apophenia :: culture

March 8, 2008

cultural sustainability

cultural sustainability

Since Davos, I've been thinking about cultural sustainability. This isn't a term that I heard there, but one that I wish that I had.

These days, when people in business talk about sustainability, they mean environmental sustainability. Traditionally, the environment was an externality that was ignored. More and more, with the conversations of "carbon neutral," people are starting to think about what it means to environmentally sustainable. At the same time, a company can be environmentally sound and completely destroy local economies and other aspects of culture through their moves.

To me, the idea of "cultural sustainability" is about companies whose actions offset the consequences of their presence (or disappearance). For example, when large companies abandon cities that they've been in for years and where the entire city revolves around them, their move has a HUGE culturally destructive force. How do they offset this in a functional way? How does this get considered to be an externality that needs to be factored in? (It used to be through layoff benefits and pensions that kept going no matter what... this is no longer viewed as critical.) Large companies who come into a town and put out of business a variety of different local merchants have another kind of culturally destructive practices. This is why the conversations around Wal-Mart get so heated: capitalism vs. cultural sustainability.

When companies were smaller and local, there were pressures put upon them to be good local citizens. They invested in the towns where they were present and operated as key actors in creating culturally sustainable systems. It was normal for a company to help out with a local school event because education made sense for the company because it meant better employees. As companies get bigger and bigger (and "globalized"), there's less pressure to be invested in the culture. Even if there was, what culture should they invest in when they're so big? Mostly, big companies give back to communities for PR purposes.

There are numerous points of pressure placed on companies right now to be environmentally sustainable, but this is not the only kind of sustainability that matters. That said, there are lessons to be learned. For a long time, the conversation tended to devolve into capitalism vs. environmental sustainability. More and more, folks are saying BOTH and finding ways to make that work. How do we do this with cultural sustainability? What pressure points need to be put into place where culture is evaluated as an externality in the models that economists draw up?

Category: culture

Tags: business practices sustainability environment

   

Posted by zephoria at 1:53 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack (0)

December 5, 2007

Overprotective parenting and bullying: Who is to blame for the suicide of Megan Meier?

Many people have asked me why I have not addressed the Megan Meier story that broke over the last month. I admit that I've been extremely bothered by the stories and the implications of an adult bullying a child through mediating technology. That said, I suspected that the press wasn't telling the full story. Like all coverage of horrible events, the press focused on what made the story juicy rather than trying to paint a complicated picture of what led to the event. I grew up in a town where a teen murder captured everyone's attention (and turned into a made-for-TV movie). It took years and uncountable appeals before we had a decent picture of what actually happened and, during that time, the stories on the street were far different from what the press was covering. Thus, I wanted to wait until I knew more.

For those who are not familiar with the Megan Meier story, let me create a brief overview of what has been commonly covered in the press. Megan (13, St. Louis) had a MySpace profile when a cute boy "Josh" (16) begins courting her. All is well until Josh breaks up with her online by sending cruel messages about how she hurts her friends, is fat and a slut, and "the world would be a better place without you." Shortly after reading this, Megan commits suicide. Josh turns out to be a fake profile created by Lori Drew, the mother of one of Megan's former friends. Police investigate, no charges are filed.

Because the story taps into every parent's worst fear and the paranoia over the internet, the press have been saying all sorts of things. Yet, never was there a response from the woman who admitted to creating Josh, most likely because she was forbidden from speaking out as police work out whether charges are to be filed. Then, this morning, I learned that someone who identifies as Lori Drew posted an explanation on a blog called "megan had it coming". Given the title of the blog, I had serious doubts that this was legitimate but upon reading the post, I think it actually might be.

(Update: Lori Drew's lawyers have said that Drew is not the writer of the blog. Thus, what follows is an interpretation of what an unknown person purporting to be Lori Drew said and should be taken with a grain of salt. The broader discussion of parenting today is still relevant.)

What we learn is that Lori viewed her acts as protective of her child who she believed was the victim of Megan's dark side. She thought she was teaching Megan a lesson and never imagined the consequences of her efforts to give Megan a taste of her own medicine. Because of earlier incidents involving her daughter, she had no love for Megan and no respect for Megan's parents who she felt were unable to see the dark side of their daughter. Step into this mother's shoes and it's easy to understand her logic and why, from her POV, she took the steps that she did. At the same time, her perspective signals some absolute failures in American society, our ability to rationally communicate, and Lori's inability to imagine potential costs of her decisions.

Much to my dismay, parenting today seems to require absolute belief that you're child is the best child ever. Many parents think that their child can do no wrong and, thus, are unable to hear critiques of their own children. In some ways, it's not surprising... people have fewer kids (who are mostly wanted thanks to birth control), inhabit single family homes, and live in a nurture-centric world where their children reflect on them at every level. Doubting one's child means doubting oneself.

The result of our child obsession is that parents are overprotective. They want to cushion their children from every scratch and get involved in every incident that makes their children feel emotional or physical pain. This is precisely what causes parents to call schools when their child gets a B or ring up other parents when something mean is said on the schoolyard or other symptoms of "helicopter parenting." Children are not encouraged to struggle through the feelings of pain and hurt and find a solution; instead, parents are expected to get involved and fix it and most enter the ring voluntarily. In these environments, there's no social solidarity amongst parents and parents are unable to hear criticism about their child. Instead, such critiques are viewed as attacks and are used as weapons when parents want others to control their children their way.

Reading between the lines, I get the sense that Megan was emotionally all over the place (for whatever reasons - an actual issue or just plain puberty). She was struggling to negotiate friendships and she had a mean streak when she was depressed. She wasn't the cool kid and she was struggling to fit in and made poor judgments about how to handle friendships. She wanted someone to love her and make her feel cool and important. Frankly, it seems like pretty normal middle school tumultuousness, but we live in a culture that can't accept rough edges. Maybe meds would've stabilized her, maybe her self esteem would've improved without the braces, or maybe and most importantly, it was just a matter of time. But as anyone who was not that cool in school can tell you, middle school sucked. It's ground zero for learning how to negotiate social interactions and many mistakes are made. This is when bullying and boy/girl-dynamics and other dramas really come to the forefront. It's awful, it's hell. Yet, the responsibility of a parent of a tween is not to try to fix all painful situations, but to teach their child how to negotiate them responsibly. This is much harder than fixing things and it's challenging for Type A parents who desperately want their kids to turn out OK. But no good comes of kids not learning coping mechanisms and relying on parents to fix every social issue.

While I understand Lori's desire to protect her child and her feeling of helplessness for not being able to do anything, it's not clear to me from her story that she focused on giving her daughter much agency. Instead, she felt as though she was responsible for fixing it. Here is where I think she made a mistake.

Deceiving children is problematic to begin with, but doing so by tapping into their emotional weaknesses is outright deadly. At a gut level, Lori knew that she could capture Megan's attention by creating a male character that showed interest. In other words, Lori knew how to manipulate Megan's attention and emotions. She capitalized on that knowledge, self-justifying it as responsible parenting. She knew how to have the "perfect" relationship with Megan, to gain her trust. This is knowledge that adults have because we've had our mistakes and learned how to negotiate social interactions. The reason that Megan's relationships were so fraught was probably not because she was evil but because she and her peers were struggling with how to appropriately interact with one another. It's clear from Megan's reaction to Josh that she was fully capable of positive interactions in a social context not strife with miscommunication and the confusion of school status. If she were truly as messed up as Lori assumed her to be, she would not be capable of this.

In my opinion, by choosing to "teach her a lesson," Lori acted in a manner that was both ethically and morally inappropriate. Revenge is foolish in every context, but adults should never take revenge on children, regardless of how much those children upset them. This is an abuse of power. Furthermore, it signals to Lori's daughter that revenge is an OK response to being hurt. Whatever happened to "turn the other cheek"? For a Christian society, we don't do a good job of upholding basic Christian values.

While Lori believes that her act of verbal maliciousness is equivalent to Megan's meanness to other kids, she's wrong. Kids can definitely be cruel and it definitely hurts, but it's embedded in a larger context about the struggles for status and popularity, the social context of the broader peer group, and, generally, reciprocal bad treatment. As much as parents want to believe that other kids are mean to their child but their child is innocent, this is rarely the case. There is usually build up and a lot of back and forth before an incident that we'd call "bullying" takes place. Bullying rarely happens out of the blue - it's situated in a larger context of social drama and hurt. By pretending to be a love interest when sexuality is burgeoning and having a significant other is a valued status marker, Lori was not simply operating as another peer. Furthermore, by building her trust, Lori consciously made Megan vulnerable. Even if she did not realize it, the trust built in such a context far exceeds the trust between most peers at that stage, and thus made Megan more vulnerable to Josh than Lori's daughter was to Megan. Capitalizing on that trust and swiftly and cruelly rupturing that bond was a truly horrible act of abuse.

I'm glad that Lori is sharing her perspective and I hope that parents read it because I imagine that many can see themselves in her shoes. Yet, I hope that parents can also see why Lori's decisions are flawed and dangerous. The critical lesson here is not about the internet, it's about parents responsibilities in raising their children. As tempting as it is to get involved and as easily as it is to do so online through deception, parents usually need to stay out of such situations. They need to advise their children, teach them how to cope, and support them through the tumultuous times. Of course, there are examples when things go too far over the line and parents need to get involved, but it seems as though that line has been erased. Helicopter parenting is dangerous and, frankly, I don't think that we're going to see the full damage of it for another 10 years as this cohort enters the workforce (although Twenge argues that the narcissism part is already affecting the workplace). The biggest problem is that this needs to be done en masse. It doesn't help to have some parents disengage while the majority of a peer group's parents are calling the school and demanding fairness and getting involved in every childhood squabble. Parenting is hard, seeing your child hurting is hard, thinking you can fix it and choosing not to is hard, wanting your child to get every opportunity possible and yet choosing not to manipulate the system is hard. I totally understand why parents want to get involved and fix it, but such engagement can be harmful to children long-term and result in a more problematic culture more broadly.

Category: culture

Tags: parenting bullying MeganMeier suicide deception

   

Posted by zephoria at 11:17 AM | Comments (27) | TrackBack (0)

October 29, 2007

innovation's social externalities

In business, the economic concept of "externalities" has tremendous salience. In short, an externality is a cost that a third party must bear due to the actions of others. For example, air pollution is considered an externality of manufacturing. In theory, as protectors of the public good, reasonable governments should regulate corporate externalities through imposed taxes. (In reality...) More and more, discussion of environment externalities is a core part of business.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about another type of externalities: social externalities. In other words, effects on social life caused by policy, cultural, or business decisions. In many ways, social externalities are quite like environmental externalities - the effects are often latent. As such, the offending parties are long since gone and the solution is not to turn back to the clock but to find a new way to move forward.

Technology often creates unexpected social externalities. Take, for example, the air conditioner. Anyone who has witnessed a summer in the deep south can attest to the value of an air conditioner. In the last couple of years, I've heard lots of people talk about the environmental costs of air conditioning yet I almost never hear people talk about the social cost of air conditioning. It used to be too damn hot to sit around inside all day long so people used to sit on their stoop or anywhere where they might catch a breeze. They used to sit in social spaces. I remember summers on the east coast where those who couldn't afford A/C spent hot summer days at the movie theater or any public place with A/C that they could find. Affordable A/C means a collapse of certain types of social community space.

Of course, policy can cause just as many social externalities as technology. Consider the implementation of compulsory high school in the U.S. and Europe. While we can certainly say now that schooling is a good thing (even if we devised schooling for imperial, colonial, and corporate purposes), we often fail to consider the externality of age segregation and what that has meant for so many aspects of civic and social life. We consciously devised a system that would stall growing up and now demonize children for not maturing. What a mess!

A different innovation to consider would be the automobile. Once again, we can talk about the environmental impact of modern day horses. When it comes to social externalities, we also have a decent understanding of how the automobile created suburbia. Yet, how would we think about evaluating the social costs of the invention of the automobile? There doesn't seem to be any agreed-upon way to measure "social good" or "public happiness" or any of those other squishy community concepts (thus, the debate around "Bowling Alone"). Unless I'm mistaken, there don't seem to be that many economists trying to work out ways of measuring social externalities (other than violence or other externalities that can then be regulated through law).

I'm concerned that our contemporary business narratives of progress often fail to reflect on the social externalities caused by innovations and organizational shifts. Of course, this is not about techno-determinism or fear mongering. We do that all too well. Propagandized mythical headlines like "Violent games make kids kill" are not what I'm talking about. I'm more interested in work like Mimi Ito and her colleagues' studies on how youth's lives are reorganized by the mobile phone and how not being easily accessible means being written out of social life. STS scholars and other academics are definitely researching how innovation and structure affect broader social life, but this work often fails to get out in the public. More problematically, it seems to me that business and the public think that progress is a one-directional path to the future and that we're on that train. Why are we so invested in innovating anything that can be innovated, regardless of the consequences?

What would it take to get people to reflect on the social externalities of innovations and public policy? To consider history and reflect on what the costs might be of a particular innovation? Now that we're curbing some of our "brilliant" ideas because we understand the economic externalities, might we reconsider some of the things we do for what the longterm social externalities might be? Of course, part of being young and innovative is to not think about externalities... I'm definitely getting old.

Category: culture

Tags: externalities economics sociality policy

   

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October 25, 2007

Choose Your Own Ethnography

For this year's Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) conference, I put together a paper reflecting on my methodological choices in pursuing an understanding of how youth engage with networked publics. In it, I try to lay out my decisions, my successes, and my failures. This paper is written in loving memory of my advisor Peter Lyman.

"Choose Your Own Ethnography: In Search of (Un)Mediated Life"

Enjoy!

Category: culture

Tags: ethnography crib talk paper 4S methodology

   

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May 8, 2007

dystruktshun of inglesh as we no

We all know teens can't spell. And parents blame technology. And they're partially right.

In talking with teens, the lack of available namespace is something that regularly comes up. They can't get the screenname they want on AIM or the URL they want on MySpace. So, they go with alternate spellings. It's fascinating to talk to them about how they started mucking with the spelling of words to create accounts on this that or the other system. Can we blame the lack of meaningful namespaces for the destruction of English? Perhaps.

Once on these systems, they want to create a unique identity, something that really identifies them, something that has "personality." Personality... personalization. Why not personalize the English language? Suh-weet. This makes it fun and expressive. (My favorite part of this is that when someone goes to copy/paste an AIM into Xanga, they have to be very careful to change the spelling to that person's style if they're going to mod the copy/paste and pretend like that was the real conversation.) So maybe we can blame the fact that teens are stuck at home, bored, and wanting to be expressive?

SMS is, of course, taking this to a whole new level. This is pretty well known outside of the US where SMS-speak has destroyed native tongues everywhere, but we're only about a year into massive texting adoption amongst teens in the States. Now, they're trying to be expressive using as few characters as possible. Remember when secretaries used to learn shorthand? Imagine how fast a teen today would be at that. Maybe we should train them to be secretaries and give them phones? Scratch that. But once again, the solution to a technological limitation is to mess with the English language. Hmm.

The English language is not actually that stable. Go check out some Old English texts and you'll see all sorts of peculiar spelling of familiar words. It took a long time for English to evolve to its current structure. I can't help but wonder if that evolution just sped up.

Category: culture

Tags: language

   

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March 20, 2007

to remember or to forget? on babies and beer goggles

to remember or to forget? on babies to beer goggles

At a dinner party long ago, a debate emerged about the importance of forgetting versus the techno-utopian desire to remember *everything*. As the animation level of the debate approached unmanageable, a woman at the table confronted the most vocal of the anti-forgetting people, asking him if he was the first child. He looked at her oddly and said no, the second. She smirked and told him that he should be thankful for the power of forgetting because no woman in her right mind would ever go through childbirth a second time if she could clearly recall the pain involved. Needless to say, her point resulted in many muted giggles.

Lately, i've been reading too much about the history of courtship in the United States. "From Front Porch to Back Seat" offers great insight into just how brand new the 1950s image of "dating" is. Go back 100 years and no proper girl would ever be caught dead out in public with a suitor. Girls chose which boys could call on them (boys had no choice) and these calls were taken at the girl's home, initially with a chaperone present. Working class girls had no parlors and thus couldn't take calls; they met boys in public spaces. Rich girls, irritated by the limits of traditional courtship, began rebelling by taking to the streets with their beaus. Slowly, from there, public dating became the common practice for courtship. Ironically, what is now perceived as solidly middle class in terms of practice originated from working class and was solidified by the rebellious upper class.

Public dating began a radical re-gendering of courtship. The move out of the home (viewed as a woman's sphere) into the public (viewed as a man's sphere) shifted everything. This was further magnified by the fact that the move to public required money and money was boy's money. While calling-driven courtship was controlled by women, men began calling the shots when it moved out of the home. They chose who they wished to date, they controlled where the date was to take place, etc. The norms also shifted as girls became popular by dating as many good-looking men as possible (and vice versa). Dating was not about love or companionship, but solely about status. The iconic image seems to forget that.

Part of how this image of dating was solidified in mainstream culture as normative has to do with mainstream media's perpetuation of the cultural norms. Magazines, TV, and movies all perpetuated this image of dating, providing structure to the ritual. Today, as we are caught in our own confusions about courtship, we long for the idyllic image of dating that never really existed, the image that the media "forgot" to convey. We no longer have social scripts for how to go about mating. I love asking teens and college students about dating... The term seems so antiquated, so wrong. Sure, teens have boyfriends and girlfriends, but ask them how they met or how they knew they were dating and all lines get blurry real fast. Hell, ask most 20-somethings about how they went from a hookup to being partners - they have no idea either.

While we continue to perpetuate an image of dating as an institution, the realities of courtship are quite fuzzy. A few too many drinks and Mr. Playboy takes home the hottie in the corner; the hottie thinks a relationship's brewing while Mr. Playboy blames beer goggles. Close friends begin adding benefits to their friendship - is a Relationship emerging or is it solely Friends with Benefits? Ideally, we'd all be good at communicating the state of our relationships with others, but the truth is that we suck at reflexivity.

Then again, do we really want precise communicative efficacy? Sometimes, the fuzzy line is more desirable. What if you don't know what you want? Land-o-gray is a hell of a lot more simpler than full commitment or complete anti-commitment. Besides, plausible deniability is a girl's best friend. But there's a difference between the blurred space and the incomplete crystalized image from the silver screen. The further we move from the space in which that was created, the more we "remember" something that never existed.

Now, imagine that you had to face every uncomfortable dating situation ever for the rest of your life, every awkward disconnect, every terrible blind date, every painfully unpleasant interaction. Would you ever date again? All around me, my friends are becoming dating-phobic because they're terrified of messing up one more time. I watch as they swing to extremes, overcompensating for the last relationship disaster. And they don't even remember the details of what went wrong! (Which reminds me... you out there... you really hated him when you broke up the first time, the second time AND the third time... don't get back together just because he's being nice now!)

While i'm all down for remembering everything i ever read, just imagine the havoc wreaked on courtship by remembering today. First off, you "remember" interactions that never took place because you read the details of her blog before you even met. Next, all of those blog entries you wrote reminds you of your own emotional naiveté because you were in lurve. And now you have the snarky emails and IMs and texts that show that you're a complete dickwad and are the root cause of all relationship woes. You have the video of your breakup that you watch over and over again to see what you could've done better so that you don't feel like such shit. Oh, and you have shelves of DVDs that prove that your relationship looks nothing like what "normal" relationships should look like (proof through Molly Ringwald). Somehow, just as you're starting to feel better, you think that it couldn't _really_ hurt to look at her MySpace. Only you found that she erased your very existence in an effort to delete the relationship out of memory. And you wonder why you've stolen every emo MP3 out there.

I don't think it's just babymaking that we want to forget. There are good reasons for the tried-and-true attitude that you can't immediately just be friends post-breakup. The reason you take time away is to forget. The reason you want to forget is because it's how you make sure your ego doesn't go suicidal on you. The natural decay of negative memories is quite useful. The re-organizing of your past allows you to be confident in who you are today. (We all remember middle school sucking, but do you really remember the details of it or just an abstraction? Statistics suggest that the #1 feeling you felt was boredom, but i suspect that's not the first emotion that comes to mind when you think of le sucktitude of middle school.)

Media has made it difficult for cultural memories to fade. We don't remember the days of house calls for courtship because society moved away from that rather quickly (and few read beyond the Crib Notes of 11th grade English texts). But thanks to TV and movies, we "remember" past practices and norms. Does this mean that culture will have a much harder time evolving with the times? Or perhaps it means that there will be an ever-increasing disconnect between the generations because even though your mom didn't fall in love like Ingrid Bergman, she's still gonna imagine that this is how it's supposed to be. How does the non-forgetfulness of archival media influence our culture's ability to shift over time?

We are building technology with the implicit desire to remember everything. Every interaction, every feeling, every idea. Why? Perhaps this isn't such a good thing. I for one would like to see my digital memories fade into hearts and flowers. Of course, being the ever-benevolent giver, technology has decided to invent a different solution: "the memory pill" (guaranteed to obliterate negative memories so that you can overcome the memory of murdering your wife... err... i mean, PTSD...). Better living through chemistry and technology, right? Right??? Bueller?

Category: culture

Tags: dating courtship memory remembering forgetting

   

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December 1, 2006

This Film Is Not Yet Rated

Last night, i went to see This Film Is Not Yet Rated (and the director Kirby Dick) over at USC. I had wanted to see the movie since Cory reviewed it on BoingBoing. Wow.

While most people i've talked to are fascinated with the legal (copyright, first amendment, etc.) issues involved, what i really enjoyed was the portrayal of how we leverage protectionist rhetoric and "child safety" to uphold hegemonic moral values that will aid industry. This isn't actually about the children; it's about maintenance of power. One of the sections that really highlights this is a discussion on how the MPAA handles violence. Glorified violence (a.k.a. no blood) is PG-13 while imagery that shows the consequences of violence (a.k.a. blood) is R. In a country that is at war and with a generation of soldiers who think that war is like a video game, this bugs the shit out of me. God do i worry about those kids coming back - they're not doing so well.

Mechanical sex is R while sex that shows female pleasure is NC-17. Heterosexual interactions are PG-13 while homosexual interactions are R. What values are we upholding here? For me, it was particularly compelling to hear the director of Boys Don't Cry speak. I saw a pre-release viewing of that film with an audience of queer and transgendered folks. I started crying during the opening credits. In depicting the brutality that queer and trans folks experience, that movie broke my heart. And for that reason, i wish that i could get every teen on the planet who's screaming faggot this and faggot that to watch it. I was ecstatic when Swank won the Oscar. I was horrified to learn that it was rated NC-17 for sexual pleasure and the rape scene (but not for the brutal violence). While i find rape scenes horrifying, most movies fail to show just how devastating being raped is; it's simplified, pretty-ified. There's nothing pretty about it in "Boys Don't Cry." It's realistic and heartbreaking, the kind of thing that should be shown precisely because it is anti-glorifying.

Anyhow, go watch the film. It's worth it.

Category: culture

Tags: film mpaa

   

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October 28, 2006

the fabric of elephant society

I read the NYTimes' article on shifts in elephant society a few weeks ago but BB's post reminded me to post it. In short, elephant society is going haywire. The young males are not being properly socialized into the elephant herds because of not having older patriarchs and matriarchs to keep them in line. As a result, there's massive amounts of unchecked violence and aggression. Violence is rampant now, as is what appears to be PTSD (resulting in more violence). Anyhow, read the article. It's a fascinating look into the collapse of society. (And obviously, there are interesting questions of parallels...)

Category: culture

Tags: elephants

   

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August 10, 2006

Henry Jenkins and Convergence Culture

While i was off playing this summer, one of my dear mentors (and a good friend) went off and started blogging. There are few people that i respect more than Henry Jenkins and i'm *sooo* stoked to get a daily dose of Henry insightfulness - i deeply miss that from my days at MIT. I feel bad for not being around to properly welcome him to the blogosphere. **WELCOME!** I strongly encourage everyone to check out Henry's blog - i'm sure you'll find it as mentally yummy as i do.

For those who work in the tech or media industry and don't know Henry, shame on you. Henry is the expert on participatory culture and really gets "user generated content" because he studies how fans create content and culture around their favorite artifacts. Over the years, he's looked at everything from fan fiction to WWF, gaming to Columbine, children's culture to media consumption. His work is seminal and uber-relevant to folks interested in media and tech.

His latest work is particularly relevant to those interested in what's going on with YouTube and MySpace, Lost and American Idol. Henry just published a book called Convergence Culture which provides a set of case studies where media is converging in interesting ways. Video games are telling the backstories to movies. TV has become participatory. Etc. This is precisely why i find LA fascinating - old media and new media are converging because the consumers are making them. This is a must-read book for folks trying to understand why and how people are engaging in all sorts of new media practices.

PS: Henry also has a really good article on Four Ways to Kill MySpace for you MySpace folks...

PPS: In case you missed it before, Henry and i co-authored a piece on MySpace and DOPA...

Category: culture

Tags: henryjenkins convergence

   

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March 19, 2006

Cognition, cults and ethnography

One of the goals of ethnography is to understand cultures on their own terms, from the perspectives of the people living them. Spending so much time thinking this way makes me really good at making sense of two people fighting - i'm able to see both sides of an argument and how different psychological frames lead to different impressions of a situation. (Of course, playing relationship therapist is not one of my favorite roles.) Over time, i've also gotten a lot better at understanding disparate political ideologies and other systems differences. Of course, it often bugs me that i can easily see the world from a conservative frame or from the position of big business. I prefer to stay meta where i think those frames are culturally devastating. But it is useful to be able to see the world from a different POV. And then there's religions and cults.

In trying to analyze religion and cults, i find that i can never truly understand the experience from the POV of the people experiencing them. I am always meta, analyzing the effects and practices from a safe distance. Part of this is that i'm scared of getting too deeply embedded. So then i started thinking about what i'm afraid of.

One of the things that intrigues me about both religion and cults is their use of DMT in their rituals and initiation rites. DMT is produced by your brain when under great stress, during sleep deprivation, fasting and meditation. (It can also be synthetically introduced.) When experiencing heightened DMT production, people are very vulnerable, very open. This is critical for communing with God, but it can also be easily manipulated. Given the practices of many self-help cults, it is not surprising to me that many self-help attendees come out thinking that they've found the path to improving their lives. They've just gone through an intense experience where they're stripped of control (must ask to go to the bathroom), sleep depped, food controlled, and pushed to reveal their deeply buried demons to a group of strangers who challenge them and push them further. This tightly bonds you with the strangers, with the ideas. This is coupled with a change in language thought to be needed to help understand the deeper truths, but in fact, used to help mark inside/outside positioning. The moves are brilliant and it's not surprising that there are different degrees of cult-ness, but that's a different post.

Both religion and cults change worldviews. One could say the same about politics but i don't know if it's the same. I started wondering about the effects of DMT production on this process. Most likely, given its hallucinogenic properties and other research on hallucinogens, DMT production results in an altering of synaptic connections. In other words, when you're producing a high level of DMT, you can build strong synaptic relationships between previously unrelated ideas (apophenia). Given the rapid language transitions i've seen in people, i feel like there has to be a neural effect of cult participants, probably because of DMT. (Is there? Chemists?)

This then puts me into an interesting bind as an ethnographer trying to make sense of these things. If there are changes to the neural processes, are there ways to see practitioners on their own terms? Is it possible to understand the cultures there without experiencing the effects that the rituals are meant to bring on? I have to imagine that anthropologists studying religion and religious practices went through some of this. (Anyone?)

This then cycles back. What are the cognitive/neural pathway differences between different cultures based on their practices and belief systems? We usually get at this through the differences in language with metaphors being a very notable synaptic difference. But what else is going on? Who studies the cognitive/neuro models of culture anyhow? Hmm...

(Caterina: this one is for you.)

Category: culture

Tags: cognition dmt cults ethnography

   

Posted by zephoria at 1:28 PM | Comments (21) | TrackBack (0)

October 8, 2005

remix is active consumption not production (when media becomes culture, part 2)

After great comments and good conversations, i want to take a second stab at explaining the shift i was asking for wrt copyright and remix. My argument is that we stop thinking of remix as production, but as active consumption. Remix happens as a bi-product of consumption. What we're remixing is culture and the active consumption of culture is part of identity development and living as a social creature in society.

Think about clothing consumption. Few people buy all of the items on the mannequin. You buy different pieces and mix and mash them. You might even decide to alter them by adding patches, by dying them, by cutting them up. You make the clothing yours. And then you share your consumption with the world by parading on the streets. In this way, you make the clothing tell your story. (tx Kevin Bjorke)

Think about IKEA consumption. Isn't it great that they lay out entire rooms for you to look at? Do any of you have rooms that are exactly like the ones in IKEA? You take furniture, you mix and mash it up until it suits you. You may paint it, you may add a different bedspread, you'll add your own books. You then invite your friends over to show them what you've done.

Are you expected to consume clothing or IKEA exactly as prescribed? No. These items are made to be personalized, made to be altered to meet your needs.

So what is fan fiction? I take a story and i alter it to tell my story. What is hip hop remix? I take a bunch of different sounds and put them together in a way not prescribed by the mannequin.

From clothing to songs, we consume and we connect it to our lives. We've always done this with media. We've made collages out of magazines, we've put together pieces of songs in a new sequence for our friends. Of course, now, the cultural bits that we consume are more accessible Lego blocks. It's possible to play with them in new ways. And there are so many more choices that we can be really creative with that play. We can consume culture in new ways and what we shit out in that process actually gets to be digested and mixed together with other bits of culture that we consumed.

There's a problem though and that has to do with distribution. When i parade around the public square in my remix of the Gap and Nike (well,...), i am sharing my remix with the world. Yet, there's nothing persistent or searchable about it. What happens when my friends snap a photo of me? They are making the remix more permanent but, still, no one from those megacorps sees what i've done. What happens when my friends sell that picture to the tabloids for a bazillion dollars because Britney and her new baby are also in the photo? And they are also wearing a different remix of various megabrands? I wasn't remixing clothing for distribution. Of course, even that does happen. Ever seen pictures of celebrities in magazines where it says the top was made by Ralph Lauren and the skirt was made by Versace or whatever?

When Jonah Peretti sent his conversation with Nike to a few friends, was he distributing it? What about when it got forwarded to millions of people and got him spots on TV? In digital world, our intentions and the potential results might not be the same. You might be speaking to six people in your blog. It might feel like the town square but what happens when millions of people apparate there like it's a Quidditch match? Only witches know this instant appearance of beyond imaginable audiences with some of them under invisibility cloaks. Yet, online, we're living like witches. Is it distribution when we're performing to beyond imaginable publics and lots of people are taking pictures?

What about when we're intending to share to our friends just like we've always done? Why do corporate interests get to tell us that our sharing with our friends is now bad even though we've ALWAYS done it? Is this only because they get to be the voyeur in the room? Who gave them that right? Sure, it's a new public, but yuck. I can't imagine growing up with a RIAA rep perched in my school bathroom.

A huge part of the identity process is to consume culture, mix it and personalize it, and share that with our friends because it has identity implications. We even share in public so that we can get parents to scrunch up their noses. Just because technology puts the elephant in every room imaginable, why do we have to accept their dictation of how we should consume their products? Why can't we consume for identity, for culture, for life? Why can't we recognize that remixes are active consumption where we've made culture personal and for our friends? We live in a world where accidental distribution is always possible, where everyone has the potential to be a celebrity in public - everyone wants to copy them. That's weird. But that doesn't mean that the acts we're doing aren't what we've always done. We just have different technologies now but the practice hasn't changed.

Category: culture

Tags: remix identity copyright

   

Posted by zephoria at 10:52 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack (3)

September 29, 2005

when media becomes culture: rethinking copyright issues

After listening to representatives from the RIAA and EFF speak past each other, i found myself frustrated at how to push the debate further. It looks like such a religious issue (two sides who simply can't understand each other) but i have to think that there's a way of progressing the debate. I turned to Mimi and asked her what she thought. She pointed out that the most important issue is always lost in these discussions: the use of media in remix (and other "infringement") is primarily not about art or creative expression, but about communication. This hit me over the head like a hammer.

Mass media has done such a good job at embedding their copyright into culture that it has become culture itself. The watercooler effect is what happens when media becomes the bits of communication - it's what lets us share our values and interests, determine common ground, etc. Conversations swirl around TV characters, brands and movie quotes. I remember two kids in college deciding to only express themselves through Monty Python quotes in conversation. They felt that every question or comment necessary was already present in the movie. Of course, much of the language that i use is straight from media. Take a look at my posts and you'll find littered references to songs and movies, sometimes cited, sometimes not. Perhaps the language of cinema truly is universal?

With new media, we have begun to communicate using more than just words. You see LJers use different photos and animated gifs on different comments as their signature of sorts. Personalized ringtones are all about associating sounds with people, building in-jokes and cultural references into the communication channels. Hip-hop certainly has an artistic bent but there's also a long-standing tradition of telling your story. Remember mixed tapes as a way to say something to someone? Or when girls made collages out of YM magazines? Lives are littered with media and as we become adept at using it to communicate our thoughts, it will appear more and more, in spite of copyright.

To magnify the issue, our communications have become increasingly persistent. While we still produce a great deal of ephemeral communications, digital and mobile technologies make much of our communication persistent. The remixed sounds of the local club suddenly have mass appeal. But at what cost? On one hand, folks want to get their expressions out to the masses, but when their expressions include copyrighted material, they are at risk.

But with media saturating our culture, how do we express ourselves devoid of references to copyrighted material? Why can't a kid wear a hand-made iPod costume for Halloween? Why can't i tell my story through the songs that i've listened to over the years? Media is the building block of storytelling and it has become so essential to what we do.

The RIAA (and other such organizations) have been so successful at getting their media distributed that they have become culture. In turn, this means that they are the building blocks in which communication occurs. At this, they balk. Do they have the right to? Do they have the right to limit culture built on top of culture? If i want to tell my story using the cultural elements that have become a part of my life, do i need to recognize the RIAA and such as the controllers of culture? This is a dangerous limitation.

Copyright was meant to help artists get their work out. Mickey Mouse is out there; they were super successful and the copyright owners made billions. But now Mickey Mouse is culture - it symbolizes far more than Disney. Do the copyright holders have the right to control culture in this way? They've succeeded beyond most artists.

We have rights for parody and fair use, but perhaps we need to push it further, to make space for when copyright becomes culture. And then let it at the hands of the culture.

Of course, power likes to maintain power, even when it means forgetting what it was originally fighting for. The RIAA and such want to own culture - that power is so tasty. But why should we let them? When they restrict the growth of culture, they are no longer serving the people or the intentions of copyright - they are simply serving themselves. They are also unfortunately doing a good job of convincing artists that the only way to become part of culture is to go with their model. I realized that we don't need to educate the masses - we need to educate these behemoths about culture, its creation, their role and the intentions behind the laws that they've used as shield for so long.

Creative Commons is fighting the RIAA on their terms, helping cement the legal structure as is. But honestly, CC is not creating culture in the same way that mass media products are. Sure, many of us want that to be the case, but will Christina and Britney ever be CC artists? Will Fox ever make its TV shows CC? Will indie ever overcome pop? The very nature of pop is that it's about mainstream and this means buying into the power holders instead of the underdogs. That makes it really hard to overturn the cultural empire. Perhaps we should think about how to reframe the debate, focusing on the cultural output of mainstream artists rather than trying to play on their turf?

Honestly, i don't know how but i definitely agree with Mimi that the debates miss the communication and cultural sharing aspect, focusing instead on the material component.

Update: i wrote a Part Two

Category: culture

Tags: copyright media culture remix creative_commons

   

Posted by zephoria at 10:21 AM | Comments (20) | TrackBack (2)