| nettime's_dataminer on Thu, 1 Oct 2009 21:47:38 +0200 (CEST) |
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| <nettime> FB v NT digest [x8: reill, elloi, magiera (3), harrison, bazzichelli, buswell] |
Re: <nettime> Has Facebook superseded Nettime?
"Alexandra Reill" <alexandra.reill@kanonmedia.com>
"Morlock Elloi" <morlockelloi@yahoo.com>
Jaime Magiera <jaime@sensoryresearch.net>
Jaime Magiera <jaime@sensoryresearch.net>
Re: <nettime> yes the facebook (tarik)
Jaime Magiera <jaime@sensoryresearch.net>
Re: <nettime> Has Facebook superseded Nettime?
Flick Harrison <flick@flickharrison.com>
Tatiana Bazzichelli <t.bazzichelli@mclink.it>
Evan Buswell <ebuswell@gmail.com>
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From: "Alexandra Reill" <alexandra.reill@kanonmedia.com>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Has Facebook superseded Nettime?
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:50:41 +0200
well, i think spending hours and hours with porn photos does change your
consciousness and so do social networks
----- Original Message -----
From: "Morlock Elloi" <morlockelloi@yahoo.com>
To: "nettime" <nettime-l@kein.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 10:01 PM
Subject: Re: <nettime> Has Facebook superseded Nettime?
> There is only one reason for written exchanges to move to centralized
> systems (aka "web"): advertizing and discussion-unrelated data mining.
<...>
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Subject: Re: <nettime> Has Facebook superseded Nettime?
From: Jaime Magiera <jaime@sensoryresearch.net>
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:45:18 -0400
On Sep 24, 2009, at 12:08 PM, Juergen Fenn wrote:
> Well, no new medium has ever made older ones completely go away, see
> print vs. radio vs. cinema vs. television, and mailinglists vs. blogs
> vs. twitter vs. internet fora, community wikis, etc. ...
Do you still have newspapers where you are? Here in the U.S.,
newspapers are drying up and going away. In general, one of the things
keeping print media alive are the product tie-ins.
> Interesting point, and that's something different. Confer, e.g., Twitter
> to Identi.ca/status.net for micro-blogging. Both services are growing
> fast, but as far as I can see, the most active users are drifting towards
> the commercial Twitter, at least among my followers. Many are on both
> platforms, as crossposting is easy. But I wonder, too, how long it will
> take for Twitter to take the whole market...
I doubt that Web 2.0 is going to collapse. While the complexity and
requirements grow for these services/sites, so does the available
computing power and net access.
There are obvious advantages to the web for reading/posting/etc. --
the ability to dynamically update content, ability to connect multiple
resources, etc.
As a new member of Nettime, I don't have an opinion about the list vs.
other formats. However, I'm in disagreement with the notion that Web
2.0 and social networking are fly-by-night phenomenon.
Jaime Magiera
Sensory Research, Inc.
http://www.sensoryresearch.net
PopPsyche
www.poppsyche.com
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Subject: Re: <nettime> Has Facebook superseded Nettime?
From: Jaime Magiera <jaime@sensoryresearch.net>
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:13:07 -0400
On Sep 24, 2009, at 4:01 PM, Morlock Elloi wrote:
> There is only one reason for written exchanges to move to centralized
> systems (aka "web"): advertizing and discussion-unrelated data mining.
That's not true at all. With the web, you can dynamically update
content (as opposed to sending out a static email that cannot be
changed, where any updates require another email). Also, the web
allows for more real-time interaction. It provides the ability to mix
media into the discussions.
> When you interact only with the local machine when reading or typing
> (such as mail or usenet) it is very hard to sell your eyeballs. When
> your messages use distributed protocols to get to recipients, there's
> no data mining (marketeers can't really use nettime web archives
> - they want to know individual behaviour - cookies, doubleclick,
> adsense.)
Not every website or web-based service is data mined. There are
protections that can be put in place. You have an extremely narrow
view of the web.
> Other than that, centralized systems bring no value to participants
> over what store-and-forward systems provide, other than pathetic
> simulacrum of "presence".. You interact with the hard drive and
> software, not the live person. Whoever put that "profile" is currently
> fucking/talking with somebody, and it's not you.
This too is also a very narrow view of how the web and social media
work. The presence provided by live FB chat (or any other system) *is*
more real-time and interactive than email. That is not a fake person
on the other end. It's a real person. Someone you may or may not know.
> So it makes all the sense for eyeball resellers to use centralized
> systems, but it's really depressing that open alternatives are also
> centralized, the currency being, I guess, "me-too-facebook" fame.
Again, there are a lot of smaller social media projects out there. If
they can successfully generate excitement and provide
interoperability, the social media platform will be very useful.
> Which brings us to the main point - we don't really need most of this
> "social networking". It's a benign time killer. "Social networks"
> change notning ... at least no more impact on the real world than the
> appearance of porn mags had on sex life, no matter how many hours you
> spent on them every day (with some notable exceptions.)
No offense, but you really need a clue on this. Social Networking and
Social Media are affecting people's lives in important ways on a daily
basis. People are connecting with friends and family they haven't seen
in years, increasing the bonds they have with people in their circle.
Social networking and media are also used for organizing protests and
other types of political activities. For example, the culture jamming
group The Yes Men used Twitter this past Monday to organize folks for
a public political statement (http://www.theyesmen.org/blog/screwed).
In terms of content, a recent study points to the fact that Twitter is
in fact being used for both babble and true conversations (http://www.govtech.com/gt/articles/711964
). You might also want to read the book "New Tech, New Ties" by Rich
Ling. It's written about texting and mobile phones, but the same
concepts are applicable to tweeting and FB. I work as a technical
support person at a major university. I've worked on several projects
that incorporate social networking/media into the educational
experience. We've seen value there as well.
Yes, there is a lot of one-off, trite content in social media. That is
because it's a new technology. Eventually, out of boredom, curiosity
and necessity, people will search out ways of increasing its valuable
use.
Jaime Magiera
Sensory Research, Inc.
http://www.sensoryresearch.net
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Subject: Re: <nettime> yes the facebook (tarik)
From: Jaime Magiera <jaime@sensoryresearch.net>
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:21:11 -0400
On Sep 25, 2009, at 7:02 AM, Tar=C4=B1k Akta=C5=9F wrote:
> you really sound funny about this facebook discussion.im perhaps at
> the age of your graduate students and i have no facebook (had one
> for sure) and as you see i am aware of what a list is. especially
> considering this very old one. still i dont think i am outcast. and i
> wonder what is it that you feel isolated from. a hyperactive sum of
> dynamics constructing the fb youths' purpose of existance? Or do you
> want to know the Anu Muhammads of all?
I work in education. It is true that the younger generation (actually,
those who are younger than grad students) do not use email and email
lists. I literally had someone say to me "Wow, I don't think I've ever
sent an email before!". With family, friends and even school utilizing
FB and other social media, one can see why they might not have an idea
of plain old email. What would the purpose of straddling an old
technology be? It's not interactive, it's not timely, it's not
viewable by others (which is becoming more and more key -- for better
or worse).
Jaime Magiera
Sensory Research, Inc.
http://www.sensoryresearch.net
PopPsyche
www.poppsyche.com
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From: Flick Harrison <flick@flickharrison.com>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Has Facebook superseded Nettime?
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:44:08 -0700
Major corporate media have the capital for mass distribution, but also
for mass awareness-building outside their media. We could build a
better facebook, but it would still be expensive, hard work to
maintain its cultural importance, i.e. its popularity.
For comparison, the Canadian film industry is publicly-financed,
local / indigenous, grassroots, and independent... but when it comes
to audience-share, there's no contest - the flood of magazines, talk
shows, print and radio advertising, and web chatter coming along with
Hollywood product is an unstoppable force.
Freenet was the place to be for email access all through the early
nineties - but when commercial entities got rolling, like AOL,
Sympatico, eventually hotmail and gmail - well, where's freenet now?
The commercial folks have the ability to bring in new audiences and
new disciples to any concept they see catching on.
If the free concept is a direct threat - i.e. napster - they kill it.
If it's just good, they bury it in counter-advertising - like AOL.
Why the heck would people pay for AOL's crappy, limited services and
walled gardens when freenet was available? Because they never heard
of freenet and AOL was user-friendly, i.e. marketed properly, from
interface design to ease of setup. Big capital brings better
designers, and more of those.
And, like VHS or Windows, there's a critical mass beyond which the
benefits of a user switching to a different system are less than the
hassle and loss of switching. That's why, in my opinion, facebook has
stood up longer than myspace, friendster, etc - the 16-month rise and
fall of social networks, prior to facebook. Enough people are on
board that switching would mean losing your friends, and facebook is
really quite intuitive and pretty now.
- Flick Harrison
* FLICK's WEBSITE & BLOG: http://www.flickharrison.com
* FACEBOOK http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=860700553
* MYSPACE: http://myspace.com/flickharrison
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Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:38:15 -0700
From: Tatiana Bazzichelli <t.bazzichelli@mclink.it>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Has Facebook superseded Nettime?
Florian Cramer wrote:
> For about two years, I've noted that a sizable part of the media
> artistic, -activist and -scholarly community that makes up Nettime has
> moved to Facebook, in the sense of being more active and networked there
> than here.
I think you have a good point noticing that a lot of Nettimers have
moved to Facebook and asking for a deeper reflection on this new
'netculture trend'. Anyway, I don't think it is appropriate to stage
Facebook and Nettime on the same level, since the conversations you can
have here have a completely different perspective and depth than the
superficial chatting on Facebook.
The question is perhaps why people feel so comfortable on Facebook, and
are using that platform more than the 'traditional' mailing-lists, even
if in that way they are giving away their private information to a
corporation, and they are helping this corporation to create its revenue.
A simple answer could be that today people are looking for a more
'personal' relationship when they network with other people: somehow
using a mailing-list creates an intellectual barrier, and you don't see
the persons behind the texts. That was once a very important privacy
issue, instead it seems that today people want not only to access your
mind, but your personal life (just with one click you can see what that
person is doing, her/his photos, which are his/her friends and so on).
So each person becomes a node of private information, which I believe is
more interesting to some people - and more ego-fulfilling.
As a lot of companies of the Web 2.0 era, i.e. Google or Facebook,
presents themself as a good giants - do you remember the slogan: Don't
be Evil!, made at the beginning by Google? The services are simple to
use, are presented as open, and have great technical infrastructures
behind them which allows fast uploads of videos, pictures, etc.
But how can we reflect tactically on that?
I have been reflecting on the issue of social networking vs. activism
and open knowledge since last year - my research is still going on - and
I believe that the strategy is once again to be conscious of what you
are using, and which the 'bugs' of the system are, that you can turn
into your own advantage.
I don't think the solution is just to refuse something because it's
proprietary. Considering that Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, etc,
are attracting a lot of users - and not only the ones with a critical
background - I think it is a good strategy to try to use them to access
many more people than a mailing-list allowed you to do in the past. The
question is perhaps: what to communicate on these platforms?
I am researching disruptive practices in the social networks, which try
to give a critical response to the relationship between activism and the
digital economy. I think it is still possible to speak about social
hacks and cultural Trojan Horses, even if you are using proprietary
platforms, and create the unpredictable where it is not supposed to be.
Some people in Italy have tried to move in that direction with the
project of Anna Adamolo. As a reference I could give you a paper I wrote
for the Oekonux Conference last March, where I connect experiences of
Luther Blissett, the Neoist Web Conspiracy and other pranks made by
multiple identities with some interventions in the Web 2.0 (i.e. the
Anna Adamolo one).
You can read it here (in particular, have a look at the last pharagraph,
'From Networking to Hacktivism: The Experience of Anna Adamolo'):
http://www.oekonux.org/list-en/archive/msg05812.html
We also organized an event in Italy within the AHA project, where we
discussed, among other topics, the social and artistic critique of Web 2.0.
I wrote a report on it, which I also sent to Nettime some time ago:
A Reflection on the Activist Strategies in the Web 2.0 Era
http://www.mail-archive.com/nettime-l@kein.org/msg01305.html
The topics of the intersection between critical thinking and social
networking are also often discussed on the IDC mailling-list (the
Institute for Distributed Creativity)
http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
Trebor Scholtz (IDC mailing-list) is organizing a very good conference
in November at the New School University, NYC: The Internet as
Playground and Factory: http://digitallabor.org/
Topics will be the intersections between 'labor' and the new forms of
digital sociality, considering that all of us who are writing content in
the social networks, are actually indirectly working for the
corporations who own them. I am looking forward to going there, because
I am sure many of these question marks will be touched upon.
At the same time, projects like Telekommunisten are trying to use social
networks as a tool for critically spreading their venture communist
services, and people like Saul Albert and Michael Weinkove, of 'The
People Speak' (http://theps.net) are trying to create physical social
networks as an alternative form of business. This could be another way
of seeing the matter.
Time ago I was speaking about the relationship between social networking
and 'traditional' networking, like mail art, with the mail artist
Vittore Baroni. An interview came out of it, which I suggest you to read
to reflect on the meaning of networking over the last 30 years:
From Mail Art to Web 2.0:
http://www.digicult.it/digimag/article.asp?id=1423
> What is the solution? Is something like Facebook needed, but as a
> decentralized, non-data-minable, user-owned system?
>
I don't know what the solution is...but I think there is still space for
critical reflection.
Best,
Tatiana
www.networkingart.eu
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From: Evan Buswell <ebuswell@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:25:39 -0700
Subject: Re: <nettime> Has Facebook superseded Nettime?
On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 9:08 AM, Juergen Fenn <juergen.fenn@gmx.de> wrote:
> Patrice Riemens schrieb:
>
>> (iii) 'free' (as in beer) web 2.0 apps are possibly going to collapse
>> in a near future under the twin crush of energy over-consumption and
>> financial constraints, leaving quite a many people and groups
>> beached.
>
> Interesting point, and that's something different. Confer, e.g., Twitter
> to Identi.ca/status.net for micro-blogging. Both services are growing
> fast, but as far as I can see, the most active users are drifting
> towards the commercial Twitter, at least among my followers. Many are on
> both platforms, as crossposting is easy. But I wonder, too, how long it
> will take for Twitter to take the whole market...
>
> BTW, there already is a way to read nettime-l via NNTP, as well as in a
> blog-like interface, viz. over gmane.org:
>
> http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime
> http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime-announce
>
> So it's not necessarily mailinglist vs.
> something_that_can_be_displayed_in_your_browser. E.g., many users relay
> their twitter accounts to Facebook. So, it's rather the same content
> distributed in different ways, running in parallel next to each other.
That's interesting. So maybe we need a
list-to-facebook/myspace-and-back-again app, a la gmane? That seems
like a solution we on this list might actually be able to live with.
This seems like an obvious enough project; does anybody know if
anybody's already moving towards developing anything like this?
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