Breakthrough!
5 Jan. 2008
I've been struggling for years to identify how all my academic interests "fit." What the fuck do a fascination with the things we take for granted, con men, social engineering, truth, fluidity, hackers, cooperation, design, play, desire, manipulation, cognition, hci, communication, culture wars, academic irrelevance, art, hatred of Foucault, new media, internet, pedagogy, food, knowledge, information, pirate radio, and,...well, any of it have in common with each other? I've been becoming more and more aware of connecting threads for the last year or so, narrowing in on...something...but I think I've finally put it all together, and well, in the last few days.
In large part, this was sparked by a discussion we've been having on the iDC mailing list. I tend to avoid speaking on the list because, frankly, it's a lot of postmodern shit and wankers trying to one up each other - all the stuff I really hate about academia blown into proportions of unfathomable magnitude. But I stay on it, because now and then some real gems come through and really make me look at things in a new light or slap my head with realization "Ah ha! So that's how it all fits!" At any rate, the current conversation is about the One Laptop project that's recently rolled out of MIT and whether it's more imperialist pig crap that we're dumping on the third world that will oppress its citizens for years to come.* I was struck - I mean, really struck, struck enough to comment on the list about it - that members of the list were actually discussing possible solutions to how the project should be rolled out to avoid this. Solutions that involved proper pedagogical practice. For third world countries. That members of the conversation have in many cases never been to or studied. I was absolutely floored by the arrogance - all couched in thoughtful academic rhetoric and concern for these cultures - that somehow we could develop answers for the citizens of these countries about the correct way to adopt these technologies.
Okay, no. Scratch that. I wasn't floored. I was unsurprised. But I was flaming pissed. This is precisely the kind of bullshit that I have thought is making academia so hated and detrimental to the regular population. Its overriding belief that it has the answers to everything, but also its inability to see when it is being grossly, obviously, transparently hypocritical. Here I exchange the political definition of imperialism with the social definition - an attitude of superiority, "father knows best" - but the conversation had a terribly imperialistic tone, even as it was about avoiding imperialism.
And that's when I realized how vitally important to me a sense of equality and fairness in my relations to others is. I mean, I knew it mattered, but I didn't quite realize how central it was to my outlook on life. I haven't been that pissed in a long time and I rather (okay, only just a little) regret taking it out on the list. But it really brought to a head all of my discomfort with academia, with class stratification, but really just with how fucking shittily people treat each other on a day to day basis, even when they have no real need to. I have enough money to be comfortable though not rich. I'm better off than a lot of people. So I've never understood what I could gain from being condescending to those who aren't as fortunate as I am, whether consciously or unconsciously. Being on the other side of the equation - including my brush with homelessness and the time I spent living in a rural area - no doubt amplified this considerably. I actually know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of the contemptuous stare (and I use "the" for a reason - if you've ever received this look for being poor, you know exactly which one I am referring to), so I'll be damned if I'm going to be responsible for giving that look to another person.
And all of this led me to realize just how all those disparate interests I listed above fit together coherently. My two overriding interests are information (which I knew) and interaction (which I hadn't quite put a finger on). Period. Everything above is related to the interplay of those two ideas.
Check it out:
- Cultural assumptions about knowledge and information. The history of information.
- How does what we believe about information (ie - "knowledge is power," "ignorance is bliss") inform how we talk about it today?
- What are the roots of those beliefs?
- Should we be taking these things for granted, or should we rethink some of these ideas at a very fundamental level? Are the assumptions getting us anywhere?
- How do our beliefs about information affect our interactions with others? Politics? Daily life? What struggles do they underpin?
- Propaganda, cons, social engineering, play, desire, design.
- How do people use an understanding of psychology and cognition to advantage in daily interaction?
- How is information presented to maximize results, whether for good or ill?
- How do our actual uses of information affect our interactions with others? Politics? Daily life? What struggles do they underpin? (see above for comparison to beliefs)
- Communication and academic/public stratification.
- What could academia learn from the answers to the questions above?
- New media, the Internet.
- Okay, I just really fucking love the Internet, because in many ways it embodies all the other ideas - information, design, struggle, community, interaction - in one messy package.
- Also, I like to make pretty things on it.
- And useful tools for using it. Based on my own assumptions of information and what it's good for. I should probably take a hard look at those assumptions.
* Note: Please be aware that many members of the list would probably disagree violently with this interpretation of the conversation.