tdm jimena

Collective vs. individual

Wikipedia

The state of the Web 2.0

Social Networks, et.al.

Lanier- Digital Maoism

The growth of the collectiveCurrent misconceptions:

– The collective is all wise– It is desirable to have few coordinating

actors• Not to be mistaken with democracy or

meritocracy—closer to extreme political tendencies.

Wikipedia= not that great

• Lacks an editorial voice• decontextualizes• The knowledge was already out there

There is no authorship (good writing is more than accuracy)

• Strong in changing topics • Most likely it won’t correct its own

mistakes

Aggregation instead of Authorship

• Aggregating sites are “consensus Web filters”

• They tend to filter according to popularity (ice cream vs. Earthquake)

• Accumulated page layers create a meaningless murk

• The race to be the highest level aggregator

• The info. we receive is what a collectivity algorithm derives from what other derived from what collectives chose from amateur writers.

• Value comes from real humans

The threat of the Hive Mind• There’s no one taking responsibility

• Remove the scent of people simulate that the content emerges directly from the Web

• “people become uncritical and dim to make these sites become coherent”

-Do you think it’s true? Are standards lowered?

Time & speed in the collective• Can move too quickly: “mind grazing

tendency”

• Can change incessantly matters that need to be settled

• Might move in the right direction but too slowly

• Lack of rules can slow its development

Dangers of the Hive Mind

• Empowering has resulted in “nasty hive mind outbursts” –Maoist, Fascist & religious fanatism

• “Good enough” is a dangerous illusion.

Collective thought is becoming mainstream

• Good authorship is out of style. • The aggregator is richer than the

aggregated. • Blogging is easy crowd pleasing• Popularity dictates the trends &

alternatives are left outside (American Idol)

Collective thought is becoming mainstream

• This way of thinking is going further than the Internet

• Technology is a good seller.• Privilege of collective knowledge over

ideas. • Minimizes risks & responsibilities.

Collective vs. Individual• Wisdom of the crowd is

real & useful• Shouldn’t define its own

questions• Good for info. that can be

evaluated by fixed parameters

• Open source is very efficient in engineering

• Bad in taste & judgement• Needs information filters• Can help keep individuals

in check

• Good for user interfaces and experiences.

• Intelligent thought is needed for science, design, lawmaking, aesthetics.

Mixing is best

• Both kinds of intelligences are essential

• “The best examples of collective intelligences are those that are guided by well-meaning individuals”

• “Clever individuals ask the questions and the collective behavior answers them”

Responses!Lanier’s essay triggered much

needed explanations and clarifications

Understanding Wikipedia

Understanding Wikipedia• Nor the Wikipedia, or any other collective entities, are

pure hive mind. Wikipedia has an elite at is center, and a lot of deliberate design management going on. –KK

• “It is an engaged community that uses a large and growing number of regulatory mechanisms to manage a huge set of proposed edits. Anonymous additions are subjected to a higher degree of control.” –CSh

• W. provides the transparency that almost no other system offers, by giving full context of the discussion on any entry in the “talk pages”. This publicly available context distinguishes it from algorithmic or market-based aggregation. -FV&MW

Understanding Wikipedia

• Its uniqueness also resides in its shared policy, providing

guidelines to the situations that emerge in editing. -FV&MW

• Crowd editing usually comes with current events, and plummets after the event loses media exposure, and the

core group of editors takes over. -FV&MW

• Authoring at here, as everywhere, is done by individuals

exercising the judgment of their own minds. –JW

Understanding Wikipedia• It does not overthrow any elite--it replaces the academic

elite with the interactive media one.-DR

• Its flaws are real, but worth enduring because we can watch the community operate. –DG

• W. is great not only because it gives an averaged view that is better than an authoritative statement by experts. It also organizes enormous amounts of labor for a single intellectual purpose. –LS

• It was created in almost no time, for almost no cost, by people who had no access to the traditional cannon. –CD

Understanding Wikipedia• 10 years ago it would’ve been seen as impossible, and

now the product of well-intentioned individuals is being compared with the highest standards. –YB

• It allows learning about the discussions that go under the task of defining “truth” —since truth is an illusion and there’s always more than one approach to any issue. –CD

• The 2006 Wikipedia template might not be good for of other kinds of information of creative works, but the 2056 one may. -KK

Criteria / Literacy

Criteria / Literacy• User-created databases cannot be used with blind

confidence. –DR

• We need to respect and preserve our own intelligence. The dangers of relinquishing individual intelligence are real. –GD

• We need to update our media literacy. Our critical thinking fell into a low level of use in the Big Media world.-DG

• “We need better tools to help the community judge reliability and authenticity. (Harris) Reputation has to become part of the mix. -DG

Criteria / Literacy• Reading Wikipedia is a media literacy exercise. –CD

• A system needs to be designed to guard against mediocre or malicious contributions through filters. –YB

• What is successful filtering? Aggregation is just one more example of the problem of the excess of information & what is managed to be heard. –QH

• Since social life involves a tension between individual freedom and group participation, the changes wrought by computers and networks are therefore in tension. -CSh

Understanding the Hive Mind / The Collective

Hive Mind / The Collective• Collective action is not the same as collectivism.

It involves freely chosen self-election and distributed coordination. Commons-based peer production and open source software is collective action. –HR

• Collectivism involves coercion and centralized control. –HR

• Collectivism does exist, but is not inherent in tools, like wikis; or in methods, such as collaboration and aggregation. –LS

• All intelligence is collective. –GD

Hive Mind / The Collective• A networked collaboration is an ecology of

interdependencies, with status and influences. –DR

• There are things wrong with each form of collective action, but the same mistakes are not made in each of them. -CSh

• Top-down control is inserted to speed and direct a system toward its goals. Until this era, technology was primarily all control and design. Now it can be design and hive. –KK

• Wikipedia is an example of the fact that the bottom-up hive mind will take us much further than it seems possible. It also proves that the hive mind by itself won’t ever take us to our goal. –KK

• The issue is more about community than a collective. –DG

The Individual /

Authorship

The Individual• The individual is, too, a social construction –DR

• Markets, governments social relations & platforms are

overlapping systems within which the individual exists –YB

Authorship • Science and technology’s greatest achievements are

articulations of collective realizations -not personal

accomplishments –DR

• Historically, the best way to keep the important things

around is to reduce the barriers to entry. –CD

The Cultural Problem

Cultural Problem

• Many current websites have more aggregation that original works, but of Western culture since post-modernism exists in

the realm of context and reference. –DR

• There is a replacement of the key components of culture by the priorities of consumer capitalism. –DR

• There’s an industrial system-form of knowledge and cultural production that causes to the exclusion of social and peer-

production.” –YB

Cultural Problem

• Shift to “Epistemic collectivism” -- placing the views of the collective uppermost. It is rooted in relativism: if there is no objective truth that we can be wrong or right about, then there is no way to make sense of expertise or intellectual authority. –LS

• Pop culture has always existed, and doesn’t substitute “the great stuff”-QH

New Form of Production

New Form of Production

• Network based social production is an alternative

form to markets, firms and governments. –YB

• It might be taking us away from individualism and back towards folk culture, but it’s also possible

that a third thing might be happening. –QH

• Strong collaboration represents a new kind of

“industrial revolution” for mental effort. –LS

New Form of Production

• “It is also about persistence—and celebrating the reality that knowledge is an ongoing process.” -DG

• The distributed blogosphere can sometimes correct the mass media failings. –YB

• The new distributed system is imperfect, but it’s harder to corrupt than the advertising-supported media that dominated the 20th century. –YB

Lanier- World Wide Mush

Collectivism is becoming the norm

• This is the way people are participating

• Shift from more passive ways

• Internet dream come true- in a way.

The Global Mush

• Too many voices drown each other

• Everyone knows what work is going on

• No competition = less innovation and diversity

• Consensus & committee = Dull, average outcome

• Proprietary development is still the most successful

Contradicts the economic trend• US shift of its economic strategy

• Physical labor intellectual activities

• Outsource manufacture• Focus on intellectual property

(design, entertainment, etc)

The framework isn’t working• Intellectual property impedes

information flow & sharing• The ‘open’ paradigm = give away

your brain’s work for kudos• Only a handful are making a living• The big players will still make money• The rest will be forced to work for

sole recognition

The framework isn’t working

Intellectual work produced for free the author gets recognition he becomes branded

he cashes in by doing alternative (physical) work

This work is threatened by technology.

It should be creating better jobs for people

The fallacy of collectivism• Extending the experience of childhood• Naïve idea of fairness• Aggregation shouldn’t substitute

energy• Young people fierce, competitive

individuals that innovate and earn royalties.

Q: does the market allow for more benefit than collective work?

The Digital GivenTen Web 2.0

Thesesmore questions

raised than answered

0. Internet is neither the problem nor the solution

• The virtual is the everyday• Is it “an indiferent bystander”?• Does it play an actual role?

1. The Web is out of the guilt in the financial crisis

• Is it really not affected at all?• “There is still hyper-growth werever

you look”--How does its growth remain separate from the rest of the system?

• “Apps. get lost inside the boring & uncertain life”

2. Networks = social drugs for entertainment & diffussion • Entertainment -- Is this a new

phenomenon, or was it there all along? And is it a bad thing? (E)

• “Most sites are echo chambers of the same old opinions and patterns”

• Can conflict manifest in this giant ‘confort zone’?

3. SN= fashion victims of impulsive grazing mentality• “What the online world needs is

sustainable social relations”– Scaleabiltiy is achieved, but

sustainability is also needed for change

• What can a network do to foster truly diverse communities?

• What has made FB remain the ‘meadow of choice’ for so long?

4. Are there collective concepts of the networked masses?• “Better SN are organized networks

involving better individuals”• Friend and tweet don’t signal

intelligence, creativity or socialism.• Imagination for transformation

Let’s kill the click – Can everybody be a concept designer?– Do older generations have a harder time grasping

networked collectivity?– Is collaborative thought a given for our generation?

5. The Web lacks antagonistic linkage

• Where is the enemy on the Web?• Are SN the only ways to link? How

about hacking, phishing, bombing?

6. Social networks are very real

• Real activity goes on that takes a toll on productivity and time.

• All this hard work hasn’t made any substantial change.

7. The network won’t be revolutionized

• “There is no fertile ground for social transformation in the Web”

• Why???• Is it a reflection of the larger social

reality?

8. There’s nothing free about the Web.

• “Free is just another word for service economies”

• We are limited by our capacity as data producers

9. The Web is fueled by the endless growth of consumerism

• We have to ellaborate technologies for a finite world

• Can “insane development” on the Web eat the system up?

10. We need complex digital identities

• Is the obsession with virtual identity opposite to real identity development?

• Is a fake persona the solution to outsmarting the control society?

• Is it really harder for older generations to understand collective thought?