As I read your message, I see you prefer to see the world as an interconnected nodes system rather then a world divided into two abstract layers (global and local).
It often happened that people shut down their mobiles on a same specific day to protest against the high prices of communication. This kind of local pressure on the phone companies never reached end results until it entered the government agenda. For instance Lebanon was one of the most expensive countries in term of mobile communication. Now things are changing due to the Ministry recent move to lower the prices. If people on earth start to shut down their mobile phones as social action against wars, the United Nation and maybe the NATO would do something for Congo... This would sound unrealistic; if like we're going to stop circulating and stop using fuel to solve the Iraq conflict… However, art that operates as a feedback to mirror the absurdity of the artist's environment often questions the misuse of power; for instance, the work of the Electronic Disturbance Theater use the power of mass connections to scramble a political attitude;
http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ecd/ecd.html. Similar strategies were applied to block the Echelon surveillance project…
Indeed we should look "how do we start?" as you said. Can one of the fast and effective ways be from up to bottom, from governments to people, as long as changes are in the good sens of human rights? The dispersed but connected localities reflect the federalism. It's a way for people to avoid a total dissolution into a single global world, and on the other hand, to also avoid the total isolation. But here again we need to know what is local? Nodes as countries, nations, communities, couples, individuals, etc…?
I think about Stephen Hawking's saying that in order to avoid failure as mankind, we should keep talking. Talking as nodes' link, but also talking as a solution by itself to "start with". This is also doable…
Best,
Ricardo
Footnote
---------------
Topic: This running discussion deals with how (new) media can affect local behaviours related to creativity and innovation within a socio-political context, and what is the link between politic and the ways that users behave.
Questions that are raised include:
- Is (new) media a tool which reinforces people's creativity and how it is expressed in terms of social behaviour?
- How are democracy and social connectivity via new media related?
- Are global and local systems two separate entities, or is it about one place?
- What is the impact of the media content on identity in your socio-politic sphere?
- How is the economy affecting visual forms of communication?
- Do artworks emerge from a specific Intention or from media models constrained by business requirements?
- What new roles do virtual social networks adopt to maintain difficult relations?
________________________________
From: Eugenio Tisselli <cubo23@yahoo.com>
To: yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
Sent: Thursday, April 2, 2009 10:22:17 PM
Subject: Re: [Yasmin_discussions] NEW MEDIA: USER'S BEHAVIOUR, SOCIAL SYSTEMS, AND THE BODY POLITIC
Dear Yasminers,
First of all, I would like to thank Ricardo Mbarkho and Roger Malina for having me as a respondent in our new topic: "New Media: User's Behaviour, Social Systems, and the Body Politic"... I hope that we will have an interesting exchange!
I would like to start by adressing one of the main questions that Ricardo has proposed: "Are global and local systems two separate entities, or is it about one place?" ... for too long, a tendency to think about the local and the global as two separate -yet interacting- social spaces has prevailed. But what lies in between? Do we have to make a quantum leap to travel between those two spaces? And where would we "land" if we did the jump from our locality into "the global"?
As Bruno Latour proposes in his revealing book "Reassembling the social" (by the way, I'm not a sociologist ;), we can "expand locally everywhere", provided we can trace the links between different localities. The theory of network topology, together with interactive visualization technologies, can become valuable tools for tracking the myriads of connections in the increasingly complex system that our world is becoming.
Think about your mobile phone for a while: a symbol of the globalized practice of ubiquitous communication, and yet an intimate and personal object with which you can contact your colleagues or reach your loved ones... whether they are physically near or far. Your mobile phone turns you into a moving communications hub, a tool for invoking dispersed localities and bringing them into your own. But think also about the thing itself: the screen, the plastic case, the circuits and microchips... where do all these parts come from? Components from all around the world, suddenly in the palm of your hand. And while mobile phones are being used more and more as tools that serve not only for communication in daily life, but also as media in which creative and artistic practices are based, they are also the direct cause of many conflicts which (seem to) happen "out there", in the "global space". If we trace the route which ends in the palm of our hands, between the
circuits in our mobile phones, we will almost certainly find its origin in Central Africa, where brutal wars are being financed greatly through the exploitation of Coltan, a metallic ore mined mostly in Congo which has become an indispensable material for the manufacturing of consumer electronics... such as our phone.
Viewing "the local" and "the global" as two separate entities tends to obscure the links, routes and connections that we must be aware of, if we want to make a more humane, rational and respectful usage of technology, or of consumer products in general. We should be able track the far-away localities from which our own local things come from; otherwise, we will find ourselves blinded by the distance. Quoting Latour, "... this tracking may end up in a shared definition of a common world"... sounds like it might be worth giving it a try! But how do we start?
Looking forward to hearing from you all...
Best wishes,
Eugenio.
Eugenio Tisselli Vélez
cubo23@yahoo.com
http://www.motorhueso.net
¡Obtén la mejor experiencia en la web!< Descarga gratis el nuevo Internet Explorer 8. http://downloads.yahoo.com/ieak8/?l=e1
_______________________________________________
Yasmin_discussions mailing list
Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
HOW TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
_______________________________________________
Yasmin_discussions mailing list
Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
HOW TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
