Anderson, C. (2012). The long tail. In M. Mandiberg (Ed.), The social media reader (pp. 137-151). NYU Press. https://archive.org/details/TheSocialMediaReader
– I’ve definitely heard of the long tail before, several times. I’m interested to read this!
– “The tyranny of physical space”–now that’s a phrase and a half! And yet I imagine that’s not just about rent, either. In social computing, the “tyranny” of physical space may be just as applicable. Could we not say the same about this very course? Could we have gotten all of us together in a single classroom? Or is this, to some extent, only possible because we have a way to overcome the limitations of physical space?
– The question about the top ten thousand tracks is fascinating when I think about it. Certainly, we think that only some of those will actually get any regular traction… but they’re the top 10,000 tracks. First, this implies that there are more even further down the list! But second, how does anything get into the “top” section unless it has demand? The correct answer was already hinted at in the question itself, if only we thought about what exactly we were asking.
– This notion of “more expensive to evaluate than to release” is undoubtedly correct. And yet it also irks me, oddly enough! Particularly where AI-generated content threatens to simply submerge us all in tasteless, mass-produced dreck, I want to value what was created by people who wanted to put their craft to work. I’m not entirely against AI work, if it’s been co-produced with a human. Tell me that somebody spent hours on shaping the lyrics to a song and then hours more trying to convince an AI generator to help them produce the music to go with it, and I’m hard-pressed to say it’s dreck! We all have to start somewhere, after all… and the more input a human has had, the more time spent crafting and shaping the result, the more value I think it holds.
I suppose I sit somewhere in an uncomfortable middle. It is absolutely more expensive to evaluate than to release… but I only want to release that which “has value”… but then I am not (and should not be!) the only person whose measure is correct. Where do I sit, then? Am I hoping against hope that the creators themselves understand what has value and what does not? Yet I have seen pieces that their creators would throw away as a failed attempt, a mistake. Would we not value a “failure” produced by a Van Gogh or a Rembrandt? I fear a future drowned by “worthless” and soulless mass-produced content, but aren’t all the alternatives essentially placing somebody in charge as a gatekeeper? I don’t want that either…
– The benefits of owning individual pieces of work are really not touched on here. Namely, the benefits (to the consumer) of paying a single subscription price for the benefits of access… really only last as long as the access does. As the long tail is curtailed, and what used to be available is removed, only those who purchased individual items and transformed them into an open format maintain the benefit of access and can pass that on to others (including when the originals are lost).
– The problem with a recommendation engine is that it works. It’s both a blessing and a curse. It does help people discover things they truly like, and it can drive a lot of additional, valuable commercial activity. But it’s also a curse. Recommendation engines can be tuned for different purposes. Humans are too malleable. The recommendations in a social network have the same purpose as the recommendations on a streaming service–to drive engagement. And we know, now, how this drives the production and consumption of extremist content. This was supposed to be a good thing. I reckon, though, that most thinking people are something like me now. I trust no recommendations from any service; I am immediately suspicious of what they want to sell me, or what viewpoints they want to push. It’s not a voyage of discovery any more.
Lessig, L. (2012). REMIX: How creativity is being strangled by the law. In M. Mandiberg (Ed.), The social media reader (pp. 155-169). NYU Press. https://archive.org/details/TheSocialMediaReader
– Hasn’t the argument always been that the young do not appreciate what came before, and that the “new-fangled” ways will destroy many great things of value? But has there not always been a seed of truth in every old wives’ tale?
– If we agree that writing is “an extraordinarily democratic activity,” and argue that everyone should have the capacity to write… isn’t it appalling, to a large degree, that people have forgotten how to write? We are not only forgetting how to write, we are forgetting how to think. My view on this is obviously biased by a life spent in tech support of some form or another, but truly, what amount of thought is required to watch some of the absolute drivel posted to social media? Zero. How many could actually argue a point using anything more than “vibes,” anything based in actual, hard, recognized fact? Could it not be that the great equalizing force of technology, by allowing everyone to become a creator with less and less effort than ever before, is also equalizing all of us down towards zero? We are not climbing to greater heights; we are sinking to lower depths.
– Yet it would be foolish to throw out the baby with the bathwater. It’s also true that the equalizing force of technology has allowed more creation. And it would be ridiculous for me to try and stand as some arbiter of what is and is not “worthwhile.” That’s not how this works, at all. Is it not true that whatever passes for culture is somewhat unique to each generation? Is there anything in my fears that has not been echoed by every generation from time out of mind? And yet that’s not enough to quiet my fears, not completely. I do think that dangers remain ahead of the human race that somebody needs to look out for. Who knows if I can see them, or if I can call an alarm even if I do… but somebody has to try.
– Back on the actual topic of copyright law, I agree that copyright is an awfully blunt tool for the digital age. Everything is, indeed, a copy. Even things like Bitcoin are copies of items–a set of zeros and ones that are replicated between distributed ledgers. The “item” is an intangible, and a copy of it exists in every ledger. And the war against copying has produced no real winners, only losers (in the sense of loss) and losers (in the sense of corporations and people who suck).
– It’s fascinating that Lessig’s careful argument (most of which I agree with, as far as adjusting the technical application of the law to maintain the original purpose of encouraging creativity) eventually winds up at the burning question I instinctively identify in modern practice: when the incentives of commerce override the incentives of altruism (as with the recommendation engine)… it’s building businesses on our collective backs. Is that a right state of affairs? Surely it cannot be.
– And with all the benefits of hindsight, I’m not sure I see the Creative Commons licensing as the solution that Lessig presents it to be. Or rather… it’s a very narrow solution to a very narrowly-defined problem. A component of a larger solution, with much greater system-wide problems demanding a more integrated overall set of solutions.
Doctorow, C. (2023). The ‘enshittification’ of TikTok. Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
– It’s strange to me that “enshittification” was only coined in late 2022 and publicized in early 2023. I would have said it was coined back in the late 2010’s, possibly 2017 or thereabouts. What a funny thing memory is.
– The description of the “enshittification” lifecycle is accurate, as we all know too well. This is where the promise of the early Web was lost. Can we say that this long game of locking people into place before turning the screws was always the end goal? Probably not! I’m sure there were services that started with the best of intentions, before being sold for money and then turned into a cold-hearted pure-business operation intended to suck the lifeblood from its customers. If anything, I see many, many, many warnings of what happens to the best of intentions when greed is allowed to be the driving force of society.
– My focus on software diversity generally has the effect of trying to prevent the mutual lock-in effect of critical mass. If platforms never have “enough” users to feel confident in trying to lock them in, then the progression into mistreatment of the users can be forestalled. And if it does proceed, then enough people remain outside the bubble to be able to find alternatives. To some extent, if the platforms will play shell games with us, then a rational response is to play a shell game in return, always shifting platforms and never trusting any one central provider. (Things like encryption and decentralization come into play here, allowing users to ensure a central point can neither fully control nor use their content.)
– And once again, what’s the primary way these platforms are trapping people and then converting them into “monetized” products? The recommendation engine. That’s becoming a theme I did not expect for this week…
– Let’s say we’ve identified the core issue here, which is that the motivations to make money off people and the motivation to connect people (and allow them to communicate freely without gatekeepers) are incompatible with each other on a fundamental level. I see two major problems with Doctorow’s suggestions. On creating a “right to end-to-end,” it is clear that at least one of the major US political parties is fully captured by corporate interests. They will not do what is best for the consumer. As long as Americans continue to put anti-consumer interests in power, American law will be written to block this end-to-end principle, not enforce it. I do not see the rest of the world being able to buck this trend successfully, unless the entirety of the rest of the world unites in agreement.
On the second point, Doctorow suggests that policymakers should focus on the right to freedom of exit–to leave a platform and yet stay connected to the community, taking your data with you. This I see as less feasible. Taking your data with you, yes, that should be a given. But I don’t see it being correct to enforce that a platform should be required to allow you to leave and still use their services anyway. Communities are more than a place, and yet the place where they gather is often inherently as much a part of the community “scene” as the people are. If a community leaves a platform and reconvenes elsewhere, all well and good! But if the community remains on a platform and is not willing to offer alternative non-platform methods of access, then I would think that is part of the choice in leaving the service.
Communities of practice
Most of my reflections in this topic will be explicitly linked to my experiences with the geospatial game Ingress. As a brief introductory background, game players belong to one of two “factions.” The goal for each faction is to essentially “capture” large swathes of territory, with higher scores for more densely populated areas. Any three “portals” may be “linked” in order to form a “field” which captures the territory enclosed within those links. Links may not cross each other, and no new links can be formed inside an area which is already “captured.” Players from the opposing faction may then “attack” portals; “destroying” a portal will also destroy all links to and from the target portal, causing any previously-established fields to collapse.
Given these constraints, players must work together in order to create truly large fields to capture an area. As an example, one particularly dense set of fields I coordinated stretched from Powell River, BC, to Vernon, BC, to Arlington, WA. During one of these operations, many teams of players must be dispatched to destroy links which would block the desired field boundaries, and there is a risk of opposing players detecting the path and creating more links in real time to prevent any field from being established. Operational security must be fairly tight, both to prevent information leaks to the opposing faction, and to prevent infiltration by opposing faction supporters acting as “moles” within the team. For particularly remote portals, satellite connections or long-range directional cellular antennas and signal amplifiers may be necessary. All players involved in an operation are usually communicating in real time with one or more “operators” who monitor the game map and direct the various teams to their next objectives as the game map changes, with various tools being used for voice communication and real-time location monitoring.
I played Ingress rather heavily for roughly four years, from 2014-2018. In my time as a player, I worked with a faction community in the Greater Vancouver area, but also communities along the West Coast and particularly in Washington state and elsewhere in BC. I also served as an operator for several “anomalies” (periodic official events held in various cities, including Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver).
Given the highly technical nature of some of this game play, the gaming community really became a good example of a community of practice–explicit knowledge was given by the game itself, but the tacit knowledge of precisely how to apply that knowledge effectively was very much a community-taught skill. Almost all players who connected with the community found themselves spending more time on it because of the complexity and breadth of skills that could be applied. Operators had to be good at integrating real-time data, understanding patterns of movement on the ground, and predicting the opposing faction’s counter-strategy. Recharge room captains had to be good with coordinating people to transfer portal keys from remote locations, then convincing other players to show up to the recharge room and help out. Players in the urban anomaly zones could be relatively less skilled, simply attacking or defending as their operators gave them commands to implement the faction’s community-determined strategy.
None of this was determined by the game itself. Players came together to form communities, and these communities organized themselves as they saw fit, elevating players to various roles as they proved capable and reliable. As players continue to further prove themselves, their reputation grows among their faction and on the opposing faction. This is particularly notable as an anti-cheating measure. A player who has never been seen before, taking actions on an incredibly remote portal, will trigger complaints of cheating via bots or similar measures. Conversely, a player who has an established reputation of having a satellite connection, a history of appearing at remote portals, and the weight of photos and testimony of other players having witnessed their work in-person will usually not trigger accusations of cheating (though the opposing faction will still complain mightily about their actions!).
Community norms are also established. A portal must have eight “resonators” attached in order to be able to form links, and links cannot be maintained if the number of resonators falls below two. Therefore, a single remote portal with only a few resonators attached cannot be used to create links. The presence of a portal in such a configuration usually indicates that somebody is attempting to achieve an in-game medal for having maintained control of a single portal for a certain amount of time. It may be customary to simply “ping” the portal with a couple of weapons blasts to alert the other player to one’s presence… and then leave it alone, as an indication of their secret being discovered, but without voiding the other player’s progress towards their goal. Destroying a portal in this configuration serves no purpose for the faction as a whole, since it cannot be used against the team; destroying it only serves to block individual progress towards individual goals. (It is heartbreaking to have spent months working towards a goal, only for an opposing player to deliberately destroy all progress on day 179 of 180, for no reason but sheer spite.)
All seven of Wenger’s actions for cultivating a community of practice were found in this community:
1. Design the community to evolve naturally: Communities were at no time mandated by the game! Many communities organized themselves on Slack or GroupMe. (My local community used Slack.) Communities would organize activities as the interest of their members dictated, so this naturally changed over time.
2. Create opportunities for open dialog within and with outside perspectives: The entire game had only two factions. Within a single faction, then, you would find players from other communities spanning the globe. An anomaly within Vancouver, BC might be supported by recharge rooms across North America and utilize operators from Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia. The strategies employed by European operators would differ greatly from those employed in North America, but this allowed best practices to evolve and adapt to changing practices on the opposing faction, with all communities continually learning from what the others discovered.
3. Welcome and allow different levels of participation: As I outlined above, players are encouraged to contribute in different ways according to their interests, abilities, location, and desired level of interaction.
4. Develop both public and private community spaces: Slack allows for the creation of public, browsable channels, as well as private, non-browsable channels. Public channels were typically used for lower-security coordination of publicized events, while private channels were utilized for various operations, organized in such a way that compromise of a single operation would not necessarily compromise every operation in progress.
5. Focus on the value of the community: General public channels offered a way for players to celebrate their achievements, including public recognition for players participating in various events and operations. Live events also provided a way for players to socialize and invite new players into the community, often by explaining the positive benefits and fun they had in their own personal experiences.
6. Combine familiarity and excitement: Every operation or anomaly offered the familiarity of the same basic gameplay, but in a coordinated environment very different from solo play. The strategies would always be changing as the two factions developed new measures and counter-measures, making these large events unpredictable and exciting, even as the basic gameplay remained the same.
7. Find and nurture a regular rhythm for the community: Regular events such as a general meetup on the first Saturday of every month, open to players from both factions, and social events in regular locations and times helped establish a general rhythm for the community to participate as desired and on a predictable schedule.
Dunbar, R. (2018, August 9). Why drink is the secret to humanity’s success. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/c5ce0834-9a64-11e8-9702-5946bae86e6d
– Fascinating little side detour. It’s an intriguing little addition to Dunbar’s number, that 40% of our time is spent with 5 close people, and another 20% with the next 10 closest. A full 60% of our time lavished on 15 people. It’s not like I’ve done a study on myself in this context, but… it seems to track.
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