Re: <nettime> Interactivity: Hicks responds to Hopkins, Stalder

[waz@easynet.co.uk]

Bram Dov Abramson wrote:

> Serge Proulx and Michel S=E9n=E9cal, who have an article
> called (in French) "Is Technical Interactivity a Mere Pretense of Social =
Interaction and Democracy?"=20

... and attack arguments which

>         "shift between the description of conditions considered
>         as necessary to technical interactivity and the mention
>         of new possible avenues for social interaction and the
>         democratization of communication.  These sociotechnical
>         arguments, however, seem to confuse the technical
>         mechanisms of interactivity between humans and machines with
>         the social mechanisms of interaction between individuals.
>         There is a danger here of propagating a technical-
>         cultural myth which recurs in the development of new
>         media technologies -- namely, the myth that the creation of
>         new systems of technical interactivity necessarily leads to
>         a greater democratization of social communication.  In this
>         article we propose some ideas toward a critique of the social
>         use of this notion of interactivity, and for the deconstruction
>         of this new contemporary myth."
>=20
> To which I'd add only: right on.  Interactive?  Yeah, of course.  So what=
?

So what? There is a danger here of propagating a technical-cultural
myth which recurs in the critiques of new media technologies -- namely
the myth that the construction of extremely long sentences necessarily
leads to a greater clarification of issues to hand.

Now, interactivity is shite and we all know it. The word does not belong
to us any more, where 'us' refers to people who actually spend any
significant degree of time online for one reason or another - this does
not usually include people who can take the idea of interactivity too
seriously. interface, yes. communication, yes. a general democratisation
of things, yes. games, sure. none of the things that are usually singled
out as being 'interactive' are in any way particularly different in
structure from things you do *all the time* when using a computer.

(so what? listen...)

if interactivity=3Dusing computers we can write, a la Serge Proulx and
Michel S=E9n=E9cal, of 'the myth that the creation of new systems of
technical computer use necessarily leads to a greater democratization of
social communication,' which translates as 'the myth that the internet
is necessarily a good thing'.

of course it isn't. of course systems and networks don't *necessarily*
lead to greater democracy. but if all the people who would be in a
position to try to help make sure that such systems *did* lead to good
things decided instead to sit around writing about how they probably
won't, then they definitely won't.

which doesn't seem very right on to me.

it isn't exactly news that some people do awful things with new media /
computing technologies. what operating system are you using?
cocacola.con. etc. er.. but there's a webful of non-commercial things
and a netful of list servers, bbs things and so on.. you know.. all that
stuff your computer does now you have a modem that it never did before.
you do know, dammit, you're using it right now, researching a paper
called Is Technical Interactivity a Mere Pretense of Social Interaction
and Democracy?

now, i haven't read Is Technical Interactivity a Mere Pretense of Social
Interaction and Democracy? but it annoys me from its very title, which
evokes whole sets of assumptions about the extent to which people who
are engaging in this aforementioned Mere Pretense of Social Interaction
and Democracy are in fact Merely Deluding Themselves.

it sounds like the article is confusing the set of people who are indeed
Merely Deluding Themselves, a set which includes people both online and
off, with the set of people who are interested in greater Social
Interaction and Democracy, a set which also includes people both online
and off, but which includes a greater proportion of people online than
the other lot, because the whole 'go and find out' structure of the set
of all information online is itself an example of Social Interaction and
Democracy that is not mirrored elsewhere - where, for example, local
public libraries are underfunded or where communications infrastructure
has not been put in place.=20

put simply - online you can find it if it's there and you know where to
look. you might do it and you might not, and the more you learn about
what is and what isn't around the better you are at finding stuff.
offline you know you won't find it. does this still hold, Proulx and
S=E9n=E9cal seem to wish to ask, when 'it' is an abstract thing like 'Socia=
l
Interaction and Democracy'? this would be a reasonable question to ask
where it not for the facts that 1) entirely new ways of social
interaction simply *are* now possible and 2) this many people have never
had this kind of access to the means of publication.

it is very clear that there are many places in the world where the
internet is not, and many places where the internet is from which it
will not do anything for anyone. but it still grows, and the potential
for further examples of greater Social Interaction and Democracy doesn't
go away. unless, of course, you believe that anyone who uses computers
is in some way, by definition, 'the enemy'. it isn't pretty when
techno-anti-intellectualism masquerades as misplaced class hatred, and
it certainly isn't going to lead to greater Social Interaction and
Democracy.

despite these slightly stronger-than-intended words, i am open to the
possibility that i have Merely Deluded Myself once again and that these
guys actually do know what they are talking about, in which case, as
ever, please let me know.

:)

wayne

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