Re: [NetBehaviour] Agony and the Ecstasy: On Zoom Burnout. (pre-paper draft)
Patrick, Lots of interesting thoughts here! I partially agree with Alan - Facebook and Twitter I find it difficult to get along with, but I've developed online acquaintances with some very interesting people via Instagram, and I'd certainly miss the connectivity and instant-availability of Web 2 if it were suddenly taken away. All the same I do hanker for the old days of the World Wide Web, version one - HTML, JavaScript and all that stuff - when you could just build your own website and it was as good as anybody else's. Not really, it wasn't, but for a while you had that feeling. I don't suppose the web was ever free really, but it's a bit like the difference between tap water and bottled water - tap water is controlled by commercial interests too, but bottled water is so much more obviously a commercial product. People use things like Zoom, Facebook Rooms, Microsoft Teams, Facebook itself, Twitter, Instagram, etc etc pragmatically - some use them experimentally or counter-culturally: just because the platforms are commercial, it doesn't necessarily mean that the the people using them buy into the commercial ethos, or that the activity taking place on them has no human value... but it'd be nicer if you didn't have the uneasy feeling that they're hoovering up all of your personal bits of information and storing it all away somewhere, to be used against you later in the form of manipulation. It'd be nicer if you didn't feel that you're always putting more money and power in the hands of people who've already got far too much of both. And as you say, Patrick, their objective is to have all of your attention all of the time. Sometimes it's just nicer to switch them off and do something else instead. Edward On 21/07/2020 13:44, Patrick Lichty wrote: Agony and the Ecstasy: Net-hanging in the age of Covid The era of Covid lockdown is Zoom-time. Although at the time of this writing, the crest of the wave is starting to pass, its impact is evident. In over three months of lockdown, stay at home, 24/7 Zoom culture has come to dominate global telepresent communications, standing in for ever-present cyber vernissages, online conferences, talks and visits. The need to work, communicate, and even socially function has necessitated the rise of platforms like Zoom and Adobe Connect, and what I have come to understand as platform politics and their neoliberal connotations. Although places like The Well and John Perry Barlow’s Declaration of Cyberspace Independence call and were founded under the notion of cyberfreedom and fluid congregation outside of the agendas of capital, the Covid pandemic has created a scenario where the private sector has found tenterhooks into the foundations of institutional communications. This is not to say that Social Media does not do this, but one of the differences I want to allude to is the institution-in-itself (facebook) as opposed to platform as channel of communication for institutions. Unlike a public utility, Zoom, as well as others like Adobe Connect, and Facebook Rooms, and so on are portals in which institutions found a necessity for network that was not facilitated by a commons, but by corporations, and by agendas of maximizing connections and communications. These two effects(institutional adoption of private protocols [Galloway] and the necessity of a will-to-connect) are the poles in which capital has pushed further into the control regimes of markets, networks, and political engineering as to where private interests further govern sociocultural concerns. It even got the UAE to release its national ban on VoIP communications. That isn;t so much about any particular country, but the effect that Zoom has had on global communication under the Covid crisis. This isn’t the first time the idea of having online platforms be the lens for focusing social interaction. Second Life, with its inherently capitalist foundations, tried to tout itself as the 3D World Wide Web, almost like an analogy to the 3D Internet analogue in the Robert Longo movie, Johnny Mnemonic. With the neoliberal dream of the Linden Dollar superceding John Perry Barlow’s Declaration of Cyberspace Independence, FOMO-driven corporations from Domino’s Pizza to Playboy flooded into the platform. christian von borries, documentary, The Dubai in Me, imperfectly compares financial speculative evangelicalism between Second Life and the “Dubai Miracle”, much of which operated on the notion of rotating real estate speculation. For some time, this was reflected in Second Life, when the mythology of Chinese real estate trader Anshe Chung announced that she had made her first million dollars on virtual real estates. However the differences between a foundation based on a technology (HTTP) and that based on a single-provider platform (Second Life) in that a provider often takes a majority of the profit, and that the upsurge of traffic caused mu
Re: [NetBehaviour] Agony and the Ecstasy: On Zoom Burnout. (pre-paper draft)
thanks Patrick On Tue, Jul 21, 2020 at 2:44 PM Patrick Lichty wrote: > > Agony and the Ecstasy: Net-hanging in the age of Covid > > > > The era of Covid lockdown is Zoom-time. Although at the time of this > writing, the crest of the wave is starting to pass, its impact is evident. > In over three months of lockdown, stay at home, 24/7 Zoom culture has come > to dominate global telepresent communications, standing in for ever-present > cyber vernissages, online conferences, talks and visits. The need to work, > communicate, and even socially function has necessitated the rise of > platforms like Zoom and Adobe Connect, and what I have come to understand > as platform politics and their neoliberal connotations. Although places > like The Well and John Perry Barlow’s Declaration of Cyberspace > Independence call and were founded under the notion of cyberfreedom and > fluid congregation outside of the agendas of capital, the Covid pandemic > has created a scenario where the private sector has found tenterhooks into > the foundations of institutional communications. This is not to say that > Social Media does not do this, but one of the differences I want to allude > to is the institution-in-itself (facebook) as opposed to platform as > channel of communication for institutions. Unlike a public utility, Zoom, > as well as others like Adobe Connect, and Facebook Rooms, and so on are > portals in which institutions found a necessity for network that was not > facilitated by a commons, but by corporations, and by agendas of maximizing > connections and communications. These two effects(institutional adoption of > private protocols [Galloway] and the necessity of a will-to-connect) are > the poles in which capital has pushed further into the control regimes of > markets, networks, and political engineering as to where private interests > further govern sociocultural concerns. It even got the UAE to release its > national ban on VoIP communications. That isn;t so much about any > particular country, but the effect that Zoom has had on global > communication under the Covid crisis. > > > > This isn’t the first time the idea of having online platforms be the lens > for focusing social interaction. Second Life, with its inherently > capitalist foundations, tried to tout itself as the 3D World Wide Web, > almost like an analogy to the 3D Internet analogue in the Robert Longo > movie, Johnny Mnemonic. With the neoliberal dream of the Linden Dollar > superceding John Perry Barlow’s Declaration of Cyberspace Independence, > FOMO-driven corporations from Domino’s Pizza to Playboy flooded into the > platform. christian von borries, documentary, The Dubai in Me, imperfectly > compares financial speculative evangelicalism between Second Life and the > “Dubai Miracle”, much of which operated on the notion of rotating real > estate speculation. For some time, this was reflected in Second Life, when > the mythology of Chinese real estate trader Anshe Chung announced that she > had made her first million dollars on virtual real estates. However the > differences between a foundation based on a technology (HTTP) and that > based on a single-provider platform (Second Life) in that a provider often > takes a majority of the profit, and that the upsurge of traffic caused > multiple technical issues, caused most of those glittering dreams to > collapse within 2-3 years. Another difference is that while the interaction > with the World Wide Web is relatively simple Second Life required a > relatively powerful machine and at least a couple days learning SL’s rather > cumbersome interface. In interaction and commerce design, the rule is that > the least friction yields the greatest returns. > > > > But then, the socio(economic) frictionlessness is one of the biggest > problems with platforms like Zoom, or Adobe Connect, or whatever flavor you > mention. In the artworld, I always saw the necessary friction that artists > thought had to happen was exclusivity or access, to an event or an object. > But then, I had not inhabited Istanbul or Dubai, which are big enough > cities with capital to support a contemporary cultural community, (and even > Chelsea is similar), but with accessibility comes the expectation to > access. Once you are there and become part of the community, there are > expectations to be met, places to be seen. And this is a crucial point – > the demand to be seen. Further linkage to privilege in the case of Zoom is > multilayered, from communities that wish to engage, and from the company, > wishing to focus social capital through its portal. > > > > What is important about this will-to-access is not that it is resultant > from the community, it is resultant from the platform. The first layer of a > demand-to-access is expectations to attend, but the other is that of the > platform, and in the end, the platform is a cybernetic system that os a > control apparatus. Although Adobe Connect has also been adopted w
[NetBehaviour] Agony and the Ecstasy: On Zoom Burnout. (pre-paper draft)
Agony and the Ecstasy: Net-hanging in the age of Covid The era of Covid lockdown is Zoom-time. Although at the time of this writing, the crest of the wave is starting to pass, its impact is evident. In over three months of lockdown, stay at home, 24/7 Zoom culture has come to dominate global telepresent communications, standing in for ever-present cyber vernissages, online conferences, talks and visits. The need to work, communicate, and even socially function has necessitated the rise of platforms like Zoom and Adobe Connect, and what I have come to understand as platform politics and their neoliberal connotations. Although places like The Well and John Perry Barlow’s Declaration of Cyberspace Independence call and were founded under the notion of cyberfreedom and fluid congregation outside of the agendas of capital, the Covid pandemic has created a scenario where the private sector has found tenterhooks into the foundations of institutional communications. This is not to say that Social Media does not do this, but one of the differences I want to allude to is the institution-in-itself (facebook) as opposed to platform as channel of communication for institutions. Unlike a public utility, Zoom, as well as others like Adobe Connect, and Facebook Rooms, and so on are portals in which institutions found a necessity for network that was not facilitated by a commons, but by corporations, and by agendas of maximizing connections and communications. These two effects(institutional adoption of private protocols [Galloway] and the necessity of a will-to-connect) are the poles in which capital has pushed further into the control regimes of markets, networks, and political engineering as to where private interests further govern sociocultural concerns. It even got the UAE to release its national ban on VoIP communications. That isn;t so much about any particular country, but the effect that Zoom has had on global communication under the Covid crisis. This isn’t the first time the idea of having online platforms be the lens for focusing social interaction. Second Life, with its inherently capitalist foundations, tried to tout itself as the 3D World Wide Web, almost like an analogy to the 3D Internet analogue in the Robert Longo movie, Johnny Mnemonic. With the neoliberal dream of the Linden Dollar superceding John Perry Barlow’s Declaration of Cyberspace Independence, FOMO-driven corporations from Domino’s Pizza to Playboy flooded into the platform. christian von borries, documentary, The Dubai in Me, imperfectly compares financial speculative evangelicalism between Second Life and the “Dubai Miracle”, much of which operated on the notion of rotating real estate speculation. For some time, this was reflected in Second Life, when the mythology of Chinese real estate trader Anshe Chung announced that she had made her first million dollars on virtual real estates. However the differences between a foundation based on a technology (HTTP) and that based on a single-provider platform (Second Life) in that a provider often takes a majority of the profit, and that the upsurge of traffic caused multiple technical issues, caused most of those glittering dreams to collapse within 2-3 years. Another difference is that while the interaction with the World Wide Web is relatively simple Second Life required a relatively powerful machine and at least a couple days learning SL’s rather cumbersome interface. In interaction and commerce design, the rule is that the least friction yields the greatest returns. But then, the socio(economic) frictionlessness is one of the biggest problems with platforms like Zoom, or Adobe Connect, or whatever flavor you mention. In the artworld, I always saw the necessary friction that artists thought had to happen was exclusivity or access, to an event or an object. But then, I had not inhabited Istanbul or Dubai, which are big enough cities with capital to support a contemporary cultural community, (and even Chelsea is similar), but with accessibility comes the expectation to access. Once you are there and become part of the community, there are expectations to be met, places to be seen. And this is a crucial point – the demand to be seen. Further linkage to privilege in the case of Zoom is multilayered, from communities that wish to engage, and from the company, wishing to focus social capital through its portal. What is important about this will-to-access is not that it is resultant from the community, it is resultant from the platform. The first layer of a demand-to-access is expectations to attend, but the other is that of the platform, and in the end, the platform is a cybernetic system that os a control apparatus. Although Adobe Connect has also been adopted widely, the frictionlessness of the Zoom platform has allowed it to be quickly adopted by the institutional community, and without having a professi
