What strikes me having read the first five chapters of Neuromancer is the extent to which William Gibson’s vision of the post-Internet age differs from the visions presented in Convergence Culture. Henry Jenkins and Pierre Levy imagine a society where Internet use enables greater social, economic, and political participation by a wider range of groups and individuals, leading to the empowerment of ordinary people to affect positive social change. Gibson, by contrast, imagines a future where the unregulated flow of data across multiple channels and through the hands of multiple agents does little to disrupt long-standing power hierarchies. In his world, ‘ordinary people’ -- typified by the steady stream of consumers trickling through the shopping areas of Chiba and the Sprawl -- are portrayed as not being particularly concerned for their society. Of course, the story is told from a criminal perspective, leaving certain aspects of Gibson’s future open only to conjecture. Chiba and the areas of the Sprawl frequented by Molly and Case might not be representative of the world of Neuromancer as a whole... Ninsei is after all described as an “outlaw zone,” a place where the governing authorities of Chiba have no real power to stop bad stuff from happening. But then again, the narrator’s suggestion that Ninsei’s lawlessness may be the product of government malfeasance is a serious imputation -- one that, when considered alongside the mysterious Screaming Fist incident and the horrifically violent police crackdown at Sense/Net HQ, makes Gibson’s future look pretty undesirable. This is not a society characterized by more democracy, more freedom, and more meaningful participation by a greater number of people on the basis of the logic of collective intelligence. It’s a global society dominated by totalitarian governments and cheap markets of the senses where law and order is only possible through strict prohibitions on user access to a wide array of potentially dangerous technologies. These technologies do seem to be empowering in that they enable ordinary people to enhance their experience of the world through digital and biological modifications of their bodies, enabling in turn a flowering of new cultural possibilities. But in the book, the question of whether such enhancements serve any purpose beyond sensual gratification is left largely unanswered -- except, perhaps, in the passages explaining Case’s fascination with the cheap chrome shuriken of Ninsei. The fact that Case can “[read his] destiny spelled out in a constellation of cheap chrome” suggests that what’s lost in a globally connected capitalistic information society is any sense of cultural uniqueness -- or, to put it more exactly, any sense of the dignity and importance of a person’s uniqueness, which to the Western mind entails certain political rights. A person in Gibson’s world is a databank ready for access, a true resource -- and therefore an object -- in every sense of the word. When anything is possible, everything is cheap.
So I dunno. Anyone take any positives from Gibson’s achievable dystopia? If so, I’d be interested to hear them.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Community Attitude.0
In “Evil Bert Laden,” Jim Brown points to the image that appeared on anti-American protest posters in 2001 of Osama Bin Laden standing next to Bert from Sesame Street as an example of a “collusion” -- a collaborative, online project in which the ‘collaboration’ happens unconsciously, often between strange bedfellows (in this case, American memesters and Islamic fundamentalists). According to Brown, “electronic collaboration is not necessarily confined to a concerted effort on the part of a well-defined community [...] [indeed,] conscious collaboration is only part of the story.” As “the Bert Laden episode points out[,] [...] community can also be something that happens to us” (par. 3). Our “globalized, networked” communities are much larger than we think, and they resist definition when the effort to define is based on assumptions about who does or does not ‘belong.’ As soon as we define the values that define ‘us’ as opposed to ‘them’ -- the terrorists, the ChillOnes, whoever -- we throw up a wall of separation between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ putting on blinders that prevent us from seeing how ‘they’ are still very much an active part of our interactive sphere. Brown makes the point that, while community-building on the basis of values and other essentials is, as far as we can tell, a basic human reaction to encountering an other, it is at the end of the day just that -- a reaction. The impulse to “buil[d]” communities “around essential identities and nationalisms” can be explained as an interpretive reaction to the appearance of the other (par. 8). If we want to understand the true scope of our interconnectedness in the Internet age -- an age in which the relational nature of things is constantly being exposed by interesting new technologies in interesting new ways -- we’ll need a new way of thinking about community that takes this basic human impulse to interpret to be of fundamental importance in determining why we form communities in the first place.
If I had to sum it up, I’d say the goal of Brown’s essay is to teach us one way of navigating a world where “we don’t always get to choose our collaborators” and where “we don’t always have a say over who uses our texts” (par. 20). The hope seems to be that a new way of thinking about community could lead to a new, more hospitable way of interacting with the other... but are the majority of Web users ready to change their thinking? As Brown suggests, a lot of how we respond to the cultural differences highlighted by globalization -- whether in a way that promotes sharing and acceptance, or in one that merely promotes ‘tolerance’ -- will come down to individual encounters with ViRaL texts like Evil Bert Laden. If each of us could learn the value of adopting an accepting, hospitable attitude toward cultural otherness, then we could maybe train ourselves to control some of our hermeneutic impulses -- to avoid factoring our assumptions about the other into our interpretive efforts, or at least to recognize the effects of those assumptions on our understanding.
The question, again, is are we ready. I as an individual Web user can acknowledge that, even prior to the “rhetorical gesture” of interpellation, I am already “in-community” with the anti-American Bangladeshi publishers who made Evil Bert Laden a household image. But where do I go from there? And to what extent is the concept of being “in-community” with people I have no direct, personally meaningful connection to a useful one for me in my everyday life? These, I think, are the questions most of us will have to ask ourselves when we consider the responsibilities entailed by our “global, networked” interconnectedness as described by Brown -- responsibilities that may not be new, but that are becoming increasingly apparent thanks to Web 2.0.
If I had to sum it up, I’d say the goal of Brown’s essay is to teach us one way of navigating a world where “we don’t always get to choose our collaborators” and where “we don’t always have a say over who uses our texts” (par. 20). The hope seems to be that a new way of thinking about community could lead to a new, more hospitable way of interacting with the other... but are the majority of Web users ready to change their thinking? As Brown suggests, a lot of how we respond to the cultural differences highlighted by globalization -- whether in a way that promotes sharing and acceptance, or in one that merely promotes ‘tolerance’ -- will come down to individual encounters with ViRaL texts like Evil Bert Laden. If each of us could learn the value of adopting an accepting, hospitable attitude toward cultural otherness, then we could maybe train ourselves to control some of our hermeneutic impulses -- to avoid factoring our assumptions about the other into our interpretive efforts, or at least to recognize the effects of those assumptions on our understanding.
The question, again, is are we ready. I as an individual Web user can acknowledge that, even prior to the “rhetorical gesture” of interpellation, I am already “in-community” with the anti-American Bangladeshi publishers who made Evil Bert Laden a household image. But where do I go from there? And to what extent is the concept of being “in-community” with people I have no direct, personally meaningful connection to a useful one for me in my everyday life? These, I think, are the questions most of us will have to ask ourselves when we consider the responsibilities entailed by our “global, networked” interconnectedness as described by Brown -- responsibilities that may not be new, but that are becoming increasingly apparent thanks to Web 2.0.
Friday, February 11, 2011
I Wanna Be an Adhocrat
In his conclusion, Jenkins taps the work of Warren Ellis to describe a society in which government happens not by expert opinion, but by the logic of collective intelligence. Accordingly, Ellis’s Global Frequency “depicts a multiracial, multinational organization of ordinary people who contribute their services on an ad hoc basis. “Conceived... in the wake of September 11 as an alternative to calls for increased state power and paternalistic constraints on communications,” Global Frequency “doesn’t imagine the government saving its citizens from whatever Big Bad is out there. Rather, as Ellis explains, “Global Frequency is about us saving ourselves” (261). This is a rather exciting vision of essentially the same future Jenkins is describing, where advances in communication technologies and in government attitudes toward citizen participation result in a total redistribution of decision making protocols.
What would it mean for us -- “personally and professionally” -- to contribute our time and effort “to a cause larger than [our]selves” such as that depicted in Global Frequency (261)? I personally have never read the comic, but I find this to be a very interesting point of emphasis. Tried and true claims that declines in voter participation can be attributed to feelings of disconnectedness from the political process ring even truer in light of Jenkins’s analysis; our society is one in which the things people do on a regular basis -- like gather around the “water cooler” to talk about work or their favorite TV shows -- are held to be silly, trivial, and even undignified in comparison to the “serious” business of politics. There’s a lot of rhetoric in Washington about the know-how of the “average American,” but to date there has been very little effort to utilize what “average Americans” actually know in crafting, executing, and interpreting legislation. This has been largely due to technological limitations, sure. But as Jenkins points out in the afterword, there are cultural factors to consider here too. The Mitt Romneys don’t want to know what we know -- or perhaps more accurately, they don’t want to listen if doing so will force them to compromise their sense of cultural “place” (read: empowerment). Cultural paternalism of the like practiced by Romney has the ultimate effect of causing people to miss the connections between their personal and political lives, setting the conditions for declines in participation by groups who fail to relate to the Beltway style of political rhetoric. And as long as these attitudes continue to dictate the way politics play out in this country, grassroots parody videos and other forms of new media discourse will continue to remain marginal to the issue analysis process. The key, then, is to get people to rethink what counts as politics.
Cory Doctorow’s concept of the “adhocracy” -- “an organization characterized by a [total] lack of hierarchy” -- is another intriguing notion (262). Equally intriguing is the contrast Jenkins draws between adhocracies like the Global Frequency network and the bureaucracies we currently rely on for so many of our social, economic, and political services. What is it about the thought of having to go to the DPS for a license renewal that’s positively cringe-inducing? The lines, the uncomfortable silence, the sheer lack of interactivity -- I would say it’s the feeling of being shuffled through a big, impersonal system without a bit of say in how you’d like the service to be administered -- or perhaps more accurately, how you’d like the service to be experienced. The vision of Global Frequency is that the quality and delivery of government services will improve when we can begin to harness advances in digital communications toward tapping the collective knowledge and experience of the body politic. It’s a rosy picture of a perhaps distant future -- as Jenkins suggests, we shouldn’t expect bureaucracies to up and disappear, and I certainly don’t mean to suggest that civic participation ought always to be pleasurable. But expanding opportunities for meaningful public service is something most people can get on board with... and now that we more or less have the technology to make it happen, we might as well get started.
What would it mean for us -- “personally and professionally” -- to contribute our time and effort “to a cause larger than [our]selves” such as that depicted in Global Frequency (261)? I personally have never read the comic, but I find this to be a very interesting point of emphasis. Tried and true claims that declines in voter participation can be attributed to feelings of disconnectedness from the political process ring even truer in light of Jenkins’s analysis; our society is one in which the things people do on a regular basis -- like gather around the “water cooler” to talk about work or their favorite TV shows -- are held to be silly, trivial, and even undignified in comparison to the “serious” business of politics. There’s a lot of rhetoric in Washington about the know-how of the “average American,” but to date there has been very little effort to utilize what “average Americans” actually know in crafting, executing, and interpreting legislation. This has been largely due to technological limitations, sure. But as Jenkins points out in the afterword, there are cultural factors to consider here too. The Mitt Romneys don’t want to know what we know -- or perhaps more accurately, they don’t want to listen if doing so will force them to compromise their sense of cultural “place” (read: empowerment). Cultural paternalism of the like practiced by Romney has the ultimate effect of causing people to miss the connections between their personal and political lives, setting the conditions for declines in participation by groups who fail to relate to the Beltway style of political rhetoric. And as long as these attitudes continue to dictate the way politics play out in this country, grassroots parody videos and other forms of new media discourse will continue to remain marginal to the issue analysis process. The key, then, is to get people to rethink what counts as politics.
Cory Doctorow’s concept of the “adhocracy” -- “an organization characterized by a [total] lack of hierarchy” -- is another intriguing notion (262). Equally intriguing is the contrast Jenkins draws between adhocracies like the Global Frequency network and the bureaucracies we currently rely on for so many of our social, economic, and political services. What is it about the thought of having to go to the DPS for a license renewal that’s positively cringe-inducing? The lines, the uncomfortable silence, the sheer lack of interactivity -- I would say it’s the feeling of being shuffled through a big, impersonal system without a bit of say in how you’d like the service to be administered -- or perhaps more accurately, how you’d like the service to be experienced. The vision of Global Frequency is that the quality and delivery of government services will improve when we can begin to harness advances in digital communications toward tapping the collective knowledge and experience of the body politic. It’s a rosy picture of a perhaps distant future -- as Jenkins suggests, we shouldn’t expect bureaucracies to up and disappear, and I certainly don’t mean to suggest that civic participation ought always to be pleasurable. But expanding opportunities for meaningful public service is something most people can get on board with... and now that we more or less have the technology to make it happen, we might as well get started.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
S/R 1: Convergence Culture
Henry Jenkins’s Convergence Culture explores the phenomenon of media convergence – a historically unprecedented, highly interactive coalescence of old and new media practices taking shape in the U.S. and abroad as advances in digital technology broaden – and deepen – access to the means of media production and distribution. Jenkins is primarily interested in thinking about convergence as a “paradigm shift.” A phenomenological “move” from “medium-specific content toward content that flows across multiple media channels, toward the increased interdependence of communications systems, toward multiple ways of accessing media content, and toward ever more complex relations between top-down corporate media and bottom-up participatory culture,” convergence is transforming the way ordinary people relate to the media they consume (254). Jenkins’s “goal” is to change the way people conceive of this relationship – “to help ordinary people grasp how convergence is impacting” their culture and, “at the same time, to help industry leaders and policymakers understand consumer perspectives on these changes” (12). By framing the efforts of online fan communities to enrich their experience of certain pop culture properties as efforts toward greater consumer participation and empowerment, Jenkins articulates a vision of convergence in which “the skills we acquire through play” – namely, the pooling of intelligence for tactical purposes – have implications for how we learn, work, participate in the political process, and connect with other people around the world” (23).
Jenkins tries very hard to avoid utopian thinking about the implications of convergence for democracy. I find this to be one of the more appealing aspects of his book – though he dares to imagine a political culture characterized by greater participation and a higher degree of collective decision-making, he never once tries to spin this vision as an inevitable outcome of the convergence process. In so doing, he keeps the focus on our responsibilities as individuals to a.), understand how the accelerating pace of technological change is impacting our cultural and our capabilities, and b.), act in a way that promotes the ideal of a participatory culture driven by collective intelligence. Where I find fault with his book is its failure to address in detail “[the] need to confront the cultural factors […] diminish[ing] the likelihood that […] [certain] groups will participate” (269). The digital participation gap is a real and persistent problem that Jenkins underplays in focusing perhaps too exclusively on the “early adopters.” Schools, NGOs, and nonprofit community organizations will bear the responsibility of “closing” the digital divide – but even within these organizations, knowledge of how to manipulate, share, and interpret media is very unevenly distributed. The open source movement has attempted to address this issue; but still, there remain many highly “computer literate” groups and individuals – hackers, for instance – who’ve a strong vested interest in disempowering the digital underclass. Jenkins never once suggests that the participatory culture of the future will be one devoid of epistemological hierarchies. But if one of our goals in the age of media convergence is more political agency for more people, we as middle-class, college educated individuals – or “early adopters,” if you will – will have to do more than simply “participate” on the level described by Jenkins. Collective intelligence is not an inevitability, but a cause like any other.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Fanfic communities as... role models? Huh...
I found the portrait of collaborative authorship Jenkins paints in his analysis of the Harry Potter fanfic community to be very intriguing. In the age of media convergence, the individual relationships that shape a story’s development -- between author and original, author and audience, author and editors, etc. -- are all accessible via a single communal space. And the internet makes more such relationships possible, facilitating (potentially!) a greater degree of specialization and refinement. The idea of collective intelligence applies here as well; according to the folks at Writer’s University, “a good beta reader... admits to the author what his or her own strengths and weaknesses are -- i.e., ‘I’m great at beta reading for plot, but not spelling!’ Anyone who offers to check someone else’s spelling, grammar, and punctuation should probably be at least worthy of a solid B in English, and preferably an A” (189).
The second claim -- the one about spelling and grammar -- is interesting. In putting mastery of spelling, grammar, and mechanics on par with knowing whether a certain plot or character arc is sufficiently consistent with the source material, these groups are effectively creating new standards for knowledge. Under the current system of grade evaluation, the education system penalizes students for failing to master some knowledge -- knowledge of how to diagram a sentence, for example -- just as it fails to reward students for mastering knowledge that falls outside the pale of what’s “essential” for their personal development. No matter how gentle the pedagogue, a F in English is a F. It might be “deserved”... but the effect it can (and often does) have on a young learner’s or would-be writer’s confidence is, well, catastrophic. It’s a disincentive to further learning and further effort in the classroom. What the fanfic community does is build and develop a self-sustaining system of rewards for its participants -- all knowledge and all contributions are valued as part of a single, collaborative effort to produce the best fan fiction possible. I wonder, then: would a similar system of rewards for specialized group projects be possible to implement in the classroom? What might it look like, and what possibilities would it open up for “grade” evaluation?
One more thing. According to Jenkins, the “shift” from limited opportunities for authorship to “mass distribution via the Web” and online writing communities “could lead to a heightened awareness of intellectual property rights as more and more people feel a sense of ownership over the stories they create” (188). While more litigation would almost certainly be a shame, I don’t think a “heightened awareness” of intellectual property rights would be such a bad thing if it got people talking about what it means to “own” an idea. As Jenkins suggests, the distinction between “copy” and “original” is blurring. Increasingly, we are being challenged to imagine “original” creation as occurring along a continuum ranging from direct imitation of a single character, setting, or style to highly sophisticated integration of a number of themes and ideas from various cultural sources.
Here, we could learn a lot from fanfic communities, who tend to put the source material first and the individual second. The concept of idea ownership is essential in a capitalistic information society. It helps us determine what’s fair. But people were telling and writing stories long before “author” was a viable career option. When it comes to creative writing and the other arts, a discussion of intellectual property rights could lead to an increased awareness not of what we own as individuals, but of what we share as a single cultural community.
The second claim -- the one about spelling and grammar -- is interesting. In putting mastery of spelling, grammar, and mechanics on par with knowing whether a certain plot or character arc is sufficiently consistent with the source material, these groups are effectively creating new standards for knowledge. Under the current system of grade evaluation, the education system penalizes students for failing to master some knowledge -- knowledge of how to diagram a sentence, for example -- just as it fails to reward students for mastering knowledge that falls outside the pale of what’s “essential” for their personal development. No matter how gentle the pedagogue, a F in English is a F. It might be “deserved”... but the effect it can (and often does) have on a young learner’s or would-be writer’s confidence is, well, catastrophic. It’s a disincentive to further learning and further effort in the classroom. What the fanfic community does is build and develop a self-sustaining system of rewards for its participants -- all knowledge and all contributions are valued as part of a single, collaborative effort to produce the best fan fiction possible. I wonder, then: would a similar system of rewards for specialized group projects be possible to implement in the classroom? What might it look like, and what possibilities would it open up for “grade” evaluation?
One more thing. According to Jenkins, the “shift” from limited opportunities for authorship to “mass distribution via the Web” and online writing communities “could lead to a heightened awareness of intellectual property rights as more and more people feel a sense of ownership over the stories they create” (188). While more litigation would almost certainly be a shame, I don’t think a “heightened awareness” of intellectual property rights would be such a bad thing if it got people talking about what it means to “own” an idea. As Jenkins suggests, the distinction between “copy” and “original” is blurring. Increasingly, we are being challenged to imagine “original” creation as occurring along a continuum ranging from direct imitation of a single character, setting, or style to highly sophisticated integration of a number of themes and ideas from various cultural sources.
Here, we could learn a lot from fanfic communities, who tend to put the source material first and the individual second. The concept of idea ownership is essential in a capitalistic information society. It helps us determine what’s fair. But people were telling and writing stories long before “author” was a viable career option. When it comes to creative writing and the other arts, a discussion of intellectual property rights could lead to an increased awareness not of what we own as individuals, but of what we share as a single cultural community.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Cybersubculture comparison project topic
For my cybersubculture comparison project, I'd like to look at...
... Disaboom, a SNS for people with disabilities:
http://www.disaboom.com/
... and Elftown, a SNS for fantasy enthusiasts:
http://www.elftown.com/
Ostensibly, these are two very different communities. Elftown is a space where people entertain themselves by creating and interacting with avatars, while Disaboom is a site far removed from the realm of make-believe, where people gather to swap experiences and work through "real-world" problems. For that reason, I'll be focusing on similarities between the two...
... Disaboom, a SNS for people with disabilities:
http://www.disaboom.com/
... and Elftown, a SNS for fantasy enthusiasts:
http://www.elftown.com/
Ostensibly, these are two very different communities. Elftown is a space where people entertain themselves by creating and interacting with avatars, while Disaboom is a site far removed from the realm of make-believe, where people gather to swap experiences and work through "real-world" problems. For that reason, I'll be focusing on similarities between the two...
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