<p class="MsoNormal">Interesting exchange between Armin and the others.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I agree with most of the points. With Armin, that there are
indeed two worlds, with Danah and the others, that the Web 2.0 sites are indeed
social.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I wonder if this community is familiar with tools that can
differentiate between the value and behavioural logics that differentiate
people, and that are a function of their psychological and social development.
I'm thinking of systems of interpretations like that of Clare Graves, and as
popularized by the various versions of Spiral Dynamics and Integral Psychology.
While I have been often critical of the uses and abuses of hierarchically
ranking psychological states and people, I do not find that these systems are
altogether wrong, and they help us understand various practices.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When I advocate 'peer to peer solutions' through our various
sites at the p2pfoundation, I'm in no illusion that everybody can use these new
tools at their full benefit. They can only be fully and maturily used by about
2% of the current population (that corresponds to what is called the yellow
meme in the Spiral Dynamics system; a further slice of 25% of cultural
creatives also can use to a great extent; the others use it, but with
altogether different logics and attitudes). But as an institutional, legal, organizational
and technological infrastructural format, embedding the social wisdom of those
who designed it, they, pretty much like a document like the American
Constitution of the universal bill of rights, can have an upward pull effect,
even to those that are not educated/matured to take full use of it. We have to
accept that people have different levels, different values, and that current
social structures and corporate interests may pull them down, but at the same
time, we continue efforts to pull them up. This may sound perhaps elitist, and
perhaps it is, but I see it as simple accepting that people are different, and
that it is indeed better to be more tolerant, to broaden one's circle of
concern, to act in a more loving and kind way, open to more sharing and
participation, etc… Certain tools are more compatible than others to achieve
such effects. But again, efficient tools are able to design in such a way that
there is congruence between different levels of usage, and that collective and
individual interest converge.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I see history as an effort by pioneering wisdom communities
(relative to the level of their age and general population) to create positive
social change, which is than eventually incorporate, but also diluted deformed
by the existing dominant paradigms and power structures and interests. This
dominant paradigm, also subject to change, represses both the lower and the
higher forms that threaten either regression or loss of power because of
institutional reform.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Both aspects, i.e. working at a general level and for the
wisdom communities, are important. I.e. recognizing where people are at in
general, and being present with humanity as it is (this is Danah's point), and
this is also why it is useful to use corporate-owned tagging and photosharing
communities, because it is a way to exert influence; while at the same time, to
develop further the uncompromising new social technologies in the wisdom
communities, which is Armin's point. To be avoided is an absolute dichotomy
between both, and to be encouraged are the skills and attitudes to straddle
both worlds. In time, the former will incorporate features of the latter,
although of course, in a deformed/diluted way. At some point then, emergence of
phase transitions can occur, in which a new level of social and psychological
complexity causes a faster adaptation of the institutional frameworks, and a
new set of problems…<i style=""></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Armin said:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">i sometimes these days feel like living in a parallel world,
of course<br>
there are many parallel worlds, but what I am coming at in particular is<br>
this split between the sort of 'public sphere' and 'public<br>
opinion' (there are not enough inverted komas to signify my level of<br>
disdain of what this nowaday means) created by mainstream media and what<br>
it creates attention for and the world of open source culture. In one<br>
world people are really gross, only care for themselves and a narrowly<br>
defined type of 'friendship' and sociality; their main goals are to get<br>
rich quick and/or become a celebrity; in order to achieve this you have<br>
to be really competitive and fuck everyone else over. In the other world<br>
people are involved in an exchange economy, often based on a friendly<br>
competition; they care for each other and the liveability of the wider<br>
world. Incidentially, or not, on the BBC or Sky Television we never hear<br>
about this other world. It is almost completely blanked out. Since the<br>
Guardian changed the name of its 'Online' section to 'technoloy' even<br>
there we read only about new gadgets and ego shooters. It is strange how<br>
capitalist media manage to blank out everything that does not fit into<br>
its concept.</p>
<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 2/12/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Alan Clinton</b> <<a href="mailto:reconstruction.submissions@gmail.com">reconstruction.submissions@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div>I think that, to clarify what I take from Armin's discussion is that we need to ask questions about how we participate in media culture. We need to question the relationships between such terminologies as "studying" a culture/media phenomenon, "buying into" it, participating in it, or "using" it. Armin's reminder of how "social media" was coopted by big corporations from hacker cultures reminds me of how (much more successfully than academics and even social activists) corporations have understood (or intuited) the lessons of the Situationist International in their ability to engage in detournement of existing practices, technologies, and ideas. We need to ask why this is so and, in our own practices, studies, and pedagogies, see what we can detour from the entities that have made quite creative (if reactionary) uses of theft. Part of this inquiry, of course, has to take a psychonalytic dimension not only theoretically but in practice. Corporations, rather than arguing the virtues or vices of narcissism, fantasy, and dream logic, have recognized their power and made effective use of a human psychology which is far more deviant and eclectic than anything found in traditional hermeneutics.
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>With this broader approach, I don't see any real contradiction between Armin and Danah as long as we recognize that concepts like social media and their more or less popular instantiations need not be static in nature. In other words, we neither accept or reject Youtube or MySpace or the like, but recognize their existence and influence as well as their more deleterious effects. But we also study them to see a) how successful they have been in monopolizing social and personal "desire" b) what we can learn about desire from them c) and what we can steal from them either in terms of rhetoric, interface structure, or ideas to promote a truly social media rather than what is now, as both Trebor and Armin note, a largely superficial and commodified social instantiation.
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Key to this, as educators and media practitioners, is never to forget that desire is what motivates people, whatever their age--to deny this is to ensure our irrelevance. Pure critique and pure acceptance, of course, both cede desire to corporations. What we need is to produce mediated desire in the service of whatever revolutions will help make a more just, creative, and free distribution of world cultures.
</div><span class="sg">
<div> </div>
<div>Alan Clinton<br><br> </div></span><div><span class="e" id="q_110b30a85ccdd4cd_2">
<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 2/11/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">danah boyd</b> <<a href="mailto:zephoria@zephoria.org" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">zephoria@zephoria.org
</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">On Feb 11, 2007, at 2:38 AM, Armin Medosch wrote:<br><br>> first of all, when I follow, loosely, I must admit, this debate here
<br>> about social media an interview comes to my mind which I recently did<br>> with a young hacker. he said, haveing looked at myspace et al, he came<br>> to the conclusion that whoever called those environments 'social' must
<br>> have a very different idea from his about what is 'social'.<br>><br>> so why do eminent scholars and digital media experts on this list buy<br>> into the social media hype? is it because big capital and mainstream
<br>> media has developed a couple of years ago the notion of web 2.0?<br>> and now<br>> we are forced to believe that those things are important? how<br>> important<br>> are they really?<br><br><br>What are you talking about? How on earth would the practices that
<br>have emerged on MySpace not be considered social? There's no doubt<br>that there's also a commercial component to these systems, but to say<br>that there's no social component to them is preposterous. Every day
<br>millions of teenagers login to hang out with their friends, converse,<br>show off, validate one another, and otherwise go about a slew of<br>social practices. Every day, i talk to teenagers who tell me about<br>all of the different social interactions that get played out across
<br>multiple media - mobiles, IM, MySpace, etc. I would concede that<br>the artifact itself is not inherently social, but as an environment,<br>it is designed to and successfully supports social interaction.<br><br>And you ask how important these systems are? Have you spent time
<br>with American teenagers lately? Or musicians? (Or LA scenesters,<br>but that's a different story...) MySpace has radically altered the<br>social dynamics and information flow amongst these groups (and<br>between bands and fans). And this is just MySpace. There are
<br>hundreds of these sites that have changed the lives of all different<br>relevant social groups. Who cares if the industry and media has<br>hyped it and is creating all sorts of funny terms that have become<br>naturalized into the vocabulary of those invested in the systems?
<br>The fact of the matter is that these systems are playing a<br>significant role in society today and it's critical to pay attention<br>to them for exactly that reason. It seems idiotic to me to only pay<br>attention to the systems that i theoretically value. This is like
<br>saying that pop culture and "low-brow" art should not be studied<br>because the only thing of value is that which has "high-brow"<br>cultural capital. MySpace is mainstream, like it or not, and thus i
<br>think it's *extremely* important.<br><br>danah<br><br><br>- - - - - - - - - - d a n a h ( d o t ) o r g - - - - - - - - - -<br>"taken out of context i must seem so strange"<br><br>musings :: <a href="http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts</a><br><br><br><br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (<a href="http://distributedcreativity.org" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
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</a><br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer alternatives.<br><br>Wiki and Encyclopedia, at <a href="http://p2pfoundation.net">http://p2pfoundation.net
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