Greetings Economists,
Rakesh makes some points he feels strongly about,
Rakesh,
recognition that every
competent adult member of a community has a public self image, a face
and thus a fear of losing face (humiliation or embarrassment) as a
result of being insulted or ignored. To be polite is to attend to
face in interaction; one not only tries to maintain and enhance her
or his own face but cooperates in keeping others' faces because their
own face depends on others whom they therefore try not to offend. To
be polite then is to meet the desire that self image be appreciated
and approved of.
Doyle,
I don't share the concept as stated. Rather face sounds to me like a
transaction of some sort that might having a computing parallel. In the
commons a polite face is traded and what does that mean? This e-list has no
face on it. There are some occasional type-face emoticons, but not a human
face. Therefore there is a level of conceptual abstraction about what face
means which is related to relying upon facially impoverished writing systems
to understand what a face really looks like. The issue is that we
understand if someone is embarrassed through seeing their face, but we can't
see their face in the words in an email.
An avatar might be used in place of showing a face. To understand my
concept, Rakesh provides some context by writing some other thoughts,
Rakesh,
Politeness of course also means respecting peoples' need for non
distraction and need to be free of imposition.
So to be polite involves meeting both the positive and negative face
needs of others.
So I take this concern about my impoliteness to mean that I am often
not at all providing for the face wants of my addressee. And one may
ask why others refuse not only to provide for but also contravene my
face wants.
Doyle,
So Rakesh clearly understands a transaction process. That process is to
exchange a postive and a negative face. Between two nodes, the transaction
produces what is required on both ends in somewhat the same way money is
equal between two people in exchange value. If we leave this at customary
levels of plain old human faces we can be mystified about what this might
lead to. Again Rakesh writes several particulars,
Rakesh,
Marxist opponents whose face needs are met with charges of
being a dummie, obscurantist, ideologue, flag waver, religious
zealot. This impoliteness is a two way street. But where do we go
from psychopathology? Are temporal value theorists now to be accused
of running a child prostitution service?
and...
And there is finally the possibility that I offend for no reason
other than to win the attention of good people in a forum in which I
and any one person can easily be drowned out; that is, a message from
me is always already chili-coded and thus more likely to be opened
and focused on than messages from other interlocutors. Impoliteness
is an attention winning strategy.
Doyle,
I think one could as a Marxist subject this transaction to material analysis
via the Information Economy. On the level of personal production, Rakesh is
saying that he isn't getting what he needs as attention from the group. And
his strategy is to provide stimulating attention getting information.
Defining attention, defining what a face are points at some interesting
areas of artificial intelligence and production of information that forms
some networked computing schema being built up, Napster has some aspects of
that sort of exchange process embedded in it.
Lets start with the rationalist concept of information. The rationalist
scrape the feelings off information so that in doing brainwork with the
remaining data, naked words, the problem that Rakesh copes with about being
requested to be polite seems to be alleviated. The whole politeness issue
is removed by removing the emotions from the words, so that information is
shared without the acrimony. Or at least that is the theory.
Nothing of the sort happens. We continue to feel about what is being said.
So a face or carrier of feelings still needs to be used to convey necessary
information about the social connection despite the claims rationality makes
about producing words.
An artificial face avatar is not what people really feel but a more
generalized transaction and exchange system to keep in check emotional
spikes that lead to brainwork degrading emotional intensities. This sort of
system is not rationalist, but a method of measuring positive and negative
face in a transaction system. One can understand that having a blast of
emotions from someone affects what is going to do in the next period of
time. But we want people to get what they want, and give what is needed in
the unified whole working class concept of socialism.
One way to understand this problem is like Rakesh says, that his chili sauce
commentary provides flavor to intellectual conversation, and some people
cope with chili fine and some don't. So the computing strategy is that
Rakesh pours chili on his words and some people filter out the chili, and
some people leave the hot stuff on their words. Or producing an avatar that
gives the proper amount of emotional connectivity that a person needs. An
analogy would be pop music that manufactures pop stars that people consume
because of the emotional content relates to their experience.
This isn't an excessively abstract fantasy but some of the real ways of
understanding networked computing. Where Trust, Accountability, Reputation,
and Security are ways to understand the networked properties of "peer to
peer" computing. See, "Peer-To-Peer, harnessing the Power of Disruptive
Technologies", Edited by Andy Oram, O'Reilly, March 2001. Avatars could be
implemented in the interface that produce information that meets needs more
productively.
If Rakesh or anyone wanted to conduct an economic analysis in a Marxist
sense that would be possible in a materialist way with the computing
products being made in this system. The face to face method humans use
otherwise to gauge "face" don't give us much to work on in alleviating what
Rakesh points at in text documents. Besides the need for politeness is
greatly exaggerated.
To summarize Rakesh points at the historical concept of face, what sort of
transaction process was created and why. I suggest what happens when we
start using machines to produce "face" or an avatar. And what is the real
value of letting Rakesh and everyone fully express themselves in the network
without having to hold their face to account for the properties of the
networked transaction. It seems to me that the scarcity of human
connectivity might be seriously understood in ways that allows us to
realistically address the kinds of concerns that Rakesh gives voice to
above. Primarily we use feelings as a means to gauge how we connect. We
understand racism through that avenue better than the weasily words that
hide racist attitudes. We don't want that connection process degraded so
that someone doesn't get what they need. We want a process that serves the
commons of resources we all need in terms of "face".
thanks,
Doyle Saylor
