Loren Sonnenberg
From Collectivate Course Wikis
Bio
Loren Sonnenberg is a temporary community producer primarily interested in the possibilities latent in new technologies for creating community consensus. He is founding member of the Access Community Infoshop (2003-2005). ACI offered free Internet access, a radical library, a performance/show space, local group meeting space, and community mediated barter to the North Buffalo community. Loren now lives in a housing co-operative in Buffalo proper and has continued to pursue his community development interests.
Research
I am interested in using McLuhan's rear-view mirror approach to look at how people engage with social web media and specifically collaborative on-line news structures. To do this I have spent a large portion of the semester looking back at the history of other communication technologies with a focus on television in particular. How did people learn how to use TV, what basic human needs did it originally satisfy, and what historical context shaped its use?
'Marching backwards into the future' this understanding of television can then be directly related to both the possibilities and complications of social web media. The primary difference between the web and television is the societal transition from 1-way media which require a large passively receptive audience (Gans) to 2-way media that depend on audience participation.
I am engaging in this research because I believe that television in its current form is not in any way representative of the public sphere that is needed for a functioning American democracy. For the web to serve as a public sphere in its place, however, we must first deal with issues of access, acculturation, and engagement that have plagued the internet from its beginning.
Project
Rawing the News
My research focus is on food as metaphor for online news production. While I wrote the weekly responses to the readings my interests for a final project turned away from an essay to a live performance. "Rawing the News" is the result of this process. It is a participatory performance that uses raw 'cooking' to illustrate the open news production process online. The performance actively involves its participants in the collaborative collection and manipulation of content.
Description:
Three seperate dishes were prepared by three seperate groups of volunteers. Each dish was prepared in three stages by volunteers.
Ten volunteers will be needed for each stage. Each of these volunteers will only be allowed to participate in one of the three stages. Promotional materials will advertise the need for such volunteers and the times at which these volunteers will be needed. In addition to campus listservs and group promotional materials efforts will also be made to reach out to other communities (Buffalo Tribe, Nickel City Co-op, Allentown,etc.). All volunteers will be asked to bring any digital cameras, camcorders, and other devices that they possess with them and will be encouraged to document their expereince throughout the installation. The installation will begin on April 12th at 10:00. The first stage will begin at 10:00, the second at 1:00, and the third stage will commence at 2:00. Each stage will be respresented by a pile of oversized cards equal to the number of volunteers requested. These cards will have instructions on them and at the beginning of each round the volunteers for said round will be allowed to pick a card. Cards may then be traded amongst the volunteers. Before continuing on to the next round all tasks must be completed in a satisfactory manner.
The first stage is Collection. During the Collection stage the 'raw content' for the meal will be gathered. This will include procuring of ingredients and other necessary items. Transportation will be required for this stage and I am thinking that a rental van would be the best option. This would allow me to create the sort of improvised content-gathering community that typically comes into existence at the moment of relevant experience. A significant part of this project, of the experience / content, is the process of introducing the participants to other institutions (Lexington Food Co-operative, Nickel City Housing Co-operative, etc.) and ways of approaching food (organic food, raw foodism, etc.). I think that maintaining the volunteer group as a coherent whole, as opposed to scattering them to the four winds to pick up items from multiple locations, will help create the sort of unifying experience I am looking for. The van will leave from UB at 10:15, stop at the Lexington Food Co-op to pick up ingredients (which will already have been paid for), and then stop at the Nickel City Housing Co-op to pick up utensils, cutting boards, graters, food processor, dehydrator, etc. It will then return to UB.
The second stage is Transcoding. During the Transcoding stage the 'raw content' will be prepared for use. Fruits, vegetables, and other ingredients will be prepped. Much like the process of writing down the experience you wish to share or that of converting a video file to a web accessible format the 'raw content' that the volunteers have collected needs to be converted before it can be used. In addition to chopping, grating, and otherwise processing individual ingredients all necessary liquids (oil, honey, etc.) will also be measured at this stage.
The third stage is Re-mix. During the Re-mix stage the 'transcoded content' will be combined to form the three dishes that will compose the final meal. Each combination of ingredients will take on new properties that the individual ingredients did not have. This will be a raw meal - none of the food will be cooked. The 'transcoded content' will take on new meanings when it is made available to / combined with the content of other content producers, but the integrity of the original ingredients will not be compromised. The news will not be 'cooked'.
The final component of the installation is a lecture. It will be given at 6:00. I intend to use photo and videography of the three preperatory stages of the installation to continue the metaphor of cooking as collaborative production. This lense will help me illustrate my discussion of the issues/dangers currently facing collaborative media-makers. The final goal is to make the content accessible. The extension of the food metaphor, the unique experience each volunteer will take away, and the sense of immediacy / relevancy created using images captured only hours beforehand should all work in unison to accomplish this task.
The lecture itself will be informed by a variety of texts and relevant life experiences. The texts that I am currently working with include What We Want Is Free edited by Ted Purges, Gatewatching by Axel Bruns, Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History by Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz. I will not go into excessive detail here, but my goal here is to explore the arena of collaborative new production by asking the following questions: 1.What is to stop for-profit institutions from organizing content production in a way that offsets the current trend toward democratization? 2.How can participants be made accountable to their content? 3.What steps have the moderators of these new structures taken to control the number of content producing identities each person can wield? 4.What models of collaborative decision making do these moderators use in their gate keeping roles? 5.How do these types of decision making models affect the production of content? 5.Does a more decentralized media production model fragment the ubiquity of mass consumed historical experience? 6. What could be the possible negative impact of such a fragmentation be on the public sphere?
These questions will be actively revised as my research progresses, but I want to focus my energies on exploring cracks in the veneer of collaborative online news production. I am interested in what is currently complicating and will continue to complicate the democratic potential for this kind of production.
Comments: You should focus on one issue, one case study, one or two texts. Establish the entire metaphor beforehand so that audience members and participants are able to get the full experience. As many visuals and as little text as possible. How to make people comfortable if I intend to create discussion for people not familiar with the project? A simple overview of collaborative online news production for the lecture might be a better idea than a more complex critique.
Week 3: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
Reading: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere by Jurgen Habermas, The MIT Press, 1991
Response: I believe the potential for a multiplicity of independent, self-mediating, discursive, and agenda setting subaltern public spheres (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_sphere) and am primarily interested in the development of technologies (web, social, and otherwise) and structural understandings (media ecologies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_ecology), etc.) that support both the emergence and well-being of these spheres. I also believe that the inherent decentralization of the agenda setting process that occurs, assuming a multiplicity of public spheres, undermines the power of television or political machines, as merely two public spheres out of many, to limit the public discourse. Then again does capitalism create the possibility of an all-inclusive public sphere through its expansionist nature and its standardization of the documents which are to be part of the public discourse. Does capital's rational commodificaton of the polis/agora entail permeability(selective semi-permeability or randomized novelty-motivated permeabily {e.g. subculture 'scene' commodification}, 'gatekeeping', or participatory assimilation (a hive society requires a commanded and commanding element)? Is there any way for public spheres composed of networked interpretive communities to take advantage of the existence of a flawed, but nearly universal agenda to create new possibilities for collaboration or community building. Is it possible to 'infect' the system, engineer a media 'virus', or 'viral' form to alter the behaviour of the system (yes? any self-motivated reproduction of idea/intellectual object {meme}); is an 'infection' a relative term signalling a negative reaction from the hegemonic system (e.g. the virus vector of gene therapy used to specifically alter {tailored evolution} of an organism)?
Firstly, the idea of a public sphere represented by the mass media, and specifically television, seems inherently flawed to me. To a certain degree the idea of the media as the public sphere makes sense if you assume the existence of a single cohesive public sphere because the media determines both the subjects of discourse and the framing of their debate. This process of selection and framing, however, is not an open one But it is not closed. Constant influx of creatuve energy is required to maintain the centripetal (hegemonic system-oriented) attention of the [media] consumer. Ask yourself, "What is an 'interest gradient'?", 'interest gradient' being the (?) varying 'slope' of the hegemonic system's 'terrain'; The 'physics' of creativity flowing through the 'mediascape': "How and why does it flow?" (Suggestion: avoid 'why' until you have traced 'how' it happens/is done. Confronting 'why' immediately inflates the universe of discourse; [why] is the most extreme and difficult question, being inherently unanswerable within any given system's logical construction {understanding is contextual, requiring environmental awareness of the conceptual 'locale', the niche, that in which [a system] is 'embedded', this environmental awareness is possible in the delimiting observation, the act of specific survey bording the 'locale', e.g. the lines of lattitude and longitude delimit the 'locale' of globe by bording/defining distance from the Equator and Prime Meridian, respectively, instrumentally via mathematics as a conceptual technology; note: elucidation of the previous comment may be required}). “Where works of literature, for example, had previously been appropriated not just through individual reading but through group discussion and critical discourse of literary publications, the modern media and the modern style of appropriation “removed the ground for a communication about what has been appropriated” Question: "Could it be said that the source 'locale' of appropriated elements of media culture has been necessarily excluded from the hegemonic system's universe of discourse to preserve that 'locale' as a 'creative reserve'?"
Discussion of the appropriated directs attention centrifugally, or away from the hegemonic system's core, creating an awareness of the fecund source 'locale'. Awareness breeds interest and fear, both of which are actually compelling (drawing to do acts; stimulating to action); awareness demands action. Public explicit communication about appropriated *phenomena* local to (and thereforeof the presence of) any fecund source 'locale', fearful and interested perception instigating action, and the implicit inertia of the hegemonic system itself synergistically promote the redistribution of action, with acts being done in response to the fecund source 'locale', not in the maintenance of the hegemonic system. Perhaps the behavior of the hegemonic media system 'desires' to maintain dynamic disequilibrium with fecund source 'locales', having realized that communication of their presence as fearfully interesting modifiers/replacers/successors cannot be entirely controlled without risking their 'true' or 'functional' 'extinction' ('true extinction' being the total nonexistence of any fecund source 'locale' vs. 'fuctional extinction', or the non-appropriability of fecund source 'locale' *phenomena* {e.g. the non-appropriability of a policy of anti-capital non-consumption}), entailing [fecund source 'locale's'] preservation, but within a tolerance range ensuring the predominantly centripetal attention of perceivers and thus that their acts probably contribute to the maintenence of the coherent hegemonic media system. Stop. Reflect: "Live, and let live." Modify this according to consolidating processes of rational capital: "Live (the self), and let (the other) live, but only for the benefit of the self."
(Author's supplemental commentary: it is, of course, impossible for such greed to survive{?}, any attempts to maintan excess demanding absolute maximization of exploitation while ignoring the coherency-ranges of viable fecund source 'locales', inevitably resulting in their dissolution at an ever increasing rate until, predicatably, the hegemonic centripetal system is unable to maintain dynamic disequilibrium with peripheral centrifugal systems {e.g. fecund source 'locales'}, having exceeded the renewability/replenishment rate of all individual fecund source 'locales' and the 'population' of fecund source 'locales' as a 'collective individual', dooming the centripetal hegemonic system to catastrophic disequilibrium, or, pithily, *death*.) (Calhoun, 23) How can the mass media then be a truly public sphere if it, by its nature, is merely a one way stream of information that cannot be held responsible for the discourse it chooses to appropriate? I almost feel like the standardized agenda necessary for the proper operation of sizable democratic bodies is being determined by some ramshackle collection of book-of-the-month clubs run amok. Lucid application of vernacular metaphor employing a culturally idiosyncratic organization to highlight the salience of such cosmopolitan absurdity: "I almost feel like the standardized agenda necessary for the proper operation of sizable democratic bodies is being determined by some ramshackle collection of book-of-the-month clubs run amok." Apt perception of ubiquitious incongruity. Paradoxically, the order is disorderly. The genetic postulates of, perhaps (e.g.) "religion", "tradition", "values", and other 'golden greats' reveal the 'authorship' of culture: equivocatory poetics abound.
[The] media text of culture, upon exegesis, divulges its' 'hierophant's cloistered secrets': 'Caligula is mad, and the emperor has no clothes,' and this is irrelevant, insignificant, and ultimately unimportant, so long as the subjective sanity of the status quo remains fashionable. Key: fashion, or the incessant presentation of (e.g.) consumer choice and preference as vehicles communicating [life-]style and taste, which are both presented apropos *your (consumer) attention*, in 'proselytizing martyrless faith'. 'Feel-good-ism, the martyrless faith': beatify 'Saint Celebrity'. In one respect, the essential play is in the negation of history, the atemporality of desire fulfilled in consumption, declaring everyone and everything replacable and therefore disposable, as (but not inherently) expendable. 'Media relativity', or subjective variance in the properties of the hegemonic media 'cosmos', actively accomplishes the negation of history by maintaining the form of presentaion, (e.g.) the structure of the media and its 'presentation-as-content' (advertising/marketing-content/entertainment: e.g. *infomercials*{?}) and the content itself ('content-bound' presentation, "The medium is the message", presentation presents itself as [content] itself {Heidegger: Being bringing itself to Being, through language, as language in Dasein {note: may require elucidation. Source "On the Way to Language", trans., by Martin Heidegger}), while simultaneously fluctuating, emphasizing, emphasizing the (ultimately nugatory{?}) content-presentation dyads, and reflexively "...fluctuating, emphasizing..." the aforemntioned process itself, creatively capitalizing upon [the process'] as content. 'Endlich' (Deutsch: "finally"), it is possible for this process to incise temporality in its inherent denial of true(?) temporal progression (which entails physical progression ammenable to the concept/conceptual reality/intellectual object, spacetime. {Author's supplemental commentary: "Alchemical", I hope, is a term sufficing to orient the reader's psyche. Saint John writes, translated imperfectly from Koine Greek, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." does not capture the transcendental gravity and binding power of the sublime "logos", which has been and is translated simply as "word", conveying, especially contemporarily, not nonesuch "logos", but merely the text, spoken, written; Today's "word" is casual.
Reflect: "What is the significance of 'giving one's word?'" Alchemical "logos", connoting the terrifying wonder of sublime order (basic, static) and ordering (basic, active) of the world, is a 'psychec' primer in application, *language is psychedelic*, (the Koine comprehensive "psyche" means a synergistic dilation of the [concept] mind, inclusively extending beyond mind/intellect, *nous*, soul/spirit, *sophia*, and affect/emotion, {e.g.} *eros* (?) and *thanatos* (?), introducing the transmundane connotations of "gnosis": intuitive spiritual revelation. Expression sanctified in the transmundane consecratory of human being via her *ethos*, *logos*, *pathos*, and *gnosos*, brings *aletheia* |loosely: "coming into unconcealment <birthing, luminosity, recall, e.g., halcyon dawn's benevolent caress, wishing even shadows' dark repair, the auspicious poignancy of their sacrificial love surrenders *us* into *mother* truth, her caring, nurturing, protective embrace of *warm* truth, *feel the warmth of truth, for it is all lives' living warmth*, Socrates and his mentor, a midwife, metaphorically guiding-*Dao*, *"[on the] Way"*-life/truth into the overwhelming luminousity of sublime reconciliation, and, popularly, Socrates' principal Plato's stunned deliverance from concealment, that hideous abomination, blindly and masochisticly insisting upon an opiating ersatz *logos*, rather the grey coercion of *[the] necessary self-deception*, immolatingly self-inflicted wounds forever bound and crippled life, inculcated into a torpid acquiescence by rotting muses' dirging a perpetual eulogy of impotence, impossibility, and indolence, because wihtout constant self-deceptive, self-degrading, self-defeating reinforcement, a feeling, any upwelling of affect, that of a Rose waiting for its will to bloom, or that equally of dead souls' sublime placidity, their ethereal meditation upon the eternal sufferings of all who wait patiently for *[the] Will* to guide them onto the benevolent *Way*, the sacred *Way*, along which one fulfills destiny at the behest of *[the] Will*, restoring balance, completing the circle, for this is the way of life that, ever embraced by it, therein lies a holy absolution admonishing one to *live or die trying*, erotically birthing an unbound soul, divinely inspired by rare Dionysus, Eros, and Pan, inexclusively worshiping paladin Apollo and radiant Helios, Cronos' suffering in Tartarus and Zeus' Olympian surfeit alike; birthed into the human world, delivered from sublime eternity, *crisis guides us* unto the fulfillment of destiny, *[the] Will* silently driving all to *Ouroboros*, sigil of universal conservation, to foetal catharsis within the living aether's luminous warmth, return to the momentless circumstances before time and timelessness both, primordial in the *eternal return*, to a mother's womb, to the warm living darkness succeeded by the terrifying illumination at birth, a primal world collapses into indifferent crisis or uncertain outcome, thrust into cold brilliance, this is the prophetic revelation, *the moment of birth is the moment of truth*.
Alas, a fecund digression into ranting esoterica ultimately .>}) In deliberately obstructing itinerant perception, the perceptual 'ocean/river/stream' (metaphor concept: indeterminate flux and {creation/genesis/perception/waking of philosphical idealism: "Esse is Percipi"} local flow), and its (intentionally{?}) addressing various and sundry addictive products, which provide subjects to whom the product has been introduced with not a simple product, as is presented via the marketing/advertising media construct (emphasis is placed upon structuring the 'circuit' of perceivers' active attention, developing potentially commodifiable patterns of consumption intending to later capitalize upon this research; developing 'cognito-affective umwelt' 'real estate') of the *'cognito-affective umwelt'* description of 'stock' or 'archetypal' qualities , but also the impetus {perhaps stimulating subliminal, or subtle peripheral 'cognito-affective' awareness) for the perceiving subject to reliably consume (e.g.) content regardless of brand or quality, but rather based purely upon stimulating (e.g.) particular 'cognito-affective' states, objects of intellectual awareness, experiencing constructs, (cosmopolitan Pavlov: the {untrained} human anticipates {as much as any dog}, expressing anticipatory behaviours and neurophysiological preparations preparing her more general or specific environmental interactions?). (Author's additional commentary: I've remained awake through the night and into today dissecting affect and cognition as a 'gedankenexperiment', or 'thought experiment', relative to the Media and media, which, although present within my life, remain quiescent on account of my conscious, deliberate reticence and periodic total dissociation from contact with 'the Media', as a gating hegemonic centripetal system, and as instrumental media apparatus, which entails my surrender to deliberately self-deceptive 'double-think' with respect to my employment of said apparatus. I am occupied; I am busy being; I will that I am. Loren, about two hours ago someone turned off the house computer without my having saved the original edit that I worked throughout the night and morning. Too delirious to concern myself with this even, I've begun the reconstruction of what was, minus some masturbatory pleasure-ranting on esoterica, the occult, insouciance {'The French Way', and 'the challenging life of a hedonist: tales of revolutionary laziness'}, and the blithe happenstance of stimulant-induced libertine eroticism, all after binging on the various amphetamines, unidentified pills &etc., while in the midst of a curiousity-bred experimental fast. Composting, my integrety slumps, *a casually rotting squash*.)
“We are witnessing at present parallel developments that both undermine the powers of the nation-state, especially economically, and internationalize media, both its systems of distribution and its content. How, therefore, should we envisage the construction of a new international public sphere and parallel system of democratic political accountability?” (Garnham, 372) Some sort of decentralization of agenda setting power amongst public spheres (with the media being one of many and deserving of an equal voice) is unquestionably necesitated by the current conditions. I also think that the tools, both technological and theoretical, for this sort of concerted decentralization of agenda setting power are still existing sharp. The window is a narrow one however before the oncoming tide of personalized consumer content subsumes the will to creatively use these tools: it is time to rush to the cracks in institutionalized discursive dominance before capitalism has expanded to fill them.
Although the mass media control over the agenda setting process undermines the basic participatory nature of the public sphere it at the same time could present a unique opportunity for the multiplicity of subaltern (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaltern_%28post-colonialism%29) public spheres to take advantage of. By defining the ubiquitous collection of appropriated information that currently informs the majority of public discourse the media has done two things: created a discourse, no matter how problematic, that is shared by all subaltern public spheres and erected a nearly universal agenda monolith capable of supporting an infinite number of peripheral discursive structures. “Moreover the public consequences of mass media are not necessarily as uniformly negative as Structural Transformation suggests, and there may be more room than Habermas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habermas) realized for alternative democratic media strategies.” (Calhoun, 33) Each of these structures / strategies (forums, blogs, wiki’s, public access, pirate radio etc.) is capable of existing alongside mass media distribution / consumption introducing while still introducing feedback into the mechanisms of the agenda setting system. They allow any community with access, no matter how sparsely distributed, the possibility to confront the media and hold it accountable: to confront it as merely one community among many, albeit one with a very unique function.
How can we as artists intervene in or cause disruption of this agenda setting process? Could we create peripheral discursive technologies for television that, through decentralization of power, destabilize, rupture, and eventually destroy the one way flow of agenda? Essentially, can we move closer to the heart of the machine? Can we introduce noise into the process of agenda setting rather than merely intercepting and manipulating a broadcast without questioning the machine itself? Can we through art support the development of pre-existing conflicts within the agenda setting regime (i.e. between creative staff, management, and sponsors)? Can we smash it wide open while all the time encouraging a transition to participatory discursive spaces?
-Loren
Week 4: Television; Technology and Cultural Form
Reading: Television; Technology and Cultural Form by Raymond Williams, Routledge, 2003
Response:
Raymond Williams Television; Technology and Cultural Form is quite a prophetic book for one originally published back in 1974. It seems to have accurately predicted many of the trends in modern day mass communications while recognizing the importance of battles (broadcasting as a public resource vs. a private enterprise) that have been to a large degree decided. This book represents a desperate call to arms for maintaining some element of democracy in control over mass communications. It, however realizes advertising and technology, not content, as the driving forces behind television’s expansion and seems to offer little hope for an alternative. Even the BBC model, where taxation as opposed to advertising funds both content and infrastructure, discussed in the text offers little hope as Williams sees it eroded more and more by the American model.
There are a few nuggets of hope nestled in here in the corners though and I am unsure as to why Williams doesn’t expand on them further. Perhaps it is just a personal bias: I am more interested in the potential of television than its dangers because its faults have been so completely institutionalized as to appear unchallengeable. The corporate broadcasting industry has won the first round of conflict over mass communications and I feel like it is time to identify new conflicts, new ways of circumventing or outgrowing these problems, rather than challenging them directly. For example Williams says, “Television became available as a result of scientific and technical research, and in its character and uses exploited and emphasized elements of a passivity, a cultural and psychological inadequacy, which had always been latent in people, but which television now organized and came to represent.” (Williams, 4) As opposed to challenging this passivity through publicly funded educational or community programming which will always be in opposition to the expansionist advertising driven structure that currently exists, how can we subvert mass broadcasting in a way more suited to its inherent nature? Can television be used to ameliorate the already pre-existing social conditions of passivity and social inadequacy? Thus, if television is an effect rather than a cause of new methods of communication and its success is an effect of previously existing social conditions rather than a cause of currently existing ones how can we find new ways to take advantage of its most notable qualities (ubiquitous content, expansionist nature, accessibility as a medium, etc.)? Why not wield MoveOn.org as a loyal viewer block instead of a loyal voter block? If group television viewership, and hence advertiser funding for specific types of content, has taken on as much power as voting in determining the national (and international) agenda for the public sphere then why not organize around a more developed understanding of this power?
There are many reasons that the American model has become dominant and each can most likely be addressed in its own way without presenting a direct challenge or proposing the development of radically different broadcasting structures. For instance Williams says, “In the developing world old films and television programmes are in effect dumped, at prices which make any local production seem ludicrously expensive by comparison.” (Williams, 37) So if content creation is driven by cost then how can we create cheaper, more open / participatory production models capable of appearing more attractive to the advertisers that fund both the creation of content and the development of broadcasting infrastructure?
“Further, there will be in many cases unforeseen uses and unforeseen effects which are again a real qualification of the original intention. Thus an explosive may be developed at the command or by the investment of a ruling class, or by the investment or for the profit of an industrial enterprise, yet come to be used also by a revolutionary group against that ruling class, or by criminals against the industrialist’s property.” (Williams, 133) What will these effects be? How can we actively subvert the original intention to create more open and discursive structures?
-Loren
Reading: The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida, Basic Books, 2004
Response: Reaction to Florida 2/08/06 + Outline of Florida 2/08/06
Week 5: The Rise of the Creative Class
Reading:
Reading: The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida, Basic Books, 2004
Response:
Richard Florida in his book The Rise of the Creative Class argues that we have entered a new age, the Creative Age, and that cities which are not forward thinking in creating environments conducive to creativity will fall behind the curve. In such a situation a strong local music scene or easy access to outdoor recreation become much more important to maintaining a healthy local economy than a giant sport’s stadium or downtown mall complex ever could. He repeatedly states that cities need to rethink themselves in ways that attract such minds, but rarely goes into detail on how to do so (I guess this is where his consulting comes in). So who are these people, where are they, and why would any city want to attract them in masse at the potential cost of ignoring other potentially important factors for urban redevelopment? Florida gives quick handouts to problems of gentrification and duly notes that African Americans are much less likely to either join in or benefit from the creative economy, but does not seem interested in really grappling with these problems. Great, so there’s this wonder body of individuals that will somehow resurrect every city in the nation from urban decay and as a bonus it’ll force the undesirable residents who are somehow incapable of being creative out of your city center. If Florida’s rosy analysis is to believed we can just take HUD funding and give it to local musicians because once the creative class there won’t be anyone around who needs assistance. A lot of aspects of Florida’s book are very interesting but his overall emphasis on creative class as urban salvation is problematic at best and at its worst seems an ample justification for shifting funds away from other areas in hopes of attracting people who simply may not come. He talks of revitalizing existing neighborhoods without destroying their original charm and all I see is empty lofts and bankrupt cities.
The Creative Class has however become an extremely influential group that needs to be recognized simply because it is one of the primary resources that modern companies are demanding. Hence innovative investments in revitalizing urban centers in ways like improving public transportation, creating car free pedestrian malls, strengthening traditionally pedestrian districts, and expanding bike paths become much more important than landing magic bullet style deals with companies which may only stick with a particular city for two or three years. Hopefully this development approach, one based upon building human habitat as opposed to one focused solely on enticing large employers, will make it easier for community organizations to get funding for local projects. In the case of Buffalo how many community or small business grants could you make available for the sixty-six million dollar cost of one Bass Pro? “History shows that the biggest mistake is to try to forestall change or reverse it. When the nature of the economy has changed, old institutions stop working.” (Florida, 323) At the very least I agree with Florida that cities who do not actively work to improve quality of life and social cohesion within the urban center will lose capable people, no matter what the opportunities for them are.
Outside of his casual dealings with both race and gentrification one of my biggest problems with Florida’s arguments is his apparently isolated interest in the first world. Many of the urban innovations he is suggesting to attract creative class people have already been institutionalized in forward thinking developing nations like Brazil. I am unsure as to why he lauds Ireland as a Creative Class success story while ignoring other emergent nations that might be just as innovative in attracting Creative Class people.
Overview: The Creative Class
Generally composed of knowledge workers of all kinds, but has a super creative core of individuals in a wide variety of different fields. Simply put: "People want to work for a company that values them, provides a challenging yet stable work environment, nurtures and supports their creativity, and allows them to realize their full potential." -143
Creative Capital
"Gradually I came to see my perspective as distinct from the human capital theory. A colleague of mine even gave it a name, the 'creative capital theory.' Essentially my theory says that regional economic growth is driven by the location choice of creative people - the holders of creative capital - who prefer places that are diverse, tolerant and open to new ideas." -223 Creative Habitat
"We humans are not godlike; we cannot create out of nothing. Creativity for us is an act of synthesis, and in order to create and synthesize, we need stimuli - bits and pieces to put together in new and unfamiliar ways, existing frameworks to deconstruct and transcend. I also feel it is inherent to creative mindset to want to maximize choices and options, to always be looking for new ones, becuase in the game that Einstein called combinatory play, this increases you chances of coming up with novel combinations. And as more people earn their keep by creating, the more these aspects of experience are likely to be highly valued and just plain necessary." -186
The Need for Community
"Virtual community is not replacing real community. Chat rooms have proliferated, but so have real coffee shops. And while DotComGuy's entrepreneurial spirit may be admired by many, his virtual lifestyle is not at all what vast and growing numbers of people want. Members of the Creative Class are not looking for a life delivered through a modem. They want one that is heart-throbbingly real." -166 Deepening the Moment
"With so many people feeling chronically pressed for time, a new set of memoment-to-moment strategies has emerged. The intent is what scholars call 'time deepening' - if one cannot elongate time, perhaps one can deepen or intensify it, getting more for each bit."
The Horizontal Labor Market People in the creative class are looking for a 'thick' job market: one with many different similar opportunities as opposed to a single opportunity with great potential to advance.
The Three T's
Technology, Talent, and Tolerance
The Great Class Sorting
"Taken together, these findings suggest that a vast and disturbing change is afoot. The U.S. working population is resorting itself geographically along class lines." -241
Week 6: Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History
Reading: Reading: Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History by Danial Dayan and Elihu Katz
Response: Reaction to Dayan & Katz 2/21/06
Week 7: Gatewatching
Reading: Gatewatching by Axel Bruns Chapters 1-6
Response:
Week 8
Reading: Gatewatching by Axel Bruns Chapters 7-13
Response:
Week 9
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Links
Subversion: Does corporate broadcasting create the possibility of an all-inclusive central public sphere through its expansionist nature and its standardization of the documents which are to be part of the public discourse? If it has could technologies be created that take advantage of this homogenization to better bridge / unite disparate subsidiary spheres? Could networked interpretive communities also take better advantage of the existence of this kind of flawed, but nearly universal agenda to create new possibilities for collaboration or community building?
Films
Deconstructing Supper
The Future of Food
Orwell Rolls in His Grave
Life and Debt
Bibliography
Television & the Public Sphere
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere by Jurgen Habermas, The MIT Press, 1991
Habermas and the Public Sphere edited by Craig Calhoun, The MIT Press, 1993
Television; Technology and Cultural Form by Raymond Williams, Routledge, 2003
Law and Justice As Seen on TV by Elayne Rapping, New York University Press, 2003
Media Events : The Live Broadcasting of History by Daniel Dayan & Elihu Katz, Harvard University Press, 2005
Media Ecologies : Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture by Matthew Fuller, The MIT Press, 2005
The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida, Basic Books, 2004
Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production by Axel Bruns, Peter Lang Publishing, 2005
Anything by Buckminster Fuller or Jane Jacobs
Food Politics
Food's Frontier: The Next Green Revolution by Richard Manning, University of California Press, 2001
Food and Culture, A Reader edited by Carole Counihan & Penny Van Esterik, Routledge, 1997
The Next Green Revolution : Essential Steps to a Healthy, Sustainable Agriculture by James E. Horne & Maura McDermott, Haworth Press, 2001
Recommendations
Grinding It Out by Ray Croc (McDonald's Founder)
The Body in Late Capitalist USA
Eating Culture-- Contact Chris Gallant about his research. He worked and read a lot about these topics.
I also mentioned to you the work opf Martha Rosler on food. I wonder if you followed that up.
Other
Deconstructing Dinner Radio Show
Contacts Page
Comment Section
check out Milk Project <http://www.milkproject.net/> and the film "life and debt" (if you haven't already). nick
Artist Statement
Development Plan: Rupert Murdoch I Love You
Free Radical Project Proposal