BarryTaylorBlog

internet as playground and factory

 

In my theology and culture class we moved into a discussion about media, media theory and media culture this week, exploring the new realities facillitated by the technologies and various media we employ--how our self-understanding is often reconfigured. We spent a little time with McLuhan--I think you have to regradless of ones opinion about his work and we wound up with Virilio and particularly his theory of dromology--speed, and its effect upon us.

The work of Dominic Pettman in this realm is also pretty helpful. I love the maxim that was part of the inspiration for this talk/conference that, "Social participation is the oil of the digital economy," Pettman uses the term 'social lubrication' to explore the relationship between the virtual oil of digital economies and the way in which real oil drives economies. Below is a taste of some more of his work.

 

 

Meme Anatomies

Here is a cool infographic that breaks down a few of the major internet memes of 2012 and shows how they evolved. It is an interesting look into our cultural obsessions and how social media and pop cultural artifacts are a vibrant partnership

the friends and friends of friends on facebook

I just disconnected from Facebook. I did in a moment, at a traffic light, but it was a long time coming. For a while now, I have been thinking quite deeply about my relationship and feelings about this particular expression of social media. I have always been a little ambivalent. I first joined to communicate with friends in the UK who told me they always responded to messages there quicker than e-mail. So at first, it was simply a long-distance communication tool but then Friend Requests started to come--confirm, confirm. Then people I didn't remember or didn't know and then that moment--do I 'confirm' or 'not now,' well, they are friends of friends of mine so...why not? Then the numbers grow, 'find me on Facebook' became part of my vernacular and friends brought friends, nothing particularly serious, essentially innocuous. I have not been very active apart from messaging people occasionally and confirming people. But for some time I have been a little conflicted about confirming people I dont really know--but I dont interact much, I never 'like' anything and most of the time I pay little attention to what's in the news feed. But today for some reason I took an extended look and didn't like what I saw. My feed was full of negative comments about Obama's comments in support of the rights of same-sex couples to marry. What I found most troubling was that I didn't actually know many of these people--I had friended on the basis of other friends or on some kind of tenuous connection--church, seminary--mostly, I must admit around the issues of religion and culture.

Now, if you don't like the idea of same-sex marriage thats up to you, but I don't want to be connected to the ridiculous comments about how America is anti-Christian, how Obama is the devil, how he has rejected God's clearly defined Truth...blah blah blah. Because my opinion is different, doesn't mean I assume some moral superiority or don't want to engage in meaningful dialogue, but I am not going to sit around and see a whole bunch of mad shit in the feed of a social media tool that I have opted to use. 

My initial reaction was to go through and edit out, you know 'unfriend,' but then I thought that perhaps I would just give it all a miss and liberate my self from it. In Geert Lovink's marvellous book he writes,

"By questioning the self-evidence of Facebook and its befriending algorithm, we already make a first step toward refusing corporate-controlled social media platforms."I prefer not to." The next step could be to actively shape new manifestations of collective anonymous action: "I need to become anonymous in order to be present."

 I'd like to think that my decision to deactivate was a step toward refusing corporate-control, but  I was just pissed off with people on my page saying stuff that I thought was offensive and naive(it wasn't the postioning so much as the justifications that upset me), and I didn't want to have it in front of my face. I don't always react to dissenting opinions in this way, I try to remain open to any and every view--I think it's important to do so in the long run--but not on a social media platform that is so intimately connected with me.

Friendships come in all shapes and sizes--it was Nietzsche I think who nurtured the idea of 'star friendships' and of course, there are 'fair-weather' friends--we have many ways of speaking about friendship and facebook has undoubtedly brought new understandings to the concept--for good and bad I think. But what it comes down to for me is that some friendships are easily left behind, others, for a host of complex reasons, we stick with, even when they are difficult. I don't pick friends based on their opinions about particular issues (well, maybe music and dress haha!), I have been fortunate to have immense diversity in my friendships, and I accept them regardless of their opinions, but what I realized is that I need a more stringent process for accepting friends on social media platforms. There are some people who I only contact via Facebook, I'll have to do a little work to make sure I re-connect via other means. In the meantime, I am going to enjoy the freedom. One of my favourite quotes about friends comes from the movie Love is the Devil, in the mouth of Derek Jacobi playing the painter Francis Bacon,

"Real pain for my sham friends and champagne for my real friends." 

theology + media culture

 

So, we are off and running on a new term. I am teaching a couple of classes, two modules online and one on campus. The campus class is Theology and Media Culture and I decided to completely overhaul it--nothing like last minute decisions to stir things up, but I wanted to chart some different territory this time around. The central theme is going to be transmedia entertainment--communication via multiple media platforms and what that does both to content and to us--hopefully it will be interesting enough to get people thinking a little more deeply about these things.

a day in the life

Documentary film-maker, Morgan Spurlock has a new series on Hulu (yes, on Hulu--doing their own prgramming now) called A Day in the Life. Richard Branson is up right now and it is worth a look. Find it here.

Brain Pickings

Every once in a while you come across a site that you think everyone should know about. I find myself making reference to brainpickings an awful lot, whether it is in genreal conversation or in classes. So if you haven't checked it out, head over and enjoy, there is so much to engage with. Today's article about book's is well worth the read. Maria Popova is behind it all--she writes for Wired and Good magazines and is on Twitter.

Premakes

 

Movie previews from before they were made. From here, via here.

Dear Diary...

"But all the conservatism in the world does not afford even a token of resistance to the ecological sweep of the new electronic media." Marshall McLuhan

I am coming to the end of a class on theology and media culture that has essentially focused on two main areas: television and social media--we have explored textual literacies, the consciousness shifts that attend the adoption or embrace of new technologies, and have examined the theological intersections and tried to determine key points of conversation and dialogue. The past couple of weeks we have focused particularly on social media platforms and conversation has turned to issues of community and privacy principally. I am never surprised that in religious enviornments the question of real versus virtual community is of some import but I am not sure it is the prime question to address. It seems that issues of privacy versus transparency might be even more important. We used to write in diaries, lock our thoughts away and keep them essentially private. Now, that has not disappeared completely, nothing ever does, but it has been eclipsed perhaps by another impulse--disclosure. Now the somewhat benile updates we post about where we are going, what we are eating, what music is playing on our ipods etc., are not necessarily the same as intensely personal and self-analytical diary entries, wherein we explore our innermost selves and say what we wouldn't say out loud perhaps, but I would not underestimate the transformative power of these updates--the transformation of us as individuals and our societies at large. How so?

The modern age was characterized by a fascination with privacy, secrecy really,--the British Official Secrets Act for example, but beyond public secrets, personal ones as well--the interior life was sacred ground-this seems to have given way to something else, not entirely other, not not the same. I don't think that all of this is particularly new, or totally dependent upon digital technologies for its manifestation, but the IT stuff has changed the pace of the game and thrown new ways of communicating into the mix and taken us to a whole new level of global interconnectivity. McLuhan spoke of TV as bringing us to a place of tribal consciousness--we became 'the human race' in ways we hadn't perceived before. Well, if that is the case, network technoligies have surely deepened that perception and brought us into closer experiential and virtual unities--we are connected as never before and many of the old ways of seeing ourselves are giving way to new possibilities and potentials.

The way we present ourselves to each other, the way we disclose ourselves, post pictures, reveal things etc has shifted the dynamic between privacy and openness I think. Something is happening, and it is multi-dimensional in its scope of trnasformation. In his "Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, John Perry Barlow writes,

"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come to cyberspace, the new homeof mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not wlecome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather."

The idea that the net is free space, free from all previous authroities, all previous codes of behaviour or ethic, is creating  new awareness about how we perceive ourselves as human beings. Where that will take us depends on many things---there are lots of warnings and fears about 'big brother' type activities on the web, and that is surely one apsect but it doesnt have to be the exclusive focus.

I think I am getting a little lost inmy thoughts right now, kind of thinkng out loud but I sense a few issues I wans't planing on writing about beginning to emerge, so I'll end this post here and get back to you when I feel ready to address them.

Shirky

 

Have been hosting a conversation on Wednesday evenings--looking at a TEDtalk and then discussing. We explored the above talk this evening, thinking about Clay Shirky's views and how they might affect conceptions of the divine, the practice of religion, the celebration of faith and the expanse of spirituality. We had a pretty lively discussion around the postive and negative implications of social media and particularly around the convene versus control approach to connectivty and social orginaization. Nice way to spend an evening, digging into the big questions.

Media Culture

Found myself in a bit of a crazy week--too many things colliding all at once and some scheduling cock-ups, which is surprising only in that it took this long to happen since I am constantly juggling commitments to a minimum of three entities. Anyway, the week began with an early morning class, Theology and Media Culture, essentially an exploration of the ways in which technologies shape us after we have shaped them. Television and social media are the two principal lenses through whih we will be exploring all this, but we are examining cumulative literacy and tracing the developments through various 'texts'--the alphabet all the way through to digital and virtual realities. I think we may watch MadMen as a class to explore the intersection of cultural shift and a particular communication vehicle, but we'll see. I also have another theology and culture class later on Mondays plus a History of Advertising class somewhere else on Wednesdays and another prety hectic day gig--lots of stuff to think about and work through. It felt quite over-whelming earlier this week, well it still does, I think I need a break really, I haven't had one in a long while and I may have reached my limit--suffering from a little bit of a brain-drain and feeling a bit stretched, and not in a positive way.  I have also not been able to practice yoga for the past three weeks because of a strained ligament so am feeling a bit deprived in that regard as well and need some kind of processing outlet.