scholarly journals Disoriented and Alone in the “Experience Machine” – On Netflix, Shared World Deceptions and the Consequences of Deepening Algorithmic Personalization

SATS ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-96
Author(s):  
Maria Brincker
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Social World ◽  
Cultural Objects ◽  
Online Platforms ◽  
Experience Machine

Abstract Most online platforms are becoming increasingly algorithmically personalized. The question is if these practices are simply satisfying users preferences or if something is lost in this process. This article focuses on how to reconcile the personalization with the importance of being able to share cultural objects – including fiction – with others. In analyzing two concrete personalization examples from the streaming giant Netflix, several tendencies are observed. One is to isolate users and sometimes entirely eliminate shared world aspects. Another tendency is to blur the boundary between shared cultural objects and personalized content, which can be misleading and disorienting. A further tendency is for personalization algorithms to be optimized to deceptively prey on desires for content that mirrors one’s own lived experience. Some specific – often minority targeting – “clickbait” practices received public blowback. These practices show disregard both for honest labeling and for our desires to have access and representation in a shared world. The article concludes that personalization tendencies are moving towards increasingly isolating and disorienting interfaces, but that platforms could be redesigned to support better social world orientation.

Socialism’s Past, New Social Democracy, and Socialism’s Futures

1994 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 439-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brad Rose ◽  
George Ross
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Work Experience ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Social World ◽  
Social Actor ◽  
Social Collaboration ◽  
The Social

The ideas of socialism grew in ordinary people’s lived experience of all-encompassing markets, totalizing doctrines of individualism, the power of capitalist property over human dignity and destiny, and equations between market success and human merit. Codified into doctrine, socialism was pro-ductivist, seeing the work experience as that which determined personal identity and the shape of social collaboration. It was also class analytical, mapping the social world in terms of classes in conflict and specifying the working class as the central social actor and agent for change. Third, it was egalitarian democratic, rejecting arbitrary distinctions determining different stations in life. Finally, socialism was Utopian, revolutionary at least in aspiration if not always in deed. The capitalist order could be, and ought to be, radically transcended. Socialism, which would follow, would reappropriate control over work and its fruits by “the workers” and would facilitate full democracy, equality, and the consecration of a creative and cooperative social order.

Social World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathanael Andrade
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Young Woman ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Social World ◽  
Life Transitions ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
Domestic Servants ◽  
Meal Preparation ◽  
The Impact

As a child and maiden at Palmyra, Zenobia had to weather various life transitions, including menstruation, marriage, pregnancy, and widowhood. This chapter gives us a glimpse of Zenobia’s formative years and examines various elements of Palmyrene domestic life in order to situate Zenobia within general patterns of lived experience. Particular attention is paid to household relations; amenities and consumption; the impact of gender, social status, and age; slavery and slave owning; and religious practices of women. As a young woman of wealth, Zenobia did not engage in manual work; this was done by either slaves or paid domestic servants. They also tended to her dress and jewelry, meal preparation, and other domestic labor. As for divine worship, Zenobia expressed her devotion to many gods and had an active religious life.

Living Theory

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 188-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Herring ◽  
Manuel Rosaldo ◽  
Josh Seim ◽  
Benjamin Shestakofsky
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social World ◽  
Primary Objective ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Theories ◽  
Sociology Departments ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Living Theory ◽  
Survey Approach

This article details the principles and practices animating an “ethnographic” method of teaching social theory. As opposed to the traditional “survey” approach that aims to introduce students to the historical breadth of social thought, the primary objective of teaching ethnographically is to cultivate students as participant observers who interpret, adjudicate between, and practice social theories in their everyday lives. Three pedagogical principles are central to this approach, the first laying the groundwork for the two that follow: (1) intensive engagement with manageable portions of text, (2) conversations among theorists, and (3) dialogues between theory and lived experience. Drawing on examples from our experiences as graduate student instructors for a two-semester theory sequence, we offer practical guideposts to sociology instructors interested in integrating “living theory” into their own curricula by clarifying how each principle is put into action in course assignments, classroom discussions and activities, and evaluations of student learning. We conclude by encouraging sociology departments and instructors to consider the potential benefits and drawbacks of offering social theory courses built around in-depth readings of and conversations between social theorists and the social world.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Felicity Aulino
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Home Care ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Home Visits ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Conference Presentations

This introductory chapter provides an overview of care in Thailand. Thailand, this relatively small nation of sixty-six million people in mainland Southeast Asia, faces struggles similar to many other places in the world, including a rapidly aging population, the exploitation of the working and middle classes, and economic and authoritarian roadblocks to political participation. People care for the sick and provide for their communities amid such conditions, and much of what they do can be described—using familiar analytic concepts—as reflecting and resisting a variety of social pressures. However, Thailand is also predominantly Buddhist, one of many indications of the powerful influence of centuries-old practice and philosophical lineages, distinct from European traditions. Close attention to mundane affairs—from home-care routines to friendly social interactions, from volunteer home visits to professional conference presentations—invites an appreciation of the subtle logics of engagement from which lived experience here stems. This book thus highlights the habituated ways people provide for one another. This focus illustrates that care is not universally parsed as a matter of concern and assistance, but rather is a function of the ways people's attention is trained by the social world to perceive and prioritize what needs to be done, and for whom, and in what ways.

Crossing Invisible Boundaries and Re-Gaining Home

2021 ◽  
pp. 153-171
Author(s):  
Stevens Aguto Odongoh ◽  
Amal Adel Abdrabo
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Social World ◽  
Northern Uganda ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Construction Of Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Invisible

The current chapter deals with two different cases of post-war displacement, divided by thousands of miles and located in two different social, cultural, and political contexts. The two authors of this chapter believe that sometimes what the construction of knowledge within any discipline needs is to use more comparative empirical research for seeking more insights and understanding of the social world. Thus, collectively, the authors through this chapter compare two far away cases of displacement but too similar within their lived experience in reality in order to contest some of the mainstream notions within the anthropological library. The main focus is to study the concepts of home and belonging between two post-war displaced cases in Africa, the post-war Acholi of Northern Uganda and the Palestinian refugees of Jaziret Fadel village at Al-Sharqyiah Governorate in Egypt. They have found that when people come across the borders, the act of physical crossing is not as difficult as penetrating the invisible ones. People can acquire visas, escape the authorities at checkpoints, or easily camouflage to be able to go through border points. However, when it comes to crossing the intangible borders, to be able to penetrate the social fabric of the newly settled in community across the border is a laborious exercise.

Exploring the Schizoid Defense of the Closet Through the Existential–Phenomenology of R. D. Laing

2016 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-189
Author(s):  
Nisha Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Social World ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Existential Phenomenology ◽  
Social Pathology ◽  
Divided Self ◽  
The World ◽  
Clinical Diagnoses ◽  
Sociocultural Contexts

This article applies the existential–phenomenological analysis of schizoid persons in R. D. Laing’s The Divided Self to the phenomenology of closeted gay individuals, as described by various autoethnographies and memoirs about the lived experience of being in the closet. It explores how schizoid and closeted gay individuals employ similar defenses and suffer similar traumas as they attempt to survive within a persecutory social world. The purpose of this comparison is to help psychologists gain understanding of what being-in-the-world is like for members of a marginalized population who lack a world in which it is safe to really be. Psychologists are thereby invited to question mainstream assumptions about clinical diagnoses and to consider reframing individual psychopathology as social pathology, particularly among patients whose psychic distress may be symptomatic of the daily trauma of trying to conform to hostile sociocultural contexts that enforce oppressive social norms.

Slavery in Achaemenid-Period Babylonia: The Social World of Rībat, Son of Bēl-erība

2022 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rhyne King ◽  
Reinhard Pirngruber
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Social Network Analysis ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Social World ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
Social Position ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future

Abstract This paper argues for a historically grounded view of slavery in Achaemenid-period Babylonia by examining the life of one particular individual, Rībat son of Bēl-erība, an ardu of the Murašû family (whose archive spans c. 454–404 BCE). In contrast to other studies which focus on the terminology or legal aspects of slavery, we examine the lived experience of Rībat. We do this in two ways. First, we study all of Rībat’s attested business ventures and demonstrate that, although Rībat occasionally acted under the direct orders of his masters, he more often pursued activities ancillary to those of the core Murašû business. Secondly, we use social network analysis of over 700 Murašû texts to demonstrate that, although Rībat was crucial in linking distinct individuals to the Murašû business, he lay outside his masters’ group of core associates. We then compare Rībat’s social position to that of other known Murašû subordinates to argue that Rībat’s experience was representative of that of other Murašû subordinates. We conclude by arguing for more social-historical studies of Babylonian servitude in the future.

The Performance Complex

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Performance Metrics ◽  
Market Competition ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Pharmaceutical Companies ◽  
Management Consultants ◽  
Online Platforms ◽  
The Social ◽  
Architectural Competitions

What’s valuable? Market competition provides one kind of answer. Competitions offer another. On one side, competition is an ongoing and seemingly endless process of pricings; on the other, competitions are discrete and bounded in time and location, with entry rules, judges, scores, and prizes. This book examines what happens when ever more activities in domains of everyday life are evaluated and experienced in terms of performance metrics. Unlike organized competitions, such systems are ceaseless and without formal entry. Instead of producing resolutions, their scorings create addictions. To understand these developments, this book explores discrete contests (architectural competitions, international music competitions, and world press photo competitions); shows how the continuous updating of rankings is both a device for navigating the social world and an engine of anxiety; and examines the production of such anxiety in settings ranging from the pedagogy of performance in business schools to struggling musicians coping with new performance metrics in online platforms. In the performance society, networks of observation—in which all are performing and keeping score—are entangled with a system of emotionally charged preoccupations with one’s positioning within the rankings. From the bedroom to the boardroom, pharmaceutical companies and management consultants promise enhanced performance. This assemblage of metrics, networks, and their attendant emotional pathologies is herein regarded as the performance complex.

Communicating Archaeology in a Social World

2020 ◽  
pp. 259-284
Author(s):  
Giovina Caldarola ◽  
Astrid D'Eredità ◽  
Antonia Falcone ◽  
Marina Lo Blundo ◽  
Mattia Mancini
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Social World ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Wide Audience ◽  
The Public ◽  
Online Platforms ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
The Right ◽  
Cultural Sector

The chapter analyzes, through case history, the evolution of online communication in the cultural sector, which has been increasingly developing in recent years. The numerous online platforms available allow a potentially enormous diffusion of cultural contents and allow reaching a very wide audience. Even the archaeological sector has adapted to the new media, but creating a good strategy is often not a simple thing. The blogging platforms, associated with a good use of social media, allow you to practice the right communication of archaeological sites, museums, and places of culture, improving the knowledge and participation of the public, and above all countering the diffusion of fake news.

The Horizons of Experience

2012 ◽  
pp. 252-272
Author(s):  
Tony Hines
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Social Study ◽  
Social World ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Life World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rational Thought

Social researchers consciously and intentionally set out to understand the life-world (Lebenswelt). It is different than knowing the inanimate world of objects. Social study is systematic and as rigorous as natural science but focuses on human experience. The social world we inhabit cradles all human experience. It is the context for meaning, for all being and becoming. Life is a temporal stream of experience that, if we are to understand it, needs to be kept at bay (bracketing it). In doing so, it is as Husserl said at the ‘horizon of experience,’ pre-theoretical. It is only through critical reflection that we understand our lived experience in relation to others, present and past. This chapter reflects on Husserl’s notion of ‘horizon of experience’ to intentionally understand the limits of rational thought on irrational objects. It offers insights through these reflections and possibilities for researching information systems applying phenomenology.

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