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From Cybertext to Produsage. Functioning and Production of Digital Texts
ArcDigital and Cultures of the Digital Economy (CoDE) institute guest talk:
From Cybertext to Produsage. Functioning and Production of Digital Texts
By Dr Robert Arpo, Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences
Monday 30/11, 16.00-17.30
Anglia Ruskin University, East Road, Cambridge
Room: Helmore 252
Norwegian Espen Aarseth formulated his theory of cybertext and ergodic literature in mid 1990´s and focused his attention on how user, verbal sign and medium form a textual machine called cybertext. His point of view to the digital texts was user oriented, but the user was seen as an individual reader, whose actions were in the center of textual meaning construction.
Australian Axel Bruns has been formulating his theory of produsage recently and in context of so called social media. Bruns´s point of view raises questions on collective production of digital texts and is linked strongly to the dynamics of participatory economy.
When we look at theories of Aarseth and Bruns, they show us the changes in thinking on digital cultures. Technologies give nowadays users much more freedom to produce their own digital contents whereas in 1990´s user did not have access to for example source code of a publication platform like now the situation is with open access applications. Freedom brings also the need for taking responsibility of one´s own actions. Produser cultures are good examples of ways to control, direct and negotiate practices and principles in collective digital content production communities.
Robert Arpo, Ph.D. is principal lecturer in MA programme for media production and management, Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, Finland. His research interests are in the area of virtual communities, digital dialogue, theories of information society and social media.
>On Network Politics — notes to self and the unknown reader
>Our network politics networking-project kicks off officially October 1st, and we are in the midst of organizing some of the activities and themes which will form the backbone of the project. The project will feature both online-presence and activities, as well as events taking place in Cambridge and New York. We had yesterday the interesting idea of using the Request for Comments-format (RFC) as a media theoretical method of sorts, that kicks off from the initial question of “what is network politics?” and then proceeds through the RFC method – forking into new questions, streams, agendas. As the project is about networking, we find its important to map the field and crucial agendas, not just yet hope to provide final solutions. This is why the RFC idea (to quote from Wikipedia!) is intriguing: “Through the Internet Society, engineers and computer scientists may publish discourse in the form of an RFC, either for peer review or simply to convey new concepts, information, or (occasionally) engineering humor. The IETF adopts some of the proposals published as RFCs as Internet Standards.” To adopt that to media theoretical and practical aims to facilitate discussion is an idea worthwhile to have a shot at, and to use it to develop concept-labs/networks for conveying new concepts, information…
Anyhow, I need to start writing some notes to self in terms of possible ways to go with the agenda, of what could be relevant in terms of topics to be covered somehow:
– politics of new networks and code platforms such as Twitter. E.g. Greg Elmer has been actively involved in this research. What kind of modes of organization, action and for example campaigning for political agencies such forms offer? This stream perhaps focuses on the question of how such technologies might deterritorialize the political landscape and praxis.
– Politics of networks as politics of invisibility: what kinds of forms of politics there are out there that are not even recognized as politics? This is a multilayered question, and relates both to perception of politics as well as the tactics of politics in the age of surveillance, visibility and software. Firstly, how should we address certain forms of tactical media, net art, etc. as forms of politics (and what are the tools to develop such understanding). Secondly, take Galloway and Thacker: “Future avant-garde practices will be those of nonexistence.” Network politics can take as its form also becoming-invisible, becoming-nonexistent in order to avoid both the politics of representation as well as the techniques of trackings, surveillance and control. All of this relates to thinking of modes of activism, as well.
– Biopolitics of network culture that is characterized by “immaterial projects, including ideas, images, affects and relationships” (Hardt and Negri); how do such forms of production take form through social media as a standardisation and distribution of specific forms of relations, sociability, affects, and community? There is a wide range of excellent work already on this stream, from Tiziana Terranova’s Network Culture-book (2004) to the forthcoming The Internet as Playground and Factory-conference in New York. (For a taste of what’s coming, see e.g. McKenzie Wark’s video interview on the topic.)
– The need for new tools for academic interaction — tools which do not only quantifiably ease distribution and storage of research etc., but qualitatively enact a change in how academic institutions work in the age of late capitalism. Gary Hall’s Digitize This Book! is a good point of entry to these debates, and what we hope to address somehow (e.g. through methods such as RFC potentially) is how the modes of relating to other scholars and production of information can be rethought in the context of network culture. Taking aboard Jodi Dean’s excellent “warnings” in her “Communicative Capitalism”-article, this mode of academic interaction should not fall prey to any automated sociability that is offered as part of the assumption of goodness of all communication in network culture, but it should critically inspect ideas of open source, multimodal forms of academic debate and possibilities of network technologies to facilitate not just more-of-the-same but visions of 21st century arts and humanities agenda (which are not detached from science and tech.)
>An aberrant text on social media — to note the launch of Cool Mediators platform
>Lesson 1 of social media culture: sociability is not inherent, its produced. All the discourse about naturality of belonging, participation, sociability should be taken as a product, not the starting point. In historical perspective things immediately turn out trickier. One could even say that the current “social turn” (referring to Web 2.0, social media, and all that) is even a bit surprising, understanding how recently crowds were deemed as dangerous, mindless and threatening. The hive mind was more of an index of dangers to democracy (both pre and post WWII). Swarms, human animality of irrational social groupings (the animality in us), collectives and such, were not automatically sources of creativity, hive minds of late capitalist sorts, but articulated together as a threat of Western civilization. Of course, the earliest examples of a much more positive stance towards e.g. emergence were to be found already in the 1910s research into insect worlds; for example the ant researcher’s Wheeler’s work is exemplary. Yet, the idea of mindless drone animality as represented as late as in the 1950s horror movies was an effective way of framing the non-human in us as dangerous. It seems like there would be a long way from such dangerous animalities to the productive, communicative, distributed animality of social media culture. Its the animality in current high tech media culture — social media. Naturally Kropotkin knew this already a while ago, and his book from 100 years back Mutual Aid should be a key reference point in any genealogy of social media.
The realization that sociability must be produced and maintained is behind some ideas that try to consolidate possibilities of participation and novel communities; hence, I want to flag the launch of a cross-media platform project to catalyze discussions, a social media tool for academics, activists, etc. I would assume, knowing something about the creators Tania Goryucheva and Eric Kluitenberg’s interests. It is planned as a tool to facilitate communication between online and offline communities, and equipped with tools that will probably turn out handy for the critical social media generation; web casting, automated archiving, etc. Might be of good relevance to our starting Network Politics project.
Launch at the De Balie, Amsterdam, September 10, 20.30, and online: www.coolmediators.net .
Machinology 