Web as world
Last night on the short drive to the session I was leading at the Berkman Center, I decided to change the planned topic — is the Web a medium or a world? — because it struck me as just too boring. Also, I’m not happy with how I’ve been leading these sessions. So, we talked about tagging instead.
Here’s what I’d planned to say. Sort of.
The question of whether the Web is a medium or a world matters if you think it’s a medium and nothing more. A medium is something through which a message travels from A to B. The communication succeeds if the message arrives at B unaltered. Obviously, the Net is a medium in that sense, complete with noise and error-correction, etc. But if that’s where you stop — and who does? — you don’t ever see the Web and can’t explain why it matters to us. I don’t even think it’s enough to talk about how the nature of the medium affects the type of communications and relationships that occur through it, although that’s obviously a valuable discussion.
I’d say that discussions of the Web as a medium are too low down on the stack, but that analogy slights the magic that lives between the layers: Just as something beyond human ken occurs between brain and awareness, there’s a thin layer of inexplicability between the Net as a medium and the Net we experience.
The communications theory that explains language as a medium has always struck me as demeaning to our experience of language. (Note: I’m about to get all Heideggerian.) Language isn’t how isolated individuals get connected. It’s how we turn together towards our shared world. Your language reveals the world to me in a particular way. Our conversation does that together.
The world towards which we turn in language has the same properties as language: It’s referential in its meaning, those meanings have a history rooted in our cultures, and it is necessarily ambiguous and poorly edged. Both world and language are ultimately founded in the fact that we humans care about ourselves, others, and the world itself; take away caring and you take away the capacity for attention and the ability to let the world show itself in any particular ways.
The Web also has those properties. It’s a referential (linked) context. The links express meaning rooted in our historical, cultural, linguistic situation. The meanings of the links are ambiguous. The clusters of links are poorly edged.
The Web isn’t the first world the big world has spawned. There’s the world of business and the show biz world, for example. But they’re domain-specific. The Web is unusual in that it isn’t. It is co-extensive with human interest. (Yes, it’s confined to those able to connect to it.)
But who cares if the Web is a world? I think it matters, sort-of and kind-of, in a few ways.
First, if you’re a reductionist, it’s good to pay homage to the unreduced phenomenon we experience. Tip o’ the hat. Keeps your reductionism honest.
Second, it can help you avoid the urge to want to fix the ambiguity and messiness of the Web. Within particular domains, that’s fine, of course: If no one can find anything on your site, you ought to straighten it up. But ambiguity and messiness are not only inherent in the Web, they are enablers of it and its value.
Third, some things become clearer if you do not start with the premise that people are fundamentally isolated and battle against noise in order to connect with others. Instead, we find ourselves in a world shared by others. Connection comes first. Isolation and alienation are withdrawals from the pre-existence of what is shared. I think that helps explain why some sites “work” and others don’t. Many of the sites that work for me are ones in which I see that my participation helps create and enrich this shared world; I have that sense at del.icio.us and Flickr, at every place I leave a review or join in a discussion, and every time I blog. I can’t explain that by thinking of the Web only as a medium, but I can explain it if it’s a shared world that we are building together.
By the way, if you want to see a group that misunderstands the Web and the value of its own products because it thinks of the Net as a medium, look at the RIAA. To the RIAA, the Net is a medium through which bits are sent, some of which are owned by record companies. And that’s as far as the RIAA gets in its understanding.
So, I do think it’s helpful to think of the Web as a world. And I believe that I have proven in this post that it is, in any case, quite a boring topic.
I’m leading a series of discussions at the Berkman Center and I’m not happy enough with them. Some have been good and even very good, but they could be better, and I haven’t felt fully comfortable. I started off by throwing some supposedly provocative question out to instigate a discussion. Haphazard results. I moved towards doing 15-20 minute presentations on what I thought about the question and then opening it up, and I think that worked better. Last night, we instead simply talked about what’s going on with tagging and why it matters. Because this is something I’ve been researching, I talked for maybe 10 minutes to lay out what I think are the basic issues. And then we had a great time.
So, I’m going to make some changes and build on what’s worked. First, I will continue to mix up the formats somewhat. For example, I thought the session in which I interviewed David Reed was really interesting because David is so interesting; I want to do more of that. Second, I’m going to try to choose smaller-scoped questions about which reasonable people may not only disagree but about which they might care. E.g., I’m interested in whether the Web is a world, but I don’t expect anyone else to be. Third, when I know stuff, I’m going to be less apologetic about presenting it; I know something about tagging and taxonomy because I’ve been interviewing people about it, so, damn it, I’m just going to tell you what I know. Fourth, more pop quizzes! (Just kidding.)
Dave Rogers has followed up our conversation in the comments section with a thoughtful response on his site.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
I’d imagine there is an interesting connection between the web as world question and the tagging / taxonomy debate.
Part of what we see as being “a world” or “the world” has to do with hierarchy. I think most people do not think “there is a world of sound”, in part, because they’ve learned that sound is just a part of the (physical) world.
On the other hand, there are (mystical and/or musical) schools of thought that would argue that the physical world is just a part of the world of sound.
As an “open” model (one that presumes that both of these points of view can coexist, even if one could be truer in one version of physics of another), one would have to imagine these worlds as being related such that either hierarchy can be seen.
With tags and taxonomies together, there are ways to establish relationships without either foregoing hierarchy or forcing hierarchy. But, with either one alone, there are more limits to the points of view that can be expressed about the worlds we live in.
Speaking of sound and worlds – watched and listened to an amazing show last night on the History Channel (Canada) about Acoustic Archaeology.
A good introduction to it “Early Rock” is found at http://www.orkneyjar.com/archaeology/earlyrock.htm
“These (ancient) sites contain passageways leading to large circular chambers, and have a resonant frequency (at which sounds naturally echo and reverberate) of about 110hz – the frequency of the male baritone, the second lowest singing voice. Standing waves, whereby sounds are reflected off walls and superimposed on to one another, and other acoustic curiosities, have been observed in these and other sites. Stone circles including Avebury and Stonehenge also appear to reflect sound in distinctive ways.
Archaeologists have suggested that chanting, singing and drumming at these sites would have produced reverberating echoes that might have been interpreted as voices of spirits or gods; they may also have induced physiological and psychological changes in people, adding to their potency as sites of spiritual importance.”
Thousands of years ago – people may have been able to see sound waves: “Experiments in a replica of the Newgrange passage, at Princeton University, showed that if a site was smoky or misty, standing sound waves would become visible as they vibrated particles in the air.”
What will be found of the Web in 5,000 years?
This is one of those posts that makes my head hurt trying to figure out exactly what you’re trying to say. Please don’t take offense.
“First, if you’re a reductionist, it’s good to pay homage to the unreduced phenomenon we experience. Tip o’ the hat. Keeps your reductionism honest.”
I have no idea what this means. I suspect it doesn’t matter.
“Instead, we find ourselves in a world shared by others. Connection comes first. Isolation and alienation are withdrawals from the pre-existence of what is shared.”
Connection may come first, maybe, but not all connections are equal and isolation and alienation may not be so much withdrawals as much as they are expulsions. “What” pre-existing “thing” is “shared,” precisely? Connection? Connections themselves have meanings and contexts, and not all of them are necessarily desirable or “good.” Leave an unwelcome comment and LGF and consider the value of “connection.”
“I can’t explain that by thinking of the Web only as a medium, but I can explain it if it’s a shared world that we are building together.”
Why not? We share only one world and our experience in it is mediated by these differing conditions and situations. To the extent we say there are other “worlds,” these are merely abstractions of this one, isolated in themselves by the different experiences of those said to be inhabiting them. Your experience of the one world is mediated by an online interaction with other people who share that “onlineness” with you. I don’t think that necessarily makes another “world,” at least not in any useful way. I don’t believe the things that you value in that experience are unique to the circumstances in which you experience them. If it is the “connectedness” and “caring,” those are probably universal and experienced in other modes and contexts and are not unique to any particular “other” world.
A different language isn’t a different “world,” it is a different way of describing a different experience of the same world. I think that’s a more helpful or useful mode of thinking than dividing one world into many, which seems to facilitate things like this:
“By the way, if you want to see a group that misunderstands the Web and the value of its own products because it thinks of the Net as a medium, look at the RIAA. To the RIAA, the Net is a medium through which bits are sent, some of which are owned by record companies. And that’s as far as the RIAA gets in its understanding.”
Is it possible that the RIAA’s understanding of the web differs from your own, and that it doesn’t necessarily reflect “misunderstanding” so much as a different experience of the world as mediated by the web? It seems presumptuous and not conducive to dialog or increasing mutual understanding to label those who have a differing perception of something as “misunderstanding.” That’s a big part of what I find offensive, at its worst, though mostly just tedious, about these broad assertions about how others don’t “get” the web, like Kofi Annan. Ironically, Doc Searls made the reference to Kofi Annan not “getting” the web shortly after, if I recall correctly, making a reference to Covey’s dictum to “Seek first to understand, then be understood.”
It seems to me that it may be more helpful for us to agree that we inhabit one world with differing experiences, and then try to understand the nature of those differing experiences rather than to make assertions regarding who “understands” and who “misunderstands,” or to declare a new “world” on the basis of a set of experiences peculiar and exclusive to a particular group – membership thereof only guaranteed to those who “get it.”
If I’ve understood you correctly. ;^)
Dave, some responses. following your sequence…
– Reductionists take a rich phenomenon and strip it of meaning. Viewing the Web as a medium does that. Thinking of it as a world does not…at least not as badly.
– Good point that some disconnections are expulsions. In fact, there’s a rich vocabulary for types of disconnections. And, yes, not all connections are desirable. But my point was that I can’t explain the Web if I try to do so only as a medium. It is richer than that.
– Yes, connectedness and caring are universal across all sub-worlds because those properties are constitutive of all worlds. Some other stuff makes the Web world special, including the fact that it isn’t delimited by a set of interests or values the way other sub-worlds are. And, of course, the Web has a type of pervasiveness and ubiquity — it’s headed in that direction, anyway — that most other sub-worlds lack. But, because it is a world, I can’t explain it purely as a medium, which is the idea you were commenting on.
– It’s really hard to know how to talk about the many worlds and the one world because it pushes us right up to the limit of understanding, so I agree and disagree with you. Yes, there is one world. But that world can be so profoundly different — different cultures, languages, histories — that it’s hard to know what to say about its sameness. The world that we’re born into is always a very particular one — 20th century America, Jewish parents, English-speaking, etc., in my case. That world is so different from, say, the ancient Greek world (to take an example within my tradition) that you could spend your life trying to understand it and never succeed fully. One world?
– Of course the RIAA’s understanding of the Web differs from mine. But am I allowed to say that anyone misunderstands the Web? Or must I be total relativist about this? If I’m allowed to say that some misunderstand a phenomenon, then I’d say that the RIAA misunderstands the Web because it thinks of it primarily as a transport mechanism or medium. Could I be wrong about that? Of course! And, obviously talking about the RIAA as if it were a person assumes some rhetorical laxness.
– Your last paragraph is admirable, and sure we inhabit one world in important ways. But we can still think some people don’t understand a phenomenon. I don’t understand rap (actually in both senses), and if I start offering opinions — and especially if I try to affect rap by, say, trying to ban it — you should feel free to say that I don’t “get” rap. Likewise for my pronouncements about, say, Korean culture, sports bars or how the world of performance art ought to reform itself. The RIAA is trying to change the way the Web works. I don’t just disagree with them in a agree-to-disagree sort of way. I think they’re missing the values that have enabled the Web to assemble itself out of nothing. So, yeah, I think they don’t get the Web. I could be wrong about that, of course, but I don’t think all understandings of the Web — or of anything — are necessarily equal.
Thanks for the excellent response, Dave. Especially the reductionist part! Following your model and picking up after the reductionist thing:
– But don’t all connections _require_ some sort of medium? A medium that especially facilitates connections is still a medium. A world is something else.
– The web being not delimited by a set of interests or values seems to argue for it being a medium, more so than a world. At least, it does to me. I don’t think I understand what part of “a world” other than “the world” you need to “explain” the web. I think that’s where I’m missing you.
– Exactly! So, rather than complicate the already difficult problem by relying on unnecessary abstractions of other “worlds,” perhaps it would be helpful to focus on the things that are common across different people’s experience in “the world.” It seems to me that the “business world” is really not a world at all, and in fact only has any meaning at all in the fact that it exists in the larger “one world.” It seems to me that this metaphor seeks to class a group of related experiences as a “world” for the purpose something other than explanation or understanding. When someone says, “You’re in my world now,” isn’t that an assertion of authority? Certainly one is always an authority on one’s own experience, but if we all share the same “real world” then such distinctions seem to exist more for the sake of dividing up the world for the unique, probably selfish, purposes of particular individuals. It’s “our world,” but each of us has our singular experience of it. And I think it almost goes without saying that none of us could ever _fully_ succeed at understanding anyone else’s experience of the world. Though I think we can find enough in common to have some reasonable ideas from which we might all profit.
– The web is such a new phenomenon (medium!), how likely is it anyone can be said to really understand it? Or rather, understand the manifold effects of ordinary human behavior in an extraordinary new medium? What isn’t a new phenomenon is hierarchy, and fear, and loss, and zero-sum games, and it isn’t a stretch to kind of understand the RIAA’s experience of the web. To the extent that you disagree with the RIAA and you wish for them to do something other than what they’re doing, it seems to me to be more profitable to engage them in some fashion where they aren’t being placed on the defensive by asserting they don’t understand something that they feel they understand quite well enough. If the web is a medium, then it’s unlikely they can significantly change it, is it not? If you view it as a world, then you immediately place yourself a position of “desire” and “fear of loss.” “The RIAA is trying to change the way the Web works.” Isn’t this really an expression of fear? If markets are really conversations, don’t we want to engage and draw out our conversants? Or do we seek to try to intimidate them with our superior authority in one sphere (academic, philosophical, ethical), while they try to counter with their superior authority in another sphere (wealth, law, courts)? Perhaps the RIAA does misunderstand the web, I don’t know if they do or not, but say they do; how do you persuade them of that? How does “explaining” the web as “world” solve more problems than it creates?
World
Joho the Blog: Web as world is worth reading, and hearkens back to some discussions that went round the place a year ago about good metaphors for the web of our webloggery. My contribution was this….
Dave, you and I are proving that comments are a poor medium for extended conversations of this sort. Your comments are great but I’m going to respond briefly because the medium is unwieldy.
First, my blog post wasn’t written to the RIAA. Of course they’re welcome to read it but, I agree that that’s not what I would say — or have said — in conversation with the RIAA or its supporters. Likewise, I’m happy to call W a fucking moron on my blog, but it obviously wouldn’t be a good discussion-opener if I found myself trapped in an elevator with him.
– By world I mean not simply that through which messages pass (= a medium) but the common referential context (= can’t understand A without understanding B and C, and you can’t understand B without … etc.) we find ourselves in and that we care about. Being in a shared world makes possible communication via some medium. Something like that.
– I agree that there’s value in finding what’s common across all (or almost all) experiences of the Web. That’s what (if I may get self-referential here) my book “Small Pieces” was about. But there’s also value in discovering what’s differentiating. That’s why anthropology is interesting. My point wrt the RIAA is that they (IMO!) are misunderstanding what’s distinctive of the Web world.
– How does one talk with the RIAA about it? In a whole variety of ways, most of which won’t work. The economic arguments focused on their self-interest would probably be more effective than rhapsodizing about the Web as world.
– You say that you sense fear in what I write. Damn straight I’m frightened. I’m afraid forces that don’t understand what we have with the Web are going to take away what we have. Yes, I’m scared shitless.
I appreciate the limitations of the medium!
“You say that you sense fear in what I write. Damn straight I’m frightened. I’m afraid forces that don’t understand what we have with the Web are going to take away what we have. Yes, I’m scared shitless.”
Which, with a change of just one word, could be something stated by Hillary Rosen back in her heyday. Which is precisely my point.
I’m suggesting that both of you (and understand that the RIAA is just a stand-in here for any number of other entities with different experiences and understandings, Kofi Annan, MPAA, MSM, etc.) have fears that arise from incomplete understandings borne of different experiences of one world. If we try to know the “one world” and the role of fear in making it what it is, we can perhaps begin to change ourselves, which is something we have some chance of doing more so than “the world (the collective experiences of both ourselves and everyone else).
All things change. As you would not have the RIAA fear the change to their “world” brought about by the web, perhaps you might abandon your fear of losing what you will inevitably lose one day anyway. (If only by the extinction of your life.) By abandoning your fear of “losing” what you have, you may not win it, or keep it, but you may win something else more desirable. And it would change a certain dynamic in the world. There’s only one way to find out.
But just as you’re skeptical of the utility of the government urging people to incorporate an hour of exercise into their daily routine, I’m skeptical about anyone abandoning their fear of loss.
Fear. It makes “the world” go round.
I don’t grok trackback so, very long, insufferably pedantic and likely completely unpersuasive response here:
http://homepage.mac.com/dave_rogers/GHD01-05.html#note_1947
David Weinberger: Web as World
David is in rare form in Web as world: […] some things become clearer if you do not start with the premise that people are fundamentally isolated and battle against noise in order to connect with others. Instead, we find…
I would like to do it in English, but it is too late and I don’t feel strong enough.
My idea is, the web is not a medium (not a medium as we know it). I wouldn’t say the web is a world. I’d say that the web is a mirror (getting better all the time).
Dave, the medium is not the message. I couldn’t agree more on this. But the web is not a medium, and it is not the message either. Not the medium, not the message, not the goal, it is simply a mirror (thus a reflected world).
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