Week 11: If the London Underground is a series of tubes, is it the Internets?
Jacob remarks that the notion of fan empowerment might be an illusion, for media conglomerates will protect their own interests. And in protecting their interests, conglomerates, at least the tech savvy ones (as Jordan points out) will embrace fans and work them into their marketing strategies. If I read Jacob correctly, he suggests that even though corporations are controlling the ways of knowing, fans will have an increased capacity to participate in new ways of knowing – so fans will be empowered. David, however, seems to contend that although fans may be participating in ways of knowing, the meaning remains within the conglomerates’ power. Thus, participation in ways of knowing is an illusion as well. Put another way, we seem to participate in new ways of knowing, but what we are really participating in are news way of advertising. If I have been faithful to Jacob and David, I think I tend to agree with David, especially if we consider our contentious discussion of the cultural industry. Fans may be able to keep shows like Jericho and Friday Night Lights on an air, but how much power do fans have in creating meaning? On second thought, let’s not do that.
But on a third thought: Jenkins refers to Levy's 'deterritorialization' of knowledge, "brought about by the ability of the net and the Web to facilitate rapid many-to-many communication, might enable broader participation in decision-making, new modes of citizenship and community, and the reciprocal exchange of information" (p. 136). So, when fans participate in ways of knowing/advertising, are they really participating in the deterritorialization of knowledge? Wikipedia seems to be the prime example of the deterritorialization of knowledge. However, although any user could edit pages, how many can effectively do so? Could we consider most readers of Wikipedia, to adapt Jenkins, a "powerless readership"?
The production of meaning and knowledge leads into Hardy's article wherein he argues that users have mapped Web 2.0 technologies and applications onto the physical infrastructure of the city, generating "what can be thought of as a 'synergistic relationship' linking individuals to data and localities occupied or traversed by users" (p. 868). In short, users are creating mashups that combine virtual and physical space to create new meanings and relationship within and between both spaces. I agree with most of what Hardy has to say about the Web 2.0 city; however, I wonder if he takes his argument too far.
Referring to the London Underground, he writes that users can plan their journeys and collect information: "This indicates how visualizations of complex urban structures, which have previously been rendered understandable through abstract designs, are now being remapped in ways that provide not only new levels of information but the actual contours of the city… Indeed it is possible to undertake a virtual walk along various streets in New York as images of the city unfold as if the user were driving down them" (p. 877). This passage with its "actual contours of the city" and "as if the user were" implies that mashups produce or capture a perfect translation of city space. These mashups are good ways of finding things within a city, but they are terrible ways to experience the city. Google Maps Street View is great for seeing what a city might look like, but it does nothing for the actual experience. Drawing upon Halyes, Web 2.0 translates the city, but we both gain and lose in the process.
Hardy states that with the Web 2.0 city, locality matters, and many users are likely to seek out that which already interests them. If this is the case, the city will not become more familiar, as Hardy claims, but stranger because many users might limit themselves to what is already in their neighborhoods or on their street. These technologies position their users in specific locations, and in so doing, perhaps, make it more difficult to escape that location or to seek diversity. If you always know where you are within the city, you never have the genuine opportunity to encounter the strange, and thereby make it familiar. Confronting the strange makes the city an unique experience rather than a smart mob consensus of the familiar. In Blog This, Jenkins refers to Cass Sunstein as worrying that "fragmentation of the Web is apt to result in the loss of shared values and common culture that democracy requires" (p. 180). Do Web 2.0 technologies that create shared values and culture hinder or help the individual or communal exploration of city life? When is dissensus more helpful?
Another useful way of thinking about Web 2.0 technologies and the city is through Fagerjord's rhetorical convergence. And although he takes issue with Bolter and Grusin’s remediation as immediacy or hypermediacy, these terms apply to the rhetorical convergence of virtual and physical space through Web 2.0 technologies. What aspects of the city do Web 2.0 mashups make immediate? Hypermediate? I think Hardy in many ways thinks these mashups make the city hypermediate, making visible a city’s contours. But, I think these mashups make a city immediate, or transparent, for users may no longer journey through a city, but rather arrive at destinations. That is, city streets fade to the background, while virtual maps occupy the foreground. Thus, we might wonder how rhetorical convergence affects not only virtual texts, but also physical texts - the rhetoric of walking, if we take walking as a text – and the hybrid texts of Web 2.0 cities.
Where Hardy writes about the locality of Web 2.0, Jenkins takes on the pop cosmopolitanism enabled by such technologies: "Cosmopolitans embrace cultural difference, seeking to escape the gravitational pull of their local communities in order to enter a broader sphere of cultural experience" (p. 155). As Jenkins point out, it is unclear how many or how much users use technology and pop cosmopolitanism to seek out "contact zones" between cultures. As I discussed above, I think the same question applies to Hardy’s Web2.0 city. Can we use technologies to make sure cosmopolitanism does not include a narcissistic streak?