![\"Bauman\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2017\/01\/Bauman-500x333.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Readers interested in social theory will likely\u00a0have heard the news of\u00a0Zygmunt Bauman’s death earlier this week. Bauman was influential to many of us at Cyborgology. His ideas have been cited in numerous\u00a0posts throughout the past six years, particularly in the early days of the blog, when Nathan Jurgenson and I were studying his work with our advisor George Ritzer. As a small memorial to Bauman, I\u00a0want to take a moment to look back at some of the ways he inspired us.\u00a0(I’ve even included a couple quotes\u00a0from\u00a0Sociology Lens, where Nathan and I\u00a0got our start as bloggers!)<\/p>\n
by Nathan Jurgenson<\/p>\n
Zygmunt Bauman\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0\u201cliquidity\u201d thesis about our late-modern world becoming more fluid seems relevant in light of the \u201ctransumer\u201d and \u201cvirtual commodities\u201d, both having received recent attention…\u00a0\u201cStuff\u201d, for many, is decreasingly allowed to solidify on our shelves and in our attics, instead flowing in a more liquid and nimble sense through consumers\u2019 lives…\u00a0the trend is towards \u201clighter\u201d exchange as opposed to the solid and heavier exchange of physical goods. Microsoft was Bauman\u2019s example of \u201clight capitalism\u201d, producing light products such as software, which is, opposed to heavier items such as automobiles, more changeable and disposable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Weightless Capitalism<\/a><\/h3>\n
by Nathan Jurgenson<\/p>\n
Almost a decade ago, Bauman viewed Microsoft as the paradigmatic example of the lighter capitalism because software was easily changeable and disposable. Today, Web 2.0 marks a further lightening. User-generated content is not largely dictated by corporate structures. Corporations on Web 2.0 do not have to dictate efficiency and worry about waste because Web 2.0 is a digital environment where content and labor is abundant. Thus, corporate entities on Web 2.0 can become more than liquid, they are gaseous; more than light, they are nearly weightless.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Liquid Charity<\/a><\/h3>\n
by PJ Rey<\/p>\n
Bauman famously speaks of \u201cliquid modernity\u201d where traditional social structures are melting away and fading ambiguously into one another.\u00a0 He argues that things which are liquid, flowing, and mobile tend to undo things which are rigid, solid, and stable…\u00a0Mobile communication networks increasingly provide concrete examples supporting Bauman\u2019s theory and Haiti is only the latest instance…\u00a0In the ten days following the earthquake that devastated Haiti\u2019s capital, Americans used text messaging to donate over $30 million…\u00a0The cell phone has made transferring money more immediate, more flexible, and simpler than even the credit card… Within seconds, the transaction is complete and money has flowed from one node in the network to another. The power of such fluid networks is that, with minimal cost in time and money\u00a0(most were $10 contributions)\u00a0to individuals, enormous resources can be mobilized.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Why Journals are the Dinosaurs of Academia<\/a><\/h3>\n
by PJ Rey<\/p>\n
In the age of the printing press, journals were, by far, the most efficient and enduring form of communication.\u00a0 They enabled disciplines to have thoughtful conversations spanning decades and continents… [Today,]\u00a0print media remain firmly entrenched, retaining all their symbolic significance, while lacking any of their earlier practical import… the privileging of the print over the digital, in fact, has the opposite effect than was originally intended.\u00a0 Instead of facilitating the rapid dissemination of ideas, it hinders it. Print is a solid, heavy medium (as Bauman explains); it travels slowly and is expensive to reproduce. Digital information is liquid and light; it travels instantaneously and is free to reproduce.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
WikiLeaks and our Liquid Modernity<\/a><\/h3>\n
by Nathan Jurgenson<\/p>\n
Zygmunt Bauman<\/a>\u00a0has famously conceptualized modern society as increasingly \u201cliquid.\u201d Information, objects, people and even places can more easily\u00a0flow<\/em>\u00a0around time and space. Old \u201csolid\u201d structures are melting away in favor of faster and more nimble fluids…\u00a0WikiLeaks\u00a0<\/a>is a prime example of this…\u00a0digitality and Internet…\u00a0create\u00a0information\u00a0that is more liquid and\u00a0leak-able\u00a0and have also allowed WikiLeaks to become highly liquid itself. It is not just one website, but also flows throughout the web on\u00a0its many \u201cmirror\u201d sites<\/a>. The data is disseminated over peer-to-peer (P2P)\u00a0networks making it truly\u00a0\u201cthe new Napster<\/a>.\u201d And just as shutting down Napster did not end music-sharing, shutting down WikiLeaks will not end the sharing of classified information.<\/p>\n
What are the consequences of this new politics of liquidity? …old, heavy structures need to become more porous else they will be washed away in the wave of liquidity. Assange\u2019s strategy is exactly to make the U.S. government more secretive and therefore less porous. Thus, the government will be less effective at communicating both internally and diplomatically with others \u2013 what Assange calls the \u201csecrecy tax.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
A New Paradigm of Leaking: Anonymous\u2019 \u201cDelicious Data\u201d<\/a><\/h3>\n
by PJ Rey<\/p>\n
Historically, leaks are the product of activism within an institution (e.g.,\u00a0Daniel Ellsberg<\/a>\u2018s famous leak of the\u00a0Pentagon Papers<\/a>). Anonymous is demonstrating, however, that\u00a0in\u00a0the highly liquid world of digital information<\/a>, leaks no longer need to be pushed from within, but can be pulled from without.\u00a0 That is to say, institutional outsiders can target the secret documents of an organization and reveal them to the public…\u00a0 The question raised by Anonymous\u2019 activities is whether\u2014in light of the knowledge that it is more difficult than ever to control the flows of information\u2014institutions will be compelled to change\/reform their behavior.\u00a0 Is enforced transparency an effective remedy to the ills created by institutionally-consolidated power structures?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Egypt\u2019s Liquid Modernity<\/a><\/h3>\n
by Nathan Jurgenson<\/p>\n
“Heavy\u201d\u00a0structures need to become more porous;\u00a0that is, allow for some amount of liquidity in order to withstand the torrent of contemporary fluidity…\u00a0Too solid, the structure of the Egyptian government was even less prepared to withstand the rising tide of a liquid generation.\u00a0Shutting down the Internet did not slow protests, but enflamed them. Unable to bend, the structure was\u00a0largely\u00a0washed away.<\/p>\n
Governments across the globe are being faced with a decision: to further solidify or become more porous. On one hand, a government that cannot provide flowing digital information in today\u2019s liquid world looks immediately repressive. On the other, allowing the free flow of information might foster dissent…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Social Media and Social Movements<\/a><\/h3>\n
by\u00a0Sarah Wanenchak<\/p>\n
The rapid spread of… strategies of protest and dissidence, discourses of political claim-making, ideas regarding what is desirable and how one might get there… is due in large part to the technologies and social networks that enable the rapid spread of everything else…\u00a0the wave of protest spreading through the Middle East is the result.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/h3>\n
The Transparent Society Won\u2019t Happen<\/a><\/h3>\n
by Nathan Jurgenson<\/p>\n
15 years ago, [we] lived in a world where the concern was of being watched with the fear of others seeing us. Now many fear not being seen; the concern now isn\u2019t if people know what I\u2019m doing, but the worry that no one cares. As Bauman states in\u00a0Liquid Surveillance<\/em><\/a>, \u201cthe fear of disclosure has been stifled by the joy of being noticed\u201d (23).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The All-in-One Consumption Tool Kit?<\/a><\/h3>\n
Jenny Davis<\/p>\n
Critical theorists have long argued that we literally consume identity through the things that we buy and the media that we ingest. Indeed, Zygmunt Bauman describes a viscous cycle of consuming and trashing identities in a breathless and fruitless attempt to avoid being left behind. Digital commerce, and mobile-based purchasing in particular, holds the potential to amplify this connection. Not only do we display our identities through the products of our consumption, but announce these purchases, increasingly seamlessly (or \u201cfrictionlessly<\/a>\u201d) to our social networks… Increasingly, our purchases will integrate into the curated content of our\u00a0prosumed profiled selves<\/a>, which act as both projector and mirror, affecting how others see us, how we see ourselves, and how act and interact in light of this projected\/reflected image.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Panopticon For whom?<\/a><\/h3>\n
by Nathan Jurgenson<\/p>\n
The Panopticon wrongly understands everyday people as prisoners with too restricted freedom when it is precisely such freedom that is often leveraged for social control… the Frankfurt School and other critics of the consumer society \u2013 especially\u00a0Bauman\u2019s critique<\/a>\u00a0that also takes the prisoner\u2019s gaze to be more important than the panoptic metaphor allows, himself positing the \u201cSynopticon\u201d that describes social control of the many watching the few cultural gatekeepers; the act of looking can modify behavior as deeply as being seen.\u00a0As such, many have concluded that we should forget the Panopticon as a useful metaphor for understand surveillance in a digital age.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Liquid Surveillance & Social Media: Three Provocations<\/a><\/h3>\n
by Nathan Jurgenson<\/p>\n
In\u00a0Liquid Surveillance<\/i><\/a>, the theorist of liquidity, Zygmunt Bauman, and the perhaps the preeminent theorist of surveillance, David Lyon, apply their unique perspectives to social media.<\/p>\n
Bauman specifically argues that privacy, the foremost invention of modernity, had invaded and conquered public realm, and has now, as a consequence of the Web, begun to fall…\u00a0[He]\u00a0states that \u201cwe see no joy in having secrets\u201d which might be exactly wrong; instead, it might also be the case that as secrets become more scare they simultaneously become more valuable.<\/p>\n
The authors push for a post-panoptic understanding of surveillance that does not forget the Panopticon, just understands it as only\u00a0part<\/i>\u00a0of the overall field…\u00a0if\u00a0the Panopticon was the few watching the many, the guards watching the prisoners, the authors also bring in the Synopticon, where the many watch the few…\u00a0Applied to sites like Facebook, what this discussion begs for is an analysis of how\u00a0the many watch the many<\/em>\u00a0on social media…\u00a0what George Ritzer and I have called \u201comnioptic\u201d… not only an increasingly powerful form of surveillance, but also the most liquid.<\/p>\n
What I call \u201cdigital dualism<\/a>\u201d, indeed, a common starting point for theorists of the digital. Bauman makes this understanding of the Web most clear when he states, \u201cour life (and to a growing degree as we move from older to younger generations) is split between two universes, \u2018online\u2019 and \u2018offline\u2019, and irreparably bicentered.\u201d He states that \u201csocial<\/i>\u00a0life has already turned into an\u00a0electronic<\/i>\u00a0life or\u00a0cyber<\/i>life\u201d (29; emphasis in the original)…\u00a0he assumption made in this volume is that the offline is being traded for the on; meanwhile,\u00a0research<\/a>\u00a0has shown that those using social media more also do more things away from the computer, precisely against the zero-sum assumption.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/h3>\n
<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Readers interested in social theory will likely\u00a0have heard the news of\u00a0Zygmunt Bauman’s death earlier this week. Bauman was influential to many of us at Cyborgology. His ideas have been cited in numerous\u00a0posts throughout the past six years, particularly in the early days of the blog, when Nathan Jurgenson and I were studying his work with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":563,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/563"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22112"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22137,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22112\/revisions\/22137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}