Newmedia on Sat, 26 May 2012 00:23:40 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re: <nettime> C(APITAL|OMMUN)ISM (i|ha)s (ARRIV|FINISH)ED |
Jon: Thanks for trying to wrestle with all this. While the analysis being discussed has been available for 50+ years, it has only rarely been considered as applicable to current events. The developments of the past 10+ years and, in particular, the current economic "crisis" compels us to at least try to apply this approach to see if it yields fruitful understanding of our predicament. The points that I have been making could be summarized as -- 1) The nature of the *economy* is shaped by the behaviors and attitudes of the people who live in that economy. We all make the world what it is. 2) These behaviors and attitudes are, in turn, "formed" by technological environment in which these people live. The world makes all of us what we are. 3) We are now in the midst of a *radical* shift in this technological environment -- from a mass-media (i.e. broadcast/one-way) "analog" economy to a *digital* (i.e. talk-back/two-way) economy. 4) Accordingly, we should expect to see changes in behavior and attitudes -- not completely or overnight but widely evident -- that are reflected in changes in the corresponding economy. 5) Economic analysis that isn't robust enough to account for these changes will likely fail to produce much insight and is more likely to reinforce earlier "biases" and add to our confusion. What has long been called "consumerism" (and is sometimes called "late-stage capitalism" or "software communism") is a description of the *effects* of mass-media as a technological environment. This phenomenon, where advertising is used to induce a "commidification of desires" in the population, has been particularly acute since the advent of television in the 1950s. The term "eyeballs" is often used to describe the "target" in this form of economy. People are said to be "programmed" to behave in particular ways in this economic regime. What has been called "new media" (i.e. a term that I "coined" circa 1989) operates in a radically different fashion from mass-media. It encourages "interactivity" and could be said to be composed of "eyeballs that talk back." Many have noticed these functional/technological differences but elaborating the expected differences in behaviors and attitudes and the anticipated impact on the economy has not yet been widely discussed. An example of the literature about these changed behaviors and attitudes is the 1999 "Cluetrain Manifesto." Much as aspects of older technological environments persisted as television became dominant, including books, radio, movies, newspapers etc -- albeit substantially altered to "participate" in the television era -- all of these previous behaviors and attitudes also linger, sometimes nostalgically and with strong commitments, making any contemporary economy decidedly "mixed." Accordingly, today the situation is a "compound" of various technological environments. In particular, while many people have a sense that the Internet "changed everything," they are still hard-pressed to identify or verbalize what has changed in their own behaviors and attitudes. Clearly differences in personal circumstances and cultural/national milieus further complicate the matter. Nonetheless, analysis of the (political-)economy that ignore these changes in behaviors and attitudes will likely miss much of what is going on. While applying frameworks that were proposed 100 (say Weber) or 200 (say Marx) or 300 (say Mandeville) years ago can be interesting and even gratifying, unless they were explicit about the economic effects of technological environments, they will themselves need to be examined in the light of what we have subsequently learned. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org