[This thread is compiled from three separate postings by Tom
Sherman on Rhizome:RAW, during the week of January 8th, 2001]
DEAD FACES
For the past four months I've been communicating with the main office
via webcam and voice-link. It has been interesting to supplement our
normal e-mail links with pictures and more expansive voice
conversations. We still keep things tied together with text. Written
memoranda still rule in terms of documenting exchanges and getting
things done. But webcam talks are very useful in terms of reports and
planning. Conference calls make a lot more sense with screen support.
I've really enjoyed getting a broader sense of my co-workers, the way
they look and talk.
I've also noticed a lot of corny, forced humour that seems to be
generated by these webcam encounters. In a situation where four or five
of us get together on a shared screen to develop a strategy, it's crazy
the way everything is put forth with grins and smiles, no matter how
serious the meeting's under-tone. There seems to be an unwritten code
of behaviour that forces everyone to be silly and predisposed to
belly-laughs at the expense of everyone and everything. This goofy,
obnoxious code of conduct is particularly glaring to those sitting in on
these meetings off-camera and mute. Our corporation has a transparency
policy. The times, addresses and agendas of all webcam meetings are
published in advance on the corporation's employees' home page.
Everyone in the corporation is welcome to look and listen in on every
meeting, should the agenda be of interest, or if they want to get a
sense of what it would be like to work with particular individuals at a
later date.
Personally I find the time just before and after these webcam meetings
to be the most revealing moments in the life of the corporation. If you
look at the daily meeting schedule and log on ten or fifteen minutes
before a meeting commences, you will find that some of the participants
sign on early. They are usually sitting there in their cubicles dealing
with on-screen data or attending to their personal e-mail or telephone
conversations. It always strikes me how dead their faces look before
the meetings start up and they put on their perky corporate
personalities. It's the same after a meeting when they're working alone
again.
If people would look carefully into their video mirrors, they would
notice a certain deadness in their faces. People sitting at computers
for long hours have this extra gravity in their expressions, especially
in the muscles around their mouths. When I look in on people getting
ready for a meeting, or just after, it is striking how they appear
emotionally mute. This vacant, drained appearance triggers my own
depressing introspection. I've become aware of my own depression through
the numbing fatigue around my mouth, the way my face looks and feels
heavy when I have that sinking feeling.
This is what I've learned from working in a organization linked by
webcams. I've learned that we're networking a certain level of
depression. I don't really believe the machines are draining us, but
there is something desperate about the explosions of laughter that erupt
when we're interacting on camera. When I feel numb and emotionally
exhausted, and look particularly drained around my mouth, I usually try
to go outside for a walk, to get some fresh air. Or at the very least I
go and stand in front of a window. I find it helps to go outside, or at
least to go someplace where I can be outside in my mind.
+ + +
MEMORY HAS REPLACED LOGIC
MEMORY HAS REPLACED LOGIC in today's world. No one can carry an argument
beyond their own position of self interest. We believe only what we
remember to be true. We remember very little on our own. We rely on our
machines to substantiate the past. Machines have a facility for memory
which is precise and extensive. Machines free us from the responsibility
of storing and organizing memories. When we forget–and we forget–we
simply have to search our machine memories to re-establish what
happened. With the aid of our machines, we don't just remember, we
re-remember. And in partnership with our machines we establish the truth
by comparing records, the documentary evidence of the past. We establish
our personal perspective by re-remembering. By re-re-re-remembering…
By re-re-re-re-re- re-re-re-remembering. We stack up the records, the
weight of documentary evidence, against the present and we get a sense
of our personal perspective. We enjoy the consistency of our
perspective. We are anchored by our memory, our machine memory. We
depend on our machine memory. We are lost without our machine memory.
When our systems crash, destroying all or part of our recorded memories,
we have to decide to rebuild or to pull the plug.
+ + +
NO SECRETS
In the mature information economy, information will be exchanged,
information-for-information, and those without information to trade will
be dirt poor. As it is now, most people only have a tiny little bit of
personal information (raw personal material, RPM). It makes you wonder
what will happen when they lose all their privacy.
People will get food stamps for telling others their deepest
secrets–things like how they have been having sex with their mothers or
their disconnected princess telephones.
Exchanges of information are economic transactions, plain and simple.
The obsession with translating information into money, into financial
currencies or commercial properties, is only meaningful in this period
of transition, and is overrated.
A transaction is a transaction…in a mature information economy,
information is exchanged (directly) without being tethered to money.
Those without information will be poor, as is already the case, and
those who lose their privacy will be the poorest. What will happen when
people have no information and no privacy?
In the information economy people are harvested like trees or minerals
or fish in the sea.
Right now people are being harvested like trees, but soon they will be
cultivated, planted and harvested like an agricultural product. Then in
turn they'll be manufactured, enslaved to provide a service, and then
finally turned into outlets for the accumulation and release of
something called knowledge.
