Final Exam Flashcards

Question

What is Kierkegaard’s critique of information and how might it apply to the internet?

Answer 1

Information technology undermines commitment Contradicted thought that info creates knowledge. The more info we are given the less committed we are to ideas, the more easily manipulated we are. This creates conflict between people surrounding ideas. Claim that access to info will create a more aware, more intelligent, and more engaged population. BUT expansion of access and circulation is attended by the rise of a principle of speed and convenience into info consumption (we look for the facts and move on, giving no additional thought) There is always more info to consumer, leads to uncertainty and doubt, as well as insistence that we are right. Can’t commit to one idea or belief, there is always something else out there to believe, to learn Our action is reduced to the flow of images, we only know the things, just not in a broader context. Information rich environments tends to produce conformity (Brave New World), use social media to express differences, but in doing so we express our differences in the same way as everyone else. (like making all music with one instrument) The more our lives are enveloped in the world of virtual visibility and distanced judgements, the more anxious we become about how people see us. Society is obsessed with image based media therefore we become image obsessed

Answer 2

Information technology undermines freedom Information doesn't set you free, it is the primary substance to normalize control. These ways of attaining info will extend the power, reconfigure power relations. Claim that digital media empower individuals by extending them the powers of participation - communication sphere is pluralized and hierarchies levelled BUT networks function as automatic and invisible engines for generating info about their use - this makes them valuable as environments of surveillance Think the theory of the democratization of media, thinking our opinions matter and have an effect on the society we live in. VERSUS Google monitoring your use (or web advertising), analyzing your information and past searches to give you the info it thinks you want A modern society controlling without using violence - solved by gathering, storming, analyzing and evaluating info. This creates an informational self that is compared to a standard of normality. We are driven to constantly create this information about ourselves online, which opens us to analytic mechanisms. This isn’t about controlling individuals, but managing populations. Power is therefore able to grasp our unique self understandings through the info we provide. Biopower - mode of power directed at processes of identity formation, identification, ways of life. Not a power exercised against us, but by us on ourselves as we go about creating a life for ourselves. …self willed conformity

Answer 3

Information tech undermines reality Disputes the claims that access to info brings us closer to one another and reality. No, we don’t have reality, we have a manipulation of symbols. We are interacting with imaginary things that have no reality, they don’t really exist outside of our mind. Claim that info will put people more directly and authentically in touch with their world (more informed and engaged) BUT our engagement with the world takes the form not of direct contact but information (virtual), largely imaginary and symbolic. Information is replacing experience. Connection with the world is virtual, and this isn’t limited to screens, reality itself is already virtual. This comes with the invention of language, after all, novels are virtual and art is virtual reality. A world of images and symbols We seek realistic substitutions for the real (special effects, plastic surgery), this is real virtuality, real effects generated by something which does not fully exist. Imaginary virtual - the thought that a friend isn’t acting like themselves, they are, what is happening is that they are not acting like you think they should act. Not dealing with real people, just images of them in your head. Symbolic virtual - reality filtered through collective beliefs, taking the form of symbolic structures. Facebook profiles, projection of symbols taking the place of the reality we occupy. Symbolic authority of security cameras. Real virtual - impossible to perceive pre-symbolically. Media doesn’t virtualize the real, there is no real, they involve us in this system of symbols that has real effects on the world.

Answer 4

Info tech undermines democracy Theory of the public sphere. People have to have a voice and it must be met with a response. Opinions need to register and matter, and something will be done with significance. It as a place to debate about the type of society you want to have. Claims digital media provide the means of communication to all, initiating a global public sphere in which opportunities for transformative action abound BUT political action tends to be displaced into the entertainment functions of digital media or to be largely indistinguishable from them. Democracy based on active engagement of citizens, supported by media allowing communication - but really media allow entertainment, people want to be entertained, we don’t want to take anything seriously and worry most about being bored. Digital media developed under this and political potential is crushed by impatience, distraction, immediacy. Communication distilled into ‘contributions’, ‘comments’ and ‘likes’ Think Jodi Dean and communicative capitalism. There is no response, only contributions to the sphere. Circulation of opinions with no real world effects.

Answer 5

“The right to be left alone” - based in info access/security “The right to be left alone, free from intrusion and the right to exercise control over one’s personal info” - based on individual sovereignty About the sanctity of the individual, we have control over what is made public and how the info we make public is used. Gossip is a breach of privacy because the individual has no voice in their own self definition. Connects to democracy…. autonomous, self-determining individuals are the focus. Not just the right to be left alone, but the right to participate in and determine the conditions of their existence.

Answer 6

Not merely repressive, also a necessary social activity. Supports social stability - census, statistics, tax info aids in organizing relationships between the citizen and the state Allows convenience - commercial services more directly connected to markets Aids institutions - student, employee, health records etc. necessary to the work of social institutions Facilitates sociability - real world and online profiling is basic to processes of identification, association, and self-definition Nested within asymmetrical power relations - serves dominant interests, we are observable, but we ourselves cannot observe - we are aware that we are being watched, but don’t have a say in how we are being watched or how that info is used. (Big Brother style)

Answer 7

Analogue - based on physical monitoring and physical information resources - limited in extent and intensity, info is harder to store, analyse, copy - much easier to protect data in central locations. Digital - new surveillance tech captures a digital image - stores, processes and analyses infer through computers, distributed instantaneously across networks - digital is more widely distributed, more regular, and more invisible. Two qualities of digital surveillance that make it different than the past: Systemization and Connectivity Systemization - formerly separate surveillance methods, systems and processes can be linked in a “total surveillance system” Connectivity - information is more mobile, more easily separable from us and more transposable between different environments.

Answer 8

Asymmetrical - essentially coercive in nature - serves the dominant interests Big Brother situation - we don’t know anything. We don’t know what they are collecting or how they are using it enacting surveillance without their knowledge we are observable but cannot observe Symmetrical - consensual, recognizes balance between surveillance and privacy this is the Terms of Service agreement we accept we participate in determining the conditions of surveillance, they are transparent, we enter with a full knowledge of what they are for and what they involve for us we have access to the info that is gathered on us, as well as to info on why and how it will be used there are limits on what info is gathered and how it can be used

Answer 9

Performativity - within social media we approach our lives as remote public performances, rehearsed, curated, planned, and posed. Within this world we are “always on” Promotionalism - we orient ourselves as objects of promotion - we send messages to elicit a positive response - these responses are experiences as self-referential validations. Connects to narcissism - currency of this world is friends/followers, likes, shares - communication in the sphere becomes promotion. social media is the logics of marketing applied to the self, making ourselves visible in a vast area of information. likes and comments aren’t conversation, they are an attribution of value Alienation - social media invite us to experience interaction as something we design independently of others, inhabiting a paradoxical world of isolated interaction. - we want the signs of intimacy and interaction while avoiding the other challenges. separation of individuals form others, social interaction occurs in isolation even when we interact with others they are alienated, we are displaced from them, only know their representation social media cannot be a place of dialogue or conversation. Therefore can’t be location of community leads to isolation

Answer 10

Constantly underestimating how sad other people are, which makes us even sadder. we don’t only want to be happy, we want to be happier than everyone else It is creation of a character by showcasing the most witty, joyful, bullet-pointed versions of people’s lives, and inviting constant comparisons in which we tend to see ourselves as the losers, Facebook appears to exploit an Achilles’ heel of human nature Social media is the place where we apply the logics of advertising to the self. Advertising in its nature promotes the good life, trying happiness to things. We present ourselves through the same light of artificial awesomeness that marketers use in promoting goods.

Answer 11

Promotionalism - we orient ourselves as objects of promotion - we send messages to elicit a positive response - these responses are experiences as self-referential validations. Connects to narcissism - currency of this world is friends/followers, likes, shares - communication in the sphere becomes promotion. Anxieties of happiness Social media is the place where we apply the logics of advertising to the self. Advertising in its nature promotes the good life, trying happiness to things. We present ourselves through the same light of artificial awesomeness that marketers use in promoting goods. Anxieties of connectivity being alone is good, we are then required to find and develop our own resources We look inward and establish an imaginative relationship with the self instead of looking outward for validation/confirmation social media as tech of promotion, confession and display feeds anxieties about acceptance, belonging and self worth.

Answer 12

Immaterial labour - symbolic, creative, cultural aspect of value - takes place at the level where subcultural innovation occurs material value doesn’t matter in the contact of success, but people define its success. (ie, we decide what movies succeed) symbolic - celebrity endorsements - there is no relation, but we come to value each of them with the other. takes place outside of production, its subculture, it isn’t cool because its produced, but by word of mouth think Nirvana and the birth of grunge it was previously difficult to access the areas of discourse where ‘cool’ was discussed, hence the value of Facebook Social Productivity - the latent economic potential of everyday interactions, through which tastes, trends, aptitudes, languages and behaviours are developed everything we do has a potential productive value. There is meaning and value that can be fed into cultural production Social Factory - the integration of everyday life into the circuits of productivity and the increasing monetization/marketisation of everyday life society itself is a factory, we are always working to produce value to someone else our time is never free, but freely given.

Answer 13

Potential productivity of media consumption has largely been understood in relation to the theory of audience commodity political economy of media based on the relationship between advertisers, content producers and audiences TV is funded by advertisements, existence is based on the availability of mass audiences for advertising messages (think the cost of Super Bowl ads) successful programs draw mass audiences, channeling ad revenue and promoting more of the same in hopes of maintaining the audience audience is commodified in terms of their value to advertisers and its availability for participation in commercial communication audiences work for advertisers, through their attention and passing messages along as well as by acting on consumer propositions entertainment is therefore not a break from productivity, but an extension of it thorough advertising, product placement, licensing, tie-ins

Answer 14

free labour is excessive activity, not typically viewed as work, performed on the internet that creates value for capital Facebook profiles are a source of value for web 2.0 companies, who’s business relies on the performance of free labour., without it there would be no content and therefore no profit. Making the consumer work for the goods - used in self service gas stations, grocery checkouts, and banks - shed the unprofitable tasks divisions between producer and consumer have been blurred - immaterial labour, producing the cultural and social component of the commodity it’s ‘crowdsourcing’ Facebook depends on the creation of these massive databases of user information, each new participant adding to its value Free labour in advertising what we like Complicate their uses for being a place to hang out - repositions social networking sites as economic actors that enable or constrain the parameters of members agency. What do the users get in exchange? We willingly participate for entertainment value - it isn’t necessarily exploited labour even though asymmetrical power relations are present. Participation is therefore constrained by the economic goals of the site Blurs between work and leisure. We are always working, creating info. Leisure time is spent a labour occurs.

Answer 15

Individualization of digital media is framed as an extension of creative power to individuals and confers creativity as an individual capacity - we possess creativity, it is something we have this seems natural, there has been an explosion of creative output and the current media system has been decentralized Artist, inventor, scientist creativity is individual expressivity, thus is bound to the material frameworks that enable the attribution of ideas to individuals - around these attributions that the political - economy of creativity and creative process takes shape ???

Answer 16

Intellectual Property - legal mechanism whereby the rules of authorship and scarcity can be applied to information first arises in England in the 17th century around concerns over ‘piracy’ of cultural works following the popular diffusion of printing AKA patents, trademarks, copyright IP is a compromise between the need of authors to make a living and the desire of consumers for access to their works. — Authors want as much money as possible and consumers want to pay the least - mass consumption logic that as more people buy it a lower costs we will still make more money capitalist institutions are created to broker the relationship, but increasingly use IP law to transfer authorial rights to themselves

Answer 17

Early identification of digital media with creativity was framed as an argument against IP key was the idea that information should be or even wants to be free this isn’t about free as in no cost, but free as in easy access, wide circulation, low barriers and broad availability for development. digital media makes the cost of reproduction on a massive scale so low it makes no economic sense to have an escalating cost for cultural commodities. IP regimes seen as ideal in philosophy, but really just transferring authorial rights to a corporation tech provided a possibility to distribute info and authorship away form the corporations examples of open sourced software, though can be seen in the past sphere of cultural development (Beowulf)

Answer 18

Idea that democratic values have become detached from political institutions and appropriated buy the market. market freedoms (choice) supplement of political ones (equality, autonomy, voice) this is a problem - choice is always relative to existing options, whereas politics is about shaping the options that exist internet serves as the material basis on which market processes and democratic values coincide we can trace the fortunes of ‘democracy’ by looking at how the internet restructures some of its key elements (pluralism, participation, community) through the market

Answer 19

Limetless info and expended opportunity for expression make it seem as if the internet enables democratic pluralism BUT the capacity for interaction is exchanged for limitless and constant contributions (Habermas and communicative actions, where a response is expected — the internet is just one way, there is no dialogue/transformation) “Communicatively hinders communication” no communication happens because all we do is make brief contributions to the data stream There is no sustained dialogue, just a space of expressed opinions, but not identifying what is best for a successful society — it’s just another opinion that we can ‘like’ or not contributions aren’t to initiate conversation or make connections, but simply to attract value (number of likes, comments, a rare meme)

Answer 20

Our ability to produce messages in a public forum makes it seem as if what we say has an impact and really matters, we are contributing. We don’t see the internet as the same time waste that TV is, we are contributing, making a difference. BUT the medium serves to channel our actions into feelings or opinions we express within the medium and then get trapped there There is no communicative action (outside of a ‘Like’), we know it’s happening, we care, but we don’t take it any further than that. — only expression and registration, communication doesn’t lead to anything but more communication, more contributions. Interpassivity, our potential for real activity is channeled into an object that comes to both supplant that activity and symbolize its constantly deferred potential But, this is the only way we feel we can be engaged with the issue (US politics) We express concern over social/political issues, but the more we pour energy into ‘contributions’ to the data stream, the less we actually do about them

Answer 21

As a globalized network, the internet situates our contributions and interactions at the highest level of significance and gestures towards harmonization BUT the ‘global’ is an illusion produced by the internet - the internet is the only place where the ‘global’ exists - and there is not a unified conflictual space The internet symbolizes our participation in a unified global community which does not actually exist except as a fetish - in actuality the web is “provincial” - we need to carve out our own little niches Actual internet structure entails fragmentation of experience, connectivity, and community - and yet we paradoxically imagine a global community there this global is always particular, our global, and disruptions to it cause us to build higher walls so as to insulate a space where all is in agreement with what we think

Answer 22

Internet provides a paradox - we have a feeling of involvement in a movement of change while enjoying the comforts that come with nothing changing We live in a world where political realities, inequality, displacement, ecological disaster, cruelty, poverty and waste are circulated as information in this form, the forums by which we stay informed, all we can do is respond in kind with more information, more contributions Isolated, we feel part of something, pacified, we feel active, distracted, we feel committed - meanwhile we are increasingly cut off from real participation

Final Exam Flashcards

(46 cards)