Ooooh, shiny! (Seems to be a theme this semester)

"Argue film is art? Yes I can."

"Better than paint?" you demand.

"The forms, they quite differ,

(Your back, it grows stiffer)

The problem? Your attention span."

Benjamin’s assertions about the inherently commodified nature of film, as well as its tacit inferiority to painting as an art form are a little frustrating to this film professional. I believe in his dismissal of film as an absorbing but ultimately passive experience for the viewer, he does not consider the capacity of someone to view film with a critical, engaged eye any more seriously than he considers that someone could view paintings passively, glance at them and not become engaged. “Let us compare the screen on which a film unfolds with the canvas of a painting. The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed. It cannot be arrested. Duhamel, who detests the film and knows nothing of its significance, though something of its structure, notes the circumstances as follows: ‘I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images.’ The spectator’s process of association in view of these images is indeed interrupted by their constant, sudden change.” I would contend that this is a flaw of consumer as well as product. When viewing a painting, one is still beholden to the image the artist presents. One can engage with that, make associations and analyze as they see fit. One can do the same with a film, but perhaps just at a more rapid pace. The filmmaker is asking the viewer to engage with a much more rapid set of images than the painter, but both artists must contend with their audience’s choice to engage. Perhaps it is a function of generation gap. I know that my brother (age 6) can process visual information at a speed that I cannot, but he has a corresponding difficulty in paying attention to one thing at a time. Conversely, my mother offers things a great deal of attention and focus one thing at a time.

It is when Benjamin begins looking at the roles of reception and criticism that he hits a stride that the modern thinker can really appreciate. He says “Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the film its true means of exercise. The film with its shock effect meets this mode of reception halfway. The film makes the cult value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies, this position requires no attention. The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one.” (p.240-241). One wonders what he might say if viewing the habitual multitasking of today, or the lack of engagement necessary to be a critic of anything in the modern blogosphere. If everyone’s opinions and distribution channels are equal, how can we learn to value discernment and respect for an educated, considered viewpoint? Likewise, what can artists do to engage their audience’s full attention?

L'etat c'est moi... et vous...

The State's an ephemeral thing
Yet 'praise unto thee' we all sing,
Did you once stop to think
This thing's not so unique
What a volatile sich ist das Ding.

It's hard to believe that Dewey wrote this in 1927, because (emphasis on the role of the telegraph aside), it feels like it could have been written today. It is very challenging to come up with a specific part of the reading to talk about because there were so many different points that came out as compelling. The transformation of religion from a public to private sphere; where modern states get to involve themselves in private transactions; loyalties to family versus state; and above all that most difficult of questions... what IS a state?

While I would love to spend time exploring so much of what Dewey had to say about the evolution of democracy and the dangers of holding modern governmental forms as sacrosanct and the logical evolution of human society (and did in previous drafts of this post...), the crux of where Dewey is relevant to our studies is fairly clear, as he spends a great deal of time talking about the role of communication technology in democratic discourse and evolution. On page 144, it says "The transition from family and dynastic government supported by the loyalties of tradition to popular government was the outcome primarily of technological discoveries and inventions working a change in the customs by which men had been bound together." While he does allow that technology has been key for the advancement of democracy, he also deplores the availability of distractions and misinformation that allow people to abdicate from their own participation in democracy so easily.

Lanier would doubtless agree when Dewey says (p. 162), "Of course, there has been an enormous increase in the amount of knowledge possessed by mankind, but it does not equal, probably, the increase in the amount of errors and half-truths which have got into circulation. In social and human matters, especially, the development of a critical sense and methods of discriminating judgment has not kept pace with the growth of careless reports and of motives for positive misrepresentation." This has been a problem for humanity for the last hundred years, at least. The pace of technology has far outstripped our ability to cope with it and develop a capacity to distinguish between what is useful and what is not. Still, this brings us back to last week's reading and explorations of how we might start sorting through our huge collections of data and making some sense of it. Are we still just gathering information? Have we done ourselves a massive disservice by devoting so many resources to increasing our ability to gather information without increasing our ability to analyze and interpret it effectively?

Ultimately, the most resonant part of the Dewey, that brought me back to Pachauri's lecture and Jeffrey Sachs', was this: "Humanity is not, as was once thought, the end for which all things were formed; it is but a slight and feeble thing, perhaps an episodic one, in the vast stretch of the universe. But for man, man is the center of interest and the measure of importance." (p. 176) While it is important to try to step out of the relentless narcissism that seems to afflict our species, it is precisely that narcissism that might get us out of the mess we've created. This course so far has brought forth many dystopian and utopian looks at the future, and definitely highlighted several challenges we have to face, but I am not as of yet convinced that we're doomed. Granted, it's only February, so we'll see where the reading takes us from here.

Vroom Vroom! Information Superhighways!

The problem with data creation

Is it lacks any standardization

My X and my Y

Are different to that guy

And prevents sharing interpretation

All three readings this week made me incredibly happy... for entirely different reasons.

I like economic theories. I do. Comes presumably from having a mother that is an economist. While Benkler is not solely focused on economic concerns, his theories are strongly driven by economic factors. While I read it from the viewpoint of someone who is a firm believer in capitalism, I do definitely see the merit of the open source movement and the value of incorporating non-market production into market economies.

I had several concerns with some of Benkler's speculations, most notably on page 13, where he spoke about the changes in media distribution. While I do think that this is possibly the best description of Internet information distribution I have ever read, he fails to acknowledge that access and distribution are not at all remotely neutral yet between the solitary information provider and the megacorporation. Despite the ability of solitary entities to gain some followers, their presence in the grand scheme of the information being shared is ephemeral because of their lack of capital backing. Are we in a period of transition? Undoubtedly. But media distribution conglomerates are not losing relevance-- they're merging with each other and forming larger corporations. As popular as Winston the Cat is, he will never have the same influence of a single one of hulu.com's advertisers because he lacks the capital backing. It's okay, I'll wait for you to finish the video before I continue. He's a weird looking cat, isn't he?

Where Benkler's ideas really DO start to be thought-provoking though, are in parts like page 14, where he says "More ambitiously, we begin to see in agricultural research a combined effort of public, nonprofit and open-source-like efforts being developed and applied to problems of agricultural innovation. The ultimate purpose is to develop a set of basic capabilities that would allow collaboration among farmers and scientists, in both poor countries and around the globe, to develop better, more nutritious crops to improve food security throughout the poorer regions of the world.” Without analyzing at length, because it merits an extensive post (or paper) of its own, perhaps it is more productive to uncouple the analysis of communication collaborations for educational/research purposes and ones for entertainment purposes.

When just looking at educational/research purposes, the power of a network of that size becomes awe-inspiring, but also begins to create some of the problems outlined in "The Fourth Paradigm". What do you do with so much data and so many collaborators without standardizing your information delivery? How do you handle peer review? How can you assure quality and authenticity of data?

When I was coming up with the discussion questions for this week's class, I kept coming back to a few ideas, mostly ones of information sorting and information retrieval. In my line of work, I do have a lot of concerns with both of these things-- I work with digital video. Issues of archival metadata, file compatibility and data integrity are huge. Even as we continue to create terabyte after terabyte of information, we do so without adequate answers to these questions. I'd gotten so used to looking at it through such a narrow lens, I hadn't even considered the similar (and far more pressing) problems facing scientific fields or the catastrophic consequences that not answering these questions would have for a large sector of the economy and our long-term collective knowledge.

One last thought... Gray says, "And note, parenthetically, that the Internet is really turning into an object-oriented system where people fetch objects." It was a side note in a much greater question, but it really resonated. I have been trying to think of all the things I use the internet for-- academic research, social interaction, shopping, casual research, playing stupid games... he's not wrong. These are all objects. I'm striving to think of what else it could be used for and when framed in such general terms, it is difficult to imagine.