being distant, being digital
A few major differences can be identified with extended use of Internet.
Overcoming spatial distance is one of the first: where not only access to distant ideas and information is gained but also access to people as such. People became physically present through projection and extension of their intellect (Sherry Turkle, 1995 v Life on the Screen:Identity in the Age of the Internet). People are thus accessible as information deriving from their specialisation. Specialisation became a standard platform of knowledge architecture. It merges data into modular knowledge structures from which information and communication flows derive.
Secondly, with this kind of mediation or remediation we
lost physical contact (some consequences were mentioned in previous post). By loosing this contact our relationships became digital instead of traditionally analogous, sensible and continuous. In the case of digitalization, mediation is always in between and code is always a means of representation.
When everyone and everything relevant is reduced to 0 and 1s and is mediated in a digital way, everything became a data, ready for knowledge supplementation into a mental hologram or simulation.
Thirdly, these holograms are
instantiated - instantly accessible, naturalised and logical in its strange fragmented and merging way. They became
immediate means of personal orientation, navigation and operation. The shift from orientation to operation is crucial. It brings forth the automata, intuition as an instinct.Further they are standardly encoded and decoded. Standardization of the code is guaranteed by limited possibilities for the use of technologies. Limitations of technologies seems to be the final goal of media monopolies: of course you can leave this virtual community and voluntarily join another one, but what does this unexpected generosity hide from us? where can you escape and what possible alternatives are available to me? this are the questions that should be asked when talking about infocom-technological development and media monopolies.
When everything is digital, everything is traceable ... and if undesired can also be silenced or erased. By being erased means being excluded with no voice... no interest... no interaction... no existence. Ironically nobody should leave the desired pattern but use it and foster it with new ideas about power relations by using given services, tools called new media or new info-com technologies. Is our communication standardized to a degree that we are intuitively following the pattern? And as follows - are we becoming mute?
Who controls us from a distance? How are we becoming determined by standard digital code, as we are by genetic and memetic one?
Loss of contact and its hyper-consequences
By
the loss of contact and by emerging digitalisation, our supplementation of knowledge has changed. Contact meant certain linearity, at least some certainty into consecutivness and causal relations. A sequential organisation of knowledge as linear causal consistnecy was possible because of this time and cause related contact.
In CMC contact is hypermediated (hyperlink), REpresented and artificial. Contacts are instant and ephemeral, more like tryings and experiments than substantiated and lasting relations. Some get stabilized and legitimized because of the large publicity and use, regardless to its causal embeddedness. Such discontinuity of data, un
sequential and nonconsecutive nature of uses emerged that is not only marginalising time and causal linearity but favoring a new way of creative merging of contents -
a modularity:
Modularity is a
different kind of supplementation and knowledge organisation. Modular structures are not linear or time related but are in contrary conceptual, building a matrix of logically consistent relations (S. Papson, R. Goldman, and N. Kersey,2004.Web Site Design: Hypertext Aesthetics and Visual Sociology) based on content and foreknowledge.
Such "educational constructivism" produces hyper structures that are knowledge simulations and a new way of controlling perception, which is personal ability to perceive and supplement the knowledge and thus control our mental environment (simulation controls someone's control).
Modularity (or even hypertextuality) is based on the tenet that everything can be fragmented, broken into pieces, atomized and then merged together according to preferences, according to desired pattern under certain agenda.
Possibilities in this way are easier to control, user's (public, experts', ...) specialisation is more intuitive and narrower and the number of alternatives can be marginalized and silenced.
From products to tools
Trends of production and consumption illuminate changed ideology that transforms consumers into users and therefore instant production and consumption of commodified goods into dynamically developed and used tools: ‘Don't just watch -- do something!’ Tools are in contrary to goods not consumed in isolated act to produce individual environment but are created to be used in action or interaction with others. Tools are not sold on the shelf for instant consumption but are embedded into wide field of all backup information and interaction forums employing all available communication resources, and thus too big to put on the shelf so easily.
As such tools can be seen as media, communication technologies that we use and through which we are structurally coupled with our dynamically interacting environment, from which we get and further share knowledge about experiences and needs. Much of our conversation nowadays is about the technologies we employ and about interests what we want to do with certain type of technology.
Tools at the same time demand tuned up skills, so in a way they standardize, stabilize and conserve our shared field of knowledge on a certain level. But at the same time they trigger consequently so much interaction about the use, that they unexpectedly stimulate development of new uses and demands for higher tools sophistication. So, at the same time "The tools are the weak spot," says Will Wright, legendary creator of The Sims video game, because they can be quickly overgrown and incompetent to improved skills of the users. Thus the production of a tool is a continuous and dynamic interactive process that incorporates emergent uses and skills. Production directives thus come from the bottom-up and foster development with fresh ideas.
The emergent process of bottom-up outsourcing is most evident as open-source paradigm on the Web. More people access to a tool more possibilities it is that more people will participate in development of better and more sophisticated services of a tool.
Yes, tool is not a product, it is a service.
Digital Cities
I digged a little deeper into the concept of digital cities. They started to be planned in
early 70ies and were designed somehow different from what the digital city is concidered today.
Before digital cities were seen as Internet access points to public information on public spaces, today they are planned as virtual networks providing services, links, information and contacts for public cooperation, education, communication, etc. based on broadband connection.
The aim of Digital Cities is to built (Toru Ishida)
1.) social information infrastructure for every day life (Internet enable us to create rich information spaces for everyday life)
2.) arena in which people in regional communities can interact and share knowledge, experience and mutual experience.
3.)DC integrate urban information (both achievable and real time) and create public spaces in the Internet for people living/visiting in/at the cities
According to
Ishida digital cities consist of three layers - information, interface and interaction layer.
But from my point of view both - information and interface layer, are too narrowly understood and usually limited to city maps and city information instead to interests and services of the community that goes beyond borders of a region or a city.
Some additional articles could be found in pdf format
here as part of the project Digital City Kyoto.
Microsoft Inc.
When I was researching blogs more into the details, it was a time when Microsoft just launched its MSN Spaces - a software like Blogger. I was interested how Microsoft sees his service on the Web and what implications his service might have for the users.Xeni Jardin is a great contrubutor to the research of Internet and a coeditor of BoingBoing site, that was a year ago one of the most popular and awarded blogs on the Net.I found the following link that might be interesting when talking about Microsoft blogger platform and automatic censorship in his software.Another issue is presented here. By being a user of a platform you and your ideas easily become an intelectual property of Microsoft Corporation. Well? Somebody is eating my brains - is this a modern way of canibalism? (That was a serious question about information society trends!)
Mi casa su casa!
By creating my first blog I've just got a feeling that I am getting an extra memory unit! Whaaa, even more - that I am getting a task to create a new 'up-to-me' memory from the blank. It is interesting to reexperience what I was doing 26 years ago:) ...... trying to gather some data and turn it into information by exploring the surrounding space and extending it into knowledge.What I'll try to 'remember' right here is what I find interesting and useful and share it further. This blog is created for the purpose of a New Media and Society course held by Nick Jankowski, but I claim that the use can never be predicted, so I'll leave the possibilities open.I try to look for interesting links and topics on the Web and I keep an eye on development of infocom technologies and their regulations, on directions of communication flows and their uses and evolution, so - some extra working memory is most kindly welcomed! And what I find the best is that this memory unit is not existing in isolation, but can be linked, commented, challenged and perturbed.I'm aware that what is most interesting for me, would be very strange to be the most interesting for you, so try harder to understand:) but keep being unique.
