Dear All,
One of the clever aspects of Facebook was that it found a way to
capitalize (in mutliple senses) relationships that pre-existed in meat
world. That it is a panopticon is what keeps me disinterested in
participating. And this leads me to a question that rubs against a
number of these threads. Fair disclosure, it came up yesterday in a face
to face group I am part of. Is privacy necessary to innovation (not
necessarily artistic)? Follow up: is it necessary only to individuals or
can it be a feature needed by working groups as well? I am raising this
question not particularly with respect to protecting property interests
in advance of "publication" (although they may come up along the way)
but much more with regard to psychological/cognitive processes.
Looping back somewhat in the conversation about the "utility" of art,
why it is important (and by art, I mean all forms/media of expression),
I have always thought that it represents the wider mind, gives form to
its integration, which is incredibly powerful and important. What do I
mean? The contents of our mental lives are big stews of the present/past
experience, fantasies, unconscious material of all kinds, and yes,
desire (=drive?), kinesthetic knowledge, etc.. Art making, because it
draws on all these sources can, quite aside from the expressive goals of
the maker, assure others that integration is possible. And it gives
permission to others to try the same thing. So a more refined version of
the question above is this: Is privacy required to invoke/evoke the
broad contents of the mind in either individuals or as a result of group
process?
Christina
Eugenio Tisselli wrote:
Davin,
When I read your phrase
And, if we live in a true community, our
ideas and actions
are bound to modify, be modified, contradict, and/or
complement the
negotiation of being.
the rose-colored environment of Facebook immediately came to mind. You know, you can "like" but not
"dislike", and people rarely disagree or contradict each other. You say that we are bound to be contradicted
when we live in a true community, and I would say that we actually need to be contradicted in order to set arguments,
discussions and debates in motion. The fact that we are here at empyre, not necessarily contradicting each other, but
offering continuous counterpoints and different viewpoints, makes us all richer. Knowledge can emerge from
disagreement. So, in the almost complete absence of a minimal quota of agonistic exchanges between people, how can a
community emerge from Facebook? Are there so many contradictions and conflicts in the "real world" that we
turn to Facebook simply to escape from them? Could we then see Facebook as an "anti-community", where we all
just whiz by other poeple's walls, stopping only to acknowledge what we like and
ignoring what we don't?
Eugenio.
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre
