Digital technologies and Web2.0 have allowed us to interrogate structure like never before. It allows us to explore and question grammar, paths, patterns, order and sequences surrounding the way that we think and what we have in the past perceived as fixed or concrete (Roth 2008). The feedback loop provides an alternative communication channel which, rather than engaging in mainstream top down/bottom up communication, acknowledges how communication and knowledge can 'percolate' through the culture and practices of everyday life (Internet Interdisciplinary Institute 2011). For example, in our war reporting project Web2.0 has enabled communication from many Middle Eastern and North African counties to reach audiences in the West. Often the footage is unplanned, unfiltered, unmediated and often almost instantaneous. The footage informs Western publics in ways that would never be possible via a Western perspective or Western media, so much so that even an analogy between the two seems ill-founded (YouTube 2011).
This reassessment of what we have perceived as unchangeable allows us to expand our world and expand our notion of what is possible by thinking in new ways. Is an affinity with Things and Objects symbolic of a part of us retreating from our fissured selves to find a more rewarding and equitable life? Julian Bleecker suggests that Things can evolve just as human beings have evolved and learned to walk upright. We seem to want to evolve everything including our pets (Bleecker 2006, pp9-15). How do we imagine this world?
References:
Bleecker, J 2006, Why Things Matter, accessed 20/10/2011, http://www.nearfuturelaboratory.com/files/WhyThingsMatter.pdf
Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, 2011, Researching Everyday Life Through Visual and Digital Media, accessed 22/10/2011, http://in3.uoc.edu/opencms_portalin3/opencms/en/activitats/seminaris/agenda/2011/agenda_020
Roth, D 2008, Google's Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web, accessed 13/10/2011, http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/16-07/ff_android?currentPage=all
YouTube, 2011, thehawkofsyria, accessed 14/10/2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPvCSzXfBPM&feature=relate
Friday, 21 October 2011
Tuesday, 18 October 2011
Week 12 - Apple vs. Google - The Two Futures of Mobile Devices
The business models for Apple and Google are very different. Apple seemingly works by the philosophy of a closed system where it holds onto the power and control of its coding and knowledge whereas Google releases coding to the public to build on and to further develop platforms (Wired Magazine 2008). However, both maintain 'control', but in different ways, and at differing levels of transparency (Robbins et al. 2006, pp651-729). Ultimately, both impose conditions and precedents for action but at varying levels of awareness to the public and through various positioning of borders (Lessig 2006). Google is giving away code for free only with the expectation of longer term return by way of monopoly on content or through the brand alliance of its customers by targeting resistant cultures. In securing deals with mobile phone companies now, Google seems to be attempting to ensure the future separation of the mobile telephone industry from content in order to exclusively produce and distribute content itself. People are interested primarily in connectivity and information, not in the actual devices as such, and seemingly not in longer term shifts in power toward large global companies and the power that they will possess in terms of knowledge and information (Wired Magazine 2008).
Freedom to make mistakes and freedom to make choices. What are the longer term implications for liberty in a world dominated by such large corporations though? Will the people be able to 'speak' through the economy in terms of demand and supply? Will these large corporations continue to provide them with the freedom and information that they need in order to make fair and informed choices? What kind of people will come to inhabit this global world over time? Will people become more active, creative, determined and motivated? Will they be compassionate and supportive toward one another?
Or are we like the cyber-utopianists suffering from determinism in our closed off world desperately needing liberation from cyber-realism (The Guardian 2011)? Is the rhetoric of concern for the needy within a deterministic world merely discourse to prevent us from realising greater freedom free from structures of power from our current 'bubble' within this paradigm?
References
The Guardian, 2011, Facebook and Twitter are just places revolutionaries go, accessed 19/9/2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/07/facebook-twitter-revolutionaries-cyber-utopian
Lessig, L 2006, 'Four puzzles from cyber space' in Code version 2.0, Basic Books, New York
Robbins, S Bergman, R Stagg, M Coulter, M 2006, Management, 4th Edition, Pearson Education Australia, Frenchs Forest
Wired Magazine, 2008, Google's Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web, accessed 11/10/2011, http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/16-07/ff_android
Freedom to make mistakes and freedom to make choices. What are the longer term implications for liberty in a world dominated by such large corporations though? Will the people be able to 'speak' through the economy in terms of demand and supply? Will these large corporations continue to provide them with the freedom and information that they need in order to make fair and informed choices? What kind of people will come to inhabit this global world over time? Will people become more active, creative, determined and motivated? Will they be compassionate and supportive toward one another?
Or are we like the cyber-utopianists suffering from determinism in our closed off world desperately needing liberation from cyber-realism (The Guardian 2011)? Is the rhetoric of concern for the needy within a deterministic world merely discourse to prevent us from realising greater freedom free from structures of power from our current 'bubble' within this paradigm?
References
The Guardian, 2011, Facebook and Twitter are just places revolutionaries go, accessed 19/9/2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/07/facebook-twitter-revolutionaries-cyber-utopian
Lessig, L 2006, 'Four puzzles from cyber space' in Code version 2.0, Basic Books, New York
Robbins, S Bergman, R Stagg, M Coulter, M 2006, Management, 4th Edition, Pearson Education Australia, Frenchs Forest
Wired Magazine, 2008, Google's Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web, accessed 11/10/2011, http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/16-07/ff_android
Saturday, 15 October 2011
Week 11a - Dichotomies to Dialectics, Then a Shift from Survival to Nature
Perhaps this also relates to this week's reading on Apple and Google, I'm not sure I haven't read it yet. What I have read is Bruno Latour in 'Piaget, formalism and the fifth dimension'. He's talking I think about Constructivism and Metaphysics, in fact, as he would say, he is talking about Constructivism and Metaphysics. I think he's discussing Constructivism in terms of humanity's pursuit for survival. Generally speaking, we see survival in terms of a dichotomy. At one end we are like animals that fight amongst each other for food etc. to survive, and at the other end we are civilised, far removed from this animal we are polite, courteous, giving, sharing, there is no boorishness here, only etiquette. But from a dialectical perspective, civility is only another means or function of survival. We have worked out that we are better off cooperating and working together (Latour 1997, pp4-14). Democracy abides by this law, that is, when we work together we create something more than we could ever achieve working separately (Baylis et al. 2008, pp92-105). Socrates, Plato, Western Philosophy and Political Science, Sociology is premised on the notion that we are animals that need to be locked-in to be protected from ourselves. Socrates was of the belief that we have achieved civility but we have a self-defeating urge to relinquish this civility and to return to our supposed animal states because it is our nature, it is only our 'system' and structure that keeps us from undermining ourselves (de Bono 1995, pp1-23). In this scenario, objectivity and civility therefore must be placed as priority or else structuralists see this as the 'system' reversed, or in regression if you like, we must keep moving forward and become more civilised, there is no other way than backward or forward (Debord 1967, pp91-109).
On the other hand, we could view humanity's imperative not as survival, but as enjoying life and feeling freedom from being locked-in and by being as we were prior to paternalising ourselves from ourselves. A return to nature as we actually are/were without construct, without self-imposed superfluous structures (Latour 1997, pp1-14). Even Durkheim admitted that there were two sides to humans; our animal, and our ability to moralise. Morality is what separates us from animals (Van Krieken 2006, pp634-638). And if we really were animals, we would just be animals, but we are not animals. If we were animals then we wouldn't be human beings. I don't believe that we have evolved from apes. Why are there still apes then? I think that we have always been something different and I don't think that we need to be protected from ourselves as a species, I don't think that we undermine ourselves, clearly and obviously we don't because we are presently here/civilised/human being and not there/animal/ape. This entire concept is 'relative' anyway because who is to define progression? What may seem backward to one person may seem as progression to another. I think that we would be more human if we were less 'measured' as Latour would say (Latour 1997, pp1-4). It would be so unnatural anyway to dress a monkey in a suit. I think Tarzan was more human than Jane (YouTube 2011). As Latour says, there is no yardstick 'out there' stating where progression is and where we/it must go (Latour 1997, pp1-4). If we are happy and content where we are going, if we are even 'going' anywhere really at all, then what does it matter? Many people see consumerism and capitalism as sophistication and progression while many others see it as the slow destruction of our planet, while others think that both are just inventions. Forward and backward, up and down are also inventions, and symbols and objects 'indicate' direction, sequence and orientation, meaning (Latour 1997, pp1-14).
Which way of being allows us to be most human?
References
Latour, B 1997,'Trains of thought - Piaget, formalism and the fifth dimension', Common Knowledge, Summer 1997, No. 71, pp1-29
On the other hand, we could view humanity's imperative not as survival, but as enjoying life and feeling freedom from being locked-in and by being as we were prior to paternalising ourselves from ourselves. A return to nature as we actually are/were without construct, without self-imposed superfluous structures (Latour 1997, pp1-14). Even Durkheim admitted that there were two sides to humans; our animal, and our ability to moralise. Morality is what separates us from animals (Van Krieken 2006, pp634-638). And if we really were animals, we would just be animals, but we are not animals. If we were animals then we wouldn't be human beings. I don't believe that we have evolved from apes. Why are there still apes then? I think that we have always been something different and I don't think that we need to be protected from ourselves as a species, I don't think that we undermine ourselves, clearly and obviously we don't because we are presently here/civilised/human being and not there/animal/ape. This entire concept is 'relative' anyway because who is to define progression? What may seem backward to one person may seem as progression to another. I think that we would be more human if we were less 'measured' as Latour would say (Latour 1997, pp1-4). It would be so unnatural anyway to dress a monkey in a suit. I think Tarzan was more human than Jane (YouTube 2011). As Latour says, there is no yardstick 'out there' stating where progression is and where we/it must go (Latour 1997, pp1-4). If we are happy and content where we are going, if we are even 'going' anywhere really at all, then what does it matter? Many people see consumerism and capitalism as sophistication and progression while many others see it as the slow destruction of our planet, while others think that both are just inventions. Forward and backward, up and down are also inventions, and symbols and objects 'indicate' direction, sequence and orientation, meaning (Latour 1997, pp1-14).
Which way of being allows us to be most human?
References
Baylis J, Smith, S, Owens P, 2008, The Globalisation of World Politics – An introduction to international relations 4e, Oxford University Press Inc., New York
de Bono, E 1995, parallel thinking, Penguin Books, London
Debord, G 1967, The Society of the Spectacle, Zone Books, New York, New York
Van Krieken, R Habibis, D Smith, P Hutchins, B Haralambos, M Hoborn, M 2006, Sociology Themes and Perspectives, 3rd Edition, Pearson Education Australia, Frenchs Forest
YouTube, 2011, U Jane Me Tarzan, accessed 14/10/2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxSzcWLIhiQ
Sunday, 9 October 2011
Week 11 - Case #mena #arabspring: The Social Network Revolutions
The Evgeny Morozov reading addresses the issue of cyber-utopianism and its surrounding simplicity and determinism. Morozov cites cyber-utopianists as associating Web2.0 technology with direct claims of democracy without consideration and attribution of agency to the intended mobilisation and strategic use of these technologies. Cyber-utopians dismiss more modest and less deterministic possibilities of the internet's democratising effects as disinterested and accuse advocates of such of being Luddites. On the contrary, by conflating moderation with extreme and by overlaying nuanced concepts with broad and sweeping claims, utopians are in fact undermining the very possibilities that Web2.0 technology has for enablement. A clear explanation of this is given on Little Red Lost in the Woods which includes a YouTube clip with Morozov explaining this position generally through illustrations and commentary. In the reading Morozov discusses these more modest and realistic possibilities as cyber-realism and outlines the possibilities provided by Web2.0 technologies in relation to the recent Arab and Egyptian revolutions and the use of Facebook and Twitter. He emphasises, however, the role of offline preparation prior to these revolutions and the intended and organised mobilisation of Web2.0 technologies as part of the process in establishing long term change and shows how existing technologies were reappropriated for new uses. As such, these revolutions need to be examined in more historical terms in order to appreciate the offline history of these movements and the organised and deliberate use of online technologies in order to mobilise resistance (The Guardian 2011). This can be seen in the recent Tunisian revolution, Syrian revolution, Egyptian revolution and Yemen revolution.
An additional point in the reading surrounds the relationship between the United States and the Middle East. If the Iraqi's are attributed with the agency to enact a revolution by their own accord and to not be indiscriminately motivated to action by the technology itself, then the United States can't take credit for producing 'democracy' in the Middle East. To say that the revolutions spontaneously erupted as a result of the enabling effects of the technology is rather to 'credit' the United States with being responsible for the spread of democracy. In terms of democracy itself though, it would certainly seem more democratic, hypothetically, if the use of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were chosen actively and deliberately rather than spontaneously by the Iraqi people, as advocated by the cyber-realists. Agency and realism in this instance seem to be situated outside of structure and determinism, outside of the State system and outside of the West???
It is interesting that Morozov mentions three possibilites for our ' fascination with technology-driven accounts of political change' in the recent revolutions; glamor and dominance, the social being generally associated with informality, and bias of those reporting being directly involved (The Guardian 2011). I think that there would be many other reasons if this fascination we have with technology was to be assessed more generally. Technology allows us to transfer work and burden, it almost acts as a secular substitute for our own paternalisation of ourselves in some instances, similarly it could also be said to play the role of 'other being' so that we can pretend that we are not alone in this universe, that we are not an anomalie, a freak of nature spontaneously erupting like a flash mob on a San Franciscan street. Do we need to believe that we were planned, designed and intended? Do we find in technology 'reason', and feel a part of something that is larger than ourselves? Or do we make technology our determined 'other' where we can challenge ourselves (Human Cloning 2011)?
In a global context, Morozov suggests that our utopionism of technology may serve as vindication for the guilt that we feel over our extended use of online networking technologies (The Guardian 2011). But why do we feel guilt over the enjoyment and pleasure we experience while on Facebook and Twitter? Do we feel guilt in this instance on an individual or a collective level, or both? Do we anticipate or even demand a particular level of displeasure in order for life to seem grounded, earned and balanced (Carveth & Hantman Carveth 2007)? How does this relate to our conceptions of freedom (Hayek 2011)? Or do we keep ourselves displeasured in order to seek pleasure (Carveth & Hantman Carveth 2007)? Is this what cyber-utopianism, determinism and structure is? A mechanism that prevents us from realising other forms of pleasure and freedom (Centre for the Study of Complex Systems 2001)?
References
Carveth, D & Hantman Carveth, J 2007, Fugitives From Guilt: Postmodern De-Moralization and the New Hysterias, accessed 9/10/2011, http://www.yorku.ca/dcarveth/fugitives.pdf
Centre for the Study of Complex Systems, 2001, QWERTY, Lock-in and Path Dependence, accessed 9/10/2011, http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notabene/qwerty.html
The Guardian, 2011, Facebook and Twitter are just places revolutionaries go, accessed 19/9/2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/07/facebook-twitter-revolutionaries-cyber-utopian
Hayek, F 2011, Thinking about Freedom: Two Definitions in F A Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, accessed 9/10/2011, http://www.carolsnotes.net/2011/05/thinking-about-freedom-two-definitions-in-f-a-hayeks-the-road-to-serfdom/
Human Cloning, 2011, Stem-Cells and Human Cloning: The Postmodern Prometheus, accessed 10/10/2011, http://biology.kenyon.edu/courses/biol114/Chap14/clone.html
An additional point in the reading surrounds the relationship between the United States and the Middle East. If the Iraqi's are attributed with the agency to enact a revolution by their own accord and to not be indiscriminately motivated to action by the technology itself, then the United States can't take credit for producing 'democracy' in the Middle East. To say that the revolutions spontaneously erupted as a result of the enabling effects of the technology is rather to 'credit' the United States with being responsible for the spread of democracy. In terms of democracy itself though, it would certainly seem more democratic, hypothetically, if the use of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were chosen actively and deliberately rather than spontaneously by the Iraqi people, as advocated by the cyber-realists. Agency and realism in this instance seem to be situated outside of structure and determinism, outside of the State system and outside of the West???
It is interesting that Morozov mentions three possibilites for our ' fascination with technology-driven accounts of political change' in the recent revolutions; glamor and dominance, the social being generally associated with informality, and bias of those reporting being directly involved (The Guardian 2011). I think that there would be many other reasons if this fascination we have with technology was to be assessed more generally. Technology allows us to transfer work and burden, it almost acts as a secular substitute for our own paternalisation of ourselves in some instances, similarly it could also be said to play the role of 'other being' so that we can pretend that we are not alone in this universe, that we are not an anomalie, a freak of nature spontaneously erupting like a flash mob on a San Franciscan street. Do we need to believe that we were planned, designed and intended? Do we find in technology 'reason', and feel a part of something that is larger than ourselves? Or do we make technology our determined 'other' where we can challenge ourselves (Human Cloning 2011)?
In a global context, Morozov suggests that our utopionism of technology may serve as vindication for the guilt that we feel over our extended use of online networking technologies (The Guardian 2011). But why do we feel guilt over the enjoyment and pleasure we experience while on Facebook and Twitter? Do we feel guilt in this instance on an individual or a collective level, or both? Do we anticipate or even demand a particular level of displeasure in order for life to seem grounded, earned and balanced (Carveth & Hantman Carveth 2007)? How does this relate to our conceptions of freedom (Hayek 2011)? Or do we keep ourselves displeasured in order to seek pleasure (Carveth & Hantman Carveth 2007)? Is this what cyber-utopianism, determinism and structure is? A mechanism that prevents us from realising other forms of pleasure and freedom (Centre for the Study of Complex Systems 2001)?
References
Carveth, D & Hantman Carveth, J 2007, Fugitives From Guilt: Postmodern De-Moralization and the New Hysterias, accessed 9/10/2011, http://www.yorku.ca/dcarveth/fugitives.pdf
Centre for the Study of Complex Systems, 2001, QWERTY, Lock-in and Path Dependence, accessed 9/10/2011, http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notabene/qwerty.html
The Guardian, 2011, Facebook and Twitter are just places revolutionaries go, accessed 19/9/2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/07/facebook-twitter-revolutionaries-cyber-utopian
Hayek, F 2011, Thinking about Freedom: Two Definitions in F A Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, accessed 9/10/2011, http://www.carolsnotes.net/2011/05/thinking-about-freedom-two-definitions-in-f-a-hayeks-the-road-to-serfdom/
Human Cloning, 2011, Stem-Cells and Human Cloning: The Postmodern Prometheus, accessed 10/10/2011, http://biology.kenyon.edu/courses/biol114/Chap14/clone.html
Monday, 19 September 2011
Week 9 - Counter-Networks: Online Activism, Whistleblowers, and the Dark Side of the Net
This is interesting this topic - how much activism is allowed? It's kind of an oxymoron - being allowed to express dissent only about certain things in a certain way and to a certain extent. It seems like dissent by 'design', a token gesture without any substance or ability to affect any real change, 'change that is bound' or 'conditional dissent' - like 'I will be your friend only if you agree with everything I say'. Pushing the boundaries of the law seems to be the 'turning point' in enacting successful change. Cultural boundaries are one thing because people can 'come around' so to speak, but the law seems so concrete, acts are either within or beyond the law. How then are we supposed to have a public of diverse voices? Both the ideal and the collapse of diversity though would be in its perception as infinite, and at what point would you agree that some actions require people to be behind bars and other actions aren't criminal but rather 'expressing diversity' (The New Yorker 2010)? We discussed this in tut where Ted asked 'Who is to decide the boundaries?' For the moment the State and probably some powerful corporates decide. Some of us vote, but do our votes really contribute to the decision making process in any valid way?
The openDemocracy reading by James Crabtree proposed a society of collective intelligence, collective knowledge and collective action where citizens get together and fulfill many collective needs circumventing government direction (openDemocracy 2003). I'd assumed that the information age was about dispensing largely with the State (Klein 2007, pp49-71), but Crabtree is suggesting a coexistence of the State with public collectivity. There is nothing illegal or unethical about people organising a Sunday morning group dog walk or dog training session at the local park independent of local council run programs. The public doesn't have to allow the State to intervene and mediate our lives and relations with our neighbours, we can organise things between ourselves directly (openDemocracy 2003). I guess over time, with the mechanisms of supply and demand, the role of the government may reduce as required, but State and an active and independent public can coexist. The State would gradually assume a role of serving the public I would assume, rather than directing and mediating the public. This would be a gradual and cultural process over time, and essentially, it would be 'public directed/decided' and not the 'shock application' of instant removal of the entire State apparatus and public imposition as Naomi Klein suggests in 'The Shock Doctrine' (Klein 2007, pp49-71). Is this time 'expanding'? Projecting cultural change into the future over time and historical consideration has vastly different consequences and outcomes to the instant 'shock' where time is locked into the moment. 'Moment' is so expansively different to 'over time' (Snapper 1999, pp129 & 131). These two conceptions of time framed around one example can give two completely different outcomes.
I was thinking about this in tut when Ted was talking about Julian Assange and the Wikileaks reading (The New Yorker 2010). If our governments had been transparent with the public as they should have been then there would not have been these vast amounts of documents to leak. In the same token, if the government knew that they had to be transparent with the public would they have acted differently/more ethically? If this process had been a gradual negotiation and a more even power balance between State and public over time, then this sudden release of information wouldn't have even occurred. The issue really is, that this situation should never have arisen, it shouldn't have been possible. But the reality is that once it was released by Assange in that sudden moment, it was a shock, it was the public catching up on their lost awareness and autonomy all in one 'moment' (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2008). 'Hierarchy' wants time to be 'present', network time considers all time; history, present, future. When the picture is wide, it looks so different to the narrow pin hole. Modernism is such a small frame within the big picture, and Modernism wants us only to look at it and not to span other paradigms. This is a trait of all paradigms I would imagine, not just specifically the Modern paradigm, but Modernism seems to act as a means also of naturalising the system of hierarchy. Network culture seems like a platform that provides us the means to access all paradigms and question the existence even of the paradigm itself (Knowledge Solutions 2009).
Within the hierarchy model then, there are two groups of people, those who look through the pin hole and see time and space as separated, compressed and tightly framed and those who see a wider picture where time and space are both expanded and converged (Deuze 2007, p246-250). The question is, why is it even assumed that we need the 'two cultures' (Allan 2002, pp1-11)? We only need that separation in a hierarchical system because the system dictates hierarchy. In a system which is posited on equality it is only logical that equality will be what drives that system. The lecture talked about how 'network architecture formats the behaviour of the agents...', the arrangement of the system in effect is what directs culture and if the system is designed to be driven by culture itself then culture will drive it (Mitew 2011). In effect, a system designed to give power to the public will enact power to the public. The hierarchy system has been in effect I would imagine for 5000 years at least. It seems that now the public has moved to 'centre' and the 'elite' have assumed subcultural traits or status, or at the very least need to enact alternative means to protect their knowledge, power and status as the public, it would appear, move en masse into their 'space' (Bruns 2009).
References:
Allan, S 2002, Media, Risk and Science, Open University Press, Buckingham
Axel Bruns, 2009, News Blogs and Citizen Journalism: New Directions for e-Journalism, accessed 5/9/2011, http://snurb.info/files/News%20Blogs%20and%20Citizen%20Journalism.pdf
Deuze, M 2007, 'Convergence culture in the creative industries', International Journal of Cultural Studies,Vol. 10, Iss> 2, pp243-263
Klein, N 2007, The Shock Doctrine, Penguin Books Ltd, London
Knowledge Solutions, 2009, Understanding Complexity, accessed 26/9/2011, http://www.adb.org/Documents/Information/Knowledge-Solutions/understanding-complexity.pdf
Mitew, T 2011, Counter-networks, online activism, whistelblowers and the dark side of the net, lecture, digc202, Global Networks, University of Wollongong, delivered 19 September
The New Yorker, 2010, No Secrets, accessed 12/9/2011, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian
openDemocracy, 2003, Civic hacking: a new agenda for e-democracy, accessed 12/9/2011, http://www.mafhoum.com/press4/136C35.htm
Snapper, J W 1999, 'On the Web, plagiarism matters more than copyright piracy', Ethics and Information Technology, Vol. 1, pp127-136
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2008, Personal Autonomy, accessed 14/9/2011, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/personal-autonomy/
The openDemocracy reading by James Crabtree proposed a society of collective intelligence, collective knowledge and collective action where citizens get together and fulfill many collective needs circumventing government direction (openDemocracy 2003). I'd assumed that the information age was about dispensing largely with the State (Klein 2007, pp49-71), but Crabtree is suggesting a coexistence of the State with public collectivity. There is nothing illegal or unethical about people organising a Sunday morning group dog walk or dog training session at the local park independent of local council run programs. The public doesn't have to allow the State to intervene and mediate our lives and relations with our neighbours, we can organise things between ourselves directly (openDemocracy 2003). I guess over time, with the mechanisms of supply and demand, the role of the government may reduce as required, but State and an active and independent public can coexist. The State would gradually assume a role of serving the public I would assume, rather than directing and mediating the public. This would be a gradual and cultural process over time, and essentially, it would be 'public directed/decided' and not the 'shock application' of instant removal of the entire State apparatus and public imposition as Naomi Klein suggests in 'The Shock Doctrine' (Klein 2007, pp49-71). Is this time 'expanding'? Projecting cultural change into the future over time and historical consideration has vastly different consequences and outcomes to the instant 'shock' where time is locked into the moment. 'Moment' is so expansively different to 'over time' (Snapper 1999, pp129 & 131). These two conceptions of time framed around one example can give two completely different outcomes.
I was thinking about this in tut when Ted was talking about Julian Assange and the Wikileaks reading (The New Yorker 2010). If our governments had been transparent with the public as they should have been then there would not have been these vast amounts of documents to leak. In the same token, if the government knew that they had to be transparent with the public would they have acted differently/more ethically? If this process had been a gradual negotiation and a more even power balance between State and public over time, then this sudden release of information wouldn't have even occurred. The issue really is, that this situation should never have arisen, it shouldn't have been possible. But the reality is that once it was released by Assange in that sudden moment, it was a shock, it was the public catching up on their lost awareness and autonomy all in one 'moment' (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2008). 'Hierarchy' wants time to be 'present', network time considers all time; history, present, future. When the picture is wide, it looks so different to the narrow pin hole. Modernism is such a small frame within the big picture, and Modernism wants us only to look at it and not to span other paradigms. This is a trait of all paradigms I would imagine, not just specifically the Modern paradigm, but Modernism seems to act as a means also of naturalising the system of hierarchy. Network culture seems like a platform that provides us the means to access all paradigms and question the existence even of the paradigm itself (Knowledge Solutions 2009).
Within the hierarchy model then, there are two groups of people, those who look through the pin hole and see time and space as separated, compressed and tightly framed and those who see a wider picture where time and space are both expanded and converged (Deuze 2007, p246-250). The question is, why is it even assumed that we need the 'two cultures' (Allan 2002, pp1-11)? We only need that separation in a hierarchical system because the system dictates hierarchy. In a system which is posited on equality it is only logical that equality will be what drives that system. The lecture talked about how 'network architecture formats the behaviour of the agents...', the arrangement of the system in effect is what directs culture and if the system is designed to be driven by culture itself then culture will drive it (Mitew 2011). In effect, a system designed to give power to the public will enact power to the public. The hierarchy system has been in effect I would imagine for 5000 years at least. It seems that now the public has moved to 'centre' and the 'elite' have assumed subcultural traits or status, or at the very least need to enact alternative means to protect their knowledge, power and status as the public, it would appear, move en masse into their 'space' (Bruns 2009).
References:
Allan, S 2002, Media, Risk and Science, Open University Press, Buckingham
Axel Bruns, 2009, News Blogs and Citizen Journalism: New Directions for e-Journalism, accessed 5/9/2011, http://snurb.info/files/News%20Blogs%20and%20Citizen%20Journalism.pdf
Deuze, M 2007, 'Convergence culture in the creative industries', International Journal of Cultural Studies,Vol. 10, Iss> 2, pp243-263
Klein, N 2007, The Shock Doctrine, Penguin Books Ltd, London
Knowledge Solutions, 2009, Understanding Complexity, accessed 26/9/2011, http://www.adb.org/Documents/Information/Knowledge-Solutions/understanding-complexity.pdf
Mitew, T 2011, Counter-networks, online activism, whistelblowers and the dark side of the net, lecture, digc202, Global Networks, University of Wollongong, delivered 19 September
The New Yorker, 2010, No Secrets, accessed 12/9/2011, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian
openDemocracy, 2003, Civic hacking: a new agenda for e-democracy, accessed 12/9/2011, http://www.mafhoum.com/press4/136C35.htm
Snapper, J W 1999, 'On the Web, plagiarism matters more than copyright piracy', Ethics and Information Technology, Vol. 1, pp127-136
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2008, Personal Autonomy, accessed 14/9/2011, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/personal-autonomy/
Tuesday, 13 September 2011
Week 8 - Citizen Journalism and New Media Audiences
Traditional hierarchical models seem to focus on resistance within notions of structure and post-structure, the Axel Bruns reading it would seem refers to this as the two-tier model. Within such a model, resistance by the public is anticipated by corporates, marketers and government in a particular way and as such is built into the model itself. However within a network, resistance seems to behave in a way or at a level that is unanticipated. Network models seem rather to dispute the very arrangement of the hierarchy model and the very notion of structure as a guiding factor altogether. In the age of the internet it would seem that both traditional and network models agree (perhaps each for different reasons) that there is a need to incorporate both structure and agency and that structure as a guiding social and theoretical principle has dominated throughout the industrial age. The dispute of the information age seems to be which model will play an a priori role. Each model accordingly has its own beliefs, concerns, priorities and associated discourses which try to convince the public that it is the best means to 'the good life'. Each model talks about different routes to the good life; short term, long term, equality versus overall benefit, competition or cooperation, responsibility or paternalisation (Bruns 2009).
Bruns seems to also outline various positions resistant to the mainstream firstly in relation to the two-tier model. He discusses resistant positions taken either at edge or alternatively at centre. The former remains true to authenticity yet can only critique and snipe without suggesting any constructive alternatives. The latter on the other hand, resisting from centre or cooption, could be deemed as sellout yet is positioned in a way that can affect cultural change within existing structures. Through the lens of citizen journalism, Bruns discusses a third resistant position to mainstream, that of the information age where nodes are positioned within the flow of the network, effectively structure has moved inside content. This position resists the very notion of structure as guiding social force at an ontological level. The model seems to advocate a flattening out, that everyone and everything is equal, that we are each unique and infinitely diverse, that we are not grouped, not stereo-typed and not categorised. That we are not pitted against each other but will gain more collectively through cooperative effort (Bruns 2009). Technology and the long tail have revealed an alternative to the dead end critique of post modernism, a means to move forward 'above' modernism (Anderson 2004).
The implications for this seem to be the ongoing existence of metanarrative but it would appear to run, from a Modernist perspective, inverted or reversed and secondary to or enclosed within agency. It seems at the fission stage of metanarrative that the information age has split not just particular conflated aspects or assumptions of culture within the two-tier system but has split the entire system somehow and is subsequently feeding this model back into metanarrative at the fission stage, in a sense, using the system as its own weapon against itself. We could see this idea similarly where the internet acts to undermine the scarcity and hence value of 'the copy' for the corporate mainstream model (Shirky 2002). From a Modernist perspective metanarrative is now running in reverse and we are regressing (Klein 2007, pp3-21). From the perspective of the information age I guess both of these notions take a back seat anyway because they refer to time and space, both of which are becoming less relevant with digital and global technologies (Sterling 1993). Was it Einstein who gave us notions of time and space that weren't physical but that which we could only imagine? So, Newton's three laws of motion presumably still run somewhere deep beneath the information age (Langone et al. 2006, p44 & 57)). And beneath that Socratic four types of autonomy based on knowledge and awareness, but how have they changed (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2008)? I can't help but wonder if these four states of autonomy relate to strong and weak force (nuclear power & decay within the two-tier model), electromagnetism and gravity and what the relationship between all these things (Nasa's Imagine the Universe! 1998). Hydrogen still seems to turn into helium but the hydrogen is somehow different???!!! Or is the information age about the same idea of the conversion of elements but about helium turning into carbon (The Astrophysics Spectator 2004)?
Alternatively, perhaps a biological comparison may be more apt. Rather than the idea of humans processing information or relating to the outside world through a centralised brain which can be developed in a hierarchical sense through education and specific academic knowledge, maybe the network model refers to the senses. The network model seems to focus on knowledge through sense, many senses; sight, sound, touch (Klein 2007, pp25-48). Perhaps that's what the nodes are, our points of contact with the external world, and then the flow is the data from our senses being interpreted by our brain as a secondary act. Then is the mind the bridge between sense and brain? I guess in a sensory and network perspective we are all equal. Perhaps someone who is blind many have a more keen sense of hearing, but we all have an equal means to utilise our senses and perhaps it is the type of thing that can't really be extended beyond others like there would be no such thing as 'sensory skill' or 'sensory knowledge', when it comes to senses we are all equal or equipped with what we were born with. The network model, with its uptake and popularity, seems to advocate sense as the primary way that we interpret information, not through the brain. Quite an interesting idea to get your head around; that information primarily comes into our body through our senses then we interpret it in our brain, not the other way around! Modernists think this is a dangerous way to think because it gives in to our 'animal' and leads us to act primarily in impulse, thus leading to our regression back to caveman. Socrates advocated that we as human beings have a tendency to undermine ourselves and he apparently discussed this notion in his dialogues and apparently it is catered for within the democratic model in the form of a 'lock-in' (Hernan Lopez-Garay 2001). But then how is it in this case that we managed at all to progress past our cave-person days? Why is it that Socrates, Plato etc. had the apparent ability to see outside our animal when everyone else couldn't and that they could protect us from something that we ourselves couldn't? And how is it that we worked out how to break/modify/utilise the metanarrative mechanism when this was not apparently ever 'anticipated' or catered for? If structure makes us, then who made structure? Is 'the fear of our animal' a discourse that traces way back before the industrial age, a fear that has been instilled in us to keep us regulated through a web of floundering discourse between structure and agency. Are we finally free of it???? Is this the third kind of freedom, the third culture (Kelly 2008)? Modernists say that humans are just an animal and that it is important to keep the ideal that we are human, it is imperative. Does the network say that we are also animals and that we will be more human if we stop trying to forget that we are animals or does the network say that we are not animals because we have the ability to reason our senses and we have only merely been wrongly led to negate our agency? Why would it matter if we all knew that we were more than a civilised animal? Actor Network Theory advocates that we are equal though with animals and objects (van Oenen 2011)?? Will have to think about this!
References:
Anderson, C 2004, Wired: The Long Tail, accessed 1/9/2011, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html
The Astrophysics Spectator, 2004,Stars, accessed 14/9/2011, http://www.astrophysicsspectator.com/topics/stars/FusionHydrogen.html
Bruns, A 2009, News Blogs and Citizen Journalism: New Directions for e-Journalism, accessed11/9/2011, http://snurb.info/files/News%20Blogs%20and%20Citizen%20Journalism.pdf
Kelly, K 2008, The Third Culture: Better Than Free, accessed 28/8/2011, http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html
Klein, N 2007, The Shock Doctrine, Penguine Books Ltd, London
Langone, J Stutz, B Gionopoulos, A 2006, Theories for Everything, National Geographic Society, Washington
Lopez-Garay, H 2001, Dialogue Among Civilisations: What For?, accessed 14/9/2011, http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/loversofdemocracy/lopez-garay.pdf
Nasa's Imagine the Universe!, 2008, Ask an Astrophysicist, accessed 14/9/2011, http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980127c.html
Shirky, C 2002, Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing, accessed 4/9/2011, http://www.shirky.com/writings/weblogs_publishing.html
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2008, Personal Autonomy, accessed 14/9/2011, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/personal-autonomy/
Sterling, B 1993, A Short History of the Internet, accessed 28/7/2011, http://sodacity.net/system/files/Bruce_Sterling_A_Short_History_of_the_Internet.pdf
van Oenen, G 2011, Interpassive Agency: Engaging Actor-Network-Theory's View on the Agency of Objects, accessed 14/9/2011, http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/journals/theory_and_event/v014/14.2.van-oenen.html
Bruns seems to also outline various positions resistant to the mainstream firstly in relation to the two-tier model. He discusses resistant positions taken either at edge or alternatively at centre. The former remains true to authenticity yet can only critique and snipe without suggesting any constructive alternatives. The latter on the other hand, resisting from centre or cooption, could be deemed as sellout yet is positioned in a way that can affect cultural change within existing structures. Through the lens of citizen journalism, Bruns discusses a third resistant position to mainstream, that of the information age where nodes are positioned within the flow of the network, effectively structure has moved inside content. This position resists the very notion of structure as guiding social force at an ontological level. The model seems to advocate a flattening out, that everyone and everything is equal, that we are each unique and infinitely diverse, that we are not grouped, not stereo-typed and not categorised. That we are not pitted against each other but will gain more collectively through cooperative effort (Bruns 2009). Technology and the long tail have revealed an alternative to the dead end critique of post modernism, a means to move forward 'above' modernism (Anderson 2004).
The implications for this seem to be the ongoing existence of metanarrative but it would appear to run, from a Modernist perspective, inverted or reversed and secondary to or enclosed within agency. It seems at the fission stage of metanarrative that the information age has split not just particular conflated aspects or assumptions of culture within the two-tier system but has split the entire system somehow and is subsequently feeding this model back into metanarrative at the fission stage, in a sense, using the system as its own weapon against itself. We could see this idea similarly where the internet acts to undermine the scarcity and hence value of 'the copy' for the corporate mainstream model (Shirky 2002). From a Modernist perspective metanarrative is now running in reverse and we are regressing (Klein 2007, pp3-21). From the perspective of the information age I guess both of these notions take a back seat anyway because they refer to time and space, both of which are becoming less relevant with digital and global technologies (Sterling 1993). Was it Einstein who gave us notions of time and space that weren't physical but that which we could only imagine? So, Newton's three laws of motion presumably still run somewhere deep beneath the information age (Langone et al. 2006, p44 & 57)). And beneath that Socratic four types of autonomy based on knowledge and awareness, but how have they changed (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2008)? I can't help but wonder if these four states of autonomy relate to strong and weak force (nuclear power & decay within the two-tier model), electromagnetism and gravity and what the relationship between all these things (Nasa's Imagine the Universe! 1998). Hydrogen still seems to turn into helium but the hydrogen is somehow different???!!! Or is the information age about the same idea of the conversion of elements but about helium turning into carbon (The Astrophysics Spectator 2004)?
Alternatively, perhaps a biological comparison may be more apt. Rather than the idea of humans processing information or relating to the outside world through a centralised brain which can be developed in a hierarchical sense through education and specific academic knowledge, maybe the network model refers to the senses. The network model seems to focus on knowledge through sense, many senses; sight, sound, touch (Klein 2007, pp25-48). Perhaps that's what the nodes are, our points of contact with the external world, and then the flow is the data from our senses being interpreted by our brain as a secondary act. Then is the mind the bridge between sense and brain? I guess in a sensory and network perspective we are all equal. Perhaps someone who is blind many have a more keen sense of hearing, but we all have an equal means to utilise our senses and perhaps it is the type of thing that can't really be extended beyond others like there would be no such thing as 'sensory skill' or 'sensory knowledge', when it comes to senses we are all equal or equipped with what we were born with. The network model, with its uptake and popularity, seems to advocate sense as the primary way that we interpret information, not through the brain. Quite an interesting idea to get your head around; that information primarily comes into our body through our senses then we interpret it in our brain, not the other way around! Modernists think this is a dangerous way to think because it gives in to our 'animal' and leads us to act primarily in impulse, thus leading to our regression back to caveman. Socrates advocated that we as human beings have a tendency to undermine ourselves and he apparently discussed this notion in his dialogues and apparently it is catered for within the democratic model in the form of a 'lock-in' (Hernan Lopez-Garay 2001). But then how is it in this case that we managed at all to progress past our cave-person days? Why is it that Socrates, Plato etc. had the apparent ability to see outside our animal when everyone else couldn't and that they could protect us from something that we ourselves couldn't? And how is it that we worked out how to break/modify/utilise the metanarrative mechanism when this was not apparently ever 'anticipated' or catered for? If structure makes us, then who made structure? Is 'the fear of our animal' a discourse that traces way back before the industrial age, a fear that has been instilled in us to keep us regulated through a web of floundering discourse between structure and agency. Are we finally free of it???? Is this the third kind of freedom, the third culture (Kelly 2008)? Modernists say that humans are just an animal and that it is important to keep the ideal that we are human, it is imperative. Does the network say that we are also animals and that we will be more human if we stop trying to forget that we are animals or does the network say that we are not animals because we have the ability to reason our senses and we have only merely been wrongly led to negate our agency? Why would it matter if we all knew that we were more than a civilised animal? Actor Network Theory advocates that we are equal though with animals and objects (van Oenen 2011)?? Will have to think about this!
References:
Anderson, C 2004, Wired: The Long Tail, accessed 1/9/2011, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html
The Astrophysics Spectator, 2004,Stars, accessed 14/9/2011, http://www.astrophysicsspectator.com/topics/stars/FusionHydrogen.html
Bruns, A 2009, News Blogs and Citizen Journalism: New Directions for e-Journalism, accessed11/9/2011, http://snurb.info/files/News%20Blogs%20and%20Citizen%20Journalism.pdf
Kelly, K 2008, The Third Culture: Better Than Free, accessed 28/8/2011, http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html
Klein, N 2007, The Shock Doctrine, Penguine Books Ltd, London
Langone, J Stutz, B Gionopoulos, A 2006, Theories for Everything, National Geographic Society, Washington
Lopez-Garay, H 2001, Dialogue Among Civilisations: What For?, accessed 14/9/2011, http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/loversofdemocracy/lopez-garay.pdf
Nasa's Imagine the Universe!, 2008, Ask an Astrophysicist, accessed 14/9/2011, http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980127c.html
Shirky, C 2002, Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing, accessed 4/9/2011, http://www.shirky.com/writings/weblogs_publishing.html
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2008, Personal Autonomy, accessed 14/9/2011, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/personal-autonomy/
Sterling, B 1993, A Short History of the Internet, accessed 28/7/2011, http://sodacity.net/system/files/Bruce_Sterling_A_Short_History_of_the_Internet.pdf
van Oenen, G 2011, Interpassive Agency: Engaging Actor-Network-Theory's View on the Agency of Objects, accessed 14/9/2011, http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/journals/theory_and_event/v014/14.2.van-oenen.html
Tuesday, 6 September 2011
Week 7 - Into the Cloud: the Long Tail and the Attention Economy
I'm starting to see now the democratising effects of the internet. The potential of the internet is becoming more and more realised over time. It is in effect using economics, capitalism and democracy to turn media power on itself. Democracy allows for revision of 'the rules' and grants much more latitude between individual liberty and the democratic collective than I realised. I wonder what other terrain of democracy I haven't yet discovered, there's probably vast reaches. Democracy can take so many forms, all legal, all legitimate, all 'within' the democratic model so to speak (Kelly 2008). It makes me realise how limited our views of democracy are in this time and place and how immersed you become in your own 'world' that you fail to see that there is so much more going on. I guess Socrates could see infinitely past the present place and envisage many forms of democracy. I just can't believe the flexibility of democracy, I thought it was so much more limited. That is probably also a part of Socratic knowledge and awareness that is built into democracy, an awareness of the capabilities of democracy and the power that we actually have legally as its citizens. I wonder if throughout history other democracies have been more aware of their democratic powers. I wonder also if the mass media has played a role throughout the last century in reducing public awareness of its democratic powers. We certainly have recently seen a trend of distrust in politics by the public which has been largely generated by media; including the sensationalism and celebrity involved in the last Federal election and the evolution of political party brands ie. brand Labor (Louw 2010, pp111-115).
I thought it was interesting to think about mass media industry being reliant on scarcity of copies in their business model and how the internet, through the mechanisms of economic supply and demand, create an abundance of copies making mass media products worthless (Shirky 2002). Very clever. So the more that any of us perform any action on the internet the more we are undermining the mass media business model. So I guess anything associated with assisting in the fercundity and duplication of data on the internet, like RSS feeds, only further reduce mass media product value. The mass media are caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to online advertising, they are damned if they do and they are damned if they don't because the same rule applies to them ie. the more they upload to the internet to entice online sales the more they only undermine their offline business model (O'Reilly 2005).
The hackers played a large role in undermining the mass media business model. But it's also interesting to think about how this whole scenario perhaps was an inadvertent consequence of cold war tactics to avert nuclear attack. The internet and the notion of network as opposed to centralisation and hierarchy were a tactic of war to overcome traditional limitations of time and space. In the first instance, the network setup allowed front line and timely decisions to be made without central consultation. Secondly, the decentralised structure of the network allowed for any node to work independently (Sterling 1993)). It seems that the bipolarity of global power for 45 years of cold war between the US and the then USSR inadvertently spawned a new war tactic of diffusion which in itself kind of revealed a new form of decentralised cooperation. But perhaps this is a natural reaction to the intense forms of concentration resultant from the US/USSR stand off. Perhaps this diffusion was not new but part of a larger cycle. Is it possible though that in an age of unprecedented nuclear power that this stand off between the US and USSR continued much longer than previous bi-polar stand offs in the cycle? Thus the awareness of this third type of 'diffused cooperative' democracy nearly became culturally lost within our lifetime (Lessig 2004). Is this the third part of metanarrative, the constructionist part? Is this what mass media has done, locked us into objective/subjective cycles without constructionism ie. they locked us into fissure and tried to extinct fussion (Centre for the Study of Complex Systems 2001)? This is why it is so important that people realise and are made aware that democracy can also legally, morally, ethically and legitimately take the form of diffused cooperation. I guess neo-liberal discourse is the mechanism which co-opts us back into the objective/subjective cycle and stops us from moving beyond the discourse to see otherwise. Neo-liberalism is the discourse of the discourse, so the media would be responsible for producing its own discourse about itself in order to keep us locked within its power (Neoliberalism: origins, theory, definition, 2005). Is this how mass media challenged metanarrative, kind of by using metanarrative against itself also? Is this democratic dialogue??? If so, then democracy is like a 'network' and dialogue is like a war of ideas and concepts, a constant critique of itself, a struggle for power or persuasion, a constant tension, a game.
References:
Centre for the Study of Complex Systems, 2001, QWERTY, Lock-in and Path Dependence, access 7/9/2011, http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notabene/qwerty.html
Kevin Kelly, 2008, The Third Culture, accessed 30/8/2011, http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html
Lessig, L 2004, Free Culture: How Big Media uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Strangle Creativity, accessed 15/8/2011, http://www.authorama.com/free-culture-4.html
Louw, E 2010, The Media and Political Process, 2nd Edition, SAGE Publications Ltd, London
Neoliberalism: origins, theory, definition, 2005, Neoliberalism inadequately defined?, accessed 7/9/2011, http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/neoliberalism.html
Tim O'Reilly, 2005, What is Web2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software, accessed 30/8/2011, http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html
Clay Shirky, 2002, Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing, accessed 30/8/2011, http://www.shirky.com/writings/weblogs_publishing.html
Sterling, B 1993, A Short History of the Internet, accessed 27/7/2011, http://sodacity.net/system/files/Bruce_Sterling_A_Short_History_of_the_Internet.pdf
I thought it was interesting to think about mass media industry being reliant on scarcity of copies in their business model and how the internet, through the mechanisms of economic supply and demand, create an abundance of copies making mass media products worthless (Shirky 2002). Very clever. So the more that any of us perform any action on the internet the more we are undermining the mass media business model. So I guess anything associated with assisting in the fercundity and duplication of data on the internet, like RSS feeds, only further reduce mass media product value. The mass media are caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to online advertising, they are damned if they do and they are damned if they don't because the same rule applies to them ie. the more they upload to the internet to entice online sales the more they only undermine their offline business model (O'Reilly 2005).
The hackers played a large role in undermining the mass media business model. But it's also interesting to think about how this whole scenario perhaps was an inadvertent consequence of cold war tactics to avert nuclear attack. The internet and the notion of network as opposed to centralisation and hierarchy were a tactic of war to overcome traditional limitations of time and space. In the first instance, the network setup allowed front line and timely decisions to be made without central consultation. Secondly, the decentralised structure of the network allowed for any node to work independently (Sterling 1993)). It seems that the bipolarity of global power for 45 years of cold war between the US and the then USSR inadvertently spawned a new war tactic of diffusion which in itself kind of revealed a new form of decentralised cooperation. But perhaps this is a natural reaction to the intense forms of concentration resultant from the US/USSR stand off. Perhaps this diffusion was not new but part of a larger cycle. Is it possible though that in an age of unprecedented nuclear power that this stand off between the US and USSR continued much longer than previous bi-polar stand offs in the cycle? Thus the awareness of this third type of 'diffused cooperative' democracy nearly became culturally lost within our lifetime (Lessig 2004). Is this the third part of metanarrative, the constructionist part? Is this what mass media has done, locked us into objective/subjective cycles without constructionism ie. they locked us into fissure and tried to extinct fussion (Centre for the Study of Complex Systems 2001)? This is why it is so important that people realise and are made aware that democracy can also legally, morally, ethically and legitimately take the form of diffused cooperation. I guess neo-liberal discourse is the mechanism which co-opts us back into the objective/subjective cycle and stops us from moving beyond the discourse to see otherwise. Neo-liberalism is the discourse of the discourse, so the media would be responsible for producing its own discourse about itself in order to keep us locked within its power (Neoliberalism: origins, theory, definition, 2005). Is this how mass media challenged metanarrative, kind of by using metanarrative against itself also? Is this democratic dialogue??? If so, then democracy is like a 'network' and dialogue is like a war of ideas and concepts, a constant critique of itself, a struggle for power or persuasion, a constant tension, a game.
References:
Centre for the Study of Complex Systems, 2001, QWERTY, Lock-in and Path Dependence, access 7/9/2011, http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notabene/qwerty.html
Kevin Kelly, 2008, The Third Culture, accessed 30/8/2011, http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html
Lessig, L 2004, Free Culture: How Big Media uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Strangle Creativity, accessed 15/8/2011, http://www.authorama.com/free-culture-4.html
Louw, E 2010, The Media and Political Process, 2nd Edition, SAGE Publications Ltd, London
Neoliberalism: origins, theory, definition, 2005, Neoliberalism inadequately defined?, accessed 7/9/2011, http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/neoliberalism.html
Tim O'Reilly, 2005, What is Web2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software, accessed 30/8/2011, http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html
Clay Shirky, 2002, Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing, accessed 30/8/2011, http://www.shirky.com/writings/weblogs_publishing.html
Sterling, B 1993, A Short History of the Internet, accessed 27/7/2011, http://sodacity.net/system/files/Bruce_Sterling_A_Short_History_of_the_Internet.pdf
Friday, 26 August 2011
Week 6 - Transglobal Entertainment and Media Convergence
Am midway through the Mark Deuze reading on 'Convergence culture in the creative industries' and I really like the way that he explains things. He's an Assistant Professor at Leiden University, Indiana and he explains things, that I'm sensing are quite complex, in a way that even I can kind of start to understand, he must be truly amazing, although I'm sure that much of what he's discussing is still washing over me (Deuze 2007, pp245-250).
From what I can gather, he's talking about 'convergence culture' (converging meaning to join or merge) discourse as being a system about the naturalisation and manufacture of merging structuralism and post-structuralism as being a liberating thing. I think he's suggesting that in the current media dominated society, the notion of post (after) Modernism is a discourse to seduce the public into believing that they can exercise their agency by turning their backs on 'tradition'. Within this process media conglomerates are convincing the public of options only available within media dominated areas and systems. The actual 'social system' is being reduced from a 'twin' system to a 'singular' system. Over time, the public has been locked into this single media dominated system and other avenues of 'agency' have become invisible, just as media power has also become invisible (Deuze 2007, pp245-250). I think digc202 is trying to expand this system again and 'release' us from this media-dominated area. Deuze states that the idea of liberation through 'merging' systems of structure and agency (in a single-system sense) is nothing more than post-modern/media dominated discourse. That true agency lies in a 'separation' of the two systems along with an 'expansion' of the system to reveal the second system which has become 'hidden' (Deuze 2007, pp245-250). The 'whole' system seems to be in need of a split or fissure and a re-grouping of culture/power/ecology (Snapper 1999, pp128-135).
Deuze discussed the conflation of 'creativity' and 'agency' in post-modern culture. The two are very different, but media culture seeks to placate us with the notion that creativity is agency. Creativity is 'innovation' whereby in a closed system culture settles to the 'bottom', creativity is recombinating already existing entities and bringing 'forgotten' ideas again to the fore and in new combinations (Deuze 2007, p250). Zigmunt Bauman (Bauman 1999, ppv-xvi) discusses this idea in terms of patterns as does Pierre Bourdeau (Van Krieken et al. 2006, pp144-145) in terms of habit/habitus, a similar concept can be evidenced with the Google page rank system (Google 2009), I always like to bomb the 999,999th entry on any search. But agency is at the level 'above'/'below' this where we ask what is it that drives us to recombinate these patterns and entities? This is the question that media seeks to hide and extinct. This kind of follows on from last week's discussion on how copyright eats and extincts not only our ability but also our desire to recombinate, it's like a downward spiraling generally of the public's awareness and internal 'desire' over time (Lessig 2004). The discourse is a reduction in mass and elite dualism, but exactly the opposite is happening. Those who are pulling the strings are becoming more powerful, the knowledge gap is widening and we have become blind to this process. Very tricky!
I wonder then how Sociology, as a discipline, deals with all of this? Sociology has been developed only in the last 120 years, post industrial revolution and amidst social media hegemony. Is Sociology unwittingly complicit in this entire process? Is this what Gabriel Tarde was referring to (Matei Candea 2011) Has Sociology in fact enabled or reproduced a culture ripe for media hegemony, or even just reproduced the discourse itself at an ontological/ecological level throughout the 20th century? As a tool, how then can we use Sociology to our advantage, if at all? Or in doing so, are we only reproducing media power?
References
From what I can gather, he's talking about 'convergence culture' (converging meaning to join or merge) discourse as being a system about the naturalisation and manufacture of merging structuralism and post-structuralism as being a liberating thing. I think he's suggesting that in the current media dominated society, the notion of post (after) Modernism is a discourse to seduce the public into believing that they can exercise their agency by turning their backs on 'tradition'. Within this process media conglomerates are convincing the public of options only available within media dominated areas and systems. The actual 'social system' is being reduced from a 'twin' system to a 'singular' system. Over time, the public has been locked into this single media dominated system and other avenues of 'agency' have become invisible, just as media power has also become invisible (Deuze 2007, pp245-250). I think digc202 is trying to expand this system again and 'release' us from this media-dominated area. Deuze states that the idea of liberation through 'merging' systems of structure and agency (in a single-system sense) is nothing more than post-modern/media dominated discourse. That true agency lies in a 'separation' of the two systems along with an 'expansion' of the system to reveal the second system which has become 'hidden' (Deuze 2007, pp245-250). The 'whole' system seems to be in need of a split or fissure and a re-grouping of culture/power/ecology (Snapper 1999, pp128-135).
Deuze discussed the conflation of 'creativity' and 'agency' in post-modern culture. The two are very different, but media culture seeks to placate us with the notion that creativity is agency. Creativity is 'innovation' whereby in a closed system culture settles to the 'bottom', creativity is recombinating already existing entities and bringing 'forgotten' ideas again to the fore and in new combinations (Deuze 2007, p250). Zigmunt Bauman (Bauman 1999, ppv-xvi) discusses this idea in terms of patterns as does Pierre Bourdeau (Van Krieken et al. 2006, pp144-145) in terms of habit/habitus, a similar concept can be evidenced with the Google page rank system (Google 2009), I always like to bomb the 999,999th entry on any search. But agency is at the level 'above'/'below' this where we ask what is it that drives us to recombinate these patterns and entities? This is the question that media seeks to hide and extinct. This kind of follows on from last week's discussion on how copyright eats and extincts not only our ability but also our desire to recombinate, it's like a downward spiraling generally of the public's awareness and internal 'desire' over time (Lessig 2004). The discourse is a reduction in mass and elite dualism, but exactly the opposite is happening. Those who are pulling the strings are becoming more powerful, the knowledge gap is widening and we have become blind to this process. Very tricky!
I wonder then how Sociology, as a discipline, deals with all of this? Sociology has been developed only in the last 120 years, post industrial revolution and amidst social media hegemony. Is Sociology unwittingly complicit in this entire process? Is this what Gabriel Tarde was referring to (Matei Candea 2011) Has Sociology in fact enabled or reproduced a culture ripe for media hegemony, or even just reproduced the discourse itself at an ontological/ecological level throughout the 20th century? As a tool, how then can we use Sociology to our advantage, if at all? Or in doing so, are we only reproducing media power?
References
Bauman, Z 1999, Culture as Praxis, SAGE Publications Ltd, London
Deuze, M 2007, 'Convergence culture in the creative industries', International Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 10, Iss. 2, pp243-263
Lessig, L 2004, Free Culture, accessed 15/8/2011, http://authorama.com/free-culture-4.html
Matei Candea, 2011, Gabriel Tarde, the road not taken, accessed 27/8/2011, http://www.candea.net/Gabriel_Tarde.html
Snapper, J W 1999, 'On the Web, plagiarism matters more than copyright piracy', Ethics and Information Technology, Vol. 1, pp127-136
Van Krieken, R Habibis, D Smith, P Hutchins, B Haralambos, M Hoborn, M 2006, Sociology Themes and Perspectives, 3rd Edition, Pearson Education Australia, Frenchs Forest
Saturday, 20 August 2011
Week 5 - Against the Law: Intellectual Property and Content Control
The central themes in the readings seem to outline the necessity of having both resistance and control and that rather than perceiving the two as working in opposition, they can actually create greater opportunity for all when working together. Lawrence Lessig gave the example of Walt Disney's 'borrowings' for Steamboat Willie. There are two issues here. Firstly, that Steamboat Bill was shown immediately prior to Steamboat Willie and that the second was a parody of the first. The two worked together and as such struck a chord with audiences that neither could achieve independently. The second issue, as Lessig discusses, is the greater creative freedom that Disney had in 1928 as a result of the few patents and copyrights that had been enacted at that time, along with the fact that patents and copyrights were also much shorter at the beginning of the 20th century, around 20 years. This is significant because as patent and copyright restrictions increased over this century, along with their duration (to around 70 years in the 1960's and 1970's), creative freedom and expression became incredibly restrained. Further, because the duration of these patents and copyrights became extended to 'a lifetime' rather than a few generations, ideas slowly began to lose their 'natural creative momentum' becoming a kind of 'creative dead-end' or as having a creative lack of continuity (Lessig 2004). For example, many engineers and inventors waited for Watts' patent to expire on the steam engine in order to implement their own improvements, however, over a 70 year period this would be unlikely and although it is suggested that because of Watts' patent the industrial revolution was perhaps delayed by a few decades, it nonetheless still eventuated (Boldrin & Levine 2007). This is an example of the interests of the individual patent owner far outweighing the collective good, and a need for greater balance in this respect.
Lessig also discusses Japanese comics known as manga and the rip-off copies/derivatives known as doujinshi (About.com 2011). Technically, the latter are illegal in Japan, however, the crime is not enforced and manga distributors believe that doujinshi rip-offs in fact create greater demand for manga. When consulted, Japanese lawyers attest that the reason the copyright breaches are not policed is because quite simply there are not 'enough lawyers' (Lessig 2004). The democratic consensus seems to have already escaped the practical necessity or collective desire for this law. Where in the past these laws have created a fissure and separation between the two perspectives, popular culture seems to have initiated a fusion between the two.
Similar conceptions can be paralleled to society which it would seem moves in cycles and patterns over larger periods of history synchronised with the human lifespan. The Kondratieff Cycle for example is an economic cycle that indicates subcultural activity occurring in reaction to economic hardship at regular intervals throughout history over the last few hundred years (Angelfire 2000). Perhaps this very conception or question is part of the cycle and occurs at this stage of each cycle. Is it possible however, that through social scientific research, our awareness of this cycle has enabled us to alter it irreversibly in an unprecedented fashion? And if so, can this amendment be managed and built into or annexed to the existing cycle somehow? Do we necessarily have to return to this 'narrative' now that its patent has seemingly expired? If we do, is it possible to make the changes now that we have been long anticipating but have been unable to implement because of untenable restriction? The John W. Snapper reading perhaps provides a possible solution (Snapper 1999).
References
About.com, 2011, Doujinshi, accessed 20/8/2011, http://manga.about.com/od/glossary/g/doujinshi.htm
Angelfire, 2000, Kondratieff Wave, accessed 20/8/2011, http://www.angelfire.com/or/truthfinder/index22.html
Boldrin, M and Levine, D K, 2007, Introduction in Against Intellectual Monopoly, accessed 15/8/2011, http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/anew01.pdf
Lessig, L 2004, Free Culture, accessed 15/8/2011, http://authorama.com/free-culture-4.html
Snapper, J W 1999, 'On the Web, plagiarism matters more than copyright piracy', Ethics and Information Technology, Vol. 1, pp127-136
Lessig also discusses Japanese comics known as manga and the rip-off copies/derivatives known as doujinshi (About.com 2011). Technically, the latter are illegal in Japan, however, the crime is not enforced and manga distributors believe that doujinshi rip-offs in fact create greater demand for manga. When consulted, Japanese lawyers attest that the reason the copyright breaches are not policed is because quite simply there are not 'enough lawyers' (Lessig 2004). The democratic consensus seems to have already escaped the practical necessity or collective desire for this law. Where in the past these laws have created a fissure and separation between the two perspectives, popular culture seems to have initiated a fusion between the two.
Similar conceptions can be paralleled to society which it would seem moves in cycles and patterns over larger periods of history synchronised with the human lifespan. The Kondratieff Cycle for example is an economic cycle that indicates subcultural activity occurring in reaction to economic hardship at regular intervals throughout history over the last few hundred years (Angelfire 2000). Perhaps this very conception or question is part of the cycle and occurs at this stage of each cycle. Is it possible however, that through social scientific research, our awareness of this cycle has enabled us to alter it irreversibly in an unprecedented fashion? And if so, can this amendment be managed and built into or annexed to the existing cycle somehow? Do we necessarily have to return to this 'narrative' now that its patent has seemingly expired? If we do, is it possible to make the changes now that we have been long anticipating but have been unable to implement because of untenable restriction? The John W. Snapper reading perhaps provides a possible solution (Snapper 1999).
References
About.com, 2011, Doujinshi, accessed 20/8/2011, http://manga.about.com/od/glossary/g/doujinshi.htm
Angelfire, 2000, Kondratieff Wave, accessed 20/8/2011, http://www.angelfire.com/or/truthfinder/index22.html
Boldrin, M and Levine, D K, 2007, Introduction in Against Intellectual Monopoly, accessed 15/8/2011, http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/anew01.pdf
Lessig, L 2004, Free Culture, accessed 15/8/2011, http://authorama.com/free-culture-4.html
Snapper, J W 1999, 'On the Web, plagiarism matters more than copyright piracy', Ethics and Information Technology, Vol. 1, pp127-136
Sunday, 14 August 2011
Week 4 - Global Media Businesses and Immaterial Production
The transformation from industrial society to network society in one respect seems quite adhoc, but I wonder what longer term cultural forces have been at work to produce these changes.
The Melissa Gregg reading discussed the shortfall in 'communication processing' labour whereby the immaterial labour of checking and processing emails for example, became an additional and unpaid task willingly taken on by workers. Gregg states that communication processing was taken on in 'addition' to the usual material tasks and that the material tasks didn't reduce in any way. Further, this 'additional' work 'eats' into leisure time. Gregg states that there are no 'official' guidelines on how the deluge of additional information processing is to be handled by the workplace or the economy. Nothing has been set in place by Law, Government, Corporation owners or Managers to address this issue and for the time being workers are absorbing the shortfall by taking on extra work by playing the role of available, willing and flexible team player (Gregg 2009).
This is interesting that the economy is apparently demanding increased levels of voluntary labour in the network society. In the recent past, women were seen as exercising a form of voluntary labour by raising and supporting home and family (Van Krieken et al. 2006, p312). Effectively, with the development of new media we are working longer hours but it is framed as autonomy and choice rather than being systemically imposed upon us (Gregg 2009). Traditionally, responsibility and autonomy seemed to work together in white collar work environments, but it seems that with the emergence of new media we are taking on more responsibility while systematically losing our ability to experience the accompanying freedom because in many instances rather we become enslaved to the affordances that the technology enables. The 'feedback loop' discussed in lecture also can be seen to 'sell' local input and 'produser' activity as autonomy, but again, a function or purpose is served and for what ends and for whom does it benefit?
It depends though on how you define freedom. The French have two definitions of freedom; Gratis and Libre. Are there any other types of freedom I wonder, perhaps a combination of both political freedom and individual freedom??? Or perhaps there are two types of political freedom, one surrounding traditional notions of democracy as collectivity, and one which focuses more on liberty. Is it possible that the latter is a type of democracy that we haven't witnessed in a long time? It seems that somehow with the invention of the telegraph and subsequent split of mind and body (although Philosophers trace this back to Descartes) that, as a civilisation, we have drifted into some kind of 'altered reality'. Is neo-liberalism an intended and political reflexive action to bring us back to political centre, but rather in a liberty form? A seemingly extreme action required to counter how out of balance and off-centre we had become? Socrates and Plato anticipated our instinct for survival and knew of our drive to undermine our civility, and hence our own freedom. They understood that we would willingly trade Gratis for Libre. Was neo-liberalism strategically devised? Was it intended for the long term common good? Was post-modernism a device to draw people out of this 'altered reality'? Or were there unintended and unanticipated consequences? Have we somehow broken the mechanism of the political system or is this just business as usual? Have we now moved out of politics and into economy??? So many questions!!!
References
M Gregg, 2009, Function Creep: Communication technologies and anticipator labour in the information workplace, accessed 13/8/2011, http://homecookedtheory.com/wp-content/uploads/functioncreepnms.doc
The Melissa Gregg reading discussed the shortfall in 'communication processing' labour whereby the immaterial labour of checking and processing emails for example, became an additional and unpaid task willingly taken on by workers. Gregg states that communication processing was taken on in 'addition' to the usual material tasks and that the material tasks didn't reduce in any way. Further, this 'additional' work 'eats' into leisure time. Gregg states that there are no 'official' guidelines on how the deluge of additional information processing is to be handled by the workplace or the economy. Nothing has been set in place by Law, Government, Corporation owners or Managers to address this issue and for the time being workers are absorbing the shortfall by taking on extra work by playing the role of available, willing and flexible team player (Gregg 2009).
This is interesting that the economy is apparently demanding increased levels of voluntary labour in the network society. In the recent past, women were seen as exercising a form of voluntary labour by raising and supporting home and family (Van Krieken et al. 2006, p312). Effectively, with the development of new media we are working longer hours but it is framed as autonomy and choice rather than being systemically imposed upon us (Gregg 2009). Traditionally, responsibility and autonomy seemed to work together in white collar work environments, but it seems that with the emergence of new media we are taking on more responsibility while systematically losing our ability to experience the accompanying freedom because in many instances rather we become enslaved to the affordances that the technology enables. The 'feedback loop' discussed in lecture also can be seen to 'sell' local input and 'produser' activity as autonomy, but again, a function or purpose is served and for what ends and for whom does it benefit?
It depends though on how you define freedom. The French have two definitions of freedom; Gratis and Libre. Are there any other types of freedom I wonder, perhaps a combination of both political freedom and individual freedom??? Or perhaps there are two types of political freedom, one surrounding traditional notions of democracy as collectivity, and one which focuses more on liberty. Is it possible that the latter is a type of democracy that we haven't witnessed in a long time? It seems that somehow with the invention of the telegraph and subsequent split of mind and body (although Philosophers trace this back to Descartes) that, as a civilisation, we have drifted into some kind of 'altered reality'. Is neo-liberalism an intended and political reflexive action to bring us back to political centre, but rather in a liberty form? A seemingly extreme action required to counter how out of balance and off-centre we had become? Socrates and Plato anticipated our instinct for survival and knew of our drive to undermine our civility, and hence our own freedom. They understood that we would willingly trade Gratis for Libre. Was neo-liberalism strategically devised? Was it intended for the long term common good? Was post-modernism a device to draw people out of this 'altered reality'? Or were there unintended and unanticipated consequences? Have we somehow broken the mechanism of the political system or is this just business as usual? Have we now moved out of politics and into economy??? So many questions!!!
References
M Gregg, 2009, Function Creep: Communication technologies and anticipator labour in the information workplace, accessed 13/8/2011, http://homecookedtheory.com/wp-content/uploads/functioncreepnms.doc
Van Krieken, R Habibis, D Smith, P Hutchins, B Haralambos, M Hoborn, M 2006, Sociology Themes and Perspectives, 3rd Edition, Pearson Education Australia, Frenchs Forest
Sunday, 7 August 2011
Week 3 - The Network Society: Narratives of Global Communication
The invention of the telegraph definitely represented a new 'concept' in communication, perhaps a whole new 'concept' generally. We had never before perceived communicating with someone without being in the same physical proximity as the recipient. It's kind of amazing how we 'invented' technology to serve a particular purpose without foreseeing it's social and cultural implications, it's like technology and science fulfill an imperative which is independent somehow of the social or cultural domain. Yet it is from this very domain that the process of development and invention evolves. We are kind of in control of our destiny and kind of not at the same time. We build systems for a particular purpose then the system spits back data at us that we didn't expect or that we didn't control! This is not technological determinism but kind of like the 'scripting' embedded in objects or technology that Latour and ANT discusses. We embed the scripts and we read the scripts and we use objects like a tool, but this kind of becomes much more complex when we involve computers and electronics, we seem to be losing more control of these objects. They assist us and take away burdens but they also challenge our authority as we become less able to understand their capabilities and functions and less able to conceptualise and predict their social outcomes, thus becoming ever more dependent on them (van Oenen 2011).
In the same token, the technology of the computer for data processing and the technology of telephone communication developed in two independent streams. It was the development of the modem that joined the two and made communication between computers and networking in this sense possible. Similarly, the internet was developed by military and government for security purposes but it was the innovation of a few individuals and eventually more and more people that utilised this logic for mass communication purposes challenging the hegemony of the mass media. It's the recombining of seemingly disparate technologies and innovative use of technologies that shows our agency in this instance.
What is interesting is the apparent lure of the cyberworld and its seeming promise of freedom and escape. We imagine that online we can 'be' inside our Mind and escape our physical bodies. Yet we try to emulate this apparent freedom in the offline world. The emergence of postmodern society seems to represent an attempt to emulate cyberculture in the physical world. Perhaps cyberculture has taught popular culture how to thwart authority and government at its very root. By taking away centralised power we can all be powerful! But what are the long term political implications of such a society? Can we be democratic without democracy? For how long can we live in peace without any overarching or external governance or authority hypothetically? William Gibson likens such a notion to hallucination. What of ethics and those who want to extend the boundaries of decency infinitely? How will this effect culture and society over time?
References:
van Oenen, G 2011, 'Interpassive Agency, Engaging Actor-Network-Theory's View on the Agency of Objects', Theory and Event, Vol. 14, Iss. 2
In the same token, the technology of the computer for data processing and the technology of telephone communication developed in two independent streams. It was the development of the modem that joined the two and made communication between computers and networking in this sense possible. Similarly, the internet was developed by military and government for security purposes but it was the innovation of a few individuals and eventually more and more people that utilised this logic for mass communication purposes challenging the hegemony of the mass media. It's the recombining of seemingly disparate technologies and innovative use of technologies that shows our agency in this instance.
What is interesting is the apparent lure of the cyberworld and its seeming promise of freedom and escape. We imagine that online we can 'be' inside our Mind and escape our physical bodies. Yet we try to emulate this apparent freedom in the offline world. The emergence of postmodern society seems to represent an attempt to emulate cyberculture in the physical world. Perhaps cyberculture has taught popular culture how to thwart authority and government at its very root. By taking away centralised power we can all be powerful! But what are the long term political implications of such a society? Can we be democratic without democracy? For how long can we live in peace without any overarching or external governance or authority hypothetically? William Gibson likens such a notion to hallucination. What of ethics and those who want to extend the boundaries of decency infinitely? How will this effect culture and society over time?
References:
van Oenen, G 2011, 'Interpassive Agency, Engaging Actor-Network-Theory's View on the Agency of Objects', Theory and Event, Vol. 14, Iss. 2
Saturday, 6 August 2011
Week 2a - Actor Network Theory (Objective/Subjective & Agency of Objects)
Have been reading a few journal articles on Actor Network Theory (ANT). The journals are mainly by or about Bruno Latour. What I have understood, in a really broad sense, is the incredulity of ANT to objectivism and its associated separation with subjectivism and vice versa. I've always thought that the pursuit of the 'objective' was problematic and a highly constructed endeavour, but I've never really thought of (inverting?) that logic ie. if that for everything we try to perceive as objective instantly becomes subjective because we are addressing it, then logically what we don't address or try to rationalise must be the very thing that is authentic or real or natural. There is a sense that there does exist things in our everyday lives that are authentic, but the moment we try to capture or articulate these things they instantly cease to exist as 'natural'. The 'objective' seems to be determined by the very thing that isn't objective. 'Culture' seems to try to convince us that subjective and objective are transposed somehow and that distinction between the two even exists. I'm getting deja vu of Jacques Derrida 'Under Erasure' somehow at this point but not sure as yet why. Is Under Erasure fission and ANT fusion??
Further, Latour discusses the notion of the agency of objects and how objects signify and carry meaning that kind of talks back to us by the way that we perceive them via scripts. What I found interesting was Gijs Van Oenen's critique of Latour and ANT regarding the agency of objects (van Oenen 2011). I think what he's saying is that Latour kind of tries to redefine 'act' or 'actor' by reducing 'act' to 'actant' to include objects as possessing agency and thereby reducing humans to objects. Latour seems to be defining human beings like any other life form in the universe, it is only humans that elevate their status above all else. 'Act' becomes any kind of random 'doing' regardless of intent or reason, which challenges Modern/Philosophical notions. Meanwhile, van Oenen states that 'act' must include both an end and an intention, objects cannot escape culture by becoming a 'snapshot' of a singular moment escaping time and meaning as Latour suggests, objects are a part of the 'flow' of culture. van Oenen is accusing Latour of only further becoming enmeshed in objectivity by trying to escape it in this way. van Oenen states that it is only through the restoration of agency to all things and by immersing ourselves in subjectivity can we continue to pursue 'objectivity'. In this sense, van Oenen is elevating objects instead rather to the status of humans and maintaining Modern notions (van Oenen 2011). This kind of reminds me of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn as the gateway out of Modernism to Postmodernism through critique of Science (epistemology) but Latour and van Oenen seem to represent the gateway from Postmodernism back into Modernism through Philosophy (ontology). Latour defines everything as objects in the Postmodern world where van Oenen defines everything as human within Modernity (van Oenen 2011). Latour seems to pull us even further toward the 'edge' while van Oenen seems to pull us back to 'centre'. Is it the dialogue or tension between these two perspectives that is important or the truth that we pursue?? Is Latour still 'seeking' and van Oenen has 'settled'? Or has Latour 'settled' and van Oenen is still 'seeking'?
What is also interesting is the emergence of ARPANET, the internet and Web2.0 described as 'random' or as a result of a series of unpredictable events. Unpredictable yes, unrelated, I don't think so. I think 'random' is like 'objective'. I think there is always an underlying pattern or grammar and that all events are tied into underlying patterns of culture that we can't escape. It depends what level you are talking about. Perhaps this is the difference between epistemology and ontology, two currents flowing concurrently through time but at two different levels. I think Latour is talking about epistemology and van Oenen is talking about ontology which seems to be what culture is. Latour is talking about specifics and van Oenen is speaking more broadly, kind of reminds me of the local and the global (van Oenen 2011). So is this inverted epistemology in what Latour describes as the new 'non-modern' world what is referred to as 'glocal' I wonder??
References:
van Oenen, G 2011, 'Interpassive Agency, Engaging Actor-Network-Theory's View on the Agency of Objects', Theory and Event, Vol. 14, Iss. 2
Further, Latour discusses the notion of the agency of objects and how objects signify and carry meaning that kind of talks back to us by the way that we perceive them via scripts. What I found interesting was Gijs Van Oenen's critique of Latour and ANT regarding the agency of objects (van Oenen 2011). I think what he's saying is that Latour kind of tries to redefine 'act' or 'actor' by reducing 'act' to 'actant' to include objects as possessing agency and thereby reducing humans to objects. Latour seems to be defining human beings like any other life form in the universe, it is only humans that elevate their status above all else. 'Act' becomes any kind of random 'doing' regardless of intent or reason, which challenges Modern/Philosophical notions. Meanwhile, van Oenen states that 'act' must include both an end and an intention, objects cannot escape culture by becoming a 'snapshot' of a singular moment escaping time and meaning as Latour suggests, objects are a part of the 'flow' of culture. van Oenen is accusing Latour of only further becoming enmeshed in objectivity by trying to escape it in this way. van Oenen states that it is only through the restoration of agency to all things and by immersing ourselves in subjectivity can we continue to pursue 'objectivity'. In this sense, van Oenen is elevating objects instead rather to the status of humans and maintaining Modern notions (van Oenen 2011). This kind of reminds me of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn as the gateway out of Modernism to Postmodernism through critique of Science (epistemology) but Latour and van Oenen seem to represent the gateway from Postmodernism back into Modernism through Philosophy (ontology). Latour defines everything as objects in the Postmodern world where van Oenen defines everything as human within Modernity (van Oenen 2011). Latour seems to pull us even further toward the 'edge' while van Oenen seems to pull us back to 'centre'. Is it the dialogue or tension between these two perspectives that is important or the truth that we pursue?? Is Latour still 'seeking' and van Oenen has 'settled'? Or has Latour 'settled' and van Oenen is still 'seeking'?
What is also interesting is the emergence of ARPANET, the internet and Web2.0 described as 'random' or as a result of a series of unpredictable events. Unpredictable yes, unrelated, I don't think so. I think 'random' is like 'objective'. I think there is always an underlying pattern or grammar and that all events are tied into underlying patterns of culture that we can't escape. It depends what level you are talking about. Perhaps this is the difference between epistemology and ontology, two currents flowing concurrently through time but at two different levels. I think Latour is talking about epistemology and van Oenen is talking about ontology which seems to be what culture is. Latour is talking about specifics and van Oenen is speaking more broadly, kind of reminds me of the local and the global (van Oenen 2011). So is this inverted epistemology in what Latour describes as the new 'non-modern' world what is referred to as 'glocal' I wonder??
References:
van Oenen, G 2011, 'Interpassive Agency, Engaging Actor-Network-Theory's View on the Agency of Objects', Theory and Event, Vol. 14, Iss. 2
Tuesday, 2 August 2011
Week 2 - Global Connections from the Telegraph to Cyberspace
Telegraph - Cyberspace. They sound like a dichotomy, poles apart. Telegraph sounds neanderthal like something from the dark ages and seems to represent something so grounded. Yet cyberspace conjures notions of the future, an escape from our physical body signifying the potential of our imagination, or perhaps it convinces us that we can fly or leave earth. Yet the reality between the two is cables. Australia, for example, had three cables for the telegraph in the mid 19th century and today has also three cables for the internet and cyberspace. Physically, nothing has changed yet socially and culturally we perceive enormous change over this period. Why this disparity between the physical and the perceived? What does it mean? What does it represent over time?
In the lecture both the wires and cables, and the network pattern of the internet, were likened to a nervous system and a brain, like inside the human body. Is there a connection between 'physical global space' and 'inside' our body, kind of like where the 'outside' meets the 'inside'? Or where the global meets the local (glocal)? Is this cybercultural embodiment? Will have to think about all these things.
The readings seemed to question boundaries, borders and norms. The Four Puzzles From Cyberspace (Lessig 2006) seemed to explore the boundaries of where cyberspace meets structural issues of law, physical place, ethics and privacy which are associated with autonomy and Socratic notions of knowledge and awareness. These are the basis of democracy and I think meta-narrative, progress, Western enlightenment and Modernism. The culture of the online 'actor network' seems to be challenging the very necessity of having a 'ground/base'. This tension seems to be challenging traditional notions of hierarchy and Modern society. The 'actor network' society though seems to demand the inclusion of groups traditionally excluded according to race, class, gender, sexuality and ethnicity, and in doing so broadens the norms, expands what is acceptable and changes what we perceive as centre. Then why do philosophers, political scientists and sociologists remain sceptical about the democratising potential of postmodern culture. Aren't these disciplines concerned with equality and freedom? Or are they concerned about escalating media and corporate power, thus a loss of democratic power in the long term? Perhaps these disciplines are tools which will become redundant in a re-centred society, leaving popular culture without any further recourse to power and at the mercy of capitalist imperatives. It's like society at large has 'split' into two, like subcultures used to 'split' connotation and denotation of words and norms of society. That subcultural logic has been applied to social theory itself. I can see both sides but wonder what kind of society can embrace the best of both these worlds. How can these seemingly incommensurate worlds become congruent, but they must, because we created them!
References:
Lessig, L 2006, Four puzzles from cyber space, accessed 27/7/2011, https://www.socialtext.net/codev2/four_puzzles_from_cyberspace
In the lecture both the wires and cables, and the network pattern of the internet, were likened to a nervous system and a brain, like inside the human body. Is there a connection between 'physical global space' and 'inside' our body, kind of like where the 'outside' meets the 'inside'? Or where the global meets the local (glocal)? Is this cybercultural embodiment? Will have to think about all these things.
The readings seemed to question boundaries, borders and norms. The Four Puzzles From Cyberspace (Lessig 2006) seemed to explore the boundaries of where cyberspace meets structural issues of law, physical place, ethics and privacy which are associated with autonomy and Socratic notions of knowledge and awareness. These are the basis of democracy and I think meta-narrative, progress, Western enlightenment and Modernism. The culture of the online 'actor network' seems to be challenging the very necessity of having a 'ground/base'. This tension seems to be challenging traditional notions of hierarchy and Modern society. The 'actor network' society though seems to demand the inclusion of groups traditionally excluded according to race, class, gender, sexuality and ethnicity, and in doing so broadens the norms, expands what is acceptable and changes what we perceive as centre. Then why do philosophers, political scientists and sociologists remain sceptical about the democratising potential of postmodern culture. Aren't these disciplines concerned with equality and freedom? Or are they concerned about escalating media and corporate power, thus a loss of democratic power in the long term? Perhaps these disciplines are tools which will become redundant in a re-centred society, leaving popular culture without any further recourse to power and at the mercy of capitalist imperatives. It's like society at large has 'split' into two, like subcultures used to 'split' connotation and denotation of words and norms of society. That subcultural logic has been applied to social theory itself. I can see both sides but wonder what kind of society can embrace the best of both these worlds. How can these seemingly incommensurate worlds become congruent, but they must, because we created them!
References:
Lessig, L 2006, Four puzzles from cyber space, accessed 27/7/2011, https://www.socialtext.net/codev2/four_puzzles_from_cyberspace
Monday, 25 July 2011
Week 1 - Introduction
I'm thinking I may think of digc202 global networks in terms of a mission or journey, very corny! The first manned space flight to circumnavigate the moon was Apollo 8 in 1968. The year before I was born. The mission was undertaken by the US and didn't land on the moon but entered the moon's gravitational field. I thought it was interesting that the mission was number '8' as the flight path took this form because the moon's orbit runs counter to that of earth. I would like to look in more detail at the cultural and social properties of what earth and moon represent ie. senses (visual and aural), time and space, wave and particle, light and dark, male and female etc. The Apollo 6 mission had problems surrounding hydrogen and helium which were addressed in the Apollo 8 mission, I would like to look into this also in more detail.
The Apollo 8 mission was the first time that human beings witnessed through the naked eye 'the dark side of the moon'. Subsequently, images of this were picked up by the media and televised ubiquitously. I'm am interested in the impact that this has had on Western culture, and also global culture through the process of globalisation over the last 40 years. I think that it would be particularly interesting to look at how cyberculture both reflects and reproduces our curiosity and desire to experience the exploration of previously undiscovered terrain. I'm still thinking about what my digc202 theme could likely be to encompass all of this and am wondering if anyone else is interested in how culture reflects and enables our desire to experience and replicate space exploration through cybercultural embodiment.
I really enjoyed the Manuel Castells reading. It was particularly interesting I thought where it discussed the tension between democratic centre and the media as an information/knowledge hub and how in global society power resides in the networks and joining fibers rather than in traditional hierarchies, structures and power elites. The fact that power and struggle combined with alliance and cooperation are characteristic of all (Western?) societies was an interesting point. Global society seems rather to empower the agency of the individual and cyberculture addresses our need for community and social contact. It seems that rather than society being subservient to 'structure', post-modern society is 'using' structure for its own purposes. Structure and content seem to be reversed or turned inside out in global society, or perhaps society has 'expanded' or moved further out to the edges and the boundary has grown? Perhaps centre and edge are still two classes like Marx discusses but their status has been reversed by post-modern culture (Castells 2004)?
Rebecca's pocket made an analogy between weblogs compared to journalism are like rubbish/waste compared to value/quality. Does digc202 examine what we have previously 'thrown away' as worthless with regards to knowledge and information?? Rebecca's pocket mentioned cyber ethics and the importance of; transparency, acknowledging doubt, providing links, leaving a trail, building, keeping permanent records of any online changes/edits and disclosing conflicts of interest (Blood 2002). Time to tweet now!
References:
Blood, R 2002, The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog, accessed 27/7/2011, http://www.rebeccablood.net/handbook/excerpts/weblog_ethics.html
Castells, M 2004, Afterword: why networks matter, accessed 27/7/2011, http://www.kirkarts.com/wiki/images/5/51/Castells_Why_Networks_Matter.pdf
The Apollo 8 mission was the first time that human beings witnessed through the naked eye 'the dark side of the moon'. Subsequently, images of this were picked up by the media and televised ubiquitously. I'm am interested in the impact that this has had on Western culture, and also global culture through the process of globalisation over the last 40 years. I think that it would be particularly interesting to look at how cyberculture both reflects and reproduces our curiosity and desire to experience the exploration of previously undiscovered terrain. I'm still thinking about what my digc202 theme could likely be to encompass all of this and am wondering if anyone else is interested in how culture reflects and enables our desire to experience and replicate space exploration through cybercultural embodiment.
I really enjoyed the Manuel Castells reading. It was particularly interesting I thought where it discussed the tension between democratic centre and the media as an information/knowledge hub and how in global society power resides in the networks and joining fibers rather than in traditional hierarchies, structures and power elites. The fact that power and struggle combined with alliance and cooperation are characteristic of all (Western?) societies was an interesting point. Global society seems rather to empower the agency of the individual and cyberculture addresses our need for community and social contact. It seems that rather than society being subservient to 'structure', post-modern society is 'using' structure for its own purposes. Structure and content seem to be reversed or turned inside out in global society, or perhaps society has 'expanded' or moved further out to the edges and the boundary has grown? Perhaps centre and edge are still two classes like Marx discusses but their status has been reversed by post-modern culture (Castells 2004)?
Rebecca's pocket made an analogy between weblogs compared to journalism are like rubbish/waste compared to value/quality. Does digc202 examine what we have previously 'thrown away' as worthless with regards to knowledge and information?? Rebecca's pocket mentioned cyber ethics and the importance of; transparency, acknowledging doubt, providing links, leaving a trail, building, keeping permanent records of any online changes/edits and disclosing conflicts of interest (Blood 2002). Time to tweet now!
References:
Blood, R 2002, The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog, accessed 27/7/2011, http://www.rebeccablood.net/handbook/excerpts/weblog_ethics.html
Castells, M 2004, Afterword: why networks matter, accessed 27/7/2011, http://www.kirkarts.com/wiki/images/5/51/Castells_Why_Networks_Matter.pdf
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