[Cult of Me] Research Questions (v1)

Hi,
sounds a very interesting project.
Presume that Texture: Human Expression in the Age of Communications Overload by
Richard H. R. Harper http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&;tid=12256 is on your reading list already?
best wishes,
Isla

Sure, you know already these sites. First is a New York Times article about the failure of Facebook in Japan – http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/technology/10facebook.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1. Second is a more general slideshare about social networks in Japan – http://www.slideshare.net/revoline/what-facebook-might-consider-in-japan-presentation. The first three questions are very interesting, wish you good luck with your research. Hope, you’ll keep updating the research progress on your blog. ;)

@isla and @DomJofo,

thank you greatly for these literature suggestions. I am at the very initial stage of the research, currently writing two pieces that are part of the subject-gestation (an essay of the concept for Political Quarterly, and a chapter on the ethics of embedded ideologies for a book to be published by Oxford University Press), and these will help immensely.

I’d be interested to know to what extent people project different aspects of their personalities on various social networks, and if that is affected by the culture they come from? Are the Chinese twitterers or face bookers, or something else entirely?

The whole issue of ‘real names’ as highlighted by the policy of Google Plus recently is another interesting one. How much importance do different cultures put on online privacy and anonymity? I can imagine the Chinese authorities taking a dim view of anything offering anonymous social networking for obvious reasons.

@Mac i don’t buy we’re moving into a culture that is post-human. in fact, i think that “human” is becoming more valuable as people realise the limitations of the machine. i’m working on another project that’s picking this apart – <a href"http://theserendipityengine.tumblr.com">The Serendipity Engine is its temporary home – by looking at one social phenomenon that technologists are trying to co-pot with ‘solutions’.

@neil – i interviewed a researcher at HP Labs about their research into the Chinese patterns of use for that country’s most popular microblogging service. It’ll be on Tech Weekly soon, and I’ll post the transcript of that conversation here.

I understand and respect your opinion that we aren’t moving into a post human age but I still disagree, despite your studies. We may be realizing the limits of the machine, but we are long familiar with the limits of humanity. “Post-human” may be too stark a term, and I may have fallen into the trap of convenience in using it. Mea culpa. There’s no doubt but that humans bring something to the table cybernetics can’t. A lot was made of Watson winning Jeopardy, until someone pointed out that answering a trivia is far less complicated than walking into a room on two legs, waving a the audience and saying “Hello Alex” to the right person.

it still strikes me as a perfectly legitimate question to ask when our technology so fundamentally changes us that we are no longer Homo sapiens. Look at the average street scene and then transfer that to nature. Imagine an animal that almost strictly pays attention to something it is holding next to its face, like a cell phone. Something would eat it. In fact, something would specialize in eating it, and probably do very well. Until recently technology merely served to make more productive those activities we had already been engaged in. Wheels became horses that became internal combustion engines. Talking became pictograms that became alphabets that became binary code translations. But at what point does all this become something more than that, where we become something not altogether human as it is understood, or does it happen at all?

I would be very interested in your thoughts on that.

Hi Aleks,

I see that in one your research questions on collectivist societies and their relationship to the web and each other through it, you are trying to explore ‘closed’ communities in general and how they have opened themselves up for interaction in a whole new environment. It can be noted that India, with all its political issues and orthodoxies has really taken a shine to the web. A recent article talks about the growing numbers of Indians on web and though the numbers are not suggestive of much by themselves, its easy to understand that the more we feel our fellow Indians are on the web, the more it becomes a push for others to join in. Heres the link to that article:
http://kiwicommons.com/index.php?p=8082&tag=internet-explosion-indians-and-the-web

Employing a follower-mentality has been the structural glue for the Indian nation for eons and this has only grown stronger through the virtual cables of the internet. What one likes in India, is liked soon enough by others too. A prime example of that would be the recent viral Youtube sensation “Why This Kolaveri Kolaveri Di?”, a Tamil+English hybrid song on love failure that has come to grip the nation and many Indians across the world. The song in itself is not significant for anything apart from the minor detail that even though the language the song comes from is not spoken commonly across India, it translates completely and doesn’t let go of the attention of the viewer. Hopefully you would be able to follow such examples in making your research on what drives ‘collectivist cultures’ to strive together in the new technological age.

Would be happy to hear your thoughts and ideas on this.

Hi Aleks,

I see that in one your research questions on collectivist societies and their relationship to the web and each other through it, you are trying to explore ‘closed’ communities in general and how they have opened themselves up for interaction in a whole new environment. It can be noted that India, with all its political issues and orthodoxies has really taken a shine to the web. A recent article talks about the growing numbers of Indians on web and though the numbers are not suggestive of much by themselves, its easy to understand that the more we feel our fellow Indians are on the web, the more it becomes a push for others to join in. Heres the link to that article:
http://kiwicommons.com/index.php?p=8082&tag=internet-explosion-indians-and-the-web

Employing a follower-mentality has been the structural glue for the Indian nation for eons and this has only grown stronger through the virtual cables of the internet. What one likes in India, is liked soon enough by others too. A prime example of that would be the recent viral Youtube sensation “Why This Kolaveri Kolaveri Di?”, a Tamil+English hybrid song on love failure that has come to grip the nation and many Indians across the world. The song in itself is not significant for anything apart from the minor detail that even though the language the song comes from is not spoken commonly across India, it translates completely and doesn’t let go of the attention of the viewer. Hopefully you would be able to follow such examples in making your research on what drives ‘collectivist cultures’ to strive together in the new technological age.

Would be happy to hear your thoughts and ideas on this.

Personally, I’d be wary of using the term “ideology” with such gay abandon given it unavoidably implies a set of coherent (if not necessarily consistent) and relatively fixed beliefs, prejudices, assumptions and what not, which are typically never there. There again it does serve as a useful heuristic device in a pigeon holing kind of way, but by so doing typically imparts a spurious analytical rigour that can reveal more about the commentator’s prejudices than the subjects’.You could veer off, I guess, into referring to systems of thought except them’s awfy big shoes to try and put on.

thanks martin. good feedback. what would you suggest?

Sounds interesting. I wonder if you’re also going to consider what happens when those cultures interact with each other through social media? Do the developing “camps” of social media sites represent new islands of culture with as many gaps, misunderstandings between each other as traditional cultural expressions? or does the touted homogenisation of culture steam-roll over the differences – and at what cost to the participants.

Hi Aleks,

The proposed project sounds very interesting indeed. I used similar ideas in a PhD Proposal last year, which unfortunately didn’t materialise. I don’t know if this will help but you may as well take a look at some of these journals/articles if you have not done so already. I found them fairly helpful when constructing my research proposal. I look forward to hearing your findings.

cheers.

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Mike – what a treasure trove! Thank you!

I have an interest in the topic. Finishing my doctorate at Columbia- Teachers College. My topic is how the Internet has changed art, artists and artculture.
Art has been one discipline where there is ferment of many people learning to communicate on an International platform.Some of the groups I work with have artists from 90+ countries. Investigating ego structure -self-organiztion

Thanks Frank! I’ll be in the neighbourhood later this year. Very interesting topic. Worth a conversation?

Aleks