Social Media

I wonder if it would be helpful to create classes for new methods of filter reconstruction? Shirky says that information glut is caused by obsolete filters that have failed. The book publishing industry was a content filter. Internet publishing destroyed that filter. This could be classified as a “Resurrection” filter. It’s about death and rebirth.

What are some other classes that we could create to stimulate the process of identifying obsolete filters? Are there micro-melodramas that we could assign to the process of filter identification/creation?

What made me think of this was an article I was reading about the pneumatic post of Paris.

http://www.capsu.org/library/documents/0003.html

 In 1853, to speed up communication to the stock exchange, a pneumatic postal system was installed under the city to send messages to the financial market directly. The telegraph existed at that time, but messages had to be routed through a field office and then delivered to the recipient, and this slowed down the process.

The pneumatic system used air pressure and tubes to deliver little notes, much like bank drive-throughs use to carry deposit slips and cash back and forth between the driver and teller. The tubes were routed through the existing sewer system to speed construction and keep costs down.

This could be interpreted as a “reappropriation” or “parasite” class of data transfer infrastructure. Instead of heading down one “resurrection” branch looking for dead filters to resurrect in different contexts as a way of reducing information overload, we could create new categories, based on micro-dramas, that spawn multiple branches.

 Here are a few ideas for categories and their constituent micro-melodramas:

Resurrection:                         Life – Death – Rebirth

Parasite / Reappropriation:  Serve – Attach – Codepend

Cyborg:                                  Biological Entity – mech./tech. graft – hybrid functionality

 Once the classes are established, they would have to be correlated with actual filters and their constituent elements. This is just a brainstorming method that might help us determine what those filters might be because it begins with a description of an actual process. Once that process is sought for in the context of an information filter, the doors of perception might open for us.

The classes I’ve started to think of tend to have mythological themes. I think that this is valuable because it leverages the power of creativity and uses symbolism to provide opportunities for alternate interpretations that resonate at a deep emotional level.

If this leads to a technological form of magical thinking, all the better.

The emergence of the concept of ‘Filter Failure’ is the result of Web 2.0 concepts. In an on-line social media class, someone tweets their dismay with the new tools they are using. Another person tweets condolences and suggests limiting time in the new environment to prevent cognitive overload. Another person commiserates with the first person and wonders if our brains are geared for such environments. Are we geared for the sensory overload? Another person suggests that it is Filter Failure that’s the problem. Another agrees.

All of these interactions happen within a short time, within a non-physical space between people who don’t know each other except through a temporary social commons. Though the term popped into existence and fluttered around, it needed to be snatched out of the data stream and mashed up with other peoples’ contributions in order to be useful. The description of the term and its emergence described in the previous post entitled ‘Filter Failure’ is the first step in the development of the term. I invite others to poke at it and transform it with their insights.

Filter Failure:

When a person first begins to use social media, the experience can be overwhelming. There are so many tools and virtual information exchange environments available, and each one offers affordances for connecting the person to other people and groups of people. It is difficult to keep track of where a particular unit of information came from, who it came from, and how to find the way back to the source. It is difficult to know which members of a group have seen which units of information and to know what they might be reacting to in a post. It is difficult to know where information that you broadcast is going and who is seeing it. Does it last forever? Will it linger around forever? Am I offending people? What did that person mean when they said that? What are they trying to imply?

Interactions with people can be difficult. Suddenly, instantly interacting with thousands of people that you hardly know can be frightening. But what is the cause of the anxiety, the cognitive overload, the dissonance and feeling of being overwhelmed? Are our brains geared to handle the proliferation and speed and sporadic mysteriousness of social media?

Maybe the problem is not with the processing capability of the brain, but rather the effectiveness of the barriers that we set up to filter the information that we interact with. We probably can’t use every available tool to access every available information source and see every posted item and link. We have to make choices. We have to decide which conduits we will use and create some kind of communal commons to temporarily consolidate the information streams for each particular social environment. When that event comes to an end, the commons dissolves, and each little conduit tendril is released to make new synaptic connections in other individuals and groups. Each thread was never really captured to begin with.

So, back to the original question: Are our brains geared for dealing with the maelstrom of social media? Yes. The cognitive overload that new users experience is not a result of a failure of our brains to accommodate new people and information. The number of people, conduits and units of information is infinite. Instead, it is a failure of our ability to set boundaries; a failure to control the parameters by which we determine which avenues we will allow in. It is a failure of our filters. A filter failure.

Web 2.0 is often used as a meaningless buzzword. It seems to be surrounded by a vast array of gobbledygook terms that may or may not have any deeper significance than an edgy name. Here are a few juxtapositions between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 that I found intriguing: directories:taxonomy —- tagging:folksonomy; stickiness—-syndication. These terms have more resonance to me than “gravitational core” (something I found on the definitive description site of Web 2.0, “definitive” because they created it, O’Reilly tech manuals).

http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html

Here’s O’Reilly’s wonderful meme map that offers much more:

It shows us the basic principles of 2.0:

crowdsourced, right to remix, decentralized, participatory, user-contributor mashup.

The underlying theme, I think, is the death of the gatekeeper. No entity or individual creates the sacred content, and everything is shared and transformed in an active conflagration of information. Perpetual beta… collective intelligence. An idea perpetuates because it goes viral, not because its promoted (in the traditional sense). One of the core principles of 2.0: cooperate, don’t control… So what’s left? From what do we create value? Capitalism created the concept of ‘commodity’ and now we’re stuck with it. So what is the new commodity? It’s the data, not the superstructure. From O’Reilly: “The race is on to own certain classes of core data.” Regardless of the fact that everyone’s involved in the act of creation (and distortion) now, I think that the most important aspect of Web 2.0 is this race to own core data. Data, novelty, dirt is the new commodity. I heard a great quote on the radio today: “Data on mobile devices is becoming digital currency.” If data now trumps platform, and everyone is swiping it from everyone else, and major media all draw from the same font, then where does the value come from? How can you possibly control your “unique” data core? You can’t. You have to steal it. A hacker paradigm has emerged. The prime minister of the UK just got hacked. Why? Dirt; currency, something to sell. The new uber-commodity. Once you spend it, then its gone, and you have to get much more, very quickly. Maybe I’m not seeing the whole picture, but at this moment I feel that the current rise of criminal infiltration of information resources is largely due to the transformation of personal information into the supreme commodity that was practically mandated by Web 2.0.