ideometric

It flopped in Korea, which probably means I’d like it. This is part of a Youtube rip.

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A new study is out measuring global purchasing power parity, revising old numbers used for economic comparison.

“The new numbers show global inequality to be significantly greater than even the most pessimistic authors had thought”

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I know I’m predictable but Daft Punk’s tron suits, their pyramid, control panels, the glowing orchestra behind them, and Kanye’s cyberpunkesque gear made me happy. style over substance aside.

Funny that Naver, a huge Yahoo style portal site in Korea, has a new “Simple Experience” that mimics Googles pared-down aesthetic.

Google, on the other hand, is using Flash buttons on their localized Google.co.kr site - the only Google country site that differs in style from their main US design.

I haven’t watched it yet, but it sounds like it could be good. It was only a matter of time for something like this, but these are professionals — I’m still waiting for some of the more popular Youtube directors to get a deal.

“NBC has concluded a first-of-its-kind deal to acquire the talked-about new Internet and social network series ‘Quarterlife’ for distribution as an hourlong drama series on the NBC network after it has first played in eight-minute segments on [myspace].”

Apparently the show centers around a character with a videoblog, and life in general for the Facebook generation. The episodes are already viewable online on the Quarterlife website — which doubles as a social network for “creatives.”

I don’t see the appeal 0f the web community angle, that market is kinda saturated already and it’d take a lot of innovation/creativity to make it successful. But it’s a nice thought…

Quarterlife website | Wikipedia entry | NYT article

Update: Haha, I still haven’t watched it, but apparently on its network TV debut, it had the lowest ratings of any new show in decades. Oh well.

I’ve never been a Mac fan. Proprietary systems and high prices are not cool. But now that you can run Windows on the new Intel based Macbooks, and given OSX’s Unix base, I am pretty much sold. The 2.5ghz core duo Macbook Pro is looking more and more appealing, especially as I type away on my 4 year old Dell.

Hamelink, C. (1986). Is there life after the information revolution? In M. Traber (Ed.), The Myth of the Information Revolution: Social and Ethical Implications of Communication Technology, pp. 7-20. London: Sage.

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I thought this was an interesting text, so here’s a short review for my own benefit in synthesizing its ideas and engaging my own for my thesis.

Hamelink critiques the narratives of human progress that arise from advances in technology (the industrial revolution, the information revolution). He refers to them as myths that ultimately serve to obscure the fact that little changes in the overall power structure of society. His point is that the utopian visions of an information society are uncritical, couched in terms that assume that technological advancement in and of itself is an unquestionable good for humanity.

To question this myth, he uses some obvious examples that many system or macro level analysts cite. 1.) Information tech is the perfect tool to “perpetuate a capitalist mode of production,” as evidenced in numerous ways by the growth of large TNCs. 2.) Information tech makes it easier for states, institutions, and bureaucracies to micromanage and extend regulation, invade privacy, etc. 3.) Information tech supports cultural homogenization, an “oligopolized leisure market,” and a whithering of autonomous culture.

Thus, Hamelink argues, the myth of the information society “is meant to cater to the interests of those who initiate and manage the ‘information revolution:’ the most powerful sectors of society, its central administrative elites, the military establishment and global industrial corporations,” holding little promise for the marginal, only that they will be “computer-controlled losers.”

While these are valid points, it seems to me that this macro perspective ignores whats happening “on the ground” - that networks made viable by dense, more affordable, and more pervasive communications technologies, are creating new sources of power that can challenge the powerful groups laid out in Hamelink’s critique above. More on this as I develop my thesis… back to Hamelink for now.

In opposition to the established information revolution myth, Hamelink proposes a counter-myth, and things get interesting. He talks about hierarchies and competition as integral (negative) aspects of the social system. Globalization and other factors have expanded competition, and in some sense hierarchies have been globalized as well. He speaks about this in terms of the domination of efficiency, rationality, and analytical thought; secularization, the devaluing of the search for meaning, and ultimately futility. Basically, I guess, touching in some respects on the problems with late-capitalism and/or postmodernity.

The counter-myth is one that stresses cooperation and “the joy and excitement of non-competitive” collaborative effort, and is aimed at restructuring the hierarchies that dominate society. The institutions and industries that are empowered by new ICTs have weaknesses that can be exploited — there is a disconnect between what they promise and what they deliver, they are locked in competition with each other for power and profit, and they are vulnerable by virtue of their size and reliance on networks of various types.

That immediately makes me think of present-day open-source oranization in all its various iterations. What’s more, Hamelink goes on to say that this counter-myth, or “heretical ethics” engages with these “dinosaurs” of the old social order through a “‘judo strategy’: exploiting, in a calculatd manner, the strength and weight of the opponent” such that the old hierarchies will fall under their own overextended weight. Asymmetric warfare, networks, open source… these ideas seem to be supported in the writing I’ve seen on netwar, 4GW (Arquilla & Ronfeldt) and John Robb’s global guerilla theory.

Hamelink’s articulation of an information society counter-myth seems like something of a reach. It’s kind of vague and all over the place, philosophical, speculative, fuzzy, etc. It lacks concrete details to ground it in reality. I think this is partly due to the date the paper was written. Nevertheless, I think the ideas touched on in this counter-myth are interesting and generally supported by events that have happened since the paper was written.

This text does a good job, for me, of encapsulating the two visions of information society’s potentials. Next on my agenda is to assemble some solid case studies to show and examine the real-world seeds of this counter-myth…