http://www.plummerfernandez.com/Digital-Natives
KIROKAZE
wallacepolsom

roma★
Jules of Nature
Peter Solarz
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ

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NASA
Sweet Seals For You, Always
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
we're not kids anymore.

titsay
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occasionally subtle

pixel skylines

Andulka

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣

tannertan36

No title available
styofa doing anything
seen from United States
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seen from Netherlands
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seen from Romania
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seen from Senegal
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seen from United Kingdom
seen from Iraq
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@thesisnotes
http://www.plummerfernandez.com/Digital-Natives
http://www.windowsofnewyork.com/
Reproduced Nose Sculpture by Argote
http://www.perrotin.com/Ivan_Argote-works-oeuvres-20216-84.html
Ivan ARGOTE "Sphinx (1750BC)" 2011 Pink granite / Granite rose 58 3/4 x 19 3/4 x 27 1/2 inches / 149 x 50 x 70 cm unique
The artist has produced the missing nose in granite of the sculpture of the Grand Sphinx of Tanis housed in the Louvre. A symbol of power of the different kings who appropriated it, from Amenemhat II to Sheshonk I, the chimera being disfigured, Ivan Argote offered to restore it. « I have always been impressed by the fact that we find at the Louvre tracks of civilizations which preceded us. It is not insignificant that these objects are in Paris, New York or London. The powerful centers build and concentrate the history. And these civilizations which were so powerful, so glorious, are not any more today than rubble and relics. What will it remain of us? »
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/01/joseph-stalin-more-popular-in-russia-now_n_2791776.html#slide=1913621
MOSCOW — An opinion survey commissioned by the Carnegie Endowment says that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin has remained widely admired in Russia and other ex-Soviet nations, even though...
Difference – Distance your cult from the establishment
Connectors – Recruit successful, attractive and spectable souls
Exclusivity – Not anyone can join
Solidarity – A clear sense of belonging to a group
Ideology – A clear belief system
Lovebomb – Overwhelm with love
Paradox – Make joiners feel that they become more individual
An Enemy – To define what you are not
Contact – Splash your ideas onto the right people
Let go – Don’t be a wide-read, psychopathic, control-obsessive cult leader
http://www.ronnestam.com/successful-culting-of-brands-10-easy-steps-%E2%80%93-a-book-tip-my-reflections/
Resorting to scepticism about identity
‘The subject of identity, both personal and collective, is on the agenda in the West, as well as in post-Soviet Russia… The current intellectual climate encourages us to regard every expression of meaning and every assertion of identity as susceptible to reinterpretation’ (Laura Engelstein and Stephanie Sandler, Self and Story in Russian History, p. 4). http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=981D26EF03ABB97C52C94B55CBE71F50.journals?fromPage=online&aid=151731
Contemporary European History / Volume 12 / Issue 02 / May 2003, pp 213-223
Copyright © 2003 Cambridge University Press
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0960777303001152 (About DOI), Published online: 20 May 2003
goffman and harré on dramaturgy & arguments against that how the word 'person' means 'face' ...
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7951.html
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7951.html
This is a book about the remaking of identities in a society cast into turmoil by revolution. What I am investigating is how individuals who find themselves in such situations deal with the question of identity—basically, how they construct new personae to suit the new circumstances of life, and how those new personae are for some considerable time uncertain, vulnerable to challenge. I am also interested in the social consequences: what social practices (purging, self-criticism, denunciation) and mentalites (suspicion, identity anxieties) develop in a situation where the individuals are busy reinventing themselves and defending their newly invented selves, and moreover are aware that their neighbors are similarly engaged. My inquiry differs from many of the “identity” studies published in recent years in that it is primarily concerned with identity at the individual, not national or group, level. Once the focus is on individuals, it is immediately clear that imposture is a necessary part of the study of identity. The impostor is one who has assumed or claimed an identity to which he or she is not entitled. In a revolutionary situation, it is extremely important to unmask the impostors who are falsely claiming revolutionary identity. Yet at the same time, imposture as a practice is uncomfortably close to the more benign practices of self-fashioning or impersonation that the revolution demands of all citizens.2 How this difficulty was handled, and how the two were distinguished in everyday life, is one of the subjects of this book. Judging by diaries and memoirs, Soviet citizens worried pragmatically about presentation of identity and might also work conscientiously on developing a “Soviet” persona, but they rarely seem to have asked metaphysical questions about essences (who am I in this boundless universe?)
IDENTITY: DEFINITION AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS
In early Soviet discourse, the closest equivalent of the term “identity” was litso (literally, face). In its “identity” meaning, however, the term was used almost entirely with two qualifiers: klassovoe (class) and politicheskoe (political). The class identity (as well as the closely related political identity) had to be made manifest (vyiavleno, defined in Ushakov as “exposed, shown in its true colors.”)15 Discussion of identity was closely linked with questions of disguise and concealment, since the Revolution had made certain social and political identities dangerous handicaps and thus fostered concealment. A disguised identity must be “unmasked” (razoblacheno),16 a very common term in early Soviet discourse. Double identity or duplicity (dvulichie, dvurushnichestvo), the latter defined as “behavior of a person ostensibly belonging to one group but acting on behalf of the opposing side,” was regularly excoriated in the Soviet press.17
While self-identifications are grounded in real-life phenomena such as native language, parentage, and occupation, they are also fluid and subject to modification. Modification may be a product of circumstance: for example, when the Soviet Union disappeared as a state at the beginning of the 1990s, “Soviet” suddenly ceased to be a viable identity.
http://www.academia.edu/1020585/Consumers_Multi-layered_Experience_and_Their_Perception_of_Corporate_Image
Maurice Merleau-Ponty - Phenomolgy of Perception (1945)
https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/download/attachments/73535007/Phenomenology+of+Perception.pdf
We are always in a plenum, in being, just as a face, even in repose, even in death, is always doomed to express something (there are people whose faces, in death, bear expressions of surprise, or peace, or discretion), and just as silence is still a modality of the world of sound.
Goffman's Theory of Impression Management & Dramaturgy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impression_management
Erving Goffman : The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.
1969 Allen Lane The Penguin Press, London
(1959)Impression Management as ControlLet us now turn . . . to the point of view of the individual who presents himself. . . Hemay wish them to think highly of him, or to think that he thinks highly of them, or toperceive how in fact he feels toward them, or to obtain no clear-cut impression; he maywish to ensure sufficient harmony so that the interaction can be sustained, or to defraud,get rid of, confuse, mislead, antagonize, or insult them. Regardless of the particularobjective which the individual has in mind and of his motive for having this objective, itwill be in his interests to control the conduct of others, especially their responsivetreatment of him. This control is achieved largely by influencing the definition of thesituation which others come to formulate, and he can influence this definition byexpressing himself in such a way as to give them the kind of impression that will leadthem to act voluntarily in accordance with his own plan. Thus, when an individualappears in the presence of others, there will usually be some reason for him to mobilizehis activity so that it will convey an impression to others which it is in his interests toconvey. Since a girl’s dormitory mates will glean evidence of her popularity from thecalls she receives on the phone, we can suspect that some girls will arrange for calls to bemade, and Willard Waller’s finding can be anticipated:It has been reported by many observers that a girl who is called to the telephone inthe dormitories will often allow herself to be called several times, in order to giveall the other girls ample opportunity to hear her paged.(Pages 3-4)
....
Underlying all social interaction there seems to be a fundamental dialectic. When one individual enters the presence of others, he will want to discover the facts of the situation.Were he to possess this information, he could know, and make allowances for, what will come to happen and he could give the others present as much of their due as is consistent with his enlightened self interest.
Full information of this order is rarely available; in its absence, the individual tends to employ substitutes – cues, tests, hints, expressive gestures, status symbols, etc. as predictive devices. In short, since the reality that the individual is concerned with is unperceivable at the moment,appearances must be relied upon in its stead. And, paradoxically, the more the individual is concerned with the reality that is not available to perception, the more must he concentrate his attention on appearances.” p. 220
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“The whole machinery of self-production is cumbersome, of course, and sometimes breaks down, exposing its separate components: back region control; team collusion; audience tact;and so forth.” p. 223
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Staging and the self
Self was viewed as a performer and a character: performer who is involved in thefabrication of impressions and stageing a performance and the character whose qualities the performance is meant to evoke. (BK: Performance itself is referring to the wider reality of theself)„A correctly staged and performed scene leads the audience to impute a self to a performedcharacter, but this imputation – this self – is a product of a scene that comes off, and is not a cause of it. The self, then, as a performed character, is not an organic thing that has a specificlocation, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature and to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented, and the characteristic issue, the crucial concern, is whether it will be credited or discredited.
In analysing the self, then, we are drawn from its possessor, from the person who will profit or lose most by it, for he and his body merely provide the peg on which something of collaborative manufacture will be hung for a time. And the means for producing and maintaining selves do not reside inside the peg; in fact these means are often bolted down in social establishments. There will be a back region with its tools for shaping the body, and a front region with its fixed props. There will be a team of persons whose activity on stage in conjunction with available props will constitute the scene from which the performed character’s self will emerge, and another team, the audience, whose interpretative activity will be necessary for this emergence. The self is a product of all of these arrangements, and in all of its parts bears the marks of this genesis.” p. 223
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“Scaffolds, after all, are to build other things with, and should be erected with an eye to taking them down.” p. 224
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Misrepresentation
The sign-accepting tendency of the audience results in expressive care, but also in the possibility of the audience to be duped. p. 51 http://www.scribd.com/doc/11541734/Reading-Notes-Erving-Goffman-The-Presentation-of-Self-in-Everyday-Life
Propaganda techniques film (1949)
http://archive.org/download/etree/lma.jpg
Manipulating Reality
http://www.strozzina.org/manipulatingreality/e_catalogo_mv.php From image to reality There appears to be hardly anything that has not been seen in the age of the new media. The items stored in the collective memory range from spectacular images of natural catastrophes to mysterious crime scenes and brief glimpses into the private lives of perfect strangers. Perception of the outside world underwent radical change with the invention of photography and cinema, enabling human beings to witness events and phenomena taking place outside their immediate vicinity – and thus in a certain sense to transcend the boundaries of time and space. The spread of photography also led in 1839 to a paradigm shift in the concept of reality. While paintings and drawings had represented the world on the basis of their authors’ experience, imagination and technical skill, the birth of photography now offered the possibility of a precise, authentic and complete reproduction of reality. Painting was instead confined to a “subjective” transformation of “objective” data of experience in its attempts to capture the real world. The immediate reaction of painters to this epochal change was a drive for art of the utmost realism. The earliest permanent photograph still in existence, a heliograph taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826, shows the courtyard of a country house seen from a window in a village near Chalon. The reproduction of this image, the original of which was discovered in the 1950s, shows us a distorted reality, not least because the use of a high-contrast film produced a grainy effect that recalls a Pointillist painting by Georges Seurat rather than a photograph. In a certain sense, the subject of the image is a metaphor of the then widespread view of photography as a sort of “window onto the world” capable of showing things just as they are. The natural scientist William Henry Fox Talbot described photography as a process whereby light reflected from the object is imprinted on the photosensitive support of the image. His conviction that whatever was visible in a photograph could be found in wholly identical form in the real world1 was one that scientists and theorists were to espouse for a long time. It was only about thirty years ago that the French philosopher Roland Barthes used the words “ça a été”2 (this has been) to pinpoint the noeme or essence of the photograph: the fact that its subject or referent must have existed once in a form identical to the one shown in the image. At the same time, this is wholly unlike the way in which painting and the mimetic arts in general work. With respect to other types of image, the purpose of the photograph, namely to provide a realistic reproduction of the world placed in front of the camera lens, endowed it with a new kind of veracity. Holding a photograph gave the impression of dealing with a duplication of reality. While the painting continued to be regarded as an interpretation of reality, expectations as regards the potential of the photographic image went far beyond this ambition. As Susan Sontag wrote, “such images are indeed able to usurp reality because first of all a photograph is not only an image, an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real”.3 The photograph was thus attributed with an extraordinary degree of objectivity, not least due to the certainty that both the subject and the photographer were present on the spot at the time it was taken. Confidence in the photograph’s ability to represent reality was also supported by the mechanical procedure of its production. The photographer took a back seat with respect to the laws of nature and mechanics, being considered of scarce importance and influence. It was now natural light that “drew” the image rather than the individual, whose role was limited to pressing a button. This new, authentic and objective method of creating images made it possible to show a slice of reality and therefore differed from the other mimetic arts, which presented a subjective and emotive idea of the world. The photograph as a model of reality The widespread view of the photograph as an authentic reproduction of reality led Susan Sontag and others to express fears about the public falling back on the surrogates of photography and cinema instead of seeking authentic experience of the world.4 The view of the photograph as a model is bound up with two of the characteristics attributed to it, namely its ability to represent reality and susceptibility of limitless reproduction. This long-dominant faith in the photographic image is based both on the relationship between image and reality and on the physical immediacy of the link between cause and effect. The French critic André Bazin described the photographic image in 1945, for example, as something produced “par la vertu d’une méchanique impassibile”:5 by means of a purely mechanical and physical process consisting in the chemical and physical traces left by the object on a photosensitive support. According to Susan Sontag, the image is generally recognized as an integral part of the real6 or rather as part of its identity. As she also observes, “photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality”.7 The image would thus tend to replace reality and perception of the real to depend increasingly on its reproduction. Sontag therefore comes to see photography as a tool for the creation of an ersatz world. Cultural critics also take the ever-increasing mass circulation of photographic images as a symptom of the individual’s growing inability to distinguish between reality and appearance. By virtue of its “realistic” appearance, the photograph of an object is therefore elevated to the status of a substitute for the object itself. The fact that the photograph can be reproduced endlessly affords the object represented countless modes of existence. Crucial support for this effect comes from the mass circulation of the technological image and its consequent ubiquity. Representations born out of the influence of photographic images are increasingly present and widespread in the consciousness of the individual and society. Due to its apparent “fidelity to reality”, photography thus contributes to our representation of the world. From photographs to images It should be noted, however, that this presumed authenticity of photography has coexisted from the very outset with the possibility of manipulating its results. A German photographer presented a portrait in two different versions, one of which had been retouched, at the Exposition Universelle of 1855 in Paris, since when the possible ways of intervening in the photographic process so as to alter the end result have multiplied. The role of the photographer and hence the subjective aspect of the process of image production were for a long time overshadowed by the mechanical and therefore objective aspect. The decisions taken by the creator of the image cannot, however, be regarded as unimportant, since the subject, framing and the moment when the shot is actually taken all depend on them. Many of the configurative possibilities within the process of image production are left entirely to the photographer or the automatic camera settings. The person taking the photograph can thus play an active part in determining its effectiveness. In graphic terms, the right choice of moment and viewpoint can turn a bar-room politician into a professional orator addressing a packed house, a wide-angle lens can transform an allotment into the grounds of a stately home and suitable framing can make a ruined site look like an idyllic rural landscape. Given the additional resources made available by digital image processing, the possibilities of manipulation become practically limitless. From reality to fiction As a result of these various ways of operating on the configuration of the image, the supposedly authentic reproduction of reality can be deliberately altered. The photograph cannot therefore be regarded as an objective and hence realistic reproduction of the outside world but simply as an unfathomable complex of different observations and viewpoints on reality. A photograph does not ensure the possibility of observing reality as such but offers us at most a specific way of observing a reality. Nor should we overlook the role of the viewer in this connection, since this is also crucial to the message of a photograph. The French philosopher Roland Barthes outlined the paradox of the various levels of meaning of the photographic image as early as the 1960s, pointing out that every recipient of a message is inevitably subject to cultural influences and always recognizes a further symbolic meaning beneath the analogical content of an image. Moreover, perception always takes place in close relation to the cognitive, social and cultural conditioning of the recipient. As Andy Grundberg so aptly observed, “All we see is seen through the kaleidoscope of all that we have seen before”.8 From viewer to participating subject On observing the works in this exhibition, it is impossible not to wonder about the veracity of the images, which cause visual irritation and force viewers to question their normal ways of seeing. While the photographs cover a vast range of subjects and procedures, they all share the characteristic of being constructed images. The individual subjects have been prepared, set up and staged. They are partly real objects and partly imaginary, thus giving rise to a fictitious sort of “photo-reality”. For all their great variety and focus on specific subjects, the photographs all present the same interface in addressing the complex of vision and cognition or rather, reality and perception. From photographs to manipulated images The precedents for the manipulation and staging of photographs stretch back a long way. The tendency to organize reality into fictitious constructs and hence to call into question the objectivity of the photographic image first manifested itself in the nineteenth-century allegorical images of figures like Oscar Gustave Rejlander. The works of the Dadaists and Surrealists can also be numbered among the precursors of the “constructed image” in the twentieth century. Awareness of the fact that the photograph is not an authentic record and that this one-dimensional interpretation fails to do justice to photography and its significance finally emerged with Conceptual photography in the 1960s and 1970s. The artists featured in this exhibition draw upon this approach and bring new dimensions into their works with the aim of exposing human perception and its mechanisms. How artists manipulate the observer A description of the viewer’s response to the works will help to illustrate these deep levels of meaning. It will thus become clear that the artists definitively undermine the widely held idea of the authenticity of the photographic image with their photographs and films, and do so at the very moment when they trick the viewer’s eye or prompt an erroneous interpretation. The works differ considerably as regards whether and how soon the viewer can discover their internal manipulation. While the content appears unquestionably clear from the very outset in some cases, others are only seen to represent a fictitious and artificially constructed reality on careful observation. The forms of manipulation range from digital processing (Andreas Gursky) and special focusing techniques (Olivio Barbieri) to the use of artificial models that appear completely identical to interiors (Thomas Demand) or landscapes (Sonja Braas). It is the artists themselves in most cases who lead the way to exposure of the true content of the image, since their objective is not to preserve the mimetic illusion of realistic representation intact. Doubts arise first as to the reality represented and then about the photographic image. The irritation aroused by manipulation of the image is an effect that the artists deliberately pursue. The viewer’s initial doubt, focused on the subject of the photograph, then shifts to the nature of photography itself, thus inevitably undermining the conventional assumption that there is an analogical relationship between real object and photographic image. On becoming aware of the manipulation practiced by the artist, viewers also discover a further level of meaning and really begin to get to grips with the image. Through the photographic process, objects are translated in representations that offer the beholder no access to reality, regardless of how this is understood. From perception to reality The message common to the photographs is that every image (of the world), be it “natural” or “artificial”, is a construction. This concept of construction and reconstruction also appears in some contemporary theories that examine the process whereby reality arises out of perception in the human consciousness. According to radical Constructivists, the brain is incapable of reproducing or representing reality as such. Due to the recognizedly selective way in which our perceptual apparatus works, the brain of the individual viewer necessarily “constructs” its image of the world. Perception is grounded on the ability to recognize, which is in turn made possible by past experience. As all individuals differ in terms of experience and knowledge, so do their perceptions of reality. On this view, reality is a specific construction developed by the individual out of various components. While differing greatly in subject matter, the works presented here reflect this conception. The artists construct, manipulate, stage or craft the image-object and thus create a photo-(un)reality of their own. The works exhibited provide a basis to address the question of the construction of reality, which hinges in turn on addressing the complex of vision and cognition or rather, reality and perception. The artists use experiences of reality based exclusively on images to show that the idea of these representations providing access to the world is a complete illusion. At the same time, it becomes evident not only that photographic images transmit a limited or even bastardized view of the world but also that the perceptual process of individuals is subjected to substantially different conditions. Perception moves within set boundaries. The world is a construction, both in a photograph and in the human consciousness. So, with Grundberg, we confirm that what we see now is seen through the kaleidoscope of all that we have already seen before. 1 See William H. Fox Talbot, The Pencil of Nature (1844–46) (New York, 1989). 2 Roland Barthes, La chambre claire (Paris, 1980). 3 Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York, 1977). 4 Ibid. 5 André Bazin, “Ontologie de l’image photographique” (1945), in Qu’est-ce que le cinema? (Paris, 1958). 6 It should be noted in this connection that Sontag at times uses the terms “real” and “true/veritable” as equivalents. 7 Sontag 1977. 8 Andy Grundberg, The Crisis of the Real: Writings on Photography since 1974 (New York, 1999), p. 16. 9 See Siegfried J. Schmidt, “Der Radikalen Konstruktivismus: Ein neues Paradigma im interdisziplinären Diskurs”, in Diskurs des Radikalen Konstruktivismus (Frankfurt, 1987), p. 15.
Q&A with Jaron Lanier (You Are Not a Gadget)
http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-Gadget-Manifesto/dp/0307269647%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAIUDIBB5W2YOHL3CQ%26tag%3Dedgeorg-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0307269647
For the most part, Web 2.0--Internet technologies that encourage interactivity, customization, and participation--is hailed as an emerging Golden Age of information sharing and collaborative achievement, the strength of democratized wisdom. Jaron Lanier isn't buying it. In You Are Not a Gadget, the longtime tech guru/visionary/dreadlocked genius (and progenitor of virtual reality) argues the opposite: that unfettered--and anonymous--ability to comment results in cynical mob behavior, the shouting-down of reasoned argument, and the devaluation of individual accomplishment. Lanier traces the roots of today's Web 2.0 philosophies and architectures (e.g. he posits that Web anonymity is the result of '60s paranoia), persuasively documents their shortcomings, and provides alternate paths to "locked-in" paradigms. Though its strongly-stated opinions run against the bias of popular assumptions, You Are Not a Gadget is a manifesto, not a screed; Lanier seeks a useful, respectful dialogue about how we can shape technology to fit culture's needs, rather than the way technology currently shapes us.
Question: You argue the web isn’t living up to its initial promise. How has the internet transformed our lives for the worse?
Jaron Lanier: The problem is not inherent in the Internet or the Web. Deterioration only began around the turn of the century with the rise of so-called "Web 2.0" designs. These designs valued the information content of the web over individuals. It became fashionable to aggregate the expressions of people into dehumanized data. There are so many things wrong with this that it takes a whole book to summarize them. Here’s just one problem: It screws the middle class. Only the aggregator (like Google, for instance) gets rich, while the actual producers of content get poor. This is why newspapers are dying. It might sound like it is only a problem for creative people, like musicians or writers, but eventually it will be a problem for everyone. When robots can repair roads someday, will people have jobs programming those robots, or will the human programmers be so aggregated that they essentially work for free, like today’s recording musicians? Web 2.0 is a formula to kill the middle class and undo centuries of social progress.
Question: You say that we’ve devalued intellectual achievement. How?
Jaron Lanier: On one level, the Internet has become anti-intellectual because Web 2.0 collectivism has killed the individual voice. It is increasingly disheartening to write about any topic in depth these days, because people will only read what the first link from a search engine directs them to, and that will typically be the collective expression of the Wikipedia. Or, if the issue is contentious, people will congregate into partisan online bubbles in which their views are reinforced. I don’t think a collective voice can be effective for many topics, such as history--and neither can a partisan mob. Collectives have a power to distort history in a way that damages minority viewpoints and calcifies the art of interpretation. Only the quirkiness of considered individual expression can cut through the nonsense of mob--and that is the reason intellectual activity is important.
On another level, when someone does try to be expressive in a collective, Web 2.0 context, she must prioritize standing out from the crowd. To do anything else is to be invisible. Therefore, people become artificially caustic, flattering, or otherwise manipulative.
Web 2.0 adherents might respond to these objections by claiming that I have confused individual expression with intellectual achievement. This is where we find our greatest point of disagreement. I am amazed by the power of the collective to enthrall people to the point of blindness. Collectivists adore a computer operating system called LINUX, for instance, but it is really only one example of a descendant of a 1970s technology called UNIX. If it weren’t produced by a collective, there would be nothing remarkable about it at all.
Meanwhile, the truly remarkable designs that couldn’t have existed 30 years ago, like the iPhone, all come out of "closed" shops where individuals create something and polish it before it is released to the public. Collectivists confuse ideology with achievement.
Question: Why has the idea that "the content wants to be free" (and the unrelenting embrace of the concept) been such a setback? What dangers do you see this leading to?
Jaron Lanier: The original turn of phrase was "Information wants to be free." And the problem with that is that it anthropomorphizes information. Information doesn’t deserve to be free. It is an abstract tool; a useful fantasy, a nothing. It is nonexistent until and unless a person experiences it in a useful way. What we have done in the last decade is give information more rights than are given to people. If you express yourself on the internet, what you say will be copied, mashed up, anonymized, analyzed, and turned into bricks in someone else’s fortress to support an advertising scheme. However, the information, the abstraction, that represents you is protected within that fortress and is absolutely sacrosanct, the new holy of holies. You never see it and are not allowed to touch it. This is exactly the wrong set of values.
The idea that information is alive in its own right is a metaphysical claim made by people who hope to become immortal by being uploaded into a computer someday. It is part of what should be understood as a new religion. That might sound like an extreme claim, but go visit any computer science lab and you’ll find books about "the Singularity," which is the supposed future event when the blessed uploading is to take place. A weird cult in the world of technology has done damage to culture at large.
Question: In You Are Not a Gadget, you argue that idea that the collective is smarter than the individual is wrong. Why is this?
Jaron Lanier: There are some cases where a group of people can do a better job of solving certain kinds of problems than individuals. One example is setting a price in a marketplace. Another example is an election process to choose a politician. All such examples involve what can be called optimization, where the concerns of many individuals are reconciled. There are other cases that involve creativity and imagination. A crowd process generally fails in these cases. The phrase "Design by Committee" is treated as derogatory for good reason. That is why a collective of programmers can copy UNIX but cannot invent the iPhone.
In the book, I go into considerably more detail about the differences between the two types of problem solving. Creativity requires periodic, temporary "encapsulation" as opposed to the kind of constant global openness suggested by the slogan "information wants to be free." Biological cells have walls, academics employ temporary secrecy before they publish, and real authors with real voices might want to polish a text before releasing it. In all these cases, encapsulation is what allows for the possibility of testing and feedback that enables a quest for excellence. To be constantly diffused in a global mush is to embrace mundanity.
FilmMaker Mag on Holy Motors
http://filmmakermagazine.com/54957-leos-carax-holy-motors/
"The social web can’t exist until you are your real self online,” said Sheryl Sandberg on Charlie Rose last year. “I have to be ‘me’, and you have to be ‘Charlie Rose,’” the Facebook COO told the talk show host.
“It’s me” — that single line appearing late in Leos Carax’s Holy Motors unexpectedly devastated me at the film’s Cannes premiere, and perhaps its memory is what’s causing me to recall Sandberg’s statement, which is certainly in line with similar comments by her boss, Mark Zuckerberg. In an age in which online platforms offer the possibility for anyone to craft for themselves a variety of personas, Zuckerberg paradoxically argues that we will move towards a single “true self,” one that finds its fullest representation through social media sharing.
Whether or not you agree with Zuckerberg, it’s hard to disagree that one of the great pleasures of cinema as a popular entertainment — its ability to transport the viewer into the skin of someone else — is now just as readily found for new audiences through gaming and online interaction. Whereas the style, attitudes and often ideologies of cinematic heros — and sometimes villains — would rub off on viewers, shaping their thoughts, behaviors, and dreams, now people can just as easily create a succession of alternate personas for themselves, sharing each one only to the small audience it’s specifically created for. Zuckerberg may believe that over time these personas will all congeal into that “true self,” but he has to — his business depends on it. However, the ability to shapeshift, “present,” and match online identities to one’s specific roles in life may be a power that, now unlocked, is simply too powerful to suppress.
Holy Motors — Carax’s fifth feature, and his first since 1999’s Pola X — isn’t directly about what I’ve just written above, but it is one of the film’s great strengths that its rambunctious, episodic narrative encapsulates these ideas as well as a whole host of others. The film begins with Carax himself awakening in a hotel room. He opens a door and wall and enters… a theater, where an audience awaits to be entertained. Throughout the film, references to cinema — early motion studies by Etienne Jules-Mary and Edward Muybridge; direct references to King Vidor and Georges Franju; a concluding moment straight out of Pixar — abound. We meet our protagonist, “Mister Oscar” (the remarkable Denis Lavant), who journeys across Paris in a white stretch limo, donning disguise after disguise to become a beggar, a beast, a hitman, a concerned father, an ex-lover. The stories that result hopscotch through various genres, forming a history of not just 20th-century cinematic storytelling but the director’s own personal relationship to it.
.....Filmmaker: The way the film thinks about identity is something that seems very of the moment. In today’s online world, people are very conscious of how they’re presenting different versions of themselves to different people. There’s a natural analogy to the character Denis plays in the film to the role of the director, or the storyteller. But then, someone else could see the film and compare the different changes Denis goes through to the roles they play in their own lives.
Religulous (2008) - Quote about how to start a religion
Bill Maher: [in a deleted scene on the DVD] No, it is not a surprise that a person would want to be a prophet. What's ridiculous is that other people let him. It's just too easy to start a religion. All you have to do is: A. think up some really powerful stupid shit. Some stuff that is so idiotic and weird that a person who believes it will be proving that ultimate virtue of faith; B. throw in some entitlements like life after death, washing away sins and free dental or whatever; and, C. wait. Just wait. Just say your bullshit and stick to it. Believe me, if you do that, if you just say it, they will come.