The Ghost in the Machine, or (In)Visibility in Chun's _Control and Freedom_

In the introduction of Control and Freedom, Chun briefly introduces a phrase that I think warrants deeper consideration. The phrase is “making the invisible visible” (5) which seems to be the unifying force of the rest of the book. If this is the case, then I am wondering how the book itself makes things visible, and to what ends. I admit I am also confused about Chun's "twinning" of control and freedom, but I think that those are wrinkles we will iron out in class.

In terms of making things visible, Chun discusses how our computers constantly send out unseen messages, both while we are at it and when we are away from it. As Marla says, it’s a useful reminder for this to be in the background as I think and write about the ideas of (in)visibility. We have no way of knowing what these “messages” are, unless we purchase and run a “packet sniffer,” which decodes them. Yet, even the “decoded” message does not translate to anyone that does not know what the codes mean. It seems that Chun’s discussion makes visible a practice rather than content, and I think this is worth further consideration as well.

When we think of pornography, for instance, we tend to think of it in terms of deviant behavior (requiring regulation or surveillance) or in terms of sexuality, gender, and power. While both these narratives hold water, and are important to consider, I think that what Chun does here is to pose all computer activity as pornographic. Thus, she is making visible a practice rather than the sites themselves – an approach I like better than Nakamura, who attempts to analyze the sites for content, or explain how the interfaces hide things. Again, important to consider, but I like Chun’s approach much better because it addresses the user more than the used.

By making practices visible, she is pinpointing the role(s) that users play in creating, disseminating, and resisting the existing narratives of the internet as free. I like that she emphasizes practices and ideologies, instead of the interfaces themselves. I do wish she had spent some more time examining the ways in which more users could resist that which is invisible, or provide more openings for how we can use what she suggests. Each chapter seems to end with a similar charge: that by critically examining the internet and the discourses surrounding it, we can actually use it for freedom. But what about other definitions of freedom? Is it just her idea of freedom, stemming from an academic’s point of view? Or is it more complicated than that? What kinds of freedom(s) are thus invisible, that the internet -- and her discussion of it -- makes visible?