[-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology

[Scott Rettberg]

Eugenio and Simon,

My guess is that people would use a "dislike" button on facebook much more as an "I sympathize with you" device than as a "you are completely off your rocker" indicator. People want to have that for the "My cat/mother/father died" response. You're probably right though, Eugenio, that the reason it has not appeared is not that it would interfere with real human interaction, but that it would cause problems for the many corporate entities participating in facebook. When BP posts some PR message about their efforts to rescue the pelicans in the Gulf, or McDonald's trumpets the health effects of their burgers on facebook, the dislike buttons would light up. 

On the other note, I don't think that the tendency toward everybody happy completely interferes with dialectic discourse on social networks like facebook. I've stayed friends with a number of facebook friends with whom I have radically different political views, and have actually had constructive political debates with them, even though I completely oppose their world-view. In a way, I think that that is one of the more interesting aspects of my experience on facebook. It has revealed to me that I actually know people who think the way that I thought only fictional others could possibly think (for example people who truly believe that health care reform in the US was the end of civilization). It felt good to engage with those people, even as it was frightening to know that my ideological bubble does not extend as far as I had believed.

While facebook is an environment shaped overwhelmingly by the desire of the network's developers to harness user information for corporate profit, it is already a space in which boredom, hatred, love, tolerance and distaste are expressed, more in the comments than in the buttons. Regardless of the shape of the stage, I think the human actors shape it to a great extent through their interactions, already.

All the Best,

Scott
On Jul 8, 2010, at 4:06 PM, Eugenio Tisselli wrote:

> Simon,
> 
> I have seen people in Facebook toy around with the idea of having a "dislike" button, but it hasn't been implemented. I wonder what would happen with such a button. My guess is that few people would use it. It's so easy to "shut down" anyone in Facebook (or other large-scale digital networks, for that matter)... you can simply ignore dislikers and, as an extreme case, delete them from your list. People would not use the button because of fear of being excluded or deleted. 
> 
> Can networks like Facebook be regarded as disciplining technologies for individuals, as training grounds for adapting to the disengaged, "everybody happy", positive thinking stance favored (and needed) by contemporary capitalism? 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Eugenio Tisselli Vélez
> cubo23 at yahoo.com
> http://www.motorhueso.net
> 
> 
> --- El jue, 7/8/10, Simon Biggs <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk> escribió:
> 
>> De: Simon Biggs <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
>> Asunto: Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
>> A: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Fecha: jueves, 8 de julio de 2010, 02:01 pm
>> This begs the question why nobody has
>> setup a Facebook-like system based on
>> actual human characteristics and behaviour, reflecting how
>> we socially
>> interact in practice? Such a model would require an open
>> and generative
>> approach to what characteristics and modes of engagement
>> are possible, with
>> constantly emerging dynamics and modes. Hate, love,
>> tolerance, boredom and
>> distaste would be only a few of the states that connections
>> between people
>> could be set to. People might choose to determine these
>> states themselves or
>> the system could heuristically do this on their behalf.
>> That could be
>> fun...and revealing.
>> 
>> Best
>> 
>> Simon
>> 
>> 
>> Simon Biggs
>> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk 
>> simon at littlepig.org.uk
>> Skype: simonbiggsuk
>> http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
>> 

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