Modern & Im/material Things

Certain corners of the web seem to be all aflame, debating the aesthetic merits of the updated Windows 8 logo. Some, like Venture Beat, deem it ugly, denouncing it as as Microsoft’s “Gap Moment” and declaring that it looks like it was made in “MS Paint.” Others aren’t sure what to make of the new, Pentagram-approved design. If Michael Beirut and Paula Scher are behind it, it can’t be all that bad, right? I enjoy its minimalism and think it does a nice job of conjuring up the Metro UI of Windows 8. I do, however, hate the non-font font that is Segoe UI. It reminds me of a knock off helvetica, akin to a “brada” or “jucci” bag. Debates about whether it looks like a window or a flag aside, there’s something else about the logo I’d like to focus on: it’s representation of the “authentically digital.”

On a Windows Team blog post, Principal Designer of User Experience Sam Moreau wrote that the new Metro inspired logo not only invoked the new Metro UI of Windows 8 but also represented the “authentically digital”:

“It was important that the new logo carries our Metro principle of being “Authentically Digital”. By that, we mean it does not try to emulate faux-industrial design characteristics such as materiality (glass, wood, plastic, etc.). It has motion – aligning with the fast and fluid style you’ll find throughout Windows 8.”

There is something intriguing to me about rejecting design characteristics that invoke materiality for something that conjures motion and fluidity. It suggests that it is possible to reject the materiality of the device hardware from the operating system. As a marketing ploy, it’s actually quite clever, especially given that Windows 8 is being positioned as a game changer of an operating system that combines platforms, apps and hardware. And what I’ve seen of the fluidity of Windows 8 across multiple devices, it’s enough for me to think that this approach might actually resonate with consumers. It’s slick and minimalist enough to get people thinking a little more about the system rather than the device. But is it enough to get people to fetishsize the system over the device? Let’s face it, no company has cornered the market on commodity fetishism quite like Apple has. 

Now in full disclosure, I work as a global search account planner and strategist for an agency that handles Microsoft’s commericial and consumer accounts. I work with our sister agencies to plan media strategy for all of Microsoft’s major business units and yes, I’m working on Windows 8 planning (don’t ask for any information because I will not provide any; I’m disclosing my client relationship because it’s the ethical thing to do). Even more disclosure, I am a user of Apple products. Disclosure out of the way, this phrase “authentically digital” has haunted most of my planning documents. It’s sort of rubbed me the wrong way, mostly because years of critical theory have trained me to cringe every time I hear the word “authentic.” Moreau’s post is as close to a definition of the phrase as I have seen yet. 

But can anything be truly authentic when it comes to discussing digital anything? Moreover, can we conceive of anything digital without the materiality of the devices that allow entry points and access? Personally speaking, I can’t have a conversation about the digital web without talking about the devices that allow me access or how my environmental context shapes my use of the devices which then shapes my digital access and experiences. Arguably the metaphors of materiality (e.g., space,borders, boundaries, etc) have allowed theorists and casual observers alike a language to discuss the complexities of the internet, digital ecosystems, software, etc. Will the phrase “authentically digital” resonate, will it become a way to demarcate digital experiences? If it is the turning point for the ‘authentically digital’ then what will become inauthentic, the falsely digital?  

P.S. Some interesting, smart responses to my post can be found here and here. 

Although I agree with Nitsuh Abebe’s observation that ideas aren’t always sounds and sounds may sometimes be ideas, I’d like to suggest that there is a third option as well: sounds can create contemplative spaces for ideas (revolutionary ones or otherwise). In short, there is some kind of alternative, third space between ideas and sounds that can be created or afforded by beautiful or pleasant music. 

“Most music lovers carry around some shred of a very powerful myth that says the opposite, that pleasant music can never really be where the meaningful ideas are.” This sentence in Abede’s post really struck me as a strange observation. Perhaps I run in very limited circles but I’ve never known anyone to say anything close to the statement above. Defining what constitutes pleasant music might be useful. For example, I find Burial’s music incredibly pleasant but someone may find Skrillex’s music more pleasant to listen to instead. The stylistic difference between Burial and Skrillex is massive but I think it boils down to restraint versus excess. I assume pleasant music for Adebe is music that demonstrates some kind of restraint or almost minimalistic quality, as his examples of Cocteau Twins, The Mountain Goats and The Chap generally suggest.  But it remains an assumption until he defines “pleasant” for readers. 

I favor music that demonstrates restraint. For me, restraint typically, but not always, suggests a higher level of sophistication, thought and attentiveness by the producer or songwriter. Subtraction and absence can create interesting spaces for communication, affect, and contemplation. Conversely, excess tends to obliterate those spaces in almost an imperialist, colonial like fashion: excess (i.e., over production) can result in kind of hand-holding between the artists and the listener, as if to say that everything is important so that nothing is actually important.

Saying more with less is hard. Saying something interesting and thoughtful with less is an art. That being said, there are times where I react to all of the minimalist, restrained music I listen to and actively seek out something more maximalist in its approach. If anything, this is exactly why I love Florence and the Machine.  A song like “Cosmic Love” is so massive, so epic and grand that it borders on obscenity. And in a way, it is obscene because it is so big. It’s brave in its boldness, in its willingness to be grand because it knows it has to be: an Aphex Twin style piano ballad would be kind of a let down for a song about love that’s as massive as the goddamn cosmos. And yet, the excess affords some breathing room for you, the listener, to consider your own thoughts on ‘cosmic love’ or at least appreciate Flo’s magnificent pipes.  So maybe this means I am more of a hypocrite than biased. Or both. 

Those who have read my blog for awhile know that I have a real love and deep appreciation for Foucault’s essay “Of Other Spaces.” He discusses (and defines) heterotopias as place-less spaces that engender alternative modes of being or knowledge production. They allow for re-imagination which may or may not be political in nature. Lately I’ve been thinking about how music can act as a heterotopia in Foucault’s framework, especially as it relates to the music I write. On some level, music as a contemplative space is a bit self-evident insofar as people often discuss their personal relationship to a song or music in terms of evocation (e.g., “this song makes me feel x” or “I think about y differently because of this band”). But usually that kind of contemplation has its roots in something personal and emotional and often in relation to universal experiences of love or grief. Restraint in music creates enough breathing room for this level of contemplation because there is less competition between sounds, beats, ideas and feelings. You can hear yourself think and feel.

A few years ago, I went through a phase where I started combining my love of critical theory with the art I made. I tried to use the art I made as a way of explicitly explaining the theory through the medium of fine art in almost a pedagogical sense. Part of it was an exploration of how to resituate theory and part of it was about making theory accessible in different ways. Sometimes this was successful and sometimes it was not. Now I find myself wanting to do the same thing with music. While I won’t go into the project too much, I’ve started working on something that begins to scratch at the surface of this a bit. 

A few months ago I wrote a post-dub song that sampled Zizek discussing the nature of love, which a few folks seemed to appreciate. As a result of that experiment, I ended up connected with another critical theory and electronic music loving producer based in Paris. Over the past 6 or so weeks, we’ve been ‘remixing’ Zizek’s Occupy Wall Street speech. The process has been really fantastic on a lot of levels. Our project initially started as an attempt to turn the speech into a protest jam for the club kids and evolved into something more like sound art. We realized that as much as we wanted to create something dance oriented, the ideas Zizek was communicating were being lost to the dance music. So it became about, I think, creating music that created space for both Zizek’s ideas to be resituated but also creating something like a heterotopia for the listener. 

We’re in the process of wrapping up the mix, creating cover art, etc for the track. We’re also drafting a statement about it and deciding on what kind of political life we’d like it to have. I can’t say if I think it’s successful or not because on some level I don’t think that it’s my place to make that call. But maybe, just maybe, the end product will be a solid effort to articulate that space between politics, ideas, beauty and sounds. 

Note: This is a link to the completed Zizek remix

A high school friend of mine committed suicide this weekend. He hanged himself in one of UChicago’s research buildings. We hadn’t been close in the last few years and I found out through a mutual friend’s Facebook status update. John was important to me in a way I can’t fully articulate. But I am going to try to anyway because I am upset and feel this is necessary, this public articulation of sadness. I can’t cry anymore, so I must write as if to document the feeling before it disappears altogether. But also, because this is grief and grief does not have to be well-put or logical.

John was one of my closest friends in high school. Probably my closest friend. I had many acquaintances but few friends, few people I wanted to be around when things got complicated. We were the weirdos, the ones who didn’t fit in. This had everything do with us being gay, but we didn’t know it at the time. We had an inkling we were different. But because we were close and spent all of our time together, everyone thought we were a couple, so they spared us some harassment. He was my prom date and a fantastic date he was. He went through great pains to find a shirt the same color of red that my hair was dyed at the time, a deep shade of crimson. He was the only one who laughed at my “one of you will betray me” joke while I broke bread at dinner before the dance. And because we weren’t actually a couple, we could dance as terribly and crazily as we wanted. He exposed me to the worst of hip-hop and I tried to get him to like punk. On this front, we both failed each other.

We took American Sign Language together, worked at these ridiculous PGA golf outings in Dearborn to make extra money for band camp, and were in a terrible emo band together. He drummed, which was hilarious because he couldn’t drum at all. And his cover of “Smells like Teen Spirit” was deafening, but every time I hear that song I think of John. During one of our high school talent show performances, we came out and performed an absolutely horrid version of Erykah Badu’s “Bag Lady.” I had never heard the song before him and now won’t ever be able to hear it because of him. A class trip to teach social studies to students in a small frontier-esque town nestled in the Cascade mountains would have been a nightmare without him. We were each other’s beards. I loved him because he reminded me that I wasn’t alone and I think on some level the same was true for him. I loved him for his willingness to be nothing less than who he was. Any fondness I have toward my high school years, I owed to him. 

We talked periodically during our college years. I remember when he came out to me over lunch one day. I simply said, “I know and I am too.” We just sat there, relieved. Coming out can sometimes just be a confirmation of the obvious. But in that moment, we confirmed, I think, what we were to one another in high school. But as happens in life, we grew apart. I never loved or respected him less. I assumed that, for the time being, we didn’t have a place in each other’s lives. You grow up, go figure yourself out, and maybe grow apart. We shared a mutual friend, a friend through whom I learned of John’s adventures and successes. John was brilliant and I had no doubt he would become a famous scientist. I looked forward to seeing his magnificent self on something like The Colbert Report, waxing hilariously but intelligently about climate change and evolution, rocking an incredible, bedazzled Louis Vution man clutch. I looked forward to saying I knew him when we were in a shit emo band together, when he wore anime t-shirts and pretended to drum by violently beating on toms. 

Now, without the fame, I just knew him and am deeply saddened by his loss. Nonetheless, it was a pleasure to have know him. Just last week he sent me a note asking for advice about transitioning from the academy to agency life. He seemed upbeat, albeit burnt out, but looking for options. I didn’t respond immediately because I wanted to craft a thoughtful response to a serious question; I wanted to give him the advice that I wish someone had given me. Now it’s too late. Now his note sits in my Facebook inbox, dated five days before he decided to give it up. It’s arrogant of me to think that a prompt response would have made a difference. But were there other unanswered notes? In aggregate, would it have made a difference? Maybe that’s a point in itself: in aggregate we matter to one another, we impact one another?  I don’t know but I am cursing myself all the same. 

So now I am staring at my bookshelf, waiting for some dead philosopher to come and help me find solace, understanding in John’s decision. It seems all too easy to say that suicide is a selfish act, a permanent response to a temporary state of being. I believe in human agency. I believe that as actors we have the right to determine the course of our lives, the terms with which we will act, love and ultimately leave our lives. I see suicide as an extension of this agency. I suppose that on some level I think we are fundamentally selfish creatures. But herein lies a great irony, that in as much as we can  be selfish about our decision to live or not live, we too are selfish in our desire to force a desire for life onto to those we love. Almost as if to say, if you can’t live for yourself, live for me. That the act of living for another may help you find a reason to live for yourself when despair is all you see. Whereas some might be inclined to turn this into a moral quandary, I’d rather leave the point at the level of irony. Moral debate or not, someone that meant something to me is now gone and a discussion of morality will not change that very real fact.

I want to believe that whatever suffering John was feeling has been alleviated. But it’s the aftermath of your search for grace (maybe?) that is the hard part, John. It’s erasure. It’s dissonance. We have your Facebook page, now a public grieving post, a central point of collective remembering. But everything seems so inane now: posts about falafel sandwiches and crappy christmas songs on Spotify in between a digital stream of grief. So now I’ll turn to a passage in Adorno’s Minima Moralia that helped me get through the hell of graduate school, that helped me find hope on days when I thought it was impossible. Each time I read this passage, I realize that I don’t fully understand the entirety of what Adorno is saying in it. Still, I find comfort in it and think I get closer to comprehension after each reading:

The only philosophy which would still be accountable in the face of despair, would be the attempt to consider all things, as they would be portrayed from the standpoint of redemption. Cognition has no other light than that which shines from redemption out upon the world; all else exhausts itself in post-construction and remains a piece of technics. Perspectives must be produced which set the world beside itself, alienated from itself, revealing its cracks and fissures, as needy and distorted as it will one day lay there in the messianic light. To win such perspectives without caprice or violence, wholly by the feel for objects, this alone is what thinking is all about. It is the simplest of all things, because the condition irrefutably call for such cognitions, indeed because completed negativity, once it comes fully into view, shoots [zusammenschiesst] into the mirror-writing of its opposite. But it is also that which is totally impossible, because it presupposes a standpoint at a remove, were it even the tiniest bit, from the bane [Bannkreis] of the existent; meanwhile every possible cognition must not only be wrested from that which is, in order to be binding, but for that very reason is stricken with the same distortedness and neediness which it intends to escape. The more passionately thought seals itself off from its conditional being for the sake of what is unconditional, the more unconsciously, and thereby catastrophically, it falls into the world. It must comprehend even its own impossibility for the sake of possibility. In relation to the demand thereby imposed on it, the question concerning the reality or non-reality of redemption is however almost inconsequential.

I recently finished Peter Handke’s A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, a short but incredibly dense and affective work. Handke’s writes about the suicide of his mother, a woman who lived through Nazi Europe and its aftermath. The book is as much about her life, the cultural context in which she lived and was shaped, as it is about her death and its impact on Handke. In short, the book is truly remarkable. It is also heartbreaking. This is not a book to read on the bus. You cannot half-assedly read this book. You must give it your undivided attention. The book demands, even requires it of you. But the tradeoff for reading a book that is a tome in its emotional scope yet brief in its physical form is that Handke’s writing will move you, arresting you with its ability to articulate the erasure of individual identity, namely the erasure of his mother.

Most compelling is the empathic yet clinical tone Handke takes when discussing his mother’s life. He pieces together her story: lost dreams, stolen moments of joy, frustrations and ultimately the nervous breakdown before her suicide. What remains is a portrait of a woman going through the motions of life, occasionally exercising agency when she remembers that she is an actor in her own story. And yet, fleeting moments of joy only seem to steal her away from the memory, the burden of the unyielding sense of oblivion she carries within herself. Beyond feeling alone in a crowd, she goes outside to run from the gradual, yet unending sense of disintegration that waits for her at home. 

In a small way, the book is a kind of feminist analysis of the impact of socio-political culture-in this case, german fascism- and its manifestation in the institution of marriage. Here we are provided with an example of how the lack of viable alternatives can result in internalized shame, self-perceived failure and regret. How a life unlived can yield a loss of humanity: 

“I talk to myself, because I can’t say anything to other people anymore. Sometimes I feel like a machine. I’d like to go away somewhere, but when it gets dark I’m afraid of not finding the way home again. In the morning there’s dense fog and then everything is so quiet. Every day I do the same work, and every morning the place is a mess again. There’s never an end to it. I really wish I were dead. When I’m out in the street and I see a car coming, I want to fall in front of it. But how can I be sure it would work? [A letter from Handke’s mother to Handke, p. 64]”

It’s difficult not to be reminded of Hannah Arendt’s discussion of the banality of evil in her work Eichmann in Jerusalem. Banality takes on a double meaning when applied to Handke’s mother: there is the (marco and) micro evil of German totalitarianism looming over Europe and trickling into daily life, as well as the even more micro evil of Handke’s mother’s home life. Yet there is the oblivion that Handke’s mother carries inside of her and there is the aftermath that Handke articulates as a witness. There is a passage from Arendt’s chapter on evidence and witnesses in Eichmann in Jerusalem that speaks to this relationship between witnesses and oblivion quite well:

“The holes of oblivion do not exist. Nothing human is that perfect, and there are simply too many people in the world to make oblivion possible. One man will always be left alive to tell the story. Hence, nothing can ever be “practically useless,” at least, not in the long run…Politically speaking, it is that under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not, just as the lesson of the countries to which the Final Solution was proposed is that “it could happen” in most places but it did not happen everywhere. Humanly speaking, no more is required, and more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation [p. 232-233].”

Although Arendt is discussing the erasure of a class of people, the significance of her point about witnessing the erasure of an individual or individuals can be applied outside of a discussion of The Holocaust. To watch the nervous breakdown of another is to, in a way, witness their erasure, even if it’s self-perceived. It is the disintegration of their humanity. Toward the end of the book, Handke writes of narration and memory, penning one of the most compelling and riveting sentences I have ever read:

“Obviously narration is only an act of memory; on the other hand, it holds nothing in reserve for future use; it merely derives a little pleasure from states of dread by trying to formulate them as aptly as possible; from enjoyment of horror it produces enjoyment of memory [p.72]”

A Sorrow Beyond Dreams is perhaps a kind of protest against the conditions that gave rise to his mother and ultimately led to her death. Handke articulates oblivion in order to curb the growth of its reach and depth.

You know that feeling when you like the initial idea of something and then it’s execution is so terribly offensive (but arguably well meant) that you can no longer support the idea? Subsequently, the terrible execution makes the mere mention of the idea irritating to no end. For me, Kate Bolick’s recently published piece, “All the Single Ladies” in the The Atlantic is a perfect example of that feeling. 

The article starts off with an interesting premise: what are the socio-cultural and economic reasons undergirding the trend of single females? A larger philosophical question about what it means to be single as a woman has the potential be a really interesting, insightful and engaging piece, even if the author’s arguments are not points I agree with. Needless to say I read this article excitedly with the aforementioned hope in mind. What I ended up reading was, frankly, five webpages of a relatively privileged heterosexual white woman bemoaning the state of her love life, looking to the blacks and the dutch for an explanation (or solace?) for her singledom. I won’t spend too much time discussing how racially insensitive Bolick’s discussion of single females in the African American community was, as others no doubt have already done so - a former graduate school classmate of mine, Ali, has a nice post about this article. I did, however, find this particular passage horrifying:

But the non-committers are out there in growing force. If dating and mating is in fact a marketplace—and of course it is—today we’re contending with a new “dating gap,” where marriage-minded women are increasingly confronted with either deadbeats or players. For evidence, we don’t need to look to the past, or abroad—we have two examples right in front of us: the African American community, and the college campus…Given the crisis in gender it has suffered through for the past half century, the African American population might as well be a separate nation. [emphasis mine]

What troubled me beyond the biologically deterministic, Gloria Steinem obsessed feminist rhetoric was an absolute disregard for what being single woman means outside of a heterosexual union. Bolick gives a hat tip to gay men and how homosexual marriage creates an opportunity to rethink the notion of marriage. But nowhere in her article does she discuss non-heterosexual women and how they too might be freaking out about being partner-less.

This is a missed opportunity because discussing queer women would have been a chance for Bolick to tackle a larger philosophical question about the social function of love, of intimate connections between two human beings without the immediate reference of a biological ability to reproduce (e.g., “love is just a precursor to making babies”). Singledom, whether self-imposed or an undesired by-product, is a very pertinent issue in the queer community, especially so because being queer for many means a life in the margins or being ostracized by family and friends. I promise you that there are as many queer single women freaking out about being single as there are straight women worried about the lack of ‘marriageable men.’

But instead of treating the discussion as an analysis of the marketplace of marriagable men, maybe we could talk about the marketplace itself. Why is there a marketplace at all? Why frame love in a capitalist model, relegating it to a mere transaction between two beings? Is marriage or partnership the only acceptable outcome for love between two people? What does it mean to feel like you’re not ready to “settle down”? What forms-life-does love take on in the context of connecting to another person whether they’re “the one” or a future ex? Anything would have been better than “I have so much privilege thanks to second wave feminism and now all this agency has left me single.”

Part One: The King of Limbs Live

In the middle of listening to Feral live, I had a realization about TKOL and my inability to connect with it as a studio album. At first listen, it seems like an album of sonic gestures, a sketchbook which for any other band would be considered brilliant, even masterful. For Radiohead, though, the gestures disappoint an audience largely accustomed to RH albums mixed with depth, presence and warmth. TKOL became for many RH fans a disappointment, something to grow into  or a ‘concept’ album - 90% of the time I think people ascribe the label of “concept album” to a body of songs they think they should like but for some reason don’t quite get (assuming there is something to get). There are concept albums but there are also albums that are disappointing. I’m not convinced TKOL is either. 

Prior to the Roseland show, I felt like TKOL was an album that left me wanting but for what I was never sure. Something was always amiss, there was a depth of sound I felt was missing from it. The influence of post-dubstep and ambient downtempo electronic music on TKOL is pretty obvious, with the work of Burial, Four Tet and Caribou occasionally present throughout the short album. As Radiohead continued playing through other TKOL tracks [“Bloom,” “Little by Little,”], I noticed that I was feeling and hearing a depth and range of bass drum and synths sounds which are compressed into mid-levels on TKOL, if present at all on the studio album. Johnny Greenwood’s work on what I think is a Moog Phatty was so vivid and present live that I felt like I must have been deaf because I didn’t remembering hear those parts on the album. Then it dawned on me that influence of dubstep on TKOL may have also extended to the actual production of the album not just the writing and arrangements.

Dubstep is, generally speaking, a genre meant to be heard live not listened to on an album. This has to do with compression levels and techniques used to hit the low and dirty bass sounds, meaning a majority of the time those deep levels can only be truly heard and experienced through a sophisticated PA system and not the average person’s sound system. Songs which sound flat on albums take on a whole new life when performed live. I understand this when I am listening to an dubstep producer’s work because the absence is intentional. However, I didn’t make the connection with TKOL because I am used to understanding their work as a kind of avant garde alt rock with electronic influences and so I’ve come to expect that their rock roots will still inform their production techniques. I understood TKOL as an album with dub influences not as a dubstep album. I’m not saying that it is a dubstep album but I do think that it is an experiment in production and sound for the band. It’s also a probable indication that Radiohead will move into that territory in a more pronounced way. 

Maybe this was self-evident to the hardcore Radiohead fans among my readers but it wasn’t so obvious to me, which is kind of ironic given how much time I spend listening for and reading about production techniques in electronic music. TKOL live was absolutely incredible and the two drummers are completely necessary. It also doesn’t hurt that the new drummer happens to have worked with another favorite band of mine, Portishead. The entire show felt and sounded like a post-dubstep, minimal and jazz inspired dance fest. As much as I love The Bends and Ok Computer, I can fully embrace post-TKOL Radiohead with as much zeal.

Part Two: Street Spirit Live

For the better of ten years I have been trying to see Radiohead live and prior to Wednesday night I had very bad luck. In short, we were never in the same place at the same time. I was starting to feel that I was fated to never seem them live. When I head that they were playing Roseland, I had this ridiculous idea that I should try and go see them. Everything kind of fell into place and I finally, FINALLY, got to see this band that eluded me for the last ten years. 

Although I was grateful to finally see Radiohead live, especially in such a small venue, the one thing I really wanted out of the evening was to hear “Street Spirit” live. In that place where one wishes for silly things they know are never going to happen, I wished to hear this song that Radiohead rarely plays because Thom finds it draining to perform live. When I was twelve, I heard that song for the first time. It’s the reason I fell in love with Radiohead as a band. It completely blew open my worldview about music. Music could be beautiful and intelligent. It could also be guided by an ethical imperative. In a much as Thom Yorke describes a world of despair, of violence, he offers “immerse your soul in love” as a plea, a kind of safeguard against the despair and violence. It’s not a way out, it’s the only way out.

The crowd kept cheering after the encore ended. They may have been finished but we clearly were not. And for ten minutes people stood there a bit confused as to whether RH would come back out. Yes, the house lights went on, albeit very briefly, and roadies started clearing the stage. And then out of nowhere the lights went dark and Radiohead came out and started playing the intro minor chords of “Street Spirit.” Somewhere between my own elation and surprise, I looked around to see that everyone else around me had the same look on their face. Everyone was crying and singing the words with this look of “is this really happening?” on their faces. It was. It was really happening. And when Thom messed up the lyrics, the audience kept singing.

And then it happened, the moment I really wanted to experience: the audience of 3000 started singing Thom’s plea “immerse your soul in love.” This was fucking magical, a convergence of elation, surprise and nostalgia. This was the kind of moment when the universe hands you a gift, a gift that connects you to the rest of humanity even if only for five minutes. Maybe it seems silly and pretentious to some of you that I had my moment at Radiohead show. I’m sure people have similar moments during Nickelback or Hoobastank shows. Nevertheless, everyone should have a moment like that. Everyone should have a reminder that there is still beauty in the world. 

Sometime ago I read one of Ryan O’Connell’s “How to Be…” pieces in Thought Catalog about the dating habits of 20 somethings. Buried in the caustic, somewhat self-effacing essay, he noted that music for some inexplicable reason matters a great deal in dating. A person’s taste in music can be a dealbreaker, a central reason that romance between two people ends or never even starts. I admit I agree with O’Connell. Music is as much a deal-maker as it is a dealbreaker for me on dates. Feel free to call it snobbery or elitism but there is no way in hell I could date someone who names Smash Mouth or Sugar Ray as their favorite bands. Just thinking about it makes me die a little inside. 

But why? Why do I (and presumably others) place such an emphasis on another’s taste in music? My sense is that for those who experience music in a more profound and pronounced way, the musical taste of a prospective mate matters for two reasons: their taste suggests their ability to connect (or at least appreciate) your connection to a song or band and it signals their potential to share in a mutual experience of a song or live concert. 

Before I can talk about why I care so much about it, I think I should try to describe how I experience music. Bear in mind this is a brief post, so my description is going to be a bit simplistic. I tend to experience music in three ways. There are some bands I experience in an intellectualized way, which means that when I listen to them I tend to think about the technical aspects of the song, changes in time signatures or clever uses of effects pedals. Conversely, there are other songs I experience in physical, visceral way. They are songs that are not particularly inventive or clever but I want to dance to them or run to them. My body responds without irony: the tapping of a foot, the clapping of hands, melodic moments without the pretext of over-intellectualism.  The bands that I love the most-the ones whose music hits me at the core of my being-create a musical experience that combines the intellectual and visceral. 

There are of course people for whom music means nothing. The sort of people who say things like “Oh, I don’t listen to music” or “I’m not into music.” I admit that I have a hard time connecting to those kind of people. To be fair, there are other, less profound reasons for dismissing someone based on their taste music. The first that comes to mind is the hassle of having to listen crappy songs on repeat when you’re in the car or making dinner with your significant other (see Sugar Ray’s “Fly”). More importantly, I struggle with connecting with people who utter statements like the ones above because their comments close off a space for us to connect and share an emotional, non-verbal experience. They close off a space to share in something that is a very constitutive part of who I am and how I experience the world. In short, it’s a dismissal of me. 

And this is what I think is at stake when people dismiss a potential love interest based on their taste in music. Generally speaking, most people want to intellectually, emotionally and physically connect with a potential love interest (“friends with benefits” are another beast entirely). Music can be a powerful way to connect people to one another on each of those levels. A song or a concert can allow a love interest to access an intimate connection point between you and a song- a connection to your ability to express and emote. Music can also create to spaces to share a mutual experience between two people, further solidifying (or creating) existing emotional, intellectual and emotional connections. Maybe what’s at stake is more than just musical snobbery. Maybe what’s called into question is intimacy between two people. Or maybe it’s really just about pre-emptively removing the possibility of having to listen to “Tubthumping” before getting ready to have dinner with friends. 

It’s that time of the year again. It’s the season of making predictions and speculations about the future of a given industry or cultural trend for the new year. As a cultural artifact, prediction lists intrigue (and amuse) me. To create them a writer must have equal parts of gall, courage and arrogance. Making bold claims about what will happen versus what may happen is a tricky enterprise.

After reading a few prediction lists, I thought it might be an interesting exercise to articulate some of my own speculations about the future of digital culture and social media in 2011. The best way to make sense of this list is to view it as a conversation catalyst rather than a predictions list. Written in note form, here are my cultural speculations for 2011:

1. The Return to Materiality: Revisiting material objects as a response to economic status and alienation from physicality and tactile experience. Not about an increase in consumption of material objects, but rather an opportunity to use material objects to create aesthetic and tactile experiences that cannot be created through the use of social media and other digital technologies (examples include: print publications, journaling, letter writing, etc). Complementary and supplementary experiences to individuals’ online experiences. Additionally, unemployment and a weak economy will price people out of certain technologies (and practices); material forms of entertainment and communication provide an opportunity to create and share content at a lower threshold of participation.
2. Engagement as Sensoral Experience: Complete sensoral engagement is not currently possible through social media and digital technologies. Three senses (sight, sound and touch) are engaged. Online listening also represents a collapsing of sound and sight, a hybrid sensoral experience. People will seek out offline and/or online events or experiences that engage all of their senses or the senses that are the most alienated by their use of technology. Online engagement will eventually refer to an integrated offline and online experience in a complementary relationship to one another.
3.  Play as Play: Personal Communication as Pleasure, Not as Work: What is referred to as “social media fatigue” is a collapse of professional and personal communication channels. Fatigue is partially due to stress of maintaining large online networks, but more likely due to lack of separation of communication channels for work and personal uses (i.e., email use at work; email use with friends and family). The use of the same communication method can augment and extend the feeling of work into a person’s personal, private sphere. Extension of work feeling can diminish sense of pleasure or play associated with personal communication. In response, people will create better boundaries or associate specific forms of communication with specific spheres of their lives. [Not sure where social gaming fits into this model as some of the biggest games (Farmville, etc) are based on models of non-paid labor. Work as pleasure?]
4. Alternative Forms of Capital: Attention, Influence and Visibility emerge and   increase in use as alternative forms of social capital/compensation for digital       labor. Responses to weak economy, alienation of the unemployed and exploitation of corporations encouraging consumption. Attention, influence and online visibility potentially offer networking opportunities, as well as means to increase online clout which can be parlayed into employment opportunities for some. In the face of unemployment, individuals may be more willing to engage in additional forms of labor in return for these alternative forms of capital for potential career opps. Alienation from work or individual’s sense of self can act as a catalyst to acquire more of these forms of capital; can create a sense of social empowerment or clout in online space that does not exist in offline space. [My knowledge of research regarding online labor and compensation is limited.]
5. Quality Vs. Quality: Scaling down of online networks, communities and action is not  product of time but of mental bandwidth and opportunity costs. To scale a large network to a smaller network is the initial filter for quality (i.e., Quantity Vs. Quality). Additionally filtering of networks after cost/benefit analyses will result in Quality Vs. Quality analysis. Style, authority, influence may become deciding factors in networks of non-families and friends. [Still working this one out]
   
   Thoughts? There’s so much research I’m trying to wrap my head around that all of my little ideas will soon be rendered irrelevant. Le sigh.

In the wake of “Cablegate” (a.k.a Wikileaks), there’s been a lot of interesting discussion about the tensions between publics and privates, morality, and online transparency. Out of these conversations emerge two interesting points: the moral right of governments to privacy and the idea and function of online transparency. 

Over the course of the last few days, I’ve seen an interesting theme emerge across my Twitter feed: the (moral) rights of governments to secrecy. The argument is essentially that leaking political documents is not just a national security risk, but is also just “wrong.” One user compared Wikileaks to someone leaking business and client trade secrets, arguing that a leak in both instances would be “just wrong.” Wrong is an interesting word to use because its use is more indicative of a moral judgment not an argument. 

There’s a very obvious foreign policy reason that governments should be allowed to maintain a certain level of secrecy: national security. As much I begrudge certain practices that are done in the name of maintaining national security (e.g., TSA pat-downs, racial profiling, the Patriot Act, etc), my safety as a citizen, as a human being, depends on my home nation being secure, internally and externally. This a strategic point not a moral one. Morality is a convenient way to end an argument not win it.

Additionally, framing Wikileaks in a discourse about morality has another effect: it discredits and diminishes the positive affect of transparency in foreign policy. By making a claim that it’s morally wrong to share and access the information contained in the Wikileaks’ cables, the possibility of an informed and engaged global citizenry disappears. Allowing a government total secrecy and moral sanction is a convenient way of keeping citizens in a state of ignorance, powerlessness and fear- the themes Foudauldian essays are made of. Opacity keeps citizens in the dark and transparency makes us vulnerable to attack from political regimes and one another.

In a recent blog post, researcher Jillian York suggested that there is an ethos among digital natives (e.g., millennials, twenty-somethings, etc) that embraces and even champions a “Wikileakisian level of transparency.” She writes, “Perhaps more than any other generation, we’ve been raised with this idea of extreme honesty, radical transparency.  And what many of the cables reveal is a duality between what is said publicly vs. privately.” York is right. Our generation  does have, for better or worse, a spirit of ‘extreme honesty’ But where we differ is in the use of the word transparency. What I suspect Jillian is hinting at is a more of a model of translucency and not transparency. All light passes through a transparent object whereas some light passes through a translucent object.

I don’t believe in a transparent web nor do I think that a transparent web is necessarily desirable. The term online transparency is itself a kind of lie. The term implies that all parties have equal access to everything at all times, a kind of “I see you, you see me” mentality. What’s missing is the acknowledgment that not all internet users are equal and have equal access to the internet, information and other technological tools. The unbalanced distribution of power between users, governments and other institutions prevents (and destroys) the possibility of a truly transparent web. 

Power analyses aside, there is another reason to be troubled by the idea of complete online transparency: an audience requires a performance. When people know they’re being followed by their peers and colleagues, as well as other parties, they begin to self-edit, to perform a more idealized (and perhaps less controversial) version of themselves. Of course there are those that go all out and leave nothing to the imagination, but they are a minority. Transparency encourages performance, which isn’t always bad but is not always honest. 

Perhaps what our generation of oversharers should do in the wake of Cablegate is begin creating a framework for a translucent web experience. A translucent web could provide an alternative to the binaries of completely closed or completely open systems. In an idealized world, a translucent web would allow open and equal access to information but still allow users to maintain a level of privacy without resorting to lies or half-truths. An opportunity for a more authentic presentation of the self because the option to draw a curtain every now and then would be there without any online or offline consequence.

[File Under: Thinking Out Loud Again]

[Disclosure: the hyperlink in “our generation” points to 8095, a consultancy group within Edelman, my employer]