Modernism(Critical Theory ) vs Translation or Delegation

Before I can make further assessments of twitter, I would like to depart from my prior Modus operandi and entertain another approach to understanding and evaluating twitter.



In a interview of Bruno Latour by T. Hugh Crawford (1993) Latour speaks of the notion of critical theory, the basis of his assessment is derived form the works of Boltanski and Thevenot. He asserts that there is a shift from a critical sociology to a sociology of criticism. He sets forth the idea that critical theory is concerned with mostly denouncing and unveiling and is not a good definition of intellectual practice. He interprets modernism based on Shapin and Schaffe's book as " as the dichotomous representation of the humans in the political sciences and the representation of the nonhuman which is taken over by science. Latour establishes modernism as the task of critique and understanding of social sciences and natural sciences, and the emergence of the "us and them" culture.



Latour does not see these polar distinctions and proposes another approach, which is more centered on the meaning of things, which is focused on the notion of "quasi objects that are constructed via the social realism, naturalism, and semiotics or discourse analysis. He goes further to state that the notion of appropriation is insufficient because it implies a rightful owner. He purposes the notion of "translation or delegation".



In the vain of the rational set forth by Bruno Latour I would like to take an approach of assessing twitter not in the form of a critique but as a question in the mindset of Latour. Most of all I am interested in trying to understand what kind of delegation or translation occurs while interacting with twitter.





www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~mrbohlen/PPPYYYUUUOO/MachineCulture/Latour_Interview_1993.pdf

Twitter --- Familiarity and Meaning

In twitter you have followers but these followers are just people who add you as a friend. The only connection you have with these followers is their post but these are somewhat removed and seem to not really have substantive meaning. Clive Thompson alluded to this in his Wired magazine article- he said you should do twitter with friends- I can see the validity in this sentiment now. Facebook provides a function called writing on someones wall- this application is basically that one function of Facebook. The limitation of twitter is the absence of any real connection to the people that are posting. It is social but not remarkable and therefore not important and forgettable.

Advertising on Twitter

One could use this application for advertisement. I have come accross a lot of post that are directing users to other sites. It has a kind of marketing possibitlity. As I browse through the users it is unclear if the posters are doing these actitities or just posting in order to get traffic to these sites.

Social Proprioception?

The following link is to an article in wired magazine on twitter. The author, Clive Thompson makes several points about twitter but the one that I found the most provocative was that " twitter is a collectivist way to keep abreast of what your friends are doing and what is going on in their lives". I find this assertion dubious because the promise of technology and its' efficiency was supposed to provide us with more free time to spend with each other but from this perspective some of this new found freedom would be spent making post form various artifacts about what you are doing.


So why has Twitter been so misunderstood? Because it's experiential. Scrolling through random Twitter messages can't explain the appeal. You have to do it — and, more important, do it with friends. (Monitoring the lives of total strangers is fun but doesn't have the same addictive effect.) Critics sneer at Twitter and Dodgeball as hipster narcissism, but the real appeal of Twitter is almost the inverse of narcissism. It's practically collectivist — you're creating a shared understanding larger than yourself.
www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-07/st_thompson

Tiers of Mediation

The following link is to a twitter page of one of the friends I am a following. http://twitter.com/WELLO His choice of a background image is hpermediated but yet representative of the mindset of the users of twitter. A overly saturated experience of social networking sites and posting sites satiating all of the senses. If you visit some of the blogspots or hompages of these twits ( twitter users) you will find links to foxy tunes, flickr, delicious, myspace, facebook, etc., and once you arrive at these sites they are connected to other sites. So does the enviroment or the community of the social communtiies have agency in stimulating your creative interest.

Mining Twitter

This is a link to a youtube video that linked to from twitter. 1. This video is just odd and I am posting it for ss & gs. 2. This is a full length movie that is representative of the amateur creative process that you have discussed in our previous meetings.

First Contact

I got an account on twitter last night. The account setup options were very similar to most interactive applications. You standard profile with picture.

After completing the set up there is a prompt that ask you "What are you doing"?

My first reaction is that I was thinking, which is somethings that I would do when posed with such a question-- you would think about what you were doing.

One apparent difference that most social networking websites is the apparent international appeal of this site; the public timeline, which updates every four minutes, populated with numerous languages.

As I engaged in more thwating ( my terminology for posting on twitter) I wanted became interested in how to translate the thwats that were in a foreign language.

The choice of profile pictures tended to fall into categories of people with standard headshot pictures, others where of twits ( my terminology for posters) in engaged in an activity while being photograph- skateboarding, playing an instrument- and there were also ones similar to my picture that are more like avatar pictures. This is my picture below: