hi Mark,
>Thanks for trying to wrestle with all this.
Thank you as well ! For some bizarre reason this email is appearing as written
in italics, but i can't change it.
>The points that I have been making could be summarized as --
>
>1) The nature of the *economy* is shaped by the behaviors and attitudes of the
>people who live in that economy. We all make the world what it is.
Yes no problems there. Of course from my discipline I would add things like
power relations are important, social 'structures' are important, ecological
relations are important, and so on. These all, both enable and restrict kinds
of behaviour.
>2) These behaviors and attitudes are, in turn, "formed" by technological
>environment
>in which these people live. The world makes all of us what we are.
i think a place where we might differ is here. For me the technological
environment is important, but it is also shaped by the power relations,
cultural relations, and so on. It is not the ultimate determining factor. It
shapes and is shaped. We can for example ask why is it in contemporary
capitalism (which is not quite the same as 19th Century capitalism but is
related), that corporations spend so much time increasing forms of energy
technology which will probably destroy the social basis which allows them to
exist and prosper, when they could easily shift into newer technology
('renwables') which might not produce that disruption?
Some of this is to do with maintaining old certainties, and some of it is to do
with the limited range of problem solving techinques which seem allowed under
that particular social formation. Perhaps easily avavilable technology limits
their options?
There are heaps of factors which determine a technologies impact and even
whether it is taken up, or some of its options are taken up, or not.
i would suggest that IT and networking was essential was essential to
transnational capitalism, and was developed in that framework, and is still
associated with it. It may ultimatrly produce changes but the depth of those
changes may well depend on other factors than just the technology.
As passing remark there is also the fact that the printing press, gunpowder,
and ocean going vessels did not have the same effect in China as they appear to
have done in europe, until China's social order and culture changed in
confrontation with 'the West'. Technological effects probably depend on
context, as well as create contexts.
>3) We are now in the midst of a *radical* shift in this technological
>environment -- from a
>mass-media (i.e. broadcast/one-way) "analog" economy to a *digital* (i.e.
>talk-back/two->way) economy.
the question here is to what extent it is a replacement and to what extent it
is an addenda to another shift in other social processes.
>4) Accordingly, we should expect to see changes in behavior and attitudes --
>not
>completely or overnight but widely evident -- that are reflected in changes in
>the
> corresponding economy.
We may do indeed.
the question there is: how do we know it is primarily a technological shift
that is producing the observed effects and not, for example, the supposed
effects which are allowing the technological transformation to be succesful?
My general argument would be that 'new media' intensifies the previous social
relations of capitalism, the hierarchies of capitalism, and the incoherencies
of capitalism - this obviously changes some things. but that is a longe
argument.
>5) Economic analysis that isn't robust enough to account for these changes
>will likely
>fail to produce much insight and is more likely to reinforce earlier "biases"
>and add to
>our confusion.
True again. But then, i don't personally know of much economic analysis which
actually focuses on psychological, social, technological, ecological, and
power relations either (at the same time anyway)....
>What has long been called "consumerism" (and is sometimes called "late-stage
> capitalism" or "software communism") is a description of the *effects* of
> mass-media as >a technological environment.
This to me is a complicated question, as implied above. Without some
consumerism, and focus on mass markets and giving people access to those
markets, you may not have been able to sell televisions, or get audiences for
movies at the 'mass level' etc.
Conspicuous consumption in the sense depicted by Veblen and Bataille (amongst
others) is conspicous across all kinds of cultures, so there is a possibility
that consumerism plugs into that, when it becomes possible for those who are
relatively poor and mobile.
The decline in wealth shared by the general poplace and its transfer to the
corporate elite, as a result of the interactions of modern business and
computerisation, would also mean that the market may well be changing from mass
markets to something else. hence the importance of noting the increase in
conspicuous consumption at the high end of the market.
>This phenomenon, where advertising is used to induce a "commidification of
>desires"
>in the population, has been particularly acute since the advent of television
>in the 1950s.
> The term "eyeballs" is often used to describe the "target" in this form of
> economy. People
> are said to be "programmed" to behave in particular ways in this economic
> regime.
Whether people were ever that programmed was moot, in my opinion, certainly
they participated in status and satisfaction, battles which were opened for
them. As the woolworths people suggest (who are still involved in mass
markets), advertisers may still be able to command eyeballs, and also command
impulses. And as i suggested earlier there may now be no delay necessary
between desire and 'satisfaction' in consumption.
>What has been called "new media" (i.e. a term that I "coined" circa 1989)
>operates in a
>radically different fashion from mass-media.
But, even if true, again the point is that it does not act in the absence of
mass media - or of other social factors.
>It encourages "interactivity"
I would prefer to say that certain structures of communication which are
present in some new media forums encourage interactivity - and encourage it in
different ways. For instance nettime, to me, is far more usefully interactive
than say facebook, twitter, linked in and so on.
>and could be said to be composed of "eyeballs that talk back."
The question here might be talk back to what? and how?
clicking 'like' next to a product is not really talking back, in i think your
sense of talking back, especially when 'likes' can be bought.
Somebody in a que behind me was talking about putting the cheese platter they
do on facebook - which by the sound of it would have been an advert for a
particular vendor - why spend on advertising when your customers may do it for
you?.
it also seems that online the 'right' seems to be winning the propaganda war,
about things like climate change and so on - the talk back still reflects the
dominant coporate view of the world (pretty much re-presenting the murdoch
line) - there is no explosion of factivity in argument, no sense to me anyway,
that we have a new 'democratic' discourse arising from the internet. There is
perhaps an increase in social paranoia if anything.
the other thing notable about online economies is that monopoly seems natural.
There is one amazon, one google, one facebook, one youtube etc... Any
competition comes from old media or business who arrived online at more or less
the same time.
>Many have noticed these functional/technological differences but elaborating
>the
>expected differences in behaviors and attitudes and the anticipated impact on
>the
> economy has not yet been widely discussed. An example of the literature about
>these changed behaviors and attitudes is the 1999 "Cluetrain Manifesto."
My impression of the cyberanalysis scene when i first entered it, was that it
was almost nothing other than elaborating 'expected differences', so much so
that it seemed to be original to actually look at what was happening now! Not
so much the case nowdays, thankfully.
>Much as aspects of older technological environments persisted as television
>became dominant, including
>books, radio, movies, newspapers etc -- albeit substantially altered to
>"participate" in the television era --
>all of these previous behaviors and attitudes also linger, sometimes
>nostalgically and with strong
>commitments, making any contemporary economy decidedly "mixed."
so this is one of my points, the economy and other social life is not
determined by one factor alone.
>Accordingly, today the situation is a "compound" of various technological
>environments. In particular,
>while many people have a sense that the Internet "changed everything," they
>are still hard-pressed to
>identify or verbalize what has changed in their own behaviors and attitudes.
>Clearly differences in
>personal circumstances and cultural/national milieus further complicate the
>matter.
>
>Nonetheless, analysis of the (political-)economy that ignore these changes in
>behaviors and attitudes
>will likely miss much of what is going on. While applying frameworks that
>were proposed 100 (say Weber)
>or 200 (say Marx) or 300 (say Mandeville) years ago can be interesting and
>even gratifying, unless they
>were explicit about the economic effects of technological environments, they
>will themselves need to
>be examined in the light of what we have subsequently learned
but perhaps we should also learn from what we have learnt, and not reduce
everything to one factor :)
jon
UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F
DISCLAIMER: This email message and any accompanying attachments may contain
confidential information.
If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate,
distribute or copy this message or
attachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the
sender immediately and delete
this message. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual
sender, except where the
sender expressly, and with authority, states them to be the views of the
University of Technology Sydney.
Before opening any attachments, please check them for viruses and defects.
Think. Green. Do.
Please consider the environment before printing this email.
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]
