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Category: network

Spitting Images & Systems of Difference

Published January 19, 2009 by cgerrish

Marx Brothers Mirror Image

“I’d swear he was the same guy. He was the spitting image.” It’s a saying that speaks of two being as one, and yet being fundamentally different. An apt phrase for the messy business of representing identity. These thoughts are provisional, but have been triggered by pondering the ideas of Internet Identity and the Semantic Web. Any discussion of representation taps into a long historical dialog.

We look to the photograph to clarify, to lift the fog of ambiguity, to testify. Muybridge’s photos settled a bet by revealing the manner in which a horse truly runs. Speaking of the power of photography to capture the image, Susan Sontag said:

A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a foot print or a death mask.

Visual evidence is highly convincing– we say seeing is believing. The voice can testify to the facts of the case. The written word, except for the wet ink signature, is open to many interpretations. But both seem to rely on conveying what is physically seen with the eyes.

On the Network, we try to create a tapestry of unique numerical endpoints– and we assign names to the space so that we may become conversant with it. It’s a supergluing of a signifier to the signified. It’s a kind of attachment that doesn’t happen in natural language. It’s like saying “I mean what I say, and I say what I mean.” It’s the ambiguity in language that lets the future in. A simple way to understand this is to consider a chart in Sean Hall’s book on Semiotics: This Means This, This Means That:

Signifier Signified
Apple means Temptation
Apple means Beatles
Apple means Healthy
Apple means Fruit
Apple means Computer
Apple means Gwyneth’s kid
Signifier Signified
Apple means Apple
Pomme means Apple
Apfel means Apple
Manzana means Apple

The truth value of the table? True in every case, and the size of the table is unlimited. There’s a slipperiness to language that allows a play of meaning across a field of usage.

A namespace relies on coordinates in space as opposed names and language. We claim a name in a particular space to take it out of circulation. We preserve its uniqueness with technology and the law. As we apply Occam’s Razor across the technology of the Network, we might think about where we can allow the signifier to play freely.

For instance what if your display name (not your login name or your opaque database key) on a social network didn’t have to be unique or even singular? What if it was identifiable through its relationships, connections, geography, avatar, and activity streams? Allow the messiness of the world to be  mirrored in the messiness of the Network. In the wild, Identity isn’t created through unique identifiers, but rather through the intersection of different lines of activity flows through time– the collection of differences. Or as Saussure calls them a system of difference. Laclau explores the idea a bit more:

We know, from Saussure, that language (and by extension, all signifying systems) is a system of differences, that linguistic identities, -values – are purely relational and that, as a result, the totality of language is involved in each single act of signification. Now, in that sense, it is clear that the totality is essentially required – if the differences did not constitute a system, no signification at all would be possible. The problem, however, is that the very possibility of signification is the system, and the very possibility of the system is the possibility of its limits. But if what we are talking about are the limits of a signifying system, it is clear that those limits cannot be themselves signified, but have to show themselves as the interruption or breakdown of the process of signification. Thus we are left with the paradoxical situation that what constitutes the condition of possibility of a signifying system – its limits – is also what constitutes its condition of impossibility – a blockage of the continuous expansion of the process of signification.

In the technology of language and the language of technology, we imagine a kind of systematic extensibility that can capture meaning and the play of signification in real time. But can it?

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Pungent Gestures

Published January 11, 2009 by cgerrish

I’ve finally worked my way through last Sunday’s newspapers in time for this Sunday’s to fill up the in-basket. Of particular note was Peter Aspden’s column in the Weekend Financial Times. He picks up on a number of themes that have been surfacing in recent conversations. Aspden observes that culture and economies run in cycles, and that a down economy may signal a return of a more pungent cultural scene.

In a high economy, capital replaces labor in the machinery of cultural production. Works are primarily created as commercial ventures; they have a business plan, an expected return on investment, and a polished level of disconnected technical professionalism.

Aspden identifies the trends he’ll be looking for in the new year:

  • Cultural Promiscuity (global silk-road type connectivity and mashups)
  • Pungent Pop Culture, a return to seriousness
  • Profundity and complexity welcomed once again
  • The return of Art Cinema (and a farewell to cinematic infantilism)
  • Art Galleries returning to the sterner business of moving hearts and minds

In a down economy, labor replaces capital in the cultural work product. The industrial pop culture complex will turn to high glamor / high gloss products as they did during the great depression. It’s a formula that depends on owning the means of production, large concentrated audiences, low prices and controlled distribution.

Price of Movie Tickets
1940     $0.24
1939     $0.23
1936     $0.25
1935     $0.24
1934     $0.23
1929     $0.35
1924     $0.25
1910     $0.07

As means of production has gone digital, and the distribution networks have gone open, the old formulas are harder to pull off. The studios will have to depend on more and more on special effects and simulated realities to generate the requisite buzz– machines replacing humans. The return to a pungent culture is a cyclical event– the classic example for me was Jerzy Grotowski’s Poor Theater.

Theater should not, because it could not, compete against the overwhelming spectacle of film and should instead focus on the very root of the act of theater: actors in front of spectators.

However this move to the digital appears to be a more foundational change, the very axis of the cycle has been radically shifted. While the high end can go ever higher, the field of play has been opened for a new generation of artists. High and low have lost their polar relationship; real connection can happen across the Network through multiple endpoints. The cost of producing high quality digital output continues to go down, while the talent required to produce high quality digital output remains ever the same.

While a film on a large screen in a movie theater isn’t the same as watching on an iPhone or a laptop; nor is a film the same a grand opera at its best. New media will breed new forms– new methods of reading and writing. As the technology falls away in favor of the performance, perhaps we’ll see some of Aspden’s predictions come true. It could be as simple as a camera, some light, three people dancing and some narration– A Band of Outsiders.

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Talk Show

Published January 7, 2009 by cgerrish

I missed most of it because it was on too late. School nights, you know. But on Friday nights, I could stay up late and watch The Dick Cavett Show. For me, it’s the canonical example of the talk show.

There were only three television networks back then, and no way to time shift. While popular culture didn’t have the diversity we experience today, there was a tremendous concentration of audience. The limited number of outlets meant there was some obligation to represent the variety of our culture. Cavett faced the impossible task of going up against Carson for 90 minutes five nights a week. His audience was around 3.4 million to Carson’s 7.7 million. These shows were large hubs, connectors, big distributors of cultural information.

When the new currents of the rock culture made an appearance on mainstream television, more than show biz chat was communicated. The strangeness is palpable, and you can see the bold strokes of something new emerging.

And while we think of the coverage of our culture unfolding in real time: in 1969, the day after the three day concert called Woodstock, Cavett had a number of the musicians on his show. I’m trying to imagine if there could be an equivalent today. Stephen Stills still had mud on his jeans.

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Speed Kills

Published January 6, 2009 by cgerrish

Keef

The natural reaction to the acceleration of our daily lives is to yearn for simpler days, simpler times. This is a train of thought inspired by reading John Thackara’s In The Bubble, Designing in a Complex World mixed with listening to Steve Gillmor’s NewsGang Live. In the 1960s there were a number of movements organized to try and get back to the land. Even as the guitar solos became faster and more electric, there was a countervailing movement toward ecology, natural foods and dropping out of the rat race.

As the conversation jumps from the Network’s current supersonic speed to a discussion of real time, there’s an understandable backlash against the idea of always on, always connected and being flooded with information in real time. The naysayers moan that increasing the speed of information to real time will only make things worse. As it is, no one has enough time to sort through the things crying for our attention.

When we talk about the speed of daily life, we’re talking about the number of tasks that need to be completed in a day. By doing these tasks faster, and by finding shorter tasks, we can cram more and more into each day. As more things become available to consume and sort through, we’ll need to get even faster just to keep up.

We’ve become hunter/gatherers filtering the incoming streams looking for nutritious information. But the idea that there’s an infinite number of valuable things waiting for your consumption has always been true. Decisions and priorities have always been the key. It just seems like it’s easier to turn on the fire hose of information these days. A well-stocked library probably has the same potential– each book is a stream of words printed into a folio.

There’s another way to look at the idea of real time. We’ve been thinking of it as a faster sort of clock time; clocks are the basis of speed. But real time also connects to event time, the flow of things that happen during a day. Real time is the time in which a conversation unfolds. We tend to think of the emergency uses of real time — a cry for help and a response of aid. Emergencies are one kind of event, but there are many ways of conversing. Real time can be quite slow… the thoughtful pause before an answer; the interlude of laughter for a well-timed joke; a silence that washes over us as our conversation sinks in and resonates.

Perhaps we don’t notice that the speedy machines of the Network don’t move at the speed of life. They don’t have a sense of the fluidity of time. And the speed we want, is not an acceleration of the heartbeats we have remaining, but rather a speed that results in efficiency and spending less time at our chores. When you imagine the real time web, take a moment and think: what’s the music playing in your head?

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