PRVCY

The internet is a powerful medium for communication.  One result of being able to share information on a global level has been the emergence of Social Networking Sites.

Social network sites are defined as websites that allow participants to construct a public or semi-public profile within the system, that formally articulate their relationship to other users in a way that is visible to anyone who can access their profile.

While the internet & social networking sites did not create the concept of social networks, they are however very useful in fashioning the analytic constructs necessary for understanding the social dynamics of groups.

Human beings today between the ages of 19 & 30 years old, are arguably the first generation to have an almost ubiquitous grasp of the internet, partly due to the fact that they were raised during the emergence of the affordable personal computer.

“Not to mention the surge of people in this demographic in pursuit of Higher Education.”

As with most emerging concepts, the generation of human beings born & raised during & before the concept’s emergence are the best prepared to handle the concept.

Human Being’s between the age of 19 & 23 are arguably the most familiar with Social networking and coincidentally this is the widely accepted period of time in human development in which the fundamentals of personal taste in music, clothing, partners and personal concepts are developed.

Children born at the onset of the personal computer or afterwards are thereby much better equipped to navigate the Social Networking Sites.

Simply said they’re developing their identity.  However, just as the personal identity is emerging, human beings at this point in their development begin to take on other social identities: that of an employer, a spouse, and/or a parent.

“You land a job, you get married or you go half on a baby…”

Now combine such an important period of a human’s life with the emergence of a quasi-public, visual representation of their social and professional networks updated in real time, accessible from practically anywhere on the planet — and the process seems to become a great deal more complicated.  Getting approval or detraction from one’s peers has increased in frequency almost to the point in which a concern for one’s image overshadows one’s desire to live.

As the human being progresses and reaches a point somewhere in between 23 & 30 years of age, they reach a learning stage that is a basically a long period of conflict and resolution between the individual and overlaying social identities.

“Your job affects your social life, your spouse affects you social life or your baby doesn’t like bar-hopping…”

It is from this newly formed sense of Identity that individuals also develop their emotional & social boundaries.

So how does being a member of digital social network this period of development affect one’s sense of privacy?

How does the creation of a public profile affect’s one’s self-perception?
Do we raise the privacy settings and shut people out in order to protect who we are?  What image are we protecting?  Our true image or our desired image?

In preparation for this project/exploration I dissected my social network and sequestered video responses to a few questions dealing with privacy, from several members of my social network.

I assured every member of the project that I would apply a mosaic effect to the visual track and an audio filter to the audio track, thereby protecting their identity and simultaneously allowing me to observe their feelings on privacy from two perspectives:

1) The content on the interviews: What they said in their digital interviews; Did they appear nervous?  Did they look overly concerned with their appearance?

and

2) How they reacted to the idea of recording themselves & answering the questions: Fear, embarassment, asking for added levels of privacy, or in some cases an outright refusal to even videotape themselves.

I made a decision early on in the beginning stages of the project to have the users record their own answers.

My only recommendations were that they record in a quiet environment with a solid color background.  I did this for 2 reasons, one technically I wanted to ensure clean audio and discernible image contrast; and 2 these recommendations, also forced the interviewee to sit in quiet surroundings, presumably alone and listen to themselves speak about a topic they are familiar with.

UPDATE: Link to a video excerpt from the video project.

The one about “Connected”

Shaviro’s style of writing in very indicative of the hyper-linked nature of the very network he writes about.  He jumps from topic to topic quickly and in most cases barely grazing the surface of the topic.  This style of writing would be better suited for a digital format, as each concept could be linked, literally to its respective source or at least additional information regarding each concept.  There is so much information in the first few sections that at first glance I was overwhelmed with a wealth of topics to dig into.

Shaviro frequently refers to science-fiction novels which initially delighted the nerd in me because it solidifies a belief that science fiction allows for a uniquely objective viewpoint of society as a whole.

Science fiction is an existential metaphor, that allows stories to be told about the human condition.  As Isaac Asimov once said, ‘Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today — but the core of science fiction, its essence … has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all. “

By tearing through several science fiction novels Shaviro allows the casual reader an opportunity to see the underlying themes that the majority of scientifically sound science fiction stands on.  The section of the reading that stood out the most to me was the section regarding the internet and the virtual world.

“Ese Is Percipi” (To be is to be perceived.)

“If our minds contain nothing but atomistic perceptions–which is to say, ideas or representations–then it is superfluous to posit, in addition, a material world out there that would be independent of these ideas … Mental representations themselves are enough… ” (83)

George Berkeley’s take on this notion is to negate the material world altogether.  This view, as Shaviro mentions, is not very well receieved by contemporary philosophers but in the realm of cognitive science, specifically, artifial intelligence, this idea has grown legs.

Given that the nature of the human brain and the computer are synonymous, at least in terms of the way they approach data. “… Cognitive scientists conceive minds, on the model of digital computers, as information processors that work by performing logical operations upon internal representations of external phenomena” (83).

Shaviro rephrases Berkeley’s argument to claim that our experience is always already virtual (83).  “You and I, we humans, we mammals, we animals, inhabit a virtual world … the brain works as a sophisticated virtual reality computer” (Dawkins 1198, 275, 278).

This theory in a nutshell is that objects only exist in the minds that perceive them.  When no one is observing objects, those objects does not cease to exist because logic dictates, that “there must some other mind wherein they exist” (Deleuze, 201).  For Berkeley, this “other mind” is God but in terms of the virtual this “other mind” is the Network.

Shaviro states, in what I find to the most amazing line I’ve read in sometime, “For the network is God, the unsleeping omni-voyeur.”

This notion that we strive to create digital representations of ourselves on the internet as a way of justifying our existence in the Network further solidifies my understanding of why Second Life, and any online environment inline with it, are so popular.  The inherent desire of the modern human being is to stand out, to be recognized, to be noticed.  In a very crowded world the digital realm allows for a new method in which to substantiate one’s existence in the eyes of God & subsequently the rest of the voyeurs prowling around on the internet.

“To be online is to already be perceived.”

Second Life Screenshots (1)

My current look. I call it Chic Slacker.

Gothic Cuddling. Cute?

Nerd Heaven.

Relaxing after a long day of riding my digital motorcycle.

Ethnographic Research Proposal

“The Digital Disconnect”

Breakdown:
Using Second Life as a jumping off point i want to delve into the use of digital worlds as a form of escape.  Ultimately I’m interested in how individuals navigate the divide between their organic world and their digital world.

When one escapes the hassles and stresses of a first life by choosing to spend one’s free-time in a second life what do they give up?  What are points of conflict?  Romantic relationships?  Career?  Friends?  Family?  Etc.

The one about context…

Positivist theories derive from the rational, empirical, scientific tradition.  And phenomenological theories, in contrast to the objective and quantitative nature of positivist theories, are subjective and qualitative in nature (Dourish, 20).

These two broad categories of reasoning help to approach the issue of context-aware computing by framing the opposing viewpoints of what context is.

The positivist account of context can be said to define the problem as one of representation. Software systems are representational, so thinking of context leads into the issue of how context can be encoded and represented (21).

I take this to mean that in order to classify context, and subsequently create computer systems capable of determining one’s context, a programmer would have to be able to codify the random, chaotic nature of reality into data.

So from a  positivist viewpoint context can be characterized by these 4 principles:

- Context is a form of information.
- Context is delineable.
- Context is stable.
- Context and activity are separable.

But from a phenomenological viewpoint context is characterized by these 4 principles:

- Contextuality is a relational property that holds between objects or activities.
- The scope of contextual features is defined dynamically.
- Context is an occasional property, relevant to particular settings, instances of action and parties to that action.
- Context arises from the activity.

Dourish argues that in order to understand context, one must not approach it as a representational problem but rather as an interactional problem.  I find this approach to be much more applicable as it suggests that context cannot be a stable, external description of the setting in which activity arises but rather it arises from and is sustained by the activity itself.  (23)  In order to fully grasp the context one must understand how their presence affects the situation, in other words be an internal element of the situation.

The one about Autoethnography…

“Believe me, honest autoethnographic exploration generates a lot of fears and doubts–and emotional pain.  Just when you think you can’t stand the pain anymore, well, that’s when the real work has only begun.  Then there’s the vulnerability of reveraling yourself, not being able to take back what you’ve written or having any control over how readers interpret it.  It’s hard not to feel your life is being critiqued as well as your work.  It can be humiliating.” (738)

From this excerpt I can’t help but think that scientists are beginning to get a sense of what artists as a whole go through.  There are always personal feelings invested in one’s work but with an auto-ethnographic account of one’s experience there is a newfound vulnerability because the emotional buffer inherent to scientific prose is in many cases completely dissolved.  Ethnographers, as far as I know, usually are able to use that emotional buffer while documenting a culture.  It is this emotional buffer that perpetuates, in my opinion, the pretenious nature of ethnography and consequently documentary filmmaking.

Speaking on a topic from an objective point of view creates a distance from a subject person that allows for a new perspective but that perspective also brings with it a great deal of cultural baggage.  Authethnography allows an opportunity for someone with a personal experience to share it.  If my understanding of this term is sound, then I support it.  I support it much the same way I support documentary filmmaking from a personal point of view.  Instead of installing a journalist or filmmaker or ethnographer in a culture or community have the people who would be documented document their own experience.

Combining this account with other accounts allows for a much richer and sincere account.

The one about the Posthuman…

I’m not actually typing this.

This is the output from a digital copy of myself Sean that was uploaded to the net to do my his Ethno-blog so I he can have more free-time.  God, it sucks being the digital copy.  He’s outside playing football soccer and I’m here balancing his checkbook and reading.  Well I call it reading so you can comprehend the method in which I absorb information but honestly its more like dropping a new, dry sponge into a cup.  I’m not bragging or anything just keepin’ it real. I could do this forever really——-

Well that joke got old but after reading the “posthuman” readings for this week thats the frame of mind it left me in.

“What if a computer behaved like a person?”

Katherine Hayles extrapolates (one of my top ten fav words, fyi) that question from the autobiographical novel Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers.  (She also gleened the question,  “What if a person behaved like a computer?” from the novel but thats much too interesting to do first so I’ll save it for later in this post.)

The creation of a digital being who’s that’s capable of being as cognizant as an adult human is beyond interesting and frankly a bit scary.  Dealing with the irrational and emotionally driven decisions of a human being is problematic enough. Now I must start mentally preparing myself for the advent and adoption of an sentient computer program?

Well lets think about the automated phone machine.  You know those answering services that employ voice recognition software to return simple results to callers who probably had hoped to speak to a real person.  A miracle of modern technology right?

Well trying to get through to a machine that can’t understand you is frustrating.  It could be the result of a bad cell connection or it could be the result of a glitch in the program.  Either way one could argue that even with the most irrational human there is at least the hope that a human could possibly discern what it is the caller is trying to say (i.e. A as in apple, C as in cat, etc..) but what about the sentient computer program?  If the computer is able to think and adapt like a human it isn’t too far fetched to believe that at some point the line separating the automated phone operator and the “real” phone operator will begin to blur.  One day you may call and get all the information you needed, hang up and never know for sure if you were talking to a program or a person.

I’m not worried about that really but I’m more worried when my boss starts acting like a computer.

“What if a person behaved like a computer?”  Well what if my boss was plugged into a terminal at my companies corporate HQ and he logs in and out at exactly the time his shift starts.  He doesn’t take bathroom breaks, never takes sick days and is a stickler for productivity.

There is no human element involved.  If a robot was riding a horse would he ever take a break and understand that the fleshy horse needs to rest and drink some water?  Or would he push the horse past its physical limit?  I suppose if the computer was programmed to evolve and to adapt, the understanding that flesh based entities are more fragile than a metal based machine would eventually emerge but there would be a learning curve.  Hopefully the horse, in this case me the human with the computer program-minded boss, wouldn’t die at the hands of an overzealous overseer focused on keeping deadlines (pun intended).

Sean

Reading Response #1 – “The Cell Phone”

I’m sure how to format this responses but I’m sure halfway through my rant I’ll figure one out.

The cell phone has become a cultural icon present in many cultures. The looks, sounds and the capabilities of each handset are incredibly interesting but what I want to focus on are the capabilities of any particular handset.

Sometime ago possessing just about any form of cell phone would have been enough to distance one person from another. But now in America’s consumerist culture the drive to have the “best” is ever-present.

If you can afford (or want people to think you can afford) the “best” you want the “best.” But in a culture like Jamaica simply having access to a cell phone is a big step. While they’re not quite using those Motorola DynaTAC 8000X’s like my main man Zach Morris, feature-wise they aren’t at the forefront of the pack.

Or are they?

When I started reading the article, having been somewhat familiar with Jamaican (& West Indian) culture I realized that I needed to abandon my Western-belief that the best phone is the one with the most features. How can a person have a phone with less features but still have the best phone? Well if that phone addresses all of that person’s main concerns and in many cases surpasses them do they really need any additional bells & whistles?

One of my main beefs with anthropology and more specifically documentary filmmaking is treating the subject of your doc/study as an object that needs to be poked, prodded and studied as opposed to a being that is also capable of teaching us about ourselves. Not to sound to “we are the world” but this belief that progress and evolution is a one directional road is insulting and quite pretentious.

This reading allowed me a chance to take another look at all the unnecessary features that I can’t live with out from the point of view of another culture.

Hello class!

This blog will house the work I develop for “Ethnography in and of the New Media Ecology 2008.” A graduate course I’m taking in the Department of Media Studies & Film @ The New School.