media behavior: towards the transformation society

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MEDIA BEHAVIOUR: TOWARDS THE TRANSFORMATION SOCIETY Presentation by Ray Gallon Friday, 16 December 2011

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Presented at the "Consciousness Reframed" conference, Munich, November 2009. The Information Society is a model based on industrial thinking and collector's mentality. The nature of new media, however, and the fact that media systems have their own behavior, means that we must evolve from the Information Society to a Transformation Society. Transformation includes community actions across networked media systems, working to transform information into knowledge, and knowledge into understanding. Transformation means individual self actualization combined with community solidarity. It is built on a "technoethical" model for society.

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Page 1: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

MEDIA BEHAVIOUR: TOWARDS THE TRANSFORMATION SOCIETY

Presentation by Ray Gallon

Friday, 16 December 2011

Page 2: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

11 MARCH 2004 In the morning, multiple explosions resound in

commuter trains in Madrid’s Atocha station. The media are unclear as to how many explosions, or the number of casualties.

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Friday, 16 December 2011

Page 3: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

11 MARCH 2004

Headlines at Spanish newspaper websites

Sources:LOS CIBERMEDIOS ANTE LAS CATÁSTROFES: DEL 11S AL 11M -Dr. Ramón Salaverría, Universidad de NavarraLA ASSOCACIÓN PARA EL PROGRESSO DE LAS COMMUNICACIONES (Spain): www.apc.org

8:00am 9:00am

1:30pm 2:00pm

4:30pm

elmundo.es: “Massacre in Madrid

elmundo.es: “ETA Massacre in Madrid

All morning, Political spokespersons attribute the attack to ETA.

elpais.es: “ETA Slaughter in Madrid.”

garra.es – official site of a daily connected to Batasuna, the political wing of the Basque terrorist organisation – announces that a communiqué from Batasuna rejected responsibility for the attack, and therefore, implicitly, responsibility of ETA.

Between 8:00am and 3:00pm, the number of people connecting to an online news source is multiplied by 5 compared to a normal day.

the number of telephone calls from landlines to mobiles increased by 725%. The telephone network is in a state of collapse.Internet becomes “unstable” and many sites become totally saturated.

Friday, 16 December 2011

Page 4: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

12 MARS 2004 The Spanish government insists on ETA responsibility The editor-in-chief of El Pais admits, later, that President Aznar

called the media, pressured them to maintain this story. Media outside of Spain begin to note that the attack methodology

does not correspond to ETA’s usual practices. Spanish internauts start to read the truth on foreign media sites. Spanish internet community reacts with:

Postings in forums Blog posts SMS (text) messages: Tomás Delclós, journalist for El Pais, cites

an increase of 40% in the number of SMS messages in Spain between March 11 and the national elections on March 14.

Friday, 16 December 2011

Page 5: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

12 MARS 2004

Viral Communal cellular messaging spontaneously starts organizing demonstrations throughout Spain for the night of March 12.

The government, once it gets wind of this, attempts to co-opt the event by calling for a “silent demonstration against terrorism.”

That night, there are demonstrations throughout Spain, but not at all silent!

Barcelona is host to the largest demonstration in its entire history.

Government politicians are publicly condemned for lying and are heckled when they try to make an appearance.

Friday, 16 December 2011

Page 6: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

13 MARS 2004

During the day, it becomes increasingly obvious that the attack came from Al Qaida or a similar organisation, not ETA

The government continues to insist on ETA responsibility, with the subtlety that they admit there “might” be other possibilities.

That night, there are more communally organised anti-government demonstrations.

Friday, 16 December 2011

Page 7: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

14 MARS 2004

The Aznar government, slated by all the polls to win with an absolute (albeit reduced) majority, loses national elections to the socialist party of Spain.

A communal media system of people, internet and cell phones effectively brought down a government.

CLEARLY, IT IS NO LONGER POSSIBLE TO SPEAK OF INTERACTIVE MEDIA AS MERELY TOOLS.

Friday, 16 December 2011

Page 8: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

PEOPLE, HARDWARE, DATA & METADATA INTERACTING...

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Page 9: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

...IN A LIVING, BEHAVING NETWORK

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THE LARGEST LIVING ORGANISM IN THE WORLD IS A NETWORK - WITH 36000 SEXES!

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Page 11: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

NETWORKED DIVERSITY IS THE KEY TO SURVIVAL

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Biodiversity is evolution’s safety net In the case of humans, we have

eliminated diversity from our evolutionary line - there is only homo sapiens sapiens, a monoculture.

In human society, cultural diversity takes the place of biodiversity.

The variety of human cultures, networked together, is our safety net.

Friday, 16 December 2011

Page 12: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

Name:Date of Birth:

Nationality:Sexual Preference:

Political partyAnnual income:

Weaknesses:

2X + 376Y/

35M - (Y-7)*G3 +

R∜2 = ???? I think therefore I am

Based on accumulation of information

Search engines focus on ability to find unimaginable quantities of hierarchically ordered information

You can even accumulate « friends ». This can become a competition.

The Information Society – a Collector Mentality

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Friends!

Friday, 16 December 2011

Page 13: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

The Information Society – a Collector Mentality

This mirrors older collector models, for example, collectors of « music ».

As noted by Evan Eisenberg, in his book, « The Recording Angel, » these collectors confuse the physical object (a disk) with « music »

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Page 14: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

What is music?

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Page 15: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

Music can only exist in real time

Performed by live musicians Decoded from a recording medium Replayed in our memories. It is impossible to hold music in our

hands or manipulate it in tangible fashion.

It is, perhaps, the first virtual art form.

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Friday, 16 December 2011

Page 16: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

Music in the digital age The advent of digital recording has simply changed

the way we encode and store music performances: Digital recordings of real-time performances Creation of original digital codes and algorithms that, when

decrypted, produce music in real time Digital production of traditional and non-traditional graphic

notations for music, before or after the fact of « composition ». Mixtures of the above

Digital recording also allows direct editing and modification of the encoded digital file, without loss of quality.

The same applies to copies. Every copy is a clone, and every clone can be modified in the same way as the original.

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Friday, 16 December 2011

Page 17: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

Music in the digital age

When digital clones of music files go out onto a network, they can take on lives of their own, be modified, in turn cloned, remodified, recloned, and so on, in a dizzying parody of the old exquisite corpse game.

« E unum, pluribus » Or, another viral model.

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Page 18: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

Peer to peer

The collector model of a network involves a client-server structure: central repository accumulates information, amasses it from distant clients, and « serves » it up on demand to them. Who controls the server, controls the information.

The peer to peer model, developed originally via Napster, allows users to share information without any central server or control. Each user on the network decides what s/he wants to share with others, and what to take from the shared pool.

Individual choices = pooled community resource

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Friday, 16 December 2011

Page 19: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

The « music industry » vs music

The music industry, largely based on the collector model of buying and selling physial objects that encode music, was rightfully terrified by the advent of peer-to-peer.

Many years later, even after having destroyed Napster, they have been unable to stop peer to peer sharing and continue their hold on the distribution of music as physical objects.

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Page 20: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

The « music industry » vs music

In truth, music was always resistant to this model

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Garage Band

Friday, 16 December 2011

Page 21: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

The « music industry » vs music

Instead of adopting a new business model that would enable it to survive, the music industry has tried to wall itself inside a fortress of enforcement of copy-right when copy-making has gotten totally out of their control.

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Friday, 16 December 2011

Page 22: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

The « music industry » vs music

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Music wants to be heard. People, sharing

a powerful, behavioural system that confounds the power, money, and political clout of huge companies such as Time-Warner, Universial, BMG, etc.

In such a system, what is the part of the infrastructure? The technology? The people?

Friday, 16 December 2011

Page 23: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

Individualism vs Community

“We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us” -Marshall McLuhan, 1960s

Individualism trumps the community at every pass (at least in the USA) -Jessica Tuchman Matthews, 1980s

“Friendship is strong, but the Whopper is stronger” -Burger King, 2009

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Page 24: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

FRIENDS AS COLLECTABLES

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What would you do for a free WHOPPER®? Would you insult an elected official? Would you do a naked handstand? Would you go so far as to turn your back on friendship? Install WHOPPER® Sacrifice on your Facebook profile and we'll reward you with a free flame-broiled WHOPPER® Sandwich when you sacrifice 10 of your friends*.

Friday, 16 December 2011

Page 25: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

Facebook and Burger King

When Burger King advertised that it would give a free hamburger to anyone who « unfriended » 10 people on Facebook, two things happened simultaneously: Thousands of people responded (many re-

friending the same people the next day) to benefit from the individual gain proposed.

Thousands of people protested, forcing to Facebook to negotiate the withdrawl of the ad from Facebook.

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Page 26: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

Individualism vs Community Networks foster exchange. However, exchange can be one-

way (broadcasting), two-way (transactional) or multi-way (viral and communal).

The only way to ensure that the dream of greater community, openness, « glocalisation », can take place is to ensure that there is space, in an internet that is more and more dominated by a transactional, individualist collector model, held safe for multi-way communities to develop and prosper.

These are behavioural models, and we cannot expect that such behaviour will spontaneously appear simply because we have a technological infrastructure to support it. The recent history of web 2.0 proves this.

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Page 27: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

Web 2.0 does not exist

There is no such thing, in technological terms, as web 2.0 – it is a marketing term.

As a marketing term, it represents the application of certain interactive technologies which are not new, to transactional relationships, often relationships that raise questions of Big Brother (keystroke logging, localisation, use of cookies to develop profiles for « push » technologies, etc.)

The principle benefactors of these technologies have been large economic interests, most notably Google and Amazon.

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Page 28: Media behavior: Towards the Transformation Society

Web 3.0 does represent a paradigm shift Web 3.0, as it is being developed by the

W3C consortium, represents the semantic web, which promises that documents will be machine readable and parseable.

It also uses ontologies for searches, which are more interesting than hierarchical searches as they often produce surprising results or lead the user down new paths.

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The Transformation Society

The Transformation Society proposes a model built on the transformation of information into knowledge, and a behavioural model that can be described as « technoethical. »

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