Text and Hubris

Jaron Lanier (author of You Are Not a Gadget) had an interesting take on the SOPA blackouts and Web activism. His article, “The False Ideals of the Web,” led to the reflections below.

I know that Lanier has his axe to grind and that is all well and good. We all do. I even agree with most of what he has to say. It is dangerous to frame any discussion in regard to regulating the Internet purely in terms of black and white. This is especially true when we are talking about battles between corporate interests. Several of the companies that oppose SOPA have less than stellar track records when it comes to supporting an open Internet community. In their continued attempt to enact a form of modern day enclosure on the content their users create they often end up working against the very ideals that first allowed them to grow and prosper. He and I have no disagreement in this regard, whatsoever.

Since we agree that much of the opposition to SOPA comes from companies with specific economic goals, I have to admit I was surprised by the direction his piece took. Lanier’s assumption that the argument against SOPA is somehow about the maintenance or worship of “free” content is completely off the mark. In fact, I would say just the opposite. Opposition to SOPA is about making sure that content creators, of any size, can continue to reach users. For some, this is merely about switching corporate gatekeepers where “new media” behemoths take the place of “old media” behemoths. For others, it is about preserving a creator’s ability to openly share content free from any gatekeepers without the fear of costly lawsuits that would essentially eliminate any chance they would have to share their work.

Google and Facebook do not oppose SOPA because they are the “good guys.” They oppose SOPA because it’s costly. That’s it. They may blanket us in the pretty rhetoric of openness and freedom but, ultimately, they’re talking about the bottom line. In all honesty, they probably could survive a post-SOPA world albeit in much different capacity. They have the financial strength to create licensing agreements with the MPAA and RIAA. The rest of us don’t have that luxury.

The Internet is bigger than Google or Facebook. It is bigger than any single company and, personally, I hope it always remains that way. In this case, the profits of these powerful companies align with the best interests of the Internet community and that works in everyone’s favor. We already know that this won’t be the case forever, though. Indeed, that is why I am heartened by the very thing that seemed to scare Lanier: the backlash against companies that supported SOPA. I am ardent supporter of free speech, but free speech involves responsibility. I believe organizations and people have a right to choose where they spend their money. If a company supports practices that I disagree with, I have the right to not patronize that company. I also have the right to share that disagreement with others. Is this behavior the beginning form of some sort of orthodoxy? Perhaps, it is. Is it any different than refusing to sign up for a website because you disagree with it polices? Not so much.

Lanier is right in arguing that there needs to be an aggressive look at models of payment for content beyond advertising. Information isn’t free even for those sites that provide content without cost. That’s one of the reasons why Wikipedia spends so much time asking for donations. I agree that we do sometimes get caught up in the “everything must be free” mentality and that there is still a long way to go in providing solid solutions to content creators of all sizes. Blaming “free” content, however, does nothing but play into the hands of those who support measures like SOPA. This not about an Internet without rules where content is merely a pointless commodity to be traded on the nearest torrent site. This is about an Internet where practical and sane content protections do not displace or harm a growing, vibrant, and increasingly important creative community that continues to push our boundaries and the possibilities of what technology and art can do regardless of their size of their pocketbooks or their lobbying firms.

I took my lunch in order to listen to Justin Reich speak at the Berkman Center. He is the author of an upcoming study that examines how the proliferation of open and free educational resources online could affect the educational divide in terms of income equality. Specifically, he looked at wiki creation and use across a variety of schools at different socioeconomic levels. These wikis were then scored against a standardized metric in order to determine their value.

What he determined was not terribly surprising. Schools with a higher socioeconomic demographics made better use of the wiki technology and more directly targeted that use to student achievement and development. Does this mean these free resources are a problem? Absolutely not, and Reich went on in-depth discussing how the data itself raises more questions than answers both in terms of data collection and analysis. One area of particular note was the need for intra-school research where technology use is evaluated in various economic strata within the same school.

What it does indicate is that we can’t simply expect free resources to suddenly be the panacea to a much deeper problem. It also indicates the need, as Reich mentioned, for targeted and developed educational strategies as opposed to a “dump and hope” method. Without a structure to encourage and develop the skills to utilize material presented, those who might benefit the most will simply continue to be left behind.

Child of the ‘net as I am, I was hoping his presentation would already be available from the Berkman Center. Unfortunately, physics and the duties of interns don’t follow the same schedule. That said, there are several incredible talks already available from their archive [ http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive ]. I strongly suggest watching Justin’s talk when it becomes available.

Justin’s blog can be found here: [ http://edtechresearcher.org/ ]. It includes his Wiki Quality Instrument tools used for evaluating educational wikis.

Friends of the Iowa Youth Writing Project

Organizational meeting for Iowa Youth Writing Project volunteers.

Date: Friday, September 23, 2011
Time: 5:30-6:30 p.m.
Location: Meeting Room A
Group Name:

Iowa Youth Writing Project

Group Type:

Non-Profit Citizen’s Group

Contact Person: Dora Malech
Contact Address: PO Box 10156
City: Iowa City
State: IA
Zip: 52240
Contact Phone: 319-804-9979
Contact Email: dora@iywp.org

Second Contact Name: michelle@iywp.org
Second Contact Phone: 319-384-2814
Second Contact Email: michelle@iywp.org

This event is open to the public.

Linked from The Iowa City Public Library Event Calendar

Okay, I have sent out a lot of invites. If you don’t see yours within a day drop me a note and I will resend it to you. I look forward to seeing many of you online. There were a few comments that I wanted to take time to respond to specifically. You’ll find them below. Once again, thank you for reading and for supporting D*.

Someone did mention that I sound a bit official in these posts so I want to stress that I am just a user. These opinions are mine alone and (except where linked) do not necessarily represent the opinions of the developers and staff of D*. Okay, moving on!

Shawn
The question is: how many other people will you be able to interact with on Diaspora? With everyone on Facebook, and many now obsessing over Google+, is there any more room for Diaspora?

While I think a lot of the craze for invites does have a lot to do with the “Ooooo…shiny” effect, I also think the heavy interest in the Diaspora project highlights a growing sense of unease that people have with Facebook and Google and how they run their platforms. I don’t think that Diaspora will supplant Facebook or Google in the near future but it definitely has a large enough base to keep everyone active and I think it has the real possibility of eventually reshaping our social networks. Imagine being able to join a pod built by your University or club or family (these are examples that Diaspora actually references). Getting to control and manage how you use your data and where you take it is an incredibly powerful thing in today’s environment and I think many people are just now beginning to realize that.

CRZ
You may have done a better job selling D* than the D* folks have. (Also, it sounds like you’ll actually send me an invite! I’ve been on their waiting list more months than I can remember….I’m still intrigued, but I haven’t been intrigued enough to be pushy about getting an invite. Also ALSO, the fact that D* would link here from their twitter feed just seems…I dunno, passive aggressive. But I can probably roll with all of this.)

First off, thanks! One of the things I found interesting about Diaspora when I first logged in was the fact that it did integrate with Twitter and Facebook. Now it’s fairly obvious that I won’t be using the Facebook option but I do use the Twitter option from time to time. From what I have read, the developers are not seeking to supplant these social giants. Rather they want to offer a better, more distributed, more open, vision of the social web. Essentially, they want to give us more options and let us choose. Now, it is my hope that this option takes the world by storm. I would point everyone to Yosem Companys (Diaspora’a Chief Evangelist) comments on this matter. What he says there is something that I have thought for a very long time and is one of the key reasons why I am so supportive of the Diaspora environment.

di Lampedusa
signed up for an alpha centuries ago, way before even people started talking about Google+, and I am still waiting… Lately I got an email asking me not to dispair, that the invite was coming soon, but I am still waiting.
Luckily, as you said, I can sign up in others’ experimental servers (but there’s no much activity there so far).
What do you do in Diaspora? Have you brought enough friends with you to have an active network?

My friends have been slowly trickling in, but I can’t say that my network was active enough based solely on friends who transferred to Diaspora (Obviously, things changed a bit today.). I didn’t need to rely solely on my existing contacts, however. Finding people with shared topics of interest in Diaspora is one of the easiest things to do. I just searched on a specific hashtag (say #photography) and added it to my followed tags list. Just like Twitter, this allowed me to find people posting on topics of interest and respond in kind. That hashtag list became a feed I could follow and add people accordingly. I think this is what Google had in mind for Sparks as well but that implementation was nowhere near as solid. I used those lists to find people and content. I quickly realized that Diaspora had done an excellent job of attracting some truly incredible people from all walks of life. It was a very pleasant surprise to say the least.

Pio
I’ve been following the development of Diaspora* since its inception was made public and anticipating its arrival as well as spreading the news (as I have done with your review) I think that since fb has become such a ubiquitous means of communication, while hoping for Diaspora to bring about its demise, we should propagate becoming more conscious participants of the means on our hands (paying closer attention to privacy settings and limiting the data we provide fb’s databases with) instead of, however rightfully, decryig Zuckerberg’s policies.

If you read Yosem’s comments above I think they offer a view that I can stand behind. There was a time when AOL was ubiquitous and I was never on that, either. I still had my access (ah, my SLIP account from Primenet.com) and that was enough. That said, I wholeheartedly agree that people should press on Facebook to increase its privacy controls and that they should educate themselves about the controls that already exist. The EFF has done some excellent work in this area helping users figure out FB’s somewhat complicated settings and FB has begun to simply things which is also a positive. By offering a choice, Diaspora continues to push FB in the right direction. If anything this serves as a benefit for users all across the social web.

So I have an account on Facebook. I use it as a way to check on the activities of the Iowa Youth Writing Project and on those around me who still use Facebook as their primary method of communication. Otherwise, the site is useless to me. Its value as a locus of people and eyes is diminished by the fact that everything I say and do is fed back into the machine. I pay for Facebook not in cash but in information. I pay by selling my words, my interests and my friends. Personally, I think that price is far too high. Beyond that, the company has repeatedly sacrificed user security for corporate sponsorship. Zuckerberg’s belief that we should all have a single user account on the Internet is not only wrong-headed, it is a rejection of the very principles that made the Internet what it is today. Rather, it is a complete giveaway to corporations and governments that seek to track and monitor their people. Frankly, I have no interest in adding any more than I must to such a machine. My account will remain, as it has, as a pointer out and away from the poisoned walled garden.

When Google Plus came out, I was incredibly excited. Here was an opportunity to get in at on the main floor with a company whose motto is “Do No Evil.” I hunted for an invite and when a close friend sent one out to me, I jumed at the chance. To be fair, Google Plus had almost everything I wanted. The circles concept was genius, the ability to hang out was actually a lot of fun. While the site still had a long way to go, I really thought that I had found a place where I could settle into and become an active participant.

I was wrong. Within weeks, Google began to cut into its users. Anyone suspected of not using their real name was summarily removed from the network. No judge, no appeal, just erasure. Then Eric Schmidt reveals that Google Plus is not a social network but an identity service. This was surprising to me because I thought I was signing up for a social network. Furthermore, I don’t want Google acting as my identity service. I didn’t mind using my real name because I am actively seeking to merge my online and offline personas, but I quite understand the need for aliases. Personally, I use them all the time especially now that I am merging personas. There are certain things I don’t want listed under this name.

This is not wrong, it is the wonderful nature of an online universe that allows us to shed one persona for another, to discover new aspects of ourselves that we never could have imagined in the physical space (this is to say nothing of those who must conceal their identity online to actually avoid being murdered for their beliefs). Of course, it also makes it a hell of a lot harder to sell to us. It feeds incorrect data into all those carefully managed databases that track what we like and don’t like and that..well that just pisses Google off. After all, their money comes, almost entirely, from advertising. The better their information, the better the sales.

And there we have it. Google Plus and Facebook: so different, and yet, entirely the same.

Needless to say, I was frustrated. So I went to a small group of upstarts who made a splash on Kickstarter a little while ago when they suggested an distributed social network. I gathered information, found @diasporainvites on Twitter and requested an account. It is still in Alpha but this is a social network the way it should be. In a lot of ways, it feels like Google Plus. Considering how long it has been in development, you can tell that Google heavily borrowed from Diaspora’s look and feel. Circles are really just a new name for Diaspora’s Aspects and in Diaspora those useless Sparks that were on Google Plus become hashtags that allow you to track conversations inside Diaspora itself. I use them all the time. Best of all, Diaspora is built for the user. You want to use an alias? Feel free. You don’t want an account on joindiaspora.com? That fine. There are several sites (called pods) that you can sign up on. Don’t like the idea of storing your data on any of those sites? Don’t! If you want, you can run your own Diaspora server (although, right now, this is recommended for only experienced users). Create a small pod for family and friends and then connect that pod to the larger Diaspora community. Your data stays with you and no one claims any ownership.

As for financial incentive, Diaspora runs because some of the users pitch in to help. This is a community of people and users. It is built not to collect data for sale to highest bidder but to honestly connect people with one another. That is exactly what this giant Internet is supposed to do. It’s supposed to make our world a little bit smaller, a little bit closer, and little bit more open for everyone. That is why I moved to Diaspora. That is why I chose donate what I can (which isn’t much so they could use your help too!) to support Diaspora. That is why Diaspora is the first social network where I am actually going to be social.

If you want to join me, you can find me at textandhubris@joindiaspora.com. If you need an invite, leave a comment below with an accessible email and I will send you one immediately. Join a social network (ahem, or more accurately, a distributed social web) where what you do and what you say doesn’t feed some giant machine but rather helps to make the community stronger and more valuable. When was the last time that happened?