There are two researchers who i think absolutely everyone doing social anything should know: Stanley Milgram and Erving Goffman. Thus, i was overjoyed when i learned that there’s a biography on Milgram (tx David). Many folks know Milgram for his work on small worlds (later called “6 degrees” by others). Milgram also developed a set of psychological experiments (written up in Obedience to Authority) that helped show how people will always follow any orders they are given and that those in power are so removed from the situation that they can demand horrifying tasks that will then be executed (think Nazis… or maybe a prison scandal). In some of his lesser known work, Milgram wrote about ideas like familiar strangers where people who recognize each other build up a very interesting social bond. Some of his short essays are collected in The Individual In A Social World
thanks for the read: i remember this stuff from college…learing alot from your blog and its kind of contextualizing my research…read up on Donath’s work as well…here’s a question:
how does eric fromm fit into this work…ie. did the escape from freedom book influence Milgram?
thought on ubiquuitous surveillence and Milgram…
stef
http://www.wearcam.org/ouiki/
just read the friendster paper and posted at a site in orkut that i am trying to get persons involved with. You quoted Milgram in the last couple of footnotes. the above is steve mann’s map(ster) invention…just when i am about to understand what he is up to…there he goes, off into the future.
seriously, looking at appling your ideas to a nursing home paper/article using cellphones and sousavaillence
stef
[link]http://www.wearcam.org/ouiki/[/link]
lets try and do that right
not to be a stickler for details, but Milgram did not (and he was very careful about this) said that people would >>always
Irina: please repost: what did Migram say?
would like to learn…
now if someone could get my local county sheriff to read it! Sheriff Joe Arpaio-maricopa County’s finest(and most sued sheriff) and supposedly the”toughest sheriff” in the USA. Nah,he’d probably take notes…
quilling is fun-check it out the new big thing(paper quilling)
Oops… better be careful with what I use to highlight words. danah is referring to the Milgram experiment called “obediance to authority” in which Milgram shocked Americans by demonstrating that most people will obey authority and administer electric shocks to other people in the excess of 450 volts (Google for details). Note: not ALL and not ALWAYS, which is a point Milgram was very careful to make. Individual differences exist, they are important, and broad generalizations can get us to some sticky scary places sometimes.
Danah
i like your lessig explaination in your thesis: never read his work but have become familiar with his name from surfing smart mobs and reading joi ito’s work…
i guess your main consern is privacy and self determination as the bourders of the self becomes a digital divide as well as on open book integrated into a collective “deconsciousness”.
how we approach ourselves as a collective and as a unique self brings in the power structures of human existence and Foucoult’s work. Hence Milgram’s emirical finding are very significant on the now present new millenium of all data of existence being stored and potentially surfed, sorted, and exploited. I have been following the Donna Haraway’s argument by living a Mannian glogged self. That is, all actions recorded creates a new self awareness: is humanity ready for a digital self if Milgram’s findings are true? Or is it a cultural becoming of a Geist, or a feelgood of authority that makes us feel inner uterine. I cuddle up to the statistical allusions of Tolstoy’s thoughts prior to a ww1. With the accumulation of arms, he rightly pointed out, will bring about a destined catastrophic of states against the individual. Now, with the storage of lifelong storage systems, will we live programmed fate: is our play of self an electronic act that thrives in the playful lie that everything is ok with humanity. we are undertaking a change as McCuhan saw: a change unrealized and very different. What future will the self bring as we too become mechanic. Can democracy exist in a polytheistic universe as it did in a monotheistic universe? or will we blend into a new era of no conflict and live in a world in which the natural cycles of war and peace no longer exist. we have never lived without suffering: and we have never existed without body. But if Haroway is right: we shall escape the flesh, borrowing it only for the temporary moment of entertaing ever complex, but finite thoughts. We will escpape the world of infinite imagination to be counted. when did we escape from our free choices: self determination only in calculation: planned, consciousness becomes predictable and present rather than non being.
stef
hit the link
Does anyone know where I can find a reference to the unexpected outcomes for the `questionners’ in the Milgram trials? I can remembe reading somewhere that the exprience of taking place in the trials was life-changing for many of the `questionners’, which was unexpected by the researchers (even though Eichmann wassupposed to have been horrified by a visit to a `death camp’). Hope someone out there knows what I am talking about!
956 – Cheap Bastard
On the other hand, if you’re going to buy the book, please do get it from danah’s site