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

[Nicholas Ruiz III]

As an example of our stilted sociopolitical
circumstances, I suspect MySpace is as fine an example
as any; I don't believe it represents a special case
of any kind.

Sociality has not 'become,' but rather, has been
capitalized upon, exchangeable as it were, since the
beginning of civilization, and even earlier,
considering the anthropic principle of familial
strength and influence within the tribal biopolitics
of primitive groups.  Evolved forms of such docilities
relative to power emerge in the ancient, medieval and
modern milieus, and proceed in their evolution today. 
The form is not novel, though the particulars of
servitude, of course vary in cultural time and space.

The origin of such claims traces back to the oldest of
world literatures, though sociality is often presented
as Fate; renaissance and modern renderings of social
economy are more recognizably developed as culture
industry.

As for modern, or contemporary conditions, apart from
the location that is virtual vs. physical, what is the
material difference of currency made by capitalizing
on those that park on MySpace, relative to those that
park at Mom and Pop's drive-thru, after the sock hop,
to buy soda pop and cheeseburgers, compare clothing
and hairstyles, chat, gossip and so on?  Is there a
further level of deceit, in one or the other, we
should differentially moralize as some greater evil?

There has never been a utopian FreeSpace, but that is
not to say that there cannot be a more equitable space
and time, no? 

NRIII

 
--- Martin Lucas <mlucas at igc.org> wrote:

> 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
> 
=== message truncated ===>
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Dr. Nicholas Ruiz III
Editor, Kritikos
http://intertheory.org