courses@JLR

The scale of Google’s Street View project is enormous. In 2007, the corporation sent out a fleet of cars (and, more recently, tricycles and snowmobiles), each equipped with nine cameras and GPS, with the apparent goal of taking pictures of every mappable route on earth. So far, Google has managed to photograph roads and byways in most of the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Western Europe. The cameras mounted on the cars are programmed to take a picture every ten to 20 meters, without regard for the content. For its users, Google Street View serves as an interactive map, giving them a photographic reference for route-making, or allowing them the particular satisfaction of navigating streets they know well (or streets they don’t know at all) through the nine eyes of the Street View camera-cars. In the program’s ability to “[let] you explore places around the world”—to take users, virtually, to real places that they are not located in physically—it recalls the terms and theories introduced by Tara McPherson, Lev Manovich, Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin regarding the liveness and volition in digital media interfaces (Google Maps With Street View). Art practices such as Jon Rafman’s Nine Eyes, which takes select images captured by the Street View cameras out of their intended context, play out these theories while also revealing their limits as they apply to photographic images that purport to do objective work.

In general, the Street View program’s interface calls to mind McPherson’s notion that, unlike television, the web functions on a “sense of causality in relation to liveness” (462). Street View is of course not live, but there is a sense of “liveness” in its indiscriminate relation of the real world, and therefore a tacit sensation that when you click your way down a city street on Street View, you are actually causing the navigation, “a feeling that our own desire drives the movement” (462). This impression of liveness is why it’s so disorienting when Street View’s images aren’t seasonally accurate, or have not kept pace with construction. In McPherson’s terms, Street View has an illusory liveness—“what is crucial is not so much the fact of liveness so much as the feel of it” (462). In this, the sensation that Street View gives its user is perhaps a literalization of McPherson’s volitional mobility, which she illustrates with programs not completely unlike Street View, such as MSNBC’s ‘Kennedy Remembered’ webpage (463).

The sensation of liveness integral to McPherson’s concept of volitional mobility is related to the immediacy in Bolter and Grusin’s discussion of the logics of remediation. Just as in the Internet webcams that show backyard birdfeeders, in Street View, too, there is a “logic of immediacy” that “dictates that the medium itself should disappear and leave us in the presence of the thing represented” (6). Inasmuch as photography is popularly understood as an invisible medium—that is, when photographs are looked at with an uncritical eye, it is assumed that what they depict is a pure or true representation—there is an extent to which the Street View images are indeed immediate. The fact that these images are created by the impassive gaze of the camera-cars both extends and undermines this sensation of immediacy.  Extends, because there is therefore no subjective photographer (or her attendant intentions inscribed upon the images) to worry about; undermined, because this immediacy thus depends on the very existence of the technological medium. As Bolter and Grusin put it (writing about video games) “the immediacy can only come through acknowledging the medium” (91). In an essay for Art Fag City, Jon Rafman expresses a similar contradiction, writing that even the features of the images that reveal how they are produced, “such as the visible Google copyright and the directional compass arrows … enhance, rather than destroy the thrill of the present instant projected on the image” (Rafman). Recalling McPherson’s discussion of volitional mobility, the interactive controls presented to the Street View user—such as the zoom in or out buttons—function to make the user feel more powerful in regard to the image as well as, via these hypermediate indicators, to deepen the sense that these images are authentic and thus could stand a detailed examination.

Google’s claim to enabling its users to explore far off, perhaps unreachable places, is most explicitly embodied in an offshoot of the traditional Street View—Museum View. Google built a trolley that can navigate museums around the world, and users can click through the museums to, presumably, see the artwork, though, of course, the quality of the images is not high enough that this would be in any way comparable to actually visiting the museum. This function, of giving users interactive visual access to other places, clearly recalls Bolter and Grusin’s discussion of media that “pretend to locate us in various natural environments”—such as webcams that show the Rockies or a “a backyard bird feeder” (5). Manovich, too, refers to this ability when he writes that the computer monitor “connected to a network becomes a window through which we can enter places thousands of miles away” (94).

 In his exploration of the genealogy of the screen as a window into a “virtual space … [a] space of representation,” Manovich introduces the concept of the viewing regime, which, for him, is a “certain relationship between the image and the spectator” (96). This relationship—the viewing regime—has to do with the screen’s image striving “for complete illusion … while the viewer is asked to suspend disbelief” (96). In a practical sense, in order for Street View to serve its function as an interactive, photographic map, the user must indeed suspend disbelief and trust the image. However, of the computer screen in particular—which he calls the “real-time screen”--Manovich writes that its image can change in real time “reflecting changes in the referent “ (97). For him, this leads to the conclusion that “the image, in a traditional sense, no longer exists … it is only by habit that we sill refer to what we see on the real-time screen as ‘images’” (98). Interestingly, Street View’s images do not change in real time at all—recall the sensation of looking at a Street View image that is seasonally out-of-synch with the actual time of year—and therefore, perhaps, a viewing regime for Google Street View might have to revert to an understanding of the images as actual images, in a “traditional sense,” while also depending on a trust that comes with the interplay between Bolter and Grusin’s twin logics of immediacy and hypermediacy. This is what I argue that Rafman’s art practice does.

As referred to earlier, this trust comes partly from the fact that Google Street View’s images are unique in that they don’t have a human—and therefore subjective—photographer. Much of the trust in these images is due to the viewer’s knowledge of the purely mechanical photographer (though perhaps, with greater knowledge of how the Street View camera-vehicles are managed, the role of the driver might bear some looking into). There is a temptation to, as Rafman puts it, see them as “true docu-photography, capturing fragments of reality stripped of all cultural intentions.” It's likely—and entirely reasonable--that users of Google Street View think of these images as true representations of reality (albeit a bit warped by the strange angle of the cameras)—they have no reason not to do so. Rafman’s recontextualization of the Street View images puts pressure on this sense that the images are purely objective and, in doing so, plays out the tensions among the related theorizations of web interfaces discussed here--particularly between the notions of immediacy and hypermediacy as posed by Bolter and Grusin.

Rafman began extracting images from Google Street View and collecting them in a piece called Nine Eyes in 2009. Since a Street View vehicle captures whatever happens to be in its path as it progresses down the street, strange things often end up being photographed. 

These images show the Street View cameras’ occasional and accidental capture of images that appear sophisticated or intentional in terms of both form and content. By removing the images from their original and intended context as something purely informative and archival—that is, immediate--Rafman has transformed them into art images and thus highlighted their hypermediacy. Suddenly these photographs have been given the status of media and a viewer is forced to consider the way they were produced beyond the potential recognition dependency between immediacy and hypermediacy that contributes to their intended effectiveness. As art objects, their manner of production is foregrounded, and much of their impact comes from the knowledge that they were created by machines—that is, their hypermediacy.

However, in those of Rafman’s selections that bear evidence of camera or computer errors—such as the images where the face-recognition technology that is meant to blur human faces blurs something else instead, or the image that shows a Street View vehicle driver attempting to adjust a camera—there is a sense that Rafman’s art practice somehow cuts down the power of these nonhuman photographers. This could be considered a stronger reiteration of the way that Street View’s captures don’t align with Manovich’s impression of the computer screen’s images as not actually images at all. Despite their claim to authenticity and liveness, Rafman’s project highlights the Street View images’ status as images, thereby echoing McPhereson’s reminder that the sensation of volitional mobility is a manufactured, false sensation. Though the user’s clicks do impact the image at the virtual level—the image on the screen does change—the user is, of course, not actually moving anything. They are not navigating through real space at all, but rather through a representation of real space as it was at one point in time.

Indeed, Rafman conceives of his curatorial work on these images as a “reassertion of the significance of the human gaze within Street View” (Rafman). Rafman is pinpointing the tensions among the way that these images are understood in relation to their function (machine made, purely informational), how this understanding relates to understandings of photography in general (as either objective and realistic or subjective and framed), and his practice of selecting images to designate as art. Through all of this, he wants to make a commentary on Google’s status as a creator of a “cultural text like any other,” despite the “weight accorded to external reality [and] the perception of a neutral and unbiased recording” (Rafman). Bolter and Grusin write, "the analog representations on our screen are powerfully connected to life off-screen" (10). Rafman's art practice expands on this: Though, in a literal sense, Google Street View does bear a photographic connection to "life off-screen," Rafman points out the degree to which we impose intention and meaning on these images, and thus suggests that the work that Google Street View performs is perhaps closer to framing and representation than one might think. 

Bibliography:

1.     Bolter, Jay David., and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. London: MIT P., 2001. Print.

2.     "Google Maps with Street View." Google Maps. Google. Web. 19 Dec. 2011. <http://maps.google.com/intl/en/help/maps/streetview/>.

3.     Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2001. Print.

4.     McPherson, Tara. "Reload." The Visual Culture Reader. By Nicholas Mirzoeff. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2002. 458-70. Print.

5.     Rafman, Jon. "IMG MGMT: The Nine Eyes of Google Street View." Art Fag City — New York Art News and Reviews. 12 Aug. 2009. Web. 19 Dec. 2011. <http://www.artfagcity.com/2009/08/12/img-mgmt-the-nine-eyes-of-google-street-view/>.

 

 

 

Perhaps I am simply not paranoid enough, but I found that Appadurai was a little too worried about the process of globalization in our modern age. For while I understand many of his concerns – of nations versus states, the anxieties over disjunctive relationships within and between the various ‘scapes’ he framed, the deterritorialization of large groups of people, the fetishism of both commodities and consumers – I wonder at his vaguely fatalistic attitude. For even while he mentions the “growing diasporas… of intellectuals who continuously inject new meaning-streams into the discourse of democracy in different parts of the world” that can help various nations with their fights for democratic representation, he maintains a (distinctly negative) view of a world growing towards dislocation and a lack of true culture. The internet, with its dissemination of new, ever more closely binding forms of media, has the potential to be both terrifying and malevolent, as well as fantastically creative and positive, and honestly, I think this sort of globalization is inevitable (which means we, Appadurai included, should stop worrying about the phenomena itself and start thinking of constructive ways to work within the new system).

Globalization has been happening throughout history; from Romans conquering tribes throughout Europe, to Imperialism, to outsourcing, globalization is a continual process that only spreads wider as the year’s progress. A global market economy was the only logical outcome of imperialistic movement, for why else do countries travel to and conquer foreign lands if not to gain wealth? The primary motivation for any sort of movement is profit, and if an individual (or more likely a company) can make a profit from finding goods elsewhere, they will do so without hesitation. And this is true even today, with the outsourcing of jobs as a prime example. Companies are always looking for ways to cut costs and turn a profit, and manufacturing goods as well as hiring overseas workers for cheaper labor are just two ways companies can save money.

And while they begin to establish work forces overseas, they also establish a consumer base, for now there is a public with at least some money, and the knowledge to want certain products. Companies are able, through globalization, not only to reach foreign markets, but even to, in a sense, create them. Technology allows companies, the prime drivers of globalization, to reach new markets of people further and further away from that company’s creation base. And although this may not seem to tie back to the idea of shifting cultural dynamics, it most certainly does, for as a community is infiltrated by a company selling a product, that product (and it’s advertisements, and occasionally the values attached to that product) become assimilated into the culture of that place. And if not, there at least becomes a disjuncture between the two sets of values, a disconnect that leaves space for the next generation, one who is used to these new values, to set in and form a new culture fusing the two.

When talking about the movements of globalization , Appadurai argues that ‘the central point is that the global relationship between ethnoscapes, technoscapes and financescapes is deeply disjunctive and profoundly unpredictable.” And while this may be true to some extent, I think something that can always be counted on is the forward movement of globalization and slow mixing (or clash) of different cultural ideas, as well as the continual push toward profit. As previously mentioned, everything is profit driven in some sense, and so while ethnoscapes and technoscapes (and financescapes) may all be moving in slightly different directions away from each other, they are all going to have something to do with money. For example: a family moving to a new country (which most likely happened because one of the adults acquired a higher paying job in this new place, and thus decided to relocate their personal community in order to take advantage of this situation. Appadurai would argue that

deterritorialized communities and displaced populations, however much they may enjoy the fruits of new kinds of earning and new dispositions of capital and technology, have to play out the desires and fantasies of these new ethnoscapes, while striving to reproduce the family-as-microcosm of culture. As the shapes of cultures grow themselves less bounded and tacit, more fluid and politicized, the work of cultural reproduction becomes a daily hazard.

He worries that this family, this new community living in a different ethnic sphere, is going to lose its original culture. But although families are relocating around the globe, and in a sense tearing their cultural heritage in twain as they move, the internet has begun to provide a way to keep in contact with family around the globe, and to reconnect with lost relatives and culture. Although a family may live far from their heritage, they are still able to interact with relatives still living in their homeland through skype and email, facebook and twitter. Through the internet, they can watch the same TV, read the same blogs, etc as their counterparts back home. The difference is that they may no longer want to. Many families may begin trying to fully assimilate and carve their own place. But this doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Yes, some traditional culture is lost; however, who is to say we are not creating another culture, a more globalized one? It may not seem as rich given its lack of history or meaningfulness, but that does not mean that it actually lacks meaning. Culture is something that is created, and as we globalize, a new culture will be (and is) created.

Along with this comes the idea of personally created culture within an imaginary community. “As group pasts become increasingly parts of museums… culture becomes less what Bourdieu would have called a habitus (a tacit realm of reproducible practices and dispositions) and more an area for conscious choice, justification and representation, the latter often to multiple, and spatially dislocated audiences.” People are able to create their own personal cultures, ones that fit them perhaps better than the culture in which they were born (or would have been born). The idea of the ‘misfit’ may slowly become less, as people can find online communities, and online cultures over which to bond. These imagined communities (internet forums, for example) provide a place for people of like mind and similar interest to come together (at least intellectually) and express themselves. Through social media, people are able to concern themselves with fashioning themselves into whatever they wish to be (and even if they don’t take that opportunity, it is there). “The world we live in today is characterized by a new role for the imagination in social life,” and the internet brings together “the idea of the imagined community (in Anderson’s sense); and the French idea of the imaginary (imaginive), as a constructed landscape of collective aspirations.” The community is online, and one can join (and create a new self, or a true self) by fusing together their imaginations of who they are and who they want to be. Yes, things brings up uncomfortable ideas of the place of the lie, in this new world, but that’s something to be explored at another time.

In a sense, while early colonialism “set the basis for a permanent traffic in ideas of peoplehood and selfhood, which created the imagined communities of recent nationalism throughout the world,” through further globalization (where people can speak with others from around the world, and the idea of communicating with a likeminded person halfway around the world is not a foreign concept, but instead an accepted practice), this nationalism has since grown into pride for online communities. Both of these communities are imagined, as a nationalistic attitude is not much different from pride in an online forum one is a part of, and so the transition (from one to the other) is easy (and possibly nearly unconscious).

 

 

I've also added here two videos that I found helpful/interesting in exploring general ideas about globalization. And although it is generally less related to the overarching topic of this post, I particularly enjoyed listening to Noam Chomsky speak about that exactly globalization is. 

 

(Sorry this is so late…I thought I’d already posted it, but it was apparently just one of those dreams where you get work done).

            Rheingold predicted that “mobile Internet, when it really arrives, will not be just a way to do old things while moving. It will be a way to do things that couldn’t be done before” (xiv). In many ways, his projection has not really come true--mobile internet tends to be just about the convenience of “doing old things while moving.” But one of the few truly “new” possibilities that has appeared with mobile Internet is geosocial networking, usually in the form of mobile dating apps, which allow users to search for potential dates who are currently nearby.  Several of Rheingold’s predictions are manifested in these apps, which also demonstrate a fusion of the physical world and the virtual world that suggests a possible expansion of Rheingold’s understanding of the world of mobile (texting) communication.

   The most well-known of these programs, Grindr, gives men the ability to find other potential male partners within close proximity. Because it is targeted toward gay men, a community often stereotyped as mostly interested in anonymous, casual sex, the app gained a reputation as solely a tool for quick and shadey hook ups.  Companies have apparently been trying to overcome this stereotype in order to expand their customer base to include heterosexual users, and though some have been relatively successful (like OKCupid’s “Locals” app) concerns about privacy and safety have persisted, especially among potential female users.

This Youtube video sums up the most extreme of these concerns from a straight female point of view. While these are of course legitimate concerns, these issues don’t really strike me as particularly unique to mobile dating—whenever you date someone you don’t know there is a risk (…of potential stalkers?), and much of our social interaction on the Internet involves the immediate or easy revelation of information that one probably wouldn’t signify as explicitly (or at all) in ‘real life.’ As Rheingold pointed out, “loss of privacy is perhaps the most obvious shadow side of technological cooperation systems. In order to cooperate with more people, I need to know more about them, and that means that they will know more about me” (xxi). This also ties to Rafael's concern with the issue of navigating or creating trust and reputation systems in digital media. Perhaps, then, this fear has less to do with the geosocial quality of the apps themselves, and more to do with the collision between the “virtual, social, and physical worlds” (xviii).

            Observing the texters at Shibuya Crossing, Rheingold writes of the world of texting as creating “a third sphere in which bursts of terse communications link people in real time and physical space.” I think that these geosocial networking apps allow for a rethinking of this conception of the separate spheres of the physical, the “all-enclosing environment of commercial propaganda,” and the texting world. These apps, like old forms of communication and cooperation, rely on their users’ physical proximity to one another, but also make use of the virtual presentations of their users.  Plus, the virtual connection that people make, after finding someone else who is nearby and who wants to meet, moves to real life far more quickly than most internet-meetings do. Thus they perhaps represent another sphere where the virtual and physical worlds are more closely linked than in other instances—they are almost literally layered in the image of Grindr’s GPS map studded with dots that represent potential partners. 

 

 

 

The technology of our modern digital world has a large focus on mobility. Mobile (cell) phones can be found on almost every person, and now most all of these phones or personal computers can easily access the internet. The ability to be connected with thousands of people instantly has given rise to many societal trends and inventions. News spreads with the click of a few keys and texts, calls, and e mails are sent flying across data streams throughout the country and the world. With such an influx of readily distributed communication, the time it takes to assemble a mass of people in one place is as short as a simultaneous mass text message. This sparks the thought of a mass gathering in a instant. Hence the idea and term "flash mob".

The first concept of a flash mob was actually referenced as "flash crowd" in a story by Larry Niven. In the story, inexpensive teleporters allowed crowds to rapidly gather at the spreading news of a minor skirmish turning the event into an out of control riot. While teleporters are still a thing of the future, the explosion of mobile phones and mobile internet devices have allowed for a similar response.  "Bypassing the broadcasting media, cell phone users themselves became broadcasters, receiving and transmitting both news and gossip, and often confounding the two. Indeed, one could imagine each user becoming his or her own broadcasting station: a node in a wider network of communication that the state could not possibly monitor, much less control." (Raphael 403)

This response or gathering was perfectly exemplified in the Phillipino overthrow of President Estrada. When a growing majority of the Phillipine public moved to remove their leader who had amassed money through an illegal numbers game, the night before his empeachment texts were forwarded across the Phillipines to mimic a protest held in 1986. The next day over a million citizens gathered together in a crowd on the streets and the president was removed from office. 

These protest gatherings became called smart mobs after the published book Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold hit the shelves. Here, the idea began to gain major media attention. The first time the phrase "flash mob" was coined was in 2003 and was the brainchild of Bill Wasik who gathered indivduals for mobs on several retail stores. Instead of revolution, his goal was to poke fun at the counter culture of non conformists. Ironically, this display created an entirely new form of counter culture demonstration. Flash mobs began to gain frequency in occurrance and by 2004 flash mob was an official term in the Oxford dictionary. Examples of flash mobs are everywhere today ranging from political protests such as the Twitter and Internet revolutions occuring today in the Middle East and Northern Africa to much more light hearted demonstrations such as dance routins and pillow fights.

While smart mobs have almost been assimilated into the category of flash mob, I believe the distinction should be driven home to separate these seemingly similar terms. Smart mobs have always been about promoting change: A change in government, laws, or even sentiments of peace over war. While on the other hand Flash mobs have been more about making fun of society or goofing around. While usually very creative, entertaining, and thought provoking, flash mobs as opposed to smart mobs put more emphasis on the publicity recieved rather than the effect gained from each demonstration. It is the reason companies have used such "flash mob" themed advertisments to bring attention to the company whether or not the mob has anything to do with their actual product.

Every flash mob is usually covered by several cameras for maximum coverage to easily put on television or more popularly video streaming websites such as YouTube. The goal of most of these mobs is a media popularity contest for who can make the most disruptive and fascinating mob. On the contrary, smart mobs have the goal of drawing unignorable attention from the designated offenders and use overwhelming support to change whatever is at fault. The large smart mobs such as the recent "Occupy" movement usually gather national news and media attention from the spectacle, which puts even more pressure for the cause. 

There are always chances for violence in large gatherings. As foreseen by Niven many crowds of unsettlede people can turn into riots. Subsequently, smart mobs against strict governments can result in military responses on often innocent crowds. Some of the most docile of flash mobs can recieve police response. Recently with negative reception, some flash mobs have even been designed to be violent. 

Where flash mobs and smart mobs have such striking differences, the premise is the same. Gather as many people as possible in a short and unnexpected time to make a statement. Whether that statement is one of political action or fun and enjoyment each mob is certaintly a spectacle. A spectacle that would never be possible without the innovations in data and mobility within technology in our ever advancing digital world.

 

 

Both Ang and Appadurai emphasize the fact that we do not yet have a sufficient understanding of the new global flows and the ways they function in a postmodernist capitalist system. They address the need to develop new terminology that can be used as part of the discourse on  the new world order/disorder in order to attain a better understanding of contemporary social, political, and cultural relations. 

 

Ang focuses on the way communicative practices construct meaning and the uncertainty of how the message is received. He rejects the notion that the sender is the only creator of meaning, and instead proposes that communication is a more complex process whereby audience members are also active producers of meaning. However, this does not necessarily mean that these modern communication systems propagate an equal distribution of power because of the receiver’s agency and ability to construct new meanings out of messages.  To Ang, power and control continues to be in the hand of the transmitter, but this is modified by the ability of the receiver to adapt, even sometimes change, the meaning of these messages. 

 

Furthermore, he states that incoherence and chaos are central characteristics of the new global system, and are necessary for the further development of markets, and thus create a more complex kind of order. Ang argues that meaning becomes temporary in postmodern capitalist systems. Heterogeneity arises from the homogenizing globalist forces because culture and identities are constantly being constructed and reconstructed. The more capitalism expands the more complex it becomes and the more chaos it produces, but also asserts order by applying structural limits to chaos. The contradiction in capitalist postmodernity - between order and chaos, heterogeneity and homogeneity, incorporation and fragmentation - creates a system of "orderly disorder" which ultimately works to maintain the postmodern capitalist system. Therefore, all resistance that takes place is within the limits set by capitalism, except in a revolution, where limits are broken and new relations are constructed. 

 

Appadurai is in agreement with Ang’s notion of chaos and disorder. The complexity of the system arises from the disjunctures among the different global cultural and economic flows. Appadurai categorizes these flows into five different scapes (from landscape, implying fluidity) which aid the construction of imagined worlds and communities. The relation between the different scapes is disjunctured and unpredictable thereby creating what Ang would refer to as a chaotic system of "disorderly order." Furthermore, he maintains that the imagined world and communities which are influenced by the disjunctures among the different scapes create new cultures and identities. Appaduari's notion of homogeneity and heterogeneity are also similar to those of Ang's. He asserts that homogenizing global forces are indigenized and localized and therefore become heterogeneous, a process that seems similar to the way Ang describes the way a message is received and meaning is constructed at the receiving end. 

 

The following article addresses the debate about the role of technology in the Egyptian revolution

 

http://www.tnr.com/article/world/83707/information-technology-egypt-revolution

 

In this article, Nye states that "While, in principle, the information revolution could reduce the power of large states and enhance the power of small states and non-state actors, politics and power are more complex than such technological determinism implies." This is in agreement with Ang's argument that new information networks do not create an equal distribution of power. However, this does not mean that these systems are not useful, but it is important to realize that the monopoly over power has not been completely overcome. 

 

 

 

Another issue that the this article illustrates is that these new information systems are not separate from context: "While a hacker and a government can both create information and exploit the internet, it matters for many purposes that large governments can deploy tens of thousands of trained people and have vast computing power to crack codes or intrude into other organizations. Even though it is now cheap to disseminate existing information, the collection and production of new information often requires major investment, and, in many competitive situations, new information matters most."

 

This statement is in agreement with Appadurai's notion of the different scapes.  Technoscapes are not completely independent of finanscapes and the relation between the two is that of disjuncture and operates in relation to their context (all the different scapes).

 

Another point which struck me about the way in which the Egyptian revolution was covered is that much of the coverage was centered on the role of technology and social media in creating the revolution. The following video is indicative of what much of the media coverage of the revolution was like.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGvcbYkRj8E

 

 

The question that comes up here is: why is so much emphasis placed on the role of social media? Why are many other important issues, which created the conditions for the revolution, neglected, such as the role of the United States in Egyptian politics and the constraints on the economy placed by globalization and structural adjustment policies? Why has most media coverage neglected the fact the Egypt (under Mubarak) was the second largest recipient of American aid? Is this relevant to Ang's point about the role of technology and mass communication in modernizing and developing non-western countries?  Would Ang describe the Egyptian revolution as a revolution? Or is the resistance that is taking place in Egypt still occurring within the limitations of the capitalist system? Is the fact that the internet is a western invention a relevant point? Does this make it easier for us to relate to the oppressed people of Egypt?

The premise of the OKCupid Dating Persona Test (which can be found athttp://www.okcupid.com/the-dating-persona-test) is incredibly simple: answer a series of questions and be assigned a “persona” that describes your “dating self”. But it is this manufacture of the “dating self” that makes this piece of web ephemera worth a second glance.

A group of my friends recently dared each other to take the test and report back to the group (in the form of a Google doc, an appropriate digital resting place for our personae to live) on which of the colorful avatars we had been assigned.

An example:

At the beginning of the test, you are asked your gender, age, and whether you are currently seeing anyone (an odd request for a dating site, but I suppose the site is aware of the fact that some people who are already in relationships fill out the test out of simple curiosity).  The first is the only one that becomes relevant later on in the test, though all three should be in terms of actually dating somebody (though some relationships choose to ignore one or the other of the latter two, often leading to disaster).  While it is nice that the test doesn't judge you when developing your persona for being in a relationship already or being over 65, the fact of the incredibly gendered nature of the test is rather puzzling.

At the end of the test, the intrepid web user is given four letters to represent their “dating persona,” a slightly odd and reductionist concept which implies that the user can be converted into raw, yet easily memorized (by a human) data.  The resulting data resembles the Myers-Briggs personality test result in that the testtaker is given her/his answer in one half of a duality.  These are as follows: Deliberate/Random, Gentle/Brutal, Love/Sex, and Dreamer/Master.  So a possible combination would be DBLM, Deliberate Brutal Love Master.

Although the user has for all intents and purposes become this data, this persona, s/he is still not certain how to parse him/herself in this new digital form.  Unlike “Julie” the male psychiatrist from Stone's article, we are not deliberate, intentional or even aware in our identity tourism.  Though we have become DBLM, precisely what does it mean to be a DBLM?  And so, we must go to the results page and read a short description written by the authors on the site.

The letters are assigned to users regardless of gender.  Either sex could be a DBLM, but their avatar and title change based on their gender.  And since this is the only interpretative lens through which the user can view his/her persona, although the underlying personality test is genderless raw data, the persona is strongly gendered.

The False Messiah
Male DBLM

The Battleaxe
Female DBLM

Perhaps something is occurring to you, the reader, already.  The male image features a placid Christ figure, mobbed by desirous women, while the female image is of an insane-looking woman, directly confronting the viewer in a frightening way and completely alone.  I don't think much analysis is needed to arrive at the conclusion that the female DBLM is presented as less desirable than the male DBLM.

But not only does the presentation in images wildly change between the genders, the description of the “dating persona” is also almost always fundamentally different.  Here is where we are sold our commodified “schizophrenia” (Stone 2000, 70).  Here is where we actually feel that we can adopt our new “dating persona”, namely from its description where the all important parsing of our personality data occurs and we are welcomed into the universe of the site as a “False Messiah” or “Battleaxe”.  But the gender of the physical body cannot be escaped despite the genderless personality description.  We are marked on the site, not only by our gender for gender's sake (important in the dating process most would say), but also for what our gender says about our personality profile.

For example, a friend of mine received the “Manchild” as his dating persona (characterized as RBLD).  Not only are the image and moniker rather insulting to an adult user, but the description cautions the test-taker from using the site at all.  While the Manchild is charismatic and unpredictable, the site says, “we’d like you to consider not using OkCupid” (okcupid.com, accessed 11/16/11).  So now that the user, my friend, has put time and effort into joining this “collective hallucination” (Gibson's wonderful metaphor) of online “personae” and dating profiles, he is immediately dissuaded from continuing to inhabit this new persona, to stop downloading himself, his personality, his likes and interests, turn-ons and turn-offs into their website, since his personality data is unfavorable in his male-marked physical body.  The male-marked online persona is faulty.

In case you were wondering, the female RBLD is called the Wild Rose. “Colorful, but unpicked. You are The Wild Rose. [….] you’re the rare, independent, self-sufficient kind of woman who does want love, but not from a weakling.” (okcupid.com, accessed 11/16/11)  The female RBLD is a sensible adult, with “bouts of cynicism, sarcasm, and thorns “ i.e. some kind of charisma (indeed “you excite a certain kind of man”), but more importantly desirable.  The Wild Rose is not dissuaded from using the site, in fact she is almost encouraged to:

“The problem is them, not you, right? You have lofty standards that few measure up to. You’re out there all right, but not to be picked up by just anyone.”

The fickleness characteristic in the RBLD personality is judged in a heavily gendered manner.  The fickle man is infantalized and denied a love life, while the fickle woman is lauded for being picky and "spunky".

If the site were to actually commodify the “schizophrenia” that Stone describes, of course it would actually have to allow the users to pick their own personas, regardless of gender and actual “IRL” personality.  But the site prides itself on instead attempting some kind of authoritative-sounding yet cheap and sexist examination of the physical “real” personality.  And yet, each person is given a stereotype that may not even fit them (especially after only being asked 50-60 very general questions) and if they are to inhabit the OKCupid space (or not, if you're a Manchild), they must  continue to use this.

 

Let's talk about Lady Gaga. 

Am I kicking a dead horse, here? 

Answer: in terms of media exploitation, the proliferation of cultural products, and the conflation of novelty with repetition?…well, no.

 

For the sake of it, lets recap. What Lady Gaga propagates is not especially new, particularly if we're thinking about her (at times, paradoxical) notions of independence, collectivism, erotics, self-acceptance, (identity) performance and identity-queering, all of which frequently appear in her work. But I am not speaking about her art, nor am I speaking of its implications here. Instead, I wish to discuss Lady Gaga as a cultural product in the Adorno-ian (?) sense, how she reproduces herself through (and draws power from) the digital labor of her fanbase. Because Gaga is a commodified object in the end (which does not necessarily detract from her legitimacy as an artist); a celebrity is always also a thing to be consumed. But Lady Gaga is special in that she garners her influence (power, money) from interactivity. By acting out a sort of transparency and perpetual confession, she delights her fans (who not only 'spend' time on these products, but often propogate them ) and simultaneously perpetuates her fame. So, as a product that makes her audience 'work' in this way, Lady Gaga is useful (pertinent!) to talk about. 

 

As I stated before, Lady Gaga's commercial power is very much rooted in her transparency. It is not unusual for a celebrity to have a twitter account or a youtube channel, or whatnot. These things are par-for-the-course at this point. Even the most reclusive and despondent artists are essentially required to keep a Facebook page now days. Its become a contractual obligation in many cases. But what does this transparency do? It transforms artists into confessors, and confessors into consumable objects. Through twitter and youtube Lady Gaga is always an object to be 'bought.' Further, these digital entities (twitter/youtube) are also networks, and these too mediate (demand) a sort of labor. Terranova writes in her article, 'Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy,':

 

"The Internet highlights the existence of networks of immaterial labor and speeds up their accretion into a collective entity. The productive capacities of immaterial labor on the Internet encompass the work of writing/reading/managing and participating in mailing lists/websites/chatlines. These activities fall outside the concept of “abstract labor,” which Marx defined as the provision of time for the production of value regardless of the useful qualities of the product. They witness an investment of desire into production of the kind cultural theorists have mainly theorized in relation to consumption." (Terranova, 107)

 

The online economy is  less about the bussiness of money, and more about the bussiness of activity and desire. Through constant interactions with Lady Gaga and her products (her confessions), feelings of intimacy and connectivity are fostered amongst audience members. But, network inherently order users. So in this way, fans are also managed. Their activites are limited. Their desires are cultivated to be a certain thing. You are what you eat. And, Gaga's fans are perpetually absorbing all the digital content she can produce. Her confessions and supposed interiors. 

 

Indeed, Lady Gaga regularly confesses. She does so over and over again, as though her life were dependent on it (it very much is). She offers up her private life for perpetual scrutiny through both twitter, 'gaga-vision', and her 'transmissions'.  For example, on Twitter last Tuesday she wrote,

 

"#DrunkyGaga in my hotel room with wine in a gown dancing to Born This Way. #Don'tJudgeMe"

 

Followed immediately by,

 

"REVISION: #DrunkyGaga ALONE in hotel room with wine in gown dancing to Born This Way #DontJudgeMe"

 

Here, Gaga employs at least the illusion of intimacy. Is she alone? Is she drunk? Inconsequential. By offering up a peak into the privacy of her hotel room (even if it is contrived), Gaga cultivates and propagates her fan-base. Similarly, Gaga offers insights backstage through Gaga Vision (which is still a blatant performance, but one that offers additional layers to her persona) <side note: embedding a video is impossible>

 

By interacting with her fans constantly, Lady Gaga effectively puts them to work. As Terranova writes,' "the speed of the digital economy, its accelerated rhythms of obso- lescence, and its reliance on (mostly) “immaterial” products seemed to fit in with the postmodern intuition about the changed status of the commodities whose essence was said to be meaning (or lack of ) rather than labor (as if the two could be separable)...Commodities on the Net are not material and are excessive...with relation to the limits of “real” social needs. " (Terranova, 111). Here, labor is not necessarily commercial (although there is, indirectly, a commercial aspect); it is cultural; it is the production of 'meaning'. The labor Lady Gaga's fans do is, in fact, reproductive. by constantly interacting with her they reproduce her visibility, pushing her to the top of the 'Twitter's Must Follow List," for example (does this exist? Probably. Let's pretend it does). Every retweet, every link to her newest video or interview, every Facebook mention, is money in pocket for Gaga.

 

But, as Terranova, talking about early online communities, writes, "free labor…is not necessarily exploited labor. Within the early virtual communities, we are told, labor was really free: the labor of building a community was not compensated by great financial rewards, but it was also willingly conceded in exchange for the pleasures of communication and exchange"(Terranova, 122). So, if we extend this analysis, all sorts of labor might be (gladly) exchanged for the "pleasures of communication." This is what Lady Gaga offers. Paradoxically, with her proclamations of independence and of being 'born this way,' she is also offering up a sort of connectivity (and sameness) where she acts as a sort of terminal node.   

 

Adorno writes in his essay titled, "The Culture Industry Reconsidered:"

 

"The  culture industry fuses  the  old  and familiar into a new quality. In all its branches, products which are tailored for consumption by masses, and which to a great extent determine the nature of that consumption, are manufactured more or less according to plan.  The individual branches are similar in  structure or  at least  fit into  each  other, ordering themselves into a system almost without a gap. This is made possible by  contemporary technical capabilities  as  well  as  by  economic  and administrative concentration. The culture industry intentionally integrates its consumers from above"

 

Similarly, grad student, Carina Finn, writes in her poetic account of Gaga's fame,

 

"THE POWER-VALUE OF GAGA is imitation, intimidation. the fashion is a repetition of the antithesis of such, such that the imitators become the gods themselves, the paradigm like a virus rather than a symptom. in this way, gaga’s power, which is desire (defined by the fact that her acolytes wear her style like masks), infects her public with military tactics. she demands that they comply they acquiesce it’s their desire to be loved by their object, so they make of their bodies, idols." 

 

Lady Gaga sells desire. She sells 'secrets.' She sells intimacy. She sells difference. She sells sameness. She sells connectivity. She sells fashion. She sells art. And in doing so, she extracts labor.      

For Gaga Academia:http://gagajournal.blogspot.com/">http://gagajournal.blogspot.com/

 

A public community, according to Boyd, is “a collection of people who may not all know each other but share ‘a common understanding of the world, a shared identity, a claim to inclusiveness, a consensus regarding the collective interest’”.  The recent creation of new public virtual music communities has had dramatic impacts on the way music enthusiasts interact with each other.  These public virtual spaces, usually in the form of some online interactive communities, reside at nexuses of a common interest and the ability to expand self-interest collectively at efficiencies never before plausible.  For electronic music buffs, the rise of online virtual public communities like Soundcloud, Audiotool, and Turntable.fm, have literally revolutionized the now systematic advance of digital sound. 

 

On each of the aforementioned sites, users create some form of identity that is representative of their own self, though limited by the platform and medium that the respective sites allow for.  Interestingly, if one searches through the typical users of a site such as Soundcloud, they will begin to notice peculiar patterns in form, content, categorization, and identities, that have been cultivated by the public virtual community itself.  These aesthetic patterns often follow actual differentiable musical sub-genres.  A commonality amongst many ‘witch-house’ sub-genre producers is the aesthetic use of symbols like ††††††††††† (those crosses) as well as other naming conventions like the use of certain darker words that is reflective of the sound the producers share in the community.  For example, within sub-genres such as ‘tropical bass/grime’ the use of globally influenced terms like ‘riddim’, ‘ha’, or even the use of onomatopoeia in the construction of made up words arise in patterns.  The public space of new online music communities has resulted in both the creation and advance of new musical sub-genres, in addition to creating intricate sub-groupings and categories of aesthetic choice that follow those genres. 

 

I would argue that online public music communities are less so displays of the human body, and more so dynamic displays of productions of the mind, whose productions are inextricably coupled with other minds publically and virtually.  Though some artists still maintain an image of themselves on their pages, most instead opt for images of things that are expressive of their sound and their sub-genre aesthetic.  Just as Francis Barker suggests in Stone’s article, “the human body gradually ceased to be perceived as public spectacle” to some extent; this phenomena is more furthered by Soundcloud than detracted from.  The aesthetic choice and representation of personal identity, although construed and constructed in many ways in an attempts to attract other consumers and innovators within that particular sub-genre niche, still remains personally virtually representative to some extent.  There are users who have false or misrepresentative accounts that are distracting to legitimate users—who are leveraging the community to find new sounds—and even some users who have developed almost sarcastic, deceptive, or collagist, profiles to represent alternate identities, which they have conceived of (and thus are still self-representative to a degree).

 

Below examples of a certain Soundcloud musician/collagist and his use of virtual representation as an aesthetic:

 

Arafat Group's Soundcloud handle

 

Sally Sahara's Twitter handle (same person as Arafat Group)

 

Beyond the profiles of online musical community users, the emergent sub-genres that arise are also focal points of identity in and of themselves.  They are niches carved out by similar patterns in sound frequencies that congeal together and create micro-communities within the overall community of the website itself.  What is even more impressive about these online music communities is their connectivity to other social media platforms and other website communities.  From any user’s Soundcloud page, one is likely to have access to much additional information on the virtual entity whose sound you are pursuing.  Links to user’s YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Bandcamp, Myspace music, etc., accounts make it possible to connect even further into that person’s own personally unique niche network.  For example, I could follow all of the artists that any particular artist on Soundcloud follows, and thus ascertain that artist’s musical tastes.  Ironically, however, sometimes it is the artists who say the least about themselves on their music accounts and who follow no one else or very few others, that become the most popular on Soundcloud.  I must believe that their followings are the result of non-virtual live performances, online buzz, memes, trends (generated by underground music blogs and forums), and the actual interestingness of the sounds that compose their own musical productions.

 

Social public communities also extrapolate into other Internet communities, and serve as microcosmic encyclopedias of groundbreaking (and soundbreaking) music representative of the sub-genre and those who contribute to it—these microcosms are still representations of a digital self, as the productions themselves are in some way representative of the individuals who publically offer their sounds.  For example, I was linked to a Facebook group that acts as an encyclopedia like forum of brand new music within the niche sub-genres I enjoy, via a channel on Turntable.fm, which enables users to “DJ” in virtual online communities.  Turntable.fm’s online communities arise based on users’ taste in sound and frequency.  Thus, electronic music can be exponentially advanced due to the unprecedented connectivity offered by public online music communities, which offer its consumers almost the full spectrum of new artists that pop up and are further propagated by other mediums, both virtual and real—ie. underground Internet radio stations and clubs across the world. 

 

One can speculate as to the extensiveness and breadth of these underground music communities—which exist in virtuality and reality simultaneously—and their ability to shape and shift paradigms in popular music and even socio-cultural movements. 

 

 

Identity tourism: a term coined by Lisa Nakamura in her essay Cybertyping and the Work of Race in the Age of Digital Reproduction, which refers to adopting a new online persona that lies outside of one’s gender and race to “experience” a new identity. Through her research, Nakamura found identity tourism occurring on internet chatrooms at an alarming rate—mostly white males who “try on” different races, ages and gender behind the anonymity of their computer screen.

 

Using this anonymity, virtual community members are able to live vicariously through fictitious personas. This new perceived convergence between the body and technology inspired Allucquere Rosanne Stone’s analysis of the body in her essay Will the Real Body Please Stand Up? Boundary Stories About Virtual Cultures. Although both Stone and Nakamura recognize the freedoms associated with a sense of disembodiment on the web, they ultimately agree that the body is both important and relevant when understanding the online experience.

 

 So, what happens when you CAN’T hide behind the freedom of anonymity, race, age, or gender online? What happens when your body is directly linked to your identity online? ChatRoulette, the popular website that lets you videochat with users from around the world, serves as the perfect interface through which Stone and Nakamura’s theories are explained.

 

 

Here is a screenshot of me and (finally!) a real person on ChatRoulette. He was from Germany.

 

When logging onto ChatRoulette, you are randomly paired up with a stranger. You can talk or chat with this stranger or, if you choose, can “next” them—meaning, your conversation will end and you will be given a new stranger to talk to. Through the concepts of anonymity, virtual space, and “nexting”, ChatRoulette shows that the visual presence of the body shapes the user experience.

 

Identity anonymity does not exist on ChatRoulette. A user can no longer hide behind a false identity. A white male cannot lie and say he is a 20-year old female. According to Stone, “No matter how virtual the subject may become, there is always a body attached….consciousness remains firmly rooted in the physical” (93). On ChatRoulette, your identity is linked to the physical presence of your body.

 

This presence shapes the demographics of users. Nakamura highlights that identity tourism makes it seem that the internet population is more diverse than it actually is. This, however, is not a problem on ChatRoulette because anonymity does not exist.

 

In this Tech Crunch article, a group of programmers set out to find data about ChatRoulette. After 2,883 conversations, they found that 89 percent of ChatRoulette users were male. Although the article did not chronicle race, Nakamura would see this as testament to the fact that when anonymity is dissolved, users cannot explore identity freedom. Thus, the importance of the presence of the physical body is highlighted.

 

 

 

 

 

Another concept that is highlighted through ChatRoulette is the concept of space. Stone recognizes the importance of space in virtual communities. She discusses how chatroom users often refer to the conference area as a physical public space, often commenting on it as a medium through which people can “meet.” ChatRoulette is most certainly emblematic of this physical space—a location where people can “meet.” This virtual space produces a community, which in turn is an “apparatus for the production of body” (Stone 87). Further, ChatRoulette can be visualized as Cartesian—some users are “higher up” on the desirability scale. You are more likely to be “nexted” if you are an older male than if you are a younger female. One writer recounts his experiences of being “nexted” versus when his wife sat at the computer. Additionally, being alone makes you more likely to be “nexted” than being in a group.

 

The concept of “nexting” highlights the real-time presence of the body. Stone would see ChatRoulette as an innovative solution to the drive for sociality because consciousness and presence on ChatRoulette is rooted in the body (93). Virtual community, according to Stone, “originates in, and must return to, the physical” (94). The concept of “nexting” situates the body and user in real-time, an important component of modern cyberspace communities. Nakamura attributes this to user-situated agency, an important component of technological liberation (319). Because the user has the agency to “next,” she is dictating her online experience through her body.

 

For example, here is someone I "nexted" immediately! Notice how this user tried to hide behind anonymity (a sexual ad). But since I could not see his or her face, I did not want to engage with this user. Anonymity results in an immediate "next." 

 

 

 

The concepts of anonymity, space, and “nexting” show how ChatRoulette adopts Stone and Nakamura’s theory of the importance of the body on cyber communities. Although it is true that Stone and Nakamura discuss artifacts in which the physical body is not visible, ChatRoulette serves as an interesting artifact to show what happens when identity tourism is no longer an option.