Aram Squalls

Panic! at the Internets

My friend Alice just published a great article in FirstMonday (an online peer-reviewed academic journal) about the persistence of moral panic over the sexual vulnerability of kids and teens online -- from the great cyberporn panic of 1996 to the tizzy in a teapot over MySpace predators today.

The article's especially timely, given the recent news that Verizon, Sprint and TWC will now be monitoring the bits they carry, and blocking users' access to newsgroups that have been identified as child porn destinations.

Now, I'm against child pornography in all forms, but I hardly think an ineffective witch hunt (honestly, how many microseconds will it take for the pervs to create a viable workaround?) is sufficient justification to destroy the legislatively-enforced protection that ISPs have against culpability for the actions of their users, and to further erode what little privacy we have left in this country.

What's next -- the telcos being held responsible for monitoring the content of our private phone conversations? Oh, wait a second...

From Alice's article:

Thus, I conclude that the furor over MySpace is disproportionate to the amount of harm produced by the site. Indeed, the furor over online predators seems also to be disproportionate. Rather than focusing on nebulous “predators,” it seems that parents, teachers, and social workers should emphasize identifying and preventing abuse in specific, local community settings.

Word to the mothaf*cka, Alice!

Inflation in the marketplace of ideas

Back in the dot-com days, we guru types used to roll out our favorite chestnut when we wanted to impress people, or to propose "radical" new business models: "consumer data is the currency of the Internet." But we never could have predicted how true this would be, what with the rise of social network marketing, psychographic and behavioral targeting, and widespread government surveillance.

Of course, this idea of information-as-currency hardly originated with us; it's central to a range of social theory by academic gurus like Daniel Bell and Manuel Castells, predicated on the notion that we are now living in an "information society" peopled by "knowledge workers."

Which leads me to my little thought of the morning (bear in mind I haven't had my tea yet): that just as global flows of capital and labor have helped to devalue our economic currency by putting our industry in a vastly larger and more competitive environment, global flows of information have helped to devalue our information currency.

Obviously, as I and others have discussed ad nauseum over the past decade, this applies to information-based commercial goods like music, video, news and such. However, I think it may also apply to other forms of information whose value has not traditionally been measured directly in economic terms.

For instance, a mere signature used to be enough to serve as a guarantee of our identity in legal, regulatory and contractual contexts. Now we are increasingly required to present multiple forms of photo ID, supply passwords, and even volunteer biometric information in order to complete transactions, cash a check, enter a building, or what have you. Traditionally, this "inflation" in the currency of personal information has been treated as a byproduct of the age-old cat-and-mouse game between information security (encryption) and information liberty (decryption). However, this doesn't preclude or conflict with another interpretation: our signatures have simply become a less valuable form of information currency as they have gotten more widely accessible. Today, even our social security numbers have become commoditized (they cost about $2 apiece online, according to a fairly recent NYT article).

Another potential effect of information inflation is the devaluation of ideas themselves. If profitable business, thriving culture, and even success in achieving the quotidian goals of our everyday lives are based on our ability to innovate, and on the strength of our ideas relative to other ideas, then the globalization of the conceptual economy certainly threatens to devalue our ideas, and thereby to undermine our potential success in business, culture, and quotidian achievements.

Of course, I'd be remiss not to invoke Jefferson's oft-quoted adage that "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." This premise -- that information, unlike other forms of capital, is non-rivalrous, non-excludable, and therefore increases rather than decreases in value with proliferation -- has been central to my work, and to many others', for some time.

This Jeffersonian framework for evaluating information is true when  we are discussing culture as a whole -- which certainly benefits from the "free flow of ideas" and the proliferation of cultural expression. Much as Metcalfe observed of all networks, the power and robustness of a cultural network grows exponentially as the number of expressive forms and practices comprising that network grows incrementally.

However, when ideas are in competition with one another -- as they must be for the Jeffersonian or Holmesian concept of the "marketplace of ideas" to function -- then the value of ideas-as-currency is derived from their relative strength, rather than their intrinsic qualities. Put in other terms, if you create a better mousetrap than I do, society overall will have fewer mice to deal with, but you'll end up with more food than I will.

Of course, there's nothing to stop me from taking your idea for a mousetrap, and adopting or even improving upon it myself. Hurray, everybody wins.

But wait -- not so fast. Technological and social latencies -- as well as ruinous IP laws (a/k/a institutionally enforced information latencies) -- invariably slow down the flow of ideas and the adoption of innovations (you might say the "free flow" is a myth -- always to be striven for, but never achieved), and therefore society becomes inevitably divided between information "haves" (those with better mousetraps) and information "have-nots" (those with worse mousetraps). And in some situations, such as a winner-take-all game (last one with a mouse loses), the speed of transmission is irrelevant, because only through the act of innovation (rather than the adoption of innovation) can an individual successfully achieve his or her goals.

Hence, the inflationary value of ideas. The wider and more fluid our information network, the more successfully and consistently we must innovate in order to prevent becoming information have-nots, or losing winner-take-all social dynamics. Today, we're already witnessing a kind of idea-hoarding that evokes images of Weimar-era Germans toting around wheelbarrows full of cash.

Before writing this post, I probably should have read the new Gladwell article on innovation and economics (it's been sitting on my night table for a few days). But I've got my own information latencies -- dozens of papers to grade, and only so many hours during which my son's in preschool. I'll take a look at it today, and check back in if I've got anything to add or amend.

UPDATE: The Gladwell article is great -- it punctures the myth of scientific genius by examining the ways in which ideas "in the air" occur to multiple innovators simultaneously -- e.g. Newton and Leibniz with calculus (strangely, no mention of Plato's contribution to the "in the air" premise). Unfortunately, he reserves the genius myth for the arts -- a claim I vehemently disagree with. However, other than describing the goings on at meetings of Myhrvold's idea-hoarding Intellectual Ventures (which sound like a lot of fun), the article doesn't have too much relevance to the question of information inflation.

UPDATE 2: Found this article from last year by Paul & Baron on a phenomenon they call "information inflation" -- however, their article refers to the sudden exponential growth in the volume of written information, and suggests the legal challenges associated with it. By contrast, I am using the term to discuss the devaluation of information, analogous to other forms of currency.

The man who would have been president

Al Gore was interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air yesterday. I have to say, even 8 years after the Great Debacle, I'm still weeping. Somewhere less than a Planck's-length away, there's a parallel universe where he's been in office for two terms, and I'll bet everyone there is having a much better time.

At any rate, I thought it was interesting that, apropros of a question regarding environmental policy and the climate crisis, Gore invoked Internet regulatory policy (such as 'net neutrality and open standards, though he didn't use the terms) as fundamental to the democratic process, and therefore as imperative tools in combating the global crisis. Wish I had a direct quote, but NPR doesn't post transcripts for some reason.

I know, it's wonky, but you've got to love a guy who can see effective communications policy as a vital element of human survival. Also, just for the record, he was warm, thoughtful and well-spoken. When he slipped into a Southern-y drawl while discussing his dad, it seemed like a genuinely unconscious shift, not the kind of hamfisted put-on we're used to. I dunno, maybe it's for the best he's been able to speak honestly from the sidelines, rather than being shackled to a party line in the White House.

Well worth a listen. Here's the link.

Whoa, oh, oh, oh, on the radio

I was interviewed on KCBS radio twice this week, opining first on the impending satellite radio merger ("creates a monopoly in a doomed industry"), and then on the subject of Elvis Costello's new vinyl+download album release (in which I summon the ghost of Walter Benjamin).

Check 'em out, they were both fun little interviews.

My exam, your take: Copyright expansion

Today, I gave the students in my Copyright class their second take-home exam (due next week). I don't really need any more grading work than I already have, but I'd be curious to see your responses and feedback. So have at it.

-----------

Congress has just passed new intellectual property legislation, containing the following stipulations:

- Copyright terms have been extended to author's life +100 years (or 150 years, in the case of works for hire)

- Copyright protection has been granted for the following:
    - apparel designs
    - interior design concepts
    - myspace/"pimp my site" templates
    - movie/tv/book/game plots
    - databases
    - recipes for food and drinks
    - funny walks
    - swimming styles
    - new instrumental timbres
    - public documents, such as laws and election tallies

- Possession of "infringing" copyrighted material, in any quantity, is a federal criminal offense, punishable by up to $200,000 and 9 months in jail per infringing item

- IP owners are permitted to engage in liability-free "limited surveillance" and "proactive neutralization of pirating tools and materials" if they have a reasonable suspicion of piracy.

President Rice has yet to sign the bill, although she is expected to make a decision any day. She can approve it, exercise a "line item veto" over certain elements, or veto the bill in full.

Please write two letters to the editor of your local newspaper, one explaining why it's imperative that Rice sign the bill, and one explaining why it's imperative that she veto it in part or in whole. Each letter should be approximately 800-1000 words long.

Copyfight fatigue?

So I'm getting ready to teach today's copyright class at NYU. The tentative subject for this week is "the birth of copyfight." I came up with a few interesting milestones:

1998: DMCA, CTEA
1999: grassroots reaction to works-for-hire clause
2000: Future of Music Coalition founded
2001: Creative Commons founded
2003: RIAA lawsuits commence
2003: Downhill Battle founded
2005: Participatory Culture Foundation founded

So then I decided to check out my favorite cultural divining rod, Google Trends, to see whether I could show that popular interest in copyright as a subject has also been on the rise. Much to my surprise, the opposite was the case: since 2004 (the first year Google started to compile this data), search volume on the term "copyright" has consistently shrunk. Eyeballing it, it looks like total search volume is down by about 50% over 4 years (unless that's a logarithmic scale they use).

Can it be that the post-DMCA foment of internet-fueled interest in the social role of intellectual property is dying down? Or are we simply a more educated world, and fewer of us need to understand what this word "copyright" is all about? It's not like the news pegs have gone away -- to the contrary, according to the chart, news volume on the subject of copyright has soared, maybe tripling in the same period (except for a sudden, vertiginous dip in 2008, which I'll chalk up to preemption by the primaries and the general presidential race).

Maybe Lessig was right to bail when he did.

What do you think?

UPDATE: exactly the same trends apply to searches for "intellectual property" (see second chart below)

senate to telcos: please spy on americans

the senate just voted, 67 to 31, to reject the dodd-feingold amendment (S. AMDR. 3907) that would have allowed us to sue the phone companies and other communication service providers for spying on us illegally. they also voted down other amendments sponsored by feinstein and specter aiming to preserve some degree of civil liberties.

just for the record, both hillary and barack were co-sponsors of the dodd-feingold amendment. the official vote tally hasn't been posted yet, but clearly there was bipartisan support for this lurch toward american fascism.

fortunately, the house of representatives version of the bill doesn't provide immunity, so there's still a chance for us.

another dark day for democracy, all in the guise of "security." didn't i see this movie already?

DIY Media Summit this weekend, in LA

I'm proud to have been one of the co-organizers of the forthcoming DIY Media Summit, to be held this coming weekend in Los Angeles.

It'll be a 3-day cornucopia of art, academia, industry and good ole fashioned nerdishness, featuring uber-nerds like Mimi Ito, Howard Rheingold, John Seely Brown, Henry Jenkins, Fred von Lohmann, and plenty others. If you've ever heard of vidding, vlogging, political remixes, machinima, anime music videos, or any of the other video-based expressions of configurable culture, you're gonna love it. If you haven't, you need to -- so you should come, too.

Registration and venue information available here.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture. New York: NYU Press

I reviewed this book for the International Journal of Communication. The link is HERE.

INTRO

“convergence culture” = “where old and new media collide, where grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways.” (2)

“I want to describe some of the ways that convergence thinking is reshaping American popular culture and, in particular, the ways it is impacting the relationship between media audiences, producers and content. . . . to help ordinary people grasp . . . to help industry leaders and policy makers” (12)

“Old media are not being displaced. Rather, their functions and status are shifted by the introduction of new technologies. . . . black box fallacy” (14)

“Convergence involves both a change in the way media is produced and a change in the way media is consumed.” (16) what about gray area?

“Producers who fail to make their peace with this new participatory culture will face declining goodwill and diminished revenues” (24) not much support for this claim

CH 1 – survivor spoilers

Commodity culture >> knowledge culture

“spoiling is empowering in the literal sense in that it helps participants to understand how they may deploy the new kinds of power that are emerging from participation within knowledge communities” (29). Spoiling = power

“spoiling is an adversarial process – a contest between the fans and the producers, one group trying to get their hands on the knowledge the other is trying to protect.” (43)

expert vs. collective intelligence

spoilers >> critical distance (ergo, democratization of critical ability/power)

“the interests of producers and consumers are not the same. Sometimes they overlap. Sometimes they conflict.” (58) good quote

MESSAGE: spoiling is a game which allows consumers to flex their newfound collective muscles vis-à-vis producers, and allows producers to integrate their audiences’ expectations and behaviors into the creative process. Outcome is unclear.

CH 2 – American idol

“‘affective economics’ . . . blur the line between entertainment content and brand messages.” (20)

reality tv = “the first killer application of media convergence” (59)

“affective economics represents an attempt to catch up with work in cultural studies over the last several decades on fan communities and viewer commitments” (62). In other words, the media industry is scrambling to catch up with JENKINS as a matter of life and death

“Here’s the paradox: to be desired by the networks is to have your tastes commodified. On the one hand, to be commodified expands a group’s cultural visibility.” (62) Nichification cuts both ways

“this emerging discourse of affective economics has both positive and negative implications” (63) again, HJ seems on the fence as to where his audience and allegiances lie.

“American Idol offers up a fantasy of empowerment” (64)

“The television industry is increasingly focusing on understanding consumers who have a prolonged relationship and active engagement with media content” (67)

“advertisers are increasingly realizing that they may be better advised investing their dollars behind shows that have a high favorability than shows tat have high ratings” (76) didn’t save arrested development.

“Consumption communities” (80)

“Some [viewers] are turned off by this hypercommercialism, but for others, recognizing marketplace interventions has become part of the ‘game’” (88) democratized critique, transparent marketing

“product placements might be a double-edged sword – on the one hand, higher consumer awareness and, on the other, higher consumer scrutiny.” (90) double-edged sword

“audiences have a long way to go if they are going to exploit the points of entry that affective economics offers them for collective action and grassroots criticism of corporate conduct.” (92) collective criticism = desired outcome for consumers

MESSAGE: new forms of marketing require that the industry pay attention to the selfsame ignored fan communities that Jenkins has been touting for all these years. But the victory is bittersweet, because their elevation to visibility entails the threat of deadening commodification. HJ holds out the possibility of a win-win scenario, but doesn’t spell out how it would work.

CH 3 – matrix

“transmedia storytelling” (20) = convergent narrative

“This transmedia impulse is at the heart of what I am calling convergence culture.” (129)

“The Matrix is entertainment for the age of media convergence, integrating multiple texts to create a narrative so large that it cannot be contained within a single medium” (95)

“In the ideal form of transmedia storytelling, each medium does what it does best – so that a story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels and comics, its world might be explored through game play or experienced as an amusement park attraction. . . . the economic logic of a horizontally integrated entertainment industry” (96) yet, strangely, no mention of uncle walt, the originator of this idea.

“The Matrix was a flawed experiment” (97)

“The Wachowskis wanted to wind the story of The Matrix across all of these media and have it all add up to one compelling whole.” (101) but the notion of a singular or complete work is problematic in convergence culture.

“The new Hollywood demands that we keep our eyes on the road at all times, and that we do research before we arrive at the theater.” (104) Agreed, but does this democratize or stratify? Addresses this only once: “As information spreads from the film into other media, it creates inequalities of participation within the franchise.” (115).

“soon, licensing will give way to what industry insiders are calling ‘co-creation.’” (105) zero support for this claim. Sounds kind of naïve. How would this fill the revenue gap created by the loss of licensing.

“So far, the most successful transmedia franchises have emerged when a single creator or creative unit maintains control.” (106). True. So what does this say about participation?

“two competing forces: the corporate convergence promoted by media industries, and the grassroots convergence promoted by fan communities and immigrant populations.” (109-110). This makes it clear that ‘convergence’ does not imply a convergence of interest between social groups or industry and community.

“More and more, storytelling has become the art of world building.” (114)

“Filmgoers educated on nonlinear media like video games were expecting a different kind of entertainment experience.” (119).

For The Matrix, “the value arises here from the process of looking for meaning . . . and not purely from the intentionality of the Wachowski brothers.” (122) excellent point.

“There has to be a breaking point beyond which franchises cannot be stretched, subplots can’t be added, secondary characters can’t be identified, and references can’t be fully realized. We just don’t know where it is yet.” (127) didn’t james joyce identify that breaking point?

“Criticism may have once been a meeting of two minds – the critic and the author – but now there are multiple authors and multiple critics.” (128).

“Our schools are not teaching what is means to live and work in such knowledge communities, but popular culture may be doing so.” (129) pop >> media literacy

MESSAGE: transmedia storytelling = convergent narrative. The aesthetic principles are still being worked out. The upside is that it makes use of knowledge communities, provides media literacy and (maybe) it makes sense from an industry structure and economic standpoint. The downside is, maybe it widens the participation gap, because it requires a more active, wired audience than passive storytelling. Also, the convergence of media does not suggest a convergence of interest – there’s still the question of who’s in charge, for both financial and creative reasons.

CH 4 – star wars

“the current moment of media change is reaffirming the right of everyday people to actively contribute to their culture.” (132)

“interactivity” = consumer feedback (133)

“participation” = consumer control

- doesn’t look into gray area. This is one way in which he fails to elaborate a full theory of convergence culture.

Industry response to cc: prohibitionists vs. collaborationists (134)

“The story of American arts in the twentieth century might be told in terms of the displacement of folk culture by mass media.” (135) and “popular culture is what happens as mass culture gets pulled back into folk culture” (136) basic HJ theory

“The Web has made visible these hidden compromises that enabled participatory culture and commercial culture to coexist throughout much of the twentieth century.” (137)

“Star Wars is, in many ways, the prime example of media convergence at work.” (145) “The availability of these various ancillary products has encouraged these filmmakers, since childhood, to construct their own fantasies within the Star Wars universe.” (146)

“fan works can no longer be understood as simply a derivative of mainstream materials but must be understood as themselves open to appropriation and reworking by the media industries” (148) reciprocal appropriation fan << >> industry. But what’s new about this? Always a dynamic between margins and mainstream.

“we see the copyright regimes of mass culture being applied to the folk culture process” (154). Yes, but WHY? Doesn’t get into bigger picture. It’s not simply a misunderstanding.

Piracy = promotion.

“Having felt that power, fans and other subcultural groups are not going to return to docility and invisibility.” (158)

“the games companies have been able to convince their consumers to generate a significant amount of free labor by treating game design as an extension of the game-play experience.” (165) important. Economics benefits of fan production for industry.

“Once you put creative tools in the hands of everyday people, there’s no telling what they are going to make with them – and that’s a large part of the fun.” (166)

“the studios are going to have to accept (and actively promote) some basic distinctions: between commercial competition and amateur appropriation, between for-profit use and the barter economy of the Web, between creative repurposing and piracy.” (167) rare prescriptive – sounds like one of the bullets from his on-site ppt presentation.

MESSAGE: cc is a rekindling of folk cultural practice, enabled by newly accessible media production and distribution tech. Result is a symbiotic relationship between pro and amateur production. Industry is split between preventing and exploiting this shift. Fans seem less torn, at least according to HJ. Solution = creative commons approach to IP.

CH 5 – harry potter

“Indeed, we have suggested that it is the interplay – and tension – between the top-down force of corporate convergence an the bottom-up force of grassroots convergence that is driving many of the changes we are observing in the media landscape.” (169) top-down vs. bottom-up

“The Potter wars are at heart a struggle over what rights we have to read and write about core cultural myths – that is, a struggle over literacy.” (170) “a struggle over competing notions of media literacy and how it should be taught” (171)

skills kids need to be “full participants in convergence culture” (176):

1. to      pool knowledge
2. to      share and compare value systems
3. to      make connections across scattered info
4. to      express interpretations and critique using folk culture
5. to      circulate creations via internet
6. role-playing

“Authorship has an almost sacred aura in a world where there are limited opportunities to circulate your ideas to a larger public. As we expand access to mass distribution via the Web, our understanding of what it means to be an author – and what kinds of authority should be ascribed to authors – necessarily shifts.” (179) excellent point, which I make in my dissertation as well. But he makes no effort to pinpoint the locus of that shift, other than a reinvestigation of “communal” and “folk” cultural traditions

“one should think about their appropriations as a kind of apprenticeship” (182) interesting point, but it also demotes remix to a secondary level of expression.

“Schools are still locked into a model of autonomous learning that contrasts sharply with the kinds of learning that are needed as students are entering the new knowledge cultures.” (183)

points out failure of .orgs to defend fanfic. HJ is at his most passionate and persuasive when returning to his home territory of fan fiction.

“current copyright law simply doesn’t have a category for dealing with amateur creative expression.” (189)

advocates revamp of IP in a negotiated fashion

“conservative critics seem to be taking aim at the very concept of transmedia storytelling” (193) his advocacy and partisanship are peeking through

“If the anti-Harry Potter Christians want to protect children from any exposure to those dangerous books, the discernment movement focuses on the agency of consumers to appropriate and transform media content.” (204)

MESSAGE: fan communities around harry potter are an excellent example of self-organized media literacy education. Therefore, the battles over HP are a reflection of a larger battle over what the role of fans should be in the new media ecology. Schools aren’t up to it. Remix is like classical apprenticeship (doesn’t mention caveats). Traditional political lines don’t make sense here – orgs are lame, and some Christians see the remix light. Advocates creative commons approach to revamping IP law, with the participation of both industry and fan culture.

CH 6 – 2004 presidential campaign

“this whole book has been about ‘serious fun’” (207)

“entrenched institutions are taking their models from grassroots fan communities, reinventing themselves for an era of media convergence and collective intelligence.” (208).

“popular culture influenced the way that the campaigns courted their voters – but more importantly, it shaped how the public processed and acted upon political discourse.” (208)

talks about photoshopped images, but no mention of Stalinist photographic manipulation.

Dean’s campaign: “where the politics of television gave way to the politics of the Internet” (210)

In this chapter, HJ is a little more skeptical of the gee-whiz, because he uses Trippi as a strawman evangelist

“Broadcasting provides the common culture, and the Web offers more localized channels for responding to that culture” (211) symbiosis between mass and convergent media – how is this different than hebdige on subcultures?

“the blogging community is ‘spoiling’ the American government.” (215) bringback.

“we can see the logic of convergence politics at play here: the effort to use grassroots media to mobilize and mainstream media to publicize.” (220) echoes digital margin/mainstream split

“What changes, however, is the degree to which amateurs are able to insert their images and thoughts into the political process – and in at least some cases, these images can circulate broadly and reach a larger public” (222) yes.

“The Daily Show . . . demands an active and alert viewer to shift through the distinctions between fact and fantasy.” (227) daily show >> new paradigm of skeptical consumption. But old question here, going back to adorno: can media compel critical or uncritical engagement?

“one way that popular culture can enable a more engaged citizenry is by allowing people to play with power on a microlevel, to exert control over imaginary worlds.” (228) yes, but please connect the dots. How does this translate into actual civic practice?

“We should be concerned about what happens to free speech in a corporate-controlled environment” (231)

“When will we be able to participate within the democratic process with the same ease that we have come to participate in the imaginary realms constructed through popular culture?” “The next step is to think of democratic citizenship as a lifestyle” (234) maybe he’s grasping at straws here.

“Popular culture allows us to entertain alternative framings in part because the stakes are lower . . . Our willingness to step outside ideological enclaves may be greatest when we are talking about what kind of person Harry Potter is going to grow up to be or what kind of world will emerge as the machines and humans learn to work together in The Matrix.” (238)

“we may be able to talk across our differences if we find commonalities through our fantasies. That is in the end another reason why popular culture matters politically – because it doesn’t seem to be about politics at all.” (239)

MESSAGE: 2004 elections suggested influence of convergence culture on both citizens and candidates. Realm of new possibilities, but HJ isn’t utopian (he has trippi for that). Just as margin/mainstream require one another in pop culture, blogs and power structures require one another for politics. (is it blogs vs. msm, or blogs vs. gov’t? this isn’t clear). Pop culture influences the way people think about the world, and thus the range of political possibilities they can imagine. Cultural change is a precursor to political change because the stakes are lower.

CONCLUSION

“Convergence does not depend on any specific delivery mechanism. Rather, convergence represents a paradigm shift – a move from medium-specific content toward content that flows across multiple media channels, toward the increased interdependence of communications systems, toward multiple ways of accessing media content, and toward ever more complex relations between top-down corporate media and bottom-up participatory culture.” (243) thesis statement

“We are in a critical moment of transition during which old rules are open to change and companies may be forced to renegotiate their relationship to consumers.” (243)

“Rather than talking about personal media, perhaps we should be talking about communal media” (245)

“Just as studying fan culture helped us to understand the innovations that occur on the fringes of the media industry, we may also want to look at the structures of fan communities as showing us new ways of thinking about citizenship and collaboration.” (246) BIG THESIS

“That is why it is so important to fight against the corporate copyright regime, to argue against censorship and moral panic that would pathologize these emerging forms of participation, to publicize the best practices of these online communities, to expand access and participation to groups that are otherwise being left behind, and to promote forms of media literacy education that help all children to develop the skills needed to become full participants in their culture.” (248) ADVOCACY THESIS

“A politics of confrontation must give way to one focused on tactical collaboration.” (250)

“Concentrated power is apt to remain concentrated. But we will see adhocracy principles applied to more and more different kinds of projects” (256-7). Yes, but what about sabotage?

“participation becomes an important political right.” (257). Yes. Why isn’t there more of this in the book?

“The ideal of the informed citizen is breaking down because there is simply too much for any individual to know. The idea of monitorial citizenship depends on developing new skills in collaboration and a new ethic of knowledge sharing that will allow us to deliberate together.” (259). ok

“One of the ways we can shape the future of media culture is by resisting such disempowering approaches to media literacy education. We need to rethink the goals of media education so that young people can come to think of themselves as cultural producers and participants and not simply as consumers, critical or otherwise.” (259). Call to rethink media literacy

MESSAGE: rules redrawn. Negotiation. Resurgence of communal culture. Political implications. Key prescriptions = advocacy. Not sure how his corporate readers would react. Focus on negotiation, but doesn’t jive with hardline advocacy. Convergence will save us all. We just need to help it happen.

Vaidhyanathan, S. (2004). The Anarchist in the Library. New York: Basic Books.

Notes

Oligarchy vs. anarchy – historical dichotomy extended into digital age.

“information anarchy” >> “blowback” [circular process]

anarchy is enabled by unmediated (decentralized) information – hence its revival and transformation in the network age.

P2P >> conspicuous production/inconspicuous consumption >> cultural anarchy

Internet = cynical medium (in the positive, Diogenic sense)

Controls vs. protocols

Remix culture is like pre-mediated culture in the capacity for consumers to be (re)producers

Anarchists: culture is the process, hence decentralization

Oligarchs: culture is the product, hence centralization

Copyright law = censorious and unjust

DMCA is worse than copyright law because it allows content providers to set terms of use, and because drm, unlike copyright, never expires. Of course, this point is practically irrelevant because copyrights will outlast DRM. Even if someone wanted to open a protected file from 2005 in 2105 (as opposed to opening a file more suited to the media technologies of the future), it will probably be ridiculously easy to bypass whatever encryption we use today.

IP becomes battleground in anarchy/oligarchy war

Oligarchy and anarchy are both bad ideas. Too much control stifles culture, too little destroys financial incentives to create. Much of the popularity of info anarchy is a result of tightening IP. Best strategy is the middle path, limited monopoly. This would be a return to the true (i.e. constitutional) spirit of copyright. We need to do this in a way that accounts for the democratic power enabled by networked technology. Thesis statement

Piracy beyond the confines of US/EU results from ingrained economic disequilibria. Someone earning $10/week won’t pay $12 for a CD.

“free flow” vs. “cultural imperialism” debates – SV is an optimist, believes that global agency trumps cultural hegemony.

Despite his faith in individual cultural agency, SV believes that aggressive American cultural policy is enforced through our commercial policy (i.e. exportation of arts and entertainment products).

Section on political/power dimensions of information discrepancies directly pertains to dFusion project

New power elite is institutional and global

New severity of information oligarchy in US (from Patriot Act to DMCA) will not only kill culture, but also scientific endeavor.

Washingtonian consensus = “soft oligarchy” = multinational trade policies benefiting established oligarchs

Vs.

California ideology = “techno-libertarianism” = flexible labor, new economy, etc. collapsed under the weight of its own inflated self-hype

Vs.

Zapatista-style anarchy, which succeeded in Seattle ’99 but faced its own troubles as cops and nations got hip to their tactics

Danger of anarchy is that it is prone to exploitation by demagoguery.

Calls for reinvestigation of two overlooked ideologies, “cultural democracy” which he more or less equates with anarchy on p. 190 and “civic republicanism” great idea, but zero discussion of practical application. He only brings it up on the last 2 pages. Also, he fails to examine the reasons for the waning of civic republicanism, i.e. ideologies that undermine civic values (consciously or unconsciously), a lessening stake in the instruments of self-determination by the majority of the populace, and systemic educational failure.

Quotes

“Stronger efforts toward control often backfire to create less controllable – and less desirable – conditions” (xii)

“techno-fundamentalism” = “blind faith in technology as a simple solution to complex social and cultural issues” (xiii)

“global communication and organization by nonelites is stimulating a reaction by elites.” (xvi)

“by the end of the 20^th century, anarchy was youth culture” (11) I think this needs to be qualified a bit. Writing an “A” with a circle around it on your looseleaf notebook is hardly equivalent to joining a syndicalist commune.

“anarchistic habits, structures of thought, matter more to more people every day.” (14)

“I’m interested in how real software influences cultural software” (20) cute

“the hacker ethic rests on openness, peer review, individual autonomy, and communal responsibility. Anarchism built the Internet. But the threat of anarchy has launched a decade-long effort to rule it and rein it in.” (39) thesis statement

“the potential ‘Napsterization’ of just about everything” (44)

“More than piracy, Hollywood is reining in creativity, adaptability, and customizability” (69), pushing for broadcast flag standards.

“Imagine if we could go beyond exercising control of our individual critical faculties. Suppose, in addition to reading things differently, we could rewrite them. . . . Until the rise of fixed and legally protected media products like television shows and feature films, humans had the power to adapt and reuse cultural elements. . . . But the restrictions that copyright law places on production of derivative works and the integrity of the original work alter that dynamic.” (79) Remix culture dynamic harkens back to pre-mediated culture. Yes, this is true in many ways, but it is also untrue in some interesting ways. I need to find a way to enumerate the ways in which remix culture represents a real departure.

“the fundamental purpose of intellectual property law is to create artificial scarcity” (87)

“in trying to exert an absurd level of control over culture and information, the intellectual property industries undermine their own cause.” (90)

“real copyright should still be relevant in the digital world” (92)

argues for a “tamer, more reasonable, more manageable vision of our information ecosystem” (93) than favored by oligopolists or anarchists thesis statement

“Our policies have severed the margins from the mainstream while anarchistic technologies have connected them in new and powerful ways.” (114) SV seems to vacillate between supporting anarchism and supporting moderate control over cultural distribution. This is, for me, a major weakness in the book.

“the emerging pay-per-view regime could signal the death of the liberal Enlightenment project and thus the public library itself.” (124) so dire. As I have argued elsewhere, there can be simultaneous free content and paid services, allowing both information flow and revenue potential for producers and distributors.

“We need a just, reasonable, republican model of information distribution. We should be able to enjoy and exploit the freedom of information anarchy with the ability to discern good from bad, useful from useless information” (129)

“In the post-Tienanmen, post-Seattle, post-Napster, post-9/11 age, the state has reasserted itself by trying to manage its information ecosystems” (171)

“When norms crumble, people feel justified in breaking laws and the state feels compelled to break heads.” (184)

“The question for us in the twenty-first century should not be choosing anarchy or oligarchy but constructing and maintaining systems that discourage both” (187) thesis statement. This is so problematic. I appreciate SV’s desire to reconcile destructive forces, but his syntax reveals the near-impossibility and vagueness of his ambitions. Who, exactly, will construct and maintain these systems? The answer to this question is, itself, the issue under debate in schism between centralized and decentralized information ideologies.

“could we lower the cultural cost of security?” (191) good question.

Additional Readings

Pierre Levy, Collective Intelligence (emancipatory power of distributed systems)