“

Algorithmic recommendation is not simply a higher-resolution representation of a market — a more precise picture of atomistic individuals that does away with the need for larger-scale approximations like market segments. Rather, it is another mode of the synaptic function — another technique for making and interpreting correspondences between persons and things, another way of organizing collective forms. Collaborative filters algorithmically rearticulate the relationship between individual and aggregate traits, suggesting the need for social scientific theories that eschew the classic break between groups and their members (for a preliminary attempt at such an approach, see Latour et al., forthcoming).

The work of recommendation, like the work of demographic marketing, relies on the idea that there are meaningful similarities among consumers and that these similarities correspond with similarities in objects. However, in algorithmic form, these correspondences take on new forms and meanings, blending preference, identity, and similarity. As these theories are built into online infrastructures, shaping the relations between persons and things and articulating new collective forms, they demand attention, not only as material for analysis, but as new modes of analysis itself.

”

from “Algorithmic Recommendations and Synaptic Functions”


Via Limn

“If you don’t learn how to be alone, you’ll always be lonely, that loneliness is failed solitude. We’re raising a generation that has grown up with constant connection, and only knows how to be lonely when not connected. This capacity for generative solitude is very important for the creative process, but if you grow up thinking it’s your right and due to be tweeted and retweeted, to have thumbs up on Facebook…we’re losing a capacity for autonomy both intellectual and emotional.”

From Fast Company’s interview with Sherry Turkle about her new book Alone Together:Why we Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other

This is on my list of things to read in the coming weeks. I tend to use the word alienation to make the same points Turkle makes about loneliness. Perhaps it’s time for me to think meaningfully about the difference between the two states of being. My sense is that they are both instances of internal anxieties projected onto the outside world regardless of the presence or lack thereof of other people. No doubt there are subtle differences between the two that I am overlooking.

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Mapping the Measure of America is a project by the Social Science Research Council to gauge the quality of life for most Americans. Data about income, health, crime, education and political participation are aggregated into an index score. The states with the higher scores are more likely to offer a better quality of life than the states with lower scores in a given field. If you’re a data and anthropology nerd like I am, the SSRC’s interactive maps are amazing. Prepare to seriously geek out. P.S. The SSRC is also behind one of my favorite blogs, The Immanent Frame, a blog about politics, the public sphere and secular culture.  P.S.S I wish the SSRC consulted a SEO expert for the Mapping project because a website with that much information and completely rendered in Flash is not search engine friendly AT ALL. It’s a missed opportunity to market their data. 

Mapping the Measure of America is a project by the Social Science Research Council to gauge the quality of life for most Americans. Data about income, health, crime, education and political participation are aggregated into an index score. The states with the higher scores are more likely to offer a better quality of life than the states with lower scores in a given field.

If you’re a data and anthropology nerd like I am, the SSRC’s interactive maps are amazing. Prepare to seriously geek out.

P.S. The SSRC is also behind one of my favorite blogs, The Immanent Frame, a blog about politics, the public sphere and secular culture. 

P.S.S I wish the SSRC consulted a SEO expert for the Mapping project because a website with that much information and completely rendered in Flash is not search engine friendly AT ALL. It’s a missed opportunity to market their data. 

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I read this book on authenticity this weekend. When I purchased it, I thought it would be a sociological and philosophical take on authenticity. When I received it and started reading it, it was clearly a marketing book. I hate books about marketing and branding. I generally find them sleazy like a used car salesman. To the authors’ credit, this book wasn’t all that bad, which I admit isn’t the most ringing of endorsements.  The authors define authenticity as anything relating to the consumer’s self-image. To be honest, I’m not sure what I think of this definition. On one hand, it strikes me as a bit soft, and on the other, it seems to simply capture the subjectivity of authenticity in the market place. The only aspect of the book that really grated on me was the argument that a company could render authenticity, or create authenticity. A general definition of authenticity is an experience or attribute which is not fake; something is authentic or it is not. That’s what the book would lead a reader to think. And yet, the authors encourage businesses to mass produce authenticity, which seems like a nice euphemism for not lying to customers. Doesn’t the act of commodifying authenticity end up diminishing its value? Doesn’t it ultimately end up becoming fake? Instead of telling companies and brands to be “real,” they could just be real (read: not exploitative).

I read this book on authenticity this weekend. When I purchased it, I thought it would be a sociological and philosophical take on authenticity. When I received it and started reading it, it was clearly a marketing book. I hate books about marketing and branding. I generally find them sleazy like a used car salesman. To the authors’ credit, this book wasn’t all that bad, which I admit isn’t the most ringing of endorsements. 

The authors define authenticity as anything relating to the consumer’s self-image. To be honest, I’m not sure what I think of this definition. On one hand, it strikes me as a bit soft, and on the other, it seems to simply capture the subjectivity of authenticity in the market place. The only aspect of the book that really grated on me was the argument that a company could render authenticity, or create authenticity. A general definition of authenticity is an experience or attribute which is not fake; something is authentic or it is not. That’s what the book would lead a reader to think. And yet, the authors encourage businesses to mass produce authenticity, which seems like a nice euphemism for not lying to customers.

Doesn’t the act of commodifying authenticity end up diminishing its value? Doesn’t it ultimately end up becoming fake? Instead of telling companies and brands to be “real,” they could just be real (read: not exploitative).

A Quick Response to Danah Boyd’s Post “Social Steganography: Learning to Hide in Plain Sight”

In her recent post for UC Irvine’s Digital Media and Learning Research Hub, Danah Boyd discusses how teenagers communicate multiple messages through social media. Steganography is an ancient technique where individuals communicate hidden messages in “plain sight.” Tattoos, invisible ink are two examples of methods used to communicate those messages. The idea is that an individual crafts a message that is intended to be read differently by different audiences without changing the content of the message. 

Boyd uses the example of a teenage girl who is Facebook friends with her mother. When the girl, Carmen, breaks up with her boyfriend, she creates ambiguous status updates that communicate to her mother that she is happy while communicating a different message to her friends:

When Carmen broke up with her boyfriend, she “wasn’t in the happiest state.”  The breakup happened while she was on a school trip and her mother was already nervous.  Initially, Carmen was going to mark the breakup with lyrics from a song that she had been listening to, but then she realized that the lyrics were quite depressing and worried that if her mom read them, she’d “have a heart attack and think that something is wrong.”  She decided not to post the lyrics.  Instead, she posted lyrics from Monty Python’s “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.”  This strategy was effective.  Her mother wrote her a note saying that she seemed happy which made her laugh.  But her closest friends knew that this song appears in the movie when the characters are about to be killed.  They reached out to her immediately to see how she was really feeling.

Boyd’s argument is that through the use of social steganography, Carmen -or anyone else for that matter-is communicating her real (hidden) message in “plain sight” and in effect employing an old communication tactic for a new digital age:

Social steganography is one privacy tactic teens take when engaging in semi-public forums like Facebook.  While adults have worked diligently to exclude people through privacy settings, many teenagers have been unable to exclude certain classes of adults - namely their parents - for quite some time.  For this reason, they’ve had to develop new techniques to speak to their friends fully aware that their parents are overhearing.  Social steganography is one of the most common techniques that teens employ.  They do this because they care about privacy, they care about misinterpretation, they care about segmented communications strategies.  

Although I agree with Boyd’s analysis that some form of social steganography is happening, I’d like to raise another point that steganography may not always be about communicating multiple messages as much as it is a response to power. In other words, in one instance someone may be actively communicating a message because they choose to and in another instance someone may be using steganography because they have to. I admit the distinction between the two may be a subtle one. 

In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Michel Foucault argues that discipline is necessary to cultivate docility, the quality needed in a population in order to be controlled. In order to create this kind of docility, individuals need to be observed and it’s the act of observation that acts as a form of control. Foucault uses Jeremy Bentham’s paradigm of the Panopticon, an institutional model for punishment that was never actually built. The Panopticon:

allowed for constant observation characterized by an “unequal gaze”; the constant possibility of observation. Perhaps the most important feature of the panopticon was that it was specifically designed so that the prisoner could never be sure whether s/he was being observed. The unequal gaze caused the internalization of disciplinary individuality, and the docile body required of its inmates. This means one is less likely to break rules or laws if they believe they are being watched, even if they are not. 

The processes of governing one’s self under the gaze of control constitutes Foucault’s notions of Governmentality. How an individual acts while being observed is a question at the heart of Governmentality. This is a simplified take on Foucault, but it’s this question that I would like to apply to Boyd’s comments about social steganography. 

My argument is that there is a sort “unequal gaze” between online users and various political, social and economic institutions. Despite the discourse of transparency between users and various corporate and political institutions, users know they’re being watched-tracked-and are governing themselves accordingly. Social Steganograpy is just one way individuals govern their behavior online. But what if that self-control extends beyond status updates or Tweets?

What if every aspect of a person’s digital self is so regulated (e.g., profiles, photos, names, posts, etc) that nothing of their digital persona reflects their offline lives because of the Web’s “unequal gaze”?  Are we going to get to a place where the Web’s publicness starts to destroy anything authentic about our digital selves? Will we end up regulating our behavior to such an extent that everything about our digital lives is all performance?

It’s a little too easy to venture down the Orwellian view of social media, so I won’t. And frankly, I’m a hopeful that some kind of middle ground can be found, something between self-awareness and authenticity. But I do think it’s important to be mindful of how one’s individual online and offline actions interact with larger systems of political and cultural power.