too much info

I could be wrong, though, as I’m not really a reader of blogs. I have a hard enough time keeping up with the book review sections of the New York and Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, Bookforum, the Atlantic, Harper’s, TLS, the New Republic, etc., as well as the British newspapers like the Guardian and Independent, which I read online. Yet even in those publications I often find that the pieces I’m excited to be reading are the exception rather than the rule. I’m all for cultural gatekeepers because there’s way more out there than I have time to read and it’s not always easy to find the best of it.

From Death of Criticism - salon.com

This is a great article about the death of serious literary criticism in newspapers by at the moment and the current trend towards democratisation thanks to amazon etc. It’s not at all ideological and provides a balanced look at the effect the Internet is having on declining newspaper purchases.

That being said, that phrase really stood out for me because it’s one which heaps of people parrot incessantly without much cause for thought. It’s the classic, ‘the Internet’s has way too much information OMG I can’t keep up!!!!’ argument and after much thought I don’t think it holds up.

It’s true that the internet has the potential to hold an infinite amount of information, that’s why it’s more beneficial for knowledge storing than a bookstore or a library, there’s no actual physical restrictions. However what phrases like this seem to ignore is the awesome searchability of the Internet.

…it’s not always easy to find the best of it.

This is a phrase which is becoming increasingly worn out. Amazon has an amazing recommendations system, it’s only recently that we’ve had a search engine like Google, with an algorithm so awesome and powerful that they have to feed it four times daily so it doesn’t turn loose and destroy the world, and we’re currently in the midst of a meta-revolution where everything can be tagged, ranked and filtered a thousand times over to serve anybody’s searching purposes.

This ‘too much information’ argument stopped holding weight for me when I went second hand book shopping yesterday. It was a sizable store in Carlton and there were two levels packed to the roof with books. My first thought? I’m never going to get through all this. Apart from the vague categories which books had been lumped in together, there was no guide as to which books were good, which were horrible, which classics were good classics for people like me who enjoyed Oscar Wilde but hated anything by the Bronte sisters. In actual fact, in this bookstore there was too much information and no way to sort it! I still enjoyed getting lost in a bookstore for two hours, it was awesome. But it destroyed the oft repeated fiction that somehow information was easier to find offline. If anything the better search techniques available online have just augmented the information we previously had access too.

Sure we might not read it all, but I think if we’re talking about cultural gatekeepers, I’d trust amazon after using it for a year just as much as Peter Craven.

This guy explains this much better in his book, everything is miscellaneous.

Internet, tech-determinists and copyright.

Also I think it’s important to remove web 2.0 from this discussion. Or at least I want to. To me it seems like a catch-phrase which may die in a few years and is more of a marketing concept than a valid term which can be used in academic discourse. Of course now I need to find something to replace it.

Furthermore I think it’s good to separate that term from the issues at stake. As shown in my e-book post, these are issues which are having an effect. Those problems are more vexing when considering libraries are buying more e-books in place of physical objects in their collection. Sure it’s cool if it works and more students will get access to knowledge but in situations like this one, it’s a horrible idea.

One shouldn’t bunch up advocates like Lessig, Litman and others in the tech determinist bundle. If anything it’s more tech determinist to use technology to lock down your work and not trusting people. I’d argue the copy-left crowd are way more pro-culture and pro-people than beady eyed, knowledge hoarding bastards who try and time your reading habits to the second and then ask if you’d like to continue reading.

It’s ridiculous I can write on my blog but not my thesis. ARGH.

E-book woes #2

Apparently my browsing timehas expired. WTF?! Could you imagine if a book told you that? Is this not insane?

Why copyright must be fixed. E-Book troubles.

I can’t actually write. I’ve discovered this after starting my first chapter four times. I have nothing else to do today but write and I can’t actually do that and it’s kind of depressing. I have a concept and have fleshed out a chapter but when you can’t put ideas down on paper your past few years of education feel like an extravagant waste. I’ve read so much on this topic I’ve reached breaking point and need to put something down on paper but I can’t so I’m at this massive impasse. Adding to that I’ve just been on an awesome trip to brisbane so there’s no reason why I can’t just get started. Shit.

So to make myself feel kind of productive I checked the Library catalogue. My hold was cancelled. Shit. So I checked if the book was in. It was out. Shit. So I access the electronic book which has been so lovingly paid for by Swinburne Library for poor chumps like me who have their hold cancelled and their book taken out by someone else and attempt to print out a chapter.

Me: *Tries to print out a chapter*

E-book: SOOZZZZ!!! U CAN ONLY PRINTZ OUT 6 PAGES ROFLOLZORZ!!!111!

Me: Uhhh…but I haven’t accessed this book before.

E-Book: SOOOZZZZ SIX PAGES ONLY PRINT LOLLLL!!!!!111!

Me: Fuck. I haven’t accessed this book before and I just want to learn. I mean I’ve technically already paid for this book with my university fees and in any case all I want to do is read it on a couch like if I borrowed a book from a library. It’s not like I’m going to be making counterfeit copies of Adorno’s The Culture Industry.

So I call up the Library and the response? You should just read it online.

It’s not the freakin’ point. This is what it’s all about when people talk about architectures of control. I love authors and creators and I think they are all rad and should get lots of money and high fives and maybe a few backslaps. I don’t want to rip them off. I went to a movie two weeks ago. I paid full price. But shit, I’m a student who’s paid for a book I should be able to access it in any format I choose. And in any case I should be treated like a student and not like a potential pirate or thief.

The e-book is a ugly piece of technology which locks down the most free of all technologies - the book. I love books. I have a bookcase covering one wall in my room filled with books. Some are bought new, some bought second hand, some borrowed *cough* stolen from friends and some handed down. But the point is these were transactions we were free to make, because copyright law doesn’t treat these transactions as theft or a loss of income for the copyright owner but as first-sale rights which are due to any normal human person. On the e-book however you aren’t even allowed the privilege of transferring the format in which you view a work. And that’s transferring a format not blindy counterfieting.

And don’t talk to me about photocopy rights of only allowing 10% of a work copied. That rule is enforced in society without photocopies digitally scanning every book and shutting down after 10% has been copied or photocopy police standing next to every university photocopier. Why? Because a) that would hinder the flow of information b) it’s not reasonable. Instead we rely on human respect. In fact I’ve never copied more than a chapter of a book and that’s all i wanted to do. But the e-book wouldn’t let me.

Web 2.0, Simulacrum & Control.

These quotes are from an interview between media theorist and activist Geert Lovink and Danish journalist Stirne Bjerre Herde.

[T]he political class is nowhere near ready to engage with the idea that we have left behind representative democracy and its inherent push to create majorities. When it comes to politics we have to think big and better vote for a hand full (sic) of parties. In many Western countries there is still only a choice between two or three parties. In terms of prosperity that would be comparable with the consumer goods on offer in a Cuban state supermarket. In fact, as you indicate, the ‘popular’ parties of the past struggle with a steady decline of membership. They have compensated their lack of proper representation with an increase of PR means. Politics has become a business opportunity for spin doctors. We do not need to repeat the Situationist critique of the society of the spectacle here. It would be much further build on Jean Baudrillard’s notion of the simulacrum and how this disembodied archipelago of signs called mutates when it enters the Web 2.0 age.

These points about the complete collapse of the political structure on the internet are interesting. I’m glad that Lovink sees the internet as a place of resistance and negotiation, where the simulacrum of Baudrilliard’s, is able to be twisted and distorted. How will mass politics survive in the age of the niche and the long tail? Should we be seeing stronger representation from minor parties?

Lovink’s next quote is also pertinent:

Let’s start with the observation that the Internet itself has become less and less democratic. This may be unavoidable as millions of ordinary users do not want to get involved in complex issues around (global) internet governance. The very idea that the Internet itself could be new digital public domain, like squares in the past, or the fourth estate in the age of the industrial revolution, does only exist on the level of tiny content particles. Increasingly users delegate power and responsibility over the network architecture into the hand of large firms such a Google where they trade their privacy against the free use of incredible web services such as Google Earth and YouTube. Let’s face it: there is less and less autonomous infrastructure, in a time when it is so cheap and easy to run a web or email server from your own bedroom. This lack of self-organization has an impact on the structure of the online political interventions that you asked about. We can hardly speak anymore of ‘tactical media’ in this respect. Even do-it-yourself is no longer an appropriate image. What we see happening is extremely fluid and instable ’smart mobs’ (Howard Rheingold) that gather, connect, act, and then disappear and dissolve the built-up structure.

I’ve always been interested in how few internet users have the ability to create their own architecture. Unlike the early days of the Internet where everyone was a geek, early adopter or a tech-head nowadays we have a large proportion of the population online and they have less knowledge about the nuts and bolts of code and programming than their own cars. I’m guilty of this as well and I even began a multimedia course, hoping to be all net savvy but of course I got horribly bored and dropped out. This lack of control does have major issues for the future of DIY and the ability to create. I don’t think this negates concepts about democratising media, but i think being unable to control spaces and sites within the web could have a lot to do with the weird, political space which is currently being played out across the internet.

ProdUsers

I’ve discovered the breaking point between the relaxed academic, who might write some papers after they finish gardening on a Sunday and the viciously, sadistic academic who lives, breathes and experiences nerdiness to the nth degree. What is it you ask? Making up words.

If you read through a normal paper, there might be about four words which you don’t know the meaning of, like deontological or epistemology but you go to a trusty dictionary and the definition is there, easy to understand and useful. This is the domain of the weekend academic, who uses long, convoluted words in an attempt to confuse their reader but fail because of the humble dictionary.

However the hardcore academic isn’t put off by this problem. Rather than find more complex, obscure words (s)he instead will go one further and make up words, not found in any dictionary. Success! Try and understand me now reader, the academic brays, while spending their entire introduction defining new terms which have never been used before (and probably won’t be used again) in an attempt to ‘clarify’ (for that word read: muddy) their argument.

However, while I usually don’t have time for academics who make up obscure words because the English language isn’t good enough for them, I have found myself falling increasingly in love with Axel Bruns’ term produser (as I write that I can already hear everybody laughing, ‘that’s not a word!’).

Axel uses it as a term to describe a number of trends which typify web 2.0.

Produsage is based on the collaborative engagement of (ideally, large) communities of participants in a shared project

Users of Amazon or Google act as co-produsers of these services even without having chosen to do so, as their usage generates information which helps to further refine the performance of these sites.

He uses the term in reference to information/knowledge production systems like open-source software and Wikipedia and this article on produsers sums up his general argument. While I like the term I feel it’s almost too restrictive. In web 2.0 everybody is a produser, with the capacity to both produce and consume on a wide basis. I think the problems with restricting it to communities (and emphasising large communities) means that it denies the option for someone to be a user and producer on a small scale basis. While amazon and google encompass a large proportion of internet users who both produce and use content, Wikipedia doesn’t and I think more could be done to emphasise the capacity of everyone to be a produser.

Recent Nielsen studies show that  

84 percent of Australian and 88 percent of New Zealand internet users use Web 2.0 for sharing content such as photos, links and video and once consumers establish familiarity with CGM (Consumer Generated Media) style activities, they then typically progress to become more involved with more advanced CGM activities such as actively editing and commenting on CGM content (77% of Australians and 78% of New Zealanders) and creating online content in the form of uploading video and music (69% of Australians and 76% of New Zealanders) to the web.

This isn’t just about open-source geeks or even about web portals and services like google and amazon but networks of sharing content between people which don’t even need the avalanche of rules and communal responsibilities which Bruns suggests these practices entail. Sharing consumer created media (photos, videos and ideas) can happen over networks large and small and I think it’s important to tear this phrase away from a limited open-source, Wikipedia or Sims mindset and place it as part of the day to day experience of people using the web.

Andrew Keen’s - The Cult of the Amateur

This is a great diatribe to read. Although it’s about as subtle as a film directed by Michael Moore on crack making a lot of points null and void, the key debates are debates which the cultural and technology community need to be having…just perhaps not led by Andrew Keen.  

Democratisation of the internet is a major issue. It allows for greater creativity and dissemination by the wider public but it completely distorts Matthew Arnold’s concepts of High and Low culture. The fact is that no longer is information in the hands of experts and because of that, the Internet has to establish itself as a place where valid information can be found. 

Lawrence Lessig dismantles many of Andrew Keen’s arguments here, which is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel but it’s understandable as Lessig himself is targeted (wrongly) in the book.

As I see it, Lessig makes strong arguments for the amateur in society and indeed it’s a position I support. I just don’t think that this position should be seen as default. It was helpful to read Andrew Keen to bounce arguments off his ranting but it would have been even better to read a well researched, even-tempered argument for the expert in society, simply to challenge and maybe even develop how we establish notions of democracy and expertise on the internet.  

IMHO though if you want further evidence of the benefits of the amateur, look no further. 

(Thx to The Age spy for this. Props to old media.)

Professional

Amateur

Engage Media

EngageMedia is a video sharing site focusing on social justice and environmental issues in South East Asia, Australia and the Pacific. It is a space for critical documentary, fiction, artistic and experimental works that challenge the dominance of the mainstream media.

The growth of digital distribution tools mean distributing video online has become a viable option for artists and activists looking for ways to get their work out there. Huge potential exists within these new technologies to bypass the control of big media conglomerates and create our own distribution channels.

EngageMedia aims to demystify and provide access to these new technologies, create an online archive of independent video productions using open content licenses and form a peer network of video makers, educators and screening organisations.

I’ve checked out a few of these videos and some are fun, some are amazing and some are horrible. In cases like Engage Media, though it’s a valiant effort at attempting to bring the democratization of web 2.0 to a political end. I’m not so sure how effective the current web-site structure is or the navigation but it’s an interesting concept.

They’ve also been interviewed by Creative Commons Australia here.