Midwest Populist Party » Transitioning into the Communications Age; an initial description of the social conditions that appear to be emerging

From a Larger Project belonging to Russell Cole

An Extract from the Introduction

The purpose of Sociology of Web 2.0 is to build upon current criticisms of American sociopolitical institutions and networks that are associated with the counter-discourse generated from the cultural field of proponents of direct democracy and its implementation for the democratic reform of America. Its intent is to enhance direct democratic theory with insights derived from the current paradigmatic transformation occurring within technological communities referred to as instances of Web 2.0. Briefly put, Web 2.0 is a new conceptualization of the social conditions that most prolifically engender the cultivation of pragmatically endowed social knowledge. This intellectual transition consists of an abandonment of the social formalism and stasis associated with institutions, such as the Academy, in favor of an acceptance and an encouragement of an open and an inclusive field. It ignores status symbol requisites, which are required of the institution belonging to the Academy, in favor of fostering communities of epistemic agents, who voluntarily contribute to knowledge building communities in whatever capacity best fits their proclivities and in a modality that most reflects their backgrounds and penchants.

This emerging episteme – the democratization of knowledge production – involves an insurrectionary movement that embodies the alterations occurring in the formation and configuration of representational spaces. The alternative avenues, which are exploitable for purposes of obtaining publicity, are provided for by the expansion of Internet Infrastructures. Members of various disciplines are increasingly seizing upon this opportunity, allowing for the publicity of their work through processes exogenous to the mechanisms internal to their disciplines; a modality of expression that bypasses the ritualism enacted by the academy when it is actualizing its exclusionary politics.

The censorship on the part of the academy clearly constitutes an act that expresses symbolically shared in-group statuses associated with a shared social identity; a display of ritualism that functionally serves as a device to proliferate in-group solidarity. Further, the semiotic resources monopolized by the practitioners of the disciplinarian mode of knowledge production – an ethereal cultural commodity that translates into a privileged position in the social knowledge-producing hierarchy –regenerate from the exclusion of the chattering classes from the spaces occupied by the Truth-producers belonging to the disciplinarian tribe. The prevention of possible pollutants effects a condition where non-members not only assume an a priori disqualified stature – preventing the inclusion of their chatter into the field defined by the agonistics of the disciplinarian language-games – it comes to provide a symbolic function involving the personification of the criteria, defining the negation of the positive identity, which, in turn, recasts definition to the in-group.

In order to provide a more concretized account of the succession of events constituting the process describe above, one might make reference to the editorial selections and peer reviews conducted by the oligarchies that form in the various fields of intellectual pursuit, falling under the academy. Those who are charged with determining what contents fail to profane the sacred spaces of the discipline additionally provide the immunities necessary for the cultural enclave to persist; thus, failing to dissolve into the negated identities of the excluded masses.

Although the regulatory mechanism cited above continues to operate and provide for the persistence of the unique statuses exhibited by the members of the exclusionary tribes of Truth-production, this stratified distribution of knowledge-building privileges is becoming increasingly threatened by an emergent alien discourse. The episteme, which this thesis identifies as the antagonist to the self-contained, auto-reproducing elitist establishments, is the manifestation of cultural practices, assuming a positively asserted conception of self, defined by the very attributes that constitute the negation of the tribal identifications comprising the academy. For convenience, these ancillary conventions are designated as instances of Public Review, which, itself, is defined by the following connotative properties: an inclusive public open to all epistemic forms and diversifications, where publicity is apportioned according to the rhetorical capacities of the agent who vies – not for representational space, because this commodity flows freely – but for the reception of one’s ideas creating the incentive for the presence of an audience.

It is beginning to become evident – as well as acknowledged – that the form of the language-games, associated with public review – in a manner that is marginally similar to the processes leading to the objectification of Truth-assertions within publics belonging to the academy – constitutes a far more expedient and effective means by which to subject propositions to the necessary language-games – embodying agonistics that subject the proposition to an assortment of assaults before it passes into a state akin to objectification. The motivation for qualifying public review as only marginally similar to the processes manifested in the practices of peers belonging to academic communities lies in the fact that the spaces of Public Review are limitless; consequentially, negating the coercive effects of a self-contained assortment of peers, where the necessity of members to remain in good standing motivates acquiescence, leading to conformity, and in many instances, homogenization. The boundless representational spaces generated under the auspices of Public Review proliferates the opportunities to identify contents of an externalized polemic or thesis that are susceptible to dismissal, depending upon the aspersions that might appeal to the others who evaluate externalized articulations, constituting possible instances of knowledge. Conversely, knowledge can be similarly adopted and shared, depending upon the presence of congruent conventions and mandates belonging to the assortment of epistemic agents. Nevertheless, since the representational spaces are limitless, there is no coercive dynamic compelling the adoption of knowledge that might be shared by others. Rather, instantiations of parcels of consensus result from dynamics best referenced as agonistics; a term rich in meaning and intricate connotative properties that only appear contradictory if one fails to possess an adequate appreciation for the sense typically endowing the lexicon with meaning during instances constituting the best use of the word.

Therefore, peer groups are generated from forces other than institutions legitimized under the auspices of tradition and precedent; aspects of the past that extend their legacy into the present through the projection of a repository of precedents that define what qualifies as knowledge prior to any unrestricted deliberation as to what knowledge needs to be in order to contend within the matters of concern resulting from the contingencies of present. Although the preceding remark is far too sweeping in its implications, since knowledge - both disciplinary as well as Public - requires language, which, itself, is an embodiment of tradition, the form of entirely voluntaristic agonistics - associated with Public spaces - allows for far greater flexibility, which proliferates the possibilities for innovation.

Ostensibly, the diversity of viewpoints emanating from a pluralistic field of epistemic agents – not all subjected to the same socializing processes resulting from indoctrination into a disciplinarian form of knowledge – offers greater and far more expedient scrutiny to the externalized work; a form of review that is not inhibited nor channeled according to the engrained practices of any single discipline. Additionally, the externalized propositions can assume differing significations depending upon the projects defining the existentiality of agents coming from all walks of life, who might pick up upon the contents differently in a way that reflects their particular concerns.

Pursuant to the predilections amassing around Public Review, the underlying subtext that is typically associated with previous understandings of the conventions and practices associated with knowledge building is becoming inverted by a new discursive order that understands the conditions that cultivate social knowledge most prolifically and more extensible to be disorderly in a respect that is Ab Initio. In other words, methodological rigor is becoming displaced by pragmatic considerations as well as an aesthetic that prioritizes the looser order that underlies the chaotic practices of human interaction – not imposed by disciplinarian limitations – which is characterized by the relations assumed by the agents occupying the spaces belonging to Public Review.

To articulate the previous conclusion in an alternative mode of expression, we can understand the state instantiated by a Public Review social knowledge-building consortium as a chaotic system; rather than a highly structured and organized regime imposed upon agents who work under the auspices of a disciplinarian form of human interactivity endowed with a privileged Truth-manufacturing status. The interactions of social agents under the circumstances exhibited through the manifestation of disciplinarian forms of knowledge production is indexical under the expansion of the concept of rationalization, according to the sense of the term introduced by Dan Bell in his description of the social class that was emerging in the Post-industrial condition; the technocratic class of intellectual laborers. Within the scope of the extension of the Technocracy, the performance of intellectual labors manifests within highly regimented schemata that inhibit as well as compel some forms of cognition versus other cognitive paths. Although such as flow of human comportment might arguably possess benefits, the limitations and drawbacks entailed by disciplinarian-knowledge-production also requires acknowledgement. In order to enunciate the rationale lying behind the recommendation for the abandonment of the disciplinarian episteme in favor of Public Review, which this paper conflates with Web 2.0, in an expression constituting a clearer and more demonstrable communicative form, a brief elaboration upon the social conditions and practices that culminate into the social object, Web 2.0, is beneficial.

Instances of Web 2.0 embody social practices not behaviorally streamlined by the barriers and paths presented by disciplinary institutional configurations, which lead to a social condition that is marked by increased innovation and an accelerated rate of social knowledge extension. At the same time, however, the cooperative practices through which knowledge is generated must be considered an organizing-principle that both structures as wells as rests upon a more fundamental condition. Specifically, the zeitgeist breathing life into Web 2.0 is a reflection of the material conditions in which the contributors to Web 2.0 endeavor. In a concurrent respect, however, the Spirit of Web 2.0 operates in a capacity that compels contributors to Web 2.0 to advocate and concretely support the preservation and expansion of the material conditions upon which Web 2.0 manifests. In other words, Web 2.0 is reflective of the Spirit of the times, which – in an embodiment differing from both idealists interpretations of human events as well as frameworks involving understandings that reference material conditions as precipitations for the forms assumed by instances of humanity - lives for its own sake; not due to the incentives provided to those who have accumulated prestige, rendering them not only powerful in disciplinarian contexts, but subservient to the imperatives emanating from requisites that must be fulfilled to preserve the institutional structures in which they assume elevated statuses.

The preceding compound proposition achieves concretion by referencing the complimentary dynamics involved in the propagation of Web 2.0; where broadband is a necessity of Web 2.0 as well as Web 2.0 driving, in turn, the expansion of the materiality constituting bandwidth.

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