“Does Google (re)Make Us?”: Examining popular thought and ontologies around the Internet’s effects on knowledge

As designed by Jeremy Bentham in 1791

If one examines modern day popular press’ position on the effects of current technology on knowledge (or intelligence), one will find an ontological struggle occurring between two dominant systems of thinking – that of the technocrats, technofundamentalists, or cyber-utopianists, whose belief systems rely primarily on scientific and mathematical inquiry, and that of post-Marxists critical analysts, who examine historical, economic, and political implications of technology.  Most recently this debate was popularized in an article in The Atlantic Monthly, where writer Nicholas Carr bemoaned the positivist thinking that a search engine like Google is knowledge at our fingertips, in his article “Is Google Making us Stupid?”  As a reaction to this popular article, WIRED magazine released a response bemoaning the bemoaners as “reflexive anti-intellectualism,” “cancerous irrationalism,” and “moronic” (Wolman, ¶10).  Clearly, Carr’s article struck a chord with the self-described ‘egghead’ rag and opens a great debate over not who is right, but how each position reflects a metanarrative about knowledge, power, and its relation to technology as examined by writers like Lyotard, Foucault, Hayles, Benjamin, and so on. The debate over Google search engine’s long-term affects on society is also a debate of who wields power over knowledge and what that power is beginning to look like in a post-Industrial Internet society.

According to Carr, the Internet alters the ways we read and think. The economics and architecture of the Internet means we constantly are performing quick scans versus in depth readings.  He cites behavioral psychologist Maryanne Wolf who says, ‘we are not only what we read…we are how we read’, and is concerned about the Internet’s preference for quick and efficient information gathering at the cost of deep textual analysis and attention spans. Carr cites a neuroscientist who claims our brains have the ability to adapt and ‘reprogram’ quickly, where our brains have the capacity to think like our technologies – what sociologist David Bell calls ‘intellectual technologies’.   According to Lyotard, “technical devices originated as prosthetic aids for the human organs or as physiological systems whose function it is to receive data or condition the context” (44).   Hayles states in How We Became PostHuman, “We become the codes we punch…the computer molds the human even as the human builds the computer” (46 – 7).   Carr echoes this prosthetic brain question when quoting the creators of Google in a 2004 interview ‘certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off” (¶27).  Clearly, such a belief system is endemic to Internet positivists like Google’s founders and at the heart of Carr’s ontological query.

But what of the effects of this prosthetic brain on our own human brains and thought processes, Carr asks.  In what ways does the surrender of personal inquiry and exploration via the modern conveniences of the Internet’s vast network of search engines surrender our own forms of autonomy?  According to Walter Benjamin, “the representation of human beings by means of an apparatus has made possible a highly productive use of the human being’s self-alienation” (32).  Such shifts in the way we think are not new phenomenon, says Carr.  When humans began using the clock on a wide-scale basis, we began to change our internal habits of eating and sleeping based around the times of the clock (¶15).  Lewis Mumford states in Technics and Civilization, how the clock under monastic obligation gave “human enterprise the regular collective beat and rhythm of the machine; for the clock is not merely a means of keeping track of the hours, but of synchronizing the actions of men” (14).  Carr echoes McLuhan’s “Medium is the Message”, but not in a positivist “global village” light.  Rather, Carr sees the Internet medium as an absorbent of most mediums, but in the likeness of its own image, full of distracting hyperlinks, ad banners, and “other digital gewgaws” which dilute our attention and concentration (¶19).   These distractions, argues Carr, inhibit our personal performance for the benefit of the machine’s performance, and are inherent in the long history of industrial manufacturing.  In the instance of the Internet and Google’s search engines, it is our minds that are up for grabs on the auction block.

Carr sees a direct relationship between Frederick Winslow Taylor’s “Principles of Scientific Efficiency” that could “bring about a restructuring not only of industry but of society, creating a utopia of perfect efficiency” and the current methodologies around Internet technology, (¶23).  Such models of efficiency in production and industry are well documented and theorized.  Lyotard examines these models of  “optimal performance” where one is “maximizing output (the information or modifications obtained) and minimizing input (the energy expended in the process)” (44).  Within Lyotard’s framework of “language games” (40) where many ways of denoting and connoting “proof” emerge, truth is replaced with providing efficient methods, and in such a shift, technology becomes a performative measure and therefore deemed to be ‘good’ (44).  When optimal speed of performance is deemed positive and is historically entrenched in modern Industrial society, it is easy to see how such an argument supports Wolman’s thesis in WIRED’s “The Critics Need a Reboot”.

David Wolman is a regular contributing writer to WIRED, a magazine dedicated to popular technological and computer innovation.  As a response to the Carr article, Wolman’s vitriolic disdain for Carr’s concerns draws the line in the sand clearly between those who praise and those who question the Internet’s benefits. By arguing of a “collective brainpower” inherent in Wikis and the like, Wolman is engaging in what Lyotard calls “sociopolitical legitimacy,” in which the people’s opinion creates consensus and eventually “proofs” (¶6, 30).  Clearly favoring scientific and mathematic inquiry over others, Wolman concludes, “we need… a renewed commitment to reason and scientific rigor so that people can distinguish knowledge from garbage” (¶7).  Assuming the “garbage” Wolman refers to is Carr’s essay, or the essay’s concern about knowledge, the ontological seeds have been planted – knowledge and what it entails remains up for debate.  It also leaves in question the implications of such “collective brainpower” that Wolman refers to.  Do these systems of knowledge transmission reflect systems of power and control, or is the Internet as we know it truly a semiotic democracy?

Foucault examines how the classical age brought forth the objectification of the body and the target of power (136).  Carr’s argument brings into question whether the Internet Age’s target of power and objectification is the mind.   As an object of control, the mind then is reduced to an economy, “an efficiency of movements” (Foucault 137).  Carr points to this tension between the economics of the mind and that of the Internet.  He argues, “The faster we surf across the Web — the more links we click and pages we view — the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements” (¶31).

Lyotard echoes this economic shift in learning systems when he prophetically claims how a computerized society will equivocally affect the ways we learn as did modern innovations in transportation and media technologies (4).   Knowledge, as an economic commodity system, “has become the principle force of production” and “will continue to be, a major – perhaps the major – stake in the worldwide competition for power” (5).   The relationship between knowledge and power then is “indispensable” in their relationship to systems of production.  Google’s ability to increase production of knowledge through scientific and mathematic experimentation and algorithms creates a system of power, control, and knowledge in the image of its creators.   Carr, rather than asking “does Google make us stupid?” may want to ask a version of what Lyotard asks: Does Google “decide what knowledge is and who knows what needs to be decided?” (8).

If one sees the Internet then as a mechanics of control and power relationships, then Foucault examines the disciplinary and disempowering affects of isolation on humans within a panoptic Institution.  Arguably, if Foucault was alive today, he would likely claim the Internet is a system of control and discipline perfected.  As a perfect disciplinary tool, the Internet and Google’s control over much of the content, is a hyperextension of the industrial factories, a partitioned and analytical space, cellular, functional, and coded, one which “might isolate and map” individuals (143 – 4).  Its machinery’s aim is “to establish presences and absences, to know where and how to locate individuals, to set up useful communications, to interrupt others, to be able at each moment to supervise the conduct of each individual, to assess it, to judge it, to calculate its qualities” (143).  Such a prescient thought is clearly exemplified in today’s Internet, with the use of Google’s behavioral algorithms, GSP and ISP tracking of one’s location, to follow our every search move, while we privately “work” in our homes on our personal computers.

While the computer has been portrayed as a tool of leisure, the ability for companies like Google to track our every move by using their browser essentially lends our movements as free labor input into their system of behavior analysis, which in turn shape our spaces. Google has the capacity to reduce complexity of the vast network of information through its search filters while improving upon itself by better understanding “the adaptation of individual aspirations to its own ends,” the mutual benefit of increased power for Google’s searching capacities and the individuals increased speed at which they may access the information they are searching, increasing performativity and reducing the time at which Google gains access to our browsing information. The speed at which the Internet operates “is a power component of the system” (Lyotard 61).

“It was more the desire for wealth than the desire for knowledge that initially forced upon technology the imperative of performance improvement and product realization” (Lyotard 45). “Power is not only good performativity, but also effective verification and good verdicts. It is self-legitimating, in the same way a system organized around performance maximization seems to be… The performativity of an utterance… increases proportionally to the amount of information about its referent one has at one’s disposal.  Thus the growth of power, and its self-legitimation, are now taking the route of data storage and accessibility, and the operativity of information” (47).

Google’s paid advertisements invoke a preferential system based on the economics of wealth and control.  So, the ways in which the scientific algorithms are an attempt to fairly distribute information via complex scientific and mathematic systems, the arguments in their defense become more of a “game of scientific language… of the rich” where “an equation between wealth, efficiency, and truth is thus established” (Lyotard 45).  Furthermore, the ways in which Google’s science and corporate control through paid ad spaces benefit each other are when “a portion of the sale is recycled into a research fund dedicated to further performance improvement.  It is at this precise moment that science becomes a force of production, in other words, a moment in the circulation of capital” (45). In turn, as the production of thought and ideas become more entrenched in Google’s research and experimentation in Artificial Intelligence through behavioral algorithms, a permanent link is created between our thought and the political economic agendas of those who wield financial and informational control over our computing systems.

“The perfect disciplinary apparatus would make it possible for a single gaze to see everything constantly” – Foucault Discipline & Punish, pp. 173

The Internet then becomes a perfect training tool.  Whether we like it or not, it has absorbed all medias, as Carr has explained, and we are in many instances forced to refer to its functions.  In using the Internet as a primary tool, we need to train ourselves in its mechanics and all it’s details.  As Carr and many media theorists have stated, tools of thought do not come naturally to humans.  Dating as far back as writing, reading, and typing, humans must learn how to interpret symbols into distinct thought processes and forms.  The same method is necessary in order to navigate the Internet.

In our training, we engage in a complex panoptic institution of hierarchical observation, one in which “eyes that must see without being seen; using techniques of subjection and methods of exploitation” and in effect,  “a new knowledge of man”  (Foucault 171).  The architecture of the Internet “render visible those who are inside it…transform individuals…, to carry the effects of power right to them, to make it possible to know them, to alter them” (Foucault 172).  Through complex networks of information, socializations, and the capacity for the companies that provide these systems ability to monitor this behavior, we can be altered, and in effect, conditioned.   In Foucault’s perspective, such disciplinary tools have traditionally results in obedient and moral citizens – “a political utopia” (174).  As subjects of the Internet, knowing that we are constantly monitored by these systems in turn regulates our behavior and subjects us to certain norms (Foucault 187).  Such power though, is anonymous, rather than literal.  It is hard to argue concretely without sounding in some way anti-technological that Google’s intentions are purely antagonistic, but nor is it hard to argue that Google is, by sheer numbers, “the Internet’s high church” (Carr ¶25) and therefore must be examined as an institution of immense power.  In its ability to anonymously survey our browsing habits, “those on whom it is exercised tend to be more strongly individualized” (Foucault 193).   Such individualization is clear when we examine the vast economies of personal computers, social networks whose titles provide layers of meaning to the names “MySpace,” “YouTube,” “iTunes,” “Wii,” and so on. According to Lyotard, such “administrative procedures should make individuals ‘want’ what the system needs in order to perform well” (62).  By giving us what we “want” through individualization via isolated and controlled environments, we are supporting the performance and economies of the Internet.  We are choice laden actors within these environments, and in choosing them, we “assume responsibility for the constraints of power, inscribe in [ourselves] the power relation in which [we] simultaneously play both roles; [we] become the principle of [our] own subjection” (Foucault 203).

This is the nature of the Panopticon, in which the Internet is its perfect contemporary example, because it reduces the number of surveillors and increases the number of those surveilled, leading to “‘power of mind over mind’” (Foucault 206).  Within a panoptic Internet system, our autonomy is both prescribed to us and similarly taken away and abstracted, enacting what Lyotard calls “a vanguard machine dragging humanity after it, dehumanizing it in order to rehumanize it at a different level of normative capacity” (63).

Lyotard’s postmodern reflection on knowledge provides a silver lining from Foucault’s historical and structural analysis of institutional systems of power and control.  That of rehumanization, logical positivism, entropy, metanarratives, language games and paralogies provide perspectives on how computerized systems can function to humanize and support knowledge within a postindustrial society.   Negentropy is the idea that performance is stable and predictable if all variables are known and follows patterns of logic, physics, and mechanics – an argument thus far supported by Foucault and Carr.  However, Brillouin argues that “perfect control over a system, which is supposed to improve its performance, is inconsistent with respect to the law of contradiction: it in fact lowers the performance level it claims to raise” (55).  This can mean two things in relation to the Internet and Google: 1) To support Carr’s arguments – that the high performativity of the Internet lowers the performativity of that which it claims to raise  (human intelligence), or 2) To support Wolman’s argument: the Internet will never perfectly control knowledge or intelligence, will not replace entirely current medias of knowledge like books, but perhaps could renew (in a contradictory fashion – think DIY) old systems of media.

Says Lyotard in conclusion:

“The line to follow for computerization to take…is quite simple: give the public free access to the memory and data banks.  Language games would then be games of perfect information at any given moment.  But they would also be non-zero-sum games, and by virtue of that fact discussion would never risk fixating in a position of minimax equilibrium because it had exhausted its stakes.  For the stakes would be knowledge (or information).. and the reserve of knowledge – language’s reserve of possible utterances – is inexhaustible”  (67).

If the Internet is a disciplinary tool of perfected observation of which we are clearly aware, then the mind is undergoing, in a sense, self-inflicted containment and imprisonment; subject to the panopticism of normalized technologies – the Internet, personal computers, Google’s search engines, social networks, and so on.  Rather than arguing whether such technologies effects on our intelligence are “good” or “bad” – Lyotard and Foucault allow us to examine the nature and history of normalized machines meant to support the functions of everyday life, the economies of thought production, and the discourses of the institutions, their subjects’ and audiences’ relations to the former.

Rather than questioning his own intellectual freedom or autonomy in challenging the positivist claims of the “good” the Internet brings to us, Carr appeals to grand narratives and key players of the past history of thought and technology – Aristotle, Socrates, Neitzshe, Guttenberg – to legitimate his argument.  By accepting the “good” of Google’s Artificial Intelligence, as Wolman does, where we allow the machine to think for us in order to gain more individualized attention, via algorithms, search surveillance, social networks and the like, we must ask ourselves not “Does Google make us Stupid?” but whether Google renegotiates rights to free human inquiry for the purposes of scientific efficiency and the general good of the state – in effect, “Does Google (re)Make us?”

References

Benjamin, Walter.  The Work of Art in the age of its technological reproducibility, and other writings on media. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Press, 2008.

Carr, Nicholas. Jul/Aug 2008. The Atlantic Monthly. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” v. 302 no1 56-8, 60, 62-3.

Hayles, N. Katherine. How we Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, ??. (from Course Packet)
Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison.  New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
Lyotard, Jean-Francois.  The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1979.
Wolman, David. 18 Aug. 2008. “The Critics Need a Reboot. The Internet Hasn’t Led us into the New Dark Age”. WIRED Magazine, accessed on 12/15/08 <http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/16-09/st_essay>

National Day of Service/MLK day & Bush’s last days

Before beginning my classes, and while the “snow” is still on the ground, I am working on some personal projects of my own.

Baby-Hat

For the first National Day of Service, I have been getting my co-workers together to make baby-hats as part of the Save the Children’s campaign called “Knit-One, Save-One”, where your baby hats will go to babies in need all over the world.

A friend a Lion Brand Yarn will send our over 15 hats to the project.  I think there may even be a 10% discount involved.  Today I plan on making 2 – 3 more hats.  Today is also my little nephew Reese’s 1st birthday.  I am going to dedicate these hats to him for his baby friends far away.  Happy Birthday Reese!!

Hemp Plant for Fiber Arts

My next project involves my first knit garment/ hemp project.  I was inspired to do this hemp project from a series of free patterns in Vogue Knitting.  The yarn seems to be the only major hemp distributor, but the more I research on hemp yarn the more I love the idea of using it in almost any of my projects, because it is durable, washable, won’t pill, and environmentally friendly.   For more information on the benefits of using hemp to knit, go to LanaKnit’s About Hemp page to read more.  Some interesting hemp yarn facts are:

1. the first pair of Levi’s were made of hemp!

2. Thomas Jefferson, once remarked on the economic value of hemp for the country and the Navy.

3.  George Washington said of hemp: “make the most of the hemp seed and sow it everywhere”.

4. Hemp seed can grow anywhere, even in unusable land.

5.  Hemp is a renewable resource, and can be used for the production of methanol, a sustainable fuel.

* Personal disclaimer: I am not advocating the use of hemp for any other reasons other than the one’s mentioned above.  What you do at home in your personal life is your business not mine, this is about sustainability, economics, the environment, and crafting with consciousness!!

So what does this have to do about Bush’s last day in office???  I have no clue, other than it is worth reflecting upon.  It is worth remembering how long we have had to deal living in the world with this man in power, it is worth feeling glorious and justified and emotional about it.  I have cried on multiple occasions because of what he has done.  I am including an excerpt from my journal on Sept. 11th, 2001:

9.11.01
• “it’s hard to believe right now, but here i am in Kenya & I’ve watched the news for hours about the attacks on the world trade center & pentagon.  at first i was in shock and pretty upset – i guess i was just thinking about how many people must have died in the places and buildings.  it seems very surreal because i am so removed from it.  i am glad i am not in the U.S. dealing with all the xenophobic, terrorist talk.  i was also worried about my brother.  but this is all so difficult to believe.  chip is fine.  i talk and  think about world affairs and conspiracies all the time, but i never write about them.  i think that is going to change.  hopefully the worst is over and i like to have a pretty faithful view of humanity and the good that can come of it.  what i am afraid of most is the USA and it’s retaliation.




• What are war theorists saying?  I haven’t read a Tom Clancy novel, but I think I should.  I really believe this could be the beginning of a new war. Everything that is happening in the Arab world -and I am in it.  And while maybe for a couple of days or weeks people may see us white Americans as ‘victims’, we won’t be for long.  Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth… that’s the American motto I can’t understand and many people in the world won’t – including the Muslin world.  I have a homestay with a Muslim family in a week.  I am not nervous.  I look forward to hopefully gaining a better understanding of a non-American/Christian sentiment.
• It scares me to think about how scapegoating for all on this has already begun.  The Taliban, Saddam, Afghanistan.  And I don’t even know very much about the leaders or militant groups.  A lot of that is because the name is the only thing pronounced – phonetically difficult words to understand if you grew up speaking English.  But that’s it.  There’s no meaning to it except that and then we don’t understand religion, politics, nations, needs, human beings, and how they can’t be put in a box & compartmentalized – these elements are all connected. These horrific acts were done by human beings – not monsters or aliens, or “terrorists’, which is almost becoming equated to that (aliens & monsters).
  
• i am afraid to wake up tomorrow to hear of more irrational decisions meaning more lives lost, meaning closer steps to war. And it’s just like the world view for so many to be shocked, because everyone thought America was impenetrable – at least those of us who have bought into American doctrine.  But we have been defeated, we are losing and we will continue to lose if Bush and our stupid government continues to take the steps it is taking.  I almost hope it was domestic acts because it would be even ‘more shocking – but the last thing i want is ethnic and religious warfare…
• what about the Muslim people in the U.S.? people will always treat them as perpetrators when they aren’t



Now I can finally say I am not afraid.  Now I can finally feel like a citizen in this country, encouraged by my leaders to participate, to not be afraid of being on the wrong side of my opinions.   For that I am truly inspired, relieved, elated, and thinking positively.  While maybe 8 years ago I was defeated, we have won with the election of Barack Obama as our next President.

“Leave Britney Alone!!”: Online Queer &Transgender Vlog Communities and the Commercial Implications of YouTube’s “Don’t Be Evil” Policies

Online Queer &Transgender Vlog Communities and the Commercial Implications of YouTube’s “Don’t Be Evil” Policies


LITERATURE REVIEW
by Catherine McGowan
The New School
M.A. Media Studies Program
Understanding Media Studies
Prof. Shannon Mattern
TA Todd Kesselman


Bloggers, video bloggers, and “user co-creators” and the communities they represent have only recently been examined ethnographically, qualitatively, and empirically (Lange 2007; Regan and Revels 2007; Lenhart and Fox 2006; Faulkner and Melican, 2007). Video blogging ( “vlogging”) is a relatively nascent phenomenon of social networking and blogging where little scholarship exists – sometimes only as a sidenote. Nevertheless, scholarship about blogs, popular subcultures, and Internet communities are part of a larger interdisciplinary discourse. This discourse is complicated by the ever-changing nature of the Internet, its accessibility, and development of new platforms at an ever-increasing pace.  Even so, the rapidity of change and the flux at which the Internet operates should not discourage or inhibit research, because of the very nature and content the Internet provides, specifically when it involves identities and communities on the fringes. Arguably, digital ethnography, as examined by Murthy, engages feminist and critical theories of dialogic and discursive methods that make the examination of video blogs essential to feminist (or postfeminist) and critical scholarship (2008: 846).

This literature review attempts to understand what previous scholarship has contributed to video blogging studies and where there is room for more inquiry, within the context of YouTube vloggers identified as queer and transgendered (“trans”), although these identifiers are not one in the same.  By focusing on a politically and socially marginalized community (communities), we can examine ways in which the structure of YouTube inhibits and/or promotes community, identity, and resistance to homophobia among trans-youth vloggers.

Additionally, this review begins to explore further questions:  How are power dynamics between textual reader (viewers), writers (vloggers), and institutional owners (YouTube) complicated when it involves trans-identified youth producing content?    In what ways are vloggers in control of their own content and in what ways are they exploited?  How can these trans-vloggers regain agency and resist “haters” via new modes of creation or possibly new institutions of exchange (Lange 2007: 41)?

Statistics

Currently, there are over 50 million blogs, with 100 million videos being uploaded on YouTube daily, over 13 hours a minute (Faulkner and Melican 2007: 51; Rosen 2008: 52).  According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project (PIP), 15% of the respondent bloggers video blogged (Lenhart and Fox 15).  If the research holds true today, two years later, then there are approximately 7.5 million vloggers, roughly the population of the entire city of London. Nevertheless – this estimate remains a questionable guess.

Even in two years since the PIP studied bloggers, a lot of the data seems irrelevant and not reflective of current trends in video blogging.  For example, in 2006 LiveJournal was rated the most popular blogging tool of those surveyed, however, new networks for video bloggers, like YouTube or WordPress did not make it on the list (Lenhart and Fox 14).

Theoretical Approach: Researching Online Vlogs – Theories, Questions, and Implications


Henry Jenkins argues in Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers that “theory production is simply one subcultural or institutional practice among many” (2006: 13).  He asks whether an academic approach to studying fan culture, popular culture, and subcultures can adequately understand and describe these groups in an affective way (2006: 27).   Applied to vlogging, communities are in constant communication, of exchanging ideas, and engaging in dialogues.  These dialogues are in their nature participatory and invite often a dialogue among insular or largely exposed groups.

Jenkins’ studies employ dialogic methodologies that engage and incorporate fans’ responses into his work(2006: 31). He talks about “intervention analysis” approaches to research, where academics can act as amplifiers to a communities problem/issue and provide an intermediary function between institutions not in current communication with the other (2006: 33). The potential for video diaries or blogs to exchange the anthropological method of “reflexivity” with “reflection” through video narratives acting as “prosthetic extensions” of ourselves further challenges an entrenched dichotomy between researcher and “subject” and provides a mirror tool into our own desires and the imagined desire of the narrators ( Holliday 2004: 50, 52 – 5).

Vaidhyanathan points to a “dearth of cross-disciplinary scholarly work that might expose each side of campus to the most interesting minds on the other” and stresses, that within an interdisciplinary framework of Critical Information Studies (see attached Mind-Map), scholars can reach a wide audience and begin a larger conversation about the issue at hand via ‘code-switching’ (jargon light prose) (2006: 301).

Postfeminist theorists also struggle with creating a theoretical framework or canon, due to its own historically ambiguous and contradictory works (Gerhard 2005:39). Rather than being an obstacle, McRobbie sees these contradictions as opportunities where feminism “must face up to the consequences of its own claims to representation and power and not be so surprised when young women students decline the invitation to identify as a ‘we’ with their feminist teachers and scholars (2007: 30). Projansky calls this moment a “both/and” approach to postfeminism as opposed to an “us/them”, where within postfeminism exists inherent contradictions, “simultaneously feminist and antifeminist, liberating and repressive, productive and obstructive of progressive social change” (2007: 68).

Similarly then, an analysis of trans-identified youth vloggers on YouTube cannot claim a universality for multiple reasons. If one were to do so, such research would fall into the second-wave feminist concept of “collectivity”, where racially, ethnically, and sexually divergent voices are trivialized for a political purpose called “sisterhood” (Sanders 2007: 84).  Second, a claim of universal meaning runs the risk of objectifying the vlogger’s text as a written object subject to voyeurism and exhibitionism (Gurak and Antonijevik 2008: 64).  Third, Murthy warns against the ethical ambiguities of conducting online research, and more so of marginalized groups (2008: 841).    Such complications, again, should attempt to be resolved (or not resolved but examined), so these communities are not further marginalized by institutional agendas, but resolved in a sometimes contradictory or at least temporal way, or what Vaidhyanathan calls “multiple complimentary methodologies” (2006: 293).

Some Implications of Queer Video Blogging on YouTube/Google


During a recent “Intelligence Squared” debate over whether Google violates it’s “Don’t Be Evil” motto, Critical Information Studies scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan pointed out the “Seven Deadly Sins” of Google, including the “sloth” sin, where, he states,
Google makes money off of our work. We blog, we put our … cats on skateboards and record them for videos. We do all of this work, and then Google harvests our work, runs all of this content through its computers, spits it back out at us, with almost no actual value added and what they end up getting is a tremendous amount of money, based on free-riding (Donovan 25).

What are the implications of Google using queer content for financial gain, and what are these examples?  One example would be Michael Buckley’s Entertainment Show, “What the Buck?!”, on YouTube.  Michael Buckley is part of YouTube’s relatively new Partnership Program, where famous “Tubers” get financial compensation for adsharing (Buckley 2008). Sponsored YouTubers become active leaders in the YouTube community, often performing acceptable forms of constructed identity. Michael Buckley’s weekly videos are recaps of that week’s celebrity and TV gossip, news, and parodies, compliments of the flamboyant and never serious, stereotypically affluent gay white male – a result of what Gerhard calls “queer visibility” where there is an “increasing recognition of lesbians and gay men as recognizable comedic and dramatic ‘types’ (2005: 42).  Whereas, another YouTube celebrity, Chris Crocker of “Leave Britney Alone!” fame, who self-identifies as transgendered, claims he was not invited into the Partnership program (Crocker 2008).  Such complicated narratives of internet rivalries and discrimination are unclear and subjective, however, the decision of YouTube to favor one queer voice over another brings to fore an important question about Google’s policies – is Google favoring more normative, non-confrontational, socially acceptable, and financially advantageous queer identities over ones which are less so?

Esther Dyson would think not.   Described by Murthy as  a “utopian ‘cyber-guru’”, Dyson argued in a more Internet “techofundamentalist” rhetoric at the Intelligence Squared debate, describing Google as a means to “erode the power of institutions over people, while giving to individuals the power to run their own lives” (Murthy 841; Donovan 20).  But, when a company like Google controls over 63% of global Internet searches in addition to owning multiple formats of online social networks including YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, and Orkut (Rosen 2008: 52), it bears to continue asking this question.
Other theorists would warn against the proliferation of Google’s content control.  Clay Shirky in his July 2008 TED Talk, reminds us to be aware of the institutional aspects of social networks, and their socio-economic effects.  By providing an institution meant to share, collect, and distribute content, social networks (like Flickr and YouTube) are creating hierarchically managed institutions – complete with management, legal counsel, and us, the content producers, where we (the public) are relegated at the bottom rungs of decisions and agency (Shirky 2005). In the context of the trans-queer community and what The Advocate coined the “Homophobosphere” – “haters”, homophobes, and intolerance will exist as long as free speech does (Lange 2007: 43;Doig 2008: 7 ¶ 7).  But what’s missing yet is a discussion on how Google’s willingness to “bring its own open culture to foreign countries while still taking into account local laws, customs and attitudes” (Rosen 2008: 53).  What is the implication of  Google’s censorship on young transgendered Tubers based on homophobic governmental institutions, as was the case in Turkey (Rosen 2008: 51)?  By censoring some material that is unacceptable to certain states, while financially rewarding others, what message does that send to vloggers?

According to Lange, it becomes advantageous for vloggers to create content that is institutionally preferential in order to gain attention and financial compensation for their work. She goes onto ask about the participatory complications of monetizing sociality and whether that should be or is the purpose of content providers (2007: 45).  If YouTubers are getting paid for preferred airtime, suddenly we run the risk of creating socialized financial incentives that encourage a particular type of behavior. Because users are provided preferred airtime on YouTube, the site no longer becomes a ‘semiotic democracy’ (Vaidhyanathan 305), but rather preferential.

So what?  That’s capitalism, some would argue. Such lack of visibility or preferential treatment has been a common practice among major record labels that decide who gets airtime – often financially and culturally dominating independently produced and distributed music and ideas (Feigenbaum 2007: 140).  When talking about the implications of  social networks, Surowecki says that the “more tightly linked we are, the harder it is to remain independent,” which becomes further complicated by how these networks are controlled, how they socialize, and whose voices they favor (2008).  As a “postfeminist” – and I would argue queer discourse – it is important to look at the implications of corporate preferential treatment of social content that is removed for its queer (meta)textuality.

Jenkins would argue that media’s future relies on an “uneasy truce” between commercial interests and “grassroots intermediaries, where a message gains visibility only if it is deemed relevant”.  He encourages people to continue blogging because the sheer numbers will help “redefine the public perception of new media and to expand their influence” (2006: 180-1).  Additionally, more positivist thoughts would argue that the invitation to participate in video blogs, and by creating shows which demand an audience, vloggers demonstrate their relationship and identification with a larger community, where fans can be active participants in the community (Faulkner and Melican 2007: 62).

But, positivist thinking about community building and engagement comes with a price, says Lange (2007: 47).  When Faulkner and Melican conclude that vloggers are “more than simply interesting…they represent a potential market” it seems the price is a way to commodify a potentially politically and transformative community into a consumer community (2007: 63).

Such commodification of content is not new to independent content producers like vloggers. Feigenbaum quotes zine writer Stacy Thompson who wonders if there’s a political potential to “feminist punk agendas” when producing within corporate venues (2007:146). By creating products of political discourses within the context of corporate owned media, specifically social networks and YouTube, Feigenbaum rightly asks whether real transformative political work can be accomplished.   By providing the example of Le Tigre’s (former band leader of Bikini Kill and riot grrl matriarch Kathleen Hannah) major label record deal, Feigenbaum states that “the band’s corporate backing forces those who consume and engage with its punk feminism to renegotiate the linkages between economic production and political articulations” (2007:148).  Nevertheless, Feigenbaum points to the continuing ingenuity of young feminists interested in building community “without signing corporate labels or selling shampoo” (2007:148).

Identity and Community Formation (or Destruction) Among Trans-Identified Vloggers: A Postfeminist Analysis

“While growing up transgender can still be a very isolating experience, the world seems a bit smaller to trans kids thanks to the vlogs” – “TransTube” The Advocate (2007)

Blogs are a way to understand human desire, community, and places in time.  With the Internet’s relative new and quickly developing medium, comes loaded with nonverbal behavior, community development, and a breakdown of social and geographic barriers.    Blogs begin to represent a new medium where massive amounts of personal information are being shared publicly, shifting and ambiguously redefining boundaries of personal and private, where singular and group identities are formed (Gurak and Antonijevik 2008: 62 – 64).


While the potential positive nature of bringing the personal to the public sphere, as many argue is the case for trans-youth finding community via the web, not all people agree that “Web-mediated feminist activism” is a positive thing, stating that web interaction reduces activism to the bedroom site of cultural production and collective action is proportionately reduced as bedroom production increases (Eliscu, 96; Kennedy 2007; Feigenbaum 145).  In fact, it can become potentially damaging or unproductive when the community has no outlet outside of the web environment (MacDougal 2005: 579).
Faulkner and Melican examine concepts of the imagined self in relation to the content producers audience by interviewing vloggers internationally (2007: 52). Despite the 2006 PIP’s findings that over 50% of bloggers produced content for personal reasons, Faulkner and Melican assert evidence of “increasing amounts of online content posted with the express intent of advancing the poster’s entrepreneurial interests and/or their careers in creative fields” – otherwise known as “proteurs” (2007: 53). Proteurs see online videos as a way to build an audience often thinking self-consciously about their produced material, what Ong calls a “secondary orality” where we are “group-minded self-consciously and programmatically” (1982: 66).   Such group oriented affects on community need to be examined to better understand the dialogue between vloggers and their perceived audiences.

Room for Growth and Research Analysis

Many important works were left out of the literature review, due to lack of time and practice.  More attention to important queer and gender theories is needed, including Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, Michael Foucault’s History of Sexuality,  would help better define identity theory and politics of queers within the framework of media.
Attached is a Mind Map as suggested by Shannon Mattern in “Literature Review Tips”.  This Mind Map traces the important works cited in Vaidhyanathan’s comprehensive bibliography of important works in Critical Information Studies, which is where I would like to further explore some key concepts.


References

Doig, W. (2008). “Homo•phobo•sphere”. Advocate, (1002), 28-31.
Eliscu, J. (2007). “Kids coming out on YouTube”. Rolling Stone, (1037; 1037), 96-96.
Faulkner, S., & J Melican. (2007). “Getting Noticed, Showing-Off, Being Overheard: Amateurs, Authors and Artists Inventing and Reinventing Themselves in Online Communities”. AnthroSource, Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings, Retreived on November 15, 2008 from http://www.anthrosource.net, 51-65.
Gerhad, J. (2005) “Sex and the City: Carrie Bradshaw’s queer postfeminisms”. Feminist Media Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1. Routeledge.
Holliday, R. (2004) “Reflecting the Self” Picturing the Social Landscape: Visual Methods and the Sociological Imagination. Knowles, K. and P. Sweetman (Eds.). London: Routelege.
Gurak, L. J., & S. Antonijevic. (2008 September). “The psychology of blogging: You, me, and everyone in between”. American Behavioral Scientist (vol. 52, no. 1), 60 – 68.
Jenkins, H. (2006). Fans, bloggers, and gamers : Exploring participatory culture. New York: New York University Press.
Kennedy, S., (2007). “TransTube”, The Advocate. http://www.advocate.com/issue_story_ektid42754.asp
LANGE, P. G. (2007). “Searching for the ‘You’ in ‘YouTube’: An analysis of online response ability” Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings, Retreived on November 15, 2008 from http://www.anthrosource.net
Lenhart, A., & S. Fox. (2006) Bloggers: A portrait of the Internet’s new storytellers. July 19, 2006. Pew Internet & American Life Project
Macdougall, R. (2005 December). “Identity, electronic ethos, and blogs: A technologic analysis of symbolic exchange on the new news medium”, American Behavioural Scientist, v. 49(4).
McRobbie, A. (2007) “Postfeminism and Popular Culture: Bridget Jones and the New Gender Regime”. Interrogating postfeminism : Gender and the politics of popular culture(2007). Tasker Y., Negra D. (Eds.), . Durham: Duke University Press, 27 – 39.
Murthy, D. (2008). “Digital ethnography: An examination of the use of new technologies for social research” Sociology vol. 42(5), 837 – 855.
Ong, W. (1982) “Orality, Literacy, and Modern Media”, Orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word. New York: Methuen.
Projansky, S. (2007) Mass Magazine Cover Girls: Some Reflections on Postfeminist Girls and Postfeminism’s Daughters. Interrogating postfeminism : Gender and the politics of popular culture. In Tasker Y., Negra D. (Eds.), . Durham: Duke University Press, 40 – 71.
Rosen, J. (2008, November 30). “Google’s Gatekeepers: Nicole Wong and her colleagues decide what the world can see on YouTube.  Are they also determining the limits of free speech?” New York Times Magazine.
Vaidhyanathan, S. (2006). Afterword: Critical information studies. Cultural Studies, 20(2), 292-315.