“Change is the other name of time.” (Aristotle)

Anita RubinUniversity of Alicante

December 4, 2009

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As a phenomenon, contemporary change• cannot be analyzed by merely following a fixed,

unidirectional development path of some specific phenomenon or event;

• cannot be explained by a mere reference to social, political, economic or even natural laws or some inner logic.

Instead, it can only be explained by systemic processes with a reference to a number of controversies, non-linear development and antagonisms which may end up in unintended or non-foreseeable consequences.

The changing nature of change

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• does not take a linear path from theory to application to social utilisation;

• and is influenced by social choices at every point of its development.

Consequently, technologies bear the imprint of the social processes that have brought them forth.

All this also means that when we talk about “ubiquous society” or “information society”, we cannot separate information into a separate aspect from that society where it is being used and utilised. In the end they are the same.

In the form of technology, change…

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Spiral shape development

Social factors shape technology, and because technologies are socially shaped, their properties and effects can in large be seen as social properties and social effects. Technological change cannot be objectively

understood by merely studying technological innovations or existing trends. Instead, it can be understood by studying its effects on social groups, behaviour, decision-making, values and choices.

Spiral shape effect: Social factors form technology, and because technology is socially shaped, its characteristics and effects can be seen as parts of social reality.

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When more and more information is available on a real-time basis, the understanding of the logic of cause and effect tends to blur. rapid and unexpected movements in the global

market economy; constant new innovations in information

technology; the growth of information on an exponential speed.

Need for the creation of new tools, means, and even language and concepts for coping, empowerment, creativity, and active participation.

Need for new tools…

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• The limits of “the plausible” are continuously redrawn at an accelerating pace and then, after a while, overridden afresh, when new information are gained or created.

• This gradually affects socially-shared rationality, starting thus to change the processes of choice making both on the personal and social level.

Need for totally new models and institutions for choice-making both from the social, economic, cultural and educational point-of-view.

the culture of self-actualisation

…and new institutions

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Rob Gonsalves:

High Park Pickets

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Where industrial society emphasises ”the middle of the road” thinking and aims at balance, convergence and stability, ubiquous society tears apart, divides, exacerbates, emphasises diversity and develops through controversy.

1. New sense of community which is highly sensitive -- emotionality of culture

2. common emotions thorough the media/social media create an iterative phenomenon (actor’s experience and feeling strengthen just because he/she knows that there are thousands of others feeling the same at the very same moment.)

From industrial to ubiquous society

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Communication is just one of the aspects in the experience of meaning: Differentiation, emergence of lines and borders, the formation of reality through that, immediate experience and feedback.

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The dilemma of Ubiquitous Network Society

Emotionalisation of the culture

Emotions are experienced via and with the media, in the public gaze

Public intimacy

Danger: emotional numbing;commercialization of emotions

Potential: neo-solidarity: new social responsibility, sense of community

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Rob Gonsalves

(Uskallatko kiivetä

puuhun ja katsoa

toisin?)

INDIVIDUALISTIC LOGICS,

PRIVATISATION

HAVING, LOVING, BEING

SOCIAL MEDIA, NEO-

SOLIDARITY• Differentiation and self-sufficiency of identity

• Ethics, morals and sociality are more and more dependent on personal choice.

Self-actualisation becomes visible in human relationships through the differences which a person can see in them.TENSION:

Traditional communality and caring spirit of ”work party”, talkootExplaining one’s self to oneself (and to the others) Facebook

The paradox of identity building

EXPERIENCE, FEELING

OSTINACY, PATIENCE, ABILITY

TO TOLERATE BOREDOM

VISONARITY, FUTURES

ORIENTATIONDecisions have to be made fast, effectively and shortsightedly, while the swelling and expanding ”present” is conquering space from the past and the future.

JÄNNITE:Kokonaisuuksien logiikka hämärtyy lyhytnäköisyys

Tulevaisuusajattelu: monet mahdolliset ja vaihtoehtoiset tulevaisuudet

We can experience global emotions together with other people. However, the stimulus has to continuously strenghten in ordet to reach the same feeling again and again.

The paradox of society of emotional experience

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• People aim at rational behaviour (= rationally-oriented action towards one or several goals).

• However, what is regarded as rational is culture-specific and becomes re-defined by the needs and conditions given by culture.

There is a constant, systemic interaction guiding cultural development: individuals search rational explanation to their behaviour from their society and culture, while their choices and decisions then reinforce and also gradually change the culture.

…/…

The dialogue of rationality and culture

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In addition to rationality, people are morally responsible beings.

1. Behaviour, choices and decisions are determined by• past individual experiences;• social environment Similar situations are interpreted differently by different

people.

2. People have free will and freedom of choice in the situations of decision-making.

moral responsibility

3. Dilemma: If responsibility both requires and is based on free will, then, if there is no free will, what happens to responsibility?

Rationality in the choices for the future?

The dialogue of rationality and culture cont.

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…yksilöllisiä mahdollisuuksia ajatella, tuntea ja toteuttaa itseään luovuutta.• Rohkeus kokeilla vs. mediakritiikki, lähdekritiikki;• Tieteen vapaus ja tiedonnälkä vs. katastrofialttius vs.

katastrofien laajuus;• Individualisaatio vs. globalisaatio;• Henkilökohtainen turvallisuus vs. henkilökohtainen vapaus;• Poliittisen päätöksenteon ja median läpinäkyvyys vs.

yhteiskuntien turvallisuus;• Kulttuurin luova potentiaali (joka vaatii sekä historian

tuntemusta että kykyä omaksua, sisäistää ja kopioida), open source jne. vs. tekijänoikeudet, piratismilait, immateriaalioikeudet jne.;

Seurauksena uusien kulttuurien ja alakulttuurien muodostuminen näiden jännitteiden ja rajapintojen kohtaamisesta.

Ubiikki sekä laajentaa että rajoittaa…

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There is a danger that creativity and innovativity will empty their contents as the guiding principles of education and economic policy, if (or when) it becomes evident that they do not fulfill the promise of rapid success, international prosperity and a lot of money.• What would a society be like where each and everyone is a success story, innovative and active performer, whose limit of progress is only heaven?• Would you like to live in society like that?• Would there be place there for someone like me, the way I am now?• What would I be afraid of?• Would I be enough?• Would I feel up to it?• Would I manage, day after day?

…/…

Creativity as a challenge

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Creative work claims for hard labour and longtime processing. In order to be genuinely useful and successful, innovativity requires profound knowledge and know-how, proper basic study and deep understanding of the background (=tacit knowledge).

To make creativity bloom, hard work and tough stamina are needed.

At the same time, to be possible, creativity and innovativity require also

• peace,• seclusion,• slowness,• a promise to consider, wonder, degust, and taste

placid and cosy life (the discourse of slow life)

Creativity as a challenge (cont.)

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Joka kerta kun surffaamme netissä, voimme tietää liitävämme valtavan tietomäärän seassa. Tieto on vapaata ja avointa, odottamassa käyttöä ja hyödyntämistä. Vai onko?

Kontrollin teemoja:

Tekijänoikeusasiat, tietoturvallisuus, läpinäkyvyys ja tietosuoja, yksilön oikeudet, vapaa informaatiovirta, vastuukysymykset, tiedon oikeellisuus…

Luonnollinen sosiaalisen vuorovaikutuksen foorumi:

Osallistuminen, osallistaminen ja voimauttaminen, aloite-kyky, luovuus, ongelmanratkaisutaidot, kriittisyys…

Inhimillinen tekijä: Ubiikkiyhteiskunnan osaamistaitojen pitäisi sisältää myös mm. valmiuden ajatella ihan itse, tuntea, olla laiska ja rakentaa identiteettiä … uskaltaa olla ei-valmis ja epä- täydellinen.

Ubiikkiyhteiskunnan ristiriitaisia vaateita

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• In addition to personal experiences, human choice derives from both the knowledge base and from the value base – i.e., from instrumental and intrinsic values.

Values play a role first in the selection of the idealised outcome, and then the selection of the means to achieve that outcome.

Choice of behaviour (based on available information, which is defined as relevant to the issue at hand and understood as reliable.)

…/…

Values and decision-making

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As long as most of our everyday choices could still be made on a routine basis, it was not necessary to consider the values behind every decision.

People could rest assured that the values of human society were in-built in the ways of acceptable action – the responsibility of a human being was to conduct his/her behaviour according to the guidelines on which social consensus prevailed.

Therefore it was not necessary to actively evaluate or even think about values each time a new situation was confronted.

Values and decision-making cont.

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• However, now we are in trouble every time when we face a situation where routine methods and the traditional way of conduct do not work (= bring about the expected outcome) anymore.

The social endorsement on which we could lean for so long and thus know that our choices and decisions were acceptable and good, is not self-evident anymore.

Instead, there are various different social groups, cultures, ways of actions, traditions, practices etc. which we have to take into consideration, evaluate and perhaps choose from.

Values and decision-making cont.

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Ethical responsibility presupposes a broader perspective than just the consideration of wishes and expectations of individuals at the moment at hand.

Structures and social institutions of modernity that used to support identity-construction and decision-making, are rapidly disintegrating or moving onto a more abstract – i.e. global – level

Free will – or, frankly, is there any?

• in general, ethical considerations have been delegated to increasingly abstract social actors;

• the consideration of grounds behind personal choice have become a private matter;

• people are losing touch with "larger-than-life" moral questions and consequently set aside ethical ideals.

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Living with constantly developing technology dependency on technology (esp. social media and networking) growing social vulnerability to disturbances and breakdowns.

Living within constant change need to be continuously open to new influence and things constant re-learning and constant alert.

Living with social pressures responsibility of individual success the modes of which are repeatedly re-stated by the culture hardening of values.

Vanishing meaningfulness (Spranger, Krohn)?

Obstacles to free will

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1. Knowledge: to be gained through learning lifelong & life-wide learning (24/7)

2. Proper behaviour, manners, models of action: Cultural change poses a challenge to what is included in proper behaviour non-adherent habits, manners, models of choice and behaviour

3. Culture: socially-defined conscious intention to develop, to choose valid goals and create commonly acceptable means to reach those goals Which culture should / will be chosen as the one the goals of which one can struggle for? value change, value conflicts

4. Comprehensive life management: proactivity, independence of immediate reactions, ability to choose one’s reaction futures orientation?

Education as/and civilization

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can be understood as• the ability of an individual to successfully cope in

different life situations; • the ability to build personal goals on a realistic level

and then to mould strategies in order to reach them.• External life management unfolds in behaviour

visible to the others.• Internal life management unfolds in individual

abilities and readiness to face difficulties in life now and in the future.

Life management

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Individualistic logic is• continuously emphasised;• based on belief of identity’s self-sufficiency and

autonomy.

Paradox of post-modern identity

• One can only develop as a human being in personal relationship with the others by acknowledging the differences and dissimilarities which become visible in them.

• A human being has a strong need to belong. • Yet morals and sociality depend more and more on

one’s own choices.

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Identity is a representation, a product which is born through the determination of differences and exclusion. It presumes constant interaction with the others.

This interaction draws the lines on what we are, who we are and where we belong. It also builds the society on which we can reflect our hopes, expectations and personal nature as meaningful.

…/…

Identity building

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The individuals of our time are developing hybrid identities, which appear as flexible and changeable in front of the demands of each new situation or person.

While a person has a strong need to belong, at the same time morals and sociality are dependent on his/her own value choices and other preferences.

Human beings face a danger to change from active subjects into an object of their own lives. They become ”a part of the event, a character in the play of experiences where nobody knows the author, there is no director, thescene is world-wide, the thread is blurred, and theme unclear.”

(Ulrich Beck)

Identity building cont.

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Interaction becomes an increasingly absolute value at the same time when social solidarity is forming into a new kind of loyalty and devotion to the given micro group (or tribe):

Adherence to personal life style and freedom to trend choice and implementation;

Tendency to utilise the community as the stage of one’s self-actualisation;

Life style is used to signal one’s personal competitivity;

Productisation of identity and branding of one’s personal life.

Productizion of identity

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Each time we surf in the Internet, we can feel that we glide on a vast ocean of information, all open, available and free for us to utilize and enjoy.

Topics of control:

Copyright issues, information security, transparency, personal freedom, civil liberties, free information flow, responsibility…

An easy forum for social dealings:

Participation, empowerment, initiative, creativity, problem- solving, criticality…

The human aspect: The skills in the ubiquous information society include the readiness to think, feel, be idle and build one’s identity…

…/…

Antagonisms of ubiquous information society

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Technology both enables and limits human possibilities to think, feel and self-actualize:

Courage to experiment vs. media criticism, source criticism;

The freedom of science and hunger for knowledge vs. vulnerability to catastrophies vs. catastrophy proportions;

Individualisation vs. globalisation

Personal security vs. personal freedom;

Transparency in political decision-making and the media vs. security;

The creative potential of culture (requiring knowledge of history as well as ability to adopt, absorb and copy); open source, etc. vs. copyrights, laws against piratism, immaterial rights, etc.

the forming of a (or many) new cultures from tensions and interface.

Antagonisms of … cont.

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The experience of individuality and one’s own uniqueness is the most important source of meaning in contemporary society.

At the same time, the burden of responsibility on one’s shoulders is getting heavier and heavier:

When the requirement of individuality is taken to its extreme, it leads to selfishness and hedonism, but also to increasing loneliness, stress and the feeling of insecurity.

Together with the processes of • social values emphasising individualisation more and

more; • social systems becoming increasingly complex and

abstract;

what will happen to people’s will and ability to take care of each other and to make a difference?

Emphasised individuality

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The control of one’s world and life management is constantly becoming more and more difficult and complicated. The constant inflow of new and real-time information brings about• parallel world views;• multitude of comparable value systems and

values;• different ideas and estimations.

Information per se is losing its meaning, while the characteristics of how to benefit financially about knowledge is regarded as its most important aspect. knowledge as a commodity; ubiquitous information society

…/…

The consequenses of social transition

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We share collective emotions through and with the help of (social) media.

Privately experienced human feelings and emotions become acceptable and desirable just because we know that thousands and perhaps millions of other people experience the very same same feelings at this very same moment.

Shared experiences are no more based on any common set of values or history, but their strenght lays precisely in the fact that they are so universal.

Emotional universality

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The differentiation between “real” and “illusory” loses its functionality:

• New, fictional images of reality start to replace the real reality;

• The importance of entertaining, circumstantial and experience-accentuating information grows as the basis of decision-making edutainment, infotainment;

• Choices and solutions are more and more often made on emotional reasons and grounds.

Emphasized individualism

Personal responsibility as the challenge

Cultural emotionalisation

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• How does the emotionalisation of culture affect social experience?

• How does the legitimation of emotional rationality change our understanding of the nature of reality?

• What does it mean in the light of strengthening individualization?

• How does the increasing collective experience of emotions through and by the media and social media – public intimacy -- affect us?

How does this affect our ability to act and choose tangible ways of action?

Questions of cultural emotionalisation

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Egoistic individualism which is based on• neoliberalism, • deregulation and • globalisation

is getting the ideal of community and joint liability, likewise based on our European heritage, as its counterforce.

The sense of community grows in the form of expanding the limits of individual responsibility.

Neo-solidarity vs. individualism

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Alongside the Western culture(s), solidarity and human responsibility on the well-being of one’s neighbours have also developed.

a tension between the individual and the idea of the community/society where this responsibility is to be extended.

Throughout the centuries the borders of community /society have widened from our immediate family, tribe and nation further and further.

Western ethics and the concept of social justice; The growth of solidarity as the extension of the limits of personal responsibility.

Neo-solidarity