[-empyre-] Reflections on Cross-domain collaboration

Sun May 6 06:14:12 EST 2012

> And from the standpoint of design, provides a vital and
 > renewable form to go with the function of our technological
 > devices.

yeah, those were the days... we had fun and we could see the faint outlines of today's 
social media architectures. we had a grand time but we were so seduced by the speed of the 
tech, the pretty displays, and the networking features that we totally missed what's now 
core to everything from the Arab spring, to Facebook's IPO, to why you're posting this 
email, dear anne, from your gmail account: our job was to analyze media and use it as a 
mirror on itself, and though we could see their outlines i think we totally missed 
perceiving the true form and function of today's social media architecture.

since you started this i'll pick on your gmail address.

google showed the following search strings in their super bowl ad:

study abroad
paris france
cafes near the louvre
translate tu es très mignon
impress a french girl
chocolate shops paris
what are truffles
who is truffaut
long-distance relationship advice
jobs in paris
churches in paris
how to assemble a crib

you are what you search, right?

so we all know that gmail gives you two gigs of free storage and a tool for every frikkin' 
media type i can list: voice, image, video, maps, 3d, and any data that i send in or out. 
it also works with other companies, like Apple, to collect voice data, position data, 
videos, and photographs to register what we're looking at and listening to. and so the 
arab spring breaks out and, sure, everybody and their bodyguard now wants access to that 
data to keep their governments from falling apart . . . meanwhile Facebook keeps vacuuming 
up millions of more bits of data about each of us each day as they cruise across an $85b 
finish line. Twitter, Google+, hell even InstaGram follow these same architectures: the 
true form and function of today's social media architecture are to FUNNEL and ANALYZE. and 
it is a malevolent design, at that.

over the years since we've worked together i've noticed that if i send a text message, or 
click on a link, or read a page, automated systems take note. Google, or Facebook, for 
examples, collect all our tiniest details, all the little things we think are unimportant 
and use them to analyze who we are, just like the above google-student-in-paris. it's as 
if there are a thousand tiny bees that descend upon our heads, lick up our data-sweat, and 
pluck from us the small hairs and dead skin, and return to their social media nest to 
recreate us from these samples, where they make models, funnel us into a processing 
machine, and analyze what we're made of, what we want, what we fear, and what we'll do.

i think it's great that social media systems are used for political changes, and i can say 
(i met him while i was in Baghdad) that people like Salaam Pax - the Baghdad Blogger - 
made real change via their media art. but by our artistic and social desire to publish our 
lives we're unintentionally improving malevolent architectures so that they better funnel 
and analyze us. the design of the culture is something that is herding us and i, for one, 
do not welcome our new robotic overlords.

we never looked into that at PARC. i, for one, was too naive. i forgot about history and 
how technology has always been used. when we worked together a decade ago i wouldn't have 
expected to see what we have now, but if i project in another decade, i wonder what we'll 
have then.

i'm happy as a little piggie to get back to this discussion about the design of mass 
media, and i'm curious to know, as someone that is an expert on this, what you think is next.

?

On 04/05/2012 09:15, Anne Balsamo wrote:
> As Crane/Winet, Jon and I had collaborated on making art that revolved
> around language and photography‹tweaking practices from journalism and
> tabloid media to create narratives revolving around social issues, electoral
> politics, film and pop culture‹and originally fueled by our perceptions of
> American life under the Ronald Regan and GHW Bush administrations.  All this
> was before we met technology researchers Dale and Scott at Xerox PARC and
> the four of us launched a long-term collaboration, for PARC's PAIR Program
> after a series of meetings that were a little like a job interview and a lot
> like the Dating Game.
>
>
>
> I so much want to write about everything that is happening now. And the
> reason I find recent events so resonant starts with the years that the four
> of us collaborated on a series of art and technology projects at PARC. Our
> collective goal was to engage the public in gallery settings, on the
> burgeoning internet, in public spaces and through printed media. The mission
> was to explore the channels of communication that existed in the mid-90s‹to
> employ them to convey narratives about the world in which we lived and
> create new arenas for dialog and discussion.  This was early Web 2.0, of
> course, long before Twitter, Facebook.
>
>
> As I reflect on my years-long collaboration with Jon, Scott and Dale, this
> is what I think of: first we (by ³we² I mean the culture at the time)
> muddled along designing new technologies‹originating social media. Then,
> last year, consumer technology became revolutionary technology. The actions
> of the Arab Spring, propelled by social media, transformed a region of the
> globe. Activists deployed available technology and created a collaborative
> space for organizing dissent.  At this time, the outcome of these
> revolutions is uncertain, but the utility of their methods of communication
> is unquestionable.  And this powerful shift in the media landscape, allows
> me to think of the work we did together as a miniscule part of an enormous
> cultural shift.  And from the standpoint of design, provides a vital and
> renewable form to go with the function of our technological devices.
>
>
>
> For more thoughts on technology and activism check out this article in the
> current Atlantic:
> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/so-was-facebook-respon
> sible-for-the-arab-spring-after-all/244314/
> <http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/so-was-facebook-respo
> nsible-for-the-arab-spring-after-all/244314/>
>
>
>
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