15 thoughts on “Week 13 – The New Politics of Knowledge (T3)”
Chua Xiu Juan
Levy believes that cyber democracy is possible and Web 2.0 will allow the realisation of global democracy through the creation of collective intelligence. The term “e-democracy” shares Levy’s optimism about the Internet as a tool for empowerment for a shift towards a democratic society, E-democracy refers to the empowerment of citizenry through active citizen participation through the use of information and communication technologies, particularly in the political processes. Due to the less governed nature of Web 2.0, there is the belief that it will bring about freedom of speech, greater transparency and democratic participation, reduce civic illiteracy and voter apathy.
Before we can utilise Web 2.0 as a democratic tool for empowerment, it is perhaps necessary to understand the social and political forces behind voter apathy, low political participation, and undemocratic forms of society. These social forces are deeply embedded in other institutions such as religion, law, education which undermines democratic politics. The ideological state apparatus for instance, is an undemocratic form of social tool which serves as a form of social control to transmit the values of the state and to maintain societal order.
Cyber democracy may be a romanticised ideal as Web 2.0, like any other forms of technology, are tools that may be used to achieve possibly contradictory goals by different social actors. It is likely that the contestation between actors towards the utilisation of Web 2.0 will always be in existence. Just as how Assange deployed the Internet for whistleblowing purposes, politicians in China attempt to use it to block information and democratic citizenry discussion.
Bryan Chia Yong Siang
I realised i can’t delete the previous comment so had to repost the blog. Please read this instead. Thank you.
I would like to begin this week’s blog entry with a quote. “The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promote is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s word but the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds” (Carr 2008) is definitely one of the quote which all of us can relate to – where deep reading is a skill which induced upon us through the need to submit our weekly blog post online. That would probably be the main gist of Carr’s article where he writes about his view on the internet and suggests that it would deteriorate the human’s ability to engage in critical thinking when reading from the internet.
The internet provides a concentration of information as suggested in the readings assigned for the week and many has reignite our interest on “Capitalism”. Terms such as “informational capitalism”, “to make money”, and “productivity”, are evident in Levy’s, Keen’s and Carr’s works respectively. Levy has highlighted to us one of the latent goals of the social media – providing extracted information from individuals to advertisers concealed under the manifest function of staying connected with friends. The need to maintain a sense of elitism in the society is propagated in Keen’s reading as he believes it rewards the elites and ensure that talents are not “democratized”, a problem generated by the current state of the internet– the internet allows for mediocre talents to enter the industry to pollute the concentration of talents. In Lovik’s work, he discussed how the internet has created an egalitarian space for everyone who has access to the internet and perhaps strengthening Keen’s perspective on how the internet eliminates the “elitism”. However, I would like to add my view on the egalitarian virtual space created by the internet and the effects it has on the economy.
The virtual space is one which has low barriers to entry into the industry – perhaps only the cost of purchasing a computer and having yourself connected to the internet would be the only cost induced barrier – which most people do not face. Next, information is readily available on the internet and the access is not limited to only a selected group of people. The music industry is an example. Many use the new media platforms such as Youtube on the internet to showcase their talents and such platform has proven to work. An infamous celebrity who brought himself to fame would be Justin Beiber who was already a rising talent on the internet before he was scouted and trained to be a professional. Thus, having a low barriers to entry and with information readily available, it would actually lead to an increase in the pool of talents – it can then be argued in Keysian’s term, a “Perfect Competition” (PC) is established with the help of the internet and having a PC would actually leads to benefits to the economy where the society would benefit from quality talents. No doubt exploitative elements would be injected into at the later stage through music corporations “helping to further fine tune their talents”, the initial stage of the providing an equal platform for rising talents is the bud for the development of future success. Thus I would actually disagree with Keen’s argument on internet being democratizing media but instead, I would be incline to think that it helps to enhance and shape our culture – one which also challenges Lovink’s view on dampening the formation of cultures and sub-cultures.
Bryan Chia Yong Siang
I would like to begin this week’s blog entry with a quote. “The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promote is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s word but the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds” (Carr 2008) is definitely one of the quote which all of us can relate to – where deep reading is a skill which induced upon us through the need to submit our weekly blog post online. That would probably be the main gist of Carr’s article where he writes about his view on the internet and suggests that it would deteriorate the human’s ability to engage in critical thinking when reading from the internet.
The internet provides a concentration of information as suggested in the readings assigned for the week and many has reignite our interest on “Capitalism”. Terms such as “informational capitalism”, “to make money”, and “productivity”, are evident in Levy’s, Keen’s and Carr’s works respectively. Levy has highlighted to us one of the latent goals of the social media – providing extracted information from individuals to advertisers concealed under the manifest function staying connected with friends. The need to maintain a sense of elitism in the society is perpetuated in Keen’s reading as he believes is rewards the elites and ensure that talents are not “democratized” which the current state of the internet is not doing so – the internet allows for mediocre talents to enter the industry to pollute the concentration of talents and “spoil the broth” where talents are not being fully recognised by the society which is mentioned in Lovink’s work. However, I would like to add my view on the egalitarian virtual space created by the internet and the effects it has on the economy.
The virtual space is one which has low barriers to entry into the industry – perhaps only the cost of purchasing a computer and having yourself connected to the internet would be the only cost induced barrier – which most people do not face. Next, information is readily available on the internet and the access is not limited to only a selected group of people. The music industry is an example. Many use the new media platforms such as Youtube on the internet to showcase their talents and such platform has proven to work. An infamous celebrity who brought himself to fame would be Justin Beiber who was already a rising talent on the internet before he was scouted and trained to be a professional. Thus, having a low barriers to entry and with information readily available, it would actually lead to an increase in the pool of talents – it can then be argued in Keysian’s term, a “Perfect Competition” (PC) is established with the help of the internet and having a PC would actually leads to benefits to the economy where the society would benefit from quality talents. No doubt exploitative elements would be injected into at the later stage through music corporations “helping to further fine tune their talents”, the initial stage of the providing an equal platform for rising talents is the bud for the development of future success. Thus I would actually disagree with Keen’s argument on internet being democratizing media but instead, I would be incline to think that it helps to enhance and shape our culture – one which also challenges Lovink’s view on dampening the formation of cultures and sub-cultures.
Edwin Lee Xian Ming
Lovink argues that in today’s world, the virtual space has been made real – being that we are constantly demanded to input more information into social media platforms e.g. twitter, there is little leeway for us to act out roles, instead being forced to be our true, real selves.
In addition, Keen states that the Web 2.0 has radicalized production, since masses are now able to produce content, e.g. photographs via instagram. However, it has also been argued that such a progression has allowed the internet to intrude too much into our private spaces – every minute of life is now becoming accountable, either willingly or unwillingly. Our entire lives are now devoted to the production of value, and the only argument remains as to whether cognitive capitalism (unconscious oppression) can be a better mode than industrial capitalism (conscious oppression).
Elix Lee
For Lovink, he contends that we now have to maintain a kind of space and the virtual has been made to become real. In this sense, we are no longer encouraged to act out certain roles but are instead forced to be our real selves (cf Rheingold: how people do different kinds of identity play). The web is now increasingly demanding as it continues to demands more of us as we continue to share information about our personal lives online on social media platforms like facebook, twitter, instagram and so on. The emergence of the location tagging also allows the whole world (if your account is not private) to know where you are, what you were doing at a particular time, and who you were with. For Lovink, this is a crisis as every minute of life is converted into work.
Tying this with Keen’s writing and notion of personalization, we have now ended up in a place where we only care about self-expression and not others, how we should personalize and portray ourselves to the public instead of thinking about the collective.
Brandon Lye
In this week’s reading, Carr uses Google as his main case in point. I find it ironic that while Google can be said to promote the democracy of information through the ability to search for information, it can be said to do the opposite instead.
Carr uses deep/light reading to show how the proliferation of information leads people to read quickly and also dulls our critical senses. Similarly, while doing a Google search, we often tend to focus on the first few results that turn up. These results are usually from huge corporations’ web pages or may be paid and promoted by Google. Hence I feel that rather than democratization, Google can thus be said to be a tool for the homogenization of culture.
Aloysius Teo
Carr has possibly made a valid point that our increased light reading has made us “stupid”. Suffice to say, with the internet, we do know more – but we lack the depth. We know the point – isn’t the point sometimes all we need? Are we mere decoders and that we are unable to make rich connections? I would beg to differ, the possible lack of depth could actually mean a good thing for we might be less overwhelmed by the information and in reverse take up the actively role of pursuing knowledge. The internet allows for individuals to actively take part in their own learning, searching and googling for information. We are given boundless of opportunities to access various information. Also, reading alone is impossible to reflect an individual’s intelligence, videos provide and engages us with rich information that writing sometimes cannot.
Instead of thinking of us as stupid/unable to pay attention to anything, I would say that we choose what we want to pay attention to & the internet greatly allows for this selectivity to happen
Seow Yi Min Eunice
An alternative example to Carr’s understanding of deep/light reading can be seen in the application called Tumblr. One is able to employ the use of images and quotes to “express” how they truly feel, via clicking the “share” button. Though this may not be directly seen in relation to the issue of deep/light reading, the thought process that is takes place is relatable. By relying on “already-made” gifs/images/quotes to post on one’s own tumblr profile, the accumulation of Informational messages is inherent. However, as Carr suggests, this is different from Intellectual messages, whereby one simulates their thought process, to generate personal thoughts into words, sentences or even a blog-post from oneself. As efficient as tumblr has been, in allowing for the “sharing” of one’s thoughts. What is being called into questioned here, is the ability of the individual in making their own ideas and analogies, and the limitations the Tumblr app has with regards to such process. This can also be possibly seen in relation to Adorno-Horkheimer’s critique of the dumbing of criticality. One is so used to relying on another’s thought expressed via another’s image/quote, that they have in-tuned their perceptions to the masses, and mass-produced information. The individual and his/her capacity to understand the social consequences of this phenomenon, is thus dulled.
Koh Hui Yi
I would like to discuss how Lanier talked about the idea of ‘collective’ in his work, “DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism”. I find that the idea of collective which he conceptualizes is sketching. Lanier postulates that the reason for American Idol voting being more collective than the political election in US is due to the convenience of the technological gadgets whereby users need only to sms in order to vote. At here, Lanier define collective in terms of participatory. However Lanier also raised the notion of collective as being stupid, that simply thinking that collective is good is wrong because it will only lead to dreadful consequences.
“And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force. This is different from representative democracy, or meritocracy. This idea has had dreadful consequences when thrust upon us from the extreme Right or the extreme Left in various historical periods.”
This is an interesting aspect of the collective notion which we usually understand. It brings forward the idea that even within the idea of collective or collective intelligence, there is power embedded in it. Collective in reality does not mean that everyone get to voice their opinion, or get to vote. In fact, people normally get together to groups to voice their opinions and for Internet, individuals can get on to groups that they prefer. But, not all individuals participate. The individuals here only refer to the idea of those that participate. What about those that are not able to participate because of problems of access? Time is also another factor to consider. Those that are able to join in this ‘collective” are those that have the ability to afford the time to discuss and share their opinions online. All these threatens the foundation of collectivism. I feel that while Internet has called for greater participation, achieving new online collectivism now is still not possible from the reality which we see now-both in physical and virtual reality. Hence, within the collective group, power structures exist for certain groups have more power and hence these groups can overshadow other smaller groups.
Melissa Koh
In relation to Carr’s article and deep/light reading, an app recently caught my attention. “Spritz” works by showing you a sentence one word at a time, displaying the words in quick succession. Then, the words speed up, and you’re forced to grasp their meaning much faster. There are settings of 250, 500 or 1000 words per minute. It claims that “The highest setting of 1,000 words per minute would let you read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in just 77 minute.”. The technology behind this is to position the different words around their central letters, aligning them so they’re easier for the eye to digest.
With this app, it increases efficiency, but does it allow for a proper digestion of content?
Lim Zheng Wei
This week’s readings concentrate on how Internet, with its characteristics of easier communication, personalisation and scale, has altered the politics of knowledge. Lanier is against the collective in Digital Maoism as he feels that collective sites like Wikipedia creates a collective chorus rather than individual voices. He feels that us not being able to sift out the writers’ personalities create a transcendental authority of collectivism. However, he makes a distinction between open source software like Linus and meta-aggregation sites. He finds value in open source software as creators who add to the product retain their own personality.
Lanier’s grim view of the collective presently is contrasted by Levy utopian vision of the collective in the future. He feels that it will lead to a form of cyber-democracy, which will pave the way to world peace. World peace is presented as achievable in the future as there is a humanist view of the world such that there is kinship among all humans, rather than within the individual societies of now. This will in turn create information capitalism where ideas and knowledge, rather than products, are produced. There is emphasis on the positives of common ownership and the greater good. Finally, we will move on to the stage of self-actualisation where we seek the greater purpose of ideas and meanings.
The other reading that intrigued me is Carr’s article on whether Google makes us stupid. He highlights the negative of google, especially the habit of light reading we form. However, as Prof Sam mentioned, reading is not indicative of intelligence. Rather, I feel that Google has created more net positives as we are taught how to search for information. This relates to the growing trend of the value of a person being not in their abilities, but rather than ability to learn new abilities: in essence, learning to learn. His article reminds me of previous weeks’ readings where scholars emphasise the negatives of newer media without giving credit to their positives. There seems to be a romanticised view among some scholars where older media is better than newer media, going back to the days when writing was first developed. However, this form of critique is not new, it appears to have been present throughout history – https://xkcd.com/1227/
Kelyn Phua
Levy has a positive view about the collective and the potential for perfect democracy across the globe. He argues that Web 2.0 brings about greater communication and allows for a collective conscience as everyone is ‘in the process of thinking within the same network’. He hopes for a globally democratic future with increased accessibility to information that will ultimately end up in ‘perfect collective human intelligence’. For democracy to be possible, Levy calls for planet-wide legal, judicial and governmental system. However I feel that this is quite impossible and unnecessary. Some countries prefer to limit the accessibility of their content to within state boundaries, while others, like China, try to restrict the web accessibility of their citizens. This will even be dangerous because of the immense power that the governmental body will hold.
Lanier similarly calls for someone to be in charge of the collective. However, he has a rather pessimistic view about the collective. He talks about the ‘hive mind’, the collective intelligence, and how it is for the most part, dumb. I argue that the virtual community in itself is very fragmented and people log on to the Internet for various purposes. The ‘hive mind’ is just a generalization of many smaller collectives. Furthermore, the collective consists of individuals who are often unafraid to voice their own opinions- this an be seen in forums. Just because we read something doesn’t mean we will agree with it. Personally, I feel that those who even bother editing Wikipedia actually have real facts to contribute to a topic that they are probably passionate about. Otherwise, most of us just go there for quick and concise information.
Keen recognizes that Web 2.0 ‘levels the playing field between experts and amatuers’, as everyone is able to be a producer and individual is given the freedom to personalize (searches, blogs, profiles). His notion of individual self-realization contradicts Lanier’s collective intelligence. He argues for an elitist mainstream media and states that there is danger in losing ‘the best’ by giving the means of production to everyone, as products will be similar. For popular music, this is true to a certain extent. Almost anyone can cover or compose a simple four-chord song that sound very similar to just any other song and post in on Youtube, but only few will truly be recognized and stay in the industry based on talent and originality. The ‘best’ will never go away because even today, there is no collective agreement on who is ‘the best’. One’s ‘best’ may be another man’s trash. Therefore I feel that there is always going to be some people who are better than others and talent can never be ‘democratized’.
Tiara Robyn Chew
I enjoyed reading this article not only because it was highly relatable to life in contemporary society today, but also because I was able to draw many parallels between this and previous readings we had done for this course. The first was when Carr mentioned that he now spends “a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the internet”, which reminded me of Lovink who discusses the reorientation of the media, from seeing us as consumers, to placing us as producers because of our constant interaction with it. Next, Carr mentions how with just “a few google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks” he was able to abstract whatever information he needed, which reminded me of Danah Boyd’s architecture of online spaces whose infrastructure enables instant access to extensive information. Carr also talks about the net as the “conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind” which paralleled Horkheimer’s assertion that mass culture is so pervasive that it curbs critical thinking. This was repeated frequently throughout the article, with Maryanne Wolf regarding consumers as “mere decoders of information” and disengaged “ability to interpret text” and that when we go online, “there’s little place for the fuzziness of contemplation”. Lastly, I saw a link between this article and that written by Walter Ong when Carr says that with people relying “on the written word as a substitute for knowledge.. they would cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful”, paralleling Ong who suggests that writing makes us lazy because thoughts become an external resource.
In “Collective Intelligence, a Civilisation: Towards a Method of Positive Interpretation” Pierre Levy expresses a very romantic view of the future, where reality becomes more alive, intelligent, interconnected and essentially free due to the Internet. More than that, he believes that with the Internet and “the cyperspace”, users can form a new collective intelligence, which will leave no room for any other autonomy than the collective itself. Reading this one can feel the overall mood of freedom and democracy that he links to the Internet, which he calls “cyberdemocracy”. Levy believes that with the Internet a new public sphere can evolve, which is above all more rich, open and transparent. Even though, I would call his idea of the Internet very much optimistic, his notion of the “cyberdemocracy”, including the principles that information is free of ownership but must travel freely, reveal to some extend how greatly we have accepted nowadays, that information is not free or at least does not come freely without any consequences, as the cases of NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden and the whole debate about Wikileaks reveal.
Moving to the other readings, one finds that there is a great fear about the development of the relationship of humanity and the Internet in the future. Reading about ideas such as “deep and light reading” by Nicholas Carr in “Is Google Making us Stupid?”, as well as Jaron Lanier´s fear of the online collective in “DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism”, makes me aware of the fallacy to believe that technology is inherently problematic. Lanier, for example, claims that the collective, which is enhanced via the Internet is irrational and impulsive and thus, forms a threat to the individual´s capacity to raise his voice. The individual will be simply undermined. Also, Andrew Keen in “Web 2.0” believes in the seductive power of the Internet, which will root in a personal cult instead of enhancing freedom.
Looking at the greater picture, I believe, there have always been ways for the individual to express themselves, narcissism can be expressed in multiple ways; irrational movements and uprisings mark human development and there has always been a way for individual´s to depart from the mass in one way or the other. The Internet has opened another channel to do so, however, calling technology or in this case the Internet inherently irrational and a tool for the masses to out rule individuality, is too simplistic.
Geert Lovink in “MyBrain.net: The colonization of real−time and other trends in Web 2.0” raises a very interesting point about the necessity of availability and true representation online. Internet presence and being available at all times is taken for granted nowadays. More than that, it is something that we enjoy and take part it, not realizing that it takes away quite a bit of our energy.
Muhammad Faisal Bin Zainal Abiden
This week’s argument over the new politics of knowledge revolves around the collective vs the individual. I believe in the power of the collective to be emancipatory by countering traditional structures of power and alleviating the effects of inequality. However, I agree with Lanier that the collective by itself is unruly and mob-like. Though there can be instances where the collective is a force of good, as seen in WELL in Rheingold’s book, the collective concerned with meaningless matters most of the time.
There examples of this. The top trending twitter topics are usually entertainment related such as De’Generes’ Golden Globes selfie and Bieber’s arrest. Matters that have real consequences mostly appear in the online platforms traditional media: news websites. Topics such as Crimea’s Invasion and US government’s offshore spying are not discussed enough by the mass.
This is more evident in Singapore with STOMP. STOMP could have been the platform for differing voices to be heard, an alternative to the speaker’s corner. However, people are more concerned about who gets the right to sit on the MRT.
Levy believes that cyber democracy is possible and Web 2.0 will allow the realisation of global democracy through the creation of collective intelligence. The term “e-democracy” shares Levy’s optimism about the Internet as a tool for empowerment for a shift towards a democratic society, E-democracy refers to the empowerment of citizenry through active citizen participation through the use of information and communication technologies, particularly in the political processes. Due to the less governed nature of Web 2.0, there is the belief that it will bring about freedom of speech, greater transparency and democratic participation, reduce civic illiteracy and voter apathy.
Before we can utilise Web 2.0 as a democratic tool for empowerment, it is perhaps necessary to understand the social and political forces behind voter apathy, low political participation, and undemocratic forms of society. These social forces are deeply embedded in other institutions such as religion, law, education which undermines democratic politics. The ideological state apparatus for instance, is an undemocratic form of social tool which serves as a form of social control to transmit the values of the state and to maintain societal order.
Cyber democracy may be a romanticised ideal as Web 2.0, like any other forms of technology, are tools that may be used to achieve possibly contradictory goals by different social actors. It is likely that the contestation between actors towards the utilisation of Web 2.0 will always be in existence. Just as how Assange deployed the Internet for whistleblowing purposes, politicians in China attempt to use it to block information and democratic citizenry discussion.
I realised i can’t delete the previous comment so had to repost the blog. Please read this instead. Thank you.
I would like to begin this week’s blog entry with a quote. “The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promote is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s word but the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds” (Carr 2008) is definitely one of the quote which all of us can relate to – where deep reading is a skill which induced upon us through the need to submit our weekly blog post online. That would probably be the main gist of Carr’s article where he writes about his view on the internet and suggests that it would deteriorate the human’s ability to engage in critical thinking when reading from the internet.
The internet provides a concentration of information as suggested in the readings assigned for the week and many has reignite our interest on “Capitalism”. Terms such as “informational capitalism”, “to make money”, and “productivity”, are evident in Levy’s, Keen’s and Carr’s works respectively. Levy has highlighted to us one of the latent goals of the social media – providing extracted information from individuals to advertisers concealed under the manifest function of staying connected with friends. The need to maintain a sense of elitism in the society is propagated in Keen’s reading as he believes it rewards the elites and ensure that talents are not “democratized”, a problem generated by the current state of the internet– the internet allows for mediocre talents to enter the industry to pollute the concentration of talents. In Lovik’s work, he discussed how the internet has created an egalitarian space for everyone who has access to the internet and perhaps strengthening Keen’s perspective on how the internet eliminates the “elitism”. However, I would like to add my view on the egalitarian virtual space created by the internet and the effects it has on the economy.
The virtual space is one which has low barriers to entry into the industry – perhaps only the cost of purchasing a computer and having yourself connected to the internet would be the only cost induced barrier – which most people do not face. Next, information is readily available on the internet and the access is not limited to only a selected group of people. The music industry is an example. Many use the new media platforms such as Youtube on the internet to showcase their talents and such platform has proven to work. An infamous celebrity who brought himself to fame would be Justin Beiber who was already a rising talent on the internet before he was scouted and trained to be a professional. Thus, having a low barriers to entry and with information readily available, it would actually lead to an increase in the pool of talents – it can then be argued in Keysian’s term, a “Perfect Competition” (PC) is established with the help of the internet and having a PC would actually leads to benefits to the economy where the society would benefit from quality talents. No doubt exploitative elements would be injected into at the later stage through music corporations “helping to further fine tune their talents”, the initial stage of the providing an equal platform for rising talents is the bud for the development of future success. Thus I would actually disagree with Keen’s argument on internet being democratizing media but instead, I would be incline to think that it helps to enhance and shape our culture – one which also challenges Lovink’s view on dampening the formation of cultures and sub-cultures.
I would like to begin this week’s blog entry with a quote. “The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promote is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s word but the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds” (Carr 2008) is definitely one of the quote which all of us can relate to – where deep reading is a skill which induced upon us through the need to submit our weekly blog post online. That would probably be the main gist of Carr’s article where he writes about his view on the internet and suggests that it would deteriorate the human’s ability to engage in critical thinking when reading from the internet.
The internet provides a concentration of information as suggested in the readings assigned for the week and many has reignite our interest on “Capitalism”. Terms such as “informational capitalism”, “to make money”, and “productivity”, are evident in Levy’s, Keen’s and Carr’s works respectively. Levy has highlighted to us one of the latent goals of the social media – providing extracted information from individuals to advertisers concealed under the manifest function staying connected with friends. The need to maintain a sense of elitism in the society is perpetuated in Keen’s reading as he believes is rewards the elites and ensure that talents are not “democratized” which the current state of the internet is not doing so – the internet allows for mediocre talents to enter the industry to pollute the concentration of talents and “spoil the broth” where talents are not being fully recognised by the society which is mentioned in Lovink’s work. However, I would like to add my view on the egalitarian virtual space created by the internet and the effects it has on the economy.
The virtual space is one which has low barriers to entry into the industry – perhaps only the cost of purchasing a computer and having yourself connected to the internet would be the only cost induced barrier – which most people do not face. Next, information is readily available on the internet and the access is not limited to only a selected group of people. The music industry is an example. Many use the new media platforms such as Youtube on the internet to showcase their talents and such platform has proven to work. An infamous celebrity who brought himself to fame would be Justin Beiber who was already a rising talent on the internet before he was scouted and trained to be a professional. Thus, having a low barriers to entry and with information readily available, it would actually lead to an increase in the pool of talents – it can then be argued in Keysian’s term, a “Perfect Competition” (PC) is established with the help of the internet and having a PC would actually leads to benefits to the economy where the society would benefit from quality talents. No doubt exploitative elements would be injected into at the later stage through music corporations “helping to further fine tune their talents”, the initial stage of the providing an equal platform for rising talents is the bud for the development of future success. Thus I would actually disagree with Keen’s argument on internet being democratizing media but instead, I would be incline to think that it helps to enhance and shape our culture – one which also challenges Lovink’s view on dampening the formation of cultures and sub-cultures.
Lovink argues that in today’s world, the virtual space has been made real – being that we are constantly demanded to input more information into social media platforms e.g. twitter, there is little leeway for us to act out roles, instead being forced to be our true, real selves.
In addition, Keen states that the Web 2.0 has radicalized production, since masses are now able to produce content, e.g. photographs via instagram. However, it has also been argued that such a progression has allowed the internet to intrude too much into our private spaces – every minute of life is now becoming accountable, either willingly or unwillingly. Our entire lives are now devoted to the production of value, and the only argument remains as to whether cognitive capitalism (unconscious oppression) can be a better mode than industrial capitalism (conscious oppression).
For Lovink, he contends that we now have to maintain a kind of space and the virtual has been made to become real. In this sense, we are no longer encouraged to act out certain roles but are instead forced to be our real selves (cf Rheingold: how people do different kinds of identity play). The web is now increasingly demanding as it continues to demands more of us as we continue to share information about our personal lives online on social media platforms like facebook, twitter, instagram and so on. The emergence of the location tagging also allows the whole world (if your account is not private) to know where you are, what you were doing at a particular time, and who you were with. For Lovink, this is a crisis as every minute of life is converted into work.
Tying this with Keen’s writing and notion of personalization, we have now ended up in a place where we only care about self-expression and not others, how we should personalize and portray ourselves to the public instead of thinking about the collective.
In this week’s reading, Carr uses Google as his main case in point. I find it ironic that while Google can be said to promote the democracy of information through the ability to search for information, it can be said to do the opposite instead.
Carr uses deep/light reading to show how the proliferation of information leads people to read quickly and also dulls our critical senses. Similarly, while doing a Google search, we often tend to focus on the first few results that turn up. These results are usually from huge corporations’ web pages or may be paid and promoted by Google. Hence I feel that rather than democratization, Google can thus be said to be a tool for the homogenization of culture.
Carr has possibly made a valid point that our increased light reading has made us “stupid”. Suffice to say, with the internet, we do know more – but we lack the depth. We know the point – isn’t the point sometimes all we need? Are we mere decoders and that we are unable to make rich connections? I would beg to differ, the possible lack of depth could actually mean a good thing for we might be less overwhelmed by the information and in reverse take up the actively role of pursuing knowledge. The internet allows for individuals to actively take part in their own learning, searching and googling for information. We are given boundless of opportunities to access various information. Also, reading alone is impossible to reflect an individual’s intelligence, videos provide and engages us with rich information that writing sometimes cannot.
Instead of thinking of us as stupid/unable to pay attention to anything, I would say that we choose what we want to pay attention to & the internet greatly allows for this selectivity to happen
An alternative example to Carr’s understanding of deep/light reading can be seen in the application called Tumblr. One is able to employ the use of images and quotes to “express” how they truly feel, via clicking the “share” button. Though this may not be directly seen in relation to the issue of deep/light reading, the thought process that is takes place is relatable. By relying on “already-made” gifs/images/quotes to post on one’s own tumblr profile, the accumulation of Informational messages is inherent. However, as Carr suggests, this is different from Intellectual messages, whereby one simulates their thought process, to generate personal thoughts into words, sentences or even a blog-post from oneself. As efficient as tumblr has been, in allowing for the “sharing” of one’s thoughts. What is being called into questioned here, is the ability of the individual in making their own ideas and analogies, and the limitations the Tumblr app has with regards to such process. This can also be possibly seen in relation to Adorno-Horkheimer’s critique of the dumbing of criticality. One is so used to relying on another’s thought expressed via another’s image/quote, that they have in-tuned their perceptions to the masses, and mass-produced information. The individual and his/her capacity to understand the social consequences of this phenomenon, is thus dulled.
I would like to discuss how Lanier talked about the idea of ‘collective’ in his work, “DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism”. I find that the idea of collective which he conceptualizes is sketching. Lanier postulates that the reason for American Idol voting being more collective than the political election in US is due to the convenience of the technological gadgets whereby users need only to sms in order to vote. At here, Lanier define collective in terms of participatory. However Lanier also raised the notion of collective as being stupid, that simply thinking that collective is good is wrong because it will only lead to dreadful consequences.
“And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force. This is different from representative democracy, or meritocracy. This idea has had dreadful consequences when thrust upon us from the extreme Right or the extreme Left in various historical periods.”
This is an interesting aspect of the collective notion which we usually understand. It brings forward the idea that even within the idea of collective or collective intelligence, there is power embedded in it. Collective in reality does not mean that everyone get to voice their opinion, or get to vote. In fact, people normally get together to groups to voice their opinions and for Internet, individuals can get on to groups that they prefer. But, not all individuals participate. The individuals here only refer to the idea of those that participate. What about those that are not able to participate because of problems of access? Time is also another factor to consider. Those that are able to join in this ‘collective” are those that have the ability to afford the time to discuss and share their opinions online. All these threatens the foundation of collectivism. I feel that while Internet has called for greater participation, achieving new online collectivism now is still not possible from the reality which we see now-both in physical and virtual reality. Hence, within the collective group, power structures exist for certain groups have more power and hence these groups can overshadow other smaller groups.
In relation to Carr’s article and deep/light reading, an app recently caught my attention. “Spritz” works by showing you a sentence one word at a time, displaying the words in quick succession. Then, the words speed up, and you’re forced to grasp their meaning much faster. There are settings of 250, 500 or 1000 words per minute. It claims that “The highest setting of 1,000 words per minute would let you read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in just 77 minute.”. The technology behind this is to position the different words around their central letters, aligning them so they’re easier for the eye to digest.
With this app, it increases efficiency, but does it allow for a proper digestion of content?
This week’s readings concentrate on how Internet, with its characteristics of easier communication, personalisation and scale, has altered the politics of knowledge. Lanier is against the collective in Digital Maoism as he feels that collective sites like Wikipedia creates a collective chorus rather than individual voices. He feels that us not being able to sift out the writers’ personalities create a transcendental authority of collectivism. However, he makes a distinction between open source software like Linus and meta-aggregation sites. He finds value in open source software as creators who add to the product retain their own personality.
Lanier’s grim view of the collective presently is contrasted by Levy utopian vision of the collective in the future. He feels that it will lead to a form of cyber-democracy, which will pave the way to world peace. World peace is presented as achievable in the future as there is a humanist view of the world such that there is kinship among all humans, rather than within the individual societies of now. This will in turn create information capitalism where ideas and knowledge, rather than products, are produced. There is emphasis on the positives of common ownership and the greater good. Finally, we will move on to the stage of self-actualisation where we seek the greater purpose of ideas and meanings.
The other reading that intrigued me is Carr’s article on whether Google makes us stupid. He highlights the negative of google, especially the habit of light reading we form. However, as Prof Sam mentioned, reading is not indicative of intelligence. Rather, I feel that Google has created more net positives as we are taught how to search for information. This relates to the growing trend of the value of a person being not in their abilities, but rather than ability to learn new abilities: in essence, learning to learn. His article reminds me of previous weeks’ readings where scholars emphasise the negatives of newer media without giving credit to their positives. There seems to be a romanticised view among some scholars where older media is better than newer media, going back to the days when writing was first developed. However, this form of critique is not new, it appears to have been present throughout history – https://xkcd.com/1227/
Levy has a positive view about the collective and the potential for perfect democracy across the globe. He argues that Web 2.0 brings about greater communication and allows for a collective conscience as everyone is ‘in the process of thinking within the same network’. He hopes for a globally democratic future with increased accessibility to information that will ultimately end up in ‘perfect collective human intelligence’. For democracy to be possible, Levy calls for planet-wide legal, judicial and governmental system. However I feel that this is quite impossible and unnecessary. Some countries prefer to limit the accessibility of their content to within state boundaries, while others, like China, try to restrict the web accessibility of their citizens. This will even be dangerous because of the immense power that the governmental body will hold.
Lanier similarly calls for someone to be in charge of the collective. However, he has a rather pessimistic view about the collective. He talks about the ‘hive mind’, the collective intelligence, and how it is for the most part, dumb. I argue that the virtual community in itself is very fragmented and people log on to the Internet for various purposes. The ‘hive mind’ is just a generalization of many smaller collectives. Furthermore, the collective consists of individuals who are often unafraid to voice their own opinions- this an be seen in forums. Just because we read something doesn’t mean we will agree with it. Personally, I feel that those who even bother editing Wikipedia actually have real facts to contribute to a topic that they are probably passionate about. Otherwise, most of us just go there for quick and concise information.
Keen recognizes that Web 2.0 ‘levels the playing field between experts and amatuers’, as everyone is able to be a producer and individual is given the freedom to personalize (searches, blogs, profiles). His notion of individual self-realization contradicts Lanier’s collective intelligence. He argues for an elitist mainstream media and states that there is danger in losing ‘the best’ by giving the means of production to everyone, as products will be similar. For popular music, this is true to a certain extent. Almost anyone can cover or compose a simple four-chord song that sound very similar to just any other song and post in on Youtube, but only few will truly be recognized and stay in the industry based on talent and originality. The ‘best’ will never go away because even today, there is no collective agreement on who is ‘the best’. One’s ‘best’ may be another man’s trash. Therefore I feel that there is always going to be some people who are better than others and talent can never be ‘democratized’.
I enjoyed reading this article not only because it was highly relatable to life in contemporary society today, but also because I was able to draw many parallels between this and previous readings we had done for this course. The first was when Carr mentioned that he now spends “a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the internet”, which reminded me of Lovink who discusses the reorientation of the media, from seeing us as consumers, to placing us as producers because of our constant interaction with it. Next, Carr mentions how with just “a few google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks” he was able to abstract whatever information he needed, which reminded me of Danah Boyd’s architecture of online spaces whose infrastructure enables instant access to extensive information. Carr also talks about the net as the “conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind” which paralleled Horkheimer’s assertion that mass culture is so pervasive that it curbs critical thinking. This was repeated frequently throughout the article, with Maryanne Wolf regarding consumers as “mere decoders of information” and disengaged “ability to interpret text” and that when we go online, “there’s little place for the fuzziness of contemplation”. Lastly, I saw a link between this article and that written by Walter Ong when Carr says that with people relying “on the written word as a substitute for knowledge.. they would cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful”, paralleling Ong who suggests that writing makes us lazy because thoughts become an external resource.
In “Collective Intelligence, a Civilisation: Towards a Method of Positive Interpretation” Pierre Levy expresses a very romantic view of the future, where reality becomes more alive, intelligent, interconnected and essentially free due to the Internet. More than that, he believes that with the Internet and “the cyperspace”, users can form a new collective intelligence, which will leave no room for any other autonomy than the collective itself. Reading this one can feel the overall mood of freedom and democracy that he links to the Internet, which he calls “cyberdemocracy”. Levy believes that with the Internet a new public sphere can evolve, which is above all more rich, open and transparent. Even though, I would call his idea of the Internet very much optimistic, his notion of the “cyberdemocracy”, including the principles that information is free of ownership but must travel freely, reveal to some extend how greatly we have accepted nowadays, that information is not free or at least does not come freely without any consequences, as the cases of NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden and the whole debate about Wikileaks reveal.
Moving to the other readings, one finds that there is a great fear about the development of the relationship of humanity and the Internet in the future. Reading about ideas such as “deep and light reading” by Nicholas Carr in “Is Google Making us Stupid?”, as well as Jaron Lanier´s fear of the online collective in “DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism”, makes me aware of the fallacy to believe that technology is inherently problematic. Lanier, for example, claims that the collective, which is enhanced via the Internet is irrational and impulsive and thus, forms a threat to the individual´s capacity to raise his voice. The individual will be simply undermined. Also, Andrew Keen in “Web 2.0” believes in the seductive power of the Internet, which will root in a personal cult instead of enhancing freedom.
Looking at the greater picture, I believe, there have always been ways for the individual to express themselves, narcissism can be expressed in multiple ways; irrational movements and uprisings mark human development and there has always been a way for individual´s to depart from the mass in one way or the other. The Internet has opened another channel to do so, however, calling technology or in this case the Internet inherently irrational and a tool for the masses to out rule individuality, is too simplistic.
Geert Lovink in “MyBrain.net: The colonization of real−time and other trends in Web 2.0” raises a very interesting point about the necessity of availability and true representation online. Internet presence and being available at all times is taken for granted nowadays. More than that, it is something that we enjoy and take part it, not realizing that it takes away quite a bit of our energy.
This week’s argument over the new politics of knowledge revolves around the collective vs the individual. I believe in the power of the collective to be emancipatory by countering traditional structures of power and alleviating the effects of inequality. However, I agree with Lanier that the collective by itself is unruly and mob-like. Though there can be instances where the collective is a force of good, as seen in WELL in Rheingold’s book, the collective concerned with meaningless matters most of the time.
There examples of this. The top trending twitter topics are usually entertainment related such as De’Generes’ Golden Globes selfie and Bieber’s arrest. Matters that have real consequences mostly appear in the online platforms traditional media: news websites. Topics such as Crimea’s Invasion and US government’s offshore spying are not discussed enough by the mass.
This is more evident in Singapore with STOMP. STOMP could have been the platform for differing voices to be heard, an alternative to the speaker’s corner. However, people are more concerned about who gets the right to sit on the MRT.