Clusters that Circulate Culture
After the Yochai Benkler talk at netpublics I was thinking about different architectures, idioms and metaphors to describe the circulation of culture that was not hierarchical and not an architecture that predisposed one to ethically challenging responses, like..big business shapes culture and defiance doesn't work. That sort of top-down architecture doesn't work very well for either explicating or creating sustainable/habitable near-future imaginaries. And the bottom-up one is more empowering, gives a voice to individual culture agents/hustlers of culture, but does not adequately always read the power dynamics in the hierarchy.
Thinking about, now, clusters/clouds, not hierarchies, of cultural production/circulation. Clouds of non-commercial production, some commercial production, and vectors by which these clusters/clouds circulate meaning, drift apart, gather bits from encounters and bumps, through their own motility (sorry how that Googles..it'll change..) dissipate, lie in wait, evaporate and re-circulate in revived (retro'd) form.
Mimi, Yochai and all the others at the dinner table deserve credit for discussing this.
Somewhere between the corporate tectonics and the bottom-up circulation/production of culture 2.0 is likely a more heterogenous geometry containing clouds that vector the dynamics of culture between and amongst all those (pretty much everyone who is a social being) who fab their social lives. Clusters of culture rather than hierarchies. Business practices are only one form of social practice, and no one practice can possibly determine another with such authority and certainty that either the bottom-up or the top-down hierarchical architecture holds up to strenuous argument.
Somewhat related to danah boyd's Friendster lost its steam, is MySpace just a fad essay and Abstract Dynamics TheirSpace essay.
Clusters that Circulate Culture
After the Yochai Benkler talk at netpublics I was thinking about different architectures, idioms and metaphors to describe the circulation of culture that was not hierarchical and not an architecture that predisposed one to ethically challenging responses, like..big business shapes culture and defiance doesn't work. That sort of top-down architecture doesn't work very well for either explicating or creating sustainable/habitable near-future imaginaries. And the bottom-up one is more empowering, gives a voice to individual culture agents/hustlers of culture, but does not adequately always read the power dynamics in the hierarchy.
Thinking about, now, clusters/clouds, not hierarchies, of cultural production/circulation. Clouds of non-commercial production, some commercial production, and vectors by which these clusters/clouds circulate meaning, drift apart, gather bits from encounters and bumps, through their own motility (sorry how that Googles..it'll change..) dissipate, lie in wait, evaporate and re-circulate in revived (retro'd) form.
Mimi, Yochai and all the others at the dinner table deserve credit for discussing this.
Somewhere between the corporate tectonics and the bottom-up circulation/production of culture 2.0 is likely a more heterogenous geometry containing clouds that vector the dynamics of culture between and amongst all those (pretty much everyone who is a social being) who fab their social lives. Clusters of culture rather than hierarchies. Business practices are only one form of social practice, and no one practice can possibly determine another with such authority and certainty that either the bottom-up or the top-down hierarchical architecture holds up to strenuous argument.
Somewhat related to danah boyd's Friendster lost its steam, is MySpace just a fad essay and Abstract Dynamics TheirSpace essay.