Hair-splitting commentaries on society, culture, and current events

Attempts to find the deep and profound in things light and straight-forward. Social commentary, cutural criticism, and philosophical observations and musings intended to complexify, connect, and rightly, or wrongly, amuse. Assembled with reckless abandon, and served up with pleasure. Menu choices and philosophical observations include: politics, current events, online communities, online trends, academic movements, theory, web and internet research, and literature.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

PBS/BBC Secrets of the Sexes... Matchmaking scientists


Besides the obvious perks a profession as a professional matchmaker might offer, the scientists on last night's broadcast of the BBC's Secrets of the Sexes were having, or getting, none of them. Not only did they not benefit from the matchmaking trade, they learned that for all intents and purposes their science was "insane, and its methods, unsound," if I might quote Martin Sheen talking at Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now about something completely different. The scientists involved in this "speed dating" matchmaking research had originally hoped to prove their hypotheses--that we are attracted to physical virility, or fertility, to social signs of status and power, to facial features that match our own, or are correlated in some way to our own face (on a masc/fem scale of opposites)--by predicting which of 40 men and women would choose one another. Their failure was, to quote the show's narrator, spectacular. The show was nonetheless fascinating, however. And I wonder whether they completely missed the manner in which they staged their own failure, setting up an unconventional meet and greet, then hoisting themselves on their own petard by remaining oblivious to the social interactions, and strategies in particular, that some of the participants engaged in.
Two women in particular nailed every guy there. And the three self-proclaimed male seducers couldn't have hit the broad side of a barn. But most weird was the one minute during which each couple was to sit down (they all played musical chairs until each had met all members of the opposite sex) and silently suss one another up. As if looking at a possible date for a minute while turning a dial from 0 - 100 (kept secret) is not an interaction; as if there's no wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more, say no more, in the very town that produced the Flying Circus in the first place!
The show concluded that first impressions had the highest degree of correlation with dating and coupling outcomes. Those first impressions were sustained artificially long (it took only the first few seconds of the thirty seconds or so these poor couples had to ogle and fondle each other with eyeballs and eyebrows, mouths and ears all furiously trying to get a grip on their facial and gestural expressions, calibrating themselves to the other's equally futile attempts at self-control, I mean some of these faces were in pain, and we're talking "I think I just swallowed a piece of glass" kind of pain).
If they had simply allowed people to flirt and converse in a normal setting, if they had left the science out of the methods, and permitted their 40 test subjects to practice the normal methods used in flirting, well, I wonder how the results might have turned out.

Technorati tags: , , ,

Monday, May 08, 2006

Political Networks against the State

I'm at Meshforum, just heard Jon Lebkowsky and Zack Rosen speak on the "Art of Networks." Both discuss the Howard Dean campaign, which used social networking famously and to infamous ends. In Deanspace, everyone hears you scream....

A member of the audience points out the fact that a social network is a hierarchical network turned upside down. I'm reminded of a pyramid on its head. The point is well taken, and Shannon Clark, our fearless organizer, steers us in the direction I hope we catch later today: mapping networks, network relations theory, topologies and so on. In the meantime, however, some distinctions about networks, be they p2p or hierarchical... What characterizes the action and activity of a network is less is structural organization and type and more its system. Social systems, systems involving communication among people (subjects), in which relationships invoke normative claims, bind actors, have meanings, use linguistic mediation, etc., these networks produce their culture, knowledge, power, and social organization differently than organizations based on the increase and accumulation of capital. This really is a critical distinction.

Clastres, and I haven't read him in, oh, 15 years, so this may be a politically incorrect reference, wrote a fabulous book on the political arrangements of "archaic" societies. His argument: that their social order was designed to prevent the emergence of a political power localized in a sovereign leader. (Agamben comes to mind also.) Political power is much more complex, and its production or reproduction much more involved, than its mode of network...

"That force without which the Savages would never surrender their leisure, that force which destroys society insofar as it is primitive society, is the power to compel; it is the power of coercion; it is political power." Pierre Clastres, Society Against the State

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Colbert report, memes, social media


Walking through the botanical gardens today I kept thinking "too much.... we've got too much social"... Nature-generated content will do that to you...

Colbert's live roast at the White House Press Conference was apparently among the most talked about events in the planet's history. Could it be that it's form, as video, played some role in this? I've been wondering whether or not the phenomenon of short-form video, of movies, clips, even TV on cel phones, of social networking by images and movies, might have some substantial differences with the "conversational" virality so oft noted about the blogosphere.

The thing is that a video is either sent as an attachment, or is linked to, and loses nothing through either. It is not an utterance, not a statement, declaration, promise, or any other thing linguistic. It's not even a sign or symbol; it doesn't communicate anything. Indeed, it's the subject of communication, a topic, reference, It's a token... To share a video with friends then, if it's a social act, must be social for other reasons. Turning to biological metaphors (viruses and memes) doesn't explain a thing, and doesn't help us understand the social mechanism at work. Which there must be one.

The simplest explanation would be that a message sent about, or with, or pointing to video, can either be accepted or rejected. Either of those is communication to the sender. And so on to the next person. In this case then it's the messaging medium still that makes it social.

A more complex description might involve "minimedia"--MySpace.com, Youtube.com, Technorati.com and Digg.com--as re-embedding mainstream narratives in cultures that don't use the mainstream media.

Another explanation, is that there is cultural in-group construction achieved by the circulation of cultural references (and if this is true, then Youtube's lack of programming oversight is its greatest asset!).

There are more engines of communication I'd like to explore: gifting, debt, obligations, promises, structured and formal cultures, exchange economies...


Reading Niklas Luhmann in aforementioned park today, came upon this:

"The more 'that which is perceived,' say, television, plays a role in this, the more communication is based on implicit knowledge which cannot even be communicated. Whereas the Enlightenment assumed that commonality consists in a communicable interest based on reason, and whereas transcendental theory even implied that self-reference could be extrapolated as a general a priori of subjectivity, communication today seems to be borne by a visual knowledge no longer capable of being controlled subjectively, whose commonality owes itself to the mass media and is carried along by their fashions." (82, Reality of the Mass Media

Technorati tags: , , ,

Thursday, May 04, 2006

OnHollywood demos... Switchr


Been keeping clear of demo reviews deliberately. Not sure it's my forte, possibly not my main thing here. Prefer myself to keep the thoughts in the "cloud", unclouded by sneak peaks of the many real tools and applications shown here, if simply to ensure a lucid mind and clarity of perspective.
But this demo caught my attention.
Switchr. (see picture)
The company's in the connectivity space; client-server connections over regular old copper phone lines. The end-user device is any phone you want -- cell, landline, office, home, doesnt matter. The company's built out a connectivity directory with which they route connections from callers to receivers. If both parties take up the connection, and this is where I think they have something, really might have something, if both parties take up the connection they can engage in "conversation." Switchr is branding the experience as a "telephone call," which might be a mouthful ("phone call? fone? call? hmm..."). I'm eager to try. Calls can last as long as the users want; they can be paused or "held" if something comes up that requires one of the caller's immediate attention.
Callers are free to use tone, inflection, intonation, lilt, scream, pitch (calls in major key preferred, but minor key works too)... Callers can say anything they want, or not say if they choose. They can refer to something in the immediate present, or in the past, the future, can refer to a shared experience or something common and familiar, lifestyle, heck, events or plans, desires and interests. Completely open and relationship agnostic.
Switchr claims that over time, callers might even form relationships. If they could deliver on that, man, I'm buyin.

Monday, May 01, 2006

Speaking at and of the Milken Institute

Liz Lawley, David Weinberger, George Siemens, Will Richardson and Doug Thomas were my new friends and fellow panelists last week at the Milken Institute Global Conference. It was quite an experience. It's not often that mealtimes are had in the company of nobel laureates (lunch), champion athletes (dinner), and drinks, investment bankers and astronauts. Themes ranged from bird flu preparation to M&A activity in Asia. There was also a lot of focus on internet technologies; it seems that the entertainment industry has figured out it's a broadcast medium (seem familiar?). My favorite moment from the conference was probably Wesley Clark telling a fellow panelist from the current administration's intelligence community, about Iraq: "You broke it, you own it." More soon. After we're done w/ OnHollywood.