Tyranny of the "social"

When I was growing up (in India), the word "anti-social" was applied to men, especially young jobless men, who were generally violent, i.e. they would go around doing the bidding of the local political mafia.

An anti-social was the rough equivalent of the goonda or the thug.

Anti-socials were, when they weren't burning effigies or breaking windows at the behest of their bosses, "bad" people in a very absolute sense of the term.

We, the "pro-social" one's, avoided them.

In this era of technology, the meanings of pro-social and anti-social have perhaps dwindled down to something despicably narrow. An anti-social is "un-sharing fellow," who likes to keep whatever information she gathers to herself, while a "social" woman is very sharing of the same (though not necessarily caring).

One of the framers of the changing, or shall we say, "evolving" connotation of this word, is Facebook and the master wizard of the "social" Hell Boy, Mark Zuckerberg. 

At least, this is so according to Evegny Morozov, whose well-considered and eye-opening argument against the god-like status granted to technology as a solution-provider to all problems of society, grip me.

In a piece, The Death of the Cyberflaneur, Morozov writes that Facebook assaults "solitude and individuality, anonymity and opacity, mystery and ambivalence, curiosity and risk-taking," by insisting in a one-sided way, that it's better not to pursue anything at all than to not pursue it "socially." 

Mark Zuckerberg posed the following question on a Charlie Rose show, where he appeared with Sheryl Sandberg:

Do you want to go to the movies by yourself or do you want to go to the movies with your friends?

A rhetorical question, to boot, it was answered by him right away:

You want to go with your friends.

Who would dare to say, "No, sometimes, I'd rather pursue something I like, alone."

Such daring, were it to take on a paradigm-effect would harm Facebook's precious "business model."

Sharing, is an implicit prerequisite of this business model. According to Morozov:

Facebook wants to build an Internet where watching films, listening to music, reading books and even browsing is done not just openly but socially and collaboratively. Through clever partnerships with companies like Spotify and Netflix, Facebook will create powerful (but latent) incentives that would make users eagerly embrace the tyranny of the “social,” to the point where pursuing any of those activities on their own would become impossible. [...] It's this idea that the individual experience is somehow inferior to the collective that underpins Facebook’s recent embrace of “frictionless sharing,” the idea that, from now on, we have to worry only about things we don’t want to share; everything else will be shared automatically. To that end, Facebook is encouraging its partners to build applications that automatically share everything we do: articles we read, music we listen to, videos we watch. It goes without saying that frictionless sharing also makes it easier for Facebook to sell us to advertisers, and for advertisers to sell their wares back to us.

"Share or die!" translates frictionlessly into "be social or perish!" but be "social" how? By getting bombarded with messages that the experience of enjoying things alone is a qualitatively inferior experience than doing the same "socially." 

Thinking about what Morozov says, I feel that the word social, as it has effloresced under the aegis of technology, has become constrictive and not such a good thing to be in its adjectival mode.

I'd rather be an "anti-social" than be a "social" in this context. 

Facebook empire

Facebook's poor performance on Wall Street is described in terms of a "tension" between two money-making cultures (read "vultures") in America: Wall Street and Silicon Wall-ey:

They are as symbiotic as they are dismissive of each other. They are equally focused on making money, but their approaches are different.

But what impresses me most is the elevated tone in which a corporation's fluctuating fortunes in the marketplace is described. If one were not a little alert, one would think that the story of a whole empire is being narrated.

Take the image, for instance. Mark Zuckerberg's Grecian head has a distinct Caesarean aura about it. He is an emperor and the thumbs up and down icons begin to look like the rise and fall of an empire. 

There are hints galore that emperor Markus Zuckerbergus is an incompetent king and the fate of his kingdom atop Menlo Park is imperiled. A previous empire that had risen and collapsed in this region was that of Sun Microsystems--it was Facebook's predecessor in Menlo Park and ruled till the time Oracle came by and gobbled it up.

The fortunes of manufacturing companies are not narrated in such imperial tones--recall the stories of GM, Ford and Chrysler. They were told in sepia tones of foreboding--as though these troglodytes were bound to fail. 

I keep on forgetting that Facebook is not just a company--it's a TECHNOLOGY company and TECHNOLOGY companies are not regular companies, they are empires. They are not economic entities but culture-shapers and "world"-changers.

India and freedom: oxymoron?

I had wished "happy birthday" to a cousin of mine on Facebook.

I noticed that others had posted the same on his "wall".

But the birthday boy never thanked anybody back till very recently.

He said he had been in China and he wasn't able to access Facebook because "Facebook is banned in China."

The tone in which my cousin mentioned the fact of banning was normal, as though he were reporting the absence of bananas in Alaska.

My cousin's nonchalance in this matter didn't perturb me in and of itself. After all Indians are phlegmatic where the question of human rights violation, or threats to autonomy and freedom--abstract stuff like that--is concerned. But threaten the urban middle class with a ban on malls, then Indians would be up in arms.

What perturbed me was what the cousin said in conjunction with the "ban". He said that "China is a magnificent country."

How could a member of thriving democracy (then again, India is a poster child for democracy without being really democratic in any meaningful sense of the term) commit the sin of such a blatant oxymoron?

"Facebook is banned in China. China is a magnificent country." The utterance has two separate parts not joined by a "but" or "however" to highlight a contradiction. It's as though the observer were looking at two different parts in the same thing and is deaf and blind to the contradiction.

I'm not saying that my cousin is politically obtuse; it's just that he is being characteristically Indian in his observation of China. He notices the presence of Beijing's beauty--the gorgeous malls, the clean roads, the overall architectural splendor, cleanliness and efficiency. In this aesthetic and infrastructural sense, China is the obverse of India.

The beauty of China has obviously mesmerized the Indian visitor, as it had mesmerized the American visitors back in the day of the 2007 Beijing Olympics.

But the absence of freedom did not register as a significant lacunae in China's apparent perfection. He didn't express shock at the fact that Facebook is banned in China. Nay, he overrode the concern for freedom and democracy and a lack of both in China as frivolous and went on to tub thump about the nation's "magnificence."

I believe that Indians in general are comfortable living with violation. There are low and high level violations of all kinds everyday in India. Take freedom or rights away from Indians--they won't mind is my guess. But take the guarantee of a monthly wage away from them, they'll faint in horror. Trade security (of a monetary kind) with freedom and Indians will be un-protesting to the hilt.

In light of the recent power blackouts in large parts of India I noticed a queer sentiment among my Indian brethren (and sisterhood) on Facebook. Many were "fed up" with living under Indian governance, marked as it is by inefficiency and grave corruption. Some yearned for a recolonization of India. The argument was that Indians fared "better" under the British Raj.

Perhaps Indians don't quite care for freedom-"shreedom" and such non-material garbage.

What do they care for? I don't know; maybe a flat far removed from the stench and squalor of everyday Indian reality? To attain that they might be willing to forego freedom and many rights.

As my favorite fictional servant Balram Halwai had noted in The White Tiger, Indians are born to be ruled and if ever they are in the market looking for an invader/ruler, China would be the nation of choice.

Facebook or "FaceBOO!!"?

To be sure, Facebook, Twitter and blogging are truly revolutionary tools of communication and expression that have brought so many new and compelling voices to light. At their best, they're changing the nature of political communication and news. But at their worst, they can become addictive substitutes for real action. How often have you heard lately: "Oh, I tweeted about that." Or "I posted that on my Facebook page." Really? In most cases, that's about as impactful as firing a mortar into the Milky Way galaxy. Unless you get out of Facebook and into someone's face, you have  not acted. And, as Syria's vicious regime is also reminding us: "bang-bang" beats "tweet-tweet" every day of the week.

Tom Friedman echoes a sentiment--about the limits of a "Facebook/Twitter"-based political action-- that had been expressed by Malcolm Gladwell a while ago.

Friedman writes of how the Facebook-inspired Arab Spring fizzled out into a winter of futility and chaos and the protestors who organized the exit of President Hosni Mubarak, could not rally around a single viable candidate for the presidential elections in Egypt. The two candidates--Mohamed Morsi Ahmed Shafiq, of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Mubarak regime--are vestiges of the old order, not a break from it.

Seems like Facebook politics cannot compete with the proven effectiveness of real, "brick and mortar" politics.

But to bemoan the failure of Facebook and Twitter to bring about durable, structural change, is as pointless as raising it to the stature of something more than what it is--mere conduits of (human) communication.

Didn't Karl Marx say "base" and "superstructure?" Where real action is concerned, Social Media is neither base nor superstructure, but a super(fluous)structure without which society won't wobble.