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I finally pulled the plug on Twaddle, aka eX, deleting my account last month. Long overdue, and I would call on anyone else who is still propping up one of the least socially-conscious oligarchs on the planet to cease-and-desist. Meanwhile, I’ll cheer that misfit on to Mars. As for the rest of them, well, let them eat cake.
Back in the ‘aughts’ I routinely early-adopted social media platforms to maintain current experience for my teaching on what was then still called “new media”. A decade into the World-Wide-Web, 2003 or so, Web 2.0 had arrived, signaling the evolution of general ‘interactive’ web platforms that allowed for user-driven and collaborative experiences. Web 2.0 transformed the internet from a generally static platform into a space where users could dynamically create and share content, but its rise also brought about critical (social, behavioral, personal) concerns that I explored in many of my workshops and lectures. This era’s defining features—social media, user-generated content, and algorithms that tailor information, and now AI—have amplified both personal expression and misinformation, often blurring the lines between fact and opinion. While Web 2.0 promised a democratized digital space, it has led to powerful tech companies amassing vast troves of user data, raising privacy issues and consolidating control over information flow, features almost completely unregulated in the US. Surveillance Capitalism anyone? Algorithms designed to maximize engagement have also been criticized for promoting social echo chambers and polarizing content, contributing to social divides. It’s all about eyeballs in the ‘attention economy‘. Through their perversely inverted efforts to be user-centered, the oligarchs of Web fostered a landscape where manipulation, privacy concerns, and misinformation are increasingly prevalent: it’s user-centered alright, but the user is merely the object of extracted wealth.
Yup, here we are. I hadn’t been active on Twaddle for some years aside from attention paid to the CGS work account up until last year, and a very occasional glance at my feed. It was functional for a time, but the ‘new ownership’ indeed sent it to 100% shit, stimulating the departure. The entire arc of evolution completely confirmed my hypothesis how those who control a communications protocol control both the form(s) and content of the communications occurring. Not only that, but the protocol and its ‘owner’ actually tap off a certain amount of power—real social power—from those using the platform. The X possessor is a case in point, and a case that threatens the stability of the social system. I long ago departed from FazeBuch (2010) and mostly from InstaHam (still have an account but don’t post and rarely look at it).
What about BlueSky and Mastodon? They provide more direct user control without a central governing entity. Back to distributed models versus centralized models: a deep conflict that’s been raging since computing began!
Of course, in the end, there is no privacy left in the US social sphere. What you consume—from food to media, everything; where you go; who you communicate with; what you say; what you do; how much money you have; what medical issues you have; where you work; what you studied; your interests and beliefs; your voting history; your criminal and court records; ad infinitum …
Not only that, all those terabytes of data are subpoenable in a court of law: What’s your level of confidence in the justice system in the US these days?
On the related topic of concentration of wealth, that this infographic is more than ten years out of date makes it even more disturbing:
Google’s proposition, to take one example, is deceptively simple: the more you let Google Now survey what you do – where you travel, what news you like to read, how you unwind – the more time it will save you with its suggestions and recommendations. Thus, it’s in your best interest to disclose as much as you can – otherwise, there’s little point in using the service. Hence the falling costs of connectivity, with the twin projects of space and time colonization occurring in a mutually productive symbiosis.
The cost of delegating struggles for free time to corporations (rather than, say, trade unions or political parties) is finally becoming clearer: it makes the willful disruptors of Silicon Valley themselves eternally undisruptable, for no other alternative social or even commercial formation can devise and run communications infrastructure of similar scale (not to mention all the data that it generates).
And then there is this other paradox of our modern living: in a world where more gathered data eventually yields more free time, an act of willful disconnection from the global tracking apparatus becomes an extra tax on our future productivity. A little privacy is all right – but it might cost you dearly.
The cost of privacy: comes in many forms including the price of dis-connection from personal human networks. The dynamic of large corporate infrastructures tapping off human energies of connection dogs the vitality of contemporary life. Sitting on a ‘living’ room the last couple days, there are flickers of human connection, but the ubiquitous intervention of screens, tablets, apps, interfaces, corporately aggregated information and corporately determined protocols of connection rob encounter of its essentials including eye contact; existing in the collective-yet-indeterminate space of *not* knowing something; autonomic focus; and shared sensual experience. Is there an asymptotic limit as to where this goes? — where the reality of the social fabric begins to resemble the Shroud of Turin: a stained two-dimensional memory of something that was once powerful and life-affirming.
This schizophrenia seems largely invisible to the widest sample of the population. Offline behavior, so historically conditioned and un-self-conscious (at least as far as instigation, perhaps not process) proceeds without compunctions, aside from those traditional struggles for control and power between the image-maker and the subject. The contemporary selfie, a special case, propagates yet another psychic split within the self over power and control. This in juxtaposition to the huge deficit of awareness of the wholesale deposition of the Self into the hands of an increasingly omniscient corporo-governmental master. What to be said, there’s no stopping it until there is a higher level of consciousness. But will humans make that step, ever?
Our lives have become split between two worlds with two very different norms around memory.
The offline world works like it always has. I saw many of you talking yesterday between sessions; I bet none of you has a verbatim transcript of those conversations. If you do, then I bet the people you were talking to would find that extremely creepy.
I saw people taking pictures, but there’s a nice set of gestures and conventions in place for that. You lift your camera or phone when you want to record, and people around you can see that. All in all, it works pretty smoothly.
The online world is very different. Online, everything is recorded by default, and you may not know where or by whom. If you’ve ever wondered why Facebook is such a joyless place, even though we’ve theoretically surrounded ourselves with friends and loved ones, it’s because of this need to constantly be wearing our public face. Facebook is about as much fun as a zoning board hearing.
Cegłowski, M., 2014. The Internet With a Human Face. In Beyond Tellerrand. Düsseldorf, Germany. Available at: https://idlewords.com/talks/internet_with_a_human_face.htm.
faugh. Where does this lead? Emotional manipulation by secretive corporo-mili-fiscalo-governmental(?) entities who are not responsive to any measures of civil society. Privacy is gone, now emotional authenticity is being eroded. I never quite understood how a majority of my students at CU got so defensive about their Facebook and other social media usage. Does this mean that the manipulation is so completely invisible that it qualifies for that water-to-a-fish state?
Emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. Emotional contagion is well established in laboratory experiments, with people transferring positive and negative emotions to others. Data from a large real-world social network, collected over a 20-y period suggests that longer-lasting moods (e.g., depression, happiness) can be transferred through networks [Fowler JH, Christakis NA (2008) BMJ 337:a2338], although the results are controversial. In an experiment with people who use Facebook, we test whether emotional contagion occurs outside of in-person interaction between individuals by reducing the amount of emotional content in the News Feed. When positive expressions were reduced, people produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts; when negative expressions were reduced, the opposite pattern occurred. These results indicate that emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our own emotions, constituting experimental evidence for massive-scale contagion via social networks. This work also suggests that, in contrast to prevailing assumptions, in-person interaction and nonverbal cues are not strictly necessary for emotional contagion, and that the observation of others’ positive experiences constitutes a positive experience for people.
Who is paying the researcher’s wages? Why are they researching this *for Facebook*?? argh… No paranoia here, it’s more just how things work in a corrupt and morally (& fiscally!!) bankrupt regime.
Julian Priest‘s TWOI project has a number of interesting dimensions: when I noticed that friends at Pixelache had jumped into participating, and, greatly respecting Julian’s work in general, I patched together a paper-shredding meet-to-delete that actually fit the bill quite well. It was, after all, staged on Satellite Court.
Prescott Arizona
07 May 2014
Time 14:30-1530 (UTC -7)
Location: -112.466932, 34.570271
1610 Satellite Court, Prescott, Arizona
051 30cm stack of my Uncle’s papers from more than seven years ago that Gladys (his sister-in-law) left in a pile to be shredded
052 Bank statements
053 Credit Card statements
054 Investment statements
055 Medical records
056 Other state secrets
057 12 year stack of 2700 gallons (US) fuel receipts from John’s recently sold Toyota Tacoma truck
Annick facilitated an event in Brussels:
Meet to Delete!
Bruxelles Event Report – Saturday April 26th 2014 – 17h00–21h00 local time – Galerie Up – Bruxelles
We had a lovely Meet to Delete event in Bruxelles at Galerie Up.
The Gallery is small 20 square meter space in the Saint-Gilles area of Bruxelles, launched and owned by Clarisse Bardiot.
On the left side of the Gallery we put a small round table with a shredder and a pot with colored pens. People could sit at the table — or stand by it -— to shred the documents they had brought or delete datas from their cell phones, in a symbolically intimate and focused act.
Next to the table, we had suspended a roll of paper onto which people could write their first name and the nature of the information they just deleted.
On the right side of the Gallery, we video-projected the orbital path of the satellite. A candle was lit in the opposite corner. A poster was displayed next to it, another one was on the door of the gallery and 3 others on the gallery window.
A 9 slide Power Point about the project was available on an iPad for people to browse.
Drinks and light snacks (chips, olives) were served.
At the end of the event, Clarisse and I took a picture of the roll of paper, then we shredded the roll and the posters, and we blew up the candle.
The meta data of the event that we shall keep are the picture of the roll and samples of shredded documents.
About 20 people attended the event, among them some children. Most of them came around the same time, which allowed for nice exchanges.
Many questions were asked about The Weight of Information satellite and the whole project.
What came out of the discussions was that we all delete stuff without necessarily thinking about it but when asked to do it consciously, and in a collective set up, it raises a different approach and feelings to the act of deleting data. Here some that were stated:
. Deleting data and information belongs to the private realm, doing it collectively is, in a certain manner, sharing some sort of privacy.
. Every one reported that they had to think about what they would delete.
. It is difficult to decide and choose what to delete [in the framework of the Meet to Delete event], it is giving a weight to something that has no —or no more— value, that we want to get rid of and in a kind of a paradox giving it, for this moment, a central place.
. The notion of loss was also mentioned.
. It takes time to delete, that is it takes our attention. There is a sort of paradox to isolate mentally oneself from the group to focus on the deleting process.
We had also many informal conversations, some related to social and political issues of (storing) digital data!
For me, the most lovely moment was when one of kid, after having understood what it was all about, deleted “2 files from his DS”.
It was a joyful and friendly event, extremely rewarding intellectually and in terms of human relations.
Thank you Julian for this beautiful project, Clarisse for having hosted it and Alexi for the caring support, everyone that came to Galerie Up and Zac for the idea of the Sprite satellites. This has allowed for a generous, sharing, poetic and light moment.
Annick
Drop in on Diane’s MiT class this morning in the large ATLS100 lecture room — she’s covering privacy issues. Huge class — I think she’s got more than 100 students enrolled. Quite different than my section of 38.
Surveillance, privacy, monitoring, searching, tracing, 1984, algorithmic filtering and screening of dataspace (face recognition, etc), Mugshots; the students had an assignment to do a name-search on a partner to find out as much as possible. Sitting near the back of the room, a majority of students are paying almost no attention to Diane — instead doing the usual retinue of screen-based tasks — other homework, Facebooking, shopping, and so on. This is disappointing in that it highLights the contemporary situation where even a highly-rated (entertaining!) university teacher is not really engaging the students. In a class of one hundred, filled with mediating screens, what should one expect. Human engagement between teacher and student has been lost in the shuffle of money/power that has become US academia.
Presence is projected out from the Self in a variety of ways — mediated and unmediated, well, always mediated by something: body heat by air (as thermal energy arising from energized interactions, catalyses, and transformations within the body). Presence is more and more being pushed (expressed) into what may be called technological networks. Distributed into more and more finely atomized (digitized!) fragments, and more and more widely distributed in both space and time. Coded, derived, lost in the data-space. When presence is so diffused into that space, we lose what we have here, now. Gone. No chance for an energized encounter when Selves are all pointed away from each other and thoroughly atomized…
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looking at the blog, looking at life, comparing the two. also understanding how Facebook has almost completely sucked the life out of other online interactions. trying to decide whether or not to go back to the Twitter account, though I loathe to do so in some way, using it to drive traffic here. although the site here is still increasing traffic overall, on a continuous basis. with Twitter and FB promotion that might increase. but the whole concept is annoying even without the consideration of the privacy issues inherent in the platforms. it is a point of pride that I’ve got my own domain, running on a Linux box, (sure, with a big commercial hosting service), managing my own tech support, and posting my own content 95% of the time rather than trolling around to re-post other’s. yet always the question of relevancy arises, after the effort of the dissertation, in the unclear zone of awaiting outcomes. and the fact that this platform is a part of the PhD overall. that places a strange pressure of continuance on it. after the 18 years of online presence, irrelevance is still an issue.
Freedom in the Cloud: Software Freedom, Privacy and Security for Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing
Absolutely brilliant talk by Eben Moglen — Professor of Law and Legal History at Columbia University, and founder, Director-Counsel and Chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center — at an Internet Society – New York Chapter event back in February of this year.
In these two videos he presents an image of what exactly happened in terms of the internet infrastructure, completely outside the purview of political or wide social awareness which presents extreme danger to the fundamentals of our civil society. Explicit, clear, concise insights into the situation presented by corporate ‘log aggregators’ like Google and Facebook as well as the issues underlying how they threaten YOUR freedom.
Fuchs, Christian. 2009. Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance
Society. A Critical Case Study of the Usage of studiVZ, Facebook, and
MySpace by Students in Salzburg in the Context of Electronic
Surveillance. Salzburg/Vienna: Research Group UTI. ISBN 978-3-200-01428-2.
The study recommends that citizens see commercial Internet platforms that store and evaluate personal data generally critically and that by establishing special consumer protection websites it could be documented in the public, which rights in dealing with personal data such platforms obtain by their terms of use and their privacy terms. Christian Fuchs: “There are many examples for how affected citizens try surveilling the surveillors with the help of websites. This can pose a certain degree of protection by making use of public information, but also has limits because the basic problem is that we live in times, in which on the one hand there are strong commercial interests in data collection and data evaluation and on the other hand after 9/11 continuously more political steps have been taken for creating surveillance societies. These are political-economic problems, not technological ones.”
there is no privacy at the speed of Light is a project hosted on ORFKunstradio and authored by Bernhard Loibner and Tom Sherman aka Nerve Theory. It explores contemporary be-ing and the impact of social and biological entities on that being. Fragment No. 23 is the latest installment:
We live in a world of strangers. Because more and more of us choose to live in cities, we find ourselves living in a world of strangers. We find privacy in the city, and loneliness. As we gain autonomy and our sense of individualism grows, it is more and more difficult to convince others that we are trustworthy. There are two ways we can prove our worth, with credentials and through ordeals. Credentials include credit cards and drivers licenses, and educational certificates. We have identity tags like social security and passport numbers. To supplement our credentials we must submit our physical bodies for measurement and examination. We must establish our reputations through ordeals. Photographs are taken. We are asked to take drug tests for certain jobs, say a hair strand drug test or a simple saliva test. We are asked to place our hands on devices that verify our identity through hand geometry analysis. We are instructed to stare into video cameras for iris scans. These ordeals have become common in many aspects of our personal lives. We live in a world of strangers and it has become increasingly difficult to establish and maintain our reputations. In this world we still rely on personal, instinctive judgment — the way a person looks and smells, the sound of their voice, and if they can look us in the eye. The way a person moves or responds to our touch still tells us a lot. But our intuitive skills only tell us so much. What kind of music does this stranger like? What are her favorite movies? Does he eat meat? Before we have sex or exchange body fluids we must determine the probability of various kinds of infections. Credentials are important, but ordeals are usually necessary to close the deal.
Teaching with technology conference. Concepts swimming at the popular surface of the sea. Little diving to the basal bentholithic ground. Why the ascendancy of the text? (and David Abram’s critique of written language as the initial wedge driven between lived/immersive experience in the sensual world and the new rational sentient be-ing.) Hearing things from the keynote speaker, intelligent, that I have dealt with and modeled in my teaching already. hmmmm. Stating the obvious. And keeping to the center. not comatose. (my presentation: Convergent Practice: Networking and Creativity)
Deep in production states, the initial 2-hour DVD burned for the installation coming up in a couple weeks. First time in artifact production for public show since the installation at Deiglan in Akureyri in 2000. Tested the plasma screen today, some sizing glitches, but otherwise, it seems to look/sound good. Second iteration will happen this week, perhaps a third after that.
So little writing done here, reflections seem to be submerged by influx, hinted knowings (tongue on 9-volt battery, citrus), secretions of saliva. pressure of hearing, adsorbing.
Open source, middleware, centralization, privacy, (the idea of standards, or the principle behind, actually directly decreases possibilities of innovation!) so, when standards come from open source communities of use, vs a central corporate monolith, you get different results. mandated innovation … hah.
Technology, arts, media. ‘talk the talk,’ but where’s ‘walk the walk.’ The focus on a particular level of technology to implement in a teaching situation. There is no correlation between deployment of technology and the quality of the learning experience (period).
Paragraphs. delineating breaks of time. illustrating the discontinuous nature of re-creating, re-production.
lost the life of language, the usage that does not spark, no internal voice. where the internal voice spends breathless hours; questions itself.
