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<p>That's all true, Howard. <br>
</p>
<p>I think it is important to distinguish between compliance and
consensus. Throwing dissidents to the lions does the trick for
compliance, and preventing challenges to power (as per the
shocking first chapter of Foucault's Discipline and Punish). <br>
</p>
<p>As to consensus, the creation of a canon is partly a practical
matter: given it takes so long to copy a book, which ones do we
think are worth copying and sharing. Printing, and now information
technology, have completely changed these decisions. But on top of
these features of the medium, there is a political process. For
example, it seems likely that leaders in early China saw how
consensus through control of the canon could provide an
alternative (or a useful addition) to lion feeding as a method for
achieving authority, by promoting Confucian ideas. Both strategies
are at work in Hong Kong today, it seems.<br>
</p>
<p>The two strategies continue side by side in differing
combinations. Some absolute rulers don't worry too much about
consensus outside the group of those standing in line to
assassinate them. Others focus more on control of the development
of consensus through control of the communications ecology, and
perhaps Russia has taken the lead in this. Neither of these two
extremes is attractive, but both are widespread. Most of us on
this list have been fortunate to live in a democratic space carved
out between the rock of forced compliance, and the hard place of
manipulated consensus. The configuration and maintenance of that
space always involves hard work, compromise, and trade-offs that
are never ideal for everybody (and maybe for nobody), but I am
certainly grateful for it.<br>
</p>
<p>If we want to say something sensible about all this, and if we
want to make any practical step which might preserve both our
discourses and democracy, then I think we need to address two
quite different kinds of questions:<br>
</p>
<p>1) What is the impact of information technology, its accompanying
regulatory framework and established patterns of use, on the
ecology of communications? How might the patterns change if we
altered this or that part of the system? These are cybernetic
questions.<br>
</p>
<p>2) Who is benefiting from the emerging communications ecology,
what are they doing to shape it's future, and why? What (if any)
changes would we like to persuade legislators and organisations to
make in response and how can this be achieved? These are political
questions.</p>
<p>Dai<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 06/12/2020 02:16, Howard Bloom
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:89261455.4854071.1607217404775@mail.yahoo.com">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div style="color:black;font: 10pt Verdana, Arial, Helvetica,
sans-serif;">
<div>dai,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>as an indication that your idea that disinformation is the
norm and consensus the exception,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
look how hard previous ages have worked to impose consensus.
spreading roman culture amongst tribal peoples in the days of
the roman empire. throwing dissidents to the lions. making sure
that everyone's education was the same with the same roughly
five books studied and the same alphabet used from roughly 200
bc onward in china. hunting heretics once rome turned
christian. the inquisition. the absolute rule of the tsar in
russia, with all printing presses used for just one thing:
printing the tsar's ukases.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>howard<br>
<br>
<br>
<div
style="font-family:arial,helvetica;font-size:10pt;color:black">-----Original
Message-----<br>
From: Dai Griffiths <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:dai.griffiths.1@gmail.com"><dai.griffiths.1@gmail.com></a><br>
To: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es">fis@listas.unizar.es</a><br>
Sent: Sat, Dec 5, 2020 9:41 am<br>
Subject: Re: [Fis] On disinformation<br>
<br>
<div id="yiv3413924224">
<div>
<div>Dear all,</div>
<div>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 clear="none">
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div>Best<br clear="none">
</div>
<div>Dai<br clear="none">
</div>
<div class="yiv3413924224yqt1627632139"
id="yiv3413924224yqtfd54811">
<div class="yiv3413924224moz-cite-prefix">On
04/12/2020 14:06, Pedro C. Marijuan wrote:<br
clear="none">
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"> </blockquote>
</div>
</div>
<div class="yiv3413924224yqt1627632139"
id="yiv3413924224yqtfd46017">
<div>
<div class="yiv3413924224moz-cite-prefix">Dear Terry
and FIS colleagues,</div>
<div class="yiv3413924224moz-cite-prefix"><br
clear="none">
</div>
<div class="yiv3413924224moz-cite-prefix">Thanks for
the reflections--I will try to continue with rather
disconnected ideas.</div>
<div class="yiv3413924224moz-cite-prefix"><br
clear="none">
</div>
<div class="yiv3413924224moz-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 clear="none">
</div>
<div class="yiv3413924224moz-cite-prefix"><br
clear="none">
</div>
<div class="yiv3413924224moz-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="yiv3413924224moz-cite-prefix"><br
clear="none">
</div>
<div class="yiv3413924224moz-cite-prefix">Best regards</div>
<div class="yiv3413924224moz-cite-prefix">--Pedro</div>
<div class="yiv3413924224moz-cite-prefix"><br
clear="none">
</div>
<div class="yiv3413924224moz-cite-prefix">El
01/12/2020 a las 22:54, Terrence W. DEACON escribió:<br
clear="none">
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"> </blockquote>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div class="yiv3413924224yqt1627632139"
id="yiv3413924224yqtfd41836">
<div dir="ltr">
<div dir="ltr">Dear Pedro,
<div><br clear="none">
</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 clear="none">
</div>
-- <br clear="none">
<div class="yiv3413924224gmail_signature"
dir="ltr">Professor Terrence W. Deacon<br
clear="none">
University of California, Berkeley</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
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<pre class="yiv3413924224moz-signature">--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
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<pre class="yiv3413924224moz-signature">--
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Professor David (Dai) Griffiths
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
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Professor David (Dai) Griffiths
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