Re: nettime [Fwd] A Spit in the Ocean (or the limits of social network paranoia)
Heya John, Thanks for the thoughtful response. I comment inline below: I think one of the reasons that the focus on directly 'opposing' a large dominant techno-social infrastructure deployment with a small techno-social infrastructure deployment is problematic lies in its basic incomplete premise: it doesn't address the de-evolution of human encounter and relation in general. First, I don't think I am focusing on directly 'opposing' anything at the moment. Actually, it sounds like you are calling for an opposition of sorts that situates preference for meat-space over cyber-space. ...with which I can sympathize. If anything, and maybe I haven't been clear, I am suggesting running alternatives, not oppositions. I am suggesting creative research and development ...something that is seriously lacking in the public institutions such as our Universities that I think should be focusing on this problem. Secondly, I certainly don't want to position myself as taking the side of smaller infrastructure over larger ones. I have doubts about the pertinence of size in software networks. We could ponder in many dimensions about what that would mean in a size-less virtual world of networks and software. I think the relevant term is scalability, not size. If anything, I want to question the nature of centralization and privatization in these would-be open and public comm systems. For example, the WWW is essentially a distributed system, arguably less distributed than the internet itself because of the imbalance between server and client infrastructure. However, the current mainstream web2.0 systems create an extra overlay network on top of this that demand that all communication flow through their private, for profit, surveillance centers. Both the web and the internet have less centers and more multi-directionality than does television or print where the means of production are bound by serious technical limitations. Part of this central-hood and private-ness is in the technical protocols and standards and licenses themselves. Part of it is from larger macro-structural environments and pressures. All of them mix and influence one another on some level. Unraveling all that at once is something beyond me and not something I am suggesting. Also, a 'technical' solution, while it pleases the hacker aesthetic locally, does not address at all the effects that the technical 'box' applies globally (i.e., the misery spread via the extractive minerals industry, for example, necessary to prop up *any* kind of server *anywhere*). Are you trying to hint at a bias against hacker aesthetics? I might understand what you mean. However, we can attribute the previous openness, flexibility, and stability of the internet to an almost aesthetic-less hacker motive. It does take a special person to admire the beauty of protocol and API design. However, the hackers and engineers who built the internet had very different priorities and motivations than do the current ones who seem to be churning out thousands of redundant and useless academic research papers -much of which is paid for by public/taxpayer money. I also believe you are thinking of the 'technical' in too limiting of terms. Maybe that is why you put it in quotes. I believe what you want to address is the box of 'progress'. Much effort in my teaching and facilitation is to reset the conditions in a grouping of people so that -- on a sliding scale from highly-mediated human connection to less-mediated human connection -- people value less mediation more. This rather than valuing the latest technological implementation of a mediated communications tool as more valuable. I firmly believe that if we gave more attention to the humans who are in most proximal to us instead of the remote 'tele'Other the world would be a better place. I'm not so sure about this. Wouldn't this potentially lead to cliques and tribes and in-breeding of ideas. I'm okay with the postal system. I'm even okay with the interstate highways. Although, I do wish there were serious limits on automobiles, especially in the city. The question of more or less mediation can go on down to sub-atomic particles: thoughts mediated by languages mediated by speech mediated by air molecules mediated by atoms and who knows what else is down there. I get your point, but I don't think I or anyone else is suggesting that electronic communication is a more preferable or less preferable way to communicate than letter writing or art or hand-holding or sex. Well, maybe sex is better given the proper consensual circumstances. Unfortunately, I admit sometimes an email would have been better. Or, are you really suggesting that email somehow deteriorates so-called un-mediated communication on a person to person level? (this suggests that, practicing what I preach, I leave nettime altogether, eh!?) But it is This is what I mean about the opposition you seem to be proposing. I'm
Re: nettime [Fwd] A Spit in the Ocean (or the limits of social network paranoia)
It's not the economic pressure as much as it's the Clumping Effect: there appears to be a biological predisposition for humans to clump in larger ... clumps. Setting up a separate home mail server, with its own domain, practically unsubpoenable and unspiderable, or home node of a distributed 'social network' is technically trivial and can be dumbed down to one-click install process. However, convincing a meaningful fraction of the people to have separate services, when *most* of others have already clumped into few big clumps, is very hard and goes against the grain. This has nothing to do with usability - e-mail travels via standard protocols, but has everything to do with prevailing trends, where big clumps win. So, what's the real alternative if any? The alternative, I think, is perhaps too difficult to even imagine. The technical problems of building an open, stable, and user-run communication space are minuscule compared to the massive amounts of economic pressure from the larger macro-structures of our social machinery.? # 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: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime [Fwd] A Spit in the Ocean (or the limits of social network paranoia)
So, what's the real alternative if any? The alternative, I think, is perhaps too difficult to even imagine. The technical problems of building an open, stable, and user-run communication Hei August! I think one of the reasons that the focus on directly 'opposing' a large dominant techno-social infrastructure deployment with a small techno-social infrastructure deployment is problematic lies in its basic incomplete premise: it doesn't address the de-evolution of human encounter and relation in general. Also, a 'technical' solution, while it pleases the hacker aesthetic locally, does not address at all the effects that the technical 'box' applies globally (i.e., the misery spread via the extractive minerals industry, for example, necessary to prop up *any* kind of server *anywhere*). Much effort in my teaching and facilitation is to reset the conditions in a grouping of people so that -- on a sliding scale from highly-mediated human connection to less-mediated human connection -- people value less mediation more. This rather than valuing the latest technological implementation of a mediated communications tool as more valuable. I firmly believe that if we gave more attention to the humans who are in most proximal to us instead of the remote 'tele'Other the world would be a better place. (this suggests that, practicing what I preach, I leave nettime altogether, eh!?) But it is not an all-or-nothing game, it can be implemented at any level at any point in time. Indeed the dynamic of choice, when choosing where to give our attentions, is a crucial awareness to learn -- because it is the *where* we focus those immediate attentions on that becomes *empowered*. etc... jh # 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: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime [Fwd] A Spit in the Ocean (or the limits of social network paranoia)
Ultimately liberism has won the masses to socialism by constructing the dream (American) and means (Capitalism) for an open society purely based on quantitative, axiomatic relationships. Capitalism has been so far a viable system of governance because has been able to embed this dicotomy while still providing a rationality to its existance. I agree that the challenge now should be to imagine new forms for open societies rather than regressimg to the idea of walled gardens. Still it holds true that the instinct of planning a walled garden and to share the information on how to do it can be the pre-condition for the creation of new territories, the experimentation of new rationalities. In so far there are no open spaces that offer such conditions (nor it looks like the industrial reconfiguration of culture will facilitate their creation and existance), but I love your indefatigable attempts to imagine them. Speaking of quantitative and axiomatic relationships, I thought nettime might want to have a look at Facebook's Securities and Exchange Commission document. Zuckerberg's registration statement is particularly interesting. You can read it here: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512034517/d287954ds1.htm#toc287954_10 Besides highlighting the ways FB hopes/boasts to change how people relate to their governments and social institutions, I find this particular gem to be interesting: At Facebook, we’re inspired by technologies that have revolutionized how people spread and consume information. We often talk about inventions like the printing press and the television — by simply making communication more efficient, they led to a complete transformation of many important parts of society. They gave more people a voice. They encouraged progress. They changed the way society was organized. They brought us closer together. So, I guess it is no surprise that he sees FB more like the old centralized technologies and less like the telephone or even the internet. That's the imaginary future we can look forward to - straight out of the middle ages and early 20th century. What exactly did television make more efficient is what I am wondering to myself. Users continue to lend their eyeballs and attention to centralized systems like gmail, g+, and FB even though there are existing technical alternatives such as irc, email, and a plethora of social networking initiatives in varying degrees of technical stability. Some of these technologies pre-date FB by decades. Why do users do that? I'm sure it has to do with a number of non-quantitative reasons related to the details of the technology itself (e.g. text-only email doesn't have images inline and tagged with your friends contact info), the convenience of having everything in once place with little visual clutter and unified interfaces, but also with social mechanics and economics that make those centralized services arguably more sustainable at larger scales. What's worse is that there really isn't a technical way to opt-out of these central services. Declining to be part of G+ or gmail doesn't preclude your being a part of their system. If a non-gmail users communicates with a gmail user via email, their email address, a somewhat unique identifier, and the content of their communication are also entered into google's private algorithmic system of actuarial surveillance. The same holds if friends upload and tag photos of you. This public email forum and my post are also trackable in a similar vein. I'm personally less worried about the surveillance, but am more worried about the ways these centralized systems expose users to cultural persuasion and manipulation (based on the surveillance). So far, this mostly happens through more-or-less traditional advertisement, which many users simply accept and even welcome (Finally, it knows exactly what I want to buy). Other users have good adblock software or are perceptually immune to the ads after years of tele-visual bombardment. This exposure is technically unnecessary even though it sometimes appears as if it is desired by a large portion of users. So, what's the real alternative if any? The alternative, I think, is perhaps too difficult to even imagine. The technical problems of building an open, stable, and user-run communication space are minuscule compared to the massive amounts of economic pressure from the larger macro-structures of our social machinery. The cause and effects of this pressure seem to be created and adapt faster than anyone can study or analyze them. The only thing I can really see from my lay-man's perspective is that a certain x% of the population has their finger on the algorithms that generate and sustain certain economic behaviours, policies, and expectations. Another (x-30)% percent seem to be thankful and eager to support the system that creates the x%, in hopes of moving up the hierarchy. My somewhat naive suggestion for the
nettime [Fwd] A Spit in the Ocean (or the limits of social network paranoia)
dear Tjebbe, as young squatters in Amsterdam in recent times both me and hellekin did benefit from your early practices of phone alarm lists. Considering your presence in this discussion now I feel that the grounds for this dialogue are extremely interesting and fertile. It certainly won't hurt nettime to have a piece of living flesh in the slow process of pseudo-institutional advertising usage that the majority does of it. On Tue, 14 Feb 2012, Tjebbe van Tijen wrote: The message I am reacting on seems to me very romantic and very naive and also untrue in the sense that when you are against a global big firm communication system and want to construct something of an order order, an outsider system, the last thing you should do is announce it here, on the dwindling list, that once was full of discussion and now mostly contains one way announcement (I also use it for that I confess).. The quest for purity in community and with that in its communication systems, sounds like the manifestos for setting up 'intentional communities' of the sixties and seventies of last century, with their attempt to isolate themselves from society as it was. One can deny a try to nobody, but I doubt that such an attitude will have the wished effect. Paranoia is a bad basis for producing any social change. Ultimately I agree with you here. Knowing him, I believe hellekin's reasoning is tainted by the uncomfortable feeling of having a metal detector at the entrance of a social space. This is something we got used in our 9/11 decade, but it still inspires an healthy disgust in some romantic types which won't trade their freedom for security and, in this very case, not even privacy. On the wave of such feelings, isolation is a widespread reaction: the desire of acting on a limited, peaceful, liberated domain which can become sustainable for our family, with the sidekick idea of federating affine realities. These are often the first reactions to paranoid, unsatisfying forms of societies where western individualist mindsets like ours can find themselves living. I'm still not entirely sure what an Asian mindset would really think about such reactions. I believe what you point out here, the dicotomy between intentional communities and open societies is a crucial point of discussion, thanks for bringing it up. Ultimately liberism has won the masses to socialism by constructing the dream (American) and means (Capitalism) for an open society purely based on quantitative, axiomatic relationships. Capitalism has been so far a viable system of governance because has been able to embed this dicotomy while still providing a rationality to its existance. I agree that the challenge now should be to imagine new forms for open societies rather than regressimg to the idea of walled gardens. Still it holds true that the instinct of planning a walled garden and to share the information on how to do it can be the pre-condition for the creation of new territories, the experimentation of new rationalities. In so far there are no open spaces that offer such conditions (nor it looks like the industrial reconfiguration of culture will facilitate their creation and existance), but I love your indefatigable attempts to imagine them. ciao -- jaromil, dyne.org developer, http://jaromil.dyne.org GPG: B2D9 9376 BFB2 60B7 601F 5B62 F6D3 FBD9 C2B6 8E39 # 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: nett...@kein.org
