PJ: First, begin by telling us the title of your installation. Then, please give brief description of what you are trying to accomplish and of the mechanics behind it.

Ned: The title of the installation is “Public/Private,” which refers to the increasingly public nature of our private data. On a daily basis we offer up intimate details of our lives to social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Myspace. It’s really amazing how much we’re willing to share with strangers over the internet, and how it can wind up being profitable in some cases and damaging in others. What I want to achieve with this installation is a visual distillation of that.

The heart of the Public/Private is a website that displays a twitter feed and a set of images pulled from the content of that feed. Twitter is the perfect venue for this because of its hashtag feature which allows users to search for given topics, and anyone who knows the hashtag can participate. The code for the installation takes that data and uses Google Images to search the words in the tweets, in essence taking them completely out of context. The most important part of the search to me is the “anything goes” mentality; there’s a size filter on the image results, but otherwise it displays the first image from that set of results. Sometimes it’s humorous, other times it’s gross or offensive. For example, in the testing phase for this project, I tweeted the phrase “some of the weirder art related stuff is falling into place”. The image result for the word “falling” was an icon image of a man falling from the World Trade Center in NY on September 11. This is the sort of random association I wanted, because at the end of the day, anything you say in a public forum can be taken out of context.

PJ: This installation has two physical components: a projector the fills the room with images and that participant all view simultaneously, and a kaleidoscope-like object that each participant views one-at-a-time. Is the dual aspect of the installation what is indicated in the title “Public/Private?” Here are some helpful guide to find what you’re looking for by SportandoutdoorHQ.

Ned: Yes. The public aspect (the projected part of the installation)
is a representation of the data that we volunteer. The private aspect is the relationship involving the interpretation of that data and actual venue. We love our friends and seeing their status updates, but I think the argument can be made that we also love Facebook itself. The kaleidoscope is a personal experience; only one person can view the images at a time, and provided the content keeps getting updated with new tweets, the resulting pattern of fragmented images will be unique for each person. It’s certainly less obvious than taking data and projecting it, but this part of the project was important to me.

Not only do we volunteer our private data, but we all experience and interpret that data differently.

PJ: I see, so the kaleidoscope aspect captures the individualized user-experience that is central to the increasing popularity of social media. For example, when I log into Facebook, I get completely unique content in my feed based on what other users I have “friended,” and I also get target advertisements that are selected, algorithmically, based on the information in my profile. This is very different from “Web 1.0” (exemplified by, say, the webpage of a bank or restaurant) where all users see basically the same information in the same form. Similarly, in the installation, participants in the room can infer that the person viewing the kaleidoscope is seeing something similar to what they are, but they cannot know exactly what content is being display in the kaleidoscope at a given time.

Ned: Exactly. It’s user-generated, unique content.

PJ: It is interesting, and almost paradoxical, to hear an artist describe her work as “user-generated.” Roland Barthes famously spoke of “the death of the author,” meaning the (post-)Modern author no longer is the sole legitimate interpreter of her own work. Instead, literature takes on a life of its own though the activity and interpretations of its audience. This insight could equally be applied to visual art. You seemed to have embraced this idea that consumers of your work are also producers (or “prosumers”). Does sharing the stage with your audience (metaphorically speaking) create any problems with respect to your identity as an artist?

Ned: No not at all. Art takes so many forms, from purely consumptive pieces to interactive collaborations. I see more traditional arts and crafts as consumptive; the artist produces a piece, and the viewer experiences or purchases it. In that sense, the story ends there, and it’s great in and of itself. I’m fascinated with collaborative art though, and not just collaborative in the “working with other artists” sense, but also inviting the viewers to participate. In essence, the art isn’t just about the creation of the form of the piece, it’s about the interaction. One of my all-time favorite artists is Felix Gonzalez-Torres, much of whose work involved pieces removed from the installation by the viewer. Sometimes the artwork was replenished, other times it died. The ephemeral nature of his art depended on the viewer’s participation. I’ve been fascinated by this idea for years, and in a way it’s actually what got me involved in web design. The ability to create an environment that the user can directly interact with is a powerful thing. When I was in high school I experimented with pages that built themselves as the user clicked on different pieces, but what frustrated me with that platform was in the end, I really was directing the entire experience. Web 2.0 finally allows the artist and viewer to work together.

Speaking of collaboration, my friend Sean Murphy is my hero for this piece. I knew what I wanted to do, but my grasp of code (well, markup) ends with HTML and CSS. He wrote the scripts that make the whole thing work, and did it in a day. He’s amazing.

PJ: One aspect that your art shares with Gonzalez-Torres’ is that it is ephemeral insofar as a new tweet to containing the hashtag irrevocably changes the piece. Today, so many cultural products are ephemeral and unpredictable. We use the term “Internet meme” to describe the constant modulations of our online culture (of course, these same memes also equally manifest offline). Flashmobs are one high-profile example of how quickly memes circulate between and throughout online and offline environments. Is this ephemerality and unpredictability an important part or your work. Doesn’t it make it difficult to determine what, exactly, your art is?

Ned: The ephemeral and unpredictable nature of the internet is really the soul of this Public/Private. What I’ve done is taken a set of unpredictable variables and given them a new space to interact in, then presented the space in two different ways that provide distinct experiences. I have no control over what people will tweet. I’ve put no restrictions on what users can say, although the script filters out any word four letters or shorter out of necessity. I have no say over what images exist for any given word, and which one will show up first. No one person has control over all of the content out there, but the internet and internet culture revolves around the open, ever-evolving environment. I’m not sure how difficult it is for people to determine what the art is in this case. When it comes to installations, I feel like the art exists not only in the content presented but in the experience that the artist provides. Unless an installation is adopted by a museum or other private party for permanent display, most installations are ephemeral by their very nature.

PJ: So, we agree that the content of the installation, like the content of the Web writ large, is ephemeral and unpredictable. I want to return to something you said earlier: Initially, you described the content of the installation as “random” and “out of context.” But, isn’t it the case that these images are determined by popular behavior? These images are gleaned from the top results of a Google image search. The Google algorithm attempts to determine which images are most strongly associated with which words. So, in a way, your installation is determining the images that are most strongly associated, in the collective unconscious, with our conversations on Twitter. In a way, isn’t it like a process of free association. On the surface, there may seem to be no order, but deep down, everything is determined by our collective behaviors. Don’t these images compel us to reflect on these behavior – to ask, in the universe of images, why this image? What have we all done to make this way?

Ned: I hope people are asking that; in fact, I personally ask that every time I do an image search and I get something way off base. Just because the algorithm seeks to find the most appropriate responses doesn’t mean that’s what actually happens. The example I gave earlier for “falling” made sense, and it’s culturally significant that [the image of a man falling from the World Trade Center] showed up. The word “looking” gave me an eye, which is perfectly appropriate In other cases though the images get confusing because the image name or the metadata contains that particular word. It’s also hard to illustrate more abstract words. Take “willing” for example. If you filter the results to medium images, you get a sculpture of an Asian man struggling in a “filthy blood pond”. The title of the image is “willing+to+float.jpg”. Google may be trying to give us an archetypal example of the word, but our file naming habits get in the way of that.

PJ: You describe a pretty interesting paradox: An orderly, rational algorithm links words and images in a way that appears irrational or, even, chaotic. I suspect, however, that the linkage between some words (say “shoes” or “candidate”) and the associated images is more rationalized than others because, presumably, certain parties have a political or economic interest in influencing the search outcomes. In a way, isn’t this a window into the politics that suffuse our language?

Ned: I’m not 100% sure if I can respond to that with much insight really. I think it’s more about some people being good at SEO [search engine organization], some people being horrible at it, and some people who are just organizing and naming their files in ways that really only make sense to them (I’m so guilty of that one).

PJ: The Internet contains vast reservoirs of text and images that each serve as potential expressions of the other. Your installation exists as a linkage between these two otherwise unrelated pools of content. Why was it important for you to link text and images? Would you agree the Kelly Joyce’s sentiment (in Magnetic Appeal: MRI and the Myth of Transparency) that contemporary Western culture grants greater legitimacy to images than text-based (and other) modes of expression?

Ned: I would absolutely agree with Ms. Joyce; we’re an incredibly image-based culture. Often you’ll see the phrase “pics or it didn’t happen” online after someone relates an event that happened to them. In addition to that, I wanted to highlight the misfires we often experience in online communication; the signified does not always signify the signifier, to put it in semiotic terms. This seems to happen frequently online when comments get misinterpreted or taken out of context, and when people think that hoaxes or prank websites are actually true. And as I’ve mentioned before, the mechanics of our image naming and Google’s image search make it perfect for that. All this seems like a lot of serious thought for the actual piece, and while I do hope people make the connection on some level, I also hope they have fun with it.

PJ: I’m really intrigued by the concept of “misfiring.” Would you go so far as to say revealing these frequent disconnects between signifier and signified is the primary contribution of your installation?

Ned: Heh, definitely. Any humor, amusement, confusion, curiosity… any emotion really that this piece might spark really comes from that disconnect.

PJ: Is there anything I missed? Any final issues to discuss?

Ned: I think we’ve covered it all. If anyone wants to see the web-based part in action, I made a Cyborgology-specific version. You can find it http://maneatingflower.com/publicprivate/cyborgology.html

PJ: Thanks for agreeing to do an interview for Cyborgology.  I’m excited to see the installation in action this weekend at Theorizing the Web 2011.

Ned: Thanks for giving me the chance to talk about the project! See you at the conference.

This is the second panel spotlight for the upcoming  Theorizing the Web conference on April 9^th.  I am presiding over an open paper session whose full title is  “Poets and Scribes – Constructing Fact and Fiction on Social Media.”  The title alludes to Susan Sontag’s On Photography in which she describes the evolution of thought surrounding our relationship to that earlier medium:

The photographer was thought to be an acute but non-interfering observer—as scribe, not a poet. But as people quickly discovered that nobody takes the same picture of the same thing, the supposition that cameras furnish an impersonal objective image yielded to the fact that photographs are evidence not only of what’s there but of what an individual sees, not just a record but and evaluation of the world.  It became clear that there was not just a simple, unitary activity called seeing (recorded by, aided by cameras) but “photographic seeing,” which was both a new way for people to see and a new activity for them to perform.

The parallel between photography and social media is that both produce documents that are mediated through the situated perspective of the actor.  Media production is never passive and it is never asocial (though, of course, such actors fall on a continuum between the ideal-typical poet and scribe).  However, when we accept that media products are embedded within a system of social relations (particularly, relations of power), we implicitly accept the idea that these products inextricably contain poetic or fictitious elements—angles or interpretations that reflect the historical moment in which they were articulated. All media, including social media, are expressions of what Donna Haraway calls “situated knowledge.”

The salient difference between the poet and the scribe is that the poet is self-aware the her work is always a half-fiction.  She embraces the fact that expression is always a process of fictioning and uses it to her advantage.  On the contrary, the scribe is faced with the paradoxical task of trying to legitimate her existence by saying her work is necessary but adds nothing.  Her unwillingness to acknowledge what she brings to the product leaves her vulnerable to both marginalization and exploitation because she is blind to the unique interests of her social position and to the value that is created in offering a concrete expression of these interests. No doubt, the average Facebook user is more like a scribe than a poet, faithfully documenting the “truths” of their existence without realizing any claim to the value of the information generated.

The four papers on this panel are joined by a theme of inquiry into the active, poetic practice of mediating our online interaction and documentation.  Abstracts are presented below:

David Zweig, “Fiction Depersonalization Syndrome”

Fiction Depersonalization Syndrome, a hypothesis that I have developed, posits that immersion in the Western world’s highly mediated environment – most of which functions as a result of recent and continuing technological advances – leads to increased self-consciousness; the extreme endpoint of this phenomenon is depersonalization, a psychological disorder where one is literally watching oneself from afar, as if in a movie or a dream. Further, this hyper-self-consciousness may lead to isolation, though, paradoxically, we are more technologically connected than ever.

Today, we are living in an “observational reality” rather than the historically dominant “experiential reality.” For the first time in history people are spending more hours of their day immersed in “Fiction” (defined in this context as media, especially observable media – television, movies, the  Internet, social media, smart phones, ubiquitous advertising, even the news) rather than living “in the moment” (i.e. engaged directly with others or the environment). This is a fundamental change in how humans have lived for all of history. And living this highly mediated life, which for many of us means being immersed in Fiction for the majority of our waking hours, inevitably alters the way one perceives oneself and reality itself.

This vast exposure to Fiction on a daily basis trains our minds to be observers, rather than participants, ultimately leading to increased self-consciousness as we view our own lives from afar, as Fiction. As technological platforms continue to evolve, and media becomes even more present in our lives, the effects of Fiction Depersonalization Syndrome will continue to amplify.

Our minds work differently when we are observing media, even interactive media like the web, than when we are engaged directly with each other or our environment. We know that the mind forms pathways when you think repetitively in certain ways – a depressed person “stuck in a rut” for example. The same holds true for perceptual states. After so much time spent as an observer, synaptic patterns form in the brain, likely rendering the mind unable to easily shift back from this observational state to an experiential state. Our modern mediascape forces upon us an ever-increasing degree of self-awareness, with depersonalization as the dissociative endpoint of this larger phenomenon.

Dwight Hunter (@Mister_Fedora), “Why is Deception Utilized in Online Dating Profiles?”

The soaring popularity of online dating has drawn many hopeful singles to websites that advertise their ability to “match” you with compatible mates. Yet, despite establishing rapport by communicating prior to face-to-face meetings, the majority of potential couples are still met with the challenge of overcoming modest forms of deception. What I have done is synthesize three factors, from existing research, which act cooperatively to aid in explaining most sources of deception in online dating profiles. I conclude that by addressing the circumvention of search parameters, a presentation of the ideal-self image, and the surfacing of a sense of competition amongst users that an understanding of the multifaceted reasoning behind many common forms of both perceived and actual deception contained in dating profiles can be achieved.

The first step of this process is recognizing that because online dating services use searchable attributes like age, location, body type, and other general traits of users as ways to filter results, users face the daunting task of predicting experiential outcomes, sometimes referred to as “magic.” Online daters try to circumvent these rigid parameters in order to not be “filtered out” by potential partners without fair chance. Meanwhile, adding to the complexity of this problem, due to both a sense of competition and the portrayal of an ideal-self image, users often create profiles that contain stretched truths or white lies. They struggle with the desire to be sought after by potential partners while trying to be honest. The realization that they must overcome any form of deception for ongoing face-to-face meetings moderates the extent to which users stretch truths or lie blatantly in their profiles.

My heuristic categories provide an opportunity to think theoretically about the root causes of deception in online dating profiles. While interacting face-to-face offers the ability to negotiate identity presentation, this is not possible online due to the static nature of a text based profile. The online dater must anticipate being compared to an indefinite number of rivals while being faced with the difficult task of trying to identify the measures by which these comparisons will take place. When crafting their profiles, users can only guess as to what will create a favorable impression by an unknown other. Consequently, online daters may be entering a process of constant identity negotiation and revision via the profile until reaching a sense of perceived success by attaining their relationship goals.

Jorge Ballinas, “Facebook Negotiation”

Using Robert J. Lifton’s “The Protean Self”, Erving Goffman’s “Frame Analysis”, and Jean Baudrillard’s “Hyperreality” this paper begins to explore the current role that Facebook plays in the lives of 15-18 year olds in the United States when it comes to friendship negotiation.  This matter is important given the pervasiveness of Facebook in general and the amount of changes that this age group faces.  Perhaps we as a society can start looking at the potential implications of Facebook on friendship.  Lifton (1993) feels that individuals have developed what he calls a “protean self” in order to mediate the flux of seemingly unending historical changes as well as the uncertainties of our social existence.  The “protean self” is a balancing act between a responsive shape-shifting and the striving toward authenticity and “a form-seeking assertion of self”. Changes in the last eleven years include: the terrorist attacks of September the 11th, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the (global) financial meltdown.  These are only some of the changes that 15-18 year olds have faced.  Life then can become a “struggle for larger human connectedness, for ways of symbolizing immortality in the form of attachments that transcend one’s limited life span.” (Lifton, 1993).  Connecting with others is key for all people.  Perinbanayagam (2000) believes that we need to interact with others in order to exist, because it is others that can name, address, and describe us first.  Young people can seek this connection through Facebook by “adding friends.”

In reality, what constitutes any friendship?  In everyday settings a friendship is a relationship that involves reciprocal feelings of either love or admiration, although definitions depend on the community in which it is being used (boyd, 2006).  It is complicated on Facebook because unlike in offline settings, in SNS settings there is no concrete way to distinguish between the different types of relationships that an individual might have, i.e siblings, lovers, schoolmates, and strangers, all of these people are “friends” on SNS (boyd, 2006).  Sundén (2003) tells us that the notion of “friendship” on SNS is fragmentary at best, there is no structure to it, as evidenced by all the different reasons possible for “friending” others.  She echoes Goffman (1974) in that “friendship” on SNS is framed in such a way as to give structure to all the different relationships (strong ties, casual acquaintances, strangers, and fake profiles) that users have with others.  These relationships could not be justifiable unless we called these people “friends”.

Is Facebook a hyperreality?  On the one hand we have “friend” which connotes so many different types of relationships with people offline that it is hard to keep track of which Facebook “friends” are actual friends offline.  In this sense when “friend” (as a sign) is used to designate an offline relationship with weak ties, casual acquaintances, or strangers (other signs) the fragmentary “friend” is used to describe already hard to define relationships.  Facebook itself is website on the internet.  No one knows exactly where Facebook is physically located, yet everyone knows the web location Facebook.com.  The context of the internet itself can be considered a hyperreal world where everything is based software language that is not recognizable by the majority of people.  On top of that the internet, in one way or another, is used to represent things that are part of our “real world” and that are put out there somewhere in cyberspace.

Whatever role Facebook does play in the lives of 15-18 year olds this paper has only began that journey.  I hope to continue this exploration and welcome the help of others.

Jenny Davis (@Jup83),  “Beyond the Popularity Contest: Constructions of Exclusivity on Facebook”

The meanings of friendship and popularity are quickly shifting in the present era of pervasive social media. In an older yet influential article, Donath and boyd (2004) note that those with very large networks on “Friendster” were often referred to using the language of prostitution—being called (and calling themselves) “Friendster whores.” This sentiment seems to have translated to Facebook—today’s predominant social media outlet.

Facebook is a nonomous environment. Not only is it expected that profiles represent an actual bodied being, but Facebook (attempts to) require that members use their real names when creating profiles. Facebook then provides a search function, through which members can quite easily find one another.  Once found, there is a norm on Facebook of accepting friend requests. It is therefore relatively easy to see how a sizeable network can be acquired.  Popularity then, is somewhat simple to display. Less simple, is the limitation of network size.

Theoretically, the desire to limit network size can be understood via Pierre Bourdieu. In his famous work La Distinction, Bourdieu shows that prestige is acquired by those who can separate themselves from the masses. Today, the masses are connected through social media—and connected in public ways. To limit access to one’s friendship, and the associated knowledge about one’s life, is a means by which distinction can be regained.

Based on the literature, and my own ongoing qualitative study, I note three interrelated ways in which social actors limit both network size, and access to the self on Facebook: 1) (public) friend purges; 2) incorrectly spelled usernames and “Fakebooks;” 3) sophisticated use of privacy settings.

A friend purge refers to the practice of going through one’s own network and “de-friending” those with whom the actor no longer wishes to associate. By announcing the purge publicly (as is often done via status update), the actor communicates her high standards—and their criteria—to those who remain.

In a more proactive vein, is the growing trend among Facebook users to spell their names phonetically. My name (Jenny Davis) might, for example, be spelled Jeknee Dave-iss. The purpose of this is to make the user more difficult to find using the “search” function. Similarly, some Facebook users have multiple profiles—one with their real name, and one with a non-searchable name (like Jeknee Dave-iss). The real-name profile is used as a filter, and the profile creator can selectively invite people to join hir Fakebook. Such an invitation is analogous to a backstage pass—everyone can see the show (real-name Facebook page), but only a select few get to see the person behind the show (Fakebook page).

Finally, in cases where social norms of politeness require that we accept certain friends, and do not de- friend them (e.g. parents, colleagues) privacy settings are utilized as a means of re-building network walls. Differential access to the profile is granted on an individual basis. In this way, Facebook users can present an intimate portrait of the self, to an intimate network, within a space that is shared by a diverse (and less intimate) group of others.

In sum, the architecture of Facebook facilitates a connection of the masses. I have discussed some strategies through which this mass connection can be tempered. A larger point is that Facebook users are able to maintain exclusivity within an architecture that promotes connectedness. This illustrates the agency of technology users. Certainly, we are constrained by the media through which we interact. We are not, however, fully controlled by it.

A wide range of activities from playing online games like Farmville or World of Warcraft to using social-networking sites like Facebook or Twitter are being described as either “playbor” or “weisure.”  I’ve recently been reviewing the literature surrounding playbor and weisure and have realized that they are too often conflated. I’d like to take a moment to offer my working definition of these two terms in hopes of encouraging greater conceptual clarity in future discussions.

Both terms are portmanteaux. “Playbor” combines “play” and “labor.” “Weisure” combines “work” and “leisure.” In this case, work and labor are synonymous. I apply the standard Marxian definition to both work and labor, understanding them to describe human activity that produces value. What distinguishes playbor and weisure from one another is their respective associations with play and leisure, because – despite the ubiquity of conceptual slippages around these terms – play and leisure are not equivocal.

Play – Johan Huizinga‘s Homo Ludens (1938) is the most widely-cited work on the concept of play.  Huizinga believes that play is a pre-social phenomenon observable throughout the animal kingdom.  It is separate from the rules, values, and needs of ordinary life, and it is an activity with its own intrinsic rewards.  Importantly, play is not supposed to result in material gain or accumulation.

Leisure – Leisure is a much broader concept than play.  It encompasses all self-directed (i.e., non-alienated) human activity.  Put plainly, it is the time that we spend “off-the-clock.”

It follows from these definitions that play is wholly subsumed under leisure.  The (traditional) relations between our terms is captured in the above diagram.  Note that certain leisure activities (e.g., hunting, fishing, crafts, etc.) have always been potential sources of value, and thus, are forms of weisure.  Play, on the other hand, has traditionally been conceived of as completely separate from labor, so that playbor is both a more novel and a more problematic concept.

Unfortunately, few theorists have even acknowledged the contradiction at the heart of the playbor concept (i.e., the fact that play and labor are supposed to be mutually exclusive).  Even Julian Kücklich (2009, iDC Digest, Vol 54, Issue 72), who coined the term, glosses over the difference between play and leisure and largely fails to fully resolve the contradiction that is internal to playbor.

If we assume that play is distinct from “ordinary life” (Huizinga), and that it constitutes an “occasion of pure waste” (Caillois), then playbour is the re-entry of ordinary life into play, with a concomitant valorization of play activities. Insofar as life (bios) is always productive, and be it only in the sense that it produces waste, the extraction of value from play can be seen as a form of waste management; and insofar as play can be seen as a waste of time, the logic of playbour demands that time be wasted efficiently. In this sense we could also call playbour the Taylorization of leisure. Like other forms of affective or immaterial labour, playbour is not productive in the sense of resulting in a product, but it is the process itself that generates value. The means of production are the players themselves, but insofar as they only exist within play environments by virtue of their representations, and their representations are usually owned by the providers of these environments, the players cannot be said to be fully in control of these means. Playbour is suffused with an ideology of play, which effectively masks labour as play, and disguises the process of self-expropriation as self-expression. However, exploitation and empowerment, subjectification and objectification, wastefulness and efficiency coexist in the ambiguous “third space” of playbour, where these binary oppositions break down, and thus open up new possibilities of intersubjectification.

For Kücklich (and others) playbor is made possible by the emergence of a new sort of ideology whereby we dupe ourselves into believing work is play.  From this perspective, playbor is nothing more than “false consciousness.”  Materially speaking, playbor is still work.  In fact, his paradigmatic example, “modding,” is pretty clearly just work done as precondition to new forms of play (rather than the implosion of work and play into one activity).

I find Kücklich’s description of playbor unsatisfying.  The reason playbor should be of interest to us is the fact that the Internet has the unique ability to derive value from actual play, not just from pseudo-play.  Play itself now occurs in a context unimaginable to Huizinga.  Our everyday lives are now so integrated into the circuits of economic exchange that no activity can any longer evade exploitation.  However, we can adapt Huizinga’s insights to recognize that play is most effectively integrated into the economy when the players are unaware that they are creating value – when they are producing “ambiently.”  Farmville players, for example, are, indisputably, playing a game from snurra för att vinna; they just also happen to be exposing themselves, and luring others, to advertising, in the process.

To be clear: most of what we do on the Internet cannot be classified as a playbor; rather, it is more accurately described as weisure (if not work).  What makes playbor important is that play is the form of leisure that we would least expect to produce value.  The fact that playbor exists demonstrates the radically transformative nature of the Internet as well as the intensity with which weisure now defines our lives.

Last week, fellow editor Nathan Jurgenson made a post entitled “Digital Dualism versus Augmented Reality” with a call for more concept work surrounding this topic.  I hope to make a contribution to that effort by discussion three competing theoretical paradigms of Internet research.  These three distinct perspectives perceive the Internet as either virtual reality, mediated reality, or augmented reality.  I argue (in the spirit of Saussure) that these three perspectives are only fully comprehensible defined in relation to one another.

Let’s start with the definition of “augmented reality” found in Wikipedia, society’s great font of prosumptive wisdom:

Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or a [sic… I fixed it] indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input, such as sound or graphics. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than augmented) by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality. By contrast, virtual reality replaces the real-world with a simulated one.

This is an unsatisfying definition.  While it does contrast augment reality and mediated reality to virtual reality (mediated and augmented reality describe relationships between the online and offline worlds, while virtual reality describes their separation), it (self-admittedly) fails to distinguish between mediated and augmented reality.  As presented in this definition, mediated and augmented reality are basically synonyms.

The failure to distinguish augmented and mediated reality betrays a widely held assumption that causality between the online and offline worlds is uni-directional; that is, it only considers how the material is altered by the digital.  However, augmented reality is bigger than just holding a smartphone screen in front of your face to see information superimposed on the landscape in front of you.  Using this kind of program as the paradigmatic example of augmented reality obscures the recursivity between the online and offline world.  Almost every aspect of online networks and their content are determined by the same social structures (e.g., race, class, gender, etc.)  that have long determined offline networks and their content.  Augmented reality does not just alter our social and material reality, it also reproduces and reifies it. (Bonnie Stewart, recently, made some comments to this effect).

What distinguishes a mediated-reality perspective from an augmented-reality perspective is, precisely, that it fails to capture the recursivity of  the online and offline.  In fact, it generally examines the way in which the online alters the offline at the expense of recognizing the ways in which the offline has always been reproduced through the online.  For this reason, the mediated-reality perspective distorts the social world.  It tends to reinforce digital dualism even as it attacks it, by assuming that that online networks and their content emerged ex nihlio.  Thus, I generally view “mediated reality” as a pejorative descriptor.  Nevertheless, mediate reality was the predominant ideology informing Internet research in the 2000s.

If mediated-reality is problematic, virtual reality is more problematic.  Not only does virtual reality assume that the origins of the online world are independent of the offline world, it also assume that the online world has no bearing on the offline world – the online is assumed to be completely isolated from and to actually “displace” the offline world.  The concept of virtual reality is digital dualism par excellance.  Early (1990s) Internet literature is widely characterized by the virtual reality perspective of the Internet.  For this reason, it was filled with skepticism and concern that our healthy social interaction was giving way to unhealthy simulated social interaction.  Despite the fact that a number of studies (e.g., Wellman, 2001) that demonstrate the coextensive nature of online and offline social interaction, many theorists discussing social media tend to continue reify this supposed dichotomy.

In the tradition of much post-Modern theorizing, “augmented reality” offers a new conceptual paradigm, seeking to implode/queer/do category work on the real/virtual dichotomy and make room for a more flexible understanding of social media that allows for recursivity between these two concepts.  A person embedded in augmented reality is a cyborg in the Harawaysian sense.  For this reason, the editors of this blog have proposed – somewhat tongue-in-cheek – that our research is best understood as “cyborgology.”  In augmented reality, the culture is hyper-literally super-imposed on the material.  Our bodies and all other objects in the world become canvases for the digital and its rapid circulation of signs and symbols.  In Bauman’s term, everything becomes a conduit of Liquid (post-)Modernity.  However, the symbolic order expressed through the digital does not emerge out of nothing; it is a reproduction or extension of what has always existed.  The digital and material are always in circulation and neither can be abstracted from the new order of social relations.  That is to say, society is neither online or offline; it is augmented.  Thus, augmented reality and the cyborgs who populate it are now the proper objects of sociological inquiry.

The protests in Egypt have been front and center in the American media over the previous two weeks.  We were greeted with daily updates about former President Mubarak’s grasp on power, and, ultimately, his resignation.  Buried in all the rapidly unfolding events were numerous stories about social media and its role in the revolution.  I think it may be useful to aggregate all these stories as we begin to analyze how important social media was (if at all) to the revolution – and, also, whether the revolution has significant implications for social media.

As a prelude to the unrest in Egypt (and Tunisia) several cables conveying communications between US diplomats and the State Department were leaked to Wikileaks.  The connection between these leaks and the protests in Tunisia was covered in the Guardian and the Village Voice.  Journalists, ever eager for a sexy headline, quickly labeled Tunisia “The First Wikileaks Revolution.”  The cables also brought global attention to “routine and pervasive” police brutality under the Mubarak regime, giving increased legitimacy to dissident groups.

After Tunisia’s President Ben Ali fell, unrest quickly spread to Egypt.  Largely unprepared to cover the event, the Western media was forced to rely on Twitter feeds (as well as Al Jazeera) as a primary source for reporting.  (For an excellent analysis of the most watched Twitter feeds see Zeynep Tufekci’s “Can ‘Leaderless Revolutions’ Stay Leaderless: Preferential Attachment, Iron Laws and Networks.”)

Social media sites like Twitter in Facebook became the primary tools employed by protest organizers.  Of particular significance, is a Facebook page called “We Are All Khaled Said” (named for the young 28-year-old techie and businessman, who in 2010, was dragged out of an Internet cafe and murdered by Egyptian police), which we now know was started by Wael Ghonim, a Google executive and “geek-activist.”  Ghonim was arrested and detained for 12 days during the protests but was eventually released.  He is rapidly emerging as a leader in the new Egyptian political environment.  Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, publicly stated that the company is “very proud” of Ghonim.  The New York Times also reported:

In an interview with CBS News after his release last week, he said he had not discussed his participation in the protests with Google in advance and would be honored to return to the company “if I’m not fired.”That prompted a message from the company’s main Twitter account that read: “We’re incredibly proud of you, @Ghonim, & of course will welcome you back when you’re ready.”

Egypt’s Internet has long been censored, though workarounds were quite pervasive.  For a period during the protests, however, the Egyptian government shut the Internet down altogether, severing the Egyptian people’s main line of communication with the outside world.  A graphic circulated by Arbor Network illustrates the drop off in Internet traffic. The shutdown in Egypt highlighted the tenuous nature of the politics and infrastructure of the Internet in many authoritarian countries.  When Egypt’s Internet was disconnected from the outside world, it was revealed that the internal Internet was hardly able to function because sites rely so heavily on information from outside servers.  Moreover, the Mubarak government proved that was easy to force Internet service providers into compliance, by threatening to that measures that would require costly repairs.

Shortly after the Internet shutdown, Google and Twitter made news when they teamed up to offer a service that allowed individuals to tweet by leaving voice messages on their cell phones.  The messages were translated into text and posted with the #Egypt hashtag.  Google acknowledged that this is was an overtly political act on its official blog, saying:

Like many people we’ve been glued to the news unfolding in Egypt and thinking of what we could do to help people on the ground. Over the weekend we came up with the idea of a speak-to-tweet service—the ability for anyone to tweet using just a voice connection.

In contrast to Google and Twitter, Facebook executives largely remained silent about their position on the protests, despite their “starring role.”  Facebook, purportedly, seeks to avoid the appearance of taking sides, and thus, possibly prompting other authoritarian regimes to block their site.  Ethan Zuckerman, of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, explained:

It might be tougher for Facebook than anyone else. Facebook has been ambivalent about the use of their platform by activists

And, in fact, Facebook has been an equal opportunity host for pro- and anti-Mubarak demonstrators alike.  Other industry leaders are less shy about celebrating Facebook’s significance for democratic movements.  Google’s Eric Schmidt said collaboration tools like Facebook “change the power dynamic between governments and citizens in some very interesting and unpredictable ways.”

What all these events have highlighted is that the very existence of  social media is a political act.  As much as such companies might prefer to remain neutral to avoid alienating their potential clientele, their every decision (or non-decision) has potential political consequences.  Given that the very existence of such companies depends on the free flow of information, the goals of these companies and the goals of democratic movements are often aligned.

Angry Birds, Apple’s best-selling iPhone app with over 50 million downloads, gets physical.  Mattel has purchased the rights to convert the video game into a physical board game, demonstrating the increasing blurriness between Internet culture and American culture writ large.

This event offers an opportunity to further elaborate the meaning of the term “augmented reality.”  On this blog we have regularly defined augmented reality as blurring/collapse/implosion of the material and the digital worlds.  Mattel’s licensing of Angry Birds for a board game raises and interesting question, because it does not so much represent a collapse in the distinction between digital and physical; instead, it is more a case of copying or mimicking the digital in the realm of the physical.  This can hardly be said to be different than Second Life simulating (well, at least, almost simulating) the laws of physics that exist in first life.

Because the Angry Birds board game is entirely separate from its online incarnation, it serves more to reinforce the illusory dichotomy between the digital and the material more than it serves to dispel it – quite the opposite of augmented reality.  Mattel has missed an opportunity here to make a truly 21st Century augmented reality by linking the board game to the app; instead, all they have produced is very old game masquerading as something novel.

Pew released some new data on music streaming and downloads.  I compiled a new chart illustrating the findings. Only one-third of Internet users in America have purchased music through the Web.  This leaves us with the question: Are the majority of Internet users pirating music or using advertisement-based services like Pandora, Last.fm, or Grooveshark?  Share your thoughts in the comments section.

The debate over the extent to which the design and infrastructure of the Web privileges certain demographic groups is not new, but, nevertheless, continues to be important.  Perhaps, most attention has been given to the way traditional gender hierarchies are reproduced by the masculine infrastructure of the Web.  Cyborgology editor Nathan Jurgenson, for example, has previously covered the Wikipedia’s bias toward masculine language.  Saskia Sassen warns “it may be naïve to overestimate the emancipatory power of cyberspace in terms of its capacity to neutralize gender distinctions.”

In an NPR interview this week, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales addressed the masculine bias of Wikipedia:

“The average age [of Wikipedia users] is around 26,” Wales says. “We’re about 85 percent male, which is something we’d like to change in the future. We think that’s because of our tech-geek roots.”

While the organization’s acknowledgment that the gender disparity on Wikipedia is promising, Wales seems to address the need for making the site more inclusive to women only from a marketing perspective.  Sociologically speaking, there is a far more important reason to attract women to Wikipedia.  Feminist sociologists have long argued the the types of knowledges that men and women produce are fundamentally different (in no small part due to their distinct social experiences).   As Wikipedia is increasingly accepted as the primary source of collected human wisdom, it is important to ask whose voices are being left out, and as such, what ways of thinking are absent in the conversation.  For Wikipedia, design and accessibility are not merely questions of customer service, but, in fact, have profound epistemological implications.

Helvetica, the 2009 documentary about the meteoric rise of a Modern minimalist typeface, chronicles the recent history of design theory and describes a continuing clash between hyper-functional Modern design and expressive post-Modern (“grunge”) design.  Interestingly, the design trends that characterize the field of typeface design seem to directly parallel the history of Web design.

Today, we take for granted the simple, sleek minimalism that has come to define the Web.  It is evidenced in the two-tone, single-logo body of the iPad; the bold, spare, and instantly recognizable typeface of the Facebook “f” logo; or the isomorphic convergence of browsers toward an uncluttered and relatively standardized interface.  Of course, various products have strayed from Silicon Valley’s prevailing design standard of Modernist minimalism, but the dominance of this design aesthetic is only further revealed by the ridicule that these companies and products receive.

The dominance of Modernist minimalism on the Web was not always a given.  For example, even at its peak popularity, Myspace afforded users a wide range of customizable with respect to this individual profiles.  In fact, profiles on Myspace continue to vary so widely that there is hardly any coherence to the site as a whole.  But, users seem to enjoy the freedom to customize their own profiles.  Beyond the content, the design itself becomes a medium of self-expression.  If you are an outward and expressive person, be sure to have music blaring when a visitor lands on the page.  If you are the dark and brooding type, exhibit this by selecting font and background colors from the bruise palate.  These observations, no doubt, echo the wisdom of Marshall McLuhan, who famously told us that “the medium is the message.”

Of course, the connection between style and personal expression is, by no means, a new phenomenon of the Internet age.  The Internet, particularly social media, has merely provided a new set of tools.  Yet, among these tools, there exists a tension between utility and expression.  Though they love to make stylistic decision regarding their profiles, MySpace users also regularly complain that information is difficult to locate in other users’ profiles that are similarly awash in a sea of customization.  Facebook’s minimalism, on the other hand, makes it a far more accessible and efficient site, but at the cost of limiting stylistic expression.

Of course, the utility-expression dichotomy may be overly simplistic.  This is precisely the argument made by a neo-Modernist designer in the second clip.  He offers a third way – what we might be call “expressive minimalism.”  This concept would allows to argue, for example, that contemporary web design is both more expressive and more minimalistic than, say, the average site in the 1990s.  That sounds about right.

The Helvetica documentary illustrates that design choices have social, cultural, and individual significance.  The importance of design only grows greater as the number of such choices multiplies with the growth of the Web and as various aspects of the Web become more deeply integrated into our lives.

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Christina Campbell wrote an interesting piece for change.org promoting a slacktivism campaign that encourages Facebook to broaden the way it defines relationships and to give users the option of a write-in box to describe their own relationships.  She provides several examples of how the rationalization of our lives for marketing purposes via the online profile ultimately serves to privilege some lifestyles while marginalizing others.