Submitted by Renu Bora (not verified) on 4 February, 2007 - 13:07.
"Corruption, Abstraction and Network Culture" Money flows are like a smoking gun. In large chunks, they can be followed through the nodes of centralized and decentralized networks. But in a distributed web of microtransactions, evidence and money are diffused. The long tail of consumption can work in all three types of web, but so can the long tail of production. Things are increasingly becoming distributed, but simultaneously there are still re-organizations into de-centralization and centralization, by old and new entities of all flavors. Corruption makes a great news story not just for all the intrigue and stratagems, and not just for the moral drama of good and evil. Corruption is becoming great news because in network culture it can be harder to find and isolate-- the flows are diffuse and so more abstract. So there is relief in being able to find it at all. Both legality and the legitimacy of knowledge are obfuscated by distributed production-- there is a growing gray area that exaggerates ancient problems of gift economies. How do we know to trust a stereo review site that may accept free equipment? Joel Spolsky as a blogger recently announced that [[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/12/28.html|he will no longer accept gifts]] (gifts = bribes). Microsoft marketing is useful to follow since they often explore these gray areas between gifts and bribes (as per their [[http://tech-buzz.net/2006/12/28/microsoft-gifts-ferrari-laptops-to-bloggers/|gifts of Acer "Ferrari" notebooks to bloggers]], and [[http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2007/01/an_interesting_offer.html|willingness to pay Wikipedia contributors]]).But in the attention economy (as per [[http://majestic.typepad.com/seth/|Seth Goldstein]] or [[http://search.pratt.edu/FMPro?-db=personnel.fp4&-format=perdetail99.htm&-lay=complete&-sortfield=Dean,Chair,Fac,Staff&-sortfield=LastName&-op=cn&FullName=beller&-recid=35175&-find=|Jon Beller]]), and network culture, there are non-material gifts-- attention flows are sometimes harder to track than objects (And yet, vast marketing work and whistleblowing blogs are actually tracking and modeling more than ever before). In network culture, this gray zone may become even more valuable and massive an arena than advertising. Capital can elude oversight by re-manifesting in the growing gift economy-- not just as goods passed like presents, but in the solidifying and flowing of social bonds whose glue may be the exchange of attention, or eyeball time. That's nothing new in society, but the technology has enabled further abstraction, and so the network medium allows the new "gift economy" new levels of fluidity (harder-to-legislate, distributed, and granular)-- cash may abstract itself into this more sociable energy: kinetic energy, or potential energy, depending on how you look at it. Anyway, there is capital flow, capital accumulation, and capital flight (they go together). An abandoned downtown may turn into a suburb, and the new ex-urbia may leave less obvious ghosts. I'm speculating that the webs of network society are building a new gift economy which extracts and abstracts from money and objects-- instead of actual gifts, and even virtual gifts, we have "gifting" (Ok, that's a lame phrase). Somewhat risky, they are harder to regulate than banks, so have a certain use and are decent micro-investments. They may have avatars in the new forms that you mention: "remix and reality." A more optimistic view might say that they are a kind of production, of created value, of added value in gestation, that increases or will eventually increase the GNP or whatever new metric we use these days. Kazys, glad you are keeping the fun alive - it's nice to see your thoughts gel over time.
Corruption, Abstraction and Network Culture
"Corruption, Abstraction and Network Culture" Money flows are like a smoking gun. In large chunks, they can be followed through the nodes of centralized and decentralized networks. But in a distributed web of microtransactions, evidence and money are diffused. The long tail of consumption can work in all three types of web, but so can the long tail of production. Things are increasingly becoming distributed, but simultaneously there are still re-organizations into de-centralization and centralization, by old and new entities of all flavors. Corruption makes a great news story not just for all the intrigue and stratagems, and not just for the moral drama of good and evil. Corruption is becoming great news because in network culture it can be harder to find and isolate-- the flows are diffuse and so more abstract. So there is relief in being able to find it at all. Both legality and the legitimacy of knowledge are obfuscated by distributed production-- there is a growing gray area that exaggerates ancient problems of gift economies. How do we know to trust a stereo review site that may accept free equipment? Joel Spolsky as a blogger recently announced that [[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/12/28.html|he will no longer accept gifts]] (gifts = bribes). Microsoft marketing is useful to follow since they often explore these gray areas between gifts and bribes (as per their [[http://tech-buzz.net/2006/12/28/microsoft-gifts-ferrari-laptops-to-bloggers/|gifts of Acer "Ferrari" notebooks to bloggers]], and [[http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2007/01/an_interesting_offer.html|willingness to pay Wikipedia contributors]]).But in the attention economy (as per [[http://majestic.typepad.com/seth/|Seth Goldstein]] or [[http://search.pratt.edu/FMPro?-db=personnel.fp4&-format=perdetail99.htm&-lay=complete&-sortfield=Dean,Chair,Fac,Staff&-sortfield=LastName&-op=cn&FullName=beller&-recid=35175&-find=|Jon Beller]]), and network culture, there are non-material gifts-- attention flows are sometimes harder to track than objects (And yet, vast marketing work and whistleblowing blogs are actually tracking and modeling more than ever before). In network culture, this gray zone may become even more valuable and massive an arena than advertising. Capital can elude oversight by re-manifesting in the growing gift economy-- not just as goods passed like presents, but in the solidifying and flowing of social bonds whose glue may be the exchange of attention, or eyeball time. That's nothing new in society, but the technology has enabled further abstraction, and so the network medium allows the new "gift economy" new levels of fluidity (harder-to-legislate, distributed, and granular)-- cash may abstract itself into this more sociable energy: kinetic energy, or potential energy, depending on how you look at it. Anyway, there is capital flow, capital accumulation, and capital flight (they go together). An abandoned downtown may turn into a suburb, and the new ex-urbia may leave less obvious ghosts. I'm speculating that the webs of network society are building a new gift economy which extracts and abstracts from money and objects-- instead of actual gifts, and even virtual gifts, we have "gifting" (Ok, that's a lame phrase). Somewhat risky, they are harder to regulate than banks, so have a certain use and are decent micro-investments. They may have avatars in the new forms that you mention: "remix and reality." A more optimistic view might say that they are a kind of production, of created value, of added value in gestation, that increases or will eventually increase the GNP or whatever new metric we use these days. Kazys, glad you are keeping the fun alive - it's nice to see your thoughts gel over time.