I should really post a review of this coffee shop. Maybe on Yelp. I could snap a photo of the cool little setup I have going here or tweet about the funny laptop rules at this place. Or I can get meta and type a Facebook update about how I am currently blogging about all of these possibilities to document my experience. While contemplating all of this, Spotify, a music-listening service, published the song I just listened to on Facebook.

Let’s reflect briefly on how we document experience. The first examples I just gave might be called “active sharing” whereas that last example, the Spotify one, highlights how self-documentation is also increasingly passive. And I think this furthers what I call “documentary vision”: the habit of experiencing more and more of life with the awareness of its document-potential.

Much has been made of so-called “frictionless sharing,” the new Facebook feature that automatically publishes updates from partnered sites and services. Sync Facebook with Spotify or the Wall Street Journal and what you listen to or read will be passively published on the new Facebook live-ticker.

This more passive sharing furthers an already established trend: we are increasingly living life under the logic of the Facebook mechanism. Facebook and the rest of the new and social media influence us most powerfully when not logged-in and staring at some glowing screen. Instead, the biggest role social media plays in our life is phenomenological; that is, it changes how we experience the world even when logged off. The logic of Facebook has become part of the logic by which we experience our augmented reality. So much so that it has become hard to experience anything that is fully outside the realm of documentation on social media in one form or another.

I cannot help but to experience the world always aware of how it could or will be documented, recorded, posted on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and the whole host of social media services that (1) allow you to document your and other’s lives and (2) provide an audience for this documentation. Social media effectively combines documentation technologies with the guarantee of an audience. It provides both opportunity and motive to document ourselves online. As we live in an atmosphere increasingly capable of capturing and recording our experience, we learn to live under this assumption. We learn to view life through “documentary vision.”

I discuss in my Faux-Vintage photo essay how social media gives us “the camera eye”, forcing us to view our present as always a potential past, and perhaps Hipstamatic and Instagram demonstrate just this sort of “nostalgia for the present.” And then there is my essay comparing Facebook to the Claude Glass, an old mirror-device that allowed the user to stand facing away from the world in order to view a more “picturesque” version of it. These posts suggest two different models of documentary vision: the camera eye where we seek to capture our reality more or less truthfully, and the Claude Glass which focuses on an idealized view of ourselves and our lives. The former about capturing the fact that we exist, flaws and all, and the latter about creating perfection.

Connections for Facebook from Obscura Digital; Facebook’s influence is always there, even when offline. This video just makes it more obvious.

Documentary vision coupled with this more passive sharing further blurs the line between experiencing something and the documentation of that experience. Some wrongly think that, say, Facebook is merely the reflection of what we do offline, when, instead, an enmeshed/augmented perspective acknowledges that Facebook also influences what we do offline. Too often people fall into the conceptual fallacy of viewing the online and offline as separate spheres, what I call “digital dualism.” Instead, what this analysis suggests is that our experience, ourselves, our entire world is the product of the implosion of atoms and bits into what I call our “augmented reality.”

The line and the causality between the person and their documentation on social media has been upended, twisted over, turned inside out, blurred and imploded into a state of mutual coexistence without clear division or causal precedence. We need to begin our analysis of social media documentation with the assumption that experience and documentation are not separate, but mutually co-determining. The causality goes both ways: Life has now become as subservient to the document as the document is subservient to life.

Follow Nathan on Twitter: @nathanjurgenson

I spoke at the wonderful “Digital Ethnography Weekend” conference last month in Italy. There, I furthered my argument about what I call “digital dualism,” the fallacy that views the on and offline as separate spheres as opposed to my support of an “augmented reality” paradigm that views these spheres as always enmeshed and dialectically co-determining.

Because this was a “digital ethnography” conference, I applied the augmented reality framework to this methodology and argued that, instead, we should be doing “augmented ethnography”, an ethnography that takes as its unit of analysis a reality comprised of atoms as well as bits, always dialectically co-determining. Colleague Alessandro Caliandro and I debated these ideas in the question-and-answer portion of my talk (with much-appreciated thoughts from Adam Arvidsson, as well). Caliandro has posted his summary of my talk as well as his criticism here. I welcome this criticism and want to respond to it below.

First, Caliandro’s development of my argument is charitable. I also very much appreciate the thoughtfulness of the critique. However, I do need to make a correction to the way he summarized augmented reality, and this correction will be important for my response to the criticism. I do not think that the differences between the physical and digital are “irrelevant”; indeed, they are quite important and I’ve written about them before (e.g., here and here). Atoms and bits have very different properties (for instance, atoms tend to be scarce and bits more abundant). It is my contention that these very different spheres come together to form our augmented reality. In fact, as I argue here, it is only under the assumption of augmented reality that we can fully explicate the relevant differences between the physical and digital. With this correction in mind, let’s move forward.

Even if I completely agree with Nathan Jurgenson on a theoretical level, at the same time I disagree with him on a methodological level.

In short, my response will be that methods should follow theory, so an agreement with the latter should imply an agreement on the former.

I have had the impression that Jurgenson conflates ‘Digital Ethnography’ with ‘Virtual Ethnography

Instead, in my opinion, Digital Ethnography should be considered as specific branch of Ethnography, which takes advantages of digital tools (for example available on the Internet) in order to better understand the society as a whole, to reach out the world as a whole

All ethnography should take advantage of both digital and non-digital tools when appropriate. If one is looking at both the on and offline and how they intersect and are calling that “digital ethnography,” then my disagreement would only be semantic (why label that “digital”?). But I would be quite pleased that it takes on as its fundamental unit of analysis our augmented reality (comprised of atoms and bits). However, Caliandro goes on to support a digital-only ethnography (whatever label we decide to give this perspective). He states that,

we must be aware of the fact that the digital world is a very specific object: it is a domain which possess its specific rules, dynamics and constrains.  That is why, I think, the idea of an ‘augmented reality’, in which digital and non-digital collapse, it’s methodologically and heuristically unhelpful.

This is the typical criticism of augmented reality and stems from the one correction I made of Caliandro’s development of my theory. Again: the digital and physical indeed have different properties, but the reality that we are studying (our unit of analysis) is one comprised of many domains with different “rules, dynamics and constraints.” We cannot begin to conceptualize the specific rules of the digital without doing so always aware of how they are fundamentally shaped by the physical (and vice versa). I expand a bit more on this point here.

To be very clear: to study only the digital, be it through observation, interviews and so on, without taking into account how all of this relates to the physical domain in a very rigorous way does not reveal the specific properties of the digital. Instead, it provides an unclear and less useful picture. One cannot simply “subtract out” the physical when doing an ethnography in the way statisticians “control for” other independent variables in their models. And, of course, I would make the same point to anyone supporting a “physical ethnography” that purposely ignores the digital domain in order to provide truths about the physical world.

Let’s pretend for a moment that a so-called physical ethnographer decided to study “how race is performed by youths in the physical world.” If that ethnographer ignored, say, Facebook, then that ethnographer would be missing plenty of data on how race is performed offline because Facebook does not just influence people when they are logged in but also when logged off and not in front of any glowing screens.

Again, we arrive at the general point that methods should follow theory. If one agrees with augmented reality conceptually, empirical methodology should follow suit.

In short, any ethnography that ignores the physical can never reveal the true working of the digital (and vice versa). Let’s look at one more criticism from Caliandro:

the manners in which social actors represent their identity online often have very little to do with the manners in which they do the same thing offline. Let us for example think about users chatting on an online forum: they basically construct their identities within a flux of narration, mainly writing about themselves and using just a rhetorical array to represent their Selves; that is, in a manner that does not occur in the everyday offline life.

Caliandro’s example does not demonstrate that the on and offline are completely separate, but just that they are different. And these differences can only be explicated by looking at how these individuals construct/perform identity both on and offline. Online chat forums do have an influence on identity, and that is something that flows both on and offline (remember, Caliandro agrees with this point). To only study the forum without making reference to the physical world would leave out how the physical world helps construct how textuality is experienced online in these chat forums. This point becomes even more important when studying online activities more typical than chat rooms like, for instance, Facebook, where the offline has an even more profound influence on the experience of digitality.

To conclude on a tangent: perhaps if digital dualist conceptual and methodological assumptions are done away with we will see a few less studies on chat rooms, virtual worlds and a few more on more popular activities such as sites like Facebook. At recent conferences I have been amazed by how many studies are still conducted on Second Life and chat rooms. To be clear: these are still important areas of study. The importance of a topic is not merely defined by the popularity of the activity being studied. However, my suspicion (and it is just that, not founded empirically in any way) is that digital dualist methodologies have made it much easier to study domains where the physical and digital are more separate (like chat rooms and Second Life; but, again, I think even these are part of our augmented reality). These methodologies perhaps made more sense before the rise of social media, however, these methodologies are increasingly inadequate when dealing with sites like Facebook where augmented reality is much more obvious. The result has been a disproportionately high number of studies on Second Life and disproportionately low number studying sites like Facebook. Augmented methodologies are better suited to capture what most people actually do online.

Follow Nathan on Twitter: @nathanjurgenson

Follow Alessandro: @Caliviral

There has been some terrific debate on my theorizing of what I call “augmented reality.” In brief, I reject “digital dualism”, the tendency to view the on and off line as separate spheres, and instead argue that we should view them as enmeshed, creating what I call “augmented reality.” [I talk more about this here.]

Today, I am posting some of the debate that occurred over Twitter and another post responding to a critique of a talk I gave on the topic.

One criticism has been that the augmented reality perspective somehow obscures the important ways in which the on and offline are different. I agree that the spheres indeed have different properties. I write here and here about, for example, how atoms tend to be more scarce than bits. Further, I write here about how these important differences are best viewed through the augmented lens.

It is this last point which I feel is most important in responding to the specific criticisms given by Zeynep Tufekci over Twitter. It is my hope that future conversations on this topic take into account the points made in that short essay. I’ll post the debate, still ongoing, below.

“	An interesting dynamic of the “digital activist” sphere in the Arab Uprisings is how many know each other offline, across nations.
	techsoc October 4, 2011

“	@techsoc becuase it is not “digital” activism! it is augmented http://t.co/sBoH7sbT
	nathanjurgenson October 4, 2011

“	@nathanjurgenson … except through much effort & most of connections are first online & only then offline–very different than US for most
	techsoc October 4, 2011

“	@nathanjurgenson This is diff from the the way FB is naturally online/offline. These people are not regular part of each others’ lives.
	techsoc October 4, 2011

“	@techsoc right, but physical meetings massively important for the cause; activism, even when primarily digital, benefits from the physical
	nathanjurgenson October 4, 2011

“	@techsoc the importance bloggers meeting up in physical space speaks to the power of augmentation, against the idea of “digital” activism
	nathanjurgenson October 4, 2011

“	@nathanjurgenson Yes, the in person meetings are crucial. But there is also power in “digital” activism — and a lot of it as well.
	techsoc October 4, 2011

“	So many stories of dangers -including torture & death- social media activists face! Nobody shld say “slacktivism” near me ever again. #ab11
	techsoc October 5, 2011

“	ppl could only think digital activism is “slacker” if they first wrongly think of digital & physical activisms as mostly separate @techsoc
	nathanjurgenson October 5, 2011

“	@nathanjurgenson In fact, the interesting discussion was sometimes online expression is not activism — but it has political consequences
	techsoc October 5, 2011

“	@nathanjurgenson The discussion wasn’t about that angle–in many cases in the region, it is separate. Online/offline not always integrated.
	techsoc October 5, 2011

“	@techsoc disagree. the over-assumption of that separation between digital and physical activism partly why “slacktivism” viewed pejoratively
	nathanjurgenson October 5, 2011

“	@techsoc ppl failing to see slacktivism leading to torture or non-activist online talk having material consequences = the fallacy in action!
	nathanjurgenson October 5, 2011

“	@techsoc seems i am saying ‘people view on/offline too separate’ and you are saying ‘that separation still sometimes important’ – fair?
	nathanjurgenson October 5, 2011

“	@nathanjurgenson I’m saying what you call augmentation has many levels and inflections — “online/offline integrated” can be too flat.
	techsoc October 5, 2011

“	@techsoc not sure i follow “levels” and “inflections”, but my sense would be that they could be best described thru augmented paradigm
	nathanjurgenson October 5, 2011

“	@techsoc wld be a good blog post; but i think the differences b/w digital/physical activism best articulated through ‘augmented’ perspective
	nathanjurgenson October 5, 2011

“	@nathanjurgenson … & also not forget that there is a lot of “digital only” micro-politics which does not link to offline in any direct way
	techsoc October 5, 2011

“	@nathanjurgenson … but it’s important not to collapse the distinction b/w online and offline and also all the different ways they interact
	techsoc October 5, 2011

“	@nathanjurgenson What you call “augmented” has always been my only & default way of looking at it–so I don’t necessarily name it but … +
	techsoc October 5, 2011

“	@techsoc agree on/offline have differences, but those can really only be described by taking the other into account: http://t.co/lFzw1UIT
	nathanjurgenson October 5, 2011

Defending and Clarifying the Term Augmented Reality » Cyborgology  Yesterday, Sang-Hyoun Pahk delivered a critique of the usage of the term augmented reality on this blog. First, thank you, criticism of this term is especially important for me (and others) because augmented reality is the fundamental unit of analysis about which I seek to describe.

“	Same in my region. Not everyone is as wired as US. $$$ RT @techsoc @nathanjurgenson in the region…. Online/offline not always integrated.
	katypearce October 5, 2011

“	@katypearce @techsoc but of course the online influences those without access and those logged off
	nathanjurgenson October 6, 2011

“	@nathanjurgenson @techsoc umm… Not always.
	katypearce October 6, 2011

“	@katypearce @nathanjurgenson Yes, not always. That’s the point I’m making. The link can be fledgling.. I’m agreeing with @katypearce here.
	techsoc October 6, 2011

“	@techsoc @nathanjurgenson + thus, less incllinded to share w. have nots. plus ‘internet doesn’t register as credible source for have nots.
	katypearce October 6, 2011

“	@techsoc @nathanjurgenson when government + media are untrustworthy, interpersonal comm is #1. Would be hard to do 2-step flow here.
	katypearce October 6, 2011

“	@techsoc @katypearce the link between on/offline just as important when people use distinct spheres
	nathanjurgenson October 6, 2011

“	@katypearce @techsoc augmentation comes in many flavors and these folks exist within that augmentation in different ways
	nathanjurgenson October 6, 2011

“	@katypearce @techsoc tho wld love to see longer form discussion of y you may NOT want to think from an augmented framework. havent seen that
	nathanjurgenson October 6, 2011

“	@katypearce @techsoc protester not using digital tools still influenced by digitality; person not on FB still (more?) influenced by it
	nathanjurgenson October 6, 2011

“	@katypearce @techsoc credible source example quite good at articulating just how digitality (in its absence) has massive impact on these ppl
	nathanjurgenson October 6, 2011

“	@katypearce @techsoc differing outcomes depending on ones engagement w/ digital/physical demonstrates how the link is not “fledgling” at all
	nathanjurgenson October 6, 2011

“	@katypearce @techsoc downplaying the link as “fledgling” leads to a very different set of research questions and conclusions
	nathanjurgenson October 6, 2011

“	@nathanjurgenson @katypearce that digital world is part of this world is trivially true — (even as there are idiotic attempt to separate)
	techsoc October 6, 2011

“	@nathanjurgenson: @katypearce But beyond that just saying it’s all augmented hides significant differences & that there are many regions+
	techsoc October 6, 2011

“	@nathanjurgenson: @katypearce +there are “digital only” spheres in a way you don’t see in US. (Again, beyond the trivial first-level effect)
	techsoc October 6, 2011

“	Agreed RT @techsoc @nathanjurgenson: @katypearce +there are “digital only” spheres in a way you don’t see in US.
	katypearce October 6, 2011

“	@katypearce @techsoc strongly disagree. “digital only” a fallacy and conceptually obscures important relations
	nathanjurgenson October 6, 2011

“	@techsoc @katypearce not “trivial”: much academic, popular, journalism makes bad conclusions from standpoint that holds dig/physical seprate
	nathanjurgenson October 6, 2011

“	@techsoc @katypearce only from augmented perspective can we articulate significant differences & impact of so-called “digital-only” spheres
	nathanjurgenson October 6, 2011

“	@nathanjurgenson: @katypearce well, that they do and I always rail against that. but really important not to hide vast differences.
	techsoc October 6, 2011

“	@techsoc @katypearce agreed, of course. i’ll link here again: http://t.co/lFzw1UIT would love to hear how augmentation obscures differences
	nathanjurgenson October 6, 2011

Defending and Clarifying the Term Augmented Reality » Cyborgology  Yesterday, Sang-Hyoun Pahk delivered a critique of the usage of the term augmented reality on this blog. First, thank you, criticism of this term is especially important for me (and others) because augmented reality is the fundamental unit of analysis about which I seek to describe.

Follow Nathan on Twitter: @nathanjurgenson

Follow Zeynep: @techsoc

Society today exists within a level of technology greater than the human race has ever experienced. If the idea that “we live in public” with digital media remains true, it is then equally true that we even die in the public sphere. This assertion thus substantially modifies the relationship between the living and the dead; specifically regarding the mechanisms of mourning. In other words, as danah boyd states, “we are all authors of our digital biographies”; we are supposed to be also authors of our own tombstones.

The digital space provides an advancement in the modern dichotomy theorized by Baudrillard regarding the separation of the city as a place of the living and the cemetery as a place of the dead. He argues that what is typical in the Western Hemisphere is that the city and the cemetery must necessarily remain separated and distant to legitimize a taboo of death. The cemetery is demonstrated to be a place of segregation; a ghetto.

The bureaucratic process of death and its legal rationalization that occurs in hospitals or funeral homes provide further evidence of such a separation.

Social networks in general and Facebook in particular, are beginning to show a growth of ‘deceased profiles.’ This causes us to rethink how the common shared space between the living and the dead. The stories of everyday life begin to weave with the mechanisms of memory and mourning.

The space within the network can be considered heterotopic (as Foucault might say), both connected and suspended; meaning it is capable of communicating with other spaces and thus yields the space of the living and the deceased evanescent.

The process of mourning (the pain of separation, the various phases such as negation, anger, plea bargaining, depression and acception) is a dialectical continuum between the desire to remember and the right to forget, generating a constant interaction between the digital footprints of the deceased and the people that commemorate its memory.

And One More Thing:

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.”

-Steve Jobs

Piergiorgio Degli Esposti studies Market and Consumption Behavior and is Assistant professor at Bologna University, Italy and a Marketing Consultant.

So many conversations that inform the content on this blog happen elsewhere, especially on Twitter. We’re going to better integrate Twitter and the Cybogology blog which will involve posting some of our personal tweets as well as conversations and debates with others here on the blog.

This past week I found a Noam Chomsky interview on a local “scene” blog here in DC. It was posted about seven months ago. In the interview, Chomsky talks about digital communication technologies and goes the route that so many older intellectuals do: electronic communications, be it texting, the internet or social media, are inherently “shallow.”

Here is the conversation on Twitter followed by a little more analysis that didn’t quite fit into 140 characters.

“	“Text messaging, Twitter, that sort of thing…is extremely rapid, very shallow communication” -Chomsky http://t.co/GK33pFVw
	nathanjurgenson October 4, 2011

“	Chomsky says that Twitter, texting “erodes normal human relations. It makes them more superficial, shallow, evanescent”
	nathanjurgenson October 4, 2011

The Secret of Noam: A Chomsky Interview  “Isn’t it interesting”, he pauses, reflecting, “that eating a banana is somehow comical”. Noam Chomsky says this to me with a semi-straight face. He understands the humor in the situation, yet to his mind the concept seems more of an intellectual observation than a funny moment.

“	@nathanjurgenson what does Jurgenson say to Chomsky’s charges? 😉
	JenniferVEvans October 4, 2011

“	i strongly disagree w/ Chomsky, of course. hoped he would have something to say about the evolution of language on twitter/texting
	nathanjurgenson October 4, 2011

“	Chomsky, like so many others who don’t use new technologies, proclaims the ways others communicate online as “shallow” http://t.co/GK33pFVw
	nathanjurgenson October 4, 2011

“	dear Chomsky, who benefits when what you call “normal” human relationships get to be considered more “deep” and meaningful?
	nathanjurgenson October 4, 2011

“	i once asked, “Who benefits from defining one way -their way- of interacting with information as deeper and more true?” http://t.co/rCHnPxnv
	nathanjurgenson October 4, 2011

“	Chomsky another 1st world intellectual calling knowledges produced w/ mobile devices “shallow” http://t.co/GK33pFVw
	nathanjurgenson October 4, 2011

“	@nathanjurgenson I often struggle with landing on a side in the shallow vs not shallow re: internet. Its another dichotomy we don’t need.
	Nick_Lalone October 4, 2011

“	@Nick_Lalone i think the further question is: what does it mean to claim one sort, your sort, of knowledge as “deeper” than another’s?
	nathanjurgenson October 4, 2011

“	@nathanjurgenson it’s funny how people who think so deeply about so many things can’t think deeply about Twitter. Short circuit!
	alexismadrigal October 4, 2011

“	@alexismadrigal: @nathanjurgenson This came up in my class last week. It’s because they don’t use it. You can’t get it w/out using it.
	techsoc October 4, 2011

“	@techsoc @alexismadrigal agreed; but Chomsky should know better than to default to calling forms of knowledge he doesnt understand “shallow”
	nathanjurgenson October 4, 2011

“	@techsoc @alexismadrigal @nathanjurgenson Chomsky *should* know but he’s used to being literate in social practices. participatory=new game.
	bonstewart October 4, 2011

Claiming certain styles of knowledge production as “shallow” or “not deep” is nothing new. It’s akin to those who claimed that graffiti isn’t art and rap isn’t music. In the realm of epistemology (the study of knowledge), there are great works by people like Foucault or Lyotard who look historically at what ways of knowing get disqualified or subjugated as less true, deep or important. Marxist, Feminist and Intersectional epistemologists, sociologists of knowledge and philosophers of science have long taught us to view these claims about knowledge as claims to power. Who benefits when digital communications are disqualified as less deep?

Does it matter that nonwhites are more likely to produce this knowledge in the U.S.? or that this is disproportionately a way of communicating and producing knowledge in the 3rd World? What does it mean to claim that long-form printed book writing is privileged as more deep and true? Chomsky makes these claims without any reference to the fact that these are also claims to power for a certain set of people with a certain standpoint.

Mass collective action is in the air, on the ground, on the web; indeed, there exists today an atmosphere conducive for revolutions, flash mobs, protests, uprisings, riots, and any other way humans coalesce physically and digitally to change the normal operation of society. [Photos of protests around the globe from just the past 30 days].

Some gatherings have clear goals (e.g., ousting Mubarak), however. there is also the sense that massive gatherings are increasingly inevitable today even when a reason for them is not explicit (e.g., the ongoing debate over the reasons for the UK Riots or the current #occupy protests). For some this is terrifying and for others it is exhilarating. And still others might think I am greatly overstating the amount of protest actually happening. True, we do not yet know if this second decade of the 21^st Century will come to be known for massive uprisings. But if it is, I think it will have much to do with social media effectively allowing for the merging of atoms and bits, of the on and offline; linking the potential of occupying physical space with the ability of social media to provide the average person with information and an audience.

For example, the current #occupy protests across the United States (and arguably the world) are part of a movement that focuses on the augmentation of the physical and the digital. #Occupy may have been born online but from the very beginning had everything to do with physical space. The name “#occupy” speaks directly to the revolutionary tactic of utilizing both the power of physical and the digital.

Augmented Reality

AdBusters started all of this online and were then joined by the internet activist group Anonymous. Social media has been used to promote the cause, networking massive numbers of people and allowing the movement to go viral (see Jenny Davis’ post on the differing roles of top-down organization versus the rhetoric of “grassroots” for this movement). Once organized, #occupy protestors are taking photos, tweeting and videoing police brutality (which, arguably, and perhaps ironically, gave the protests a second life because it was then that more mainstream outlets began to cover the movement to a greater degree).

However, more than a “digital” protest, the movement has been fundamentally concerned with “occupying” geographic space, mobilizing flesh-and-blood bodies in an area, yelling, walking, breathing, sleeping and doing what physical bodies do. We have come to learn that effective mobilizations require the utilization of physicality, digitality and the important relationship between the two.

This is augmented revolution. It is a tactic, and is one that is becoming increasingly refined. Those organizing the #occupy protests learned from the Egyptian uprisings. I’ve described previously how those were augmented; utilizing both the physical and digital to more effectively create change. I’ve also looked at how the Anonymous BART protests followed the same path. Predictably, the UK Riots and the subsequent clean-up effort did the same. This all follows my larger thesis that we live in an augmented reality that is the product of a massive implosion of atoms and bits, opposed to the ‘digital dualist’ assumption that views the digital and physical as separate [read more about that here].

Augmentation Means That Protestors Have a Voice

There are many reasons why we seem to have an atmosphere of dissent today. We are witnessing political mobilizations across the Middle East, North Africa, Asia, South America, and mass protests just about everywhere else. Riots and flash mobs are increasingly making the news. And I do not think we can divorce all of this from new communication technologies. The list of reasons why this might be the case are well-known: people have access to more information; the internet allows for ideas created by just about anyone to spread rapidly across the globe; people can more effectively network; ideas and events can “go viral”; and so on. This territory is obvious and well-covered. I want to focus on one feature unique to social media that might also explain the atmosphere of dissent we seem to be breathing in.

Protests today are far more participatory than ever before. Of course, all protests are almost by definition participatory. Showing up, marching, shouting, making signs: all of these activities characterize active participants of a protest. However, in physical space, one’s potential audience is small. The underlying danger in any protest movement is that ambition, motivation and a sense of hope that each individual is making a difference might be lost. Your chant or sign may reach few eyes and ears. Protesters in the crowd have to constantly reassure each other that they are important and relevant. In physical space, you may often feel that you are shouting into the wind.

Social media has changed protest similarly to just about everything else it has touched. Today, people are not passively consuming dissent, but are more actively involved with creating it. The producers and consumers of revolutionary messages are increasingly the same people. Most of the protestors can snap photos, shoot videos, organize on Facebook and tweet to the world. This is participatory, prosumer, dissent.

Beyond the new ability to create all of this digital content, what is often overlooked is how social media promises an audience for this content. This is an important change. A lesson we have learned from social media in general is that providing an audience also imparts motive to behave. Would we feel the necessity to take a picture of the breakfast we just made if Facebook could not promise the audience to “like” and comment on that photo?

The motivation to protest has existed long before social media (as Malcolm Gladwell likes to point out). And even the tools to document and express ourselves existed before social media (photography, video, word processors and the like). What is different today is not just the ability to create content but that the audience social media guarantees gives us motive. No longer just shouting into the wind (made of atoms), one is also shouting into a network (made of bits); and there is an audience there that very well may be receptive to your message.

And this is new.

As a protester simultaneously marching in physical space and documenting online, you can watch the stream of activity by following the protest’s hashtag on Twitter; your tweet retweeted by someone else on the other end of the globe. You can post your photos to Facebook and watch the comments come in. Augmented by the internet, what you are doing matters. This is the not-so-secret weapon of augmented revolution.

This is why social media has created this flammable atmosphere of mobilization that is growing around us (as well as the counter-movement of digital repression). That the rise of social media is now historically coupled with large-scale dissent is no coincidence. Unrest, protest, riot is all more possible, perhaps likely, because social media has united the power of both physical space and networked digitality. Mass collectives of networked individuals (cyborgs) is the new normal (for better or for worse).

Follow Nathan on Twitter: @nathanjurgenson

This brief essay attempts to link two conceptualizations of the important relationship of the on and offline. I will connect (1) my argument that we should abandon the digital dualist assumption that the on and offline are separate in favor of the view that they enmesh into an augmented reality and (2) the problematic view that the Internet transcends social structures to produce something “objective” (or “flat” to use Thomas Friedman’s term).

Instead, recognizing that code has always been embedded in social structures allows persistent inequalities enacted in the name of computational objectivity to be identified (e.g., the hidden hierarchies of Wikipedia, the hidden profit-motive behind open-source, the hidden gendered standpoint of computer code, and so on). I will argue that the fallacy of web objectivity is driven fundamentally by digital dualism, providing further evidence that this dualism is at once conceptually false, and, most importantly, morally problematic. Simply, this specific form of digital dualism perpetuates structural inequalities by masking their very existence.

Digital Dualism versus Augmented Reality

Perhaps the central theoretical insight that characterizes my work thus far is the concept of augmented reality. I develop the term here and provide a bit more detail here; simply, this perspective rejects the digital dualist position that the digital and physical are separate spheres and instead promotes the idea that atoms and bits enmesh to create our augmented reality.

Digital dualism is a fallacy, and it seems to be pervasive: from academics like Sherry Turkle operating with the assumption of a digital “second self” to mainstream conceptualizations like the The Social Network film arguing that Facebook users are trading “real life” connections for a something digital. While many more examples can be listed (and many have been on this blog by myself and others), what research as well as those who actually use social media tell us is that social media has everything to do with the physical world and our offline lives are increasingly influenced by social media, even when logged off. We need to shed the digital dualist bias because our Facebook pages are indeed “real life” and our offline existence is increasingly virtual. I have made these points many times on this blog so let me discuss the specific form of digital dualism that is perhaps the most dangerous.

Code is Social

The digital dualism versus augmented reality debate relates to another outmoded conceptualization that argues the Internet has the power to transcend and remove social locatedness. At its onset, the Internet seemed to promise the possible deconstruction of dominant and oppressive social categorizations such as gender, race, age and even species; as the cartoon goes, “online, no one knows you’re a dog”. We can trace this line of thought through the classic Hacker ethic that ‘all information should be free’ through the open-source movement behind Linux and in the philosophy of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

Essential to these projects was the idea that the Internet can be created as a sphere separate from (perhaps even better than) the offline world. Digitality promised a Wild-West frontier built without replicating the problems of our offline reality, fixing the its oppressive realities such as skin color, physical ability, resource scarcity as well as time and space constraints. The new digital frontier was a space where information could flow freely, national boundaries could be overcome, expertism and authority could be upended; those old structures would be wiped away in the name of a utopian and revolutionary cyber-libertarian path blazed by our heroic cyber-punk and hacker digital cowboys (indeed, those were boy’s clubs).

This dream could only be maintained by holding the digital as conceptually distinct from the physical. Perhaps this is understandable given this new space was literally being invented. However, the novelty of the new digital reality betrayed the ultimate reality that none of this digitality really existed outside of long-standing social constructions, institutions and inequalities.

This digital dualist utopianism was in reality always deeply embedded in (or augmented by) offline social structures. For instance, Barry Wellman argued in 2001 that “computer networks are social,” which still serves as an important reminder that this point indeed needed to be made. Fred Turner [.pdf] has done an especially good job revealing the hidden profit motive behind the open-source movement. Others have shown how the supposedly revolutionary Wikipedia project has only shifted knowledge-creation from the hands of a few white men to now being produced by a few more white men (revolutionary this in not). Lawrence Lessig, Saskia Sassen and many others have demonstrated that computer code itself, that ultimate symbol of inhuman, logical neutrality, is embodied, social, historical, and reflects specific value judgments. Danah boyd has been especially persuasive in describing how coding decisions on social network sites are the result of specific biases on the part of website engineers, often to the detriment of those less powerful and more vulnerable. And, as Jessie Daniels discusses in the fourth chapter of her book Cyber Racism, sometimes even those interested in inequalities wrongly begin with digital dualist assumptions, for example, Daniels discusses people worrying about white supremacist websites using the Web to recruit people opposed to the sites being an outlet for those who import their racism to the Web.

We could list many, many more examples about how supposedly-objective systems are instead embedded in the messiness of offline social structures and inequalities. Others have gone over this territory in much more detail and make this case better than I. All I am attempting to do in this essay is situate the fallacy of web objectivity within the underlying digital dualist fallacy that the digital and physical are separate.

Digital Dualism as Morally Problematic

Much of my previous work on digital dualism has focused on the perspective being false, but linking it to those that claim the Internet transcends the social demonstrates the moral problem of maintaining this specific dualist perspective.

Masking the deeply embedded political motives that undergird computer code with claims of “objectivity” serve to make more invisible those very motives. Technology never removes humanity from itself, it never creates a space outside of fundamental social structures, and the notion that digitality was ever somehow a new space that transcends basic facts of social life is the height of digital dualism.

To conclude, what this analysis suggests is a traceable path from a conceptual fallacy that predates the Internet and became realized online with the dangerous result of disappearing the visibility of certain forms of social inequalities. It is not surprising that a bunch of (mostly) white males claimed to create a digital space somehow separate from their own socialization (i.e., the intersection of their specific race, gender, class, etc. standpoints). There is a long history of those from dominant groups thinking of themselves as the “neutral” or “natural’ human being. And it is precisely this fallacy that allowed the Internet to be conceptualized by some as a sphere outside of socialization, of the digital being somehow separate from the physical.

It is my hope that identifying this digital dualism and calling for an augmented perspective that always situates digitality and physicality as mutually constitutive can be one more small step towards shedding conceptualizations that mask social inequalities. Our augmented reality is one where the politics, structures and inequalities of the physical world are part of the very essence of the digital domain; a domain built by human beings with histories, standpoints, interests, morals and biases.

Follow Nathan on Twitter: @nathanjurgenson

Can an identity have a homepage?

Many have long argued that identity is the result of both  (1) performative work on the part of the individual as well as (2) the influence of society with all of its history, structures, institutions, norms and so on. We do not produce our identities in a vacuum, they are influenced by society. And we do not blindly consume our identities from the options given to us; humans are complex beings who creatively tweak, mix and remix to achieve something always unique. Not just producers or consumers,  it is best to think of ourselves as identity prosumers. Here, we will show how this process is made most explicit when identities are prosumed through social media technologies.

Prosumption has long been a topic on this blog (see Nathan’s paper on this topic, and Jenny has a paper forthcoming in the American Behavioral Scientist). We argue that prosumption is precisely what defines new, social media: unlike television, we do not only consume, say, Facebook, we also produce the content. Similarly, social technologies facilitate identity work that is more explicitly prosumer.

One of the key affordances of the Web is the ability to connect geographically dispersed people. This means that those with similar interests can find one another, interact, and form communities without the geographic and temporal barriers of physical space. Individuals with even extremely uncommon identity characteristics can now find others like them in ways never before possible. New identities are coming to be collaboratively named, shared and defined that were not known of before the mass popularity of the Web. Marginalized individuals can collectively prosume an identity category into existence, while prosuming the identity label and meanings for themselves.

Two related cases illustrate this point nicely: transability and asexuality.

Transability is a condition of incorrectly-abled embodiment. People who identify as transabled feel a deep need to be physically impaired in a very specific way (e.g. blindess, paraplegia, left above the arm amputation, etc.). The term transability was first coined in 1994 by a man who goes by the name of Sean. He runs the website transabled.org.  Over the past 17 years, Sean, the other bloggers, and the participants on the site, have collectively defined and articulated what it means to hold a transabled identity, and prosumed this way of being into an identity category–so much so that it is currently being considered for inclusion in the upcoming DSM-V
(although the official name in the DSM would be “body integrity identity disorder”).

Asexuality is a sexual orientation defined by not experiencing sexual attraction towards other people. The term was created long ago by researchers, but did not appear as an identity category that individuals self-identified with until much more recently. Similar to transabled.org, David Jay founded asexuality.org in 2001 as space where similar people could organize and announce their existence as well as support each other (more from the site and an article in the New York Times).

Transability and asexuality come to exist as potential identity categories via the rise of the social Internet.

The participants of transabled.org and asexuality.org say that they have always been this way, and that the sites and fellow community members merely provide them with a label, a language, and sense of legitimacy with which to describe and understand themselves; that the identities themselves were not “invented” in these online spaces, only the category labels.

Identity work, and by this we mean the accomplishment of the self, is perhaps made most apparent by these examples where the labels, definitions, understandings and meanings are collaboratively constructed right in front of our eyes.

However,  transability and asexuality only make clear what is true of all identity work both on and offline. Identity is always a collaborative and reciprocal process of self-production and consumption of culture (see Bourdieu’s theories of practice and structuration).

At the same time, as we have shown, the prosumption of identity works a bit different with the introduction of the Internet. Identity categories, previously unnamed or culturally unavailable, burst into existence and shake common understandings. Self-identification can now become increasingly diverse when old categorizations are upended, new ones are created, and existing ones are further dissected.

Is this a good thing?

On the one hand, this “long tail” of identity categorization runs contrary to the queer theory project of critiquing the prosumption of identity categories in favor of a more fluid understanding of the self that deconstructs adherence to category labels and definitions.

On the other, the prosumption of new identity categories is often described as highly liberating for those who prosume them. Those on transabled.org, for example, talk about the positive emotional benefits of having a name and language with which to make sense of their desires, and a group with which to share their struggles. On a material level, the unifying label allows community members to mobilize on unified goals (e.g. inclusion in the DSM, a path to legal corrective surgery, insurance benefits).

In the age of the Web where labels have the potential to proliferate, should we embrace the queer theory project of deconstructing categories and labels or do we celebrate the increasing ability to self-identify (rather than be identified) with ever more new and precise category systems?

Follow Jenny Davis on Twitter: @Jup83

Follow Nathan Jurgenson on Twitter: @nathanjurgenson

Something interesting has been happening in Times Square this summer. As has been occurring for a century, the crowds gather with necks perched upward looking at all the famously illuminated billboards. But now there is a new type of buzz in the crowd: they stand together facing the same direction, cameras held high and their hands waving even higher. They are not just watching celebrities or models in this the most expensive ad-space in the world; today, they are watching themselves on the big screen.

This is all part of a new billboard for the company Forever 21 currently in use in Times Square in the heart of New York City. It struck me that this billboard is nothing short of a consumer-capitalism-happening, and started snapping photos and thinking about what this all might mean.

Times Square, that glittering spectacle of cabs, people, and lights in Manhattan got its name when the New York Times moved its offices there on New Year’s Eve, 1905 (first celebrated with fireworks, and soon after by dropping the famous ball). Advertising here began as painted wooden signs but quickly became one of the first areas to illuminate billboards with electronic lights. The economic boom, fueled by the stock market downtown, through the 1920’s (think: F. Scott Fitzgerald) centered Times Square as the capitol of decadence as well as high-profile corruption. Times Square saw the emergence of the dynamic scrolling “ticker” (i.e., “the zipper” installed in 1928);  made with electronic lights, this was the first signage that could produce dynamic, changing content from moment to moment; an astonishing innovation for its time.

As the city suffered catastrophic economic hardships, especially in the 1970’s, Times Square earned its new reputation as a seedy, crime-ridden area of sex shops and porno theaters. After Mayors Kotch and Giuliani “cleaned up” the city, Times Square changed shape again, emerging into the ‘safe’ Disneyfied and McDonaldized landscape of consumption that it is today. Amidst the crowds of tourists you’ll find a Planet Hollywood restaurant, M&M’s and Disney stores and, of course, a McDonald’s (and many other chain-operations). In short, Times Square is “spectacular” in the way Guy DeBord used the term. In fact, the illuminated signs that the buildings (are required to) have are actually called “spectaculars.”

What each of these epochs of advertising in Times Square have in common is that the relationship between the gaze of the crowd and the advertisements themselves was largely in one direction: the crowds saw the celebrities, models and images scientifically chosen by advertisers and marketers. The crowd was to first see, then buy. The crowd was to see but not be seen.

However, today, we are witnessing a new innovation: the glowing light of physical-space-advertising has become interactive and augmented. No longer is the media sphere largely separate from those observing it. Increasingly, we are seeing an augmented advertising that blurs the physical bodies in the crowd with the advertising media itself.

The Forever 21 billboard (pictured above) is a massive television screen that displays live video of the street below. There are various animations overlaid on the display and a pre-recorded woman interacts with still shots produced, live, of random people in the crowd. Reading this, it may not sound like that big of a deal. In person, what does seem like a big deal is how much attention the billboard gets; how excited people are. I saw one elderly couple watching with tears rolling down their cheeks.

This orientation, of consumers taking pictures of themselves in a billboard that is taking a picture of them, is largely brand new (actually, Cosmopolitan did something similar in Times Square last year). Advertisers have long wanted for consumers to see themselves projected in advertisements. Today, advertisers can literally do this. And, as I witnessed, we love it.

New York City recently closed off certain areas in Times Square from car traffic to make them more pedestrian-friendly. This has come to be not so much for the purpose of allowing them to move quickly and freely, but instead to gather as crowd. They have gathered to stand still, face a single direction, and watch a sign that is watching them back.

It used to be said that “having your name in lights”and to be displayed larger-than-life in Times Square demonstrated that you “made it”; that you are a star.

Today, we are all part of that “elite”; we are all mini-celebrities worthy of being documented on the big screen in Times Square. Our cultural moment is one where documentation of our lives in intimate detail, especially on social media, provides the requisite existence. This is why it is joyous for the crowd to see themselves in this place. This is the center of the universe of importance, of relevance and celebrity. Things weigh more here.

And, of course, people know this to be somewhat a ruse. The crowd knows that the camera is simply fixated anyone and everyone who stands within its wide gaze. You are not special to be on that billboard.

But it continues to work, as was strikingly demonstrated by witnessing its effect in person. People stand transfixed, in awe of the billboard. Consciously or unconsciously, we get a sense that showing up on a Times Square billboard is important. It does mean something.

I left Times Square wondering just why this trick works so effectively?

Live feed of the billboard.

Video of the billboard in action.

See similar billboards in England and Japan.