H Ulises,<br><br>This is a useful list, I took the liberty to add some of my own answers.<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 2/14/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Ulises</b> <<a href="mailto:arsalaan1-idc@yahoo.com">
arsalaan1-idc@yahoo.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;">danah poses a challenging question:<br><br>What values are embedded deeply into the web
2.0/social media ethos that we are<br>perpetuating by 1) building these systems into the infrastructure of social<br>life; 2) idealizing them as the great equalizer?</blockquote><div><br><br>Technology is the product of multiple social struggles, creativity and compromises (Andrew Feenberg). In particular it is also the consequence of the thought-forms and value-systems of the 'hacker class' that designed them, that is both true for the internet (book: when the wizards stay up late), and the web
2.0 designers (multiple interviews with founders of various services), tempered and modulated by the commercial forces, but also user expectations and demands.<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
I can by no means attempt a full response, but maybe I can 'mashup' one from<br>various contributions to the discussion as well as from my own. Think of the<br>following as the Playlist for a Critique of Social Media (
i.e., it's the list of<br>the songs to be included, but not the full melodies):<br><br>01. How Much Is That Doggie In The Window? :: sociable web media (even when<br>operating within 'open' models) exists in a capitalist economy; it cannot exist
<br>prior to its commercialization</blockquote><div><br><br>I'm not sure that is completely true. Web 2.0. is totally under-capitalized and not many venture-backed projects are making any money. The remarkable thing for me is tha the social web 1) started to thrive after the failure of the first commercialization phase (2001 crash); 2) thrives and uses open source technologies and communities and the pre-existing network (which does not exist, would not have existed following a commercial model). More and more, capitalist intervention and monetization strategies are a posteriori. It would be much better to say that there is mutual interdependence between the social field and the commercial field. But I agree that the reason Web
2.0 takes a commercial path, because of the difficult viability of other means under current conditions.<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
02. Can't Buy Me Love :: the architectures of participation in sociable web<br>media are determined primarily by the dynamics of a market economy, which raises<br>ethical questions because capitalism is inherently anti-social
</blockquote><div><br><br>Again a very one-sided thesis. I want to make a more general remark here. What is the process that makes even critics, bow to the current supremacy, self-censoring any alternatives as a matter of principle, even though the continued existence of an infinite-material-growth system is a logical and physical impossibility? A system has truly won, when even it's critics think they can only think within its premises. The last phrase, 'inherently anti-social', should be qualified, in the sense that capitalism promotes certain kinds of socialities against others.
<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">03. If I Knew You Were Coming (I'd've Baked A Cake) :: yes, social media objects
<br>operate in both a market and a gift economy, but the 'gift' is always<br>subordinate to the opportunities to derive profit from it; the best we can hope<br>for is hybrid capitalism</blockquote><div><br><br>The gift is only subordinated to the commodity in the eyes of those wanting to make profit from it; from the point of view of the gifters, the commodified reality is a means to perpetuate the gift. If your statement were true, that would mean that the behaviour of the majority of people is commodity-oriented, and that simply isn't true. How do you know the best we can hope for is a hybrid capitalism? I would qualify that, in the sense that, for the survival of teh biosphere and the human community, the best system is more likely to be a pluralist economy that has markets for scarce goods, submitted to peer arbitrage, within a steady-state economic context and with the dominant immaterial processes following peer to peer dynamics.
<br><br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">04. This Unavoidable Thing Between Us :: sociable web media *can* be potential
<br>resources of anticapitalist struggle; however, the actualization of these<br>resources cannot be framed in terms of bridging the 'digital divide' in order to<br>grant everyone access to the 'marketplace' of the public
<br><br>05. It Smells Like Teen Spirit :: sociable web media controlled by corporations<br>produces plural monocultures, which should not be confused for diverse or<br>authentic social spaces</blockquote><div><br><br>The affinity logic is the basic network logic, but does that 1) preclude interconnections?; 2) the result of corporate control? Does that mean that communities operating outside corporate control automatically go beyond plural monocultures?
<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">06. Where The Hood At :: the network is a limited model for organizing social<br>
realities; nodocentrism can be particularly corrosive to local connections, as<br>it makes anything not plugged-in to the network virtually invisible (despite the<br>hype, the hyperlocal does not enhance but subordinate the local and the social
<br>to a market economy)</blockquote><div><br><br>Previous media developments have similarly caused the non-literate, non-TV watching people to be marginalized in certain senses. So the trend and danger is certainly real, though again we note that in the prhasing above, this is all subordinated to the market again, which I think is a simplification. Is there an alternative to the work that allows the marginalized to be connected, just as it was the priority of the labour movement to get worker's children alphabetized and educated? Now, saying that there is a danger to nodism is one thing, but saying that the hyperlocal automotically destroys the local is another. Amongst the great revival of the localization movement nowadays, you will notice that they are all hyperconnected, so the latter does not seem to automatically destroy the former. Rather hyperlocal technologies can also serve to revive the local. I've seen this personally at work in Brest, French Brittany, where the municipality is leading a revival of local cultural life, thanks to hyperlocal technologies.
<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">07. Alone Together :: the social scripts of networked individualism leave people
<br>more alienated and prone to control by state and corporate interests,<br>monopolizing social and personal desire</blockquote><div><br><br>Just as participation explodes and people are more and more autonomously navigating and building their lives through the hyperlocal interstices ... Just when people are abandoning their reliance on institutions and mass media (see the massive shifts documented by the Edelman Trust Barometer) and rely more and more on their peers. What a way to miss the essential elements of what is going on.
<br><br>What is needed in thinking is an ability to hold contradictory and paradoxical elements together, not inflate one part of reality to the whole.<br><br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Michel<br><br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (<a href="http://distributedcreativity.org">distributedcreativity.org</a>)<br><a href="mailto:iDC@mailman.thing.net">
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