Very interesting thoughts from my friend Karin Hodgin Jones: There are some interesting bits in here about a utopian technological determinism associated with thinking that the internet will lead to democracy, political participation and revolutionary organizing (as opposed to crowd-sourcing oppression and regressive behaviors). My experience of privately generating public content on the internet is that it is usually met with an authoritarian coercive force that attempts to do a few things: 1. correct me where Im wrong (or perceived to be wrong) 2. deny my experience as valid 3. support my most simplistic interests and social achievements (I got in to____! yay! I was born on this day ____ years ago, yay!) 4. equally shame and support me for my optimism and resilience (snark vs. likes) 5. permit encounters with moral (and especially religious) attitudes that would not be necessary parts of successful relationships that I might have with people in another environment where sharing of prayer or beliefs would not come up. 6. shrink the sphere of influence through filtering that leaves me without the ability to further expand the sphere of influence within my current platforms (FB most notably) as new people arriving on my list push the messages of older contacts to the background. None of these forces are likely to inspire my sense of democracy or draw me into a public action or protest. They are designed to create complexity and conflict in my acquaintanceships, not my society.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Dec 2014 15:21:46 +0000
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