[HN Gopher] Gin, television, and social surplus, or, "looking fo...
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Gin, television, and social surplus, or, "looking for the mouse"
(2008)
Author : nz
Score : 86 points
Date : 2021-11-12 13:15 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (gist.github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gist.github.com)
| ImaCake wrote:
| While some points in here might ring a little cynical today, I
| think the broader argument has proven true. The mega project I
| have been contributing my spare time and cognition to is
| inaturalist [0]. Despite it's many flaws, it is impressive to see
| the depth and breadth of data available on it. It also serves the
| same public good that wikipedia does - building and delivering
| important knowledge that can change the world.
|
| The projects that fit this social surplus model that are doing
| good are often happening quietly. Those that are negative uses of
| social surplus are loud. Don't let that fool you into thinking
| good projects are less common or hopeless causes.
|
| 0. https://www.inaturalist.org/
| flerovium wrote:
| He's saying that post-WWII society had a lot more free time. But
| this isn't true for people living in rural areas. Historically,
| many had more free time.[1]
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28q7l5/how_m...
| WJW wrote:
| The free time of people in rural areas is not quite as
| important, politically speaking, as the free time of people in
| cities. By the very nature of cities, people inside them can
| reach other people more readily and social movements will
| spread quicker in cities than in thinly populated areas.
|
| So, in the earlier time when people in rural areas had a lot of
| free time they couldn't really do a lot with that free time in
| a political sense. But after industrialization caused a huge
| migration towards cities, some of the people took their
| newfound free time after WW2 and used it to rally people
| towards ideological causes. Obviously this is a threat to
| entrenched interests who don't want any new ideologies to gain
| momentum as they benefit from the status quo. The article makes
| the claim that by making mindless entertainment available to
| all, many of these ideological shifts were deprived of energy
| and this stabilized society somewhat.
| milesvp wrote:
| I have several thoughts.
|
| Was gilligan a genius? So many attempts to get off the island
| were completely hare brained, maybe only he could see it. Lovable
| sabotage can be an effective tool to help save an org from
| itself.
|
| But the more important thought, I'm reminded of all the works of
| Luis von Ahn who was trying to capture this surplus. He had a
| talk talking about the number of hours spent playing soltaire,
| and used the unit of empire state buildings built and it was some
| staggering number of units. It was a very compelling idea about
| the same time as this article. It's a shame so much of that
| surplus has gone towards solidifying several tech giants rather
| than more things like Gary's Mod.
| [deleted]
| carbonguy wrote:
| I've been fascinated by the ideas of this piece ever since I
| first read it, particularly by the idea that leisure time is
| something that many - or most - people actually have a hard time
| dealing with and integrating into their lives.
|
| I wonder now what other "Wikipedia"-type projects have arisen
| since 2008 to serve as similar public goods. GitHub? Maybe
| YouTube, if you squint hard enough?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| StackOverflow et al.? I enjoy helping people in fields where I
| have relevant experience (it think I do!), eg with computer
| issues, and SOs gamification of that (and other community
| knowledge) makes it into something of a leisure time activity
| for me on occasions.
|
| I take part in some FB groups (pottery related) in a similar
| way.
| jetrink wrote:
| I think YouTube definitely qualifies, though the content hosted
| there is much more heterogeneous in quality and purpose. The
| how-to content alone is its own little wikipedia. Guided by
| videos, my mother is now diving into home-improvement projects
| that she would have relied on my dad for in previous decades.
| My dad has always been handy, but now he's learning to do
| things to professional standards instead of the improvised,
| jury-rigged way he's always done them.
| wayanon wrote:
| Enjoyed reading this. As much as I feel guilty watching YouTube I
| do at least feel I am doing something slightly more proactive
| than watching legacy TV or streaming in that I'm having to search
| for stuff that solves a need for me at that time, or at least
| judge how effective the YT algorithm is. I'm lucky to have the
| BBC and value it as an impartial news organisation but I haven't
| watched one of their (or ITV or others) programmes for at least 5
| years, even on iPlayer. It's all YouTube for me and I don't
| begrudge the Premium subscription at all - it's changed my life
| so much for the better.
| wayanon wrote:
| In case not obvious I'm living on my own - I can see that
| normal TV viewing is more of a communal/social thing.
| 0x4d464d48 wrote:
| Good read.
|
| This is from 2008 and hindsight is 20/20 but theres a couple of
| disturbing omissions that have started making themselves
| apparent.
|
| The piece emphasizes how all of this "cogitive surplus" is going
| to promote sharing and in the hands of good actors that's
| fantastic.
|
| E.g.
|
| "Just to pick one example, one I'm in love with, but it's tiny. A
| couple of weeks one of my students at ITP forwarded me a a
| project started by a professor in Brazil, in Fortaleza, named
| Vasco Furtado. It's a Wiki Map for crime in Brazil. If there's an
| assault, if there's a burglary, if there's a mugging, a robbery,
| a rape, a murder, you can go and put a push-pin on a Google Map,
| and you can characterize the assault, and you start to see a map
| of where these crimes are occurring."
|
| But now for the other side of the coin. What happens when the
| people providing and sharing content are _bad_ actors?
|
| E.g.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11297050/tay-microsoft-ch...
|
| Further, you're always assuming the provided data is accurate. It
| mandates a level of trust with the data provider. Sure, there may
| not be much incentive to provide fake data to a simple crime map
| but this can change quite readily when commercial interests are
| involved or some coordinated group of malicious actors. My mind
| jumps to small business owners being 'brigaded' on Yelp and state
| funded troll farms.
|
| One final piece that I found particularly disturbing.
|
| "Media that's targeted at you but that doesn't include you may
| not be worth sitting still for."
|
| It's hard to argue that finding a niche for oneself is bad but I
| don't think that there are many intelligent people left that
| would argue media bubbles are a force for good. That's not to say
| the author would disagree but this is not an endorsement it seems
| to border on sympathetic.
|
| I don't learn and grow from media that targets me. If anything
| it's antagonistic to that. Media that targets me makes me feel
| comfortable. It promotes narrative formation over reality
| testing.
|
| Media not targeted for me, or that doesn't include me on the
| other hand, requires analysis. It requires comparison and
| contrast to my ideals and beliefs. It requires assessing why that
| media _doesn't_ target me and understanding who it's intended
| audience is and why _they_ consume it.
|
| /rant
|
| Felt the need to work on my writing this morning.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > What happens when the people providing the content are _bad_
| actors?
|
| Manipulation for economic gain, creating a sacrifice zone to be
| depleted, exhausted, and discarded like a landfill of souls.
| Lammy wrote:
| I love this metaphor:
|
| "The way you explore complex ecosystems is you just try lots and
| lots and lots of things, and you hope that everybody who fails
| fails informatively so that you can at least find a skull on a
| pikestaff near where you're going. "
| codeulike wrote:
| Clay Shirky wrote a whole book about this - "Cognitive Surplus"
| (2011)
|
| That key bit about the person-hours in Wikipedia always stuck in
| my head - 100 million hours to build wikipedia, versus 200
| billion hours per year watching TV.
|
| And when people panic about kids amount of screen time these
| days, I think 'well at least it involves making choices' - which
| link to click, which tweet to like, which bit of candy to crush
| etc. Whereas in the decades that our societies spent glued to tv,
| a handful of massively centralised outfits somewhere got the
| privilege of beaming their own curated stuff straight into
| millions of peoples faces. They chose the content and the
| schedule and millions of people just turned up every day and sat
| infront of it.
| wrs wrote:
| Great speech. There does seem to be an optimistic assumption here
| that more participation in media is always better. But from a
| 2021 viewpoint I would now add the discovery (through mass
| experiment) that there are some forms of _participative_ media
| that are just as empty of value as, and far more toxic to society
| than, just letting people watch TV. So, as they say, "it's
| complicated".
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(page generated 2021-11-13 23:01 UTC)