Joho the Blog
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June 13, 2003
Michael Swaine, editor-at-large of the estimable Dr. Dobb's Journal, doesn't like Small Pieces Loosely Joined. But he doesn't like it for the right reasons: He disagrees with the ideas in it. The way he disagrees points to a deeper problem with the book. And with my life. Apparently, I set his teeth on edge in Cluetrain by insisting, in Michael's words, "that the fundamental unit of life is the group and that individual human beings only have meaning or worth as members." In fact, Michael is so convinced that that's wrong that he assumes that I must be doing some well-intentioned lying, in the good ol' fashioned "The poets tell many a lie" sense:
Actually, I have to agree with myself on this one. I don't think groups are fictions. They aren't the same sort of thing as individuals, of course, but a view that says that only individuals are real — and that groups like families and communities are therefore fictions and lies — strikes me as overly strict in its understanding of what the meaning of "is" is. (Who would have thought that Bill Clinton would be remembered as a metaphysician?) Nor do I think groups are abstractions any more than the concept of a self is an abstraction. (Humans aren't just "flesh and blood.") But it doesn't follow from the acknowledgement that groups are real and are formative of individuals that groups should have totalitarian power over individuals. It's just not that binary. We've been working for millennia on getting the complex mix of rights and obligations right. The same issue arises for Michael in Small Pieces. He says the book recommends abandoning ideas like individualism and that the world is independent of our awareness:
Michael then reasonably objects that we're unlikely to be able to agree on the new values we're creating in cyberspace. No arguing with that. As he says, "we can't settle on rules for running a mailing list..." But, the book doesn't suggest that we jettison truths about reality and individuality, etc. Rather, it says that our traditional ideas about such things are alienating. For example: (1) The focus on reality as that which exists independent of us drives a wedge between reality and meaning. (2) This split is untrue to our everyday, real-world lived experience, which is of a world of meaning. (3) The dismissing as fictitious of all that is dependent on our awareness — i.e., the claim that groups are unreal because they aren't flesh-and-blood — is itself a value judgment. So, in Small Pieces I'm not arguing that we adopt some "Lies to Live By." I'm suggesting that a description of our life on the Web unveils some truths we already live by in the real world. Further, the Web appeals so deeply to so many of us because it offers a haven free of our real-world alienation from those truths. Michael thinks I'm up to something different because my description of Web life — and of the real world — seems just so thoroughly wrong to him. He and I are left without a lot of recourse. At one point when discussing my claim that our rugged individualism makes us unhappy and lonely, Michael writes "I'd like to see the data on that, David." Even if there are some statistics (e.g., Putnam's Bowling Alone), the correlation of psychology and metaphysics is always going to be, um, a little shaky. Small Pieces proceeds, to put it grandly, phenomenologically. Phenomenology tries to uncover experience. Of course, "uncover" is a loaded term since it implies there's something there to be uncovered. So, perhaps I should say that phenomenology points at stuff and says "See?" If you don't see, phenomenology doesn't have a way of proving it to you. That's a huge stinking problem. And, of course, it introduces the observer into the equation: could it be that you don't see what I see because I'm who I am and you're not? To which the phenomenologist replies: "Oh yeah? You wanna make something out of it??" After which the phenomenologist puts an ice pack on his broken nose and replies that the whole point is that the observer is always already in the equation and that experience is indeed and obviously conditioned by culture and language and that the idea that certainty is the only acceptable criterion for truth is itself a highly cultural/historical idea. But what it comes down to is: "See?" I wish I had another way to proceed. I like the cool slap of a clean proof. But for the sort of issues I care about, I'm stuck with a way of thinking that is indeed more like writing fiction than like writing science, not because it's less true than science but because it's clarifying only if it clarifies. But that's inevitable if you want to talk not about the world so much as about our world. And both are conversations worth having, IMO. If you're not a subscriber to Dr. Dobbs but want to read Michael's review, it'll cost you $5 for 72 hours of access, which strikes me as pretty pricey for a narrow time-slot. Michael's blog is lively, informative and opinionated. No surprise there. Posted
by D. Weinberger at June 13, 2003 09:41 AM
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» Flesh and Blood from AKMA’s Random Thoughts Tracked on June 13, 2003 01:41 PM
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Comments
I'm not ponying up the money to read Michael's review (since I'm still saving my pennies to buy Small Pieces), so I just want to respond with some thoughts on what you wrote.
Dismissing groups as less real that individuals is obviously a dangerous strategy, unless one is content to be told that the individual is not actually flesh and blood at all but some complicated assembly of electrons or neutrinos or quarks or whatever the heck fundamental physics says we're really made of. I think Michael's real worry is that the ideals of the group and the ideals of the individual may come into conflict...in which case, he wants the individual to get the deciding vote.
I'm in agreement with you that there's not a simple binary opposition here -- the individual's wants/needs/aspirations/fears are very much conditioned by the group's, and vice versa. And while, from the point of view of a reductive strategy for analyzing human goings on, it may be easier to think of the individual as the fundamental unit, we become individuals in the context of a group from day 1. Aristotle and Mencius both have good stuff to say about this. I think it was Mencius who said you have to choose where you live carefully, because it reflects not only on what sort of person you are when you choose that community, but also on what sort of person you will become. The parallel piece of that choice, though, is where the community will end up because of your joining it.
So it seems like "virtual communities" offer us a chance to really choose membership in a group which reflects values we identify with, possibly more than our "flesh and blood" communities could. (I live where I do now, for example, as a result of factors including where I and my partner could find work, where we can afford housing, how long a commute each of us can stand, what kind of resources we need for our kids, etc. We don't, I'm sad to say, really know most of our neighbors, or what values they embrace beyond those we can infer from the state of their front yards.)
Online communities also give people the opportunity to work out what their values actually are, and what consequences those might have for participation in a group. It may not be surprising (as W.E.B. duBois could tell us) that when we lay all our values out there we find internal conflicts. The task, then, is to figure out how to choose a better set of values that are consistent. And one of the best reasons for people to go through the difficult process of self-examination and reconstitution is that it helps the group (and of course, the other individuals in the group).
But here's a bit of a worry gnawing at me: a big difference between virtual communities and traditional ones is that membership is a virtual community is optional. To some extent, you can't fully opt out of membership in a flesh and blood community unless you're a self-sufficient hermit on your own island that no government entity is trying to tax. I wonder whether the ability to bail from the virtual world at any time fundamentally changes the dynamics of group membership within that world. Any thoughts?
Posted by: Janet Stemwedel | June 13, 2003 12:34 PM
I get Dr. Dobb's for reasons that are unknown to me (perhaps for buying a new set of skis or visiting a certain Web site?), and I read Swaine's essay yesterday and thought -- that'll teach David! The inside back cover of a programming magazine that doesn't publish its contents for free on the Web has ZAPPED HIM! Now he's done for.
More seriously, my only problem with Symmetrical Paesanos, Largely Jowled is that the ideas in it are so interesting, complex, and multifarious that I cannot recall them in great clarity. I recall reading the book, thinking about it, rereading paragraphs, nodding in agreement or disagreement -- but I can't remember any single idea from it.
This does not make it a bad book. In fact, it means I need to reread it. Most nonfiction has either a complicated point that it takes a book to present the evdience for, or a simple idea repeated endlessly. Soiled Pigments Left Jawbone has many thousands of simple ideas put together into a really interesting whole, like those photographs made of smaller photographs.
Posted by: Glenn Fleishman | June 13, 2003 01:35 PM
Humans are social creatures. In isolation we atrophy. Hermits have discovered wonderful things, but it has been of no use to the evolution of human kind if they weren't able to share their discoveries with others.
As a result of our hardwiring as social creatures we have developed tools to bridge the social space which we share with others. Language being a really good example. But not just verbal language: body language too. And music and the full range of expression in the creative arts. All of this contributes to our sustained existence as a species and our future evolution.
There is no human without social interaction and there is no social interaction without a couple of humans. So maybe it's a both/and thing. We continually dance within our own skin, with our edges touching other edges and our centres remaining consolidated. We are creatures for who the network is the natural form of being. Our bodies and minds are extended down cables, light pulsing around the world, a global neurological system in which we have the opportunity to swim in the entire pool of human kind.
The Web is not a new world. We have always lived in webs. The Web is simply the latest expression of the complex nesting of our individual identities in the shared human space.
Posted by: Chris | June 13, 2003 02:44 PM
Janet writes: "I wonder whether the ability to bail from the virtual world at any time fundamentally changes the dynamics of group membership within that world."
In fact this is one of the main points that James Fallows made about the nature of American society in his book "Not like us"; if I can paraphrase (and I could be wrong), one of the characteristics that distinguishes Americans from Japanese and Europeans is that we're more ready, willing, and able to re-make our lives than they are, or were--Fallows wrote this in the late 80's, before the internet was something that regular people could participate in. So I think the difference in the case of virtual communities is in the ease with which you can disappear.
Or maybe a more important difference is the effort required to stay in a virtual community. On the net you have to keep typing, or people forget you exist. Sounds a little like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, who had to keep running just to stay in the same place.
Posted by: Peter Schweitzer | June 13, 2003 04:05 PM
Damn interesting, kind of large pieces though.
''Human'' gets thrown around a fair amount here - anyone care to give us some idea of what they mean by human nature? How do groups become something other than what they think they are, unless they are challenged by people who refuse to be "conditioned" by the group?
Posted by: tom m | June 13, 2003 06:20 PM
Hell, four hours on the golf course costs a hundred bucks. Dr. Dobbs is a bargain of a time slot at five bucks for 72 hours. But on the course I'm always stuck in a foursome. Dilemmas abound.
Posted by: brian moffatt | June 14, 2003 01:01 AM
when draws his sword, his head falls right off.
seems to me that ANY response to the book both acknowledges and succumbs to a felt connection to it. the commentator literally cannot physically resist the real urge to respond to the abstract connection. thus the community connection, however abstract it might appear, is as complicit in the response as the flesh that pumps blood to the fingers that type. the case is lost immediately as it's opened.
the request for commonly (communally) agreed data only compounds the defeat. the only way to prove the book wrong is to walk away in silence. but in which direction would one go? even the most immature and/or incoherent of forms IS still a form. the response makes the book true.
finally, noticing that swaine's commentary in defense of the individual actually attacks and invites others to join him in attacking one individual's perspective with the blunt instruments of implicit community connection and a request for collectively-agreed-to-be-real data, the whole thing only serves to add insult to the commentator's own injuries.
all that said, what can i as one little individual in a big community do to help bring those who don't yet see it into fuller awareness of the whole?
to post or not to post? hmmm...
Posted by: michael | June 14, 2003 02:24 AM
Lots of good stuff in the comments about the difference between real and virtual communities. I find it difficult to believe that groups are not extremely significant in human affairs given how much we have to say about them. The term "community" is much more prominent than "group" in the comments, which says something in itself. I'm sure AKMA and Trevor would like the connection with "communion" better than the more neutral "group".
Reading the comment about Fallow's Not Like Us raises some interesting questions about American communities and just how fluid they are. How does that change in urban vs. suburban vs. rural communities? How does this map onto the "culture wars" that we are experiencing? It seems that the more people you have living in close proximity, the less they are tied to their physical communities, but the more they go for a more social and communitarian politics. Then there is the myth of the "rugged individual" while it is also clear that fronteir people helped and depended on each other very much.
What we have is the central importance of community to what it means to be human, and at the same time much greater fluidity and imperminance in terms of membership (increasing with time and technology). For much of human history it is safe to assume that most people lived and died within the bounds of a community, and changing groups was rare (excepting joining your spouse's group on marriage, but even that would have been within a system of clans originally (an extended group of groups)).
Since we agree that group affiliation is now much less pre-determined, particularly with virtual communities, it is very likely that the dynamics of group formation are a significant issue for the future. There is an analysis of network effects that says that the value of a network that links individuals grows as the square of the network size, but when you add the potential for group formation it now grows exponentially (i.e. N things have 2^N subsets).
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