28 APR 2024 by ideonexus
Modern Absence of Monoculture
It is difficult to, either quantitatively (through sales, net worth, or awards) or qualitatively (through an objective hierarchisation of cultural products) provide an indisputable metric for ‘fame.’ First, there are contextually contingent variables like streaming or internet relevance preventing me from drawing transhistorical comparisons with say, The Beatles or Michael Jackson. And then there is the reality that in our postmodern, globalised world, culture has expanded, mutated, and i...23 SEP 2023 by ideonexus
Withdrawing Attention is Civil Disobediance
Civil disobedience in the attention economy means withdrawing attention. But doing that by loudly quitting Facebook and then tweeting about it is the same mistake as thinking that the imaginary Pera is a real island that we can reach by boat. A real withdrawal of attention happens first and foremost in the mind. What is needed, then, is not a “once-and-for-all” type of quitting but ongoing training: the ability not just to withdraw attention, but to invest it somewhere else, to enlarge an...23 SEP 2023 by ideonexus
Compatible Connectivity
Connectivity is the rapid circulation of information among compatible units—an example would be an article racking up a bunch of shares very quickly and unthinkingly by like-minded people on Facebook. With connectivity, you either are or are not compatible. Red or blue: check the box. In this transmission of information, the units don’t change, nor does the information. Sensitivity, in contrast, involves a difficult, awkward, ambiguous encounter between two differently shaped bodies that ...Folksonomies: social media attention economy
Folksonomies: social media attention economy
18 APR 2023 by ideonexus
Avoiding Communication Vexes Online Surveillance
The idiot does not communicate,2 writes philosopher Byung-Chul Han in Psychopolitics. He may speak, sure, but not to convey a certain message. That makes the idiot instantly subversive in our time, where communication counts among the highest goods. Not so much because we value the exchange of information or because we can learn from each other. But rather, because the ever-accelerating, 24/7 communication cycle is what keeps surveillance capitalism going. It feeds the database and helps ...Folksonomies: resistance surveillance
Folksonomies: resistance surveillance
05 JAN 2023 by ideonexus
Web Gardens and Streams Elaborated
Caufield makes clear digital gardening is not about specific tools it's not a Wordpress plugin, Gastby theme, or Jekyll template. It's a different way of thinking about our online behaviour around information - one that accumulates personal knowledge over time in an explorable space. Caufield's main argument was that we have become swept away by streams the collapse of information into single-track timelines of events. The conversational feed design of email inboxes, group chats, and Ins...Folksonomies: web topology digital distraction
Folksonomies: web topology digital distraction
05 JAN 2023 by ideonexus
The Garden and the Stream as Metaphors for WWW
The Garden is an old metaphor associated with hypertext. Those familiar with the history will recognize this. The Garden of Forking Paths from the mid-20th century. The concept of the Wiki Gardener from the 1990s. Mark Bernsteins 1998 essay Hypertext Gardens. The Garden is the web as topology. The web as space. Its the integrative web, the iterative web, the web as an arrangement and rearrangement of things to one another. Things in the Garden dont collapse to a single set of relations o...Folksonomies: metaphors digital distraction
Folksonomies: metaphors digital distraction
The author will later call the memex the original garden.
16 DEC 2021 by ideonexus
Principles of Technorealism
1. Technologies are not neutral. A great misconception of our time is the idea that technologies are completely free of bias -- that because they are inanimate artifacts, they don't promote certain kinds of behaviors over others. In truth, technologies come loaded with both intended and unintended social, political, and economic leanings. Every tool provides its users with a particular manner of seeing the world and specific ways of interacting with others. It is important for each of us to c...16 OCT 2021 by ideonexus