Social Media Addiction Infographic

I thought this infographic was hilarious. I'll admit that I'm guilty of just about every symptom above. Let me know what you think. Are you guilty of any of these? How do you feel about the notions implied?

My Luck

It would be my luck that the only class I miss this semester was the LIVE, REAL TIME BLOG class. Of course, real time blogging is what I do for a living. When I heard about this Thursday night (after returning to consciousness after being sick) I was bummed.

That means, I now have to blog about the reading in the old-fashioned way. Stay tuned for that.

iSpy reading reaction: Chapters 1 and 2

Immediately when I began reading Mr. Andrejevic, I agreed with his thoughts on the importance and increasing popularity of geo-based technology. As the book was written in 2007, it has missed an important advancement in this industry. Geo-based social media is the next step in what he calls digital enclosure.

Andrejevic discusses how digital enclosure can include purchases or transactions made online can be tracked by Google so that it can customize the advertisement it shows. With the likes of Foursquare and Facebook Places, users openly admit their location via their mobile device. GPS-based cell phones have also become more prevalent since his book was written. Despite theses advancements, I think Andrejevic is spot on and certainly ahead of the curve.

Andrejevic then focuses on the connection between politics and consumerism in his second chapter. I think the interactivity on the commercial end is making people expect that type of easy participation across society. This is a bit random, but something that would not leave my mind in reading the second chapter. One example I think of is American Idol or Dancing with the Stars. It is so easy to vote for your favorite contestant. In fact, it is so easy that more people vote on the finales of those shows than in the presidential elections. Think about how hard and un-interactive voting is. Election Day is on Tuesday, you have to go there in person and then fill our papers and then vote and then leave. In the world of online polling and telephone voting, that's way too much work.

I think Andrejevic makes some very solid points. I think he could consult companies to help them utilize the technology he is discussing. I don't think he needs to alarm people about what is taking place. My argument is that being online is forfeiting one's rights of privacy. Nothing is very private anymore.

Midterm Questions In Progress (Missing 7 & 8)

I will be in the Facebook/Twitter group on April 7 with Katherine, Jamar and Max.

The process of developing my answers had multiple steps. I first laid all of the questions out on a blank document with spaces for answers. I went through each questions and applied knowledge I had from memory in order to answer the question. I then applied information from my class notes, along with finding important pages numbers that could lead me to further explanations in the reading. I then attended the collaborative class session to get outside input to better my answers.

1. Jaron Lanier argues against cybernetic totalism. What are the key features of cybernetic totalism? What arguments does Lanier offer against it?

According to Jaron Lanier, there are two main “strands” of cybernetic totalism. In the first strand, the computing cloud is supposed to get smart, on its own, to a superhuman level. The other strand relates to the concept of a crowd of people connected to the cloud through anonymous and fragmented contact. This second strand is that crowd of people is the superhuman group that gets smart on its own (Lanier, 139). In other words, cybernetic totalism is the idea that computers will someday surpass human intelligence. This concept is followed by the idea that human-like features can be replicated by logarithms and computer coding. In moving to the second strand, the overall and community contributions that create knowledge will also become more intelligent than human thought.

Lanier is entirely against the notion of cybernetic totalism. On page 75, he gives his two arguments against the idea. Spiritual failure, he argues, has “encouraged narrow philosophies that deny mystery of the existence of experience” (Lanier). The other argument he has is behavioral failure and how the concept of the cybernetic total undermine human’s creation of and involvement in common knowledge on the internet. Lanier goes on to say that a computer cannot self-conceptualize or self-identify. Computers just recreate what humans originally put into it, which forces loss of creativity.

2. What is "lock in" and why does it matter? Make sure that your answer includes technical and cultural/political components.

Jaron Lanier describes “lock-in” from a technical standpoint and then relates it to the bigger picture he society. As a computer programming term, “lock in” is when an algorithm or file creates a bigger problem, because of the way you have it set up and designed in the infrastructure. Eventually, one may find a better algorithm that does not create as many problems, but it would be near-impossible to replace the new for the old because of how widely disseminated and used the out-dated equation is. This “locks in” the former algorithm to a place of permanence. In the bigger picture, “lock in” can related to a concept or ideal that is later expanded upon, but the original thought is the foundation for the rest of society’s developing expansion of that original thought (Lanier, 9).

3. Why does Lanier think that flat information networks threaten creativity?

According to Jaron Lanier, the development of flat information networks is threatening the creative process. Individual thinking is slowly dissipating for the idea that collective thought is the best way to solve a problem. In class, we discussed how the offices of Facebook in Palo Alto, California are very common-work based. There are open cubicles, and glass encased conference rooms with an emphasis on transparency to achieve a mission. This is opposite of the traditional model where hierarchical companies use offices as a symbol for status in the company. This collaborative work concept, according to Lanier, is removing the creative process in favor of what the group develops. He discusses how file sharing is not stealing, but it forces the sharing of music, movies, books and files. There is such a deluge available that there is no longer incentive for creating your own. The internet is nurturing the development of flat information networks that just reproduce ideas over and over and share them around the world. As Lanier says, “Computers can take your ideas and throw them back at you in a more rigid form, forcing you to live within that rigidity” (Lanier, 134). Lanier argues that for something to be stolen, it needs to be denied to others who want it. He adds that as things become copied over and over, the creator of the original will have no status because it cannot be proven as the first edition (Lanier, 141).

4. Why does free choice make stars inevitable? Be as thorough as possible.

Power laws, as described by Clay Shirky, can be used to help describe how free choice makes stars inevitable. The power lows specify that the more frequently something appears around the internet, the more clicks and hits it will have, which also grows exponentially. There is a monopolistic market for those sites that appear frequently and get the big hits, and only a few have that privilege. This exponential growth in views for certain websites makes it harder for smaller, start-up sights to get viewed at all. When it comes to any kind of medium on the internet such as videos, songs or blogs, there are still only a select few major competitors who are considered the pinnacle.

5. Several authors (Lovink, Dean, Terranova) criticize the 'late eighties "Californian" mindset'. What is that mindset and why do they criticize it?

The ‘late eighties “Californian” mindset’ is a utopian view of the digital internet and how it can only offer positive changes to society and the economy. A group of socially inept math geniuses created a useful website that offered them immense wealth but put them stuck in the middle of society. The group offered a high-minded potential that the internet could supposedly offer, bringing liberating change to the economic structure to a gift-based one. Information and media could be exchanged for free. Followers of the movement firmly believed that the internet would offer a digital realm of perfection and would eventually solve all of the world’s problems. They argued that the internet had no flaws.

The authors not only criticize the movement, but the mindset was coopted quickly and put to an end. Dean argues that the internet is used as a place in which people escape reality. It leads to a place where pleasure and pain are found, including sexual fetishes. The danger in assuming the internet and its content have no flaws is entrusting that people on the internet always have credible information (Terranova, 120).

6. How does Terranova describe the "mass"? What makes the mass a feature of contemporary network culture? How does the concept of the mass inform or figure in Terranova's critique of the idea of a rational, deliberative public sphere?

According to Tiziana Terranova, the “mass” is a group of consumers opposite the group of money-making oligarchical producers. The mass is inept and thinking on its own and is easily influenced by the ruling group. The mass is more about a feeling and bond than a demographic. Spectacle helps define the mass since people will flock and surround the event (Terranova, 134). The Super Bowl was an example mentioned in class as a spectacle. In this case, the “mass” consists of the millions of Americans who flock to participate in game-related festivities. The ruling group consists of the NFL executives, television producers and advertisers who organize the event and make money off of the mass’s obsession with participating. This concept of the “mass” relates to the internet and network culture because without this majority group, social networks would be impossible. The mass is the group influenced by the internet.

Terranova’s “mass” theory impacts political discourse because it means that these major spectacles control the direction of the majority in the public sphere. Because of this forceful alignment of the mass, the group has been less and less subjugated by the public sphere. The transparency and noise surrounding the public sphere forces the mass to follow one direction more often than developing individual opinions (Terranova, 133).

7. Terranova emphasizes that a cultural politics of information, "as it lives through and addresses the centrality of information transmission, processing, and communication techniques" extends beyond the distinction between signal and noise. It encompasses a wide array of objects and interfaces, choices and designs, that organize our perceptions and influence the transmission and receipt of information/signals. What aspects of contemporary life come to mind? Come up with a vivid, detailed example to illustrate Terranova's point. Be sure to attend to what she calls the "level of distracted perception . . [that] informs habits and percepts and regulates the speed of a body by plugging it into a field of action." In your answer, begin with a schematic account formulated in terms of Shannon's diagram and then add to and enrich that schematic with more atmosphere and detail. After you have a detailed example in mind, consider the political implications and for whom: police, surveillance, or state apparatuses? for those seeking to resist or change a political formation? for the general field or norm that establishes the base point or expectations for political action (that is, the level of everyday habit and normal life)?

8. According to Terranova, some specific features of the architecture of the internet induce divergence and differentiation. What are these specific features? How are the challenges met? And, what features or qualities does addressing divergence and incompatibility give to the internet?

9. What is the decline of symbolic efficiency? Why does it matter?

The decline of symbolic efficiency, as Jodi Dean describes, is the loss of inherit and universally common meaning behind a certain idea which are mainly expressed as words or phrases on the Internet. A physical analogy that helps me understand this better is the connection (or lack thereof) of language translation, plays on words and puns. Sometimes jokes or even serious notions in one language, make no sense when translated into another language. Now, the decline of symbolic efficiency goes even behind different languages, and can occur within the same language, but through the internet and networked blogging. In Blog Theory, Jodi Dean says that sometimes it is impossible to tell if a blog post is ironic, sincere, funny or serious. As Dean argues, this matters because it identifies the primary concern that goes along with impossibility of totalization. There is no way ever to designate one universal meaning with one idea. As she explains, there is always another opinion or option that can make one’s idea more questionable to the larger group. The decline of the symbolic matters because it will significantly reduce norms and universality among the population. Symbols are the primary identification tool for any group and is recognizable to members of that group. A decorated pine tree in one’s living room with colorful lights and a star on top is common symbol of Christmas. If that symbol were one to loose efficiency, along with other symbols of the December holiday, how would Christmas be able to continue? How would one recognize who celebrates and who does not? Traditions, such as holidays, are in jeopardy over this decline, as one example.

10. What are the key features of blogs? What do they have in common with search engines?

One key features of blogs is the “post,” Jodi Dean says. “The post gets the blog off the ground. And keeps it going. When posts stop, the blog dies” (Dean, 47). What makes a blog post specific is the sense of immediacy. The posts do not need to tell a collective narrative. The key is that the posts are immediate. Blogs can be text, photos, links, quotes or almost anything else.

Blogs are similar to search engines because of their original purpose. They turned out to be different attempts of fixing the same problem. They were both designed to help organize the chaos of the internet. Their goal was to compile useful information in an easily searchable place. Search engines put their trust in the algorithm while blog users put their trust in the author (Dean, 43).

11. What are the differences between the ways that cinema and networked media produce subjects?

Cinema and networked media produce different types of subjects with different types of consumption needs. Cinema provides a collective viewer. The group of people seated together and watching one screen becomes a collective. Cinema is also physically uniting within the same space. The experience becomes shared by all in the collective (Dean, 70). Cinema also almost entirely is consumed by the audience, very little production occurs on their end.

Networked media is entirely different in the sense that you remain physically solo on a single screen. The experience is an individual one with only virtual interaction. Networked media is a form of self-expression exemplified by what you like on Facebook (Dean, 79). In class, it was discussed how each person’s internet experience will be totally different. It is true that you might follow the same people on Twitter as another person, but not identical. You may follow an additional person that makes your Twitter feed and therefore experience a little different from the person sitting next to you.

12. How do affective networks capture users?

Affective networks capture users easily using their self-reflective and attractive appeal that offer the users intense pleasure and pain, and sometimes withdraw them from reality. As Dean says, “The loops and repetitions of the acephalous circuit of drive describe the movement of the networks of communicative capitalism, the ways its flows capture subjects, intensities, and aspirations” (Dean, 114). Simply put, it all goes back to enjoyment. Users enjoy seeing information that they producer, that others consumer, and that others base their own productions off of. It can be as simple as a Facebook photo post. If you took a photo, other users can see it (consumption) and then comment on the photo (more production). The interactivity gives users more and more enjoyment. Dean compares this to the cinema, were users just have to show up. Affective networks rely on that circuit of drive that continually brings in production of new content (Dean, 114). Put another way, the more content we help produce, the more content there is to consume (Dean, 124).