Yesterday, in the mail, I received a very small envelope in the mail containing the TTC Subway Rider Efficiency Guide that Sean Lerner was kind enough to send over. I know I’m known for excessive use of superlatives, but in all honesty, this guide is perhaps the best thing to happen to the TTC in years. A few reasons why:
- The guide is small enough to not only fit in your pocket, but even your wallet or cell phone case.
- The guide (which I used this morning) definitely saves you the frustration of looking for an exit, or exiting in the wrong place and then having to pay an extra fare to get to the bus bay.
- The guide shaved about 35 seconds off my morning commute. That might not seem like a lot, but it adds up.
- The guide tells you where the washrooms on the TTC are located. Since I drink several litres of water a day, and the TTC has very few washrooms, this comes in handy.
- The guide gave me something to read and try to memorize on the subway, especially since I forgot to pick up a copy of Metro this morning.
- The guide is released under a Creative Commons license, which makes me happy and warm and fuzzy all around.
- The guide is available for download for free on the web, but trust me, its worth dishing out a few dollars to get the nicely printed copy.
Of course, what excited me the most is the statement in the press release that says “in early June the guide will be launched and celebrated with some guerrilla-style subway theatre.” Sweet.
Oh, and while I’m at it, Mouris Moussa just got named the TTC’s 25 billionth passenger. The article to the Toronto Star and requires registration, but here’s the Mouris Moussa’s story, in brief:
“Me and my wife were seniors, new immigrants to Canada. Our first ride to Union station from Sheppard was by the subway. My wife catched last car but I missed the subway. One of the employees of the TTC watched my very bad situation. Quickly he contacted the subway driver and took me with his car to Eglinton station where my wife was waiting (for) me. I never forget this kind help from them.”
Ah, so much TTC lovin’ today.
The savior of community in today’s communication technology — or so is the general sense on the web — is the social networking tool. The social networking tool provides a place of sociality (Miller and Slater 2002:199-200) on the web: a place where the real and the virtual meet and the opposition between these two types of relationships (Miller and Slater 2002:187) dissolves. The internet today is abuzz with community-building applications, and the ubiquity of sites such as Friendster, The Facebook, Yahoo! 360, and even photo-sharing applications such as Flickr is indicative of the importance of the social side of computing.
Within anthropology, the social side of technology is often framed through social constructionism. Pinch and Bijker, when discussing the social construction of technology, claim that “science and technology are themselves socially produced in a variety of social circumstances” (1987:20). If technology is socially constructed (Pinch and Bijker 1987:18-19), then it is clear that modernity itself — of which technology plays a marker — is “reworked from within” (Arce and Long 2000:2), and that social change is a consequence of the movement of conflicting social systems and not external forces (Arce and Long 2000:11). By accepting this premise, we can then reject modernism as being equated with Western progress, a rejection Kofi Benor Hadjor makes clearly in his definition of modernization; instead, through constant social change, every society, including those in the Third World are constantly modernizing (Hadjor 1992:203).
Within this framework of social change within anthropology, social construction of technology clearly shows how the emergence of new technologies creates “repercussions in the structuring of social action and behavior” (Pelto 1973:12). Yet, technology itself is constantly being influenced by the society in which it lies; Wiebe Bijker claims that technology is “continually reshaped and redesigned by the various social groups involved” (1992:75). Further, “even in the diffusion stage [of a new technology], the process of invention continues” (Bijker 1992:97).
One way to conceptualize this syncretic influential relationship between society and technology is through the creation of narratives. Stories are “used to make sense out of ambiguous situations or to represent sense-making in earlier events” (Orr 1996:12). The creation of narratives, and then sharing and propagating these stories is at the basis of social networks. The graphical representation of such narratives can be done through the social map.
Image removed temporarily. Please contact Sameer Vasta to get full document.
The example above of a social map of Flickr contacts (using the popular web tool FlickrGraph with the user Vasta as centre tile) is but one way of representing connections within a social group. However, in order to effectively analyze the social construction of technology, it may be more influential to trace connections through “relevant social groups” who share a meaning with the technology or “artifact” (Kline and Pinch 1999:113).
In my own personal social map below, I have tracked relevant social groups to the making and consumption of four interconnected pieces of software released by The Mozilla Foundation. These four pieces of software are not the only products released by the Foundation, but were chosen in the interest of condensing the social map in order to look at a core set of connections between developers, financiers, influencers competitors, and users. It is important to note here that all of these pieces of software are open source, and many users are also developers. For the sake of simplicity in graphical representation, I have separated the developers: it is assumed that they are users as well.
Image removed temporarily. Please contact Sameer Vasta to get full document.
The pieces of software, or the “artifacts,” are in constant states of flux and are continually being reshaped through various channels. Each social group brings with it its own culture, its own set of practices and interests, similar to Elizabeth Hahn’s observation with cinema viewers in Tonga (2002:260); the technology is then redesigned to accommodate some of these interests and perspectives, but still retains others that are foreign but not alienating.
In this small example of a social map used to trace the social construction of technology, we see the workings of different communities working in a network to create social change, rather than the change coming from an external force. Perhaps this may shed some more light on the question of whether technology is the great connecting or distancing tool.
Sources
Alberto Arce and Norman Long. “Reconfiguring modernity and development from an anthropological perspective.” In Anthropology, Development, and Modernities: Exploring Discourses, Counter-tendencies, and Violence. (eds.) Alberto Arce and Norman Long. New York: Routledge, 2000. pp 1-31.
Wiebe Bijker. “The Social Construction of Fluorescent Light, or How an Artifact was Invented in its Diffusion Stage.” In Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. (eds.) Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992. pp 75-107.
Kofi Benor Hadjor. Dictionary of Third World Terms. London: Penguin, 1992. pp 37-38; 95-102; 201-205; 276-279.
Elizabeth Hahn. “The Tongan Tradition of Going to the Movies.” In The Anthropology of Media: A Reader. (eds.) Kelly Askew and Richard R. Welk. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. pp 258-269.
Ronald Kline and Trevor Pinch. “The Social Construction of Technology.” In The Social Shaping of Technology: Second Edition. (eds.) Donald Mackenzie and Judy Wajcman. Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1999. pp 113-115.
Daniel Miller and Don Slater. “Relationships.” In The Anthropology of Media: A Reader. (eds.) Kelly Askew and Richard R. Welk. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. pp 187-209.
Julian E. Orr. Talking About Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job. Ithaca: ILR Press, 1996. pp 1-23.
Pertti J. Pelto. The Snowmobile Revolution: Technology and Social Change in the Arctic. Menlo Park: Cummings, 1973. pp 3-14; 53-96.
Trevor J. Pinch and Wiebe E. Bijker. “The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other.” In The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. (eds.) Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P Hughes, and Trevor Pinch. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987. pp 17-50.
Most of you know that Todd Solonz’s new movie, Palindromes, casts seven individual actors of different races, genders, and ages as the lead character Aviva, a thirteen year-old girl on a voyage of self discovery. I haven’t seen the film yet, though I’m sure I will be soon, especially after the phenomenal job he did with Welcome to the Dollhouse ten years ago.
However, the concept got me thinking; if you could have any ensemble of actors portray you in a movie about your life, who would you choose? I’ve come up with a preliminary list, but I admit it was very very hard to think outside the gender/race/age box:
Do remember, this is not a list of my favorite actors, just an ensemble cast who — in my humble opinion — would be effective in playing me in the movie of my life. Go on and make your own. Then let me know, I’ll link to it.
Most people, when I tell them that I am a blogger, are mildly amused. However, when they discover that I am also a student of anthropology, the same question arises: is the internet, and technology in general, bringing us closer together, or assisting in alienating ourselves from the outside world? Though I am unprepared to answer such a question right now, it is one that is pertinent to the study of anthropology in the information age.
Many questions surrounding the building and maintenance of community are centered on the concept of meaning: community as either a place of meaning or a way to discover meaning. This emphasis on symbolic interpretations is central to the new scope of anthropology. Claude Levi-Strauss (1967:18-20,32) defined anthropology along the lines of de Saussure’s definition of semiology: a study of the existence of social signs. The importance of the meaning of these signs — an important tenet in the span of today’s anthropological study — has helped anthropology develop into a social science where subjective observations have become a means of objective demonstration (Levi-Strauss 1967:50-52). Taking the Levi-Straussian (1967:51) stance that “if society is anthropology, anthropology is itself in society” in an increasingly technological society, perhaps the first place to discover the role of technology in creating culture is through the symbols that these same technologies represent.
Marcel Mauss, in his work on gift-giving and receiving in archaic societies, portrayed economic transactions — through the exchange of gifts — as a form of symbolic exchange (1990:7). Therefore, if even economic transactions can be taken into the symbolic realm and hold a key to the search for societal meaning, it is only clear that technology would do the same. Arnold Van Gennep’s discussion on rites of passage was an important stepping stone in the discussion of symbolic mediation within anthropology, which was in turn heavily discussed by Victor Turner and Mary Douglas. Turner’s work on liminality (1967) as a period of transition and transgression is key to the understanding of how we experience technology. Within the rite of passage, the liminal phase is characterized as being in-between, as being a place of inversion, where anything can happen before reincorporation (Turner 1967:95-98). Strikingly, this is also similar to William Gibson’s description of cyberspace as a “consensual hallucination” (1984:51). Within Gibson’s cyberspace, the individual is separated from society and enters an alternate world where boundaries are transgressed (Gibson 1984 48-54).
What then, is the meaning that is being conveyed through new technologies? Those familiar with Marshall McLuhan’s mantra “the medium is the message” (2002:18) could possibly argue that in fact, it is these same technologies that are the meaning for which we, as users, are searching. While reports of information overload affecting our productivity pour through the news media, McLuhan’s claim that we are being inundated by the new electronic speed of literacy (2002:23) is more relevant than ever before; an echo of the hypothesis that we are finding meaning within technology — which then acts as a symbol — rather than within the outcomes of this technical use. If culture is indeed assigning roles to people instead of jobs (McLuhan 2002:25-26), then individuals within an increasingly technical culture will identify with the roles that technology provides for them and create their own social space based on this distinction. Raymond Williams asks whether society is on the path of technological determinism — where technology is accidental and the consequences follow directly from the creation of these technologies — or symptomatic technology, where while technology is still accidental, they are a symptom of change on the societal level (2002:29-30). In either case, technology lies within social structure as a creator or by-product, and therefore is influential in forging cultural meaning.
John Naisbitt is quick to say in his book on technology and meaning that we both fear and worship technology (2001:36). Langdon Winner, in his discussion on technology as an artifact, is quick to support this claim through his own assertion that technology as an artifact is political; that is, that it holds an arrangement of power (1999:33). The structural aspects of technology create an inherent way of building order, whether it be conscious and conspiratorial or not (Winner 1999:31,33-39). This statement of power is echoed by David Nye (1996) in his discussion of the geometrical sublime; skyscrapers and bridges, having been used as symbols of literal and figurative upward progress, portray power in their symbolism by offering contrasting views of the city: both from the ground looking up and demonstrating hope, and from the top looking down and demonstrating control (Nye 1996:104). Even the simple photo has elements of power: as photography does not possess a language and the camera can not lie, photography “confirms the suppression of subjectivity” and removes any element from discovering truth from technology, but rather only finding personal interpretation and meaning (Berger 2002:51-54). Roland Barthes takes the structural argument for technology further in his discussion of the Eiffel Tower as he states that though in essence the tower is useless, to visit it allows the individual to participate in a dream — thus finding personal meaning ensconced in the steel exoskeleton (1979:5-8). Once at the top of the tower, each person can separate and group the city according to their vantage point: the city joins with nature and a new nature is formed from human space, and human interaction with architecture and technology (Barthes 1979:9-10,14-15).
It is clear then that technology is influential in the symbolic order of society, however it is important to look at technology not only as a separate tool, a system of signs encoding meaning, but to see machine and human as one. Donna Haraway sees the two not as two separate subjects, but as a type of cyborg — not in the science fiction sense of the word — blending the organic with the mechanical (1999:43). The attribution of human roles to machines is not new, but Bruno Latour claims that it is a choice we have made as a society, though it may be circumscribed choice because of social, economic, and physical restrictions (1992:236). Instead of machines, he calls these characters “nonhumans” and asserts that the “missing masses” of society now lie in the nonhuman mechanisms that surround us (Latour 1992:254). Technology is not simply a tool anymore, but a functioning and influential member of human society. Susan Buck-Morss takes this one step forward, claiming that the human being is turning his body into — or at least mimicking — the machine to protect against the shock of the machine labor itself (2002:105). Taking examples from Soviet-era Russia, she asserts that technology is human intervention into nature by means of nature’s own laws (Buck-Morss 2002:125-127).
Is technology tearing us apart or bringing us together? There is still no clear answer, but it is evident that technology not only functions in the symbolic order, just as does community and religion, but is so deeply ingrained within us that it also functions in the human domain.
Sources
Roland Barthes. “The Eiffel Tower.” In The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies. New York: Noonday Press, 1979. pp 3-18.
John Berger. “The Ambiguity of the Photograph.” In The Anthropology of Media: A Reader. (eds.) Kelly Askew and Richard R. Welk. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. pp 47-55.
Susan Buck-Morss. “Common Sense.” In Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Utopia in East and West. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002. pp 98-133.
William Gibson. Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books, 1984. pp 2-74.
Donna Haraway. “Modest Witness@Second Millennium.” In The Social Shaping of Technology: Second Edition. (eds.) Donald Mackenzie and Judy Wajcman. Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1999. pp 41-49.
Bruno Latour. “Where are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts.” In Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. (eds.) Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992. pp 75-107.
Claude Levi-Strauss. The Scope of Anthropology. London: Jonathan Cape, 1967. pp 7-53.
Marcel Mauss. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. New York: W.W. Norton, 1990. pp 1-18.
Marshall McLuhan. “The Medium is the Message.” In The Anthropology of Media: A Reader. (eds.) Kelly Askew and Richard R. Welk. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. pp 18-26.
John Naisbitt. High Tech High Touch: Technology and Our Accelerated Search for Meaning. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2001. pp 7-112.
David Nye. “Bridges and Skyscrapers: The Geometrical Sublime.” In American Technological Sublime. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996. pp 77-108.
Victor Turner. “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage.” In The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967. pp 93-111.
Raymond Williams. “The Technology and the Society.” In The Anthropology of Media: A Reader. (eds.) Kelly Askew and Richard R. Welk. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. pp 27-40.
Langdon Winner. “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” In The Social Shaping of Technology: Second Edition. (eds.) Donald Mackenzie and Judy Wajcman. Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1999. pp 28-40.
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