From Life Streaming to Aesthetics to Future possibilities of.. well I guess social media strategy?
Thursday, August 7th, 2008Well I’m still very much under the weather.. but wanted to blog something.. mainly just for the purposes of blogging something… but its hard when I’m feeling this weak. Blogging for me is often about focusing on something so tightly that eventually you have this kind of breakthrough moment.. where something interesting pops through.. or at least that’s how I’m conceptualizing it.. in practice it might be different from that but…
My head is full of madness as I right.. so much stuff flying around that I want to share.. stuff from podcamp, pre podcamp, even post podcamp.. seems I’ve been so busy meeting people, learning things, having random adventures.. just with little to no time to out put much of anything.
Ok.. lets focus Matt.. .how about..
Matt Gets a new iPhone?
This is my first cell phone.. first one I’ve owned.. never mind a smart phone….
If you’re a social media type.. having a smart phone of some sort is a real game changer.. or that’s what I’m learning… Just being able to email from where ever.. twitter from where ever.. always being connected.. it really changes your perception. And its brought my to think about life streaming again.
Life Streaming
Terminology is.. fuzzy.. but basically life streaming is like.. you’re living.. and the stream just goes on.. like having a web cam attached to your forehead as you ago about your daily living.. I’m not much of a consumer of this sorta media.. I sorta wonder why the hell I’d want to follow around someone’s forehead as they live there lives.. but, that’s not to say I don’t see amazing possibilities here.
Social Media / New Media.. you must understand.. in this world there’s a whole lot of stuff that’s like.. predefined boxes… “this is a podcast,” “this is a blog,” “this is a wikki,” these are known quantities.. but what’s real is not something that’s confined to a box.. boxes are conceptual frameworks that allow us to be lazy.. or perhaps efficient.. a method of cognitive compression, if you will.. or “optimization” as we say in the biz…
But you’d do well to hold your horses… because one of the most awesome things about social media / new media is that it is anything but a known quantity. If you seek to be a practitioner of any merit.. my advice to you is to look for the potential in the landscape.. where who you is, and where it is, somehow overlaps: go there, do that thing.
I used to dream of doing life streams when I was a little kid… No, seriously, I did!
A few latter:
Life streaming presents a number interesting aesthetic issues… by aesthetic I mean “philosophy of art.” Broadly I’d say you have the line between realism and formalism.. realism being that which brings us closest to.. shall we call it “empirical reality?” Formalism is.. something that is the opposite of that.. calling our attention to the medium its self.. it is a sorta different sorta reality that it brings us to.. perhaps a surreal reality? Surreal reality might be linked to subjective reality.. the object as a pose to the subject.. “real reality” is after all both subject and object.. both subjective and objective.. Life streaming gets rid of time compression.. and thus brings us closer to objective reality.. in interesting ways.
In my own work there is always a dialog between realism and formalism.. I generally prefer formalism.. the truths I want to express are often best expressed in what one might consider surreal manners..
In any event.. while all of this sorta philosophical mumbo jumbo has its place in a critical analysis of the matter.. and while I think we ought to be thinking of such things.. it’s a long way from this to the pragmatic analysis..
The Pragmatic Analysis
What is it that you want to do? I suppose what I’m looking at is the subject of “story telling.” Story telling.. in the live stream.. how does one go about that?
A few latter
The answer that floats through my mind is a complex one.. One that’s frankly too complex for this blog entry.. particularly given how sick and weak I’m feeling… and lets just face it.. its mostly presumptive stuff given that I haven’t actually spent too much time following any live streams.. never mind making them.
A few latter still
But.. as this line goes.. one can start one’s thinking with what’s already been done / is out there.. or by sorta thinking about the possibilities.. and the structure of the medium.
In social media we have a range of communication formats that range from.. roughly speaking.. the synchronous to the asynchronous.. What are the implications of any point in that range?
Obvious stuff
- Synchronous / live stuff.. it is difficult to have the same sorta production values as what you would have for stuff on the opposite extreme.. time / energy / money put in, per moment, of communications.. One can develop strategies for dealing with this sorta thing…. but..
- The more live / synchronous you go, the less control you generally have
- The more live / synchronous you go.. probably.. the more the context of what your doing is important.
A few latter:
Some of these points strike my as somewhat dubious… at least from a serious philosophical perspective. Another thing to think about is that we are talking about “social media” which is to say it’s social.. or at the very least interactive… So the live stream is.. not really a one way affair.. necessarily. What this means is that an understanding of pscyho-social dynamics is helpful in approaching the medium.. The approach most of the successful folks in social media.. at least the ones I know.. seem to take is something like a game theory esk solution.. What game strategy would be most successful? If you’re dealing with a “merit based social hierarchy” which.. as it turns out.. is to say a “female social hierarchy” then.. status bares a relationship to your contribution to the collective..
So the place to start is to ask your self “what has thou to contribute?” There is a sort of “invisible market place” which.. in a rather supply and demand esk way.. influences the value of various sorts of contributions.. What drives this market place is the various challenges folks are dealing with. (Chris Brogan has a recent interesting post on “content marketing” and the future of marketing, that supports this claim.)
An anarchical institutional theory of value?
Each of us is a unique individual.. with unique qualities / virtues as well as vices.. what constitutes virtue or vice has to do with this ecosystem.. how the “crowds wisdom” defines you, so to speak. So.. for this reason.. I think it helps if you get in there and play.. before you really develop a serious hard lined sorta strategy.. or to put it another way.. always experiment with an eye open for magical possibilities.
Now listen.. I know this sounds a little creepy.. this notion that the crowd shalt define you.. for the artist’s in the audience, it’s a bit like Arthur Danto’s institutional theory of art.. accept not quite so exclusive.. For you who feel uncomfortable with this notion.. I understand.. and for you I ask you to hold on till such time that I can give this notion more attention.. at which point I’d imagine it would become a good deal less creepy.. for now I ask simply that you indulge me this one.
So there’s this kind of interrelationship between who you is, what the collective is, and this sorta dialectical relationship inside of which you evolve… and its somewhere in here that you build your personal brand..
Next day sometime:
Well, hmm.. lets see.. so I guess what I’m saying is that there’s a certain sorta strategic subtext to the life stream.. That might not be the best way of putting it but.. Well I guess I should just post this and return to the subject latter.. seems like I never really got to anything too interesting here.