Sociology Author Key terms

QUESTIONS

1. In the transition from "interpersonal" interaction (of the kind Goffman wrote about) to on-line mediated exchange, how has the experience of "authentic" relationships been transformed? Have our expectations shifted in terms of desiring particular forms of communication? Do we grow accustomed to new standards for human interaction, thereby depressing any will to seek more interpersonal forms of contact. 2. Turkle outlines important dimensions of human sociability that become benchmarks for our receptivity to on-line communication/interaction: -empathy: experience 'caring' -emotional connection -reciprocity These dimensions determine whether new media platforms can induce use by people. Compare/Contrast these to Goffman's theory of performance as setting benchmarks for meaningful "interaction". 3. Question: Contrast Simmel, et. al.'s observations regarding adjustments individuals made to city/modern life with challenges adjusting to new media? -from traditional bonds that specified how sender-receiver connected... to stranger. -from in situ performance... to virtual (_____) ("friend", "follower,"...?)

Tim Wu

AT&T is the star of Wu's book, an intellectually ambitious history of modern communications. The organizing principle — only rarely overdrawn — is what Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, calls "the cycle." "History shows a typical progression of information technologies," he writes, "from somebody's hobby to somebody's industry; from jury-rigged contraption to slick production marvel; from a freely accessible channel to one strictly controlled by a single corporation or cartel — from open to closed system." Eventually, entrepreneurs or regulators smash apart the closed system, and the cycle begins anew. The story covers the history of phones, radio, television, movies and, finally, the Internet. All of these businesses are susceptible to the cycle because all depend on networks, whether they're composed of cables in the ground or movie theaters around the country. Once a company starts building such a network or gaining control over one, it begins slouching toward monopoly. If the government is not already deeply involved in the business by then (and it usually is), it soon will be. Wu argues that it has little choice. Not only are communications businesses particularly prone to consolidation, but the political effects are far greater than they would be in other industries. The book's title comes from a line by Fred Friendly, the longtime CBS News executive, in which he distinguished between free-speech laws and "exclusive custody of the master switch." They are two different things, but either has the ability to shape the flow of information. The same cannot be said, Wu notes, "of orange juice, heating oil, running shoes or dozens of other industries, no matter their size." Today may seem an odd time to be making this argument, given the online flowering of discourse, civil and otherwise. But Wu makes a good case that the Internet is vulnerable to the cycle. The world's computer network is ultimately a physical entity, onto which other forms of communication — film, telephone, television, radio — are starting to migrate. This is what media executives mean by "convergence." It seems likely to help big companies get even bigger, and arguably offers the potential for even tighter control of information than existed in the past. Wu's candidates for the AT&T of the future are Comcast (if its takeover of NBC-Universal succeeds), Google (if it decides to abandon its tradition of openness and instead tries to eliminate rivals) and some combination of AT&T itself and Apple. But he ponders this only briefly and acknowledges that it is too early to know. His most thought-provoking argument about the future may actually be the past. The similarities between radio and the Internet are particularly striking. Radio in the early 20th century was a scattering of amateur stations, started not for profit, but so its hobbyists would have a platform for their views and interests. Lee De Forest, a pioneer who ran a station in the Bronx, urged young people to listen so that in "the still night hours" they could "welcome friendly visitors from the whole wide world." Waldemar Kaempffert, the editor of Scientific American, proclaimed, "All these disconnected communities and houses will be united through radio as they were never united by the telegraph and telephone." Soon, however, radio's heterogeneity began to fade. In 1922, WEAF in New York, AT&T's flagship station, broadcast the first advertisement, for a leafy housing development in Queens. By 1926, AT&T had teamed up with the Radio Corporation of America to form a new radio network, the National Broadcasting Company. The station, at 660 AM, would become known as WNBC (and later as WFAN, the country's first radio station devoted to sports). AT&T and the radio manufacturers wanted radio to transform from hobby to big business, so they decided to fight back, publicly and in the courts, against a commerce secretary who had been protecting radio from what he called "advertising chatter." That commerce secretary was Herbert Hoover. A federal court eventually ruled that Hoover had no authority to assign radio frequencies, and NBC's network mushroomed. The cycle was under way. Wu wisely avoids magic-bullet solutions to the inevitable problems of the communications industry. Simply keeping government out of the business does not work, because the industry tends to form private monopolies if left alone. And having the government run the business, as England and other countries have tried, presents its own problems. The government itself is a monopolist and often behaves like one. Wu instead calls for constraining "all power that derives from the control of information." He writes, "If we believe in liberty, it must be freedom from both private and public coercion." In practice, this would mean that the Justice Department would have to adopt a broader definition of its antitrust powers, beyond its typical emphasis on competition's effect on prices. The longstanding Hollywood censorship code did not raise ticket prices, after all, but it did violate the country's ideals. Similarly, AT&T had the power to quash the answering machine, which, incredibly, a Bell Labs engineer invented in 1934. The "government's only proper role," Wu concludes, "is as a check on private power, never as an aid to it." It is a useful rule of thumb, even if not every choice breaks down quite so clearly. Wu previously popularized the phrase "net neutrality," an updated version of the old notion of "common carriage" in the telephone industry. The central idea, as with that of this book, is that market competition brings enormous benefits, but the market itself does not ensure competition — or, more broadly, desirable outcomes. This argument can be extended to the economic importance of communications, even if Wu's concern is more political. The businesses he describes have been some of the American economy's great global successes: Google, NBC, Paramount Pictures and many others. They were able to lead the way in part because they could take advantage of the fruits of this country's long tradition — now somewhat diminished — of government investment in basic scientific research that the private sector would never find profitable. The Internet, to take one example, may now be the world's communications network. But it started as a Defense Department project. As "The Master Switch" artfully shows, the government often has a role that no company will play on its own.

daniel bell

He argued that post-industrialism would be information-led and service-oriented. Bell also argued that the post-industrial society would replace the industrial society as the dominant system. There are three components to a post-industrial society, according to Bell: a shift from manufacturing to services the centrality of the new science-based industries the rise of new technical elites the advent of a new principle of stratification. Bell also conceptually differentiates between three aspects of the post-industrial society: data, or information describing the empirical world, information, or the organization of that data into meaningful systems and patterns such as statistical analysis, and knowledge, which Bell conceptualizes as the use of information to make judgments.

Jean Piaget

In the infant stage (birth to age two) children are just learning to recognize and interact with the environment and are thus completely egocentric. In the toddler and preschool stages (ages two to six) children are able to represent the world to themselves in symbols and images but are unable to distinguish their point of view from that of others. In the middle childhood stage (ages six to twelve) children develop greater cognitive abilities and therefore have declining levels of egocentrism and are able to visualize a situation from another's point of view. In the adolescent stage (ages twelve to nineteen) egocentrism further declines as individuals develop the ability for fully abstract thought and are thus able to analyze a situation from many perspectives.

specialization

Individuals become known for their particular place in economic order; the cultivation of their general interests are subjugated. As a result, in order that this most personal element be saved, extremities and peculiarities and individualizations must be produced and they must be over-exaggerated merely to be brought into the awareness even of the individual himself.

Lena

Jennifer Lena attempts to take on two of popular music's most regularly debated areas and get to the heart of the problems in previous scholarship. Given that academics working in different areas of popular music studies can barely agree on the difference between genres and styles, let alone subcultures, scenes and communities, she is arguably taking on something of a poisoned chalice. Her approach to these areas of debate has been to create a conceptual template in order to create data through which she attempts to show the relationships between community and genre and, perhaps more importantly, to demonstrate just how many similarities exist within the various genre communities. The result is an interesting, if at times rather frustrating, approach that ultimately unlocks two of the key problems with previous models. Taking the issue of communities first, Lena is able to challenge an underlying tenet of the study of music communities that has continued to hang on since subcultures first became an area of research interest. In such work, the music itself was considered to be secondary to style and of minimal importance to the debate; even to those outside the debate, this seemed more than a little strange when observing music-related movements such as punk. Certainly many academics have gone on to pull apart the early subculture work in their explorations of varying types of music scenes and tribes. However, the bonding aspect of music and the way that communities drive their associated musics has been largely under-discussed. As you might expect, discussion of genre (and style) has placed community as a bit player in the story of how music is brought together under collective music markers. One reason for this might be that communities are relatively fluid, while on the whole the models proposed for understanding genre have been quite rigid. And it is Lena's understanding of the fluidity of both community and genre, and of the reasons why some music styles gain mass popularity while others thrive in small niches, that makes this book an essential read. To support her investigation, the author draws on a vast array of examples from some 60 musical styles, ranging from death metal and hip hop to bluegrass and polka, in order to uncover a "shared grammar that allows us to understand the cultural language and evolution of popular music". Drawing on her own US-centric research, Lena proposes four dominant genre forms - avant-garde, scene-based, industry-based and traditionalist. She also argues for a fifth form, the "government-purposed genre", for territories outside the US including China, Serbia, Nigeria and Chile. Having identified these genre forms, Lena goes on to investigate the commonalties in each, including similar economic, ideological and aesthetic traits. What she uncovers is a creative momentum that all genres share when they face obstacles to their development, before revealing the ways in which communities collaborate around ideas in order to move past these hurdles. Ultimately she proposes that genre development takes on one of only two potential trajectories: they are either scene- or industry-based, and follow set patterns of growth and development as a result. The narrowness of this conclusion may be a little frustrating for scholars grappling with popular music that might challenge Lena's model, but in reality, the beauty of this work is the simplicity of its final proposition. Banding Together is an essential read for fans of popular music, thanks in no small part to Lena's wealth of music knowledge, as the book draws together the studies of music communities and music genres into a coherent whole. Whether or not you agree with her opening challenge to the importance of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's seminal hip hop track The Message, though, is another matter entirely.

specialization

On the other hand, Simmel describes the metropolis as a place of liberation from the binding mentality of the small community, thus granting the individual more space and freedom to independently define himself. Individuals become known for their particular place in economic order; the cultivation of their general interests are subjugated. As a result, in order that this most personal element be saved, extremities and peculiarities and individualizations must be produced and they must be over-exaggerated merely to be brought into the awareness even of the individual himself.

Clay Shirky

Our social tools remove older obstacles to public expression and thus remove the bottlenecks that characterized mass media. The result is the mass amateurization of efforts previously reserved for media professionals" The presence of the internet has had a profound effect on professions as we know them. With the internet allowing amateurs to produce material on their own, news and media professionals find their jobs in question. "Most professions exist because there is a scarce resource that requires ongoing management...," (57) but the internet has changed the way some professions are viewed. Much of this is accomplished without the use of professionals which, in turn, is lowering standards. The loss of professional control will be damaging for many of societies core institutions (73). People can publish whatever they want, which undoes the limitations that the press imposes. A story that the press might feel is unimportant can be found important by someone else and gets posted on the web. As a result of this posting, blogs get started and this "unimportant" event becomes much publicized on the web. The effortlessness of publishing provides many more outlets. This ease gets the word out online in hundreds of places and has an amplifying effect over the smaller professional outlets. This changes news from an "institutional prerogative to news as part of a communications ecosystem" (66). The "radical spread of expressive capabilities" (66) has resulted from mass amateurization.

Robert Merton

Robert Merton's theory is that society has determined that certain goals are acceptable, and that only certain means are acceptable to achieve these goals. For example, if society's approved goal is wealth, then the proper means to the goal (wealth) is to find a well paying job. Anomie (Durkheim's theory, discussed in his examination of suicide trends) is a state of "normlessness" in which a society or an individual is lacking structure. According to Merton, a person is in an anomic state if they approve of societies predetermined goals, but reject the means that society has deemed appropriate. This can happen if, for instance, an individual accepts the goal of wealth but is unable to find legitimate means (a job) so they turn to petty crime to make money instead.

Sherry Turkle

The first generation of children to grow up with electronic toys and games saw computers as their "nearest neighbors." They spoke of computers as rational machines and of people as emotional machines, a fragile formulation destined to be challenged. By the mid-1990s, computational creatures, including robots, were presenting themselves as "relational artifacts," beings with feelings and needs. One consequence of this development is a crisis in authenticity in many quarters. In an increasing number of situations, people behave as though they no longer privilege authentic emotion. This paper examines watershed moments in the history of human-machine interaction, focusing on the implications of relational artifacts for our collective perception of aliveness and for human-to-human relationships. For now, the exploration of human-robot encounters leads us to questions about the human purposes of believable digital companions that are evocative but not authentic. How have changing commun/media platforms affected capacity for humans to make meaningful relationships? Steps toward emotional embrace of robots: 1.Individuals see robots as "psychologically" alive viz. possessing a quasi-consciousness that is evidenced by their capacity to make a response. 2. Individual attachment becomes strong b/c children see robots as having capacity to express 'feeling' or opinion about them. 3.It was not the robot's capacity for "intelligence" but for "emotion" that made them gain empathy of humans Relational artifacts (objects): "a computational object explicitly designed to engage a user in a relationship. Question: Why do people prefer relational objects? "Relational artifacts have become evocative objects, objects that clarify our relationship to the world and ourselves. In recent years, they have made clear the degree to which people feel alone with each other. People's interest in them indicates that traditional notions of authenticity are in crisis." 1. Empathy: they "make people feel as though they are dealing with sentient creatures that care about their presence." 2. Reciprocity: "people who meet these objects feel a desire to nurture them. And with this desire comes the fantasy of reciprocation. People begin to care for these objects and want the objects to care for them." 3. Lack of judgment of individuals by robots. 4. Vulnerability: people can see that the robot could be destroyed or broken.

Adam Sternberg

This is an obituary for the generation gap. It is a story about 40-year-old men and women who look, talk, act, and dress like people who are 22 years old. It's not about a fad but about a phenomenon that looks to be permanent. A number of trends have nudged us in this direction, from the increasingly casual dress codes at work to the persistent marketing of counterculture "rebellion" as an easily attainable, catchall symbol for cool. So why would anyone dress up anymore? A suit says, My mother made me wear this to go to a bar mitzvah. The Grup outfit says, I'm so cool, and so damned good at what I do, I can wear whatever the hell I want. At least when I go out to brunch. Of course, when you're 40, with a regular paycheck, yet still want to resemble a rock star who resembles a garage mechanic, well, what's a guy to do? Status symbols still have their uses, especially in the world of clothes. And this is where the $200 ripped jeans come in. Or $450. Or $600. You want the tattered jeans, but you also want the world to know, I can afford the very best in tattered jeans. It's about a brave new world whose citizens are radically rethinking what it means to be a grown-up and whether being a grown-up still requires, you know, actually growing up. This generation is now, if you happen to be under 25, more interested in being stuck in your youth.

David Stark

What counts? In work, as in other areas of life, it is not always clear what standards we are being judged by or how our worth is being determined. This can be disorienting and disconcerting. Because of this, many organizations devote considerable resources to limiting and clarifying the logics used for evaluating worth. But as David Stark argues, firms would often be better off, especially in managing change, if they allowed multiple logics of worth and did not necessarily discourage uncertainty. In fact, in many cases multiple orders of worth are unavoidable, so organizations and firms should learn to harness the benefits of such "heterarchy" rather than seeking to purge it. In each case, the friction of competing criteria of worth promoted an organizational reflexivity that made it easier for the company to change and deal with market uncertainty. Drawing on John Dewey's notion that "perplexing situations" provide opportunities for innovative inquiry, Stark argues that the dissonance of diverse principles can lead to discovery.

Whyte

William Whyte's 1956 classic, The Organization Man is far too embedded culturally to be 'reviewed' today, even as a classic. Whyte's critical portrait of post World War II corporate America, and the suburban lifestyle it created, it is in fact an updated version of Weber's arguments, against what Whyte saw as a culture that had drifted much too far from the individualist, competitive and Darwinian ethos to which Weber attributed the growth of the West. Any book which creates an iconic cultural image will necessarily itself be reduced to caricature. In Whyte's case, his nuanced (if unsympathetic portrait) of his subject ended up reduced to a strawman collectivist figure, as in the 1984 Apple commercial. This book is not a plea for nonconformity. Such pleas have an occasional therapeutic value, but as an abstraction, nonconformity is an empty goal, and rebellion against prevailing opinion merely because it is prevailing should no more be praised than acquiescence to it. We'll consider Whyte's ideas in their original sophisticated forms, but you will need to make a conscious effort to think deeper than the default simplistic imagery associated with the phrase 'Organization Man'. The book rings very true and very current, which makes sense, since if we are right about cloudworker economics, we are seeing a partial return to a form of work that is a century old. A form of work whose loss Whyte was bemoaning, since he wrote about its antithetical form, the corporation, in its heyday. Whyte begins the book with an open declaration that while his project is a journalistic in nature, his own views are strongly unsympathetic towards the culture he is about to dissect. The setup begins with a compact definition. Whyte is setting up talk about a specific social ethic: By social ethic I mean that contemporary body of thought which makes morally legitimate the pressures of society against the individual. Its major propositions are three: a belief in the group as the source of creativity; a belief in "belongingness" as the ultimate need of the individual; and a belief in the application of science to achieve that belongingness. The specific ethic Whyte saw around him was a dreary sort of Utopian anti-individual collectivism. An ethic that represented lifelong and lifeless pre-adulthood and dependence on infantalizing nanny institutions (he calls suburbia the "dormitory" of the organization man). Whyte saw it as stultifying the creativity of all professions, not just corporate middle managers. To this ethos he attributed the bureaucratization of innovative potential and the professionalization of academe. the trend might well be very long-term, and that dependence on a counter-trend might be misplaced. In this, I believe Whyte was more right than we like to admit. But the organization man is still alive and well, and in the majority, even if the corporation is no longer playing Nanny. the commentary on the unique aspects of the American experience. observation that Americans do not like to admit their collectivist spirit is not new. Collectivism? He abhors it, and when he makes his ritualistic attack on Welfare Statism, it is in terms of a Protestant Ethic undefiled by change — the sacredness of property, the enervating effect of security, the virtues of thrift, of hard work and independence... He is not being hypocritical, only compulsive. He honestly wants to believe he follows the tenets he extols,

Media

a set of organizations tied together through creative relations and economic relations. do not anthropomorphize. media landscape is the sum of roles and relationships that change as media environment shifts. ex rise of newspaper creates columnist, or the rise of internet creates blogger, etc.

Bill Keller

aggregation- taking words by other people and posting them on your own website in order to make a profit. he complains that the media is self-referential and self-obsessed, and that the true journalism of today, such as the Arab spring uprising etc, are going largely under the wayside.

George Simmel

aspects of modern urban culture. the individual's position in the big city urban life and his psychological coping with its form of existence. the big city is dominated by objectivism (as opposed of subjectivism, with the individual at the center). Human interactions in the metropolis become short and instrumental, lacking the emotional and personal involvement of small communities. The city's inflation of sensory stimulus coerces man into being rational and instrumental in his social interactions, and he has to screen out much stimulus in order to psychologically be able to cope with its rate. People are enslaved to time, working under the clock. Everything in the city is measurable, qualitative value is reduced to quantitative and this yields what Simmel terms as "blasé" - superficiality, grayness, indifference and alienation.

Negroponte

being digital - Negroponte presents a strong belief that humanity is inevitably headed towards a future where everything that can will be digitalized. the book is made of "unwieldy atoms" that will probably be replaced by a digital copy by the time anyone reads the book Humans come to technology with set of expectations framed by our role as "consumers": We "receive" information that is made by content/media producers Expect media producers to have particular voices and identities Trust tied to consistency of voice; legitimacy tied to affiliated corporation (self-published also relevant) Digital brings new power to consumer Transform notion of consumer Transform the sender receiver model by introducing 2 new features All media are "bits" and can be CO-MINGLED Bits refer to other bits: SELF-REFERENTIAL and CUMULATIVE Consumer: secondary repackaging and co-mingling for customized exper. nature of customization now more complex interactive: two way experience possible Intelligence no longer follows hierarchical model (only) different forms of power -different ways of gaining legitimacy and authority w.r.t media and communication -consumer equally likely to prefer (and patronize) aggregator/dist. than producer Media as business/industry now open to new forms of competition -different kinds of private property created (power to co-mingle is an asset) -different kinds of consumer demand for info. and communication (faster, sillier) Proliferation of producers: consequences? -homogenization o content? -exaggerated personality? -ambiguity? do you know if she isan expert? do you know his statement is backed up by data? is this a commercial?

Clay Shirky

believes "the internet runs on love" to describe his belief that the utilization of group power is more than just the aggregation of individual action. he believes that "more is different" the power of the internet allows anyone witha computer to utilize its power and affect change in ways never before practical. insituti dilemma- the fact that insttitutions must spend resources in order to manage them. online tools allow people to bypass institutions and engage in activities that are present higher costs than the potential value" for instutitons Individual v. Society: modern media often lacks authorship. How does this impact our ability to create stable, effective social relationships? Structural Tension: Group behavior is a continuous regulatory challenge. -creation of expressive public spaces w/o correlate means of sanction/expulsion is historically unique -new media requires continuous creation of norms, rules and agreed-upon mechanisms for determination of membership and appropriateness of conduct 2. Does the "group", "crowd," etc. become a fetish for Shirky? As groups proliferate, do we ignore features of social relations: -equity -recourse -usurpation of power by select members?

Lessig

believes that copyright law has expanded in its power since 1974 -duration, concentration and integration of the media industry, For the first time in our tradition, the ordinary ways in which individuals create and share culture fall within the reach of the regulation of the law, which has expanded to draw within its control a vast amount of culture and creativity it never reached before." What are the optimal ways to ensure private ownership in new media landscape such that: Sufficient public access is guaranteed Protection of artistic rights are safeguarded Monopoly over ownership of communication channels does not result. To date government regulates all media communication channels, including the internet. Capacity of individuals to utilize past works is safeguarded (for quoting, art, public knowledge). Structural Tension: All claims for private use/appropriation threaten or compromise the freedom of creative expression and interaction. -constant lag btw innovative methods of transmitting information and systems of regulation -constant resistance by owners/regulators to disruptive means of sharing info. that threaten their authority. Structural Tension: W/new forms of sharing and interaction, social groups form that escape the authority & oversight of those managing their behavior. Media: information is a commodity bought, sold and exchanged Social roles and relationships develop, creating customs and norms. As groups rely on information, these norms become taken-for-granted and defended as "rights." -presumption: creativity builds on the past -presumption: creativity is an exercise of borrowing and transforming -presumption: creative freedom is the foundation for democratic society

Stuart Ewen

consumption couldn't be driven solely by need. Had to be driven by culture (status, identity, sense of belonging to American culture- maintain consumption to stay w/mainstream(Joneses)). modern business could not depend on "elite market." "excessiveness replaced thrift as a social value." -"It became imperative to invest the laborer with a financial power and psychic desire to consume." ADVERTISING was the way that the worker became turned into a consumer. "in the 1920s, advertising played a role of growing significance in industry's attempt to develop a continually responsive consumer market." ...became the equivalent of the modern factory. It was portrayed as "efficiently" creating the modern consumer. ...developed a language that was rooted in scientific understanding of the consumer; understood "basic instincts" of the consumer. ... developed an idea that talking up the virtues of the product would be a way to appeal to instincts of consumers. Ewen says that business tricked workers: Displace satisfaction from the job to joy outside the means of production. Shorter hours & Longer wages "consumerized" the worker. "The question of shorter hours was also tantamount to offering labor the chance to expand the consumer market. And yet the nation of chance like the notions of industrialized democracy and 'economic freedom' were subterfuges in so much as these alleged freedoms and choices meant merely a transformed version of capitalism's incessant need to mold a work force in its own image." 1. New forms of media always opportunity for mass to develop power & agency. -media typically arises out of spirit of small groups and collectives. -media fulfills the function of giving voice and creating local comm. By its very nature, early American radio was local, and hence the roots of 'localism' in broadcasting." 2. Citizens are not passive; had their own preferences and ideas. -citizens resist attempts to revoke media -citizens resist attempts to commercialize media; don't like advertising. QUESTION: How is the voice and collective power of citizens threatened by institutional powers? -Wu on radio -Lessig on internet -Johnson on popular culture 3. Government creates legislation favoring centralization of media (pro business). --idea of national conversation emerges -- idea of a national identity is created (imagined community=Benedict Anderson) the role of advertising in the development of the new world. It's only been a hundred years since the invention of mass production, which eventually required a culture of mass consumption to go along with it. What good is it to produce a billion widgets a day if there is no one to buy them? The result was the creation of the middle class, at least in America and Europe. Globalization is another matter - the growth of a middle class throughout the world is inevitable but lagging. The cultural implications are also interesting. Previously, people in our culture were raised to value craftsmanship, quality, and thrift. These values became unsuitable, and had to be replaced with acceptance of disposability and debt. Tradition was replaced by trends. Also, people had to be made perpetually dissatisfied with themselves and everything around them, so they could be made to buy things which promised fleeting satisfactions. The transformation has been so complete we are almost unaware of it. We take consumer culture so much for granted. Consider: Cultures used to have one book or central legend that lasted them for hundreds of years. Now every single day brings a new "Most Viewed" item on YouTube. Movies that lead the box office two weeks in a row are uncommon. A number one bestselling book or album spends only days at the top of the charts. This is clearly no sustainable economy! The acceleration of this process seems almost asymptotic. The most significant event in the future history of the world may not even be perceived by anyone, because it will only last for a fraction of a second.

Sherry Turkle

how much impact technology has had on the world today. she focuses on the sacrifices we have made in allowing technology to infiltrate our lives and make things more convenient and easy. most people are constantly checking their phones, when they are on the go and even when they are with their friends. it also affects a lot of people's daily routines, where people show up to work nowadays with their headphones on etc. they often prefer the phone to relate with their coworkers. the preference and understanding the value of interpersonal communication is diminishing.

Karl Marx

in his critique of capitalism, marx says that there is a fetishism of commodities, whereby we fetishize the commodity and alienate the worker. this is because we see the products of labor as being separate from the producer of the product. as a result, the proletariat is unable to achieve what Marx calls "species being", which is what he describes as the human path to happiness. this is because the upper class controls the means of production and reaps the benefits of the labors of the proletariat. commodity fetishism - where people attribute social relations or phenomena as being properties of and between objects or products. in other words, they attribute value to the objects themselves rather than paying attention to the amount of real labor that went into the production of the good. the new proletariat is the masses of people who use social media. the new labor power is the amount of work and time that people put into social media. the new capitalists are the people who own, profit from, and control social media. they profit from the labor power of the masses.

Authority and Legitimacy

media is a space that grants legitimacy and authority. is is a place in which claims of legitimacy and authority are made. new media redefines the opportunities for peole to gain power via media

reserve

mental attitudes of citizens are based on witholding true, deep responses. fleeting engagements predominate.

second self

new media allows us to create a second identity, we do not have to deal with the messiness and awkwardness associated with real conversation, we can make ourselves appear to others exactly as we want to. people, so deeply caught in the cleanliness and convenience of the technological bubble, are not only sacrificing their ability to engage in face-to-face conversation but have also forgotten its value. unlike in face-to-face conversation where we are more directly forced to "attend to tone and nuance [of voice]" (Turkle), online communication generally takes place through the exchange of text.

steven johnson

popular culture - in particular television programs and video games - has grown more complex and demanding over time and is improving the society within terms of intelligence and idea. Johnson challenges the precept that pop culture has deteriorated. He derives the term Sleeper Curve from the Woody Allen film Sleeper, where "scientists from 2173 are astounded that twentieth-century society failed to grasp the nutritional merits of cream pies and hot fudge" Johnson defends the value of modern pop culture. He argues that the appeal of video games is not through their (possibly violent or sexual) content, but rather through the fact that the "structure" of the video games uniquely invites exploration and stimulates the reward centers of the brain television is a "brilliant medium" for determining how skilled people are at understanding interpersonal connections, or their Autism Quotient (the higher a person's emotional intelligence, the lower their "AQ"),[6] and that reality shows in particular realistically display the complexity of "social network maps" in human relations, where a group of people have complex and intertwined engagement. modern television and films have reduced the number of "flashing arrows", narrative clues to help the audience understand the plot, and require audiences to do more cognitive work paying attention to background detail and information if they wish to follow what they are viewing.` "Think of it as a kind of positive brainwashing: the popular media steadily, but almost imperceptibly making our minds sharper, as we soak in entertainment usually dismissed as so much lowbrow stuff. I call this trend the Sleeper Curve." Presumptions: Upending established hierarchy of communication: elite platforms provide socially productive info.; popular culture denigrates mental faculties "For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a steadily declining path toward lowest common denominator standards, presumably bc "masses" want dumb, simple pleasures...But in fact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more intellectually demanding, not less." 2. Masses interacting with each can produce critical thinking (not just affirm status quo or depress creativity/innovation) 3. Argument for Sleeper Curve "comes out of the assumption that the landscape of pop culture involves clash of competing forces: neurological appetites of the brain, the economics of the culture industry, changing technological platforms." Interplay of techn. And social forces is at heart of productive energies (not tech alone) "certain kinds of environments encourage complexity, others discourage it." Perfect convergence of historical forces required to make techn. produce this effect.

Bernie Hogan

self-presentation can be split into performances, which take place in synchronous "situations," and artifacts, which take place in asynchronous "exhibitions." Social media, on the other hand, frequently employs exhibitions, such as lists of status updates and sets of photos, alongside situational activities, such as chatting. A key difference in exhibitions is the virtual "curator" that manages and redistributes this digital content. Hogan addresses this question through the Lowest Common Denominator Theory. The Lowest Common Denominator Theory explains that there are two groups of individuals we consider when presenting an online self: "those for whom we seek to present an idealized front and those who may find this front problematic" (Hogan 383). In other words, we consider those we would like to impress (friends, romantic interests, family, etc) along with those who might use the online self against us (bosses, co-workers, children, etc). In the end, the online self we present is the lowest common denominator between the two groups. "What can I display online," the individual might ask, "which would be acceptable both to my friends and to my boss?"

ambiguity

social media brings about ambiguity in social media and in personal interactions. it tricks people into thinking they are making a bigger impact than they actually are. it also negatively impacts our ability to get to know one another social activism: Gladwell points out that people are often tricked into believing that liking an activist Facebook page or following a certain Twitter account will somehow help in the effort to bring about political change. This not only means that they will not be inclined to do anything else, but it also allows the people to never have to take any kind of qualitative risk on behalf of the cause they believe in, thus hampering the chances of activism being truly effective.

Malcolm Gladwell

social networking has created weak ties that allow people to come together and collaborate effortlessly. in the past, people needed to create strong personal contacts in order to affect change. one effect of social media is that it now only requires people to put forth small and rather meaningless efforts to affect change, only enough that they will feel good about themselves and/or receive social praise. social media has no form of organization that is controlled or regulated, there's no real sense of authority, nothing truly gets done through social media.

ABC NEWS

that the time we spend on the Internet doesn't just cause us to have online alter egos. It influences who we become and how we interact with others when we're offline as well. As a psychiatrist, Aboujaoude said he sees many patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and the behavioral shifts brought about by Internet use. Society at large is becoming a more angry, uncivil place," he said, pointing to the violent rhetoric that preceded the recent tragedy in Tucson and the vitriol surrounding the health care law debates last summer. "We should ask ourselves if one reason we've become so uncivil is because of what we do online and how we act on our blogs and in our chat rooms he higher-order, instinct-policing superego "has gone AWOL."

Durkenheim

the breakdown of the influence of social norms on individuals within a society discusses how the division of labor is beneficial for society because it increases the reproductive capacity, the skill of the workman, and it creates a feeling of solidarity between people. The division of labor goes beyond economic interests; it also establishes social and moral order within a society. Mechanical solidarity - connects the individual to society without any intermediary. That is, society is organized collectively and all members of the group share the same beliefs. The bond that binds the individual to society is this collective conscious, this shared belief system. organic solidarity - society is a system of different functions that are united by definite relationships. Each individual must have a distinct job or action and a personality that is his or her own. Individuality grows as parts of society grow. Thus, society becomes more efficient at moving in sync, yet at the same time, each of its parts has more movements that are distinctly its own. the more primitive a society is, the more it is characterized by mechanical solidarity. The members of that society are more likely to resemble each other and share the same beliefs and morals. As societies becomes more advanced and civilized, the individual members of those societies start to become more unique and distinguishable from each other. Solidarity becomes more organic as these societies develop their divisions of labor. Durkheim also discusses law extensively in this book. To him, law is the most visible symbol of social solidarity and the organization of social life in its most precise and stable form. Law plays a part in society that is analogous to the nervous system in organisms, according to Durkheim. The nervous system regulates various body functions so they work together in harmony. Likewise, the legal system regulates all the parts of society so that they work together in agreement. Two types of law exist and each corresponds to a type of social solidarity. The first type of law, repressive law, imposes some type of punishment on the perpetrator. Repressive law corresponds to the 'center of common consciousness' and tends to stay diffused throughout society. Repressive law corresponds to the mechanical state of society. The second type of law is restitutive law, which does not necessarily imply any suffering on the part of the perpetrator, but rather tries to restore the relationships that were disturbed from their normal form by the crime that occurred. Restitutive law corresponds to the organic state of society and works through the more specialized bodies of society, such as the courts and lawyers. This also means that repressive law and restitutory law vary directly with the degree of a society's development. Repressive law is common in primitive, or mechanical, societies where sanctions for crimes are typically made across the whole community. In these lower societies, crimes against the individual are common, yet placed on the lower end of the penal ladder. Crimes against the community take priority because the evolution of the collective conscious is widespread and strong while the division of labor has not yet happened. The more a society becomes civilized and the division of labor is introduced, the more restitutory law takes place. Durkheim bases his discussion of organic solidarity on a dispute with Herber Spencer, who claimed that industrial solidarity is spontaneous and that there is no need for a coercive body to create or maintain it. Spencer believed that social harmony is simply established by itself and Durkheim disagrees. Much of this book, then, is Durkheim arguing with Spencer's stance and pleading his own views on the topic. Durkheim also spends some time discussing division of labor and how it is caused. To him, the division of labor is in direct proportion to the moral density of the society. This increase can happen in three ways: through an increase of the concentration of people spatially, through the growth of towns, or through an increase in the number and efficacy of the means of communication. When one or more of these things happen, labor starts to become divided because the struggle for existence becomes more strenuous.

george hulme

the mind of a hacker - When asked about their motives for hacking, nearly 100% say they hack for intellectual challenge, to increase knowledge, to learn about computers and computing, or to understand how things work. However, 14% cite attacking authority and the government among their motivations. And 7% say it's to attack capitalism, break the law, or become well-known. ome like to hack to test their skills and knowledge or just to outsmart an admin One teenage hacker complains that society and the media lump criminals, vandals, and virus writers in with young tech lovers who try to stay within the bounds of the law. "I try not to break the law

Jeff Howe

the rise of crowdsourcing "Crowdsourcing" is how the power of the many can be leveraged to accomplish feats that were once the responsibility of a specialized few. Jeff Howe reveals that the crowd is more than wise-it's talented, creative, and stunningly productive. It's also a perfect meritocracy, where age, gender, race, education, and job history no longer matter; the quality of the work is all that counts. If you can perform the service, design the product, or solve the problem, you've got the job. But crowdsourcing has also triggered a dramatic shift in the way work is organized, talent is employed, research is conducted, and products are made and marketed. As the crowd comes to supplant traditional forms of labor, pain and disruption are inevitable, and Howe delves into both the positive and negative consequences of this intriguing phenomenon. Through extensive reporting from the front lines of this workplace revolution, he employs a brilliant array of stories to look at the economic, cultural, business, and political implications of crowdsourcing.

Blase

unrelenting stimuli provokes deadened response, and leads to unauthentic interactions

Goffman

we interact in order to call forth a desired response. we are actors attempting to guide people towards a certain response. likewise, people view our actions and respond to them as actors. we also use our interactions as an opportunity to learn about others, thereby furthering our ability to elicit certain kidns of responses from them. 1. The distinction of two modes of communication - expressions we give and expressions we give e off. The former is the concretely intended and conscious form of expression, as epitomized by verbal communications using language. The latter is the non-verbal, presumably unintentional, form of communication that is not concretely expressed in speech but nevertheless have efficacy in communicating, consciously or unconsciously, some things about the person expressing it. It is important to keep in mind that, while the former is always intentional, the latter does not necessarily have to be unintentional in turn and, in fact, people are capable of manipulating them as well, which is the subject of the next introductory distinction Goffman makes. 2. The symmetry vs. the asymmetry of these two modes of expression. Symmetry occurs whenever there is a congruence between what these two modes of expressions communicate, asymmetry is whenever these two do not express same things. Thus, say, when a student who had been yawning all along a lecture, nevertheless says he had enjoyed the talk greatly, then there is an asymmetry in what these two modes of expressions communicate. Because people are capable of manipulating the latter, non-verbal mode of expression to a considerable degree, then there is a possibility for the type of information games to set in, Goffman notes. This may take the form of a cycle of "concealment, discovery, false revelation, and rediscovery", all of course geared to the goal of giving off as advantageous a set of impressions as possible. There is a different degree as to how much an individual believes that the expression one is putting up as social performance represents the true reality. At one extreme, a performer sincerely feels that whatever he/she is doing represents the true reality, at the other extreme the performer has no belief at all that his/her action stands for anything sincerely real. Say, if one finds no real meanings at all about the religious doctrines one nevertheless comports accordingly, then that situation is of the latter. This attitude often takes form in certain type of cynicism. Between these two extremes there are all kinds of different degrees as to how much actions are believed to be "real". Front - Front stands for the standardized expressive equipment that people use to define situations in a general and fixed way. Front is in turn divided into several components. First is the setting. This is the scenic, physical parts of expressive equipment, associated with certain spatial location. Next is the personal front, the other items of expressive equipment that their endowment to individuals are perceived to be very natural - such as size and looks, race, sex, speech patterns, etc. Further, Goffman makes the distinction between appearance and manner. Appearance is those aspects of individuals that tell of his/her social statuses. Manner is those aspects of communication that tell of others the type of interaction roles performers expect to play in a certain situation. In short, while the appearance is fairly changeless condition that signifies who we are, manner is how we want to be perceived of in a particular situation. This distinction is interesting, for while there is a tendency for the setting, appearance and manner to coincide, they do not necessarily have to. Sometimes there are discrepancies among those three - how we want to interact with others do not match with our appearances, or the settings we are in, and vice versa. Further, as remarked earlier this concept of front is somewhat similar to Berger & Luckmann's "objectivation". Consequently, the similarity is such that Goffman also perceives of front as the embodiment of generalized reality that can be applied to number of different situations (Although there is some difference between the two in that Goffman gives more attention to the conscious action of individuals to make use of these fronts). Thus, he notes that there is a tendency for a large number of different acts to employ same fronts. Once again, human actions are not done only for their own intrinsic sake in the presence of others, they are fundamentally social in nature. People typically, in the presence of others, "dramatize" what they are doing - highlighting and emphasizing those aspects of what they are doing they want to convey most. Some professions face no problem of this dramatization, as policemen, musicians, surgeons, etc. Other professions face a little more difficulty. This often leads to the dilemma of whether one should focus on doing whatever they are doing "for their own sake", or should one be concerned more about expressing what they are doing to others. 4. Idealization We saw that through "front" people tend to present objectified version of meanings. Meanwhile, idealization is another important socialization mechanism people commonly employ - that is, performers have tendency to offer observers impressions idealized in several different ways in social interaction. One aspect of this idealization that Goffman delves into with some details is the concealment of aspects of their lives performers do not want observers to see and, therefore systematically attempt to hide. Goffman specifically thinks up and lists five different ways people conceal their "secrets" in pp. 43 to 48. In opposite fashion, performers may also exaggerate that their actions, or relationships they have to others, are "special" and worthy of preferential attention. Thus, many of the social interactions rely on the feelings on the parts of participants that they are of special significance to each other - and people try to give impression to others that their relationship is specially important. 5. Maintenance of Expressive Control The management of impressions observers receive through the maintenance of expressions is such that it can be compared to a piece of art - in the sense even small mishap can disrupt the whole scheme and destroy the credibility of whole performance. The art of impression management is by its nature rather fragile. Goffman attributes this fragility to the fundamental discrepancy existing between "all-too-human selves" which are supposed to be volatile and impulsive, and our "socialized" selves (This somewhat naive assumption regarding human nature, though seems to be resting on a crude version of Freudian psychology, is one of the weaker argument in the work to me). 6. Misrepresentation Whether outright lying or more subtle form of misrepresentation, it can be said that since in a social setting people do not act for the sake of actions only but are concerned about their impression management, some form of misrepresentation is always likely to occur. However, what is "true", or what is "false", or what is "honest" and what is a "lie", are socially defined and cannot be defined in absolute terms. Therefore, the important point in this section is that it is not a sociologists' task to be concerned with the question of what is a misrepresentation in any absolute sense and what is not. Rather, a sociologist must focus on the question of, in what ways can the process of creating certain impressions be disrupted through the misrepresentation. 7. Mystification Mystification is a particular technique that may be employed to keep the observers at a sense of awe. Thus, the observers may be held in the state of mystified in regard to the performers. Maintenance of social distance, and regulation of contacts, are usually crucial if this process is to work successfully. 8. Reality and Contrivance Lastly, in this section Goffman argues against the tendency of the Western culture to characterize two types of actions in their relationship to "reality" in a dichotomous concept. One is the real performance, not contrived at all, naturally occurring as it is the unintentional and unconscious response to the conditions surrounding him/her. The other is the false, contrived performance, calculated, and is in no way a response to any specific conditions around him/her. Goffman argues that this dichotomous categorization obscures the scientific reality, and argues that there is no intrinsic or necessary relationship between appearance and reality. One can equally well manage their own impressions and thus, their own version of reality, by acting completely dishonestly or lying everything about oneself. So tacitly, Goffman takes us back to the starting point he shares with Berger and Luckmann, as well as symbolic interactionist tradition in general - that all reality is socially constructed. He ends this chapter by talking a bit about the nature of the socialization process of people - that people do not learn every single details of what they are supposed to do and comport in every specific situations, but learn just enough pieces of information to "fill in" the roles he/she may encounter. "We all act better than we know how" (p. 74), Goffman comments, yet he does not mention how this is made possible exactly - and in general this last argument is actually the most vague among all arguments in our assigned section.