From MediaFranca

Contents 1 Collectivity v/s Connectivity: designing for increased social agency 1.1 Abstract 1.2 Presentation 1.2.1 Slide 1: Title 1.2.2 Slide 2: The Problem 1.2.3 Slide 3: The Framework 1.2.3.1 Table 1.2.4 Slide 4: The InfoCloud 1.2.5 Slide 5: The Irrelevancy of the Near 1.2.6 Slide 6: Designing for Shared Perspectives and Integration 1.2.7 Slide 7: Communicating as Networking 1.2.8 Slide 8: Communication WITH and Communication ABOUT: the irrelevancy of the Other 1.2.9 Slide 9: Designing for Dialogue and Malleability 1.2.10 Slide 10: The Web as a space and the Web as a tool 1.2.10.1 Internet as a Space 1.2.10.2 Internet as a Tool 1.2.11 Slide 11: Non transcendental actions 1.2.12 Slide 12: Designing for Praxis 1.2.13 Slide 13: The Framework Model (& Conclusions) 1.2.14 Slide 14: The End

Collectivity v/s Connectivity:
designing for increased social agency

Abstract

Paradoxically, although western societies are moving towards economic prosperity and technological development, social capital is steadily declining. Nowadays young people feel less inclined than their elders to engage as citizens in the rituals of voting and following news about world events and public affairs. As a whole, society appears increasingly nihilistic and depressed, where most indicators of ill-being, such as suicides, psychic disorders, divorce, loneliness and the like, are widespread and increasing.

On the other hand, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have been transforming our society into a networked and hyper-connected global community. Nonetheless, we must distinguish between enhanced connectivity and enhanced collectivity. Merely because digital media is making people more connected does not mean it is increasing the degree of our social engagement.

Can Design help reverse these trends? Can Design help transform increased connectivity into increased socialization, civic participation, and a greater sense of individual and collective agency? Can we take advantage of the connective and associative power of communication technologies and inject it into social communities?

In this paper, I explore literature from various disciplines (Sociology, Social Psychology, Media Studies, Philosophy and Computer Science) as I aim to connect the different statements into a bigger framework for Design understanding. This framework aims to identify the integrative and ethical norms implied in the design of new media as a positive social force.

Presentation

Slide 1: Title

Connectivity v/s Collectivity:
designing for increased social agency

Herbert Spencer
MDes Interaction Design Candidate 2007

Slide 2: The Problem

The problem I'm addressing lives within a paradox. Some scholars call it the western paradox and it consists in the contradiction between: the strong economical development of our western societies while simultaneously they show a decline in their social capital.

We have more and better technology, better health and education and better overall life standards while there's evidence of

• declining civic engagement
• declining voter turnout
• declining social participation
• and declining community groups

What Tocqueville celebrated more than a 100 years ago as the strength of American society, today is fading away. Modern society is becoming less cohesive and –as a whole– appears increasingly depressed, where most indicators of ill-being, such as suicides, psychic disorders, divorces, loneliness and the like, are widespread and increasing. Modern individualism encourages people to think that they can find happiness and self-accomplishment WITHOUT the community, instead of finding them WITHIN the community:

• Do your own thing
• Be self-sufficient
• Don't force your values on others
• Prefer solo spirituality to communal religion
• Assert your personal rights
• Expect other likewise to believe in themselves and to make it on their own

On the other hand, we have the Web, where people can publish content, share resources, give away information, expertise, and advice even without monetary compensation. Still, the openness of this virtual space reinforces narrow group identities as archipelagos of disconnected islands.

Can we, as Interaction Designers, do something to reverse these trends? To inject the connective and associative power of digital media into social communities?

These I the questions I pursue in this paper.

Slide 3: The Framework

(See framework)

This essay is structured in three parts:

• In Part 1 I address the individual level of meaning making and its relation with the informational setting in which we move in.
• In Part 2 I look at the nature of mediated communication between people in the network.
• In Part 3 I talk about how the web shapes our participation and enables a different kind of social agency.

Each one of these parts is devides, as well in:

• a specific setting (or point of view)
• a problem related to that setting
• and thirdly, a design strategy or approach for overcoming that problem.

(As I progress through the presentation, you'll be oriented by the little icon on the upper left.)

Table

	Part 1 from the individual's perspective	Part 2 nature of transactions	Part 3 collective dialectics
Setting	The infocloud	The social network	The public forum
Problem	Irrelevancy of the near	Irrelevancy of the other	Irrelevancy of action, futility
Design Element	framing and language	communications and transactions	tools and spaces
Strategies	designing for shared frameworks designing for integration	designing for malleability designing for dialogue	designing for openness designing for agency

Slide 4: The InfoCloud

It is no secret that we are everyday exposed to an enormous amount of information. For this reason, we have developed certain strategies for overcoming this informational overflow.

For the purpose of understanding the world in which we live in, we use our digital interfaces for augmenting our cognitive process and for optimizing our limited attention:

• We have our preferred and trusted blogs
• trusted news repositories
• We are subscribed to specific news feeds
• or even to specific tags
• We have our social networks
• We belong to email listings

...and so on.

This is what Thomas Vander Wal calls our infocloud and it consists of what we organize, retain and would like to keep and access across devices, across contexts and across life. This infocloud operates as a custom framework for priorizing, filtering, managing and sharing information with others.

We create our context. And if we create our contexts, we influence the meanings of the things around us.

Slide 5: The Irrelevancy of the Near

This information-centered perception of the world has deep consequences in how we understand and assign meaning to space and distance. It is commonly said that modern communication technologies have brought the death of distance; that is, physical distance. ^[1]

But, in exchange of this, we have created another kind of distance: a cognitive or epistemological distance. This kind of distance refers to how “knowable” something is in relation to our infocloud; i.e. something can be just a click away.

In this sense, what is near are those artifacts that can be reached easily through this framework. These are the things we are familiar with and understand well. On the other hand, objects that are epistemologically far are those foreign and completely irrelevant to us.

In other words, the our infoclouds have made relevant what is far and irrelevant what is physically near. The negative side of this is that our immediate surroundings are more irrelevant to us. This could explain --just in part-- the lack of engagement we are suffering with our immediate communities.

Slide 6: Designing for Shared Perspectives and Integration

At this level, there are two mayor Design approaches: Designing for shared perspectives and Designing for Integration.

1. Designing for shared perspectives and representations: is about creating tools for allowing people to see through each other's eyes, to share cognitive models instead of finished artifacts. An example of this approach can be seen in del.icio.us. Here, they design for the power of emerging folksonomies, which are bottom-up organization strategies for cataloging information. This model has been widely replicated through the Web mainly as navigation systems. What is interesting about this approach, is that it identifies our selection in consumption as an inherently productive activity. People produce ways of consuming, which can be shared with others in ways of framing, understanding or recommending. This vision also leads to the consolidation of communities of interest.
2. Designing for Integration between Physical and Digital: strives for situated interaction, by providing contextual information of our physical surroundings. This, again, has many levels of implementation, but Craig's List is a good example of the larger scale.

Another example is MeetUp.com. This service helps people find others with same interests and who live near at the same time. Then, people are encouraged to meet face-to-face upon a regular basis, and form local communities with digital ties.

Slide 7: Communicating as Networking

In the second part of the paper, I look at communication through the Web. The World Wide Web was originally conceived for sharing digital resources. Its basic principle has characterized its tendency towards supporting the standardization of the shared artifacts, striving for the production of a common space that is ready to articulate and absorb them into a unified frame.

In this sense, the logic of the network is built upon nodes, it privileges the artifacts over anything else.

1. Knowledge is turned into information (it is nodified)
2. Information is turned into files that are transfered. (it is in the network)
3. Files can be shared, archived or sold.

This trend has been harshly criticized, arguing that by digitizing everything we are turning knowledge into a commodity. Pushing that criticism forward, what about people?

People create digital representations of themselves in the form of user profiles, personal blogs, avatars and the like. These digital representations can also be capitalized as social networks, in the number of contacts one might have in Liked In or in FaceBook. Again, it's not about people, it's about nodes. And nodes as useful resources.

Slide 8: Communication WITH and Communication ABOUT: the irrelevancy of the Other

As I mention in Part 1, things are made more or less relevant to us, epistemologically near or far, through the way in which we engage in communication with them. In this sense, we can distinguish two general modes of networked communication: communication WITH and communication ABOUT. ^[2]

Communication WITH takes place in the form of a dialogue, where we recognize the counterpart as we make it relevant to the course of communication by engaging it IN the discourse.

On the other hand, communication ABOUT takes place in the form of a monologue where the main focus is the mediating artifact rather than it’s creator. The architecture of the Web privileges this communication mode, where we care more about what is being said instead of who's saying it. In this sense, the Web brings the irrelevancy of the other by over privileging the node.

Slide 9: Designing for Dialogue and Malleability

In the network of mediated transactions, where the other might be potentially irrelevant, we can identify two design strategies for overcoming this problem:

1. Designing for Malleability: In this approach, people are given the possibility of transforming and modifying their contents as well as their contexts, resources are turned into tools for people to adapt, customize and negotiate among their communities. This allows the user transform the digital setting to fit personal but also for collaborating with others. Ning.com is a good example of this. It is an online platform for creating social websites and social networks. The unique feature of Ning is that anyone can make a full copy of the types of social websites and social networks that are popular today and customize them for a particular topic or need, catering to specific audiences. Tools are facilitators but their purpose are open, in other words, these are tools for making people designers.
2. Designing for Dialogue: is designing for symmetrical interactions among people, and they are understood as supporting a co-evolutionary process through a dialectic relationship. People are empowered to talk back, to comment, to build on top, but in a transparent and reversible environment. In this approach unidirectional broadcasting is disencouraged as a mode of unfair argumentation. Instead, interaction seeks for emerging issues and ideas, in a more bottom-up and atomized approach. Therefore it takes place in a small human scale, in communities and small groups where the main values are:
   1. common meaning
   2. collective thinking, and therefore
   3. collective ownership.

(Here, the main example is the emergence of the commons.)

Slide 10: The Web as a space and the Web as a tool

What we have so far, is that the Web has the double condition of being a space but also of behaving like a tool.

Internet as a Space

It is a space when it provides us with a environment for dialogue and when serves as a public global record, open for everyone. Openness pursues for the creation of a collective and democratic memory that will potentially serve tactical and political purposes in situations where the official memory may not be sufficient [Braman, 2006]. In this way, essential cultural memories and community identity is protected from being manipulated or erased. With this at stake, commitment for collaboration in the creation of the shared record emerges naturally, although not massively.

Internet as a Tool

The Web behaves as a tool when it helps us achieve something that goes beyond itself. If we think that it has the power to enrich or corrupt our lives is because we are thinking in specific uses we make of the tool but not about the tool itself. Deterministic thinking about technology (or tools) leads to the belief that the tool itself has the power to change our lives but forget the open opportunities for human agency in the appropriation that can result in unexpected uses, finding new affordances of the given tools. Furthermore, let's think of how can we empower people to be active transformation agents of their environments instead of being a product of them.

Slide 11: Non transcendental actions

Ok, so we've said that the Web can be designed as a malleable space, it supports symmetrical conversation modes and it helps us have a public record and a shared memory.

But what if what we get trapped inside it? What if MEANS are turned into ENDS and nothing transcends beyond the digital representations? Or even worse, what if what we do is melted into a uniform and anarchic chaos?

The problems in this sphere are complex and recursive:

• access and education
• sincerity and trust
• systemic bias of self-regulatory structures.

Ivan Illich adopted the word conviviality to mean the autonomous and creative intercourse among persons. He describes conviviality as a state of individual and social well being where persons are once again in control of the tools that fulfill their physical, emotional and spiritual needs.

These tools are not just artifacts; they include language and administrative structures. Illich believed that modern technology that is developed solely for the sake of efficiency can be used out of proportion to the good that is added to a person's life, with the result that men work for machines instead of the other way around.

Means are turned into ends

Slide 12: Designing for Praxis

The design strategy that emerges in this level, I call it designing for praxis and holds a systemic vision related to metadesign strategies. Here I can distinguish 2 threads:

1. Designing for Openness: This points towards the value of egalitarian access and net neutrality. But beyond that, its about thinking about the entire Web as an open system of conversations. Building on top of Maturana's^[3] statements, we could say that the flow of conversations within the Web as a medium are recursively modulated and adjusted as the very structure of the medium itself. So openness, in this sense, leads to a self-regulatory organization enabled by the tools that support this openness and empower users to engage in this flow of conversations. Following this idea, ^[4] states that designers must fully understand their role as enablers, but more precisely, as seeders within a dynamic system. As a consequence of this, design cannot be understood as planning, but instead, as the constant dialogue readjusting the flow of use.
2. Designing for Agency: tries to identify, augment and create new channels for emerging discourses, as new social mindsets, new consensual agreements that can be transformed into action. This has deep social and political implications, because it is about enabling people to design for themselves, and to participate effectively in the democratic process.

Slide 13: The Framework Model (& Conclusions)

What I have learned from this? Two things:

1. That for envisioning adequate design strategies for increasing social agency we must take into account three different layers of complexity, each one of them somehow nested inside the other:
   1. Understanding individual perspectives and their cognitive frameworks
   2. The mode in which communication takes place as a way of constantly negotiating the participatory medium the web has become and
   3. How different discourses and arguments are allowed to emerge from the medium and transcend into concrete social action
2. Design CAN increase social agency by enhance our mediated relationship with others and our surroundings. The way in which the Web is currently evolving indicates a strong tendency towards augmenting people’s agency in building our informational medium but its still weak in terms of augmenting our collective decision-making or providing us with a participatory democracy. I can see that in the near future we'll be extending these affordances into more politically significant areas such as government itself. Sooner or later, the existing model of indirect representative democracy will be questioned due to the raising control people are gaining over the flow and of information.

And I'm very exited to see what's going to happen with Design in such scenarios.

Slide 14: The End

Thank you

1. ↑ Mejias, 2005
2. ↑ Mejias, 2005
3. ↑ Maturana, Humberto. Metadesign. INTECO
4. ↑ Elisa Giaccardi