Clay Shirky, "Here comes everybody"

I am in the process of copying and pasting old blog posts from a Ning class blog. I don't want to lose these observations so here they are.

Clay Shirky does an excellent job of describing the dynamics of collaboration and group interaction in light of recent mass appropriation of online social technologies and tools. I found that his explanation of the "Birthday Paradox", as well as his categorization of "group undertaking as a ladder of activities..in order of difficulty...sharing, cooperation, and collective action" (49) helped me to better understand the incredibly complexity of large networks. There are practically infinite linkages and activities that can take place between members of groups and persons participating on massive sharing platforms or microblogging sites like twitter, yet somehow people manage to find a place or a group to fit into if they search deeply enough or if they know the right people (who know the right people.) These platforms, the relative openness of these networks and the kinds of communicative activities taking place on them allow for real time response to political crises and social events; they also unite people from all over the world and foster work on all kinds of projects at a pace and in a risk-free environment that many businesses and institutions cannot afford to do.

I also couldn't believe it when Shirky cited Wikipedia as a creation dating to 2001- which seems rather recent- and wrote about how it only took on its ".org" form a year or so later, responding to users protesting against its possible commercialization- that fact speaks to how much we make these tools a part of our lives and normalize our use of them in so many ways, including how we interpret the world (as continuously editable!) and how we work with one another.

Personally, I think it is great that CCTE classes and faculty/students here use so many of these online social tools to connect with one another; at the same time, it is rather stressful trying to manage all of these tools (including the ones I have to deal with at work and in life- basecamp, anyone? a CMS for life please?), remembering how we present ourselves on them and finding the appropriate context and tools for the task we wish to accomplish. On the other hand, we are given so many options of (re)presenting ourselves and sharing information to others and this can certainly be a positive thing: we have facebook for our friends, colleagues and family and connections between those people, linkedin for professional networking, online places where we can be an expert or newbie, and so many other resources that we may choose to partake in anonymously, yet still remain part of a "group". In some ways thinking about the Shirky book dispels some of the issues of "community" and "group" that we were having in class discussion last week. Shirky doesn't really mention community that much in his book; he is more interested in the flexibility and spontaneity of group formation. What is the difference between community and group? Is it really that important and is the difference merely semantic?

Which brings me to confess how I love the fact that I can tap into so many groups whenever I want, with as much or as little commitment as I can give (depending on the "promise" and "bargain" offered by the group.) Lastly, I am intrigued by Shirky's comment, "more is different." More may be different on the bigger scale; however, if we were to analyze users and participants on an individual scale, wouldn't we discover that individual Web use, sharing and networking are scaled rather humanly and predictably, and that individuals are still looking towards those with similar interests? I find it so amazing how Web sociality and these communications technologies play with our sense of scale- we are simultaneously part of the large and small, the massive network and the chatroom of twenty devoted members. It is the fact that so many people are contributing to the same places, sharing amongst each other and leveraging their networks around events or certain causes that things are changing.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

As I read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I was moved by Jonathan Safran Foer's weaving of past and present memories of people affected by 9-11 and his decision to include accounts of the bombings of Hiroshima and Dresden. Although he shows parallels in these stories of loss and trauma, we are aware throughout the text of the singularity and exceptionality of each one. Safran Foer describes the very personal suffering of individuals who must coexist with memories and physical artifacts of these events as they go about activities in everyday life- traveling, writing letters, lying to one another, sleeping and dreaming, looking at photos or letters. The characters of Oskar, his grandmother and grandfather attempt to make sense of their lives in a world that moves forward while they remain in a liminal state of doubt and uncertainty. The author captures the frustration they experience when they realize that fundamental, life-changing questions associated with these events will never be answered; thankfully, the author does not present a completely pessimistic picture of human relationships at the end of the book. Each character is presented with an opportunity to re-evaluate the most important things in their lives, and each chooses to engage with their memories in ways that are not self-destructive and directed exclusively inwards. They share their feelings with one another, and are less lonely for it.

I was also reminded when I read this book of my friend who traveled to Hiroshima and saw people’s shadows burned into walls as a result of the blast's impact. What are the artifacts of loss when everything is blown apart and people simply disappear, leaving shadows, and not bodies, behind? I believe our artifacts are memories, texts, photographs, ephemera that may mean nothing to some but everything to others- and as some of my peers have pointed out, Safran Foer offers us many ways of documenting or representing life as doodles or even blank pages.

Given the fact that I don't read much fiction anymore (no time, sadly), I found myself missing the psychological space of novels and the powerful combination of abstraction and intimacy that I experience when reading a good one. Until now, I have not experienced the novel as a way of reflecting upon the events of September 11, and I found that Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (through the author's careful writing) existed within a medium that could offer a more thoughtful, nuanced, and honest way of representing the anger, confusion, and sadness of people coping with the aftermath than other representations (fiction films, mostly) or forms of documentation that I have encountered. Even though it may be difficult for many us to verbalize their thoughts in a completely transparent manner, due to physical and social limitations, it is possible to express ourselves more freely through writing, especially in memoir form.

Finally, I want to add that I enjoyed the experience of bringing Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close everywhere throughout my travels in New York City. I picked it up at the Strand, and brought it to Bushwick, Washington Heights, into the tunnels of the subway, upstairs, downstairs, and finally to Teachers College. Like the space of memory, good works of fiction allow us to engage in one activity or be present in one space while absorbing ourselves in another. In some ways, the act of reading or writing a novel is to create a safe space for embracing affect that would, in other contexts, be prohibited or ignored.

Veblen & the Leisure Class - Working Hard or Hardly Working?

"Conversely, the greater the proficiency and the more patent the evidence of a high degree of habituation to observances which serve no lucrative or other directly useful purpose, the greater the consumption of time and substance impliedly involved in their acquisition, and the greater the resultant good repute." (32)

Below are some assorted thoughts on Veblen:

What characterizes the leisure classes is not simply the accumulation of material wealth, but the belief that they are entitled to such an accumulation (we discussed this in class w.r.t Mills.)

When I read about the wealthy, "leisure class" described in Veblen, I was immediately reminded of auction houses that deal in fine art or luxury property sales. I have never been to an art auction but I have seen them portrayed on television, in the movies, and heard stories about them from friends who work in the business of selling art. The truly wealthy send their assistants or whomever to bid for them- *perhaps this is where the phrase "to do so-and-so's bidding" came from, though I don't know. The leisure class with money aren't even present in these instances! They are doing what Veblen describes, namely, enacting the business of being wealthy and overseeing things from on high, without having to do any physical "labor". I wonder where the idea of large-scale anonymous donations or philanthropy fits in Veblen's idea of leisure class. Is an anonymous donation of a huge sum interpretable as a symbolic gesture of the leisure class' need to conceal their wealth? Is it part of the act of doing something they're "supposed" to do? (though I'm not entirely cynical; I believe that some people make generous anonymous donations for reasons of modesty, and also because they believe in various causes and social improvement.)

Another interesting point that Veblen brings up is the relationship of technology and tools to a societal transformation in ownership. Tools allow for greater productivity. More productivity means more things to accumulate and increased time for those in power to collect and buy stuff. Humans, and animals such as the bower bird, like stuff.

Of course what rich people buy is not necessarily "high-class"; however I'm sure they like the myth that we imagine for them, the greater myth we participate in where we collectively imagine that they buy rich things and have fun activities in the presence of other rich people. Meanwhile, the hardworking, long-suffering staff plot their revenge. Cf. the great movie by Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg, The Celebration (Festen) and countless other narratives in a similar vein.

Barthes and Mythologies

"To keep a spatial metaphor...I shall say that the signification of the myth is constituted by a sort of constantly moving turnstile which presents alternately the meaning of the signifier and its form, a language object and a metalanguage...Myth is a value, truth is no guarantee for it; nothing prevents it from being a perpetual alibi: it is enough that its signifier has two sides for it always to have an elsewhere at its disposal. Meaning is always there to present the form; the form is always there to outdistance the meaning." (Barthes, 123)

To Barthes, myth is a "sign" (combination of signified and signifier) with a unique relationship to its corresponding words, images, or other representations of objects (signifier); the objects that they refer to (signifier); and a larger body of meaning, which he calls "signification". Unlike other signs, myths can have many physical and visual representations; these "forms" point to higher-order, abstract concepts like "imperialism" or "colonialism" or "justice" that attain the status of myth because their meanings are ambiguous, powerful, "motivated" (as Barthes describes them), and connected to our historical and physical contexts. A myth is a representation with deep, often disputed meaning(s) embedded in social norms, activities, objects and ideas, and as I understand it, deeply related to our beliefs and assumptions. A myth is "speech stolen and restored" (125)

My reading of Mythologies leads me to understand Barthes as a kind of detective of meaning. He uncovers the power behind cultural practices and habits that we often perceive to be superficial and popular distractions. The activities of wrestling and striptease are embodiments of spectacles of justice and fear, respectively. Barthes also looks at why these activities have attained such predictability in their execution/performance, and reliability in how they amuse or titillate audiences. As myths, these activities are both capable of fulfilling certain expectations of how we think we should act and behave, and also capable of instilling a sense of fulfilllment (for example, in the witnessing of naked "sex" in striptease, or the thrill and catharsis of seeing someone "deserve" physical defeat in wrestling). What can be considered mythic in our contemporary world according to his analysis? What cultural symbols, activities or representations have meanings that might possess this contradiction of "obviousness" and ambiguity? Barthes seems to consider myths as representations of meaning that can communicate at an individual, personal level, and also at a level that functions in the realm of a "collective experience" or memory. Are myths culturally similar or dissimilar? Can certain types of myths be generalizable across cultures? In other words, do cultures have the same myths? Or same types of myths? How do myths enter and exit in historical relevance? What does it mean to be living in a world where we can continually inscribe meaning onto objects- physical, digital, biological- through recontextualization?

Here are a few quick myth mashups for you. I really couldn't think of anything else, right now, except for Che (sorry Che for more representational abuse- but I use these as illustrative examples). Are myths more or less powerful now because of the sheer number of mythic representations out there, or because now so many more people can repurpose mythic representations, thereby evoking (I speak for myself) mixtures of disgust, reverence, confusion?? As I look at the images below I wonder, how, and why?!?!

$ = Power: C. Wright Mills and William Randolph Hearst

Over break, I visited Hearst Castle, one of many homes of the famed publisher and politician William Randolph Hearst. On the tour, I learned several interesting facts about his life: at the time Hearst built the estate, he controlled 98 business in various industries such as forestry, mining, and ranching, not including his publishing interests.

The estate was built during the start of the Great Depression, though Hearst himself was still receiving a high income of somewhere around 100 million dollars (I think- and that's 1930s dollars too.) Later on, as Hearst's fortune went under, he slowly sold his land holdings (at one point he owned something like 40 miles or so of California coastline!) and his businesses. I don't know the details of how the Hearst Corporation turned its finances around but I know that his family is still deeply involved in corporate ownership and management (W.R.'s grandson, George R. Hearst Jr., is co-Chairman of the board of the privately owned corporation.)

The example of W.R Hearst fits well with many of the sociological traits that C. Wright Mills in The Power Elite underscores: Hearst was wealthy, college-educated, the son of a landholding millionaire mining engineer and businessman. I liked how Mills tried to debunk the idea of a power elite (back then) of immigrants or upwardly mobile lower middle class people by using statistical figures of mostly white, upper-middle class and highly educated shoe-ins for corporate executive positions. His critique of the "entrepreneur" and "bureaucrat" are especially biting, and he argues that most people incorrectly identify the entrepreneur as an individual who has "all the risks of life about him, soberly founding an enterprise" while in fact "[i]n 1950, a far more accurate picture of entrepreneurial activity of the corporate elite is the setting up of a financial deal which merges one set of files with another. The chief executives of today to do less building up of new organizations than carrying out of established ones." (133) Certainly W.R. Hearst wasn't a poor man starting from nothing when he began his publishing enterprises. He had social capital, connections, and financial means, and inherited the first paper he started from his father (who was also a Senator). I wonder how true Mills' idea of entrepreneurship as a somewhat marginal (as in, not making an enormous amount of money) way to start a business holds today in a world of startups, and in a world where we tack "social" onto the term and use it to promote small businesses in developing countries through microfinance and microcredit.

Finally, another major point I got from C. Wright Mills is that survival tactic (and money-bringing one) of the power elite, especially the business power elite, is to consolidate and diversify. Mills points that out in his description of the kind of lateral, industry-influencing decision making that corporate executives must partake in:

"on the higher levels, those in command of great corporations must be able to broaden their views in order to become industrial spokesmen rather than merely heads of one or the other of the great firms in the industry. In short, they must by able to move from one company's policy and interests to those of the industry. There is one more step which some of them take: They move from the industrial point of interest and outlook to the interests and outlook of the class of all big corporate property as a whole." (120-121)


Clearly Hearst Corp. exemplifies this idea: it has broadcasting, radio, newspaper, magazine, and interactive companies; space satellites; a ranch; real estate holdings; and philanthropies- you name it- all over the world.

Schumpeter - Capitalism, Socialism & Democracy

Since this was a rather difficult reading, I will clarify major points of Schumpeter's argument for my benefit:

-Capitalism is characterized by fifty year business cycles

-Compared to classical economists, Schumpeter believes that the economic engine of capitalism is not pure competition, which operates on the principle that companies compete against each other to produce the most goods and services at the cheapest cost while making the most profit. In such an environment, the net effect of this type of competition is lowered prices, increased output and the edging out of those who cannot compete. Monopolies and advertising campaigns are cited by Schumpeter as examples of a kind of hybrid competition, where companies and industries create artificial & intentionally high (or low) pricing structures.

-The economic engine of capitalism according to Schumpeter is creative destruction, where
"the opening of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organization development from the craft shop and factory...illustrate the same process of industrial mutation if I may use that biological term- that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one." (83)

-Creative destruction is the process of innovation and creation of new business models that emerge from technological development (I assume through capital investment) and widespread societal adoption. In other words, new paradigms in production, distribution, and consumption that can be reproduced on a mass scale correspond directly to the profitability and increased output of capitalist institutions, industries and corporations, as well as wealth for individuals (and the middle class) . Although this ongoing process of capitalist development has its winners and losers, it is ultimately of enormous social benefit since it opens new markets (via new products and services) in the process of closing, or destroying, existing ones.

I am interested in the question of credit, technological innovation, and the economic engine of capitalism. Somewhere in this dynamic of boom and bust is the ethical question of how many people (in America and elsewhere) fail to save and spend too much on crap they don't need that is pumped out at exponential rates. What defines innovation for Schumpeter- I have the feeling that he means anything in the business world and in the global flow of economy that mysteriously leads to improved social conditions for people(? not sure about this though) Does his notion of innovation apply to efficient processes like the ways in which global networks of capital investment, credit flows, trade legislation and labor practices are currently managed? The rapid transfer of capital, money, goods and services characterizing our current situation has shaped production, distribution and consumption of the material and non-material (information) world in a way that perpetuates increased output rates and decreasing costs of labor and goods, but also in a manner that can't be sustained indefinitely.

The destruction end of this picture is bleak, especially when we consider environmental costs. I think that at this point we are all aware of the fact that there is so much more to consider regarding innovation for innovation's sake. I am explicitly critiquing the ideology behind "nanotechnology" or Moore's law, ideas that are characterized by the desire to build things that are faster and smaller without taking into consideration the fact that whatever is being produced might be more disposable. Technological innovations related to the speeding up production processes- or chains of distribution- can lead to little to no comprehension and reflection of decisions that consumers might make.

Walter Benjamin, film, and virtual distractions

Benjamin has a very special concept of "art" in mind, if I understand him, when he discusses what happens to works like paintings and performances when they are reproduced on photo, film, radio, and made available to large audiences. They lose some of their special, place-based qualities and sensualities; however, some forms of technological reproducibility, like that of film, allow for new forms of perception and tactility. Benjamin rather beautifully describes the camera's ability to magnify and diminish space, allowing us to see multiple angles, and imagine ourselves in different times and spaces or witness to movements and motions that we would never be able to "in real life", like extreme slow-motion or even the act of montage itself.

We can see the same movie in numerous locations, given the right equipment, but the movie won't be the same, really- the context might change, and the movie itself can be spliced and re-spliced ad infinitum. Alternately we might see numerous locations in the same movie, and interpret the space-time of the movie according to narrative conventions.

I especially like this quote: "For contemporary man the representation of reality by the film is incomparably more significant than that of the painter, since it offers, precisely because of the thoroughgoing permeation of reality with mechanical equipment, an aspect of reality which is free of all equipment."

I wonder what he would have to say about the fuzziness or poor quality of television, video, web cam communication, and digital video online created by amateurs (not saying that all amateurs post poor-quality videos.) Is art an imitation of life? Is life an imitation of art? Are we looking for "reality" or photographic realism in art? Or are we searching in art for new forms of experience and perception, redefined by "technology" and then by profiteering?

Finally, here's an excuse to put this on my blog: I used to watch Concrete TV, a mashup show on public access tv during my late nights in college. Here's a Boing Boing link. Be warned as some viewers might be offended. There are a lot of women in skimpy outfits, excerpts of car crashes and scenes from kung fu movies. I am so happy that public access television exists, as it is a "somewhat" curated form of audiovisual experimentation for mass public consumption, unlike websites that aggregate everything like YouTube. One could argue though that YouTube videos are curated into channels by individual users.

Also a friend of mine introduced me to this really strange thing called chatroulette that's been the subject of recent press conversation. I guess it relates to this current discussion of new forms of experience via technology. The Fast Company article that I have linked to compares one's experience on the site to "psychedelic performance art territory". I wouldn't advise going on the actual site (well, that's my scholarly advice but you can do whatever you damn well want); in short you can webcam with strangers as if you had ADHD. The point of it isn't to have any kind of extended conversation, but to casually, and quickly, (like literally five seconds at a time) browse through random people sitting in front of their webcams. Life in the age of real-life digital manipulation.