Capitalism and everything 2.0
This week in our course one of our tasks is to examine the 2.0 suffix, and to think about the potential benefits and risks of applying it to libraries, archives, museums, or other heritage institutions.
One of the problems I have with the 2.0ization of everything is its roots in capitalism and consumption. In Michael Casey’s and Laura Savastinuk’s guide to Library 2.0, they actually begin with Business 2.0, and use a tonne of business examples (whether Amazon or eBay) throughout the book. Something like the long tail is definitely a valuable concept for librarians and archivists to understand, but it is rooted in supply and demand. I read Casey and Savastinuk’s book a while back while writing a paper for ARST 540, and re-reading a chapter this week makes me think I need to revisit the rest of the book. I found they never really gave a satisfying statement of how Library 2.0 differed from these money-making 2.0s. I hope this doesn’t sound naive — I don’t mean that libraries cannot participate in the economy, it just unsettles me when we don’t examine our role in it.
Just to give a non-library example: I had the pleasure of hearing Patricia Williams speak a few years back, and she mentioned that her 13-year-old son had just created a Myspace page. Once she discovered this, she promptly dismantled it, both because he was a minor and her permission had not been sought and on top of the risk for data-mining. But she also expressed concern for identity formation on corporate sites like this. She puzzled over all of those quizzes: when you pick what kind of gangsta or which Golden Girl you are from a quiz provided on a website with financial interest in your demographics…is that really freely forming identity? Just the fact that it was called “Myspace” suggests the trap of consumer culture: you are given certain superficial choices (purple background or red?), rather than being encouraged to make significant choices.
This is an oversimplification, and Myspace is hardly an exemplary forum of participatory culture, but these kinds of concerns need to be addressed, especially when public institutions start getting in on the fun.
