Mirko Tobias Schäfer

Bastard culture! : how user participation transforms cultural production

Nieuwe online technologieen brengen een grote belofte van bevrijding met zich mee. Leken en amateurs worden enthousiast als helden van het digitale tijdperk omhelsd. In dit boek analyseert Mirko Tobias Schafer hoe de participatie van gebruikers daadwerkelijk vorm krijgt door deze in de context te bestuderen van onder meer het populaire discours rondom nieuwe media. Schafer laat met behulp van onderzoek naar hackers, fancommunities en Web 2.0-applicaties zien hoe de dynamiek van innovatie, controle en interactie zorgt voor een uitbreiding van de traditionele cultuurindustrie naar het domein van de gebruikers.

Beyond Engineering: Software Design as Bridge over the Culture/Technology Dichotomy

In his book “Le geste et la parole”, the paleontologist André Leroi-Gourhan sketched the evolution of Homo sapiens as having left the domain of biological advancement in order to continue – with an accelerated pace – in the field of language and technology. While many of Leroi-Gourhans proposals have not aged well, his concept of humanity being shaped by a man-made web of objects and symbols – of machinery and discourse one might say – has been a powerful image in a time when the idea of the tool as neutral artifact is still an important paradigm. In the last decade, however, there has been a resurgence of academic interest in technology not purely as a means to an end but as a cultural force. Together with this shift in perspective on the role of technical artifacts in our high-tech collectives, we see, more specifically, an increased awareness of the “toolmaker” as the supposed locus of technical progress. Every age seems to have an epitomical figure of technical creation: the craftsman for the Middle Ages, the inventor in the Industrial Revolution, and the engineer in the 20 century. Late capitalism has introduced a new figure: the designer as the toolmaker of the information age. The last two decades have produced a plethora of literature on the new way of creating technical objects; from product design to Web design, from industrial design to experience design, design is everywhere but no two definitions are the same. As a consequence, the term refers less to a clear-cut concept or methodology; it rather functions as a means of differentiation. Software design for example is not a well-defined practice; it is a way of saying that what is being done is somehow going beyond the well-defined practice of software engineering. Behind the term “design” actually lurks a multiplicity of quite different ways of creating, shaping, and maybe even using. In this article, we will first consider the growing cultural significance of software in order to establish a motive for having a closer look at software production. We will show how new practices of technical creation are connected to and stimulated by this curious artifact, the computer, the Universal Machine. We will then argue that because culture and technology have become increasingly difficult to distinguish, we must reevaluate the way in which we create tools, think about culture, and regulate technical creativity.

Digital Methods From Challenges to Bildung

The chapter starts with a short summary of what we consider to be five central challenges concerning the recent move towards Digital Methods. We then interrogate David Berry’s concept of ‘digital Bildung’ as a means of facing these challenges. Our goal in this discussion is, maybe paradoxically, to move the spotlight from ‘the digital’ and programming, to the plethora of concepts and knowledges mobilized in digital tools. To this end, we discuss three examples that allow us to both concretise and complicate the debate about what kind of skill set is needed by digital scholars.

Foundations of Digital Methods : Query Design

The chapter starts with a short summary of what we consider to be five central challenges concerning the recent move towards Digital Methods. We then interrogate David Berry’s concept of ‘digital Bildung’ as a means of facing these challenges. Our goal in this discussion is, maybe paradoxically, to move the spotlight from ‘the digital’ and programming, to the plethora of concepts and knowledges mobilized in digital tools. To this end, we discuss three examples that allow us to both concretise and complicate the debate about what kind of skill set is needed by digital scholars.

Challenging Citizenship: Social Media and Big Data

Information technology affords that almost all aspects of our lives can be translated into data, data that are used for forecasting, assessment, real-time tracking, targeted advertising and polling. The practice of digitization and the role of electronic information media technology affects to various degrees almost all aspects of everyday life. Web platforms, such as popular social media are constantly generating data through simply recording almost all user activities. In a way the user generated content, is less the individual posts, comments, selfies and cat images the platform’s users create, upload and distribute, but rather the data generated while using the platform’s interface and interacting with other users. This ‘datafication’ affects our public sphere as much as our consumption behaviour. A datafied public sphere changes the practices of opinion polling, political debate and civic action. As a result, our understanding of citizenship, democracy, public sphere, and public space is fundamentally transformed.