Zooming in and out: trying to find focus

            Accepting Rushkoff’s (2019) notion of “fractal sensibility”, a principle of self-similarity across scale, as an apt metaphor for the reflexive relationship between individual and society, our readings this week convey an unsettled, out-of-focus view that swerves between micro and macro perspectives of our mediatized present.      

“The world can be understood as a fractal, where each piece reflects the whole.” (Rushkoff, 2019, p. 189)

            Are we zoomed out too far and thus miss important details? This is vantage point from which Rushkoff himself wants to mobilize his readers to turn the seemingly lost cause of the digital revolution into a renaissance of “newly retrieved collectivism” (p. 195). Yet, Rushkoff is not advocating a return to the values of the Renaissance, a dark past of “bloodletting, feudalism, or sword fights” (p. 190).  By retrieving, for ourselves, “human-scaled, medieval sensibilities” and the “insight of premodern cultures” (p. 190) which transmit the flow of time as “tidal patterns” (p. 189) rather than as unrestrained linear progress, Rushkoff suggests, we can also reconnect to “core human motivations and values” (p. 191) to strengthen our sense of community.

“Retrieval makes progress less purely linear…” (Rushkoff, 2019, p. 190)       

While examples like the American Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, or the Fall of the Berlin Wall belie Rushkoff’s pessimistic assessment of change brought about by revolutions as a “Ferris Wheel” with a revolving but essentially unchanged cast of oppressors (p. 187), I do appreciate his skepticism of an uncritical “openness to fundamental change” which has repeatedly created “footholds for those who would exploit us” (p. 191).

            Listing numerous examples, Rushkoff argues that our easy embrace of everything new has made us vulnerable to interests that find ways to monetize our naïve enthusiasm. Yet, I have difficulties tracing Rushkoff’s claims about our supposed collective mentalities to any convincing arguments concerning their provenance. Indeed, Rushkoff admits “we don’t yet have great ways for talking about this new spirit of collectivism” (p. 194). This lack of clarity is discomforting. On the one hand, we may be doomed because of “our” openness to change and on the other hand “we” just need to tap into “our collective nature” (p. 193) to (re-)gain control over our digital lives. O‘Neil’s (2016) account of the “targeted citizen” illustrates that this decision-making process really is not up to the individual or a mystic collective but -in her examples- steered by algorithms that influence our behavior en masse (Facebook’s “I voted” initiative) as well as in micro-targeted messaging across media platforms. Even not being targeted by media campaigns affects behavior in a “nefarious feedback loop” as “the disregarded voters are now more likely to grow disenchanted” (196). O’Neil makes her prescription for regaining control confidently: Change the objective! Create an algorithm for helping people instead of exploiting them and -voilà- you may have created a force for good (197). Who exactly will do that work? That remains unclear. We have only read selected chapters from O’Neil’s book, so she may provide some concrete suggestions. However, this is the last chapter (except for the conclusion) and for now these ‘forces for good’ remain as out-of-focus as Rushkoff’s “collectivism”.

            But maybe we are zoomed in too close to the mediatized terrain and grasp only small bits of an infinitely larger picture?

“They reinforce the homophilous social networks they inhabit instead of using technology to connect across lines of difference.” (boyd, 2014, p. 174)

            Lamenting that “communities where race is fraught maintain the same systems of segregation online and off” (p. 155), boyd (2014) zeros in on Keke, a black teenager, and her Los Angeles neighborhood, school, and social media presence. Keke confides how she hates this state of self-segregation but must accept it because “that’s what happens” (p. 156). Taking Keke’s comments at face-value, boyd identifies two main reasons why visions of a post-racial utopia failed despite the liberating promises of digital technologies. One, people replicate the patterns of their social life in their online networks. And two, because the same prejudices that people harbor are integrated into the infrastructures of our mediated lives (bridges, cameras, video games, Siri, and of course social media), the paths for our interactions are already paved. 

         Yet, when interviewing Kath, a white teenager, who expresses “passionate, progressive” ideas, boyd digs deeper for the under-the-surface dimensions of Kath’s social media life (p. 165). The result contradicts Kath’s view of herself but confirms boyd’s findings on friending networks on social media. I am not suggesting that, as a researcher, boyd should not dig deeper! But she does not to do so evenly. Only her results are ‘even’: for teens, race matters and they self-segregate into like groups based on race. To explain the phenomenon, boyd draws on sociologists who “refer to the practice of connecting with like-minded individuals as homophily” (p.166). Alternatively, boyd could have drawn on sociologists who refer to this practice as racism for it is plausible that the self-segregation of white teenager is rooted in very different sociohistoric structures than that of teenagers of color. One-dimensional, cliched representations fuel this particular feedback loop and may lead researchers to overlook the multi-dimensionality of all teenagers’ lives.

It’s complicated!

So, indeed, finding the focus is complicated. The landscape online is changing so fast that thoughtful reflection and analysis is challenging. Moreover, just like space in urban, rural, and natural areas, public space is diminishing or contested, digital citizens have to claim their rightful space. And citizens do fight back and reclaim these analog and digital spaces, hopefully for the good as O’Neil suggests. If we understand our social lives as fractals, online media is a part of our lives, not a separate entity and that challenges us as researchers to know how to adjust the zoom.

Works Cited:

Boyd, d. (2014). It’s complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. New Haven, Yale University Press.

O’Neil, C. (2016). Weapons of Math Destruction. New York, Crown Publishing Group.

Rushkoff, D. (2019). Team human. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.