blog (January, 2008)
self-arranging, explodable echo chambers
A jarring reminder to diversify social connections and information sources, Adam's quote from The Polarization of Extremes relates how the internet aids in the "the creation of enclaves of like-minded people," making groups more homogeneous, and "squelching diversity."
But that function is only part of the story, and, really, a feature, [not a bug,] if viewed in context of longer and larger processes. The web is the frameworks for -- and accelerator of -- constant connection, explosion and re-arranging of minds and ideas.
Individual talents and perspectives don't have to shrivel within a retribalized society; they merely interact within a group consciousness that has the potential for releasing far more creativity than the old atomized culture. Literate man is alienated, impoverished man; retribalized man can lead a far richer and more fulfilling life--not the life of a mindless drone but of the participant in a seamless web of interdependence and harmony. The implosion of electric technology is transmogrifying literate, fragmented man into a complex and depth-structured human being with a deep emotional awareness of his complete interdependence with all of humanity. The old "individualistic" print society was one where the individual was "free" only to be alienated and dissociated, a rootless outsider bereft of tribal dreams; our new electronic environment compels commitment and participation, and fulfills man's psychic and social needs at profound levels.
[...]
the global village makes maximum disagreement and creative dialog inevitable.
-- Marshall McLuhan, The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan (March 1969)
(emphasis mine)
I'll split hairs and suggest that McLuhan was wrong when he said seamless. Separations exist, and are essential for growth within: polarization/contraction provides focus, cooperative motivation; pressure-cook. But the seams are more porous and flexible than in meatspace, due to the web's openness and allowed dynamism in personal identification.
(Build a highly-adaptable, low-bandwidth medium, and all sorts of social norms are discarded because of ease of anonymity. As bandwidth has increased and patterns have been been formalized, anonymity is somewhat less available, but adaptability and fluidity of interaction remain.)
Not that competition ever goes away because everything happens at once all the time. It's a rich situation. But we are learning global harmony.
[...]
Our social models, including our corporate world, were designed as mechanical models. But organism and mechanism are very different [...]
At present we're moving away from inventor-created, allopoietic systems to autopoietic systems -- literally self-created systems, living systems in holarchy instead of hierarchy, with negotiations instead of top-down command; systems that negotiate cooperation and thus design themselves from within instead of being engineered and repaired and redesigned by inventors or designers.
-- Elisabet Sahtouris, Living Systems, the Internet and the Human Future (May, 2000)
Paul Hawken gave examples and a very nice metaphor for this phenom in his Blessed Unrest SALT talk, (mp3 | summary.) ... Don't sweat global: think local and act local, and more appropriate large-scale results will emerge as aggregate.
(Last-quoted) Sahtouris is speaking on March 1st at River's Edge in Rocky River. Jenita calls her my new guru secret crush but got me a ticket for the workshop anyway.
The last time we were at River's Edge the audience was largely composed of the Sisters of St. Joseph from the congregation next door... I'm happily certain this won't just be an echo chamber for my pre-conceptions.
MidTown Cleveland cracked by Iraqi e-Army?
One nice thing about online RSS newsreaders is that their scheduled caching often holds onto items that have been taken down.
This post showed up in the Midtown Cleveland blog in my Google Reader this morning, though it was already removed when I went looking for it on their site:
Hacked
This site was hacked by the Iraqi e-Army. Tell your Mr Fool Bush to get outside our country; Iraq, or all American websites will be hacked. All the database of this website was hacked, all names, contact numbers, zip codes, everything is with us now. Bye - actually, see you a lot later.
return to suburbia
Ten miles out of town, a cut-through from mall transit center to community college. Through residential neighborhood side-street-sides, past a high school. Conspicuously strange to not worry about surrendering peripheral vision by raising my hood to the cold -- no one else was out except the cars, (for whom the highway only ends at the driveway.)
According to health statistics, you're about twice as likely to be injured in a car accident as by physical assault. And you're much more likely to suffer that car accident in a sprawling exurban location where people drive more.
-- Safer and greener in the city, an email from GreenCityBlueLake
In the city, I feel safer on the street, in the open.
In the suburbs, on the sidewalk, out of traffic's way.
And what goes through the minds of people with the luxury of seeing these things from a "safe distance" -- white minds or black minds -- is this: "Thank God I've moved farther away, where nothing like that could happen."
-- Dick Feagler, Beating in Shaker leaves some ugly cultural welts (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
It had been awhile since I'd experienced that public privacy, safety.
Secure but desolate.
Still in my head, partly framing the experience:: an image of the great American disconnect conjured by Kate Sopko, reading from her new book last weekend: (Just $7 for local light, bright!)
Yet, suburban culture (especially as our suburbs move more toward the 'gated community' model) does not have much within it to encourage connection between people, and has a lot within it that encourages isolationism. If someone would like to disconnect from people, little will stop them: they can retreat into a single-family home, vast entertainment complexes, virtual reality an a daily series of scripted social interactions. This is far less likely for people who grow up in poorer communities, though, for sure, entertaining ourselves to death is becoming an accessible option across class lines in America.
-- Kate Sopko, Systems are Cowards, from Stewards of the Lost Lands
Rat Attacks MidTown
A few of us gawked out my cubicle window, guessing what the giant rat across the street was wild eyed about.
Ilya thought our neighbors were celebrating the Chinese New Year, (2008 is year of the rat,) to one-up their Christmas decoration. AsiaTown is on the other side of MidTown, though.
I wondered if the rats in Public Square had fled uptown, escaping the poisoning of their boroughs.
John guessed correctly: a showing against non-union labor. We hadn't seen the scab on the rat's underbelly, but it was grossly apparent when I went outside to shoot {photos of / the bull with} the guys making their stand.
