Place Essay
How well does the spatial metaphor work for talking about the web? Does it make sense to talk about networks as places?
The “Networked Place” essay links networks to Habermas’ notion of the “public sphere.” To what degree does the web function as a public sphere? Who has access to it? Is it class or culture bound in any way? The “Networked Democracy” authors claim the web provides “broad availability” as a place for deliberation. Is this really correct? To what extent do “the digital divide” and cultural differences related to online practices qualify these claims?
To what degree does the network get characterized as a “place” for identity formation? What are some examples?
Culture Essay
This essay focuses on the converging relationship online between cultural consumption and cultural production, with a particular focus on music. What are the key aesthetic, ethical, and legal issues that come up here and how do we begin to sort them out?
How can we link Benjamin’s discussion of the loss of the “aura” to this discussion of cultural production? What happens to “originality” and “authenticity” in the kind of work discussed here (DJ Dangermouse, Deconstructing Beck)?
Why do the authors see mashups and remixing as “post pomo” (p.2)? Couldn’t a case be made that remixes and mashups simply build on and extend forms of creativity central to postmodernism or even modernism? (Think “The Waste Land” or Ulysses, for example).
Jenkins on Convergence Culture
Jenkins points out (p. 13) that media critics call the tools we use to access content “delivery technology.” What are the implications of thinking of the book as a “delivery technology?”
Jenkins cautions against reducing “media change” to technological change because that “strips aside” something “cultural” (15, top). What’s he getting at here?
A major issue that circulates through a number of the essays has to do with the tension between the web as a user-driven medium that generates content from the bottom up and as a medium large corporations want to appropriate and control for their own purposes. Jenkins treats this as a kind of paradox on pp. 17-19. To what degree is networked public culture susceptible to appropriation and control by corporations that dominate traditional cultural forms? This could be connected to the question raised on the bottom of p. 1 of the networked democracy essay: Is the internet “convivial?” Does it empower people and make the medium difficult for elites to control, or not?
Democracy Essay
The political remixes discussed in the essay (pp. 15-16) are entertaining, but do they really have any real political force or power?
The authors claim the web provides “broad availability” as a place for deliberation. Is this really correct? To what extent do “the digital divide” and cultural differences related to online practices qualify these claims?
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I would just like to point out that my friends and I still get together and go for coffee to discuss things (and not to talk to people on our Blackberrys). I would also like to say that places like Starbucks are in your neighborhood. The people who make my coffee know my name (and the names of most of the customers who go there) and we also have conversations. It seems to me that the article about space/place is also an article on the middle to upper classes-- people who can afford to drink Starbucks and to walk around with GPS mobile devices (the tag line for blackberry.com is "A wireless email solution for mobile professionals"-- that is their niche market). And as soon as the technology that the article talks about becomes cheap enough for mass consumption, we will be on to something new. I think that the problem with talking about modern technology and its impact on culture is the problem with technology in general which is changing at such an alarming rate that few can keep up.
Taking the changes in technology in a slightly different route, I’ve been wondering if we can take the idea of participitory culture a step further. At what point – or is it really possible – does creation from the bottom up overtake traditional corporate domination? It seems way off in the future when we are at the beginning of a new kind of era, but is it possible for public users to become unified enough to where corporations are not only borrowing from public culture but actually falling behind in credibility, influence, and perhaps even finances?
To go along with Scott, if something like that were to happen, would we lose all sense of an "underground"? When too many people or a major record label find them out, generally underground movements (and I'm thinking of something like the riotgrrl movement since it sort of predates the internet with its ability to sustain a network) lose some of their force or are accused of "selling out" by those who wished to keep their music, magazines, or generally the niche culture underground.
I think these sorts of niche groups benefit from networked public culture as it is now, but I'm curious as to whether the potential for unwanted exploitation has risen or decreased, and whether indie kids (for example) will soon have to find another place to keep their music and life in order to maintain their status as underground or alternative, or if that's even desirable anymore. Because even now I'm thinking, alternative to what?
I think Erin makes a couple of very useful points that complicate the “Networked Place” essay. I agree the authors underplay the extent to which people get together at places like Starbucks (or indies like Metropolis on Granville, which draws a very different crowd) to talk and interact face-to-face. Perhaps Jenkins’ notion of convergence would be apt to apply here, i.e. the coffee house is a site of convergence of the old public sphere and the new one, where people interact with other patrons and on the network. I also think the point about class is crucial. Starbucks facilitates a network place only for people who like and can afford to drink espresso drinks, and who can afford to pay the wireless cost (Metropolis is free, which is one of the reasons the crowd is different—then of course there’s Argo Tea near the WTC; one could do a whole sociological study of these wireless places). This unevenness of access and the different cultural milieu of participants online is an issue I meant to raise in the second questions under both “Place” and “Democracy.” I’m sure we’ll get into this tonight.
It seems to me the issues Scott and Allison raise are linked to the points Erin makes. The issue here has less to do with access (though the questions above remain) than with control and power. Can what Scott calls “public users” maintain the balance of power over corporate interests, participating in online culture in such numbers and in such imaginative ways that the corporate world is constantly off balance and playing catch-up, or will it be the other way around? If capitalism’s ability in the West to quickly appropriate and commodify rebellious music and fashion is any measure, it may be the corporations who prevail. Look at today’s article about how MySpace (now owned by Rupert Murdoch)is adding tools to block video clips, for example (link to article is at the top of the online video links on this blog). It seems to me the underground movements Allison talks about are always getting co-opted by the dominant culture, but of course this just breeds more underground movements. In a worst-case scenario, it may be that the very idea of “underground” has been commodified by the dominant culture—certainly the idea of being “indie” has.
Ok, there's a lot here but I'm going to give it my best. Firstly, yes to what Erin said--not only about Starbuck's but about places in general. Just yesterday I had friends over for tea, checked my email, my Myspace, (both of the latter 2 multiple times) and later went to Carmen's after tutoring at the Literacy Center. (and did my homework =) People still get together--I think the fear that people are too isolated in front of their computer screens is slightly paranoid--people crave other people. hasn't anyone heard the slightly corny proverb that human beings need 3 hugs a day to maintain a sense of well being? Yes we have created online social networks--but to me this only speaks to our need to keep in touch--even on the Internet, even as technologies develop that seem to perpetuate isolated lives. Not to say that people do, at times, close themselves off and there is a danger of "hermetization," but, I think, people will generally acknowledge their need to be around others and act accordingly.
As far as the underground goes, my friends and I decided a couple of years ago that the Internet destroyed the idea of subculture because it made the underground too accessible. (In our case it was the indie scene and goth scene--which was appropriated by the mall store hot topic and which is where I admit I worked for a few years--so I am complicit in said appropriation) However, the disruptive technologies discussed in the articles lend hope that perhaps corporations are still a step behind the true computer geeks--Napster was appropriated, but YouTube is still free (so far) and when corporations take that over something else will pop up. The Japanese anime people seem to have found a middle ground for dealing with their ingenious fans, so it'll be interesting to see if Western corporations can begin to perceive their fans as opportunities rather than "disruptive." Though there is a certain rebel capital in being designated "disruptive" I suppose. Not sure how much this relates/contributes, but anyhoo...
A quick response to your first point, Natalie. Jenkings uses the term "tele-cocooning" on page 17. The example mentions Japanese youth who stay connected with wireless devices ALL THE TIME. In the article Jenkins footnotes, the authors illustrate how students actually become closer to one another as a result of the technology, even though technology often seems more like a buffer between traditional face-to-face interaction. I think the same applies to social networking sites, but with the added bonus of keeping in touch with people you would never see otherwise.
Fun buzz on the blog. First, a quick note on subculture. If a subculture defines itself against prevailing norms, and then the norms change, this doesn't mean the death of subculture, but a shift. You have to find a new way to be against the mainstream, since the stream has changed course. Maybe in a media/tech saturated culture, the next big subculture will be unplugged naturalists living in the hills. Who knows. But the change can be viewed as an exciting invitation to forge new communities around new sub-ideals, rather than a devastating blow.
Second, a sidenote on memory. The Networked Place article mentions the possibility of mapping the world and providing links to important historical information over every location. This would guarentee the survival of memory. This argument made me think of Plato's Phaedrus, where Socrates argues against the technology of the book. The written word allows us to store information, and so we no longer have to posses it as actual memory. For Plato, memory is durable. You have with you all the time. It is yours the way a reminder note on the fridge is not. The result being that the more we come to depend on the written word, the less and less we remember. I can testify to that. Name the states and capitols? Not anymore, but I can google it. By proposing that the network contains memory is to change our very understanding of memory: no longer personal, but collective and searchable.
Don't forget your mittens.
Julia - I agree with you regarding the idea that subcultures don't die but rather shift, and I think it's well put. My question, then, if it makes any sense, is whether the norms change at all, or whether as a subculture becomes co-opted, the ideals or whatever common ground the members shared in addition to fashion, attitude, and collective angst gets lost as the sort of outward appearance of those subcultures become the focus.
Co-optation allows Bikini Kill to become synonymous with Hole, and for people within the community, that's blasphemy, because the co-opters "got it wrong" - somebody misunderstands the movement, and that misunderstanding redefines it in such a way that feminism falls out of the picture and we're left with details of fashion and expletive-laden shouting matches to explain what the movement means/meant to people. (Not that those things aren't inextricably tied to the specific goals of the kind of feminism this subculture aimed at.)
All that is to say that I think it may not always be a matter of organizing around a new sub-ideal, since sometimes the original ideal never actually gets co-opted.
Responses to Julia's thoughts: In regards to memory--I like and don't like the idea of the Internet being my memory. Not necessarily because it's impersonal, but because of the "darker" side to that memory. If my movements/actions can be tracked on the web as part of its "memory" am i not then contributing to the Panopticoniality (I'm trademarking that word)of the system? If we can all be watched, should we assume we are? Again, as Jenkins points out, not just by corporations, but the government as well. And what does that say about the tradeoff of being on the web? Myspace, Facebook, YouTube, Match.com, etc. all have people trying to look their "hippest" and/or trying to garner any semblance of fame they can. Though I agree with Scott that these sites are excellent ways of keeping in touch and/or meeting people you otherwise wouldn't--where does our privacy go? If the Internet can portray my identity, track my favorite links, and remember all the capitals of all the states where does that leave the "actual" real-time me? Assuming that there is one...What I find interesting is that while everyone is up in arms about wiretapping, celebs upset about the ubiquitous paps going through their garbage, etc., people (including myself) are more than willing to participate in an arena where surveillance is not only prevalent, but desired by its participants. Do we really want privacy, or do we just say we do?
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