[iDC] How does social media educate?
John Hopkins
jhopkins at neoscenes.net
Mon Feb 12 16:29:36 EST 2007
>I guess it makes sense to begin by asking: What is 'social media'?
>However, your questions and observations are already suggesting that
>it might not be that easy to provide an answer.
All media is social -- media is 'that which carries between' people.
Media without social context is the sound of one hand clapping.
Mediation is the process of the (attenuated) movement of energies
between the Self and the Other.
Thus, there is an infinite range of possible ways to transfer energy.
Technological systems are introduced to bind individuals into a
collective structure of relationship with the many others who
surround them -- the accumulated social system. From the set
including all the possible ways of interaction/energy exchange, these
social systems and structures prescribe a limited subset of pathways
for interactions (read: protocols, styles, conventions, fashions,
languages for example). Each system or structure allows certain
forms of interaction and restricts other forms -- a phone, for
example, allows the transfer of attenuated sonic energy, but does
not allow touch to be transferred. By definition, then,
technological intervention which IS the mediative carrier across the
abyss between the self and the Other -- and it is always reductive,
exclusive, limited, limiting, and imperfect.
The seed of alienation is in that imperfection-of-means to bridge the
gap between the Self and the Other.
If we have no energized interaction with the Other, we are lost in
complete and spirit-less alienation as we make our way through life.
The introduction of (imperfect) mediative carriers into the exchange
between the Self and the Other by the social system in which they are
embedded causes a more or less significant deflection of possible
energy transfer between the two. That deflected energy is deflected
into the social system itself. The social system directly benefits
from more energy being routed away from the two individual (routed
away from the primary connection of human-to-human). Each 'higher'
technology represents a increasingly complex pathway by which the
individual's energy is siphoned off into the social system. This
because the greater the degree of organization necessary to produce a
'higher' technology requires a greater amount of energy (for example,
the infrastructure necessary to produce paper vs producing
computers). Participating in the social system necessary to produce
computers does 'require' that you give a certain amount of your
life-energy into the maintenance of that organized system of
production. You have to work a certain number of hours of your
lifetime, losing them for ever, in order to make enough money to have
a phone to call your friends. What if you spent the time with your
friends to begin with, talking with, sharing with them, those
original life times. Then you would not need to leave them in order
to work in order to have a phone in order to call them and engage in
a more highly attenuated exchange with them. The social system
requires the former condition if we are to participate in the
accumulated rewards of that system.
I can think of no other 'explanation' to the alienation and dis-ease
I see in people in the developed world other than the increasing
degrees of attenuation to human relationship which occurs at each
juncture of 'higher' technological implementation. Nor can I explain
the greater and greater indexes of control which dominate our
existence in the social system that produces the mediative
technologies except that we are giving more and more of our energies
into that social system, surrendering that life-energy to the
collective use of the system -- to use as it wishes -- to collect and
project in the process of insuring its continued existence (which
means securing the need for the individual to continue to give energy
into the system, and not to the Other).
I can speak to Danah's comments on a personal anecdotal level and a
professional level, having several teen-age/early 20's relatives in
California who I spend significant time with both f2f and virtually.
Not to mention the hundreds of university students interacted with
over several tens of countries and cultures and 20 years. Yes, kids
use the technologies, but also, yes, those same kids (in the case of
certain demographics in California), live in suburban "neighborhoods"
completely bereft of f2f possibilities. Neighbors seldom communicate
f2f on the street because everyone is in cars, and more often than
not, "neighbors" don't have even marginal information who is actually
living next door. Of course kids meet at school, but school is a
drive away, and until a student has a license to drive, isolation is
complete -- to be caught riding a bike to a friend's house is to
admit, shamefully, that there is no car available for use. Attentive
interaction is rare. As the social system draws off the energy
expended into these social mediative systems, there is less focus on
any face-to-face interaction. And, consequently, less ability to
relate in any way but highly mediated forms of interaction (i.e.,
going to the movies, watching teevee together, shopping together,
IM-ing, texting, phoning, driving, and on and on...) I do see Fear
when a f2f interaction with an unknown Other and with unknown
outcomes ensues. It's much easier to be in deflected situations...
And it is exactly that same fear which is a convenient instrument of
control in all social systems bent on dominance.
And to assume that one can live life without the skills and
challenges of face-to-face is an assumption I refuse to make about
human existence in this world.
A police state is that state which successfully deflects to itself,
harnesses via control of the mediative carriers, the bulk of this
energy exchange between individuals in that particular social system.
The success of a system like the Stasi had in place in Eastern
Germany -- where the number of informants began to rival the number
of those under observation -- a situation which effectively shut down
any direct person-to-person exchange, leaving all energy to the
social system to re-express as IT liked. In that case, to extend its
command-and-control over the individuals in the system in a
lizard-eating-tail unsustainable system. Eventually destroying the
very people who it depended on for survival -- because in the end,
that kind of social system is about stasis and death, and it cannot
renew itself to deal with the contingencies of the dominant principle
of Life which is change...
(note that to use the phrase 'social system' is meant to suggest that
there are a multiplicity of levels on which the circumscribed actions
operate, as social energy concentrations are fluid and scaleable --
anything which gathers attention gathers our life energy. Anything
you look at changes you, forever.
And to the original question of the subject line -- social
media(tive) carriers do educate -- by prescribing the pathways of
interaction -- if you choose not to accept the pathway, you are cut
out of the social system, period. Nice choice for a teenager, eh?
Do it OUR way or else...
Systems like MySpace and others are not leading the way, "radically
altering the social dynamics," they are temporary (and literally
reactionary!) niches of narrow possibility in an evolving system
which ultimately seeks and wants to draw energy to itself for its own
survival, not for the good of individual souls or their immediate
local situation.
Personally, I'm not interested in talking about "the next best thing
to being there* without deepening my students awareness of what being
there is about -- and I find that awareness is draining away in the
face of ever-greater socially applied mediation...
Having just undergone the intense and long-term trauma of a major
accident, surgery, and physical rehabilitation, I can say that my
beautiful and highly developed and globally extended network was
little help at all. It was the few humans who were in my immediate
vicinity who, lliterally, carried me through.
Observations written on the Leicester-London train.
And looking forward to a f2f with Armin on Wednesday.
I would be interested if anyone might provide an example of a
technological / mediative carrier which was not produced within a
social system (i.e., used ultimately to 'allow' exchange between the
self and the other or to facilitate the survival of the social
system).
* telephone commercial slogan
Cheers
John
--
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tech-no-mad, on the road again -- london, england
the travelog: http://neoscenes.net/travelog/weblog.php
new sonic work: http://neoscenes.net/aud-vid/audio/drift.html
email: jhopkins at commspeed.net; jhopkins at tech-no-mad.net; hopkins at isnm.de
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