Differences & Repetitions

Back in June I blogged about “Algorithmic Culture,” or the sorting, classifying, and hierarchizing of people, places, objects, and ideas using computational processes. (Think Google search, Amazon’s product recommendations, who gets featured in your Facebook news feed, etc.) Well, for the past several months I’ve been developing an essay on the theme, and it’s finally done. I’ll be debuting it at Vanderbilt University’s “American Cultures in the Digital Age” conference on Friday, March 18th, which I’m keynoting along with Kelly Joyce (College of William & Mary), Cara Finnegan (University of Illinois), and Eszter Hargittai (Northwestern University). Needless to say, I’m thrilled to be joining such distinguished company at what promises to be, well, an event.

The piece I posted originally on algorithmic culture generated a surprising — and exciting — amount of response. In fact, nine months later, it’s still receiving pingbacks, I’m pretty sure as a result of its having found its way onto one or more college syllabuses. So between that and the good results I’m seeing in the essay, I’m seriously considering developing the material on algorithmic culture into my next book. Originally after Late Age I’d planned on focusing on contemporary religious publishing, but increasingly I feel as if that will have to wait.

Drop by the conference if you’re in or around the Nashville area on Friday, March 18th. I’m kicking things off starting at 9:30 a.m. And for those of you who can’t make it there, here’s the title slide from the PowerPoint presentation, along with a little taste of the talk’s conclusion:

This latter definition—culture as authoritative principle—is, I believe, the definition that’s chiefly operative in and around algorithmic culture. Today, however, it isn’t culture per se that is a “principle of authority” but increasingly the algorithms to which are delegated the task of driving out entropy, or in Matthew Arnold’s language, “anarchy.” You might even say that culture is fast becoming—in domains ranging from retail to rental, search to social networking, and well beyond—the positive remainder of specific information processing tasks, especially as they relate to the informatics of crowds. And in this sense algorithms have significantly taken on what, at least since Arnold, has been one of culture’s chief responsibilities, namely, the task of “reassembling the social,” as Bruno Latour puts it—here, though, by discovering statistical correlations that would appear to unite an otherwise disparate and dispersed crowd of people.

I expect to post a complete draft of the piece on “Algorithmic Culture” to my project site once I’ve tightened it up a bit. Hopefully it will generate even more comments, questions, and provocations than the blog post that inspired the work initially.

In the meantime, I’d welcome any feedback you may have about the short excerpt appearing above, or on the talk if you’re going to be in Nashville this week.

My department at Indiana University, Communication and Culture, is looking for a top-notch person to fill an opening in digital/social media, at the level of assistant professor.  Check out the job announcement, below, and please circulate it widely.

I’m not a member of the search committee, by the way, so if you have questions it’s best to contact the committee chair–my colleague, Professor Barbara Klinger.

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Indiana University

Department of Communication and Culture

Digital and Social Media

The Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Digital and Social Media to begin Fall 2011.

We seek a humanities-trained Ph.D. whose primary area of research expertise and training is in digital media studies focused specifically on the social dimensions and potentials of digital media. This applicant will be expected to interact productively with colleagues in one or more of the department’s three areas: Rhetoric and Public Culture; Film and Media Studies; and Performance and Ethnographic Studies. The applicant must have a well-developed research program and teaching experience in digital and social media. She or he will be responsible for developing an introductory lecture course and advanced undergraduate courses, as well as for actively shaping and teaching graduate offerings in this field of study.

We particularly encourage applicants whose research involves specialization in areas such as:

• Social networking
• New technologies of political advocacy
• Ethnographies of new media
• Convergence and participatory cultures
• Digital video
• Games and gaming

Candidates are expected to have a strong research agenda and a commitment to excellence in teaching. Preference will be given to those who have their Ph.D. in hand by the date of appointment. Applicants should send a letter of application, curriculum vitae, writing sample, and three letters of recommendation to: Professor Barbara Klinger, Chair, Digital/Social Media Search, Department of Communication and Culture, 800 E. 3^rd Street, Indiana University, Bloomington IN 47405. Review of applications will begin December 1, 2010 and continue until the position is filled.

Indiana University is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. The university actively encourages applications and nominations of women, minorities, applicants with disabilities, and members of other underrepresented groups.

Just a quick note to let y’all know that I’ll be a guest on Social Media Hour on Tuesday, June 1, 2010 at 1:00 pm EDT. The topic is privacy, transparency, and social networking sites. You can listen live by clicking here; the archived recording will be available here. Here’s a complete description of the program from the SMH website:

SOCIAL MEDIA HOUR #59: PRIVACY, TRANSPARENCY, & ONE MORE LESBIAN

This week the show will explore the topic of privacy and transparency specifically looking at how social networks and social technologies/platforms are changing the standards of privacy … or are they? With the amount of transparency in today’s world, are people reevaluating what they share? Is that a good thing? Ted Striphas from Indiana University joins the program to discuss. Also on this week’s show, Shirin Papillon, the Founder & CEO of OneMoreLesbian – a media site that aggregates the world’s lesbian film, television and online video content in one place. What does this have to do with the other topic? Simple. An array of sites and networks have arisen catering to myriad special interest groups. You can find site and networks for just about anything … that’s not new. But think about it, you choose to visit a site and participate in a social network … that behavior is tracked – whether by Google or brands that may appear there. If you choose to post links or comment on posts, others see your participation – so suddenly your personal affinity for a particular group is now public, which means in the case of LGBT oriented content, you are now more out than you were before. We’ll talk about OML as a business and about its growth and what it means when it comes to helping further expose a wider audience to the gay community.

Should be a blast! Please listen if you can.

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UPDATE — Here’s an embed from which you can stream the entire episode:

I missed most of the SyFy (née Sci Fi) series Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009), though I managed to catch enough to know that I wanted to watch the new prequel, Caprica, from the beginning. I haven’t been disappointed. With the pilot and two episodes now under my belt, it’s safe to say that I’m hooked.

Caprica provides an origin story for the Cylons, a cyborg race created by humans who later attempt to annihilate their masters. That may sound pretty de rigueur as far as the sci-fi genre goes, but here’s the twist: we learn that each Cylon’s “being” — his, her, or its unique identity or essence — is actually the aggregation of a human individual’s medical records, purchasing patterns, educational transcripts, voting records, electronic communications, and other personal information archived online. The Cylons are, in other words, the walking, talking, informational avatars of the human race.

It was with all that in mind that I happened upon the clip embedded below, which is from the February 2, 2010 episode of The Colbert Report. The title, “Cognoscor Ergo Sum,” translates from the Latin as, “I am known, therefore I am.” How apt. In the segment Colbert spotlights Blippy.com, IJustMadeLove.com, and other websites that allow people to reveal and record the intimate details of their daily lives. Blippy lets you broadcast what you’ve just purchased using your credit card, and where. IJustMadeLove allows you shout from the electronic rooftops when, where, and how you’ve just done the nasty. (Yes, I wish I were making that one up.)

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The Word – Cognoscor Ergo Sum

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

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There’s been all sorts of talk for years now about the vulnerability of information online, and it’s no surprise given the proliferation of networked databases that identity theft has emerged as one of the foremost crimes of our time. What’s even more striking to me, however, is how Caprica and the Colbert clip together seem to shift the meaning of — and even up the ante on — identity theft.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that we humans are poised to give rise a line of super-machines intent on wiping us out. What I am suggesting, though, is that we can only begin to imagine how and for what purpose the digital data trails that we leave behind today will be used in the future. I like to think about it this way: when I started college, how could I have anticipated a rash of photos and videos surfacing close to 20 years later on Facebook? Heck — there was barely an internet back then, let alone affordable scanners or even the idea of social networking.

Leave it to popular culture, then, to register one of the critical questions of this new decade: how does a society plan for an information future that may well be unfathomable, technologically speaking?

Fred Vogelstein over at Wired has been turning out some great material about Facebook over the last couple of weeks. His first piece, “Great Wall of Facebook,” and his follow-up interview with company CEO Mark Zuckerberg are compelling in what they portend for the company’s future.

The gist of the matter is this: Facebook began as a social networking site, and indeed it very much remains that. However, it’s also in the process of re-imagining itself as a new type of search engine, one that prioritizes human social connections over abstract computer algorithms. And it’s a move expressly designed to pit Facebook against its archrival, search engine giant Google:

Today, the Google-Facebook rivalry isn’t just going strong, it has evolved into a full-blown battle over the future of the Internet—its structure, design, and utility. For the last decade or so, the Web has been defined by Google’s algorithms—rigorous and efficient equations that parse practically every byte of online activity to build a dispassionate atlas of the online world. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a more personalized, humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline. In Zuckerberg’s vision, users will query this “social graph” to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire—rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where Google is now.

Two things are intriguing to me about Facebook’s foray into search. First, I’m fascinated by Zuckerberg’s rhetoric. He describes Google as a tool of the “surveillance society” — as if Facebook had no interest whatsoever in paying attention to what its users are doing. He also describes Google’s approach to search as “top-down,” suggesting not-so-implicitly that Facebook’s approach is more bottom-up. Why is it that every technology company is the authentic champion of grassroots democracy until the next new hotshot comes along? It’s getting old…really, really old. Didn’t Apple beat that one to death with Microsoft?

More compelling to me is Vogelstein’s discussion of Facebook and Google’s respective philosophies of search. Prior to reading his article and interview, it hadn’t dawned on me that there could be such radically different search architectures — much less that there would be a struggle over them. And that make these times we’re currently living in all the more interesting.

There’s a lovely moment near the beginning of Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things, in which the late philosopher shows how living creatures used to be classified prior to the advent of the modern kingdom-phylum-class-order-family-genus-species system. There was a radically different order of things, as it were, and reshuffling that order involved a tremendous redistribution of power throughout society.

Perhaps it’s overblown to pitch the impending Facebook-Google showdown in such world-historical terms. All the same, the struggle over how best to bring order to knowledge and information isn’t just about one company’s desire to triumph over another — it’s about how, where, and among whom power will be dispersed in society.

…Lawrence Lessig, responding to Kevin Kelly, explaining why “free culture” is liberal-capitalist, and not socialistic:

http://www.lessig.org/blog/

The comments are especially interesting and fruitfully extend the debate. For my part, I’m not convinced that socialism is “coercive” as much as it is “compulsive,” but really that’s a side matter….

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P.S. The debate continues. Here’s the link to the latest update from Lessig on free culture, liberalism, and socialism.

You may have noticed that D&R looks a little, well, different than it used to. Yesterday, I made a few changes that I hope will result in a more readerly site.

The first thing I did was get rid of the “DIGG” tags that used to float to the upper right of each blog post. I liked them, but unfortunately, they caused D&R to load much too slowly for my tastes. You can still DIGG my posts, though; in fact, you can do a lot more now. I added a new feature to the site, which you can find just below each blog entry. Simply roll over the little gray box, and you can share any post instantly on Del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, Furl, Google, MySpace, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Twitter, Yahoo, and many other popular social networking/bookmarking sites. Please, try it out!

Hopefully these changes not only will make D&R move a little faster, but also will help the site to become more interactive. I do it all for you, dear readers, always. ; )

It was bound to happen sooner or later, I suppose.

By “it,” I mean signing up for Facebook. I’d held out for quite some time, my resolve bolstered by an informal straw poll I conducted this past January, in which my friends (not the Facebook variety) and interlocutors on D&R told me that I wasn’t missing much by avoiding the popular social networking site.

LIARS!!!!!!!!!! Apparently just about everyone I know, or have ever known, was already on Facebook, which makes me about the last person on earth to join. I suppose it’s worth narrating how I ended up there.

To put it as straightforwardly as possible, Twitter is the gateway drug for Facebook. Over the last year or so I’d incorporated various RSS news feeds onto my academic website, Bookworm, since I thought it might be nice to have some elements that updated constantly. I was never really satisfied with them, though, and so about a month or two ago, I made the fateful decision to join Twitter and place a badge on the site. I figured it might be a nice way to add real-time information about my research projects, conference presentations, publications, and so forth. And then something unexpected happened. People started following my Twitter feed, and eventually, I, theirs. It was riveting. One of my followers even proposed a picnic “Tweetup” to all his followers. Suddenly, I realized that virtual connections might indeed translate into “real world” ones.

I also blame Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point. I just started reading it in earnest the other night and became enthralled with his portrait of “connectors.” These are people who know people–lots of people. Connectors are able to move in and across many different social circles, because they tend to maintain what Gladwell calls “weak ties.” For them, connection is far more important than depth in a relationship, which allows them to stay in touch with a sprawling array of people. That sounded pretty Facebook to me.

So after much gnashing of teeth, I bit the bullet last night and signed up for Facebook. At 7:30 p.m., I registered. At 9:30 p.m., I had 17 friends. This morning, I have 28 and counting. I’m still not sure what to make of it all, honestly, but I’m intrigued to see how things develop. It’s been nice reconnecting with old friends, though I fear for Facebook becoming a major time-suck. This was confirmed not only by the two hours I spent online last night, but also by some of the comments my friends had left on my Facebook wall. They said things to the effect of, “welcome to the black hole” and “sucker!”

I’ll admit, I’m pretty awkward on Facebook right now. I can barely tell my profile page from my home page, and I have no idea what a zombie war is or why you’d want to fight one. I’m anxiously anticipating my colleague Ilana Gershon’s book, therefore, which will provide a road map (among other things) to interpersonal dynamics on Facebook. For now, though, I’m really just fumbling through. Please bear with me.

I’m undecided on the issue, personally, which is why I’m asking all of you to weigh in. On the one hand, it’s enough for me simply to maintain this blog, let alone to contribute to Sivacracy (oh–and earn a living). On the other hand, a recent peek at a friend’s Facebook page showed me that, well, essentially everyone I know in the universe belongs. No one’s directly pressured me to join, yet I feel compelled to be a part of something so many people seem to be engaging in. (Yes, I succumb fairly easily to peer pressure.)

In other news, I’ve made a few minor changes to add further interactivity to D&R. Each post now contains a footer with email, Digg, and subscription links. I’ve also changed my site syndication, which is now handled through FeedBurner.

Happy 2008, everyone, and let me know what you think about Facebook.

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P.S. For more on this thread, see my post from May 2008, “Why Did I Join Facebook?“