commentary

Okay, so let’s get it out front that we all have a lot of feelings about stuff.

Proceeding from there.

Nathan Jurgenson and David Banks have already writted excellent responses to Nicholas Carr’s very thorough and interesting critique of Cyborgology’s own criticisms of the concept of digital dualism – and all are well worth reading (there are additional links to more great responses here as well). What I want to offer here is my own take on a couple of the criticisms Carr offers, as well as an apparently-needed clarification to some of what I’ve said in the past. And, again, what it really comes down to for me is feelings.

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Apologies for the typos and the general lack of editing of this piece, I’m hurriedly tapping this out right before putting on the Theorizing the Web conference in a couple of hours.

Nicholas Carr chose a great lead photo for his post yesterday critiquing the anti-digital-dualism argument put forth by myself and others on this blog. The image of a remote landscape evokes “wilderness”; well, it doesn’t “evoke”, it literally says “wilderness” right on it and the filename was “wilderness.jpg”. I think this image might be a fun way to illustrate one very fundamental disagreement Carr and I have. But before we can get there, I should spend some time replying to the various points in his post. Since Carr’s rebuttal to the digital dualism argument gets the digital dualism argument I have made wrong in some very fundamental ways, I’ll have to spend much of this post simply clarifying that; which is fine, reiterating things is a useful task. Though, what’s more fun than restating what’s already been said is jumping off into new directions, and hopefully we can do a little of that here, too, finishing with that lead photo.  more...

This post expounds on just one section of Liquid Surveillance and should not be considered a proper “review” as such, though I have completed a full review for a journal [read it here]. Further, one of the co-authors of this book, David Lyon, is giving the keynote to the Theorizing the Web conference this Saturday in New York City [more info].

In Liquid Surveillance, the theorist of liquidity, Zygmunt Bauman, and the perhaps the preeminent theorist of surveillance, David Lyon, apply their unique perspectives to social media. I’ve already written a general review of the entire book, submitted to a journal; here, I’m expanding on one specific section of the book that was too much for the general review and deserves its own treatment. In any case, this post has more of my own ideas than would be appropriate for a journal review.
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The way fiction deals with technology – the kinds of technology it tackles and how, and whether it actually should, directly – seems to still be a pretty thorny issue for a lot of folks. Or at least for some folks. Usually in conjunction with this is some variety of handwringing over what technology has Done To Reading, or Done To The Novel, often with the implication that no one reads anymore because ebooks don’t count as reading and also everyone is too stupid and/or distracted to read anyway.

This summary isn’t actually all that hyperbolic. Hang around a bunch of writers for long enough and you’ll probably hear some version of it.

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In October, Facebook began offering a paid promotion option to its users. This gave users the opportunity to pay money for their pictures and status updates to gain greater visibility. Now, Facebook expands this option further by offering the opportunity for users to pay to promote their Friend’s posts.

Fist, this reminds us that Facebook is a for-profit company, currently struggling to project an external image of profitability. The introduction of pay-to-use features, including promoted posts and “Facebook gifts” has been less than lucrative for the company. *True confession: I don’t even know how to give someone a Facebook Gift, nor am I inclined to figure it out.*  Facebook is supposed to be free, and while users continue to pay in abstract ways with their prosumptive activities in general, and their personal data in particular, they do not seem keen to pay in the direct, credit card-with-expiration-date-and-3-digit-security-code, manner.

Using the Power of Sociology, however, I predict that this may change with the introduction of the new pay-to-promote feature for Friend’s posts. I say this because the new feature rectifies a particular problematic niche that continues to trouble social media users on a social-psychological level. To talk about the function of the new feature, I must begin with two competing presentational tensions within the social media landscape: The attention economy, and visible identity work. more...

This is just an off-the-cuff post as I do some weekend reading, namely David Brin’s The Transparent Society (1998). I’m curious about the common grand narrative that society has become more transparent and thus will continue to be more so, ultimately creating the state of full transparency, full surveillance, where everything is seen, recorded, and known. I’ve critiqued this line of thought before, as the issue is common in writing about surveillance or privacy, from silly op-eds to pieces by serious scholars like Zygmunt Bauman.

Brin begins his book by asking the reader to look 10-20 years in the future, which from 1998 means today. Brin claims in the world of the future-for-him / now-for-us there will be no street crime because surveillance cameras peer down from “every lamppost, every rooftop and street sign” which are “observing everything in open view” (4). more...