* 1. The Electrosocial
The more I push the envelope for Naviblog, when making presentations and explaining the need for intuitive mobile search services, the more I realize: we are no more discussing an informationalization of society, where communities and individuals are grappling with the introduction of information technology. No, we are talking about quite the reverse, that is, the socialization of information technology.
In retrospect, as a tool in the human quest for further understanding and control of the limited resources at their disposal. adapting communication over electromagnetic waves - the phone, the Web, microwaves, infrared remote controls, and so on - is simple anthropomorphism. Moulding something to fit a shape acceptable to humans. But do we realize how far we have come already? Talking into a mobile phone is not merely restricted to our middle classes; other countries across the Global South have their ear glued to the handset as well. Online multiplayer games are not exclusive to South Korea, mobile phones are not only ubiquitous in Milan, Tokyo, or Paris, MySpaces are not exclusive to American WASP teenagers.
This means one thing: never have so many people at the so-called bottom of the pyramid been in contact with raw information from across the Globe. Never have so many people been educated to at least some basic degree, offering them a rough-hewn point of view of their own, backed up by a realtime library of worldwide events to draw conclusions from. Islamists point out Danish slurs on chat sites, Iranian elites pick up social trends on domestic chat boards, US elites snoop on phone conversations and adapt fear strategies to boot. The social value of information, and action based on it, is rising everyday and we are its leading proponents.
Naviblog is not an anodyne development in a sea of map-based or social network applications. It is the by-product of its time and the outgrowth of a need to offer a mobile interface to a glaring social development: the socialization of electronic information. No longer are SMS's bits of character text flowing over mobile operator networks, rather they are graphic extensions of social communication space. No longer are websites, RSS links, bookmarks and blogs mere shards of XML data waiting for search engines to snapshot them in their databases. These are explicit digital footprints of an emerging electrosocial information environment that I call the "Infospace".
* 2. The next Electrosocial slum leader - a romantic view of the "natives"?
Recently reading Mike Davis' Planet of Slums that forsees most of humanity in the 21st century will be born into a slum somewhere on this planet, seems to coincide with a new decentralisation of social progression. With aboriginal social-communal upheaval in Latin America, Islamist resistance to foreign aggression in the Near and Middle East, and a new non-alignment movement gathering speed in the form of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Central and Far East Asia, geopolitics are definitely shifting. Whether these developments are good or bad are irrelevant to the purpose of this discussion, but suffice to say this: people are moving quickly to claim age-old advancements for the most basic things as water, shelter, natural resources and labor security, using any means possible. Using the mobile phone as rallying point and rallying call for political social networks, people have stepped over the edge and into an electrosocial web of communication that is inextricably linked to technology as tool for advancement of society.
This same book however states that 1/4 of the entire world population lives in poverty, so what good does "electrosocial" do to those who do not even know what "social" means? Do those who look to the next meal with trepidation actually care about electronic media? Can these people use these new forms of assembly and communion to advance their welfare and status as humans due basic respect and protection? As those living in Tokyo know, even the homeless Japanese read the newspaper, in the same way as people that want to keep in touch with cheap low-end GSM phones will do so when connecting a landline would cost them an arm and leg. I believe that the next Nasser, the next Bolivar or Gandhi will soon be born in one of the slums and will come to move around, maybe on scholarship like Gandhi, maybe round his continent like Che, maybe just around his favela, and what they see will call him or her to cry out and gather others around them.
A romantic view of the "natives" doing what they haven't been able to do for centuries? Well, just looking at the last 60 years have shown the resourcefulness of those who have been able to lift themselves out of serfdom to First World policies of aggression, domination or pillage, and develop a homegrown version of dignity they can measure themselves against. Most of the world remains in serfdom, but it does not have to be that way. 300 years since the 1700s, Western Europe is a different place. The "natives" are not a bunch of feral, underdeveloped, "Third (class) World" and dispensable humanoids that Ivy Leaguers may have assumed over the centuries.
An implicit "Electrosocial" communication is now part of the fabric of rich countries, and is spreading across the Global South. No-one should assume that these "Slummers" will remain cowed before the IMF, World Bank, IAEA, UN, GATT and other forms of oppressive pro-government elite rule. The electrosocial leaders are being born into these slums as we speak. They will lead the future uprising against poverty and exclusion, and numbers will carry with them and their cause, to act as a torch for all the poor and destitute to see. Look at movements in the Phillipines, look at South Korea, look at Bolivia: it's already started.
Yes, maybe they will be shot down, executed, crucified, assassinated, but their cause will resonate and elites will have to accommodate their rising demands. The Sans-culottes are back. This time their assault will be both physical and electronic, and they will succeed. Again.
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