Value, Reality and Objects: what is Digital about a Digital Economy? Annamaria Carusi Oxford e-Research Centre University of Oxford Background • Digital Economy Research Programme • Innovative Media for the Digital Economy Research Cluster • Focusing on Social Technology Systems in Creative Industries, Transport and Health • STS including Social Networking Systems – – – – Facebook MySpace YouTube Etc • User generated content Our questions • What forms of exchange? • What forms of production and consumption? • What forms of value? Digital Economy and Digital Lives Value In economic sense scarcity labour supply and demand In other senses: emotional aesthetic scholarship knowledge …. etc A multitude of objects …. – Emails, images, tags, bookmarks, documents, spreadsheets, music, movies, data in every shape and variety – By the very nature of digital artefacts • • • • • Reproducibility Speed Replicability Intermittent existence Lightness (Agustin Araya) Disintermediation • Loss of ‘quality control’ • Bypassing traditional gatekeepers – Editors – Publishers – Curators – Professionals Crisis in trust • Authenticity and provenance • Institutional roles: authorship, editorship and curatorship • Status, expertise and professionalism • Truth • Ethics • Technological system: how reliable is it (I’m not going to lose all my emails, images, documents); how secure is it (no unwanted snoopers) Value and trust • Of all the multitude of objects out there, which should I value? • Ought I to value this particular rendition of a digital artefact (this version of The Old Curiosity Shop that I am listening to from what seems to be the BBC7 site;)? • Ought I to entrust my valued collection of Christmas images to iPhoto or Picasa? • Trust is a way of reducing complexity (Niklas Luhman) Complexity reducing solutions • Ratings • Reputation • Apomediation: ‘guide on the side’ (inter=between; apo=stand by (separate, detached) • Provenance tracking • Reliability • Encryption and security • Which are social and which are technical? • Which are trustworthy? Trust • Trust is the cement of social relations at all levels, including economic • Any co-operative activity requires trust: – – – – Buying and selling Entering into any contract or agreement Promising Making dinner arrangements • We always and everywhere trust • Trust makes mistrust possible Trust • We trust a lot more than we normally talk about trust • We talk about it in exceptional circumstances, like when something has gone wrong or when we can’t fall back on trust • We talk about it all the time in digital economy and in the development of digital technologies. Trust • Technologies are disruptive of our normal practice; they bring these practices to the fore and make us reflect on them. • They make us wonder …. ‘but how can we go on trusting ….?’ • ‘How do we trust?’, ‘How ought we to trust?’ Writing as a disruptive technology ‘Once a thing is put in writing, it rolls about all over the place, falling into the hands of those who have no concern with it just as easily as under the notice of those who comprehend; it has no notion of whom to address or whom to avoid. And when it is ill-treated or abused as illegitimate, it always needs its father to help it, being quite unable to protect or help itself.’ Plato, Phaedrus. Writing … • • • • ‘Rolls about’ Don’t know where it comes from Don’t know how it will be used There is no truth in it because there is no possibility of authentication • For all of these reasons, there is no wisdom to be gained through it Cf Digital Data and Provenance Concerns ‘Provenance refers to the knowledge that enables a piece of data be interpreted correctly. It is the essential ingredient that ensures that users of data (for whom the data may or may not have been originally intended) understand the background of the data. This includes elements such as, who (person) or what (process) created the data, where it came from, how it was transformed, the assumptions made in generating it, and the processes used to modify it.’ Quoted on NSF site: www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0455993 Value and trust • Multiplicity -- superabundance -- of digital entities of all kinds • But in order for them to have value … • We need to know how to trust them • Often – Something that ties them to their circumstances of production – Something that embeds them in a story …. – Something that situates them in particular human lives – Something that enables them to be interacted with Real vs digital • Greater reality accorded to the original and to the particular • The aura of [an object] has to do with its authenticity, its rootedness in a particular time and place, in tradition and rituals, • Walter Benjamin: ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’ (1936) – Photography; film (especially sound film) • Reproducible forms displace aura in favour of exhibition value Real vs digital • ‘Permeation of reality with mechanical equipment’ (Benjamin) • The ‘mechanical equipment’ -- and its output -- is a form of interaction with that reality • Activities – Gathering, collecting, hording – Tagging, manipulating, embedding in mashups – Exchanging, sharing, distributing ‘The key, he says, is tightly integrating online activity with tasks people can perform in the real world. "Yes, there are blogs and Listservs," Franklin-Hodge says. "But the point of the campaign is to get someone to donate money, make calls, write letters, organize a house party. The core of the software is having those links to taking action--to doing something.’ ( Talbot, How Obama Really Did It’, Technology Review, 2008) Objects vs actants • Subjects/users and objects • Digital artefacts? • Objects ‘stare back’ – The ‘invisible threads that tie us to objects’, the ‘snares and visual wires’; making us look at some rather than others (James Elkins) • Digital actants – Anything that has a [functional] role within a system Back to value • The value of digital artefacts does not arise from the real • Neither (for the vast preponderance of digital artefacts) from their relationship to money • Connect digital artefacts with activities, motivations, actions, real lives • Learn the lessons of history • Embed trust in the processes, uses and actions through which digital artefacts gain value. Annamaria Carusi Oxford e-Research Centre University of Oxford annamaria.carusi@oerc.ox.ac.uk