Archive for January, 2008
Game Theory may not be that far off.
One of the ideas presented in the documentary, “The Trap”, was the concept of Game theory. Game theory is a strategy of play in which each player makes decisions based on what they think the other player’s decision will be. According to the documentary John Nash took this idea and from it created what he called “Nash equilibrium”. Nash thought that the ideal way to achieve balance in society would be to live in a society where everyone was selfish and only out for themselves. If every man was constantly on the defensive and constantly plotting and planning against their neighbor, with the idea that their neighbor was doing the same, then a general balance would be created.
While watching the film I thought Nash’s idea was ridiculous and far fetched. While I understood the theory, I didnt think it would work in practice. We kind of talked about it last class when we were talking about altruism, and I don’t think it really matters whether or not a person does an act of charity that isn’t completely selfless, the point is they did something that benefited someone else so a selfish society couldn’t exist.
However, as we started exploring this idea of new media it occurred to me that Nash’s idea may not be that far off. I think that with all the new technology we’ve created, such as the web, internet, cell phones etc., we have started to isolate ourselves from each other. So may things can be done with very little human contact, people shop online now, almost everything is done with automated services now. Text messaging and AIM also make it easier for people to essentially avoid each other.
“Americans are far more socially isolated today than they were two decades ago, and a sharply growing number of people say they have no one in whom they can confide, according to a comprehensive new evaluation of the decline of social ties in the United States.”
 I found this quote on a website which I posted to delicious.
New Media and “The Trap”
If it is true that “if you build it they will come,” then it is likely that whatever humans create they find a way to destroy or corrupt. So as soon as different types of digital media began to emerge, we began to hear of new forms of identity theft, harrassment, and of course perverseness. The next step is protection against these things including virus protections, and as legislation allows, even protection against internet harrassment. Harrassment over the internet, particularily is currently under debate over whether to enact laws that protect children from online harrassment after the suicide of a 13 year old girl. These forms of government interference to protect the public from itself is brought up several times in “The Trap.” In this way, perhaps New Media serves as new mediums for humans to lose their freedoms.
Assignments for Jan 5th
Great, nice work on the trap. Next week:
- Group 2: continue your journal, and go further into the web, expanding the media environment around ‘The Trap’.
- Group 1: feel free to continue your journal beyond the first week and be sure to follow group 2 as you will need to comment on their writing by Monday and present it in class next week.
- All: post to our del.icio.us tag some references that expand the discussion about the trap in the context of new media.
- Recommended reading for next week: Anna Notaro, “The Lo(n)g Revolution: The Blogosphere as an Alternative Public Sphere?â€`
- Ashely & Sheila:
- Read Anna Notero’s text
- summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday
- be prepared to present the article in class
- Post to del.icio.us some links that expand the discussion either about the text or about key themes in it.
- Enjoy.
See you all next week.
cheers,
Mushon
New Media and “The Trap”
One part of this documentary that relates to new media is its reference to how new “liberating” systems and technologies very commonly end up as agents of control. In “The Trap”, Adam Curtis provides many examples of such occurrences, from the introduction of a system of diagnosing mental illnesses, all the way to the present day fight on terrorism. In the former situation, the tests and survey’s compiled were meant to more easily and accurately recognize various mental illnesses in order for Doctors to better treat their patients. However, such descriptions became grounds to keep people in mental institutions based solely on the single claim of hearing the sound “thud” in their head. I’m specifically referring to the experiment that a man conducted in which he took 12 or so people never having any case of mental illness (including himself), and had each one go to a different institution claiming that they heard this noise “thud” . Every single participant was admitted into the hospital (when they actually had no mental illness whatsoever), and we’re not released until they “acknowledged” their problem and “got better”. Therefore, this system that was created to help alleviate people suffering from mental disorders soon transformed into a system that looked to control and alter perfectly healthy people. And such a transition did not occur simply from the Doctor’s end, but from individuals as well. People were soon being controlled by this list of symptoms and descriptions of mental illness as it compelled those ordinarily healthy individuals to request medication to be made “normal”. This concept of systems of liberation transforming into systems of control relates to new media as epitomized by the Internet. The birth of the Internet has allowed us to have endless amounts of information and channels of communication right at our fingertips. It was a seemingly uncontrolled, communal space in which people had the freedom to write anything and talk to anyone. However, especially since 9/11, this once open space is becoming smaller and smaller as the searches people engage in, the people they talk to, and the things they write are increasingly being monitored. Furthermore, in a slightly different sense, the Internet has evolved into a place where people can get second by second coverage of the news and of other people. And the availability of this information is not limited to high-profile celebrities - the Internet allows common, everyday people the ability to attain a tremendous amount of information about another, everyday person. Simply type your name in the Google Search bar and you may be surprised about the information that pops up about you. This instantaneous feed of information definitely does have its pros, but the cons - the invasive and controlling aspects - are cause for concern. Take a site like Facebook. Nowadays people have to be very careful what they do out on a Friday or Saturday night because if the wrong person is there with a phone or camera, pictures from that night are likely to find their way online. Similarly, look at the girl who committed suicide because she was being harassed through Myspace by someone she thought was a boy from her school, who actually turned out to be a neighbors mother. In general, the nature of Internet conversations and interactions leaves a lot of room for one party to control the other.
how the trap relates to new media
Positive and negative liberties have been discussed by a few people already and I think that it is one of the most interesting things that the trap brings up. One of the greatest forms of new media is the internet which is typically thought of as a free space. In my experience using it, this is true because you can do pretty much anything you want with it from uploading videos, downloading all kinds of content, blogging and access a plethora of information about things you cant find in books (ie the things from mean streets like bomb making). When we try to apply conventional laws to the internet, people seem to have a hard time. An example is how stealing is against the law, you cant walk into a store and leave with a cd without paying for it. Yet for a long time, the sharing of songs over the internet was overlooked. Even with record companies cracking down it is extraordinarily easy to find free music, movies and programs on the internet to download for free (which is essentially stealing). The way the internet is explored seems to be more free than the way you can go about your real life. The same is true for other kinds of new media such as cell phone networks where it is possible to share all kinds of illegal content. When related to positive and negative freedom, is it okay for regulations to be imposed on these free spaces? I think that the internet and things like cell phones are so new that regulations need to catch up quickly to the changing trends if they want to be accepted. However, will new media still be considered new media once positive liberties are in effect? I think one of the greatest things about new media is the ability to be different than the real world. I wouldnt steal a cd but I probably wouldnt hesitate to pirate music.
“Village of the Damned” - game theory
The first thing that came to my mind after viewing “The Trap,” was, oddly enough, the 1995 movie “Village of the Damned” starring Christopher Reeve and Kirstie Alley. If you are not familiar with it, to put it in a nutshell, aliens impregnate a group of women in a small town, with their alien spawn. These children grow up to be emotionless creatures who only care about the survival of their kind, doing anything to protect themselves and eliminate any potential danger, whether it means killing others. In contrast, humans are meant to be the creatures with emotion and feelings so that they are selfless. Though people have historically taken over land by pushing animals past further borders, and forming subgroups to separate themselves, I don’t think they are as evil as “The Trap,” makes them out to be. Every decision is not made for the benefit of oneself… I think. Maybe my ideas have been influenced by romanticized movie scenes in which humans quickly make decisions that sacrifice themselves to selflessly help another??Â
The Trap, Big Pharma, and New Media
One of the most intriguing points that I discovered while watching “The Trap” was the use of psychotropic and psychiatric drugs in order to treat unhappiness. The documentary puts forward the point that drugs such as Prozac were released by the pharmaceutical companies partially as a ploy to “normalize” the masses, making them pliable and easier to control. The example of the red-haired woman, who cheerfully praised the effects of Prozac while her husband lamented how much she’d changed since she started taking it was a powerful image. Convincing people their unhappiness is an abnormality, then drugging them up in order to better place them within a homogenized sphere is a dangerous practice. Right before I blogged this, my home page presented me with an article concerning just this idea.
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/75081/
The article discusses how certain political ideologies or personal beliefs are now being placed within the realm of mental illness. This includes distrust of the government, which is being diagnosed as paranoia, along with a recommended treatment. This rejection of authority has been labeled as “ODD” (Oppositional Defiant Disorder), obviously labeled to conjure similarities with another “widespread” but debatable diagnosis, ADD.
So what does this have to do with new media? In this case, I’m considering new media anything that involves the near-instantaneous transmission of desired information, such as the internet, PDAs, and some cell phone technologies. Given the vast amount of alternative information and news sources present on the net, it stands to reason that individuals who feel uncomfortable with the current media power structure would seek out information online. These individuals also tend to cluster together in groups, in the form of newsgroups, listservs, or blogospheres. Given that these communities now have the chance to spring up on the internet, whereas previously geographic proximity would have been a necessity, it makes sense that oppositional forces would arise. In this case, the increasing diagnoses of thinking Americans as abnormal or disordered is a somewhat troubling situation.
Positive and Negative Liberty-post 2
Another aspect surrounding the concepts of positive and negative liberty that I found very interesting is their connection to the ideas of public good and public choice. In “The Trap”, Adam Curtis drives home the point that the idea of working for a public good is a complete fantasy, because people are in actuality only out for their own personal advancement. Therefore, when a government official makes claims of representing public choice, he or she is in fact only representing personal choices that will serve in his or her best interest. Under the notion of game theory, people are seen as selfish and suspicious, and it is therefore highly unlikely that any one person would put aside a condition that would better server their own situation for the sake of the public good. In a very similar way, the idea of negative liberty is often revered as the goal to strive for in terms of freedom, but as this film points out, negative liberty does not actually stand for anything other than the belief in the freedom of all individuals to act on their own accord. And while it does not dismiss the existence of government and laws, under negative liberty, such institutions should exist only in so far as they uphold an individuals ability to successfully live as a true individual. While I think the idea behind public good and negative liberty are great, I don’t see how the two could ever work together, or if either is even possible on its own. Both terms seem to represent impossible ideals that would clash even if they were achieved. Assuming the disposition of humans beings under game theory is incorrect, and people are in fact caring and sometimes selfless, trustworthy creatures capable of reaching a consensus as to what the public good is, that act alone automatically hinders ones ability to act as a true individual, in addition to offsetting the idea of negative liberty. As I understand it, the idea of a public good encompasses a lot more that the most base laws to ensure that one can act of his or her own accord. It involves the construction of many more laws and regulations that may in fact represent the sentiments of the general public, but nevertheless eliminates their possibility of negative liberty.
The Trap and New Media
To me, the interesting connection between “The Trap” and new media is the underlaying notion of politics. “The Trap” examined politics and the ‘optimistic illusion,’ which states politics are out there doing best for the general public and not just for themselves. When in reality, expressing on behalf of general interest is impossible because general interests do not cover all of the public (the structure of the general interest is of certain class, income, race, etc).
With new media (specifically the internet), we are experimenting with what many refer to as the ‘democratic medium’ - one that gives substantially more power to the users to freely express themselves. However, this seems to me yet another illusion- the democratic medium is only available to those who have access to and can acquire the technology. The views that are being expressed on the internet is only half of the picture (those that have no access, have no voice). In turn, the politics of the internet are much like that of real life. The politicians (frequent users) of new media make up the ‘general interest’ but even this general audience is still limited.
Looking at embedding structures within New Media Platforms
“The Trap” speaks about how latent systems that underly our society today came to in many way define our actions and thoughts. And while some of these situations were the end result of politically motivated (or individually motivated) decisions, we as users (and researchers) need to be very aware of the media systems we create when we use the web to spread information. With old media, people are very aware of these hidden forces, as the media was “mass,” controlled by highly controlled and monitored industries and government bodies. With the web, people imagined that they were gaining as sort of freedom from large, controlling bureaucracies, an individualized set of media which was self administered, and completely self-selected, so individuals who wished to be exposed to simply and “independent source” could completely circumvent the old way of disseminating information. However, much like turning research of Psychiatry to a calculated end-product, we need to look to these underlying systems which we take as transparent and without politic and reassess whether that algorithm that feeds us “socially picked news” (Reddit, Digg) or even the way in which different blogging platforms effect how each post is ultimatly understood by an end use. While people discuss the merrits of popular blogging scripts such as Wordpress, Movable Type, or Blogger, not many people consider what that software may enherintly add or subtract to the messages being broadcast. In the world of new media, the platforms become the media itself, and we are left with a channel of almost infinite different media each with their own subtleties which carry loaded messages, which are almost more dangerous as they are hidden from view. The systems we build to help us to do sometime need to be kept in check in fear that they become the reason we do something.
