Alex Sayf Cummings | Georgia State University (original) (raw)

Books by Alex Sayf Cummings

Beginning in the 1950s, a group of academics, businesspeople, and politicians set out on an ambit... more Beginning in the 1950s, a group of academics, businesspeople, and politicians set out on an ambitious project to remake North Carolina’s low-wage economy. They pitched the universities of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill as the kernel of a tech hub, Research Triangle Park, which would lure a new class of highly educated workers. In the process, they created a blueprint for what would become known as the knowledge economy: a future built on intellectual labor and the production of intellectual property.

In Brain Magnet, Alex Sayf Cummings reveals the significance of Research Triangle Park to the emergence of the high-tech economy in a postindustrial United States. She analyzes the use of ideas of culture and creativity to fuel economic development, how workers experienced life in the Triangle, and the role of the federal government in bringing the modern technology industry into being. As Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill were transformed by high-tech development, the old South gave way to a distinctly new one, which welded the intellectual power of universities to a vision of the suburban good life. Cummings pinpoints how the story of the Research Triangle sheds new light on the origins of today’s urban landscape, in which innovation, as exemplified by the tech industry, is lauded as the engine of economic growth against a backdrop of gentrification and inequality. Placing the knowledge economy in a broader cultural and intellectual context, Brain Magnet offers vital insight into how tech-driven development occurs and the people and places left in its wake.

A public history project, founded by the South El Monte Arts Posse, to document the suppressed hi... more A public history project, founded by the South El Monte Arts Posse, to document the suppressed history of El Monte and South El Monte in California's San Gabriel Valley, challenging the pioneer mythology that centers white colonizers.

"Democracy of Sound" is the first book to examine music piracy in the United States from the dawn... more "Democracy of Sound" is the first book to examine music piracy in the United States from the dawn of sound recording to the rise of Napster and online file-sharing. It asks why Americans stopped thinking of copyright as a monopoly—a kind of necessary evil—and came to see intellectual property as sacrosanct and necessary for the prosperity of an “information economy.” Recordings only became eligible for federal copyright in 1972, following years of struggle between pirates, musicians, songwriters, broadcasters, and record companies over the right to own sound. Beginning in the 1890s, the book looks at the competing visions of Americans who imagined a different system for distributing recorded sound: one that kept obscure and noncommercial music in circulation, preserved out-of-print recordings from extinction, or simply made records more freely and cheaply available to the public. Genteel jazz collectors swapped and copied rare records in the 1930s; counterculture radicals pitched piracy as a mortal threat to capitalism in the 1960s, while hip-hop DJs from the 1970s onwards reused and transformed sounds to create a freer and less regulated market for mixtapes. Each challenged the idea that sound could be owned by anyone. The conflict resulted in today’s stalemate between those who declare that “information wants to be free” and the political consensus that America’s economic well-being depends on protecting intellectual property. The saga of piracy also shows how the dubbers, bootleggers, and tape traders forged new social networks that ultimately gave rise to the social media of the twenty first century. "Democracy of Sound" is a colorful story of people making law, resisting law, and imagining what the law might be when America’s musical heritage hung in the balance, from the Victrola and pianola to iTunes and BitTorrent

Papers by Alex Sayf Cummings

Beneficial Shock, 2024

A look at gender and the concept of "games" in the films of David Fincher

The Metropole, 2020

My review of Grace Elizabeth Hale's great book about Athens, GA and the emergence of the indie mu... more My review of Grace Elizabeth Hale's great book about Athens, GA and the emergence of the indie music scene in the United States.

In the early 1980s, the philosopher Paul Oskar Kristeller looked up "creativity" in the dictionar... more In the early 1980s, the philosopher Paul Oskar Kristeller looked up "creativity" in the dictionary. He groused that the word "had been much used and misused in recent literary and popular discussion," but remained "vague and ill defined." However, to the Columbia professor's astonishment, the word could not be found in the Oxford English Dictionary's 1971 compact edition, nor in the fifth edition of Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, published in 1939.

This article is forthcoming in the Journal of Urban History. It aims to historicize urban theori... more This article is forthcoming in the Journal of Urban History. It aims to historicize urban theorist Richard Florida’s influential formulation of the “creative class” by focusing on the emergence of a high-tech economy in North Carolina’s Research Triangle metropolitan area. In the 1950s, a powerful coalition of academics, businesspeople, and politicians launched a plan to move the state away from its traditional reliance on low-wage industries by founding a research park between Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, believing that scientific firms would value the park’s proximity to several nearby colleges and universities. The essay argues that local boosters emphasized the area’s cultural opportunities and intellectual climate as major quality-of-life considerations not only for high-tech companies, but the scientists and engineers that they hoped to employ. RTP thus created a blueprint for subsequent development strategies—later promoted by Florida, among other scholars and consultants—that made arts, education, and other cultural institutions central to the marketing of a city’s “brand” or identity.

The early twenty first century has witnessed a series of highly public clashes over online file-s... more The early twenty first century has witnessed a series of highly public clashes over online file-sharing, Google's book digitization project, and fair use on college campuses. Such conflicts have led to predictions of the demise of the music and publishing industries and questions about the proper regulation of “intellectual property.” These conflicts are only the latest eruption of an ongoing debate about the regulation of creative works in new media, reflected in numerous legislative efforts to expand the scope of property rights and penalize copyright infringers since the 1970s. This article explores the roots of the struggle between producers and reproducers of music, highlighting the long period when copyright law excluded sound recordings from federal protection. It charts the decline of anti-monopoly sentiment in American political culture by tracing changing attitudes toward recorded music in the courts and Congress. In the Progressive Era, lawmakers expressed considerable reluctance to bolster the rights of copyright-holders, viewing such rights as potentially detrimental to competition and the public interest. By the 1960s, however, state and federal authorities had grown more sympathetic to pleas for protection from the recording industry. Americans increasingly viewed copyright not as a limited monopoly privilege granted by the government, but as the rightful protection for an individual or corporation’s capital investment in a product. This shift resulted from a clear increase in unauthorized reproduction of sound recordings in the 1960s, the propagation of the idea of a postindustrial or information-based society, and the conscious organization of various copyright interests under the shared banner of intellectual property. The United States’ economic woes in the 1970s created an opening for copyright interests to press their case, elevating the protection of intellectual property to an unprecedented level of priority in US domestic and international policy. In the process, lawmakers replaced the cautious and limited Progressive tradition of copyright with a robust new property rights regime.

Hoopla about the emergence of an information economy was widespread by the 1990s, when academics,... more Hoopla about the emergence of an information economy was widespread by the 1990s, when academics, politicians and the press celebrated the social transformations brought aboutby computers. Yet the rhetoric of high-tech revolution long predates Windows 95 or even the World Wide Web. Building on the work of Howard Brick and others on postwar debates over technology and the economy, this article explores how the trope of the “information revolution” entered public discourse in the United States in the 1960s. It considers how the general idea of a post-industrial society – an economy in which manufacturing might play a diminished role – became specifically tied in the public imagination to information technology and intellectual property. Technology firms waged a concerted campaign to assuage anxieties about technological unemployment while extolling the importance of computing and other new technologies to the nation’s economic future. It illustrates how advertisers developed a public relations message for firms such as RCA and IBM, aiming to reassure the public about the potential of computers and automation to transform society for the better. This promotion of the information revolution actually predated the influential discussions of a post-industrial society by theorists such as Daniel Bell and Alain Touraine in the early 1970s. The essay also highlights how prominent public intellectuals, such as Margaret Mead and Herman Kahn, and government officials lent their credibility to claims about the value of a future economy based on creating and processing information during the 1960s.

A look at the complex history of transit and housing in Atlanta, and the local progressive critiq... more A look at the complex history of transit and housing in Atlanta, and the local progressive critique of the city's celebrated BeltLine project.

For a generation of youth–queer and non-queer alike–Prince cleared the path to a different way of... more For a generation of youth–queer and non-queer alike–Prince cleared the path to a different way of embodying gender and sexuality.

This paper argues that "intellectual property" and "information" represent the alienated form of ... more This paper argues that "intellectual property" and "information" represent the alienated form of labor in a high-tech economy. It looks at the cultural, economic, and intellectual history of the information economy, using a variety of theoretical approaches to analyze the role that high-technology and intellectual property play in contemporary political economy. It considers computing, biotech, pharmaceuticals, entertainment and higher education in light of the ideas of Paolo Virno, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and other thinkers.

Looking at the long history of debates about labor and automation, this piece considers the ambit... more Looking at the long history of debates about labor and automation, this piece considers the ambitious plans of companies such as Uber, Amazon, and Google to replace workers with new technology.

Southern Cultures, 2013

The history of bootle ing both liquor and music is lled with roguish characters who did not toil ... more The history of bootle ing both liquor and music is lled with roguish characters who did not toil discreetly in the shadows. They became the heroes of early auto racing, such as Junior Johnson, who did time for bootle ing but went on to fame as a stock car driver, earning the designation of the "Last American Hero" in a 1965 essay by Tom Wolfe. Johnson (left) as crew chief and car owner at the Nashville 420 in 1983, photographed by Billferguson, courtesy of a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

A chapter in the 2009 edited volume "Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," this paper loo... more A chapter in the 2009 edited volume "Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," this paper looks at the way collectors in the 1930s prompted a reevaluation of the value of jazz and sound recordings in general. Collectors did not treat recordings as disposable consumer goods but, rather, as works of art and cultural artifacts worthy of preservation. By establishing a market for rarities and reproducing obscure and out-of-print works, these men laid the groundwork to the rise of a bigger bootleg market after World War II, which sparked the first major clash between listeners, entrepreneurs, the jazz press and record labels over who should control (and maintain) access to the world's recorded heritage. It also resulted in a comical fiasco in which RCA Victor was found to be unwittingly bootlegging records originally released by itself and its competitors in 1952.

In this discussion piece for Aeon Ideas, I look at the ways that musicians might adapt to a new d... more In this discussion piece for Aeon Ideas, I look at the ways that musicians might adapt to a new digital economy that centers less on scoring record deals and hits and more on personal connections between artists and fans.

Beginning in the 1950s, a group of academics, businesspeople, and politicians set out on an ambit... more Beginning in the 1950s, a group of academics, businesspeople, and politicians set out on an ambitious project to remake North Carolina’s low-wage economy. They pitched the universities of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill as the kernel of a tech hub, Research Triangle Park, which would lure a new class of highly educated workers. In the process, they created a blueprint for what would become known as the knowledge economy: a future built on intellectual labor and the production of intellectual property.

In Brain Magnet, Alex Sayf Cummings reveals the significance of Research Triangle Park to the emergence of the high-tech economy in a postindustrial United States. She analyzes the use of ideas of culture and creativity to fuel economic development, how workers experienced life in the Triangle, and the role of the federal government in bringing the modern technology industry into being. As Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill were transformed by high-tech development, the old South gave way to a distinctly new one, which welded the intellectual power of universities to a vision of the suburban good life. Cummings pinpoints how the story of the Research Triangle sheds new light on the origins of today’s urban landscape, in which innovation, as exemplified by the tech industry, is lauded as the engine of economic growth against a backdrop of gentrification and inequality. Placing the knowledge economy in a broader cultural and intellectual context, Brain Magnet offers vital insight into how tech-driven development occurs and the people and places left in its wake.

A public history project, founded by the South El Monte Arts Posse, to document the suppressed hi... more A public history project, founded by the South El Monte Arts Posse, to document the suppressed history of El Monte and South El Monte in California's San Gabriel Valley, challenging the pioneer mythology that centers white colonizers.

"Democracy of Sound" is the first book to examine music piracy in the United States from the dawn... more "Democracy of Sound" is the first book to examine music piracy in the United States from the dawn of sound recording to the rise of Napster and online file-sharing. It asks why Americans stopped thinking of copyright as a monopoly—a kind of necessary evil—and came to see intellectual property as sacrosanct and necessary for the prosperity of an “information economy.” Recordings only became eligible for federal copyright in 1972, following years of struggle between pirates, musicians, songwriters, broadcasters, and record companies over the right to own sound. Beginning in the 1890s, the book looks at the competing visions of Americans who imagined a different system for distributing recorded sound: one that kept obscure and noncommercial music in circulation, preserved out-of-print recordings from extinction, or simply made records more freely and cheaply available to the public. Genteel jazz collectors swapped and copied rare records in the 1930s; counterculture radicals pitched piracy as a mortal threat to capitalism in the 1960s, while hip-hop DJs from the 1970s onwards reused and transformed sounds to create a freer and less regulated market for mixtapes. Each challenged the idea that sound could be owned by anyone. The conflict resulted in today’s stalemate between those who declare that “information wants to be free” and the political consensus that America’s economic well-being depends on protecting intellectual property. The saga of piracy also shows how the dubbers, bootleggers, and tape traders forged new social networks that ultimately gave rise to the social media of the twenty first century. "Democracy of Sound" is a colorful story of people making law, resisting law, and imagining what the law might be when America’s musical heritage hung in the balance, from the Victrola and pianola to iTunes and BitTorrent

Beneficial Shock, 2024

A look at gender and the concept of "games" in the films of David Fincher

The Metropole, 2020

My review of Grace Elizabeth Hale's great book about Athens, GA and the emergence of the indie mu... more My review of Grace Elizabeth Hale's great book about Athens, GA and the emergence of the indie music scene in the United States.

In the early 1980s, the philosopher Paul Oskar Kristeller looked up "creativity" in the dictionar... more In the early 1980s, the philosopher Paul Oskar Kristeller looked up "creativity" in the dictionary. He groused that the word "had been much used and misused in recent literary and popular discussion," but remained "vague and ill defined." However, to the Columbia professor's astonishment, the word could not be found in the Oxford English Dictionary's 1971 compact edition, nor in the fifth edition of Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, published in 1939.

This article is forthcoming in the Journal of Urban History. It aims to historicize urban theori... more This article is forthcoming in the Journal of Urban History. It aims to historicize urban theorist Richard Florida’s influential formulation of the “creative class” by focusing on the emergence of a high-tech economy in North Carolina’s Research Triangle metropolitan area. In the 1950s, a powerful coalition of academics, businesspeople, and politicians launched a plan to move the state away from its traditional reliance on low-wage industries by founding a research park between Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, believing that scientific firms would value the park’s proximity to several nearby colleges and universities. The essay argues that local boosters emphasized the area’s cultural opportunities and intellectual climate as major quality-of-life considerations not only for high-tech companies, but the scientists and engineers that they hoped to employ. RTP thus created a blueprint for subsequent development strategies—later promoted by Florida, among other scholars and consultants—that made arts, education, and other cultural institutions central to the marketing of a city’s “brand” or identity.

The early twenty first century has witnessed a series of highly public clashes over online file-s... more The early twenty first century has witnessed a series of highly public clashes over online file-sharing, Google's book digitization project, and fair use on college campuses. Such conflicts have led to predictions of the demise of the music and publishing industries and questions about the proper regulation of “intellectual property.” These conflicts are only the latest eruption of an ongoing debate about the regulation of creative works in new media, reflected in numerous legislative efforts to expand the scope of property rights and penalize copyright infringers since the 1970s. This article explores the roots of the struggle between producers and reproducers of music, highlighting the long period when copyright law excluded sound recordings from federal protection. It charts the decline of anti-monopoly sentiment in American political culture by tracing changing attitudes toward recorded music in the courts and Congress. In the Progressive Era, lawmakers expressed considerable reluctance to bolster the rights of copyright-holders, viewing such rights as potentially detrimental to competition and the public interest. By the 1960s, however, state and federal authorities had grown more sympathetic to pleas for protection from the recording industry. Americans increasingly viewed copyright not as a limited monopoly privilege granted by the government, but as the rightful protection for an individual or corporation’s capital investment in a product. This shift resulted from a clear increase in unauthorized reproduction of sound recordings in the 1960s, the propagation of the idea of a postindustrial or information-based society, and the conscious organization of various copyright interests under the shared banner of intellectual property. The United States’ economic woes in the 1970s created an opening for copyright interests to press their case, elevating the protection of intellectual property to an unprecedented level of priority in US domestic and international policy. In the process, lawmakers replaced the cautious and limited Progressive tradition of copyright with a robust new property rights regime.

Hoopla about the emergence of an information economy was widespread by the 1990s, when academics,... more Hoopla about the emergence of an information economy was widespread by the 1990s, when academics, politicians and the press celebrated the social transformations brought aboutby computers. Yet the rhetoric of high-tech revolution long predates Windows 95 or even the World Wide Web. Building on the work of Howard Brick and others on postwar debates over technology and the economy, this article explores how the trope of the “information revolution” entered public discourse in the United States in the 1960s. It considers how the general idea of a post-industrial society – an economy in which manufacturing might play a diminished role – became specifically tied in the public imagination to information technology and intellectual property. Technology firms waged a concerted campaign to assuage anxieties about technological unemployment while extolling the importance of computing and other new technologies to the nation’s economic future. It illustrates how advertisers developed a public relations message for firms such as RCA and IBM, aiming to reassure the public about the potential of computers and automation to transform society for the better. This promotion of the information revolution actually predated the influential discussions of a post-industrial society by theorists such as Daniel Bell and Alain Touraine in the early 1970s. The essay also highlights how prominent public intellectuals, such as Margaret Mead and Herman Kahn, and government officials lent their credibility to claims about the value of a future economy based on creating and processing information during the 1960s.

A look at the complex history of transit and housing in Atlanta, and the local progressive critiq... more A look at the complex history of transit and housing in Atlanta, and the local progressive critique of the city's celebrated BeltLine project.

For a generation of youth–queer and non-queer alike–Prince cleared the path to a different way of... more For a generation of youth–queer and non-queer alike–Prince cleared the path to a different way of embodying gender and sexuality.

This paper argues that "intellectual property" and "information" represent the alienated form of ... more This paper argues that "intellectual property" and "information" represent the alienated form of labor in a high-tech economy. It looks at the cultural, economic, and intellectual history of the information economy, using a variety of theoretical approaches to analyze the role that high-technology and intellectual property play in contemporary political economy. It considers computing, biotech, pharmaceuticals, entertainment and higher education in light of the ideas of Paolo Virno, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and other thinkers.

Looking at the long history of debates about labor and automation, this piece considers the ambit... more Looking at the long history of debates about labor and automation, this piece considers the ambitious plans of companies such as Uber, Amazon, and Google to replace workers with new technology.

Southern Cultures, 2013

The history of bootle ing both liquor and music is lled with roguish characters who did not toil ... more The history of bootle ing both liquor and music is lled with roguish characters who did not toil discreetly in the shadows. They became the heroes of early auto racing, such as Junior Johnson, who did time for bootle ing but went on to fame as a stock car driver, earning the designation of the "Last American Hero" in a 1965 essay by Tom Wolfe. Johnson (left) as crew chief and car owner at the Nashville 420 in 1983, photographed by Billferguson, courtesy of a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

A chapter in the 2009 edited volume "Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," this paper loo... more A chapter in the 2009 edited volume "Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," this paper looks at the way collectors in the 1930s prompted a reevaluation of the value of jazz and sound recordings in general. Collectors did not treat recordings as disposable consumer goods but, rather, as works of art and cultural artifacts worthy of preservation. By establishing a market for rarities and reproducing obscure and out-of-print works, these men laid the groundwork to the rise of a bigger bootleg market after World War II, which sparked the first major clash between listeners, entrepreneurs, the jazz press and record labels over who should control (and maintain) access to the world's recorded heritage. It also resulted in a comical fiasco in which RCA Victor was found to be unwittingly bootlegging records originally released by itself and its competitors in 1952.

In this discussion piece for Aeon Ideas, I look at the ways that musicians might adapt to a new d... more In this discussion piece for Aeon Ideas, I look at the ways that musicians might adapt to a new digital economy that centers less on scoring record deals and hits and more on personal connections between artists and fans.

Progressives across the United States have applauded the proposed development of a new ring of li... more Progressives across the United States have applauded the proposed development of a new ring of light rail, parks, and bike and walking trails around Atlanta's in-town neighborhoods, a project called the Beltline. Conservatives and suburbanites have, predictably, opposed the measure, continuing a long history of opposition to public transit in the South that is intimately tied up with issues of class and race. Yet opposition to the project from the Left, particularly among black activists, has been very little noticed. Georgia State historian Alex Sayf Cummings examines criticisms of the program in terms of equity and justice ahead of a July 31 funding referendum.