::fibreculture:: not-working works

[David Teh]

interesting questions, anna, alexia,

> However, what I think is lacking is an aesthetic inquiry into the
> sociality of networked relations and perhaps also a lack of
> philosophical questioning of the social in the network. This would be
> more a kind of 'meta' inquiry - ie what do we mean by the social in/of
> the network, how is relationality constituted by/in the network.

i agree this is most pressing. imho, earlier

one thing that's missing, i think, is an understanding of network relations (as
social relations) that can handle the 'mixed use' conditions of the network,
the fact that so much of our online interaction - especially text-mediated
interaction - occurs in a space _between_ the traditional categories of work
and play. this interaction puts a real strain on these categories. the
first-wave of network-political-economy thinking obviously inherited these
divisions from older economic discourses, and while it did much to
conceptualise the networks as an economic infrastructure which could be used,
fought over and fought in, post-industrial economics was perhaps not
sufficiently nuanced to cope with the changes in affective social conditions
which confound the old analytic certainties of work, capital,
infrastructure/superstructure (nature/culture for that matter), etc.

i've sensed a real interest in these problems on this list (through Anna, Andrew
M, and others. (_pace_ our bored lurkers) and of course there's been a
resurgence of theoretical debate around labour (via operaismo, autonomia,
precariousness etc). but i'm wondering whether it mightn't be worth also
returning to an older anthropology - concerned with the symbolic, structural,
mythological, even magical, but content to approach its objects in their own
terms - for models of how information circulates in a community, and how this
affects the division of time and labour therein. (andrew, would you say someone
like Jose Gil is in this vein?)

if people know of good literature that does this, i'd be happy to hear about it.

> Of course there are lots and lots of sociological and ethnographic
> studies that focus on audience and participation via lists, blogs etc,
> but these, and I'm being very generalist here, tend to focus on the
> 'nodes' - ie the who and the what - not the relationality - the how...

do you have 'relational aesthetics' in mind here, anna? has anyone written
specifically about online community from this perspective? not having read
bourriaud's book, i must say i'm a bit wary of the cultish reception this idea
receives in the artworld. i was told by a curator recently that her decision to
project some video-art (footage of a car-park) onto the (very polished) concrete
floor of the gallery was a 'relational' strategy... having said that, bourriaud
does specifically say it's an 'anthropological direction', so i guess i should
get over my scepticism. (what a young curmudgeon i've become!-)

> >   Would you offer opinions on a hot topic that is not directly in your
> > way just because it looks to be where the action is happening?
>
> that is an interesting question and I think pertains to the issue of
> temporality in the network and to issues of crowd/mob dynamics but also
> to a more general economy of information in which we all continue to
> operate - 'just-in-time' service economy, in which the time for
> consideration is spliced out

i agree this is an interesting question. and yep, no time for consideration, not
now, not in front of this clunky webmail interface anyway. i wonder would i take
more time in Word? i've just spent 5 yrs thinking about the 'general economy of
information' - specifically in Bataille's sense - because it strikes me that
before we can hope to figure out how (traditionally) 'non-work' activities are
integrated into 'work' time, and thus become or prevent work, we need to figure
out what (today) makes something work or non-work, or makes it something else.
most people who have time to read lists like this are professionally engaged in
symbolic communication of some type, which blurs these lines day-in day-out.

to my mind, we can't do these jobs _well_ without excess - excess information,
and excess time spent considering it, debating it, browsing it, searching it,
sharing it, blogging it, posting it (offering comment on matters beyond our
expertise, fending off uni-administrative paranoia, etc.)... and imho, for
those of us in/around universities, our industrial masters' concerted efforts
to regulate, rationalise and reify these 'excesses' has been, and will always
be:
a) incomplete;
b) misguided; and
c) detrimental to their own 'product'

just a sunday morning drive.
cheers all,
dt



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