Cloudculture, the internet wars and the sublimation of self
The launch event for Charles Leadbetter’s Cloudculture pamphlet at the ICA last night let loose a rain-shower of thoughts about individuality and ownership (disclosure: I haven’t read it yet).
Charlie’s theme was that we’re moving to a different kind of internet, that its shape would be determined by the “civil war” now raging between old and new media (Murdoch vs Google, Jobs versus the music industry) and between government (security, protection) and citizens (freedom of speech). His gist was that – and I’m paraphrasing wildly now – the outcome would be imprinted in the structure of intellectual property rights that emerges from the fight. The threat is that the battle ensnares the possibilities of creative collaboration, or that cloud capitalists are organising the future landscape to suit corporate and state purposes (I know some, and they are).
ICA director Ekow Eshun then joined in with a thesis on individuality and the self and ‘who owns the version of ourselves’ that exists in the cloud? “I say”, said Eshun, “it is not ourselves, instead we merge with others”. Hold that thought.
“So what’s the difference between the network and the cloud?” This was the first question from the audience and it was a good one because it helped pin down the dodgy metaphor of cloud (I could never think of the web as being ‘up there’). Leadbetter’s ironic references to the Information Superhighway aside: I said, the network connects together isolated personal computers and (some of) the information they store; the cloud is a set of tools that we can use, collectively, to manipulate and transport layer upon layer of information and data that it holds.
This raises problems (not really problems, but changes in nature) of authorship, ownership and self. We no longer generate individual work or own discrete cultural artifacts – this blog post might even attract a comment or two that isn’t mine (go on). For people with an old media sensibility its hard to let go of auteur theory and practice: our sense of self is wrapped up in what we make ourselves and attach our name to, and in the myth of individual genius that we learn at our mother’s knee. What we lose in individual recognition, though, we gain in a connected sense of self and a realistic understanding of the process of making as public and collaborative, not private. This is how Leadbetter’s and Eshun’s ideas come together as a new set of relationships between individuals and cultural artifacts and the society of makers (made by many).
In response to some #cloudculture tweeting about utopian and distopian visions of cloud computing futures I offer McLuhan’s tetrad, or resonating interval. The tetrad plots the points of change on a continuum of past, present and future, by giving a balanced framework for analysing the effects of technical change in terms of what is enhanced, what does it flip into (reverse) when pushed to an extreme, what does it obsolesce and what does it retrieve that was previously obsolesced.
Here’s my first take on a tetrad for cloud computing. Please consider, add to, change or takeaway:
Tetrad for cloud computing:
5 comments
It’s a big jump from abandoning individual intellectual property rights directly for a hive mind super intelligence. Doing it within a generation is stretching our capacity to cope, adjust and create workable alternatives and the publishing industry, for a start, is having a collective nervous breakdown.
To state the obvious: the bonus of the auteur model, (ego gratification and identity solidification aside), is that it gives a clear basis for rewarding creative effort and input into society. The hive mind principle only works if society is organised so that everyone automatically gets their needs for shelter etc met, funded by the society somehow.
As a writer who makes her living from the sale of her own words–difficult, unpredictable and flimsy a process as that is–I’m not ready to give up my ownership of those words, even though I can see the social benefits of random collaboration and free dissemination.
Was this mundane aspect addressed in the lecture? Can it be somehow included in the tetrad?
Hi Lara. Yes it’s a big jump if it all happens at once – which generally it won’t but in some places might. IP rights wont be abandoned entirely but they can’t last in their present form – they get in the way of creativity. Meanwhile I’m just looking at where we might be going, ultimately, not saying it’s all here now.
The auteur model is by definition individualistic or (as in the case of cinema) a misrepresentation of collective effort albeit driven by a singular ego. The gratification of ego and wallet is a problem until we can find more fragmentary ways of recognising contributions and new business models to reward them.
Already, for journalilsts for example, it’s possible to get direct access to audiences outside the context of an ever-shrinking traditionally capitalised mainstream media, but really hard to get paid. Spot.us is an example I really like of a new model for funding investigative journalism. The finance is crowdsourced, in this case, but the story is not.
(Question: Isn’t there some kind of rule about commenting on sibling’s blog posts?)
William are you busy.. how’s life… how are the children.. drop me an email… was wondering if you were short of work given UK is in recession .. if so maybe have something that would interest you
Dear Paolo, how lovely to hear from you. We’re not short of work I’m afraid, just the opposite, but if there’s anything fabulously well paid in the line of web services for hedge fund managers, you must give me a call. How’s the recession in Lugano? Are you bailing out Greece?
Well, I just liked the tetrad you designed and wondered if it could do with including the issue of ownership at the material level, perhaps in “reversal”. The loss of that direct relationship from words written to money earned, for example. How we gain that in the new cloudculture is, as you say, a gradual process demanding great creativity itself.
It seems to me that we are bungling in our efforts to create a new model head-on rather than by a slow process of default and retroactivity. But then, I read Publisher’s Lunch every day, a litany of angst over attempts to fairly sort out royalties from e-books, Google, Amazon etc etc. This confusion may just be the only way to muddle our way forward. The Creative Commons approach attempts to bypass the issue and while it is laudable in its intent it doesn’t answer the fundamental material dilemma caused by the digitisation of content. I don’t know Spot.us but will check it out. Thanks!