[-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology

[Christina Spiesel]

Dear All,

Not having finish my first cup of morning coffee, I responded privately 
to Eugenio picking up the privacy there. Here is an only slightly edited 
version of what I responded to him. I am delighted for the topic to be 
expanded into the group:

Hi Eugenio,

The question came up in a cyber oriented legal discussion on the part of 
people who might actually be able to influence policy -- or at least 
thinking about policy. So innovation was considered a broad term from 
the gitgo embracing expressive arts, tech, science, etc.  I would be 
inclined to say that intimacy can only arise from situations that feel 
private, in the first instance and where, if there are groups involved, 
there are strong norms about boundaries. That is, I am positing that 
privacy (it's reality or its illusion?) is a pre-condition for 
generating intimacy. And I do regard intimacy as a very important thing 
among life's goods. I know that I need to feel that I have a period of 
time when I won't be interrupted to open my mind to whatever is there as 
a beginning source of material for something I wish to create. Of 
myself, I know that I do different kinds of activities requiring privacy 
better at different times of day. I am a better writer in the morning, 
painter in the afternoon, so the privacy needed is a bit of a moving 
target. Last night my husband and I had a quite intimate conversation 
with a third party in a public place but we could feel  our conversation 
only existing around a small round table and that others were not paying 
attention. I do not believe that that conversation would have taken 
place with a ring of listeners around us.

The problem re digtial networks is this: "the cloud" may be webbed and 
dispersed, but its actual physical instantiation is on servers 
physically located around the world and there are human agents 
throughout the system.. So there is a big difference between groups with 
their own servers and those that use cloud computing. I have been part 
of discussions about the privatization of student email by universities 
in the US by using gmail instead of university based servers. This opens 
up huge problems of information security, emergency alert systems ,etc. 
This story only gets it partly right: 
http://chronicle.com/article/College-20-E-Mail-Gets/66120/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
The upshot is that everything on the cloud is subject to arbitrary 
action from outside the system *not perceived by user*s. So for me, an 
:"intimate network" would need to be running on some platforms and not 
others.

The issue with Facebook, in my humble  view, isn't just whether they 
give their users privacy tools, it is a) whether you can trust your 
"friends" to abide by norms about circulation of your posted materials 
to third (and on out) parties, but more importantly, b) what is most 
valuable, and not at all protected by any privacy regime, is Facebook's 
knowledge of who knows who.

Thanks for responding,

Christina







Yunzi Li wrote:
> Dear all,
> I am deeply impressed by all the topics and ideas told. Talking about 
> "privacy", especially the Facebook. I want to put "censorship" into 
> question. As I come from China,  so I know much about Censorship 
> happening there. Some websites like Facebook, Youtube are banned in 
> China, if so, the "imagined community" established by digital media 
> may be prohibited by official. I know some communist countries also 
> share this problem.
> Melody
>
> On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 4:37 AM, Eugenio Tisselli <cubo23 at yahoo.com 
> <mailto:cubo23 at yahoo.com>> wrote:
>
>     Christina,
>
>     It's very interesting that you bring up the question of "privacy"
>     as a possible precondition needed for innovation (and, if I
>     understood correctly, also creativity). But I wonder if "intimacy"
>     would be a better way to characterize this "separateness" that an
>     individual or group needs to develop cognitive processes in a
>     staisfactory way.
>
>     As Scott says, networks such as Facebook are primarily designed to
>     harvest user data for its use by corporations. Privacy, indeed,
>     has been a big issue around Facebook, and more so lately, when
>     extreme policies were found to be invasive. Many users left
>     Facebook because they felt their privacy threatened, by flocking
>     to "smaller", more grass-roots or focused social networks. But I
>     think it's interesting to think about this also in terms of
>     intimacy. As individuals, we tend to seek intimate spots in order
>     to think, to reflect... to create. As groups, we also gather in
>     places which are welcoming. These environments seem to propitiate
>     the "invocation/evocation of the broad contents of the mind", as
>     you beautifully put it in your question.
>
>     Can we think of an example of an "intimate" network?
>
>
>
>
>
>

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