The Foucault post yesterday seemed to go down well, so I thought I’d chance my arm and respond to a couple of criticisms in a new post rather than the comment thread. Sorry, purists.
My erstwhile-friend Roger from Content & Motion launched the first counter-offensive. ;-) His main point is about the decentralisation of power in the online world. There’s no central control tower any more in the online Panopticon.
O RLY? UK Government agencies want/have your email, your movements and your picture already. We have entered an age when central government in the UK has access to almost everything you do. So no, power and discipline is not decentralised. It is more centralised than at any point in history.
OK: that’s a little bit of a feint from me, I know. I do know what he means. He means we choose — a lot of the time — about what authorities and news sources we read. We each can vote for the stories/pictures/video etc. that bubble up on twitter, digg and delicious. If I want to get my news from the Doom-monger Daily and nowhere else, then I can.
But then… but then all of those choices are recorded; they are creating more information about me — they are fleshing out the picture of who I am and what I do and what I like. And what marketing tactics might work with me. And how much of a threat I might be, were I remotely threatening. Remember, that all knowledge, experience and information is also power given away. I went along to the always-splendid MeasurementCamp meeting this morning – and as I imagined, this is grist to the mill for the social networks (Facebook, Bebo are delighted to share demographic information). It’s the only part of their business model that makes sense:
What’s that? You want an ageing commie sympathiser who smells? Yeah, we’ve got a coupla hundred of them – check out this delaney guy – hahaha!
Yep: there’s no longer a central control tower. There are hundreds and thousands of them. You’re covered by twenty cameras every time you move online. They each exert their portion of control and they do, I believe, have a central ideology – what’s become to be called the groupthink and circle-jerk of the Internet. More on that below.
[As an aside, I remember a guy from Microsoft asking me a couple of years ago whether selling ads against user-volunteered information in their profile was ethical. He was genuinely concerned. I said go-for-it – there has to be a value exchange for there to be a business.]
Catherine (location unknown, sadly) makes a great point (she made three great points, actually, but I am only doing one tonight):
You may have no racists on your Twitter feed, but how is this different from the people you choose to associate with in real life? This isn’t socialmediaworld, this is the world most people create for themselves in real life. You may not like this process (and there is an argument to be made against it), but it’s certainly not down to social media.
You know what, she’s right. Social media has extended my political world to a far greater extent than it has constrained it.
The second-half of the post regarding transgression is severely unfinished – it was nearly 2am. I’d love to see some analysis on internet Groupthink. I know I see it on a daily basis. But the extent to which minority views and change are thus made impossible? That would be the theoretical outcome of Foucault and Social Media and that’s why it’s there, but I don’t have any data whatsoever. mea culpa.
[NB: I’ll certainly back the original post up, insofar as I able, but be aware that I wrote it as an exercise in response to an invitation. It’s not a manifesto. It’s mucking around with ideas to create something potentially useful and thought-provoking. That’s not a cop-out; it’s the way it is].
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Hey Ian. I still love you in a non-erstwhile fashion.
My main point was that I hate Foucault. This coloured the rest of it.
My other point was that we don’t (yet) live in a Stalin-esque regime. When all this SocMed info is aggregated into an all-encompassing evil power it’s really scary. But I don’t see that happening. Microsoft still can’t figure out a user interface, and our Govt spends time bungling expense claims.
That said, like you say, folks need to be more aware of what they’re giving up when they’re opting in and participating with all this stuff.
And this is the rub. It’s a question of Ethics (capital E) rather than post-woteva’ism. Social Media is fab because it enables us to share, discuss, publish and wotnot (and create new opportunities for businesses, individuals, etc, etc).
With this comes a downside: visibility and privacy issues. We have a choice to participate or not. Agencies (govt types — not Online PR types, because they are good) and companies have a choice to abuse this or not. But this choice goes with the turf.
…which is why Catherine’s point is very relevant. It’s not a Social Media issue, it’s a social issue. And it’s everything that we’ve ever grappled with, only on a more perma-link basis.
Anyways — fab post. Thanks for getting all our grey matter going…
Thank you for the posts. It’s nice to see Foucault having his day. I’m particularly interesting in your suggestion that blog posts as discourse is a significant line of enquiry. Agree strongly, tick.
In terms of his work on power in D&P, my understanding is that Mr F was interested in the ways that power operates through different forms (what he called a regime) at different periods of time in history, and this leads me to think about social media as a disciplining regime. Mr F also argued that regimes are not always oppressive, which is why on 1st inspection , given what is being claimed about digital marketing , participation and brands online, power being put into the hands of the consumer etc. he seems so relevant. But I think Mr F’s work offers more, because he looked at the idea of institutional procedures. If we think of digital marketing as the institution, brand strategy as a complex set of practices, and analysize the workings of the power relations between consumer and producer – I believe there is, what he’d call, ‘a regime of truth’ that consumers have more agency than they really do once you get into the economics of value.
Ps Roger why don’t you like Foucault? He is the biz!