Just as we have given up on the ideal of the ancient Greek practice of having very many different states, each with their own unique constitution (for we all ought to be democracies now, even if many of us are actually oligarchies and tyrannies) - alone comes the internet- which clearly re-invents this multiplicity.
What after all are the 'great' dominant site (The Wikipedia, Google, Facebook etc) but an an ...Archy ;As is certain constitution, which loops individuals up one with the other and defines their relationships with each other.
Our Friendships our commerical actions, our every life history or family find their echo and are articulated upon the internet and different ways. It then echoes as a refrain what we do and articulates it in different ways.
A fact that is of course challenging to the status quo of our minds. What does it mean after all to be able after twenty years or so to refine our past, with its friends or music? what does it mean to be able to have world to flirt with? And how we live i world were one really can buy globally - what are ones loyalityes? Each great-site actually poses a question or perhaps runs an experiment, where in an action we are caught up changing or challenging our natures. We need be as we were, and the internet is how we change (although where this leads, butter, moth or merely perpetual puppea is never clear). A great pan-hellenic Experiment of the what the mind might be in new and shifting context - is being poured across these differing Archies.
Each archy puts in play and shares in differing our images. our talent, and ambitions but also our memories and feelings. more than that memory and feelings are incited to be shared. we become then a thing that bleeds across its own sharing- that that is invent or thinking about new feelings to share, and dreams of those feeling or talents actually resonating into others. we become a strange poet or prostitute of souls, articulating our bits (real or imagined) in the hope others might use them - and we turn ourselves into a celebof this or that constitution,
Here need a little caution, for there are other subtler element here. the networks that are created by the internet reflects also the global situation and bars of language and nation. A world where these bars need not be is opened up, but not necessarily inhabited (as yet or perhaps at all). their is clearly then a silent geography also in the internet- defining. our old way of thinking has not dies, is merely conjured anew in a slippery different landscape, where it need not be. and yet as that landscape echoes its actually usage and develops accordingly, it is likely enough that echoes of this nationism in relfection will linger for a long time.
More that that in a sense each of these great sites - are not just another clever application, but also actually define what the internet is for. Google or Facebook then defined actual use of the thing and carry on defining it. The point bring their are no clear rules about what the internet is for or even what it is: It is defined only in the way people use it (as library or marketplace or meat market or Porn library). In the best tradition of greece then, each of the great-sites are not merely a constitution, ways of looping people together, but also provide a template for a political type - and Archy. This template is at once unique to that site, but also but there- other sites might well look on it, and how it allowed change to seeps across the net , and react.
There is then that ancient greek feeling of possibility New sites emerge, and with it new uses, and we look always to the next site, the new constitution, the perfect program perhaps, and debate what it should be and how it will link individuals - the constitutions it will invent.
But as with the best Greek constitutions there are extra rules, defining how these sites operate (what they expect from their citizens) and how they compete. Sites will then not merely be about sharing between folk, but also must have some means of making those folk pay. Thy will then define in their means of sharing, a second stream, a means of wealth generation (or if they do not that itself is an issue). The idealism of the constitution is then tinged with the fact that the manner individuals are looped, the new way they might share anything or more often nothing in particular, must at some point itself be a money making opportunity: be that directly or indirectly- apps or Ads - what we do or what is done to us....
The Internet then is in the process of rethrowing something in our minds, and trying (and only partially slicing to pry open that something, and render it lucid to capitalism and making money. Likewise it is clear that the state has to recover itself in the internet, and find new ways to be important - to make us all safe or tax us or whatever. The Internet actually challenges the Post-Elightenment Capitalist-National consensus about what, who and how individual actually is. As persia rallied agianst greece then the government looks in fear at the internet. Finally in this list of old powers their are the exciting merchants of information (real or imagined)- the news-organization and publishers, who need to find ways of either fitting into some if not all of these constitutions (and even becoming an Archies in their own right)... Or else to must cosy up to internet companies in some manner, offering them something or else (finally) learning to do with out.
No wonder then the state lumbers about trying to make us fear for our very identity - and the capitalist bandwagon attempts to impose the Laws of copy write onto the new terrian. It has to - for an issue of survival of the old system in these new Archies.
but as they link together individuals, and so intent constitution each of the great-sites, become to a degree clonable. That is they learn from each other- and from the progression of sites. Here there is a clear odd enough process in play. for great-sites live and die by their twin abilities constantly define new ways of sharing information and looping individuals together or else being the dominant way by being the best or at leas the one everyone continues to use).
Great-sites then become established around one thing they do - and then clone there own principle, in the knowledge that others will be also cloning it, and bleed it across the internet: a search design, becomes a developer of ready to hand application, and then becomes a phone maker. The point being that the constitution are then open affairs - elements can be borrowed or lent- aspects developed. Sharing is never simple - it has many faces - and everyone can share (and is ever great-site will borrow elements of each other and attempt to make them their own, while diversifying what they do).
At the same time there is a real mass logic here. Certain application only work when very many people share them. more than that mass phenomena start to exist across the folk caught up together- sites generate then their own manner, their lifes as people join them. they further differentiate then in this sharing (and develop) Sites then that do not have the critical mass, however wonderful they might be simply loose out.
Their is a wonderful Pelopennsian total war being waged by the great sites of the internet. each have to continue expanding both what they do and who uses them in order that they survive: That is in order that other sites do not merely strip them of their constitution (and is clone their way to link individuals), and then run off with their citizens.
Running across these constitutions is another silent factor - an issue of landscape - the internet is defined by its codes and its neutralities. It only exists as it does as long as the number do not run out, and the freedom of what can be said and shared, but also how it is are preserved. Alter these and you have really changed the landscape for the net- changed what it is and what it will do and how it then evolve (which is not necessarily a bad thing). The Internet like Greece is caught up in the landscape that allowed it to be possible, change that landscape and everything might slip.
In Short i these days of ours, ti s clear the Internet is fast becoming to topic of interest in the fat world at least- as massive social experiment, what many up into it and actually quietly challenges many many things. the question will be then will this challenge be sustained, or will ancient Persia or merely the Rule of Empire prevail once again? And will the shifting archies themselves stablize into a number of shared established Aristoltian forms (he has six) - or wil lthe anrachy continue for the forseebale future at least.
No comments:
Post a Comment