Article/Review: Digital Maoism, by Jaron Lanier

[from the I Wanted To Write About This Article a Month Ago Department]:

Jaron Lanier is a contributor and member of edge.org ¹ (which I have listed in my sidebar links). Specifically, he offers his perspective on the evolution of technology and the internet and is credited as a "computer scientist and digital visionary". In an essay posted May 30th, Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism, he tackles the rise of aggregator/meta-centric portals such as Wikipedia (which I also have listed in my sidebar links), where individual contribution he argues (and to this extent, responsibility) is obscured by an emphasis on a hive mind approach.

Lanier starts, appropriately enough, by sharing the fact that his Wikipedia entry refers to him as a film director, which is truthful only to the extent that he made one film, a decade and a half earlier. "Every time my Wikipedia entry is corrected," he begins, "within a day I'm turned into a film director again. I can think of no more suitable punishment than making these determined Wikipedia goblins actually watch my one small old movie."

And with this he sets his target. It isn't, he insists, Wikipedia itself:

"No, the problem is in the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it's been elevated to such importance so quickly. And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force. This is different from representative democracy, or meritocracy. This idea has had dreadful consequences when thrust upon us from the extreme Right or the extreme Left in various historical periods. The fact that it's now being re-introduced today by prominent technologists and futurists, people who in many cases I know and like, doesn't make it any less dangerous."

Lanier's strongest point, as I see it, is his contention that the collectivist, hive-driven format of sites such as Wikipedia (and extended in his essay to meta-meta-meta aggregators such as Digg and Reddit) continue a troubling trend toward aggregated, impersonally edited content over... well, content curated and written by identifiable humans.

"The race began innocently enough with the notion of creating directories of online destinations, such as the early incarnations of Yahoo. Then came AltaVista, where one could search using an inverted database of the content of the whole Web. Then came Google, which added page rank algorithms. Then came the blogs, which varied greatly in terms of quality and importance. This lead to Meta-blogs such as Boing Boing, run by identified humans, which served to aggregate blogs. In all of these formulations, real people were still in charge. An individual or individuals were presenting a personality and taking responsibility.

[...]

"In the last year or two the trend has been to remove the scent of people, so as to come as close as possible to simulating the appearance of content emerging out of the Web as if it were speaking to us as a supernatural oracle. This is where the use of the Internet crosses the line into delusion."

Lanier's line of query unfolds to include the observation that the "meta" is now more popular and, in respect to Google News, more profitable than traditional media (newspapers in particular), yet no one standing next to the microphone is able to articulate the fact that popularity contests do not historically vet the best, but rather, what the collective believes is safest. And of course, nobody seems to want to say that the collective is just as culpable - in some ways more powerfully culpable - as individuals.

I highly suggest anyone interested in the social internet, its architecture and direction, give this essay a good read. Lanier's observations move from the immediate suspects above to commentary on analogous movements, such as Linux ², the "open" software movement, and the ever-ubiquitous MySpace. In many respects, it's about time somebody spoke eloquently about the collapse of the human face behind these efficient portals.

However, I do have some issues. For one thing, the tangents never really weave into a comprehensive whole, making it feel much too cumbersome (and a page too long) to concisely support Lanier's provocative thesis. There are many arguments using the financial marketplace as a comparison tool which, although in theory an applicable analogy, is probably the last example I would use if I were arguing for a more humanistic approach. In fact, for someone arguing for this approach, Lanier's language sometimes bares the same technocratic opaqueness which I would argue obscures a better understanding of the debate.

For example, leading to his summary:

"Empowering the collective does not empower individuals — just the reverse is true. There can be useful feedback loops set up between individuals and the hive mind, but the hive mind is too chaotic to be fed back into itself."

I realise the term "feedback loop" is an applicable simile when discussing communication, but it's disconcerting when a term normally applied to specialty occupations - namely, software programming and audio engineering - should somehow become the standard upon which we seek to inspire a better world. Is this not, to some extent, asking a less-predictable society to be like a more-predictable tool?

Please read the essay for yourself and feel free to share your feedback in the comments section.

Please note: there is a discourse on the essay on the edge.org site here.

1. From their site: "Edge Foundation, Inc., was established in 1988 as an outgrowth of a group known as The Reality Club. Its informal membership includes of some of the most interesting minds in the world. The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society."

2. There is no official site for "Linux" (outside of linux.org, which looks exactly as it was when first uploaded many, many years ago...and no this is not a compliment). The link I provided goes to Ubuntu, which is the flavour of Linux I use at home. There are others.

Jacksonville, Florida

I will be going to Jacksonville, Florida in August. If anyone can suggest anything reasonably cool to do while I'm visiting (art, life, vibe sorta stuff) please let me know.

I've been there before, so I already have some impressions.

Perhaps not the world's most exciting spot, but I'm willing to believe that I've been blinded by bland insurance company skyscrapers and haven't truly seen what is there to behold (if only to find a place to drink and chill).

Any guidance is appreciated.

Photo: Bellwoods Place #15

Comment: There is nothing inherently masturbatory about film

Eric Bogosian wrote in 1995 :

It's a truism to say that movies, TV and canned music are all dead media. In fact, they are machine-made. Might as well have electrodes sunk into my gray matter as a pair of headphones and some house music. Now, don't get me wrong. I like a blasting boom-box as much as I love jerking off and I'd be sad if I couldn't slink into a refrigerated movie theater in the middle of a hot, stinking New York afternoon and sedate my self with greasey [sic] salted corn while watching illuminated photos of people killing each other.

But it's all dead. Which is to say, un-unique. Every one the same as the other. The movie (or TV show or record) is the same whether I'm there or not. That's why it's like porno as opposed to sex. Good theater is like having sex. It's different depending on who you're with.

I originally read this in a newspaper article, though paraphrased more succinctly: theatre is like sex while film is like masturbation.

So as to not give the impression that I've withheld a decade's worth of disagreement, this is not the first time a theatre actor has publicly pissed on filmmaking (in general, no less) whilst implying theatre as sacrosanct. More recently, a local theatre actor with a sizeable list of TV/film roles had done the same in a local weekly. And every time someone takes this approach it's hard not to view them as precious ideologues.

Arguments like this are easy to make, especially when you opt to side-step the reality of that which you are criticizing. To be fair (some may say too fair), I like to think Bogosian was championing theatre (specifically New York's scene) as opposed to condemning film, seeing as he was distressed at the brain-drain occurring at the time (and I'm sure continuing to this day).

The truth is that there is nothing inherently masturbatory about film or filmmaking, or at the very least the threshold is no greater than in - dare I say it - theatre. If I may borrow Bogosian's turn of phrase, it's a truism that there is more to filmmaking than the inflated mediocrity we see passing through our cinemas on their way to the DVD shelf. How difficult would it be for anyone to use the same argument about theatre: Mama Mia, anyone? Is it fair to base an argument about theatre on Tarzan? Truth is, every artistic medium has its share of sequined fluff and it is patently unfair to point to the worst (or, in the case of LA, the home of the worst) for validation. It's an argument which ignores the power (abetted, I argue, by actors also) of such a wide array and long history of great filmmaking that tallying a list (as I've attempted for the last 20 minutes) seems as asinine as Bogosian's comment.

Every artist works with the bells of his pursuit's downfall ringing in the background. This is part of the very thing which pushes artists to do their best work: namely, being pissed-off (or, depending upon your local caste system, "outraged"). Being pissed-off gives us the plays, films, and yes - television - we as a society need to have around us (if not to watch). So, if Bogosian was simply sounding a pro-theatre rallying cry, I can understand. What I can't understand is when reasonably intelligent people denigrate perfectly analogous pursuits for sake of expressing their petty love of another.

Photo: Bellwoods Place #13