[iDC] Re: A critique of sociable web media
John Hopkins
jhopkins at neoscenes.net
Thu Apr 26 02:46:58 EDT 2007
This is a bit late, but in the case that some of the thoughts have
not been completely substituted by the latest Manifesto produced by
Mr. Keen, I'll risk the possible consequence of very loud silence and
post t anyway...
>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.
I have mentioned this before -- but, look, why should people be
surprised that any social system of a scale greater than three
individuals might function this way -- where the social system
generates a protocol/form to govern the possible expressive pathways
of connection and encounter between the self and the other. The
process of defining this pathway arises as part of the evolution (or
indeed IS the evolution) of the social system itself. The two actors
-- the social system, in defining this pathway, and the individual,
choosing to participate in their human encounters via this defined
pathway -- end up in a relationship of energy transfer. In the
prototypical case, the social infrastructure defining the pathway of
connection drains off some of the energy that the two humans would
seek to concentrate each other.
I'd point to the essay I posted here a month ago to zero response --
in the midst of the Baudrillard-fest -- an essay that I wrote for the
Pixelache "Architectures of Participation" conference in Helsinki
http://neoscenes.net/hyper-text/text/pixel.html -- which suggests
some principles through which one can approach socio-technical
systems and understand their affects on human relation. Principles
that do well to deal with any technical level of system. Up to
including the ones that pervade that of our contemporary world.
>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.
Let's promote some fundamental understanding on how these systems
(read: ANY social infrastructure that is a result of collective
concentration of resources) drain the energy of participants in order
to concentrate power, and how we can prevent that drain from our
human-to-human connections (prevention lies in the determination of
pathways BY THE individuals involved). Now it might be that some
socio-technical infrastructure might offer the individuals a pathway
which they are happy to use, but in the vast majority of cases, the
socio-technical infrastructure is imposed virtually without choice on
anyone who happens to be nominally participating in the social
system. Participation and the consequent adaption to the normative
is required to be a part of the social system to begin with. Lack of
adaption is either passively or actively punished. Adaption/Adoption
is rewarded -- why would anyone want 2500 friends -- except to have
the pride of social power and position. In a social system that
values pride, power, influence, and visual appearance, what young
person would risk punishment to forge an existence outside of that?
so it goes.
Cheers,
jh
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