But what I found more interesting (and disturbing…) is how some of the arguments, specially those ones about the concept of Good Enough Quality Syndrome,  looked so similar to what Ortega y Gasset had written down around 80 years ago in his book The Revolt of teh Masses:

There is one fact which, whether for good or ill, is of utmost importance in the public life of Europe at its present moment. The fact is the accession of the masses to complete social power.

(…)

The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select.

I have never liked much Ortega’s ideas and books; one of the main reasons is that I had to read and study several of them for my high school history and philosophy classes (that’s what happens when your culture has very few modern philosophers, you always end up having to read the same ones…); and I do not think he is right on most of the pessimistic predictions he included in The Revolt of the Masses.

However, it is a good food for thought to think how some of the advances in communication and information technologies, and new applications such as social network sites, have an effect on the concept oft the masses that Ortega described so negatively in the 30s (remember, that was the decade of the Great Depression, the rise of fascist movements,…), and how his ideas may be an interesting counterpoint to the Smart Mobs theory (but then, of course, Smart Mobs has its own web site, and Revolt of the Masses just a short entry in wikipedia…)

Maybe it’s time to dust my old Ortega’s books, and read them again…

A couple of quotes that specially attracted my attention (emphasis is mine…):

In any case it is often statistically difficult to disentangle the effects of globalization from those of the ongoing forces of skill-biased technical progress, as with computers; structural and demographic changes; and macroeconomic policies.

(…)

Much of the extreme poverty was concentrated in rural areas, and its large decline in the first half of the 1980s is perhaps mainly a result of the spurt in agricultural growth following de-collectivization, egalitarian land reform and readjustment of farm procurement prices – mostly internal factors that had little to do with global integration.

(…)

Issues like globalization, inequality, poverty and social discontent are thus much more complicated than are allowed in the standard accounts about China and India.

The article is quite short, and, although it points some inconsistencies in the standard accounts about China and India, it does not provide any alternative explanation for phenomenons such as the rise in inequality indicators and its relation with globalization.

The point I found more intriguing, however, is the mention of the effects of skill-biased technical progres. In the traditional development accounts, technical progress is always associated to positive effects, but as the author hints, it is possible that technical progress (or some kind of technical progress…) also has a negative effect on equality, since the access to technology and its advantages may be limited by its cost and/or required skills to use it.

There are many efforts to use technology as tool to trigger economic and social progress in the more disadvantaged groups, but I wonder how many of them are really succesful and what are their effect on poverty and inequality indicators…

POST UPDATE: after writing this post, I found a paper about the increasing social fragmentation and inequality in Bangalore. I have not had time to read it in full detail, but the author seems to favor the thesis that globalization increases inequality:

Bangalore’s meteoric rise to a globally integrated location of modern service industries reflects the recent trends of economic globalisation. (…) Its integration into the highly competitive framework of inter-city linkages produces profound processes of urban restructuring creating new disparities and a highly fragmented and polarised urban society. Bangalore is becoming what is called a multiply divided city where both social and geographical barriers are reinforced.

For those that have never visited India, the concept may need some explanation: in Indian cities street names are almost useless: only some of the main roads have recognizable names, and even in those cases there are no signs displaying those names. Smaller streets do not have names, or if they have them, usually add to the confusion (there are whole neighborhoods full of numbered main and cross streets that do not seem to follow any predetermined pattern). If you add the fact that building numbers are almost inexistent, it is almost impossible to find a place only with the street name and number.

The solution is a landmark based address system. Basically, when you give somebody directions on how to get to some place, they are based on a series of landmarks, usually well known building, such as temples, official buildings, shopping centers, or any other specific street features that stand out. Any address is useless unless it includes the corresponding set of landmarks.

The consequence is that the mapping and directions applications that had been developed with the more regular American or European street systems in mind were useless for Indian cities, and they had to adapt to the specifics of Indian street systems and support landmarks. Yahoo Maps implementation is not perfect: it provides landmarks when giving directions from one place to another, but it does not allow you to include a landmark in an address (at least it has not worked for me…); but, with all its limitations, it is a step forward to adapt mapping and GIS systems to local needs

On one side, this is a clear example on how technological solutions have to adapt to local specific conditions, but this development also opens questions about the influence of technology on habits and attitudes: as GPS navigation, mapping software, and related technologies become more popular in countries such as India, will hey change the way addresses and directions are given?, does the inclusion of certain landmarks in a system such as Yahoo Maps say something about the relevance of that specific building?, who determines that a certain building and or site is a landmark?.

I can imagine, in the future, corporations, shopping malls, and other commercial sites paying for the inclusion of their corresponding locations as landmarks, and if that becomes a source of revenue for this type of services, is it possible that landmark based systems are also implemented in mapping services for other places?, and would that change the way we think and model our cities?…

How many times have you heard or read that sentence?. I’ve googled it, and there are more than 7000 references, counting both globalized and globalised spelling (by the way, which is the correct way of writing it?).

Usually, it acts as a starting point to two different types of arguments. On one side, the catastrophic view: due to globalization cultures and traditions will be lost, the natural environment will be destroyed and we will end up in a uniform, oppressive, orwellian world where difference will not even be remembered. On the other side globalization, serves as a excuse to push unpopular decisions (usually political or economical), like ‘because we live in a globalized world, we need to dismantle the welfare state…’.

These two arguments are based on a typical deterministic view of technology. It is obvious that what we call globalization has been speed up by the advent of new communication and information technologies, and, from a deterministic perspective, those new technologies determine how society is going to evolve; there is no way out, society has to resign to its fate…

There are several pitfalls to these arguments. It is simply not true that globalization is a new thing, there have always been global relations between the different regions of the world. Cultures and societies are not closed entities that have grown up and evolved in total isolation (yes, there is, maybe, the exception of some communities in some out of the way areas, island in the middle of the Pacific, Hymalayan valleys,…, but even in that case those peoples had to come from somewhere…). The idea of an intrinsically pure culture of a community (country, region, people, race…) that can be polluted and must be protected from external influences, is just a myth fed by nationalistic interests.

And, although it is true that new ICTs expedite and facilitate communication, relation, and sharing between different parts of the world, that does not mean that this integration must evolve in the directions we usually (and wrobly?) associate today to the word globalization.

Faster and better communication technologies bring with them more interaction between people and cultures, but that does not necessarily imply reducing the cultural, social and economical diversity of the world, as most of the arguments that start with ‘We live in a globalized world…’ try to suggest.

And what about the photo?

I think this one illustrates cultural diversity in a global world at its best: a Brazilian barber shop in the Chinatown area of NYC, probably frequented by Hispanic customers that also live in that area…

This datum is part of a review of a series of conferences and seminars that have been going on in Barcelona about the topic of The architecture of fear. Terrorism and western urbanism. The central topic of these conferences was the impact that the security concerns, raised specially after the terrorists attacks to New York, Madrid, or London in the last few years, have had on urban design, architecture, and the development and use of security (meaning anti-terrorism) related technology.

In Spain we are currently in the middle of the local elections campaign, and the topic of security has become central in the discourse of some political parties (mostly, but not limited to, right wing parties). Waving the fight against crime/terrorism flag has always been a political resource, and also a way to prioritize certain technological developments, such as automatic (intelligent?) surveillance.

Obviously, as much as you try to upgrade them with the 2.0 version number, social networking is not only about those web sites, but rather an activity quintessential to human nature. Social networking is about linking and relating to other people and how to use those relationships to acquire and share knowledge, to get things done, or just to enjoy them. Technologies and technological artifacts do mediate in social networks (actor-network theorists would say that they are part of the social networks…), but no technology, and specially no trendy name applied to a tecgnology, can change the fact that we maintain links with other people and that we use those social relations tor multiple purposes.

The study of social networking is not something new either: in the early sixties Everett Rogers studied the process of diffusion of innovations and concluded that between adopters plaid a key role in the speed at which innovations were accepted, or rejected, by users; and in the seventies, Mark Granovetter published his seminal paper on the strength of weak ties in social networks, that opened the field of social network analysis.

But although social networking is a natural human activity, its characteristics and effects are completely mediated by specific cultures. In Maximum City, a book about Bombay (Mumbai) writen by an American of Indian origin (an NRI), Suketu Mehta captures very well the difference in importance and meaning attached to social networking in two different cultures: India vs the US (and the UK):

There is very little you can do anonymously as a member of the vast masses. (…)It has to be one person linking with another who knows another and so until you reach your destination; the path your request takes has to go through this network. You cannot jump the chain by going directly to someone who doesn’t know you connected only by the phone line. Then it becomes a buyer and seller transaction rather than a favour. A friend went from Bombay to London and told me she was horrified that she could spend an entire day (…) without ever needing to make a personal connection.

Technologies (telephone, e-mail, Web2.0,… ) can mediate the formation and maintenance of social networks, expanding its reach and increasing (or diminishing) the strength of certain social links. It is also very probable that the adoption and use of certain technologies will help changing the cultural values and meanings associated to social networks and how they are used. But that does not mean, as it may be inferred from some of the media hype, and as much as some marketing gurus may like it, that social networks are not specific internet sites or features added to web services.

(The worst example I’ve seen of the misappropriation of the social networking concept and term is the title of an article in cnet: Ten reasons social networking doesn’t work. Of course, it talks about some reasons why some of the web sites dubbed as social networking sites do not stand to the expectations created)

What I found more interesting is how the authors do not focus only on what we would call technological infrastructure. Infrastructure is not only about power supply, broadband connections and wi-fi hotspots, but also about space and things that populate it, about the ways we interact with, and the meanings we attach to them.

This conceptualization of infrastructure is aligned with Latour’s view of the agency of objects. Objects play a role in the course of actions, they participate, as actors, in the formation of associations. But these associations are difficult to trace except in specific moments when they are rendered visible: when there are innovations, i.e. new object types or modes of interaction are created; when they are approached by users unfamiliar with them, or when they stop working (due to accidents, breakdowns, strikes…). These are exactly the situations in which infrastructure becomes relevant: when there is some change in it (innovation), when it is approached by somebody not familiar with it, or when simply it is not working any more, at least as the user would expect it to work.

New applications, new technologies, new artifacts, can change the strength of some associations, and maybe create new ones. In that process, part of the underlying infrastructure is going to become visible and relevant again, it is going to evolve and change, as the innovations and the way we associate to them adapt to it, and finally become themselves part of the infrastructure.

As usual, Castells’ comments are thought provoking. I have specially found interesting his position against what could be called technological futurology, that he summarizes in this phrase (translatedd from the Spanish original text): “In reality, what most people calls future is the present, what happens is that they do not know it”.

He shows his point describing how mobile technologies are changing the way the world gets access to communication and services. There has been a lot of talk in the past years about the digital divide and how most part of the world population does not have access to computers and, consequently, data networks and services. There have been lots of initiatives to reduce the digital divide, usually focused on providing some kind of access to computers to the ‘disconnected’ populations (internet kiosks, internet community centers, OLPC…), but what is really giving the possibility to access on-line services to many groups that would, otherwise, remain disconnected are mobile technologies: more than half of the world’s population today has access to a mobile phone.

This concept of future is, precisely, what I want to refer to in the title of the blog. It is not about forecasting what is going to happen, and what the world is going to look like ten years from now. Lots of people have tried to do that with very little success. The possibilities of getting it wrong are much, much higher than guessing what is going to happen, so lets leave predictions to astrologers, chiromantics….

For me, taking about future is talking about what is happening today that is changing the way we do things, communicate, work, live…. Future is the path, not the destination, and when you want to follow a path that you do not know, you need to focus on the curves and slopes, the little changes, rather than trying to figure out what the destination is going to look like.

We have an image of the UK as one of the societies with a high level of concern on the protection of privacy. It is one of the few countries in Europe where there are no identity cards of any form issued by the government, and when, once in a while, an identity card initiative is proposed, it faces so much opposition that it gets dropped by politicians. The proliferation signs warning of CCTVs in operation is, at least superficially, opposite to this image.

Maybe the perception of the abundance of CCTVs was caused by the legal requirement to warn citizens of their existence, making CCTV signs quite ubiquitous in the London city landscape, but it certainly produced some estrange situations, like this CCTV sign besides a big graffiti (or street art?). Usually, the painting of street art such as this is somewhere in the fringes of legality, so the image makes you wonder what was first: the CCTV or the graffiti, and how those symbols of different lifestyles and attitudes ended up side by side in the street.

Beyond the curious image there is a whole reflection on how surveillance technology can change our habits and attitudes about the public space. Up to which extent do you change your behaviour when you know that CCTV is operating in a certain public space?, is the proliferation of surveillance warning signs going to trivialize it or, on the contrary, is it going to act to create social reaction to the technology?. And, of course, what happens when there is the possibility that some kind of surveillance is being done without any information signs?…

Panopticon or 1984, the fact is that surveillance based distopias are, today, part of our collective imaginary, so this is going to be an area of friction between technology capabilities and social expectations and concerns…

That evolution is specially visible in technologies related to consumer products (how many people who look at the L2Cache size spec for microprocessors has an idea, beyond bigger number is better, about the meaning of that spec?). But in certain circumstances this jargon evolution can also happen in other technologies not so consumer oriented.

In Bangalore, the major center of the software export industry in India, in an environment with a very high IT employment demand, IT and programming related skills becomes a very valuable asset. The consequence is that the programming jargon is becoming part of the regular language. Small signs advertising training in very specific programming technologies abound, and, in certain situations, it is quite easy to start a conversation with an stranger about specific programming languages, platforms, and techniques.