mtl3p

I had a really good Weber class the other day. Instead of looking at some modern practices as “globalization”, I started to think of it as just another step towards organic solidarity. If organic solidarity is an organizing principal, and our current western, urban society is not finished in that transition, just somewhere along the scale of organic and less mechanically solidaire than “primitive” societies (as he defines them), than can’t we look at the practices of globalization as a next step? In that case we would have to look at all of the things we love about the city (organically solidarity-based society) and ask ourselves if it’s coherent (or productive) to try to work against them at a larger scale?

If social facts are not facts, just presentations/practices that need interpretation, then perhaps the widespread complaint of loneliness in modern / organic society might not be a fact of actual isolation, but a presentation of something else. Are we looking at social interdependence in an organic way when we express what we love about the city, but from a mechanical solidarity kind of way when we criticize it? If so, how does it mean for us to have access to both of those forms of conception at the same time? And to be using one framework exclusively for praise and the other exclusively for condemnation.

I feel myself caught in this trap every time I try to meaningfully criticize technology. I think.

We had a good discussion of what it means to transgress in an organic society. If it’s possible, etc. I think that if we look at what we consider transgressions socially, than we can see that we still have a lot of investment in the mechanical solidarity form of organization of society.

I’m trying not to descend too far into solutions. It’s hard, but I’m trying out to figure what questions to ask. The questions dictate their own specific solutions. Which is annoying, because I enjoy dialectics, and a system of thought that diverge and ultimately converge. I have to stop myself from following these trails in the woods and instead ask “why an I choosing this path over another”.

“Why do we attend to the things to which we attend?. - James Ten Brooke
I’m trying to figure out my answer for that, and the meaning for me as a practitioner of being alive and human in 2006, Canada, Montreal, white, male, etc to try and gain an understanding of the relevance and larger meaning of my choice.

Bart wrote a great post that has some contains some distance from his own practice as convener (and more) of GameCODE. So wonderful to see critical distance from one’s supposed domain, especially in academics, and even more so in activism. I’m trying to allow / encourage distance, non-espousal to one form of activist practice or another, (and even to the question of how/whether activism (or resistance) is useful.

“You see this kind of sensationalizing mentality even in discussions about media and media technology themselves, as in statements by media maven John Perry Barlow about computers or the Internet – or whatever – being the most transforming technological breakthrough since the discovery of fire; or Znaimer’s milder, more Canadian assertion that television is the most important communications development in 500 years. What might have intrigued Innis is not which breakthrough was more stunning, but where does this mentality of sensational breakthroughs come from altogether? One follows another with monotonous predictability. If you take a step back, the whole mindset can seem a little embarrassing; it is not impossible to imagine a society in which sensational breakthroughs and firsts are not constantly being declared. Where does such a need, such a mentality, come from? Innis answers that the technologies of communications themselves have engendered a sort of breakthrough-mongering, which extended even to the attitude toward new technologies.”

Last Call for Harold Innis - really good read, actually. I just found it looking for that James Ten Brooke quote.

My next step to seek distance is to go to Mexico. A trip that I feel is completely undeserved, but with people that I lucky even to know, let alone to count as friends. (I’m gone from the 9th to the 24th). In the new year I should be signing up for a contact dance to try to gain some more understanding or more access to better questions.

Yeah - so basically right now I’m respecting and trying to understand my own resistance towards continuing the same type of work that I’ve been doing. Questions that keep popping up are the Brooke one and the Einstein one - “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Partially I’m looking to my own physical practice of sex, dance, and presentation (presentation specifically around gender) to try to identify areas of blindness (areas outside my (and possibly our) cultural clearings). Yes, it’s definitely self-serving (focusing on sex and taking trips to mexico?), but I’m not going to disqualify it on only those grounds. If ‘neath can enrich himself through walking around, taking pictures and sharing, then maybe I can become a better communications activist/community organizer by becoming comfortable with touch and movement.

More personally importantly right now than learning for it’s own sake, is to address the dissatisfaction and reluctance I feel with my field of work.

I’m waiting for us to get over the whole mass-collaboration part of wikipedia and see the actual product of it as something that fits right into existing power dynamics. Like roads for an industrial age, a free encyclopedia is something that an information economy makes more money because of than off of. Same thing with ISF as a purely free wifi group (as opposed to an independently run community media group). I see Stephane’s unswerving insistence (please correct me if I’m pegging you wrongly, Steph) that FLOSS really is about liberation, and I can’t help but feel/worry that 1) it’s just certain subgroups transforming something from a commodity to a basic infrastructure for reasons that have little to do with high-minded ideals (anyways so much FLOSS is really about the “F” :economic market - like IBM’s support, not the “L”, and two I’m still out on the idea of whether I want my revolution (read: societal infrastructure) dictated (read: created) by guys that don’t/can’t dance.

UPDATE - next day. Tracey posted a funnyrelevant xkcd comic.