Archive for January, 2008
Online Identities: Where Fake is the Real
Posted by Nav in Uncategorized on January 30, 2008
What if people are doing more than just escaping when they create and inhabit new personalities online?
One of the most difficult and ambivalent aspects of online life is the uncertainty of whether people are anything like the projections they create for themselves on blogs, Facebook profiles or in virtual worlds like Second Life. There is something simultaneously optimistic and disconcerting about the fact that people are able to reinvent themselves on the web, choosing to either imagine better versions of themselves or produce entirely different personas. Inevitably, we are left asking the tricky question: online, how are we to know what someone is really like?
Traditionally, the answer to that question has always been… well, you can’t. After all, even if you were to meet an ‘internet friend’ in person how would you know, for example, that the grizzled biker before you doesn’t actually ‘feel like’ the fairy avatar he chose for himself in Second Life? You probably couldn’t; how might you, to use a slightly trite phrase, ‘see into his soul’? But even in that obvious example, there’s something interesting in the disparity between who people ‘really’ are in their day-to-day lives and who they are online. Why do some people choose identities that are so radically different from their regular ones?
To me the useful thing here is the idea of fantasy and its place in our lives. What would it mean that a petite, skinny Japanese woman might choose a tall, voluptuous blond avatar? Or that a shy, diffident teenager might project a bombastic, arrogant personality online? Or that a man might ‘become’ a woman or vice versa? Perhaps the invention of online identities is not only a delusion or an escape, but is also an expression of some hidden or unconscious desire to be that which one is not. When Second Life avatars have such ‘unrealistic’ proportions, with users choosing ridiculously sized sexual organs or even non-human characteristics, what might they be trying to express through the fantasy of the virtual?
It seems that in all the silliness and dress-up, something quite profound is being said quite deliberately. That someone ‘gets a kick’ out of online gender-bending or sexual experimentation suggests that the virtual sphere is a place to play out those things that one cannot in real life but that exist in oneself nonetheless. There is no purpose in getting bogged down on which is ‘more real’ – it’s the very ‘unrealistic’ manifestations that are important. Online, you can ‘be’ who you can’t in life, can play out the unconscious forces that produce so much of what we do. The fake becomes the real: when we create a cartoon-ish image of ourselves, perhaps we are overemphasising and exaggerating the very things that we wish we could be and do in real life.
[Update]: It occurred to me after I wrote this post that, well, these aren’t entirely my ideas. They came from discussions I’ve had with a friend who I’m sure would prefer to remain anonymous. He’s much smarter than me though, so if we’re lucky he’ll write a comment elucidating or challenging what I’ve said.
‘Influentials’ and ‘The Tipping Point’ Aren’t Dead Yet. Here’s Why.
Posted by Nav in Uncategorized on January 29, 2008
Duncan Watts’ argues that it is social conditions and not hipsters that determine trends. But despite his brilliance, Watts has yet to ask the crucial question: who or what creates ‘social conditions’?
There has been a lot of buzz today surrounding the release of Fastcompany’s article on Duncan Watts and his new theory of how trends disseminate through society. It is being characterised as a sharp reaction to Gladwell’s notion of the Tipping Point and Keller’s ‘Influentials’ theory. Whereas those two argue that trends operate in society like infections that start with a few, key carriers able to influence people, Watts suggests that trends are far more random – that their success has more to do with the conditions of their spreading that who does the spreading itself. From the article:
“Perhaps the problem with viral marketing is that the disease metaphor is misleading. Watts thinks trends are more like forest fires: There are thousands a year, but only a few become roaring monsters. That’s because in those rare situations, the landscape was ripe: sparse rain, dry woods, badly equipped fire departments. If these conditions exist, any old match will do. “And nobody,” Watts says wryly, “will go around talking about the exceptional properties of the spark that started the fire.”
It’s brilliant, paradigm-shifting stuff and I love it for its refusal to deny the maddening, almost anarchic complexity of modern social systems. What Watts pays particular attention to is the lack of data on interactions between ‘influentials’ and the people they influence. When he asks how exactly do people influence others, people are left gasping for answers and I think that insistence on concrete evidence is great. But the difficulty I have with Watts is the relative fluidity of how he uses the term ‘social conditions’. If Watts argues that social trends are generally quite random and respond to particular social contexts, we would do well to ask what historical, economic and social conditions produce those contexts?
It seems there is something to be said for positive feedback loops. Look at my favourite example of the iPod: how can we characterise its rise? If we take Watts to heart and diminish the idea of hipster influence, what then paved the way for the wildfire that was and is iPod-mania? Well, one factor would be the increasing cultural import placed on technology as a marker of success – the now well-known transition of tech from domain of the geek to domain of the cool kid – what I always call techno-fetishism (sorry, been reading Freud). Second was the broad proliferation of musical genres and tastes: the iPod’s massive capacity meant all of those genres that were previously distinct were now aesthetically and literally all together at the same place. Tech had created new forms of music and tech was also the new home for them. But I think the thing we need to look out is what broader systems in society disseminated these ideas through society. What is key here is not the popularity of the iPod; rather, it is the propagation of the system of values that facilitated and led to the explosion of the iPod. Hipsters may have not controlled the iPod phenomenon – but they may have had a hand in popularizing the values that made the iPod seem so cool.
So even though Watts suggests trends are too complex to pin down to a few, influential people, I still think the tipping point model has value here, specifically in why people start to desire certain things. Often it is because they are trying to either become or emulate particular models of success or savviness – I desire an iPhone or a hot body because people who appear to ‘have it all’ have those things. And who dictates those ideals? Representations of ‘ideal people’ in the public sphere – celebrities, hipsters, tastemakers – basically, people with cultural capital to burn. No, they don’t create ‘trends’ per se – what they do is encourage the value systems that allow for the dissemination of particular trends.
Gov’t Funded Journalism: Not As Crazy As It Sounds?
Posted by Nav in Uncategorized on January 26, 2008
If freedom of the press is vital, should the market determine what form of journalism prospers?
This much we can be assured of: for most tech bloggers and journalists, government intervention is about as popular as an endoscopy or Windows Vista. So it is hardly surprising to read the reaction to Columbia University president Lee Bollinger’s remarks that we should consider government funding of long-form journalism.
Mathew Ingram suggests that this amounts to a hand-out and a step to unnecessarily sustain an outdated business model, and I think that pretty much sums up the tech blogosphere’s reaction. So fine – what’s being argued is that the market is changing in response to the new cultural conditions of the web and that there is no need to preserve the past. But Michael Arrington’s response goes a step further and links the argument to free speech – that you cannot have the powers-that-be controlling the dissemination of information through society or imposing a particular form of speech when the public doesn’t want it. Fair enough right?
But let’s be a little skeptical – hopefully without descending into leftist paranoia. What is interesting to me are the three articles of faith that underpin Arrington and Ingram’s unease: 1) first, that the press operates as an ideological counterbalance to the government, something that is not as clear-cut as it appears; 2) that freedom of speech is at stake when the government sponsors the press but, curiously, is not so when that sponsor is a business entity; 3) and that the market is the best criterion to determine what form of journalism should prosper.
It is not difficult to point out numerous moments when the press reigned in the government and this is inarguably a good thing. But why is it that government sponsored media is a threat to free speech but that media supported by large corporations – some of whom have annual revenues larger than Canada’s GDP – is not? Given the amount of power held by large corporations, I think we would want balances on their influence too. And what of the effects of a market-driven response to journalism, particularly the long-form kind? It seems that what’s being dressed up in fancy language is that news should sell – if it doesn’t, its social import is of lesser importance. But I would argue that long-form journalism – the sort that engages broad, complex, difficult questions – needs to exist even if it is unpopular. It is vital that somebody think about the news instead of only reporting it.
And isn’t this the advantage of publicly funded media – that it can be assigned a budget and then act ‘in the pubic interest’? I’m not suggesting that state-run media is a solution to all our problems. But to me it seems that if we are looking for checks and balances in media, a mix of both privately- and publicly-funded media is a step in the right direction. Marketability cannot be the only criterion by which we determine what sort of journalism is popular. A journalist’s responsibility is not only to report the news but also to critique and analyse the contemporary situation. If journalism is a business like any other then how can it do anything but be caught up in economics and ideas of business? While governments are hardly ‘neutral’, their benefit is that they do not have to always be concerned with profit and marketability. There is, on rare occasion, a space for more than just money.
The solution, I think, is to make public news sites and companies the home of long-form journalism. Sustain the CBC, BBC and institutions like them with soap-operas, reality tv and music shows – do whatever you have to do to create a space for critique that isn’t owned by Disney or GE. While Mr. Ingram suggests that “if people want long-form, investigative journalism then I assume they will indicate that desire in the traditional way: by reading it, and in some cases even paying for it”, I think abandoning the dissemination of information to the market is akin to asking business interests to dictate the flow of information through society. To wit, just because people don’t want it, doesn’t mean they don’t need it.
Weekend Scrawl: A Poignant Game, Supercilious Graffiti, Blurry Sex and More.
Posted by Nav in Uncategorized on January 25, 2008
I know, I know – a link list? Why bother when others do it so much better? Well, I’m trying to keep some momentum going – and not everything fits in my ‘technology/pop culture’ schtick. So, without further ado:
Can we put the ‘games as art’ debate to rest now? Passage, a brilliant little game that pushes the boundaries of what games can do gets a write up in the WSJ. What’s so great about it is that it could only be done as a game. I’m not going to ruin it for you though: play the game itself here. [via]
What’s better than regular graffiti? Graffiti that reminds others of just how pathetic their lives are. Though I feel I’m well past condemning people for having to work 9-to-5 jobs, this still really made me laugh.
Hate self-referential, postmodern word fuckery? Don’t read this. Because it’s awesome.
You know how photography never captures the energy of sex or its weird ‘in-but-not-in-time-ness’? This is the best attempt I’ve seen.
The ostensible point of academics is a sort of trickle down economy of ideas right? Yeah, turns out that it works about as well as Reagan’s financial theory – at least at until someone steps up (I’m trying dammit!).
How much worse can reality TV get? This much worse.
Remember that NYT story about how tuna is loaded with mercury and is going to abduct your children? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
We will return to our regularly scheduled verbose wanking soon.
Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Lost
Posted by Nav in Uncategorized on January 23, 2008
The Wire be damned! Why J.J. Abrams creation is the TV show of our time.
In anticipation of tomorrow’s next week’s season premiere, here, in no particular order, are the reasons Lost will teach you everything you need to know. (Yes there will be spoilers.)
1) Power doesn’t say ‘No’. It asks you to say ‘Yes’:
“Jack: You want me to help you?
Ben: No, Jack. I want you to want to help me.”
Ben and ‘the Others’ are masters of manipulation. Rather than forceful ‘conversion’, they work on people’s vulnerabilities and fears to coax them to behave in particular ways. In John Locke they find a willing accomplice – but not because they coerce him into joining them. It’s because he is made to believe it is in his best interest to do so. This is exactly how power works in society – it is far more effective to convince someone that ‘this is good for you’ rather than telling them that this is what you must do. Repression always fails because people rebel; beckoning someone to consent is always the best method of control.
2) We never escape our past: TV shows, particularly in America, are notorious for showing how people overcome their past to forge a new future. I call ‘em “transcendence narratives”. Every happy ending – of the ex-con gone good or she who was lost now being found – always misses out on the hard stuff of rebuilding a life and the constant back-and-forth of ‘escaping your old self’. From Jack’s obsessiveness to Mr. Eko’s guilt to Sawyer’s emptiness after killing Locke’s father, no character gets a fresh start on the island. Even Locke, who miraculously walks again, struggles immensely with betrayal by his father. No-one just walks away from who they were – they only learn how to confront it or deal with it, and even then, it never fully goes away.
3) There is no ‘state of nature’: From Hurley’s status as ‘the fat guy’ to the isolation of Korean-speaking Jin to Jack’s “I’m a doctor” leadership, social stratifications don’t disappear, they just get morphed and transformed on the island. There is no “pure state” – social dynamics and power relations never disappear.
4) Evangeline Lily is ridiculously, insanely hot: Wait, what? How did that get in here?
5) People’s actions are as determined by their circumstances as by their characters: There is no way in hell Jack would have let Sayid, Bernard and Jin die in another ‘normal’ situation (Even though they live, Jack believed them shot). It is only the insane conditions brought on by the island and the Others that force him to act that way. This could be applied to other characters too – Sayid, Locke, Kate, Charlie, anyone really. Lost lays bare the myth that we always control our own actions because it so clearly shows that actions only happen in reaction to something, not in a vacuum.
6) People will have sex at the weirdest – and thus most appropriate times: See Sawyer and Kate. ‘Nuff said. You could also, if you wanted, make some point about sex being the ultimate form of human connection – but that would be just silly.
7) There is no such thing as a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ person: No-one on the island is free of some crime. Everyone has done something wrong and everyone has done something right. The ambiguity of Lost – its refusal to box people in, whether Juliet, Kate or Charlie – is its greatest and most honest triumph. This, perhaps more than any other reason is why Lost is the show for the uncertain and morally ambiguous 2000′s.
If you would like to disagree – you shouldn’t. 
If you insist though, hit the comments and let me know what you think.
News Flash: The Internet Can Bring People Together!
Posted by Nav in Uncategorized on January 21, 2008
For every inspiring web proselytizer you come across, there are ten miserable sods who claim the internet will be the death of us all. Perhaps the most consistent bugaboo trotted out is that the Web will reduce us all to techno-hermits, glued to glowing screens and forgoing all human contact. The internet, according to its naysayers, is so utterly compelling, rewarding and addictive that people shall never leave the house again and will instead spend their lives refreshing their RSS feeds rather than going out to the pub, meeting someone and getting laid… It is, frankly, the end of civilisation as we know it. So fine, I’m being a bit dismissive. But to at least try and be fair, the fears that underpin this ‘ludditism’ aren’t entirely irrational. They are, I think, rooted in a growing sense of alienation and solitude as more and more people live in large cities, in massive apartment buildings and spend more and more time working. The diagnosis may be wrong – but the symptoms are very real.
Thankfully, Wired’s recent coverage of a Harvard study on online communication and its effect on the face-to-face kind suggests that geeks who always felt such fears misplaced were, in fact, right. The article argues that online communication, far from becoming a sphere unto itself, works in tandem with physical, interpersonal interaction. Most compelling is the argument about electronic mail – “that email’s real value isn’t in communicating with Kuala Lumpur but with Betsy in the next cubicle” such that “the most productive workers have the densest intracompany email web”. Far from a distraction for bored teenagers, email and things like it make people productive. The point is that electronic communication is not, as so many fear, a replacement for human interaction. It is a supplement, a method of plowing through the minutiae of day-to-day interaction, avoiding the constant interruptions of popping over to see someone, so that when you do get to the pub (or boardroom) you can talk about important things and social issues rather than the details you need to catch up on.
And think about it – are you out with your friends less or more since you got on Facebook? Do you feel more or less a part of a community since the advent of message boards and blogs? And as the article points out, why is the tech industry – in which tech use is tautologically at its highest – so dependent on geography? Wasn’t the Web supposed to smash physical boundaries? No – no it wasn’t. Because people use the internet to connect with each other in their real lives, not some mythical ‘virtual’ one – as if there ever was such a thing. There is no substitute for being around other humans. And while there are bigger questions to ask – about how what we do online may contribute to the same system that might cause alienation and solitude – at least now we have some proof that, if alienation is a problem, then ‘the internet’ is not to blame.
Facebook and the Future of Capitalism
Posted by Nav in Uncategorized on January 18, 2008
The next phase of capitalism? The commodification of human relationships. A revealing piece in the Guardian raises serious questions about complicity, resistance and the future of ad-supported content.
I have always found conspiracy theories distasteful. To me, they have always seemed like an attempt to evade the complexity of wide-scale issues, reducing a difficult problem such as poverty to the evil conniving of a few men ensconced in an office tower. That said, there is something remarkably troubling about Tom Hodgkinson’s stunning (if slightly paranoid) piece on Facebook in the Guardian this week.
In it, Hodgkinson digs into the ideological leanings of the VC’s behind Facebook’s meteoric rise. Most significant among them is Peter Thiel, a prominent right-wing investor who also spearheaded the growth of PayPal. Thiel, who is unsurprisingly in favour of a small-government free market approach, has not only written a book condemning multiculturalism as something that limits personal freedom but has also characterised the next wave of capitalism as the monetizing of day-to-day activity; in much the same way PayPal creates a business out of grandmothers buying stuffed animals from each other off eBay, Thiel and Co. look to the commodification of human relationships as the next wave of capitalist growth. Social networks and media are, in this model, merely mechanisms for advertising delivery.
What we end up with is a potentially unconscious disconnect between what online services purport to do (“connect people”, “bring the world together”) and the ideologies that users may inadvertently support. While one can set up, for example, a pro-union or pro-minimum-wage Facebook group, the money made from the ad-supported model supports an ideology that is explicitly opposed to such ideas. The point here is that Facebook is many things at once: it is simultaneously innocuous and insidious; a potential platform for the political engagement of youth in which all activity ultimately supports one ideology and one ideology only; or a way for sequestered teens to connect while being bombarded with ads.
While this all might sound paranoid – and might very well be – it highlights the problems we will face as all online services, including music and video, increasingly move towards the ad-supported model. What are the implications of participating in Facebook if one is oppsed to Thiel et al’s political viewpoint? How complicit are users in propagating the politics of the owners of services they use? What are the issues surrounding disclosure? Should we be alerted to the ideological stances of services that posit themselves as ‘neutral’? Or should the onus be on users to choose services, the financing of which supports their own ideological concerns – a sort of new mode of ‘voting with your dollars’?
Fundamentally, the tricky question is that of resistance. It’s a tough question to ask in the tech blogosphere – as soon as you do, people will assume you are trying to suggest some kind of traditional Marxist revolution. As I have said before, criticism is unwelcome in the technology blogging community. But there are serious questions to ask – I wonder to what extent the ad-supported model isn’t something akin to a sort of ‘false consciousness’: that we spend our time doing genuine, ‘human’ things – connecting with others, playing games, making dates to meet-up – and in doing so propagate a particular sort of ideology that we may be personally opposed to. I mean seriously – how many people do you know who would be comfortable with the idea of ‘commodifying human relationships’? Not many I would bet. And yet, we may very well be doing exactly that.
These are not simple questions. Unfortunately, save perhaps the few gadflies like Nick Carr, no-one will ask them – the technosphere is so overwhelmingly committed to the concepts of the free market and a sort of apoliticism, no-one will even care; this will be written off as more technophobic clap-trap. For this reason, it is all the more disheartening to realise that Hodgkinson was not the one to write this piece – he descends into Keen-esque ludditism and attempts to dismiss the internet as a mere extension of other technologies rather than the radical epistemological shift it represents. When Hodgkinson responds to very idea of social networks by asking “what’s wrong with the pub?”, he falls into the classic mistake that online networks were meant to replace face-to-face connections. And his insistence that “Facebook actually isolates us at our workstations” sounds like the usual alarmist clap-trap that ignores the potential humanist core of a persistent network of communication.
But fortunately this does little to lessen the implications of Hodgkinson’s piece. What remains to be seen is whether anyone will actually listen. Hit the comments if you have any thoughts.
[Update]: Slate has a piece up looking at how Facebook’s reliance on its users is kinda’ makes it like the Ikea of the intertubes.
Macbook Air: Why Pretty Always Trumps Practical
Posted by Nav in Uncategorized on January 15, 2008
Yes, “form over function” – but it’s more complicated than just ‘people are superficial’.
So, it’s one of those days today – when the entire internet may as well have an ‘i’ in front of it or, to be less polite, when Steve Jobs receives one long, collective blow job. While iTunes HD rentals may be the announcement that has the most significant long-term effect, unsurprisingly it is the razor-thin Macbook Air that is getting the lion’s share of attention. The response has been interestingly mixed – even Gizmodo seems conflicted, with one post showcasing their trademark technofetishism (translation? “ooh, it’s so damn pretty”) while another condemns the Air for its lack of a replaceable battery or upgradability, calling them ‘fatal flaws’.
But the most interesting – and incendiary – post has come from Devin Coldewey at Techcrunch who has called the Macbook Air “basically useless“. The writer goes through a series of very practical criticisms – the proprietary ports, the lack of an optical drive and the slow CPU etc – and they are all very valid critiques. Trouble is, he totally misses the point. Coldewey is trying to suggest that people buy consumer goods like iPods and Macbooks purely out of a need for how they are used; they do not. It is precisely the ‘sexiness’ of the device – i.e. the desire it elicits in us – that creates its success. When Coldewey asks “What is losing that last half an inch doing aside from attracting stares?” what he refuses to understand is that the stares are the important thing. This is not about how ‘people are shallow’ – it is the difference between use value and exchange value. In most circumstances, there is in fact less use value to a Macbook Air than a regular Macbook – it can do less. But its exchange value – i.e. its worth to us as a cultural item rather than just a practical tool – is far higher, precisely because it “looks so damn cool”, because our friends want one and because owning one will be a marker of not only our savviness but also of our success.
Finally, if you want absolute confirmation that this is about so much more than just ‘technology’, just look at the Apple page for the Air. In reference to the development of the Air it says, and I quote, that “you don’t lose pounds and inches overnight”. They are, in effect, employing a contemporary discourse that links thinness to self-improvement to market the desirability of the Mac. And we want that right? I wanna’ be thin and constantly improving – who doesn’t? It’s brilliant – and, to me anyway, totally insidious and off-putting. It is, however, a perfect moment for understanding how contemporary culture fetishes technology and, in a way that is far more complex than it sounds, puts form in front of function.
Lo-Fi and the Aesthetics of Irony
Posted by Nav in Pop Culture on January 14, 2008
Alternate Title: Why Casiotone for the Painfully Alone Puts the Lie to Lo-Fi’s ‘Authenticity’.
It’s difficult to argue that irony is the dominant mode of expression in our time. From the resigned snarkiness of Gawker to the ubiquity of The Simpsons and The Family Guy, irony is seemingly everywhere. Its position in our culture is often seen as a product of a postmodern weariness – and wariness – of sincerity: that the breakdown of accepted truths during the 20th century has rendered detached irony the only ‘honest’ option when any commitment to truth starts to feel like what one might call ‘naive dogmatism’.
There are, however, pockets of resistance to the dominance of irony. Perhaps more than any other medium, in music one finds artists committed to sincerity and authenticity – to the ideas that meaning can still happen, that art can still affect people and that self-expression is more than just reconfiguring somebody else’s ideas. It is, I suppose, possible to conceive of a debate between the two ‘sides’: the ‘sincere’ could argue that art must still point out fundamental human truths in order to be relevant, while the ‘ironists’ might claim that art is only truthful when it lays bare its own artifice, its own inability to represent ‘truth’ in anything but a limited way.
I was thinking of this recently while listening to a lot of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone (yeah c’mon, like you’re surprised…). There is a remarkable appeal to synth player/singer Owen Ashworth’s lo-fi approach. The stories of alienated twenty-somethings and the insistence on a stripped-down aesthetic resonate loudly with the North American urban experience and listening to CFTPA, you almost imagine yourself unemployed and smoking while sitting in a damp basement apartment somewhere. But what especially intrigues me is why CFTPA’s music works so well: is it because it so sincerely captures the malaise of modern urban life? Or because it so soundly rejects the sheen and polish we associate with pop music, material success and mainstream culture?
The answer, I think, all depends on your approach to lo-fi. Traditionally, lo-fi (i.e. the opposite of hi-fi or ‘high fidelity’) was seen as a move towards authenticity, specifically as a rejection of the slickness and polish of seventies and eighties rock. Today, it continues to occupy that rebel spot, often in electronica like Casiotone and most frequently in indie rock and pop, perhaps most recently with Jacksonville foursome Black Kids. The wikipedia article on lo-fi sums things up pretty well: “Often lo-fi artists will record on old or poor recording equipment, ostensibly out of financial necessity but also due to the unique aural association such technologies have with “authenticity,” an association created in listeners by exposure to years of demo, bootleg, and field recordings”.
So the usual argument says that by stripping out production values and studio trickery, lo-fi is more authentic. But the wikipedia article quite cleverly points out the ‘aural association’ that lo-fi has – that it is the attachment to the ideas of poverty and the image of the struggling artists that give lo-fi its aura of authenticity. Context is thus everything: lo-fi does not represent a purer, truer form, but is instead a contingent reaction against over-production. In fact, you could argue that lo-fi is far from ‘authentic’ and that a polished, clean-sounding album does a far better job of ‘authentically’ reproducing a band’s sound.
But I would go a step further and argue that, rather than only a rejection of the aesthetics themselves, lo-fi is also a rejection of the sincerity that underpins the desire to make a ‘polished’ record. After all, what is more ‘sincere’ or ‘authentic’ to try and create a highly produced ‘Corgan-esque’ disc that ‘best represents a band’? It is not sincerity and authenticity that breeds lo-fi; it is the wariness of those very things. The sound of lo-fi, far from being more pure, insists upon itself as a recording, as a product of technology and it constantly points to its own artifice – the clicks, the fuzz and the muffled sound becoming markers of an ironic rejection of sincerity. Lo-fi has become the aesthetic manifestation of our generation’s approach to irony, our resistance against the attempt to produce the ‘perfect’ piece of art and it instead embraces the constantly self-effacing nature of irony. What lo-fi ultimately points to is the inability to ever capture a moment or sound or experience and in the giving up, it becomes liberating. And, if lo-fi continues to produce things like Casiotone for the Painfully Alone and its remarkable ability to connect with the zeitgeist of our time – then I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Gizmodo’s CES Prank: Has 60′s-Style Disobedience Come to Tech Blogging? [Updated]
Posted by Nav in Uncategorized on January 10, 2008
[Update]: So, I feel a little vindicated that Gizmodo chose to agree with my reading of their actions 
But reading the responses to Gizmodo’s post, I’d also like to point out that this is a reading of how this prank plays out as an idea – I’m trying to not judge Gizmodo’s actions in relation to ‘professionalism’ or ‘the tech field’.
Yes, it was dumb and juvenile. But was there more to it than a simple prank?
So, it seems that reigning tech-comedians Gizmodo are in all kinds of trouble since their CES throwing stick stunt boomeranged on them – sorry, I mean, their ‘turning TVs off prank‘ – and attracted the attention of Techmeme. If you haven’t heard yet, they carried around quasi-legal remotes and turned off TVs during company presentations. Calcanis and others seem enraged, while local tech guru (and all-around great guy) Mathew Ingram doesn’t see what the big deal is. The argument here is whether or not this was completely unprofessional behaviour or, like so many other acts of juvenile rebellion, an ill-thought-out idea rooted in some sincere dissatisfaction
It’s funny that this happened now, particularly since Gizmodo themselves wrote a takedown piece on CES
essentially condemning the inanity and pointlessness of the convention. And I have been thinking about this problem lately: of how we critique the very things we both love and are bound up in. For me personally, I am, on one hand, a tech blogger and do so because of a general fascination with both technology and its broad
er cultural ramifications. On the other, I am ‘Marxist’ grad student at a generally left-wing grad school – a place that has given me many tools for seeing the broader and darker side of the consumer goods industry, from the problems with its labour practices to the ideological context that sustains CE.
But one way to look at this is that Gizmodo’s prank was in fact the result of their takedown piece. Upon first read, Gizmodo’s critique of CES seems hypocritical. After all, the idiocy of corporate presentations and the idiocy of tech blogging are inherently linked. To actually use some o’ that Marxist terminology, the former is the material base, the latter the ideological superstructure. Okay fine, I don’t mean that literally, but you get the idea – there is a symbiotic relationship between those who produce tech and those who fetishise it. You cannot have a culture that is mad for everything tech – see the Wii or iPhone for examples – without an ideological context that sustains the desire for and perceived value of technology. You could argue that if Gizmodo really wanted to resist something like CES, they would resist the entire idea of techno-fetishism which, let’s face it, isn’t going to happen.
Instead, what they seem to be saying is “Yes, we are techno-fetishists! Now can you stop treating us like fucking idiots please?” – which, all things told, isn’t so bad really. My point here is that a broad critique of the consumer electronics industry would require the positing of an alternative to the entire industry – something neither I nor Gizmodo can do. One could argue that Gizmodo’s prank was a case of ‘changing the game from within’ – a sort of youthful rejection of the stupidity that dominates marketing-speak and the consumer goods industry in general. Naturally, I can’t get carried away too far: Gizmodo will continue to be a major player in sustaining the consumerist underpinnings of North America’s technology economy – to make no mention of their completely retarded perspective on feminism – all the while keeping in mind that this was just a stupid prank. Still, it’s interesting to see what could be read as a kind of disobedience here where new media is at least forcing established industries to respond to some of the issues at play in a nightmare like CES.
