stargeek
Social Super-Orders?Social Super-Orders?Social Super-Orders? 05/03/2004 06:13 PM Really briefly, there's a fascinating and short post over at zephoria called Social Technology from MPD to Aspergers in which Danah says: I have a funny feeling that social technology is back to developing software based on disorders and instigating new ones in people. Only, we've move away from schizophrenia and onto autism. Did you ever get the sneaking suspicion that this new wave of "social software" is not really making social life easier, but permitting the kind of social awkwardness that is recognized in Asperger's? Having read this I started to wonder to myself whether or not our attempts to gradually improve of ways of socially interacting online would see us pass through a whole range of psychological disorders. Perhaps the limits and barriers to social interaction and identity online really do have very clear offline parallels. Perhaps we won't be able to enable truly effective collaborative online spaces until we've finally started modelling or facilitating these social encounters effectively. And maybe then the various new affordances of the internet will truly come into their own. But what will we have then? I'll tell you what! A new form of ultra-enabled socially superordered men and women - their prosthetic social enhancements compensating for and transforming any individual awkwardness into truly collaborative endeavours? This is a GrokNews Entry: (what is grok?)Social Super-Orders?Grok Headline matches for Social Super-Orders?Music chiefs' anti social ordersMusic chiefs' anti social orders 06/01/2004 10:19 AM Music company executives could be served with Anti Social Behaviour Orders for failing to crack down on fly posting. ON PECKING
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 A few months ago I wrote about Edward Hall's book The Hidden Dimension, on the science of proxemics -- the study of 'social distance', how we relate physically and psychologically to space and to overcrowding. A month earlier I wrote a fanciful piece about how people choose where to sit at a boardroom table and what that says about them. Now I'm reading Impro, by British playwright Keith Johnstone, which is ostensibly about the art of improvisational acting, but which has a great deal to say about other subjects, including proxemics. Here's a passage on Status and Space that especially caught my attention: Imagine that two stangers are
approaching each other along an empty street. It's straight, hundreds
of yards long and with wide pavements. Both strangers are walking at
an
even pace, and at some point one of them will have to move aside in
order to pass. You can see this decision being made 100 yards or more
before it has to. In my view the two people scan each other for signs
of status, and then the lower one moves aside. If they think they're
equal, both move aside. If they both think they're dominant (or if one
isn't paying attention) they end up doing the sideways dance and
muttering apologies. But this doesn't happen if you meet a frail or
half-blind person: You move aside for them. It's only when you think
the other person is challenging that the dance occurs. I remember
doing
it once with a man in a shop doorway who took me by the forearms and
gently moved me out of the way -- it still rankles. Old people tend to
cling to the highest status they have had, and will deliberately 'not
notice' others while clinging fiercely to the (often walled) inside of
the walkway. A bustling crowd is constantly and unconsciously
exchanging
status signals and challenges, with the more submissive person
stepping
aside.
Johnstone is interested on how this subliminal body language and
status-checking can be exploited, to both powerful and comedic effect,
on the stage. I'm more interested in its implications for human
behaviour in a crowded world. I didn't believe the above passage was
true until
I started observing people (and myself) moving in crowds. You can
easily pick out who
sees him/herself as dominant, and who's going to move aside, a mile away by their demeanor and
body language. It's hilarious to watch. Older people almost always
expect, and subtly signal to younger people to move aside, even young
people in gangs with attitude. And they do move aside, belying their whole
superficial demeanor. Women tend to defer to men of the same age, but
old, frail and pregnant women somehow trump everyone else -- everyone
moves aside for them. I watched adults puff themselves up and brace
for
collision with children (especially those of cultures that let their
kids learn these status rules slowly) rather than simply
get out of their way. In one case I watched a very respectable,
well-dressed middle-aged man actually deliberately kick a child out of the way, and
then apologize to the mother (not the child) that he (the man) 'wasn't
paying
attention'. I never realized how arrogant I must appear in crowds. I tend to dislike them, 'pretend not to see' people in them (much to the dismay of people who later tell me I 'rudely' ignored their smile or nod or wave of recognition), and take on a hurried, distracted, disinterested, hostile and elbows-raised demeanor. It works very well, except with some children, and except when I have to pass people from behind. Imagine how this plays out in protest demonstrations! And in lineups, especially where first-come first-served is hard to observe because there are no clear lines, or where some lines move much faster than others. So here you are a dominant person, forced to wait passively behind a long, crowded line of 'people of lower status', while other people of low status move ahead faster or even cut into line. Foaming at the mouth time! Ever noticed that the people angriest in lineups are middle-aged businessmen? Maybe I'm finally starting to understand pecking orders: Why they're important in nature, as a simple and automatic mechanism for social organization and balance. And how, in man, in our horrifically overcrowded civilization culture, they get inflated and perverted into political hierarchies and produce megalomaniacs and nuclear pissing contests. What disturbs me most is what this bodes for us idealists trying to establish non-hierarchical, leaderless political and economic structures -- communities of peers. Are such structures unnatural? Or do we simply need to learn to recognize the pecking order for what it is -- a primeval tool for minimizing conflict and deciding who will do the breeding -- and what it isn't -- a license to take an unfair share of wealth and power?  Impro has some other
wonderful insightful observations on several topics. Here are my
favourites:On Creative Blocks: At a time when I seemed to have lost all my artistic talents, I began to explore [dream images] and hold onto and attend to them..Then I progressed to attending to mental images [things I pictured for example while reading]...The effect was so interesting that I persisted...I looked in the window [that I was picturing in my mind] and saw strange rooms in amazing detail...I belatedly thought of attending similarly to the reality around me. The deadness and greyness of my life and imagination were immediately sloughed off...The dullness was not, as I had thought, an inevitable consequence of age, but of education. On Overcrowding: People travel a long way for a 'view'. The essential element of a good view is distance, with nothing human in the immediate foreground. It lets us experience the pleasure of having our space flow out unhindered. Posture improves, breathing improves...These are all probably symptoms of human overcrowding. On Social Distance: When you hand out leaflets on the street, you can't just thrust them into people's hands. You have to establish that you're giving out leaflets, and then present one at exactly the right moment. If you get it wrong, people will either ignore you or be alarmed. [It's a very complex social activity, hard to do well, as any election campaigner will tell you. It's a submissive act, requiring great improvisational skills, and almost impossible for dominant personalities to master.] On Education: Most schools teach children to be unimaginative...Many teachers think of children as immature adults. It might lead to better teaching if we thought of adults as atrophied children. Many 'well-adjusted' adults are bitter, uncreative, frightened, unimaginative, rather hostile people [anyone you know fit this description?]. Instead of assuming they were born that way, or that that's what being an adult entails, we might consider them as people damaged by their education and upbringing. Many teachers express surprise at the switch-off that occurs at puberty, but I don't, because first of all the child has to hide the sexual turmoil he's in, and secondly the grown-ups' attitude to him completely changes. A story written off as childish fantasy in an eight-year-old may be taken, at fourteen, as a sign of mental abnormaility. The adolescent therefore has to learn to 'fake' everything. On Art: We have this idea that art is self-expression, which is weird. An artist used to be seen as a medium through which something else operated...Imagining should be as easy as perceiving. [In children, it is.] On Acceptable Behaviour: Sanity is a performance...It's a matter of presenting yourself as safe... When people are perceived as unpredictable, they are socially rejected...And it's no good telling a student he won't be held responsible for the content of his imagination [he will]...so the student must pretend to be dull...People's normal behaviours destroy other people's creative talent. All the social weapons we use against other people we also use, inwardly, against ourselves. On Assuming an Identity: Our faces get fixed with age, but even in young people you can see that a decision has been taken to appear tough, or stupid, or resigned. (Why Stupid? Because then people expect less of you). Sometimes in extreme situations people will break out of their usual expression and you can't even recognize them...Our personality is the Public Relations department for the real mind, which remains unknown. It always seems to function at some level in terms of what other people think. If I am alone and someone knocks on the door I 'come back to myself'. I do this to check that my social image is presentable. Though I may later get 'lost in the conversation' [and get outside my personality]. People isolated for long periods report 'personality disintegration'. [Perhaps this isn't madness -- maybe they become who they really are]. A final caution: Despite its insights, this book is hard work -- it's written for those who know the jargon and rituals of acting, and for the rest of us it's tough slogging. |
MacMerc.com posted a photo:
Esther and Pierre don't need LinkedIn to reach pretty much anyone they want to contact. Yet there are a whole lot of folks who want to reach them, and don't have a personal connection to do so. So the service worsens their email overload with little corresponding benefit.Link
M.I.A. and S.M.B. combine to form Super Galang Galang. The
mixmaster is
Josh "cry.on.my.console" Last.Name.Omitted (who will be playing with
M.I.A. in Manchester UK next month: Link). Also check out the
Britney-vs.-M.I.A. track. Link (Thanks,
Justin,
and whoever corrected me on the credit issue, I accidentally deleted
your identity.)
Previously:
MIA for intergalactic overlord,
MIA is, well, MIA due to visa troubles while entering US
How to order multiple Daring Fireball T-shirts at a discounted price.
* The special signed and numbered editions (by George R.R. Martin) of the limited edition A Game of Thrones RPG are still available for pre-order. The order page will be updated soon with a new art preview, as well as a sneak-peak at the Noble d20 character class.Link (Thanks, Jesse!)* We are downsizing and consolidating our warehouses. In doing so, we found a few copies of out-of-print products, and have placed them for sale in our Rare Products Store. Supply is extremely limited in some cases, and we will sell items on a first-come-first-serve basis.
* In the Rare Products Store, we also have a few gems never offered before, including the German translation of the Sailor Moon RPG and sealed decks and displays of the Origins-Award winning Sailor Moon CCG, as well as imperfect printings (at great discounts) of BESM d20 and Silver Age Sentinels.
* Also in the Rare Products Store, we are offering 7 lucky individuals the chance to own an exclusive part of the company: one of our personalised convention Team GoO hockey jerseys. Each one must be custom made, so you can choose your own jersey name and number.
* In our In-Print Store, we are offering substantial discounts on product bundles. It's the perfect way to jump in and try that game you've been wondering about. Bundles are avaible for Big Eyes, Small Mouth, BESM d20, Silver Age Sentinels Tri-Stat, and Silver Age Sentinels d20.
* For the first time ever, we are selling the ULTIMATE GoO Bundle: one copy of every in-print product we have in our catalogue - plus a few surprises - for an amazing 60% off!
* Finally, a special thank you to our more aggressive customers: if your order comes to more than $200, we will include your name in all of our 2005 books under a dedicated "Contributing Supporter" credit.
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