{"id":4019,"date":"2012-02-14T16:28:56","date_gmt":"2012-02-14T21:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/?p=4019"},"modified":"2012-02-14T16:28:56","modified_gmt":"2012-02-14T21:28:56","slug":"searching-for-the-cyberflaneur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/2012\/02\/14\/searching-for-the-cyberflaneur\/","title":{"rendered":"Searching for the Cyberflaneur"},"content":{"rendered":"

I encourage you all to read Evegny Morozov’s brilliant article in the New York Times Sunday Review<\/a>. \u00a0In it, he laments the loss of the cyberflaneur,\u00a0<\/em>a brilliant term for one who “strolls” through cyberspace the way a 19th century\u00a0flaneur <\/em>would:<\/em><\/p>\n

leisurely stroll through its (Paris’) streets and especially its arcades \u2014 those stylish, lively and bustling rows of shops covered by glass roofs \u2014 to cultivate what Honor\u00e9 de Balzac called \u201cthe gastronomy of the eye.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The changes to the Web in the last decade have made “strolling” obsolete. To put it in more Weberian terms, the Web has been rationalized<\/a><\/em>. \u00a0Here’s is a particularly thoughtful passage:<\/p>\n

Transcending its original playful identity, it\u2019s no longer a place for strolling \u2014 it\u2019s a place for getting things done. Hardly anyone \u201csurfs\u201d the Web anymore. The popularity of the \u201capp paradigm,\u201d whereby dedicated mobile and tablet applications help us accomplish what we want without ever opening the browser or visiting the rest of the Internet, has made cyberfl\u00e2nerie less likely.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He saves most of his scorn for Facebook.<\/p>\n

Everything that makes cyberfl\u00e2nerie possible \u2014 solitude and individuality, anonymity and opacity, mystery and ambivalence, curiosity and risk-taking \u2014 is under assault by that company. And it\u2019s not just any company: with 845 million active users worldwide, where Facebook goes, arguably, so goes the Internet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A critique I build on in my upcoming book, Facebook Democracy<\/a>. \u00a0In it, I explore the importance of mystery and detachment from the self to democratic civic life. \u00a0I’m particularly struck by this passage in Morozov’s essay:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe art that the fl\u00e2neur masters is that of seeing without being caught looking,\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Applied to politics, this translates to a citizen that observes, listens and reads the cacophony of political voices before they jump in. \u00a0But Facebook culture, I think, makes that role more difficult to put into practice. \u00a0The result is either complete detachment from politics, or a political certainty that equates to having a Jim Rome style “take” of political events. \u00a0Neither seems like a good model for democratic citizenship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I encourage you all to read Evegny Morozov’s brilliant article in the New York Times Sunday Review. \u00a0In it, he laments the loss of the cyberflaneur,\u00a0a brilliant term for one who “strolls” through cyberspace the way a 19th century\u00a0flaneur would: leisurely stroll through its (Paris’) streets and especially its arcades \u2014 those stylish, lively and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12362,12361,942],"class_list":["post-4019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cyberflaneur","tag-evegny-morozov","tag-facebook"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4019"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4020,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4019\/revisions\/4020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}