Thesis brainstorming!

Since research has ground to a halt over the last few weeks - not because I'm addicted to Chain Factor or anything - I thought I'd try and limber up creatively with a quick brainstorming exercise.

This is really just a snapshot of what I'm working on, but worthwhile all the same. Any excuse to use this cool online mindmapping application!

Research proposal

I've just e-mailed the dean of research at my university an abstract of my proposal for a doctoral research project. Whew!

The title for the project is ‘An ethnography of consumer gift systems in video sharing websites’. Poetry!

Here is the abstract, in all its beauty.

"This research aims to develop a model of consumer gift giving within the virtual communities of video sharing websites, to extend the paradigm of gift giving as described in classic anthropological and sociological texts. I aim produce empirical evidence in support of Markus Giesler’s research on consumer gift systems (2006). Giesler conceptualises a consumer gift system as ‘a system of social solidarity based on a structured set of gift exchange and social relationships among consumers.’ (Giesler, 2006) Giesler derives a set of markers that characterise gift systems - social distinctions, norm of reciprocity, and rituals and symbolisms - and finds that peer-to-peer music file sharing facilities (such as Napster, Kazaa and Lime Wire) display these characteristics. I wish to extend Giesler’s concepts to embrace the less structured/more distributed forms of social interaction and sharing represented by video sharing websites (such as Youtube and Google Video). The latter part of the research will also discuss the implications for research on solidarity, gift giving and consumption and future research directions."

ReMarx

Apropos of nothing, I came across this excellent remix of the Communist Manifesto today - written very faithfully in the style of the great man himself - by Columbia Law professor, Eben Moglen. Here's a quote:

"The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt its culture and its principles of intellectual ownership; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. But the very instruments of its communication and acculturation establish the modes of resistance which are turned against itself."

Pretty impressive. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Moglen is affiliated with the Free Software Foundation.

Bruce Mau and The Accursed Share

Ha! The title of this post sounds like a pulp adventure novel!

This Saturday, in the course of a mammoth shopping trip - the kind I never do - I went into Chapters book shop and bought Bruce Mau's Life Style. Although I am a biblophile (bordering on biblioholic) I did trade in about six old books - half the price of the new book - which, incidentally, was on sale. Woo!

Anyway...

During some random research I had read Bruce Mau's incomplete manifesto for growth and been impressed. It's published in Life Style, along with a lot of other interesting thoughts and images from Bruce Mau Design. Here's a taste of the manifesto, but I strongly recommend reading the whole thing:

"1. Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good.
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep.
The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents.
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study.
A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift.
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader.
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead."

There is a point to this anecdote. Coming across the book seemed to be one of those happy coincidences when the Universe fulfils a deep wish. Firstly, seeing the "process is more important than outcome" point above - which has recently become my unofficial motto - sort of reminded me that I'm on the right track.

Secondly, in the course of some current research into the gift economy, I have been wanting to find my copy of George Bataille's The Accursed Share. As soon as I looked for it, it showed up, peeking out of a pile of books.




Naturally, I opened Life Style to find that Bruce Mau had designed the book.

Gift Economy

I'm very interested in the concept of the the commons and the gift economy. Despite the recent republication of Lewis Hyde's The Gift - a sort of cultural history of social attitudes to gifts and creativity, and of creativity as a form of gift giving - there has been very little written about it. Hyde describes his interests as 'the public life of the imagination'.

In the last 10 years, there has been a little more interest in the gift economy. I first became aware of it through George Bataille's The Accursed Share, and the advent of open source software development (and especially the success of Linux) and participatory media (and especially the popularity of blogging, vblogging and podcasting) has kept the subject current.