Category Archives: r7

r7: Really, Andrew Keen?

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The chapter I’d like to discuss is the essay written by Andrew Keen titled “Web 2.0.”  The more I read of this essay, the more I wanted to find Mr. Keen and punch him in the face.  His comparisons of Web 2.0 and communism made me want to puke, and it’s not because he didn’t make some valid links between the two.  Sure, the digital age has created a narcissistic world in which everything is personalized to people’s opinions.  Anybody can blog about anything (click here!) nowadays, and I agree that it may be taking away from “elite” media.  But to call the digital world communist?  I see the parallels between the two, but communism is such a taboo idea in Western society that to label something as such is a bold statement to make.  People see that word and automatically cringe in fear of having their rights stripped from beneath them.  Simply put, even if the internet evolves into a matrix filled only with blogs and opinionated, ignorant writers, communism is still too strong of a term.  This evokes fears of economic repercussions, of which, the internet will have little to none (in the way of socialist distribution).  And as for the fall of “elite media” or losing “our memory for things learned, read, experienced, or heard?”  Shame on you, Andrew!  There are thousands of websites that have mainstreamed elite media, including major news sites, where every story ever written is a simple click of the mouse away.  The internet has made elite media more accessible, not less.  Sure, there’s more distractions from these reputable sources, but they are in no way destroyed by our digital society.  And you say it’s democratizing talent as though that’s a bad thing?  There are so many incredibly talented people that have gone unnoticed in society and throughout history.  The internet simply levels the playing field so that breaking through requires less of the “who you know” aspect and relies more heavily on how talented you actually are.  Although I’m not a fan (and I repeat, NOT a fan), Justin Bieber is one of the top artists today, and he would be working a part time job and attending community college if his musical and vocal talent hadn’t been discovered via YouTube.

Personalized?  Yes.  Narcissistic?  Sure.  Communist?  Not buying it.  Web 2.0 has created a world with more opportunities and greater access to “elite media,” not less.  So before you call to arms against the internet with a Digital Red Scare campaign, I think you, Andrew Keen, need to reevaluate exactly what the internet brings to the world.  You should start by falling of your high horse and hitting your head — maybe that will knock some sense and reason into you.

r7 The Fear of Being Alone

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When I first read William Deresiewicz’s piece on “The End of Solitutde” I asked myself what was so wrong about not wanting to be alone. Deresiewicz makes the argument that we are so consumed with technology in our daily lives that we lose our privacy and concentration. I agree that we spend a ridiculous amount of time using our cell phones and computers and ipads and cameras and iphone cameras, but what is detrimental about not wanting to be alone?

Deresiewicz sites a number of historical examples that demonstrate how the “act of being alone has been understood as an essential dimension of religious experience, albeit one restricted to a self-selected few” (308). The author was also shocked to hear one of his students report that she found the “prospect of being alone so unsettling that she’ll sit with a friend even when she has a paper to write” (308).  Though it’s not stated how old his students are, I don’t find this response all that surprising. I think many young teenage girls go through a stage in their life when they don’t want to be alone, especially during the Jr. High years. It’s a period of time when you are making new friends, trying to fit in. No one ever wants to be the girl or boy sitting alone at the lunch table. I don’t think this fear of being alone is solely related to the overwhelming presence of technology in today’s society.

Later on his article, Deresiewicz points out, “A constant stream of meditated contact, virtual, notional, or stimulated, keeps us wired in to the electronic hive—though contact, or at least two-way contact, seems increasingly beside the point. The goal now, it seems, is simply to become known, to turn oneself into a sort of miniature celebrity” (312). This observation struck me and made me think of one of my friends who is very active on Twitter. It’s not the amount of tweets she broadcasts in a day, but the satisfaction she gets from it that I don’t quite understand. I don’t mean to single her out, because this is what all twitter users do to a certain extent, including myself. But what is so satisfying about telling a virtual audience random facts about your day? For all we know no one could be reading our twitter pages and yet we all go about publicizing insignificant aspects of our daily lives. What does this provide for the twitter user? I mention my friend because I find out more about her day from twitter than when we actually speak to each other. It seems that technology today is replacing our basic necessity for physical company and the actual act of talking to another individual.

Nomadicity: Wherever you go, Siri will follow

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Todd Gitlin’s essay “Nomadicity” starts by telling us about social currency and how we carry it around with us all the time. He continues to talk about the development of the Walkman and how people began to expect to individualize the daily experience. I cannot help but think about what Gitlin would say now. When he wrote this essay in 2002, we were only in the beginning of an era in which technology allowed us to take/have/do everything no matter where we are.

In a small coincidence, I got an iPhone 4S over spring break. I only specify type because it means I have Siri. I also, in yet another coincidence, asked Siri today, “Where are you?” Her oh-so-clever-and-witty response, which makes me and I have no doubt numerous other users wonder how she was programmed, was “Wherever you are, that’s where I am.” I think this response is the perfect example of what Gitlin’s article is about: nomadicity. Gitlin, referencing the pioneer of the concept, describes nomadicity as meaning “that wherever and whenever we move around, the underlying system always know who we are, where we are, and what services we need.” Siri, part of the underlying system, caters to our services and as she says, she is always with me. We can now ask our phones to cater to us in ways not possible before October 4, 2011 (her release date).

Gitlin wrote this article not too long ago, but it was before every phone had a built-in GPS, before Google and Facebook tracked our every move on the internet in order to specialize the ads we see and to guess our demographics (Google thinks I’m a 25-34 year old male), and before we had phones that could do the following: call, text, play games such as Words with Friends, Scramble, and Angry Birds, watch tv/video/games/etc, be a calculator and a compass and a calendar and a clock, play music, store photos, take photos, receive and send emails, take notes, remind us of to-dos, give us the news, tell us the weather, be a map, read books, video chat, and talk to you if you get lonely or lost. There are of course many more functions I could name, but who even cares at this point. If the iPhone, Siri and all, isn’t the perfect example and exemplification, in fact the total fruition of nomadicity, then I’m not sure what is.

Someone today told me to enjoy my iPhone, but to be careful. I was told, “It’s really just a toy.” Have we convinced ourselves of the necessity of all these gadgets simply to amuse ourselves? Is the iPhone really just a toy? Or do I need all those functions, wherever and whenever I move around? What is the utility of being able to play scrabble with 12 of my closest friends, my mother, and a variety of strangers at any time of the day anyway?

r7: Wikipedia and Beyond: Jimmy Wales’ Sprawling Vision

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I particularly liked this article because I am an ardent supporter of Wikipedia. I think it raised a really important question about the way we transmit and receive information in the age of the internet. What is the importance of credentials and authority? Is “collective intelligence” just as valuable? Based on Wikipedia’s success, I personally tend to think it is. While people against Wikipedia try to discredit it because they worry it might have some sort of slant or bias, I believe that “collective intelligence” actually prevents this (or at least limits this) from happening. I think a key point to keep in mind when thinking about the site is that Wikipedia is mostly creating a taskforce to collect the knowledge, not create it. Ultimately, the information on the site should still be coming from those same authorities and experts, but it is being communicated to us in a way that is easily understandable and nonbiased because thousands of people are working to make it that way.

I believe there are other benefits to Wikipedia as opposed to an encyclopedia that the article addresses well. I thought the part discussing the benefits of instant gratification, as in the ability to fix an error immediately and thoroughly which is not possible with a book, was particularly relevant to our culture today. We have come to expect everything instantaneously and I think Wikipedia is helping to make that a reality. It is allowing us to increase our efficiency. That is not to say that this means we should immediately accept what we see on Wikipedia, but rather, as Jimmy Wales suggests, use Wikipedia as a springboard to launch us into other, more specific pieces of information. Collective intelligence has to be drawn from somewhere, and if Wikipedia pages are properly cited this allows us to still be able to access the works of all of the authorities and experts that will ultimately help us to understand what we’re looking to.

A final interesting point about the article was its long discussion of “Wikia.” This was published in 2007 and I am yet to hear of what Wikia is, so I’m assuming that it hasn’t blown up and become the dream Jimmy had hoped. Regardless, he’s still incredibly influential and Wikipedia is still flourishing. It seems that the author’s claim that heroes need to keep topping themselves isn’t true in this case, but I’m still pretty curious about what happened to Wikia. I guess I’ll have to Wikipedia it…

R7: Keen proves that book publishers don’t have the best taste

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In his article “Web 2.0: the second generation of the internet has arrived and it’s worse than you think,” Andrew Keen writes like one who speaks to hear his own voice. As soon as the term “marxist” got thrown into the article, I knew that I would be reading an exaggerated and unfounded critique of the new web. Keen’s main argument was that the new technology “arms every citizen with the means to be an opinionated artist or writer,” (243) as virtually anyone is allowed to publish and upload their own personal content. Wait, this is a bad thing?

While people can indeed upload, the web does not arm every citizen with the means to be read and heard. Just as the establishment of big media served as the “experts in taste” for selecting who would be published or broadcasted over the radio waves, the web itself has its own establishment of reputable sources, such as famous music blogs and popular forums. Moreover, the actual act of publishing personal content is by no means an outrage against big media; in fact most users probably hope to get connected to the big studios, labels, and publishing houses by using the Web 2.0.

If the purpose of the media and entertainment industries is to “discover, nurture, and reward talent,” then the web is the perfect filter for them, serving as an extra employee who seeks out talent. Who’s to say that all the talent was captured in the pre-internet era? Maybe there was another Bono out there, but his demo tape got accidentally thrown into the trash. In the web age, if an artist is especially good, his or her music is shared via social media so much so that they cannot be missed. Perhaps Keen is afraid that the new Web 2.0 will render him irrelevant as an author, and his poorly thought out critique with various academic terms was an act of insecurity.

r7: Nomadicity: So Close.

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Gitlin’s essay “Nomadicity” was for me another example of an eloquent rant that missed the mark because it didn’t go far enough. “Nomadicity” argues that our technology, especially mobile technology, imposes on our solitude. He explores the concept of presumed availability that is a product of our mobile technology, and how this “on call” mentality can be an invasion one’s privacy and a violation of one’s personal time. This is a sound argument, but I am struck by Gitlin’s one-dimensional argument against the use of mobile technology. Indeed, our cellphones can be an invasion of solitude; however, they also ensure our solitude.

 

My hope for this article was that Gitlin would elaborate on his bus stop example, going further than simply calling our use of headphones and cellphone in public spaces social shields, and examine how simply their presence in public can be an act of antisocial behavior.

R7: More is Better

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Judging by the way Andrew Keen ended his article, you would have thought that someone forced him to read thousands of weblogs. Who cares if there are millions and millions of weblogs? No one is making Keen read these blogs and I find it hard to believe that the simple existence of a blog suddenly dilutes content everywhere. Blogs serve to please a select audience, and when that audience disappears the blog will disappear. But so long as one person (including the writer) cares about the blog, there’s no reason for it not to exist.

Keen is scared that having more democratized content will dilute our standards. But if anything, the abundance of content is only allowing for people to cater closer towards their tastes. To me, it seems as if Keen is arguing that people deserve less choices. He would argue that there shouldn’t be seven different styles of peanut butter, that there should be chunky and smooth. But I don’t see the issue in having extra choices. It doesn’t matter how diluted any pool of products, ideas, or people is—the best of each respective group will find a way to rise up and differentiate itself. If we have a million weblogs dedicated to origami, it is fair to assume the best ones will be referred to by their readers to their peers and circulate to the point where they are more well-known. Having extra blogs doesn’t hurt this process at all. Bad blogs remain un-followed and unread, while good blogs spread quickly. So the consumers of origami will still have access to the best blogs, but they will also have the ability to cater towards the blog that most aligns with their other interests. Perhaps one blog focuses more on animal figures, while another focuses on floral figures. This option of customization is not hurt by the addition of more blogs, only by the imposition of barriers to entry for authors of prospective blogs.

Furthermore, Keen’s prediction of a future where “everyone is an author, while there is no longer any audience” sounds borderline insane. Just because Tom made a Youtube video of himself singing Party in the USA doesn’t mean he would never watch any other videos but his own. There will never be a point where people only consume their own material. There will always be an audience, and the highest quality or most appealing material will find a way to percolate through the population.

The world thinks of America as the epitome of meritocracy. If Keen had his way, how many talented people would be squashed because they never had a chance to shine? Maybe even Justin Bieber.

R7: Keenly avoiding overgeneralizations

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Andrew Keen is a doomsday crying outlier of the Internet world. Someone who has engaged in entrepreneurial endeavors, he benefited from the services the internet has to offer and turns around, in what can only be considered an elitist manner, to deny millions of others the same opportunity. As someone who had neither connections to mainstream media, nor any god-given right on the possibility of capitalizing off the World Wide Web, he still believes others should be barred from universal access to expressing their opinions. He espouses Hamiltonian fear of the general public but, unlike the political genius, fails to offer any way of preserving the sanctity of the democratic web and preventing the “passions” of the masses.

He begins by over generalizing about past civilizations and their ability to resist temptation, especially the wiles of whim. Hardly an accurate argument, most of his examples derive from peoples that failed because they succumbed to the desires of an overtly opinionated tyrant or autocrat. This drastically opposes our world today, which he acknowledges as one dominated by the opinions of many. Web 2.0, as his friend astutely puts it, “will radically democratize culture, build authentic community, create citizen media.” This brings together the liberal foundations of 60’s ideology, one of “countercultural utopianism,” and the technological boom of the 90s up till today. It uses the latter empirical progress to bring the former’s ideals to fruition. And, much to Keen’s dismay it seems, it has worked.

The dangerous temptation of today’s world is the collective pool of voices, from various backgrounds and schools of thoughts, all able to spread their word on the equalizing playing field of the internet—according to Keen, that is. My two qualms with this belief are that it characterizes the internet as a socialistic utopia, which it is not and it also makes the massive rhetorical leap from democratic discourse to communistic preachings.

The internet, like modern day voting laws, act as societal equalizers so that each person’s voice counts equally. But, as with voting, money is always a tool of leverage. It is undeniable that the opinions of Mark Zuckerberg count more in the world of the internet than the average facebook user because of his scope of influence and the weight of his monetary power. There are crevices of the internet that are truly equalizing, but it has become a commercial domain as well where money can buy visibility and exposure, which is everything in the internet. So it is not true that the world will devolve into the chaos of a multiplicity of voices all drowning each other out. As with all markets, those best able to use the tools at their disposal gain power and can use the power to control the lower hierarchal levels. The internet is no exception.

Further, Keen poses arguments against the very goals of the internet. Pioneers of the internet aimed to create a microcosm of individuals where each were given the same tools and starting place to do with them what they will for whatever purposes they wish. Marx, on the other hand, is not encouraging mere equal access to opportunity but rather redistribution so that everyone has equal means. The internet is too laissez-fair for that sort of goal. Further, Marx’s writing was not as extreme as the principles he encouraged because, like all propaganda, the written arguments for an idea are mild and persuasive. Anyone would want a society where each individual can be “accomplished in any branch he wishes.”

Finally, he claims that everyone being able to publish their own work will overwhelm the true geniuses in society and so we will no longer have people like Mozart and Van Gogh. This is a complete fallacy—we have seen internet celebrities be found by the average person being judged more for their talent rather than their original funds and ability to market themselves commercially. It allows for more Mozarts—unlike these geniuses of the past, they don’t have to worry about being “found,” something that would be near impossible in today’s world.

r7: The End of Solitude

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William Deresiewicz’s “The End of Solitude” is a long-winded form of red-herring.  The title suggests that the chapter might be about the end of solitude in the face of the growing dependency on the internet…the book is about the web, after all.

Instead, the chapter focuses on the different mediums of “interconnectivity” between people over time.  The author thinks that the “contemporary self” (this phrase itself is problematically ambiguous) has a different propensity for solitude now than the contemporary self of the romantic era.  I’m no sociology pundit, but I’d say that this trend is a given.  Don’t all humans adapt to changing times?  Doesn’t the introduction of mediums like computers and game boys force people to change their need for solitude compared to their more primitive ancestors?

Another thing: is the author’s title ironic?  He points out that friendship has a different meaning on Facebook when one has 532 friends than when one has 32 actual non-internet friends.  Is the author saying that the internet has ended solitude, or that internet inventions like Facebook have exacerbated it? I think there is a side for both arguments; I’m just not sure which one he believes in.

Apart from the fact that the author’s main point is difficult to make out, and that his language is sometimes sweeping (at one point he says, “like other religious values, solitude was democratised by the Reformation and secularised by Romanticism”), the thing that I’m afraid I have to criticise most in this essay is that I do not see how it is related to the internet and technology at all.  I do not see the link between the contemporary self and the internet in this essay.  Though, I do think there is room for this idea to be fleshed out.  It would be interesting, for example, to conduct a concrete study to compare how a contemporary person views solitude in relation to the internet.

In general, Digital Divide provides good food for thought on controversies about the internet, but the book isn’t meaty enough.  There are real political, ethical, and legal problems that are intrinsically linked to the internet…like Stuxnet worms in nuclear power plants and children abducted through conversations on Facebook and breaches of super injunction orders that are not discussed specifically or in detail in Digital Divide.

r7: Nomadicity

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The first article in the section, Todd Giltin’s “Nomadicity,” immediately caught my attention. Too often have I put in my headphones in order to “shut everything out” and “squash thoughts:” I prefer my iPod to any other “escape implement.” While reading this description, I couldn’t help but think of my recent Spring Break trip to Washington, DC, where the Metro was filled with passengers drowning out the world with their headphones; in fact, the subway was almost silent from lack of talking. At Duke, I think the situation is slightly different, as the buses are normally filled with conversations. For that reason, I wonder if this more solitary form of traveling is related to cities, or what conditions the city produces that lead to portable music players and silent subways.

Also, it seems that this article was written long before the Smart Phone era, as the author notes these “wireless handheld devices with Internet access” had only begun to spread throughout the United States. In fact, only 35% of Americans own a smartphone now, but that number is expected to reach 65% by 2015. I have managed to get by with my Macbook and Duke’s seemingly endless WiFi network, but if the university did not have the wireless coverage it did, I would consider paying an extra $15 to $80 a month for the required data plan. Considering this, and the author’s suggestion that we are always striving for more portability, what is the ultimate form of technological mobility? Have we already reached it, with internet accessible phones?