[iDC] Re: A critique of sociable (and mobile) web media

Thu Apr 19 14:22:37 EDT 2007

I attended the lecture where Ethan, Trebor, and Danah spoke.    
Trebor’s suggestion that sociality has become a form of exploited  
labor rang true for me, but what that means in terms of courses of  
social action is less clear.

As Ethan stressed, you don’t have to do it their way.  They provide a  
service you can take or leave.  And most people choose to take it.  
The notion that this is a Faustian bargain is a non-starter. If  
people don’t feel exploited on any articulable level, what can you do?
The way that hegemonic forces define choice seems obvious when you  
talk about television or the print media, and so unclear to people  
when you talk about the internet.  Listening to the discussion, I  
felt that we are at a point sort of like the early days of factory  
labor, where the fact that people are being brought together in a new  
way is just starting to reflect itself in terms of the consciousness  
of a predicament.

Danah’s suggested that youth are excluded more and more from real  
public space shed an interesting light on youth use of online spaces  
such as Myspace. In my mind’s eye, I started to compare the youth of  
Los Angeles to the English peasantry forced off the land by the  
Enclosure acts, only instead of being sent to Australia, they have to  
do time in Second Life.

Choice in our era is a problematic notion in general, but  
specifically we can ask ‘Where do you go?’  if you turn off and tune  
elsewhere?

Trebor suggested that the non-profit route is insignificant.  He  
mentioned Craigs List, I believe, and one of the questioners made a  
plea for a public, presumably government-owned online space that  
seemed well-intentioned but also seemed to fall flat.

In a market sense the insignificance of alternatives in more than  
apparent.  Any discussion of monopolies in industry would give the  
$155 Billion Google and the $300 Billion Microsoft and their  
confreres control of a market.  When I came home from the Vera  
lecture I noticed the story about Google offering $3.2Billion for the  
online ad agency Double-click.  The irony of Microsoft challenging  
the sale on monopoly grounds adds to one’s conviction that the future  
of the online universe will be controlled by fewer large players.

"Together, Google and DoubleClick will empower agencies, advertisers,  
and publishers to collaborate more efficiently and effectively, which  
will, in turn, provide a better experience for our users. "So says  
Susan Wojcicki, Google's VP for Product Management.

What increased monopoly control means online is different than what  
it means in television, radio or print, where it is more difficult to  
become your own producer, but it exists.  I would not argue that non- 
profit entitities will be significant competition on that level.

Ethan himself has been central to creating a project Global Voices,  
globalvoicesonline.org, a developing world voice that speaks to power  
in a politically intriguing way.  His astuteness in creating such a  
group, and the crowd obviously enjoyed the presentations of online  
citizen media political action in difficult circumstances in East  
Africa and Southeast Asia,  is an important quality.  I don’t share  
the belief that you can just leave or turn off.  But I do believe  
alternative spaces are important, if only for postulating an  
alternative, for creating cultural frameworks, skill sets and even  
modest infrastructure.  Perhaps as someone who has worked in  
alternative and community media for many years  I have to.  But what  
might alternatives mean, and how can they mean something valuable?

Unfortunately the ground is shifting rapidly, casting the possibility  
of even a relatively open online universe in another light.

Another trend that bodes poorly for a free or open space online is  
the significant move of online culture to mobile devices. Industry  
statistics suggest that mobile devices will be the major route to the  
internet in just a couple of years. Particularly in the US these  
mobile platforms are closed and proprietary.  Their future  
development in the hands of operators and other big players moves  
them more in the direction of the worst kind of television and  
commercial radio.

While in East Africa an NGO can negotiate to develop social software  
for cellphone use, that’s not much of an option in the US.
How that might change is difficult to see.  When one adds the rapid  
development of locative devices for control both in public space and  
the workplace, the picture looks rather grim.

  Trebor advocates in "Re-public" an invigorated media literacy,  
making a plea for “a participatory skill set, resistance to the  
monocultures of the web and self-awareness.”

I would suggest that we need to occupy the mobile/locative platform  
space, at least speculatively.  I would argue that what is needed are  
new efforts to bring together people who together might be able to  
offer tools, thinking and energy.

To this end several groups here in New York are putting together an  
‘unconference’ to bring together programmers, designers, activists,  
students, and artists in early May.  See www.mobilizednyc.org.  We  
invite participation and of course, discussion!

Cheers,

Marty Lucas

On Apr 18, 2007, at 8:22 PM, Trebor Scholz wrote:

> Our discussion about affective labor and the sociable web came up  
> again at a recent panel at The New School. Afterwards there were  
> quite a few
> fascinating responses to the arguments across the blogosphere to  
> which I responded at:
>
> http://www.collectivate.net/display/ShowJournal? 
> moduleId=223903&currentPage=3
>
> I summed up my ideas in a willfully provocative essay for a new  
> issue of the journal Re-Public. (The issue also features essays by  
> Geert Lovink, McKenzie
> Wark and Michel Bauwens.)
> http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=138
>
> What is a fair exchange in the context of the highest traffic sites  
> of the sociable web? Yes, we get much out of many sites to which we  
> contribute. We can
> "egocast," build friendships, develop thousands of weak ties,  
> learn, date, and simply enjoy hanging out with friends on this  
> disembodied platform.
>
> It is hard, however, not think of utilization when NewsCorp spent  
> $583m on MySpace, which is now estimated to head toward a market  
> value of $15billion
> (over the next 3 years). A definite value is created and that  
> surplus value is not shared in a fair way.
>
> The community, which indeed undoubtedly benefits, is monetized.  
> People cannot simply leave if they don't like being used because  
> their friends are all on
> that site. You can't post a video to a small video-sharing site if  
> online fame is what you are after. Perhaps the days of "Friendster- 
> mobility" are over. Here,
> the networked publics left in large numbers. The choice that  
> participants have is limited; they are in a social lock-down of  
> sorts. This lack of true
> alternatives may have well been the reason that 700.000 users of  
> the Facebook recently protested when the unpopular RSS feature was  
> introduced.
>
> On the before mentioned panel, both, danah boyd and Ethan Zuckerman  
> brought up the tremendous costs for NewsCorp that are associated with
> technically supporting all that sociality on MySpace. Ethan also  
> pointed out that it may take big business to facilitate large scale  
> networked social life.
>
> In the end, what really matters is not only that people become  
> aware of the fact that they are being used on these giant sites. It  
> is important to be clear
> about the ownership of content and it is also crucial to know the  
> privacy rules of the platforms that we are using.
>
> What is most important, however, is the ability to be independent,  
> which means that I have a way of leaving-- taking with me what I  
> invested (the
> content-- the blog entries, the photos, the videos...). For me,  
> much of the ethics of the sociable web is related to the ability to  
> call it quits.
>
> -Trebor
>
> PS:
> Some of these topics were also picked up in Sweden:
> http://www.whomakesandownsyourwork.org/mw/index.php?title=Main_Page
>
> New subscribers-- you can read our list archive of this debate at:
> http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/2007-April/thread.html
>
>
>
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