Thursday, February 19, 2009

Gift Economy

Giving Status by giving.

Do you do it because you get status??

Communal.

Collective behaviour as opposed to the individual

Whole the collective supports the whole.


The Gift Economy:

Off Wikipedia:

Reciprocal Altruism – oxymoronic

Don’t really work well together.  Counter intuitive.

Altruism does explain some parts, you are always giving.  But if you don’t get back it’s not an economy.

Almost like Karma, what you do will come back to you.

Have to deal with you give to people because it’s the right thing to do.

What do you get out of it.  Get thanks?

Reciprocity.  Expectation of gratitude?


Scale of return.

Some people will give the whole and some just a small part.  It’s not equal.  


Another aspect:

Creative Commons

Can put conditions on the work.  Then it’s not truly altruistic.


Is competition a natural force?

It’s instilled, that might not matter if it’s natural or not.


But for everything that you find is free, you will have to find someone that has paid in labour or in some kind of capital.  In doing so, the have put themselves a debt to provide for others.


For the most part, most don’t know who/ if they have benefited others.


Some people with the 1000’s of posts on discussion boards have a particular reason for doing so.


Perhaps for the sheer fact to amuse – if not monetize the content.

Do you have to do anything for their motivation to continue?

What about the illusion that you get something


The altruistic reason is the fictional audience.

It’s fictional and who we think we write for.


Gift economy as a potentially transformational moment.


What are some motivational factors:

  • - filling a void
  • - amuse etc


People mostly give for the cause to be better or because it makes them feel better.  How do you move from intrinsic motivation to external.


Purpose of most social movements – change.

At the end of the day you hope that the change occurs.


If you are actually good at what you do, you put yourself out of business, then you don’t need to do it anymore.

There are few social movements that legitimately put themselves out.

There has to be a deficiency as a motivational factor.

You’re always doing for others, because for some reason can’t do for themselves.


Obligation or deficiency.


If we are working for optimization, it is very hard because of the multitude of views.


Assumptions that within capitalist system we are actually looking to maximize.  


What ever you looking to do you’re looking to maximize, more edu, most stuff etc.


If the gift economy is based on collaboration, then not competitive.


Even open source is regulated:

  • - built on computers
  • - subject to language
  • - cultural norms
  • - bodies of knowledge


As much as there is the potential and dispensing of it, almost neuter it for other capacities.  Is it detrimental to the cause?


Do you have a right to dictate what a person can do with a gift?

Why should you be able to do that?


Gift Economy is giving conditionally.

Issues of how you determine conditions.

Just give and eventually something to come back.

No negotiation of a fair exchange.

Presumption that it’s a valueless enterprise.

About the amount of labour.

Can expect that my giving will eventually get others to do same


All engaged in economy in some way.

Transformative tool for our system of exchange.

“Doesn’t guarantee and optimize a sustainable life.”

Unless it’s the Holland pick up a bicycle if you need.


Private property predicates all our laws and how we know things.

What is yours and what is shared.


Constriction of transfer ability of things. (value)

So then find a way.


Society of rugged individualism

Why will some not take something for free.


Participation requires some sharing.  System of exchange, power, social levels of exchange.


How do we encourage people to continue, how do we widen to from limited view.


After the break think about:

  • - giving and getting back
  • - what did you learn about doing what you’ve been doing.
  • - Sharing so colleagues can let you know

(And a great suggestion from Rob)

Homework:

Share /Present your case study










Thursday, February 12, 2009

More on Waste - Hey! It's Wang Chung!

Examples of waste on the internet:

 

Cornify.com – seems like a waste of time.  Maybe not wasteful if you change it to notes.  It’s fairly sophisticated technology. 

 

Time is not only a commodity.  It’s cause we think of it as in volume.  Two ways to think of: commodity or experience.  It’s the underlying connecting feature is experience.

 

Is local emails a waste?

No: sharing without interruption. 

Yes: might be more efficient to talk.

 

There are complications to the technology.  When we assume that the technology can do everything, we don’t think about perhaps think about what’s the best technology.

 

Is there a benefit to “wasting” time.

 

What kind of waste can we think of?

Time

Energy – Physical (biometric, cognitive etc), electrical

Resource – material, Financial

Potential - opportunity

 

What’s more wasteful, using something fully for a short period of time or using something rarely over a long period of time?

-       is it more physical waste or more waste of resource

 

To a certain extent there are trade off’s are good for the power of tech.

 

Shifting focus and change of technique. 

 

Waste is relative / is universal?

When holding on to legacy things (ie qwerty keyboard) does it serve a purpose?  With the legacy issues can we let go and change?

 

We collectively made the decisions to keep things the same way.  Ie keyboard.

 

Efficiency at the design level are built in way before we decide to use it.  We dumb your body to use it.  Someone along the way someone made a decision that impacts our participation.  We just think of what we do as what we do without thinking back.

 

Some types of waste are universal.  Some waste just can’t be used.

 

Ie Gillet business model.  à printers and ink.

We perpetuate the model when we engage.  Levels of comfort.

 

You can teach yourself to do but might not enjoy. 

When we felt compelled to do something we might not actually have done something.  Ie product red.  But we feel comfortable when we have an object that says we did do something.

 

If we feel fulfilled by a passive action we won’t take on an active one.

 

Petition don’t do anything.  Passive action placate ourselves, do they equal participation. 

 

There is this idea what when we ‘engage’ in the passive activities, they might lessen the impact of the active.  There is a social badge of honour.

 

Often the structure and institutional aspects of organizing turn people off the whole active idea.  It’s not what they expected and move on.

 

In the end, it doesn’t matter whether or not it had anything to do with you or not.  So long as you believe you did something, you might continue with the active participation. 

 

How waste translates to the gift economy.  Various manifestations like creative commons, open source à economy of excess.

 

Exchange without having a direct and tangible return.  So that because you have shared things, when you need things it’ll be there.  à the spirit of sharing.

 

How do people maximum that potential to make something to do something etc.

 

Participation not just in interaction with others but also with getting further than what you could on your own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday, February 5, 2009

First class back after the strike

When looking portfolio, isn’t description of what you did.  It’s not the artist accompliament. 

 

Engate in autoethnography.  Graded on what you learned. 

What sorts of things you consider for participation in modern tech.

Through the force of being forced to make things in groups.

Can work with anybody.  Not just in the class.  Can talk about that process. 

 

You write your blog to this phatom reader who is yourself. 

 

Downfall: Nothing I love to read myself.

Have own inhibitions.

Can talk about what gets in the way?  What enables?  What contributes to my engagement to the media.  Can be many different things, technically, academic etc.

 

Can be:

Why did I use a public blogger?

Why did I choose this subject?

 

Nature of knowledge acquistion.  How does it fit in the model of education?  If it’s your model for journals and books, what difference is there?  How do you categorise?

 

Portfolio:

Beginning: Overarching thing about what you learned about the course.

Can be organised however you want.

Each section must be 1 page.

Last year some 10-15 pages.  Some went to 60 pages.  Describe what you did is not enough.  What you learned is the most important.  About the broader phenomena.

Each portfolio is individual regardless if you do everything in a group.

 

Participation is more than showing up.  It’s how you:

-       learned on your own

-       take things and help others

 

 

Can do all of the projects in one weekend.  Just explain why you did / didn’t do all of the projects and what you learned.  How did you reflect on your engagement of the excerise in the notion of participatory communication.

 

Facebook Group.

Did you check the credentials for the leader of a Facebook group? 

So some guy starts a group.  Then everyone says, “I should have start a group”

 


Participation on another level

-       being active

-       just being a member

 

We go to the places that are more like us than anywhere else.

 

We can go anywhere in the world, but we don’t.  The chances are that despite the fact that we may engage with blogs from all over the world, the chances are you aren’t getting outside views.  You’ll probably doing what you’re doing.  You really aren’t sharing with anything new.

 

Expand your networks.

-       talk to different people

-       join different groups

-       do different things

-       parties / friends

 

Research is that most people don’t make it past the 1st page in Google, even less go past 2nd page.

 

Unless you go to a party that’s good, it’s usually your same circle.  You tend to meet people through a connection.  We follow our blind paths.  The more we think we are expanding our network, we are only expanding through number but not perspective.

 

Those networks are a replication of another connection you’ve already have.  But are all actually quite similar.

 

The ultimate in social media is to become a ‘source.’  When people come to you for information. 

 

Harder to see what the social efficacy versus the political… some social may translate political.

 

Difference between social participation about a political vs social participation around political (organizing to do something vs organizing while doing something)

 

We lost a lot of cognitive energy.  But when we aren’t purposely doing anything it’s called waste.  But some say that is when we get the most done because we can recuperate or come up with new things.

 

It may not be a waste if you still learn from it.  You may not need to take away something tangible. 

 

What is the broader outcome of participation if nothing tangible comes from it?

 

What are the outputs?  What do we get from our participation?

Micro-celebrity à most famous person in a room of 100 of people they’ll never know

 

We are willing to suspend in our belief in waste so we can keep up in our lives.