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<p>Dear all,</p>
<p>We tend to think of 'surveillance capitalism' and other related
trends as being a disruption of normality. But seen from a longer
perspective, perhaps we are living in an unusual period (or the
possibly the end of it) in which there has been relatively
widespread social agreement about the nature of the world that we
are living in. "Ask the priest" used to be the answer to questions
of eschatology or social propriety (and often still is) but that
doesn't help much in establishing who is giving the orders or why,
and what is going on in the town over the hill. We have relied on
newspapers for that, and, in the UK, the BBC. As a result, flat
earthers haven't much traction recently compared with the conflict
between Galileo and the church, and even McCarthyism was primarily
about economic power and control, not as unhinged as the
witchcraft hysteria that Miller (rightly) compared it to. If it is
true that we have been living in an oasis of relative consensus,
where did that consensus come from? <br>
</p>
<p>I would argue that it emerged from the inherent limitations in
access to printing technology, and the editorial, commercial,
political and social processes that developed to cope with that
limited access. It is these processes that generated the authority
of some ideas over others, the generalised trust in some media
rather than others, and the ability to identify consistent biases
in those that were trusted.</p>
<p>I suggest that we should recognise that disinformation, fake
news, and plain old gossip, are the default state for human social
interactions. It is evolved and designed social structures and
institutions that overcome this. Our challenge is then to
disentangle the way that that informational authority was
generated in the past, and the (perhaps disfunctional) way that it
is generated at present. My suspicion is that we won't get far in
improving the situation unless we question the central role of the
recommender algorithms that have taken over much of the work of
human editors in determining what is seen heard and read, and by
whom. To have any chance of achieving political traction in the
face of commercial interests and personal preferences, proposals
for change in that area will have to tell and extremely clear
story about how we got to where we are, where we should try to go
next, and how we could get there.</p>
<p>Best<br>
</p>
<p>Dai<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 04/12/2020 14:06, Pedro C. Marijuan
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:60b13ca7-ff68-d334-477a-285c97e3f9ff@aragon.es">
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Dear Terry and FIS colleagues,</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Thanks for the reflections--I will
try to continue with rather disconnected ideas.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">The term 'surveillance capitalism'
introduced by Shoshana Zuboff (indeed complemented with a
parallel 'surveillance authoritarianism') is addressed to cover
the new negative aspects of current technological developments.
However, my opinion is that these phenomena are inherent in all
human societies in all epochs, for there is always a tension,
say, between the individual "fitness" and the whole social
"commons", which can be set in quite many different dynamic
equilibrium points, basically maintained via circulating or
communicating info flows. It is easy to see that information,
disinformation, surveillance, persuasion, and coercion travel
together in the socialization-communication pack. Historically,
every new means of communication (then we land on McLuhan)
alters those social equilibria and somehow demands a social or
cultural reaction to re-establish an acceptable collective
situation. The problem now, you mentioned in the previous post,
is the enormous concentration of power, of brute info flows,
around these new media--without appropriate social curation at
the time being. I doubt that these technologies can bring the
solution by themselves . Institutional, social intervention
would be needed... Scholarly analysis might be important,
providing cues on the the influence on individual and collective
moods/personalities, on the possible counteracting institutional
alternatives and on the needed new cultural norms to abide along
these new forms of communication (sort of 'traffic
regulations'), even a personal hygiene of communication... <br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">The problems are far more serious,
complex, and faster than in McLuhan's time. We have to reinvent
his views... But how can we organize a collective, cumulative
discussion? I was thinking that a feasible first step, apart of
what we can do directly in the list, could be calling for a
Special Issue in some interesting, multidisciplinary Journal.
Well, at the time being, Terry, Joseph, and myself are promoting
a sort of ad hoc group to move things--anyone else would join??</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Best regards</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">--Pedro</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">El 01/12/2020 a las 22:54, Terrence
W. DEACON escribió:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAOJbPRKf6C4Fd9OS=ehLA5uB79q_cFy-CS3YeBTq87F=9xy2ow@mail.gmail.com">
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<div dir="ltr">
<div dir="ltr">Dear Pedro,
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Great suggestions. I like the idea of an ongoing
separate thread addressing disinformation.
<div>Of course I only addressed Western disinformation and
didn't even touch on highly massaged information that is
often disseminated with centralized governmental
control.</div>
<div>This disinforms by selective censorship and
redundancy and is increasingly taking advantage of the
myriad new forms of surveillance that can be used to
shape the information made available to different
targeted audiences.</div>
<div>
<div>And Yes McLuhan is definitely relevant.</div>
<div>I wonder how he would think about the effects of
these new media.</div>
<div>How do they reshape the nature of content?</div>
<div>How they can be understood using his notions of hot
and cool?</div>
<div>What is now in the rear view mirror within the new
media that once was in the foreground?</div>
<div>On these matters Bob Logan might want to weigh in.</div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
-- <br>
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature">Professor Terrence
W. Deacon<br>
University of California, Berkeley</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
-----------------------------------------
Professor David (Dai) Griffiths
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