They cite "context collapse" and say this "uni-context" is deeper, but I still don't see how this "uni-context" is all that different than "context collapse", extensively studied since the 2000s. And which Goffman in the 1960s was writing about in the context of big mixed social gatherings like weddings, that bring together people who know you in quite different contexts.
This is an interesting perspective on the concept of "atomization of the individual", which the interview interestingly does not refer to. Both atomization and the "uni-context" arise from the destruction of an individual's local contexts, like family and community, leaving them an individual in a global, maximally-large pool of individuals, the so-called uni-context.
Atomization has clear motivations: increasing the individual consumer base (no, you shouldn't share your car or lawnmower with your block, you need your own), suppressing democracy, and generally making a population more predictable and easy to manage.
"How do informational norms change when we’re all living in the same universal room?"
I different interesting question: why would we want to inhabit this universal room in the first place? The post mentions the idea of being "bigger than yourself" but to me the context collapse achieves the opposite - a sort of carboard caricature of oneself.
I've been watching both the corporate media, and social media, rot completely over the past 30 years.
A large part of that was that early adopters tended to be more educated, played nicely, and were not involved in attention-seeking, sychophancy, and often, escapism.
Another factor is the bright colors, moving videos and other eye candy, and psychological hacks like the emojis for "liking" and gaining "followers" which produce addictive feedback loops.
Of course, this interview touches on valid points, but is not the whole picture. "Bad news travels fast" and gets more clicks. That helps explain the rot of the news media.
Maybe I am oversimplifying too, however. Factors like sophisticated persuasion campaigns by various organizations, for example, cannot be discarded. Likewise with the advertisers.
Agree strongly with your first factor. Early adopters often (though not always) self-select for higher-level interaction. This has been true of media dating back to cuneiform.
A third factor addressing 21st century media rot is the absolute dependence on advertising, and the demonitisation of earlier ad-supported formats (print newspapers, print magazines, radio, television, and increasingly non-social-media online platforms) as ads transferred first to "new media" (itself an old story, though dating somewhat more recently to the origins of mass-advertising in the mid-19th century), and ultimately to "adtech", with highly-personalised, highly-targeted advertising.
That latter both led advertisers to abandon non-targetable media (including generic online banner ads), and the increasing pandering of online media (especially Search and Social) to advertiser interests. This both killed ads-as-financial-foundation of other online media, and increasingly turned Search and Social into ad-delivery rather than information-delivery / community-connection platforms.
It's the odd standouts which have independent funding which are still relatively immune to this. HN is one of those, some sites such as Metafilter and the Metaverse are others online. Public media would be another notable exception, though of course it is being increasingly targeted as well, largely for political reasons, notably in the US (NPR, PBS, and the late CPB), and UK (BBC). It's healthier elsewhere, notably in my experience, Germany.
I'm having immense problems digesting this interview to understand the concept of the uni-context.
It does sound very interesting and right up my alley.
I also don't seem to be able to use internet search anymore (probably a user error) so if anyone has a link to a document, soundfile or video of Agnes Callard explaining the concept without the interuptions from a interviewer that is more interested in contributing than to let her explain the concept I would very much appreciate it.
I wish philosophers—everyone, really—would provide a definition of their neologisms. I'd prefer a succinct, Aristotlian one but I'll settle for anything approximating it.
This is probably the best source, but it's completely unavailable online:
This actually fits quite nicely with the idea that the graph network of humanity has meaningful emergent properties/challenges/phenomena at various densities or subnetwork connectedness thresholds.
It's the same fundamental network problem: the infrastructure that allows unprecedented levels of commerce and ideas and travel will also allow disinformation, plagues, and homogeneity. The double-edged sword of graph density.
There are some of us (late generation-X / early millennial) who saw this coming and still maintain a variety of separate identities across many domains.
I don't know why someone would want to have the same identity in the workplace as on internet forums, for example.
Social media appears to have given many people the idea that they ought to cultivate their public identity from an early age as preparation for internet fame / personal branding.
Orson Scott Card saw this coming last century and wrote of a character who maintained 2 online personas who became the thought leaders of opposing groups.
Some of the late gen-x/millennials who saw this coming may have been inspired to read Endor's Game after seeing the movie
Does it really matter that a review was written by "Ronald B Smith" vs "BrewersFan4000"?
I'd argue that it only matters when the goal is to convert "real name" accounts into something that is effectively merged with an Experian soft credit score, Google supercookie-powered profile, etc.
I’m in month 5 of not having access to any social network, and although the first weeks I felt tempted to reinstall X and Reddit, I’m at a point where I don’t think I’m ever coming back. There are still great spaces like HN where you can consume content and participate in debates. I do miss some of the fun stuff, but it wasn’t worth being exposed to all the other crap for a few laughs a day.
Like most of these things, one can bemoan it and say “oh it’s terrible that this is how it is” but I think it’s pretty easy to self-test this to see it’s adaptive for a reason.
Brendan Eich was fired from Mozilla as CTO because of a small donation in favour of Prop 8. Fine?
I think most people here would say yes. In fact people did say that.
I think many people would say they don’t want to have a plumber who opposes (say) trans rights. Or read an author who is anti-gay. Pick some view heretical to your world-view and see if you can stand to encounter people who hold it.
If you require all purity you probably prefer the uni-context.
It's a shame the title doesn't just include the word: "uni-context". It's a really useful and interesting perspective.
The other relevant word is "objectivity". There so many systems in our society whose context we surround ourselves with, it starts to feel like every subject is objective. The reality is that every subject is subjective.
I think one of the big drivers for this dynamic is that our social systems are facilitated with software, and we always make software as a uni-context. An application is a fixed context.
If we can figure out how to introduce subjectivity into software, that would be extremely useful for both computing and society.
I think much of this might apply to Callard: her high public visibility in social media, the attention grabbing colorful attire, her as I recall public advocacy and openness about her own polyamorous lifestyle. I don’t think that’s typical. Certainly it’s not for me. I’d rather be Zelig. But I think most people code shift, and present different personas in private life compared to work. Probably much less so for the average substack author, so it surprises me little the idea might resonate with Derek Thompson, the blog’s author.
> What the techno-determinism angle misses is: Why did these technologies catch on in the first place? Why was radio popular? Why did we come up with new things—television, smartphones—and why did they catch on, too?
This doesn't seem very compatible with societies that have a Germanic majority as population. _Maybe_ the USA can be the pluriformity that adopts this, but I don't see this as an attractive idea for my society (Netherlands) at large. "Act normal, and you're already acting crazy enough", and all that.
I want to be able to discuss taboo ideas in private, without getting globally cancelled for something I that might be discussed out of my mind. No thanks to the uni-context.
context-bound > uni-context, for at least the Germanic-speaking world.
I would recommend her article on travel in the New Yorker, The Case Against Travel. I absolutely hated it and disagree with it so much, and I think she's up to similar stuff here. But you will get a sense of her from the article, and it's worth a read either way.
That article proposes that, soon, it will be possible to connect any online identity to its owner's other identities by analyzing stylistic details in their writing. So even niche online communities will have these problems.
38 comments
[ 0.89 ms ] story [ 64.0 ms ] threadIsn't that what G Wave/ G+ trying to solve?
I think a better option would be: don't tie your IRL identity for online communications.
"Context collapse is a claim about informational contexts, and my claim is a claim about normative context."
Atomization has clear motivations: increasing the individual consumer base (no, you shouldn't share your car or lawnmower with your block, you need your own), suppressing democracy, and generally making a population more predictable and easy to manage.
I different interesting question: why would we want to inhabit this universal room in the first place? The post mentions the idea of being "bigger than yourself" but to me the context collapse achieves the opposite - a sort of carboard caricature of oneself.
A large part of that was that early adopters tended to be more educated, played nicely, and were not involved in attention-seeking, sychophancy, and often, escapism.
Another factor is the bright colors, moving videos and other eye candy, and psychological hacks like the emojis for "liking" and gaining "followers" which produce addictive feedback loops.
Of course, this interview touches on valid points, but is not the whole picture. "Bad news travels fast" and gets more clicks. That helps explain the rot of the news media.
Maybe I am oversimplifying too, however. Factors like sophisticated persuasion campaigns by various organizations, for example, cannot be discarded. Likewise with the advertisers.
A third factor addressing 21st century media rot is the absolute dependence on advertising, and the demonitisation of earlier ad-supported formats (print newspapers, print magazines, radio, television, and increasingly non-social-media online platforms) as ads transferred first to "new media" (itself an old story, though dating somewhat more recently to the origins of mass-advertising in the mid-19th century), and ultimately to "adtech", with highly-personalised, highly-targeted advertising.
That latter both led advertisers to abandon non-targetable media (including generic online banner ads), and the increasing pandering of online media (especially Search and Social) to advertiser interests. This both killed ads-as-financial-foundation of other online media, and increasingly turned Search and Social into ad-delivery rather than information-delivery / community-connection platforms.
It's the odd standouts which have independent funding which are still relatively immune to this. HN is one of those, some sites such as Metafilter and the Metaverse are others online. Public media would be another notable exception, though of course it is being increasingly targeted as well, largely for political reasons, notably in the US (NPR, PBS, and the late CPB), and UK (BBC). It's healthier elsewhere, notably in my experience, Germany.
It does sound very interesting and right up my alley.
I also don't seem to be able to use internet search anymore (probably a user error) so if anyone has a link to a document, soundfile or video of Agnes Callard explaining the concept without the interuptions from a interviewer that is more interested in contributing than to let her explain the concept I would very much appreciate it.
This is probably the best source, but it's completely unavailable online:
https://www.reed.edu/events/?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26even...
Hopefully there will be some artifacts from this that will be available to the greater public.
It's the same fundamental network problem: the infrastructure that allows unprecedented levels of commerce and ideas and travel will also allow disinformation, plagues, and homogeneity. The double-edged sword of graph density.
I don't know why someone would want to have the same identity in the workplace as on internet forums, for example.
Social media appears to have given many people the idea that they ought to cultivate their public identity from an early age as preparation for internet fame / personal branding.
Some of the late gen-x/millennials who saw this coming may have been inspired to read Endor's Game after seeing the movie
Also known as “social proof”/“social credibility”, and it’s a common mistake to assume it has no value whatsoever.
I'd argue that it only matters when the goal is to convert "real name" accounts into something that is effectively merged with an Experian soft credit score, Google supercookie-powered profile, etc.
Brendan Eich was fired from Mozilla as CTO because of a small donation in favour of Prop 8. Fine?
I think most people here would say yes. In fact people did say that.
I think many people would say they don’t want to have a plumber who opposes (say) trans rights. Or read an author who is anti-gay. Pick some view heretical to your world-view and see if you can stand to encounter people who hold it.
If you require all purity you probably prefer the uni-context.
The other relevant word is "objectivity". There so many systems in our society whose context we surround ourselves with, it starts to feel like every subject is objective. The reality is that every subject is subjective.
I think one of the big drivers for this dynamic is that our social systems are facilitated with software, and we always make software as a uni-context. An application is a fixed context.
If we can figure out how to introduce subjectivity into software, that would be extremely useful for both computing and society.
This read as AI, which is odd.
I want to be able to discuss taboo ideas in private, without getting globally cancelled for something I that might be discussed out of my mind. No thanks to the uni-context.
context-bound > uni-context, for at least the Germanic-speaking world.
That article proposes that, soon, it will be possible to connect any online identity to its owner's other identities by analyzing stylistic details in their writing. So even niche online communities will have these problems.