[spectre] TODAY LIVE: Geert Lovink & Armin Medosch at De Ballie

[pighed]

tania ~

great post. thank you.

you mentioned,

    /> The most widely spread forms of participatory media nowadays
    operate at the levels of exchange with the information (like Web 2.0
    related tools and services: blogs, vlogs, podcasting, etc),
    commenting (in particular so much loved by mass media form of
    invited and then carefully filtered feedback),  and, the one which I
    find the most significant - collaboration around production of
    shared resources of different sorts (e.g. Wikipedia, open source
    software, etc). What  I am particularly interested in is whether a
    participatory media model can be successfully developed and applied
    as more specifically targeting tools to tackle the problem of the
    mediation in the course of public discourse production, aiming at
    questioning the pragmatics, conventionalities, behaviour patterns
    which are the driving forces behind the dominant forms of public
    discourses./

great..

and as the project curator, what have you found?  what methods of 
mediation were most effective?
can you outline the model that you're finding most successful, or 
interesting, perhaps?

i ask because i'm spending a good deal of time working with contemporary 
social aggregators and collaborate filtering devices.  different 
participatory media models seem to be forming into a kind of taxonomy 
that looks weirdly similar.  in fact, to look at what you're discussing, 
whether it's wikipedia or open source dev (or google, yahoo, world of 
warcraft, myspace, flickr, youtube, second life, facebook, linkedin, 
dopplr, etc) they get spooky similar in terms of their social architecture:

    1. you enter a space (usually by recommendation)
    2. you see other people there
    3. you build or buy stuff
    4. you get points (usually for doing just that)
    5. you acquire social standings (via points or some listing)
    6. you can "level up" (when you have enough points)
    7. when you level up you make a mini-community
    8. you then maintain that mini-community
    9. you recommend the system to others (shave, lather, repeat)

curiously, this formula seems to be the driving paradigm for mediated 
public discourse as well.  like wikipedia.

i mean, wikipedia uses this system.  open source uses this system.  at 
first glance it is based on a meritocracy in both arenas.  but wikipedia 
is different.  wikipedia has a power of authority.  but who, really, is 
authoring it?  an individual that may or may not be correct in what they 
say.  this is quite different from open source development because 
wikipedia it is not functional nor (necessarily) factual.  it 'works' if 
someone else verifies or agrees (not if the source file compiles).  
wikipedia has become THE authority / author of public knowledge in a 
very short time.  why?  is it because so many people are authoring it?  
because it is so public?  and does that alone validate the voice - a lot 
of them saying the same thing?  i hope not.

this is not a rant against wikipedia.  it's a question about how the 
mediation works, and in what context it is most appropriate.  systems 
like wikipedia seem dangerous tools for public dialogue because opinion 
parades as fact by virtue of the mass of contributors. it may be public 
discourse, or it may be a tyrany of the majority.  i simply cant tell 
yet and am hoping you can explain a bit about what you found at deBalie 
as you refine your tools..

thanks.

hoping you can post some of your lessons for us.

    - mark stephen meadows / pighed


PS: and i love the announcements.  they're valuable.  we learn new 
things from those of you that post. thank you.