NM Things.

Kate Crawford’s article discusses the implications of wearable devices today by juxtaposing them with shared public weight scales of the past, particularly to explore how the evolution of such devices allows for the harvesting of information for entities to profit off. It also questions the loss of control of the individual users over the information shared, through the glorified advertisements of becoming one’s best self – inspiring collective usage for more data that feeds data-driven capitalist interests.

The first thing that comes to mind upon reading this article was the sudden realisation of the ubiquity of fitness-tracking devices. It seemed like there was an explosion of such devices in my household – from the government, from insurance companies, etc. Reading this article has revealed to me that these devices are not as innocuous as they seem.

The government supposedly is encouraging a healthier, fitter population, rolling the fitness trackers out with the National Steps Challenge where clocking thousands of steps a day can help you earn vouchers. Social engineering is not uncommon, and at times even necessary at the national level – but it becomes a potential intrusion of privacy when the collective information is tracked by the government. The government may say they are to improve future national health programmes, but we should not forget the controversy over the conviction of a murderer through the use of TraceTogether when the government first vowed that data from it would not be used for any other purposes other than COVID containment.

The government also collaborated with FitBit to give out free fitness trackers that, unlike the no-brand ones provided by the government, had all the frills. However, there was a caveat – you are only eligible if you sign up for FitBit Premium which brings ‘personal insights to help you make smarter choices about your health’. FitBit needs the data, as Crawford mentioned, or data-points with which their algorithms are able to subtly guide individual choices. Free FitBit trackers do not sound as appealing when you will be handing over your personal health information over with no clue over where the information goes, how it will be used, and whether it will ever go away.

Finally, insurance companies are giving out such devices too, not because they are aligned with the government’s aim for a healthier population, but because it affects risk, premiums, and pay-offs. In short, the bottom line is their concern. This discrimination against people who are perceived to lead ‘less healthy’ lifestyles might not always be accurate – these devices are not fool-proof, and they have their fair share of glitches and ambiguity surrounding the accuracy of its information.

Alex Lambert’s article discusses two concepts – intimacy and cosmopolitanism, and explores their relationship within the digital media context. The dichotomy which Lambert addresses is that intimacy necessarily excludes cosmopolitanism, as becoming intimate results in the exclusion of others. However, he argues that this is not the case and that it is possible for intimacy to encourage cosmopolitanism, or what he calls cosmopolitan intimacy.

One part I found most intriguing was when Lambert introduced Peter Sloterdjik and his rejection of cosmopolitanism on the grounds that it threatens the intimate spheres, as diversity disrupts and pollutes without possibly emerging as a meaningful collective. Lambert brought Sloterdjik in to show how intimacy, when taken to its extreme, does violence (physical or otherwise) to the ‘outsiders’. Through my use of social media, I have witnessed such violence visited upon outsiders who, in an attempt to insinuate themselves into a group, ends up being ridiculed or teased in the comments section. Although not as devastating as conflicts arising from ethnic, religious, or class based intimate spheres, I feel they are just as relevant in the digital media context.

Also, Facebook, a platform primarily used in the Western world and thus having English as its lingua franca, does have certain sections or posts where a certain community comes together and communicate in their own language. More often than not, there would be an English comment (or a few), interrupting to poke fun at their language. For example, the most common comment I see would be – ‘Why are people talking in noodle language?’ These commenters I see as outsiders who has inadvertently escaped their online social bubbles and stumbled upon another intimate sphere within which they do not understand or comprehend. Their comment, or reaction, is indicative of tribalism – banding together with other English speakers to poke fun at a culture they are unfamiliar with, before quickly retreating back to where they feel comfortable.

Although what I have described above is the opposite, where it’s the outsiders who visit violence upon the ‘insiders’, it is an event that reflects how the lack of cosmopolitanism perpetuates tribalism and the us-against-you mindset. This is then magnified on digital media as the porous borders of the different sections dominated by different cultures are easily stumbled upon.

Bown talks about the trivial, mobile games we play, specifically Candy Crush Saga and Football Manager. He elaborates on how both games are part of the culture of distraction in today’s world, and that they show us both sides of that spectrum. These games, innocent as they seem, perpetuates a passiveness or avoidance of confrontation towards our reality, centred in the author’s chapter as around boring, unfulfilling work. He uses both games as case studies to demonstrate the desire to simulate success for the self through games, and the intention to put on a display, as we already do in our daily lives, for an imaginary audience or ‘the big Other’.

Bown states that without the distractions of mobile games, or mobile apps such as Buzzfeed, work satisfaction would massively decrease. He bases this assumption on the opinion that without such little distractions from the dreary work some (or most) of us do, people would be forced to face, and thus confront, their reality rather than escaping it. He is implying that these little distractions help to make meaningless (at least to ourselves) work tolerable, and therefore their absence makes such work seem intolerable. Of course, I am assuming that the little distractions he has listed are not exhaustive, and that even banal text conversations we have at work with our friends, or inane videos online might fall under the same category.

I do agree that I am guilty of these little distractions, whether at work or in school. Although I have this weird habit of not playing mobile games outside of my home, I do strike up conversations in group chats about nonsensical topics, watch videos, listen to music, etc. Anything to distract myself from the tasks at hand. The author’s point that it appeals because it creates this sense of satisfaction when we go back to work, I think, would resonate more with me if he had said that it brings about a relieving of guilt for being distracted when I return to real, pressing work. This relief would invigorate me, albeit only for a brief period, before I find my attention slipping back to the little distractions.

It is this guilt then that I think relates to what the author claims is the big ‘Other’, which we try to ‘hide’ from when we take on our little distractions during work. I have never given thought to where this guilt came from. It was not to anyone in particular. It was just this sense that something knows I had been whiling my time away on useless activities, or maybe it was simply self-reproach.

 I will be reflecting on the article ‘WeChat: Social Network and Smart City’, a study of the Chinese social networking application WeChat, with respect to my local context. The paper elaborates on the application’s part in the transition of a smart city through its multi-functionality and the resulting ability to meld virtual and real life together. Moreover, WeChat has helped to change consumption behaviour and affects how its users experience their day-to-day activities, and the authors explore this impact on society.

China is arguably full steam ahead in developing smart cities, with its initiatives winning both praise and sparking controversy. One example would be the social credit system which rewards ‘good’ citizens with city-life perks such as lower interest rates or cheaper healthcare, while ‘bad’ citizens could be publicly shamed with billboard sized digital photos of themselves displayed to the population in prominent locations. Such smart initiatives would actually mould society over time, changing behaviour on a societal level and how people interact with each other. Reward and shame could create new divisions in the social fabric, and only time will tell how this system will play out.

China’s WeChat reflects what is to come, with greater emphasis on the virtual causing it to flow over to the real life, gradually making it indistinguishable and heavily interdependent. The multi-functionality of the application means that once it has enough users and becomes the bridge to essential and non-essential services for a significant portion of the population, societal functions would become inseparable from it.

With Singapore’s longstanding reliance on technology to compensate for our size and population, Singapore is considered the smartest city in the world (at least by Thales). Our path to becoming a smart nation, unlike China, was not a matter of choice but exigency. Without natural resources or a strong labour force to compete with other countries, we had to rely on technology and innovation to streamline processes and gain a competitive edge, and with much success. However, our reliance on the digital has thus far been centred around the government and businesses, for practical reasons. There are still pushbacks from the population, such as hawkers and customers refusing to adopt the cashless payment method. Although Singapore is strongly guided by the government on all matters, unlike China, there is less coercion into adopting government initiatives.

Ravanelle talks about the sharing economy and questions the use of the term ‘sharing’ when it is basically the monetization of assets and services through digital platforms. The emphasis on trust in the sharing economy is also a point of contention with the author, where the presence of verification steps contradicts the term ‘trust’. She then lays out the argument of how the sharing economy is actually detrimental to societal relationships, contrary to what the creators of the various platforms promote – bringing people together. Finally, the author discusses how such ‘gigs’ bring with them risks and instability for those who provide them due to the nature of the jobs and the lack of coverage provided compared to more traditional jobs.

I disagree with Ravanelle’s point about verification steps being contradictory to the term ‘trust’. She claims that it is ‘misleading’, as the company puts the burden of proof of reliability on its users through a multitude of steps and checks, and does not solely rely on trust itself to facilitate the exchange of services on its platforms. However, trust is earned, whether in the Gemeinschaft or Gesellschaft context. My opinion is that trust is simply earned differently, but that does not change the fact. In the past, “someone’s word and firm handshake are trustworthy”, but that is only because rapport and reputation has been built up through countless interactions, or there was a strong social more that ensured such actions were binding. In the sharing economy where complete strangers who come from all over, or even different communities are brought together, there has to be some system with which to build the trust so that transactions can take place without worry or paranoia. The verification steps are, to me, simply modern methods to build that trust (through reviews, badges, etc.). To suggest that trust with anonymous strangers can be fostered any other way is idealistic but utterly unrealistic.

The author also brings up the point about the sharing economy not being ‘disrupting’, which I have to disagree with based on what I have witnessed. When Grab and Uber emerged in Singapore, taxi drivers saw great disruption to their incomes and work. Flag downs trickled, and the on-call service also fell significantly because of the convenience provided by the new applications. Eventually, conventional taxi drivers had to acquiesce and join these platforms just so they are better able to maintain their incomes. More than that, such applications are not simply about convenience, it has allowed much cheaper fares with options such as GrabHitch, which opens up the relatively expensive private hire market to the less well-off. Without an application which connects peer-to-peer, it is difficult to imagine such a service succeeding. People who normally could not afford a car (especially relevant in Singapore given that we have the most expensive rights to own cars in the world) could also now do so by signing up with Grab, basically giving them a de-facto fringe benefit of the job. With all of these points, I find it difficult to agree with the author that such applications are not ‘groundbreaking’, ‘wreaking havoc’, or ‘disrupting’.

However, what I do agree with is the author’s discussion on risk shifts. Anecdotal evidence from my friends working in the GrabFood and FoodPanda industry has given me an inkling on how such platforms shift the risks onto their ‘freelancers’. These applications usually have tiering systems – with FoodPanda, it is called Bamboo Rewards, and with GrabFood it is called Emerald Circle. Fancy names that simply mean ‘keep working and as hard as you can, or others will replace you’. Absence from the applications, even if with a legitimate reason such as serious illness, would mean that the riders’ tier will be affected, which in turn affects income and rewards. These applications use the term ‘partner’ to refer to their riders, which is just a nice way of avoiding responsibilities a company normally has for its hired employees. Such applications give their ‘freelancers’ a false assurance of autonomy when in fact they are very much obliged to give their best or risk losing income. Such a system avoids the contractual obligations a company has to legitimate employees, yet allows the company to reap the rewards of an army dedicated to generating revenue for it.

Fuchs’ critical commentary focuses on exposing the flaws in the arguments given by other scholars studying participatory culture, revealing these authors’ lack of consideration for forces that shape and define the actions of users and producers on social media. Fuchs focuses largely on Henry Jenkins’ arguments, suggesting that Jenkins’ neglect of ownership, capitalism, and corporate motives in his celebratory writings of participatory culture fundamentally undermines his very own argument, at least according to the theory of participatory democracy. Another point Fuchs took issue with was how Jenkins conveniently assumed fandom in popular culture to be synonymous with activism. These are the two points I will address in this post.

I have to agree with Fuchs’ stance that ownership, capitalism, and corporate motives cannot be excluded in any argument celebrating participatory culture. These forces are the very foundation on which social media platforms are designed and promoted to society. Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram are deliberately designed to hook its users, from the colour of notifications to the endlessly refreshing news feed. In the famous documentary The Social Dilemma, employees from various famous Silicon Valley companies took their stand and moved on to businesses where designing addictive elements in alignment with profit motives is not part of the job scope. The stories these individuals tell are perfect microcosms of the exclusion that is mentioned by Fuchs – employees do not get to make decisions, they are not participating, they simply do as instructed by the owners and higher management. Fuchs shooting down of Jenkins’ assertion that social media is an expression of participatory culture is thus apt, as these platforms seek to exploit users through the hands and brilliance of employees who are held hostage by employment contracts and the obligation to further their employers’ aims.

I am also a proponent for Fuchs’ argument that fandom in popular culture is not equivalent to being politically active. From personal experience, identifying as fans of any celebrities, groups, or culture (eg. K-pop) is not indicative of an alignment in beliefs. These fans may parrot the views or political stances of their idols, but these are mere performative actions that often do not lead to any lifestyle changes or meaningful action outside of the online sphere. Those who retweet, repost, hashtag or share political movements do so not out of informed choice, but more because of herd mentality. Such performative activism is, in my opinion, quite useless and grating on the nerves. If fandom did translate to activism, after BTS’ numerous forays into environmentalism, their fans should also be spearheading environmental efforts all around the world. Whether this is so can only be determined by actual research, but I think what we should keep in mind is that these fans follow their celebrities primarily for entertainment and aesthetics, and thus I would be leaning towards the obvious result – fandom does not equate activism.

Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno write critically through a pessimist’s lenses about popular and mass culture. They coined the term culture industry, where the ubiquity of mass produced and disseminated entertainment takes away individual autonomy and entrenches the capitalist system. The authors assert that this mass culture has inculcated passivity in society, where members simply take in standardised media content without critical thought. Consumers become victims of this mass culture, sheep that simply follow the lead of capitalists who decide for them and are able to manipulate them into accepting, even embracing content that are homogenous. Producers become reduced, in the authors’ view, to mere imitators rather than actual creators.

I find the pessimism of authors dreary and difficult to swallow. Horkheimer and Adorno denounce popular culture categorically, without giving credit to the benefits it brings to society. Just as high art was once exclusive to the bourgeois, popular culture is the shared experience that people from all classes can enjoy. Modernity brought with it pushes for equality and the removal of discrimination, and in my opinion, popular culture is the wave that brought down all of these barriers. It is the symbol of equality, where even the richest scions and the poorest teenager can be found enjoying its offerings. Countless movements have been started and fuelled by popular culture - #MeToo movement, #BlackLivesMatter, and etcetera. Interestingly, these two examples too, reflect how people today are pushing for equality, whether of gender or skin colour.

They claim that originality is lost, and everything uses the same formula. There is some truth to this, and I shall use music as an example. Every pop song at the top of the charts is built using the same four chords, but meaning cannot be forced upon an individual, and if all pop songs are as homogeneous as the authors imply, then why do some songs mean more to different individuals? Art is highly subjective, and the meaning individuals derive from any piece of art is not just provided by the creator, or even by the capitalists who ‘guide’ what society should listen to, watch, absorb. The meaning is forged through an individual’s own experiences and his perception of the piece. All art is meaningless art without an observer.

I am guilty of being a participant in popular culture, but that does not mean that I lack creativity, or a taste for ‘originality’. I enjoy independent music as much as I do pop music, and independent films often catch my eye too. The argument that originality is dead, and that mass culture is a certain form of brainwashing is an over-simplification by the authors. Just because two films have the same sequence of events, or a correlating pattern, does not mean they are the same. By simplifying, we can just as easily argue that American kickboxing and taekwondo is the same sport, as they both involve a certain violence through the use of one’s body.

If anything, I feel that media and popular culture drive creativity and encourage originality. And it is exactly the ease of transference of ideas today that so many things get ‘mainstreamed’ so quickly, and absorbed into the ‘culture industry’. From zany advertising ideas to movies that buck the trend, art is highly alive today, and mass culture is the culture that will stay as a benchmark for any progressive creative who wants to get experimental and catch the attention of the masses.

Ito Okabe Anderson explores the intersection and relationship between portable objects and physical spaces, across three vastly different cultures: Los Angeles, Tokyo, and London. He finds three common threads that run through these cosmopolitan cities – cocooning, camping, and footprinting. The mediation of people’s relationships to their cities’ infrastructures through the objects they choose to carry reveal sets of shared practices that personalise, automate, and systemise the way locals interact with local urban locations.

I am guilty of cocooning, as I am sure most my age would be. During public transport, I put on my earpiece, scroll through social media, have conversations in text, all without paying much attention to the physical space around me. However, it is not because I want to ‘shut them out’, or ‘transform dead time in incidental locations into time that is personally productive or enriching’ as the author opined. In truth, I like to think of myself as a people person. I love meeting new people and having conversations with strangers. Unfortunately, such is just not the culture in Singapore, or in most fast-paced ‘global cities’. Making random conversation on public transport is weird at best, if not downright intrusive.

Yet ‘intrusive’ is an intriguing word that reinforces the concept of a cocoon people have created with our mobile devices. It intrudes into individuals’ ‘private space’, which as the author explained, is the bubble that many of us carve out in public spaces to keep the outside world out, while participating in activities the self finds meaningful.

Camping is also a common sight in places like Starbucks or Coffeebean, or practically anywhere where you can hog seats for hours with Wi-Fi connection. I rarely camp, unless I am feeling too cooped up at home, or if I really need to focus to rush out an assignment or project. The reason I do this is precisely because I can cocoon myself with my laptop and phone and music, and deliberately ignore everything else around me. There are no parents around to get me to do chores, or siblings to ask me what I want to have for lunch. I think of camping as a subset of cocooning, as without cocooning oneself, or in a tight group at the most, camping becomes futile. During breaks however, I come out of that cocoon, people-watch, and even at times have conversations with the waiter or manager, then I can plug my earpiece back in and people will know not to bother me. It is this seamless transition from public to private space that attracts me to camping.

Lastly, footprinting is not as relatable to me as I do not hold reward cards or any memberships, regardless of type of service, unless they are essential (for school, banking, etc.). The author explains this as a resistance to the de-personalisation of services, but I just simply resist the idea being ‘loyal’ to a brand. Services improve and slide all the time, and I simply adjust my consumer choice accordingly.

Spigel discusses the presence of the television in our physical spaces and how it not only rearranges the activities we do in our homes, but how some aspects of home life now centre around it. He explores the arguments that surround television, considering all aspects of its benefits and less welcome effects on our familial and social lives inside and outside the home. More than that, he delves into the deeper repercussions that this wondrous technology has had even in the socio-political world, subtlety adjusting attitudes for better or for worse.

With the breadth of points covered by Spigel, I will not be able to do justice to all of them in one blog post, and so I will be writing on the points that I felt that I could relate to during the read.

The television brings the world to the home, but Spigel countered that all television programming has to be within the areas of American agreement (since the United States is his context), which I think is nothing unusual. In Singapore, the Infocomm Media Development Authority censors heavily all sorts of media, including television. Homogenous scripts for local television shows are the norm and done to death. They emphasise the value of family, insert subtle public service announcements, and basically just exist as a sterile and sanitised ideal of Singapore society which can barely be considered entertainment. In fact, Singapore proudly stands as Netflix’s most censored market*.

Spigel then addresses Paul Virilo’s argument that frames television as an impediment to liberating the entrenched role of the housewife. My personal experience coupled with anecdotal evidence rejects this argument as both my parents go to work and come back to watching television together, with or without their spawn. It is unsettling for my siblings and I whenever my parents are not laughing and talking while watching the television, as it can only mean they have been quarrelling. They are equally invested in the television, and I do not see how it affects the ‘roles’ society might assume them to take on. In Singapore, there is more than a 70% rate of dual-income parents** as compared to America’s 58%***, and I think this is significant in shedding light on how such an argument is weak in the Singapore context.

Spigel thinks that Virilo provided an over-simplified argument that understates the contributions television has given to socio-political issues such as opening the door to discussion and acceptance of homosexuality in society and eventually, politically. However, this leads me back to my third paragraph about censorship in Singapore. Explicit or implicit promotion of a lifestyle that is not ‘pro-family’ (as if two people of the same gender are incapable of loving each other and forming a family unit) in programmes, films, or even a children’s book (remember ‘Penguingate’?) are not allowed.

I have to agree though, that television in the broader sense did cause the Westernization of many youths today, including myself. Furthermore, my personal preference for nature over cities was also moulded by the countless hours I spent watching Animal Plant and National Geographic when I was younger, and my love for reading and knowledge was spurred by the interesting programmes on the Discovery and History channels. The television broke down so many barriers for me, and it made me look at Singapore a different way – the lack of nature and scenic vistas is my biggest gripe about living here. Nature documentaries help me escape the hectic and fast-paced life of the city-state we live in.

To conclude, Spigel makes an applaudable effort at  giving a holistic overview of the myriad ways that television has affected people, society, and the part it plays in reframing worldviews. This lack of tunnel-vision made for a very illuminating read.

‘Penguingate’ – Credit: https://libraryofcats.wordpress.com/2017/08/06/and-tango-makes-three/

*https://www.campaignasia.com/article/singapore-is-netflixs-most-censored-market/458073

**https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/getting-more-to-be-dual-income-couples#:~:text=Although%20nearly%2054%20per%20cent,men%20are%2050%20to%2064.

Couldry and Hepp suggest that media is not merely a tool that society adopted for use in daily life and communication, that it has become an integral part of our social worlds and deeply woven into its fabric. Media is not only defined by its utility or affordances, in fact, it defines, to varying degrees in different regions, our own reality. They claim that since communication is essential for us to construct our institutions, practices, and coordinate behaviour, anything that involves communication, namely media, will play a major role in moulding our reality. Reality in this sense does not mean the physical world as it is, separate from human perception. It refers to the social worlds that for all intents and purposes, are our reality, through shared experiences and beliefs.

It is precisely this enmeshed relationship of media, communication and social constructs that Couldry and Hepp puts forward the term mediatization – where the layers of mediated communicative practices all contribute to constructing our social worlds.

Mediatization is a new concept to me, but upon reflection, it becomes obvious how mediatization accurately describes how the world has been shaped and framed by the increasing variety and ubiquity of media channels. Media pervades every aspect of my life – Facebook provides the latest on trending news, Instagram to keep up with my friends’ lives, Telegram and Whatsapp to organise gatherings with friends and family respectively, and my laptop for e-learning.

A great portion of my reality now is framed mainly within my phone and my laptop, without which I would be, in some sense, crippled, as most other Singaporeans would be. There is no equivalent alternative if I want to keep up with the social lives of my friends or to get fast headlines from the comfort of my bed. This dependency on media devices has already become an almost inextricable part of my life. The lack of a choice in my personal life is a microcosm of society in today’s new media age. Singapore itself is declaring that it will become a Smart Nation, which essentially means a hyper-connected city where being plugged-in one way or another becomes the norm.

This is a salient example of how media is tied to so many layers of our lives, and of how much mediatization has taken place. As much as we think we have control over media, by going on a digital detox or coming up with little rules to separate ourselves from our devices, it eventually becomes only a matter of degree about how much and how often we are plugged-in. The inseparability of media and day-to-day life, not of habit but of necessity, is evidence of how everything has become mediatized, and the myriad of media will (or in fact, has already become) a mainstay in our personal and professional lives.

The humorous image attached is tangential, but I hope still appropriate.