[-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology

Fri Jul 9 19:06:37 EST 2010

Scott,

I agree that constructive debates and exchanges can happen on a network such as Facebook. But I can't help getting a general feeling of detachment when I engage in (or pass by) such behaviors. Maybe this is due to a personal desire for compromise (at varying degrees) when collaborating / making things with others. In 1973, Mark Granovetter talked about the stregth of weak ties in networks: ties that enable reaching individuals not accessible via strong ties (connecting tightly-knit groups among each other). More recently, Christophe Aguiton and Dominique Cardon write about the strength of weak cooperation. I quote from their article:

"The 
strength of the weak cooperation arises from the fact that it is not 
necessary for individuals to have an ex ante cooperative action plan or 
altruistic intention. They discover cooperative opportunities only by 
making public their individual production."
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1009070

Why all this praise for weakness? Are we turning towards a social context in which the looseness in relations is actually a desirable thing? 

I would also like to share with you a paper by Kylie Jarrett called (rather unfortunately) "Interactivity is evil! A critical investigation of Web 2.0" Simon has mentioned Foucault, and I talked about disciplining technologies in a previous post. What I found interesting about Jarrett's paper is that, through her research, she proposes that the interaction in social networks might be characterized as being "disciplining technologies as defined by Foucault". Let me quote her abstract:

"Central to Web 2.0 is the requirement for interactive systems to enable 
the participation of users in production and social interaction. 
Consequently, in order to critically explore the Web 2.0 phenomenon it 
is important to explore the relationship of interactivity to social 
power. This study firstly characterises interactivity in these media 
using Barry’s (2001) framework differentiating interactivity from 
disciplining technologies as defined by Foucault. Contrary to Barry’s 
model though, the analysis goes on to explore how interactivity may 
indeed function as a disciplining technology within the framework of a 
neoliberal political economy."

So, while Barry found that interactivity in social networks was "clearly associable with the permissive injunction 'You may!'", and thus would appear to be "contrary to any kind of disciplining", Jarrett sees such interactivity as being just what neoliberal economies require from their "clients": flexible time, creative capacity, "self-steering selves"...

Here is the link to the full paper:
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2140/1947

Best,
Eugenio.

Eugenio Tisselli Vélez

cubo23 at yahoo.com

http://www.motorhueso.net

--- El vie, 7/9/10, Scott Rettberg <scott.rettberg at uib.no> escribió:

De: Scott Rettberg <scott.rettberg at uib.no>
Asunto: Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
A: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Fecha: viernes, 9 de julio de 2010, 02:25 am

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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