Internet Art: The Eye of the Beholder

 .

It is bad form to pose a question that is almost as long as the job candidate's presentation, so for once I followed my self-imposed mandate: shut-up and listen.  The presentation on Internet Art had been very interesting - thought-provoking even, as evidenced by the fact that more words than doodles adorned the open page of my trusty notebook.  Problem was that few if any of the notations were of the "ascertain the suitability of the candidate," variety.  They were all more skewed to the "nature of art in the world and the place of the Internet in that dialogue" end of the spectrum.  My colleagues would not be pleased were I to trot them out at the end of a meeting that had already passed “quittin’ time.”   I had already tossed out one brief question, which was swiftly ignored in favor of more formal communication scholarship methodological, theoretical and bibliographic issues.  I started a new doodle.

And here's what I was thinking as I doodled:

You talked about an Internet art show where one of the formal curatorial criteria was to have no criteria, in that no submissions would be rejected.  Takes me back to days when my daughters swam for the Faculty Club in the Triangle Swim Association. Everybody swam, everybody got a ribbon.  No swimmer's efforts would be rejected.  As a parent I understood that the dominant orthodoxy of the time was "everybody wins."  I could appreciate that, but it muddied the previous clarity of a more hierarchical, though admittedly less friendly, system of the blue ribbon is first, the red is second and the white is third.  If you didn't get one, well, swim faster next time.  Tough swimming love, but at least clear.  “Ribbons for all!” was more confusing. I remember that when my older daughter was swimming in the "six-and-under" group, she decided it was really important to get a ribbon of every color.  She had every color but the cool black one with the gold letters. How do you tell a five-year old, "Well, honey, to get that ribbon you have to be last.  So go out there and do your worst!"

An art show in which there are no rejections injects similar confusion into the scenario.  I can sympathize with the idea of breaking the bounds of the old "beaux arts salon" mentality in order free up space for new methods of expression.  But that same lack of criteria almost demands abuse. I mean, if you publicly declare that anything will be accepted, you are just asking folks to see if you really mean anything.  You are begging people to foreground the "con" in contemporary art. “Let see if they’ll accept this!” And we have all been to brick and mortar shows where yes, they did.  Still, one thing about the Internet is that there are no walls on the gallery; that space is in many ways quite unlimited, so perhaps it is fine to give everyone a ribbon - as long as one is willing to accept the fact that the ribbon has no meaning.

There are probably as many different definitions of art as there are artists and art critics.  The Internet seems to be most amenable to what I have thought of as "therapeutic art."  Therapeutic art is art done primarily for the benefit of the artist.  Therapeutic art is to the artist what the gym is to most people.  Most folks go to the gym and work out because it makes them feel good - either physically when the endorphins kick in, or the more emotional and intellectual pleasure of knowing you are doing something "healthy."  Most folks are not professional athletes who go to the gym to condition themselves to better perform the physical demands of their job, they go to the gym to feel good.  The same is true of therapeutic art - it is a balm, it calms us amid life's ragged race.

The Internet art discussed in the presentation - often incredibly complex, intense effort and energy by thousands of people resulting in "products" that were often the fleeting or ephemeral manifestation of "process" - seems to have a strong therapeutic component.  The repetitive attention to detail resulting in complex patterns seen in this type of Internet art is more akin to quilting than say, painting or sculpting. Those art forms are often defined by a jerky process, start and flow, stop and stare, trial and error enacted in the isolation of a studio.  The analogy of Internet art to quilting fits even more snugly if we consider a quilting bee, when a group of artists in direct communication with one another work to create a communal work.

I tend to see quilting bee, therapeutic, art as different from what I think of as transcendent and/or definitional art.  Transcendent definitional art has more to do with the definition of the discrete self that transcends the characteristics of the group. In this type of work the artist seeks an expression of an evolving or established singular self.  The value in the creation of this type of art lies in the simultaneous expression of, and the physical crystallization of, the self in the artifact.  That assertion obviously runs counter to the notion in general semantics that the word is not the thing.  To a certain degree I am asserting that the creation is the creator, or at least has a holographic relationship to its creator in that he or she can be re-visualized through the artifact.  I went to see the recent excellent exhibit of Rembrandt's works at NCMA, here in Raleigh.  Since his death in October of 1669, Rembrandt has been his paintings.  In the absence of the artist, the artifact becomes the primary manifestation of the self.  And, of course, therein lies a threat, a danger in the fragility of the artifact.  To the extent that the creation can be physically destroyed, so a portion of the expressed self is placed at risk.

Internet art, or at least art contained by the Internet, can be both advantaged and disadvantaged by its electronic home.

In therapeutic art the Internet offers the advantage of a seemingly infinite "quilting table."  Millions of people can pull up a chair, stick in a needle and add their swatch to the pattern. However, there are risks attached to mistaking this therapeutic art for transcendent or definitional art.  One can certainly find balm in the affirming shared activity of thousands - but these actions can also bury the uniqueness of the self in the complexity of massively networked activities.  In its darker moments, networked art can feel more like the group-mind throbbing of a beehive, rather than the cozy comfort of a quilting bee. 

Obviously, the throbbing of the hive also engenders the communal power that is often germane to political art. And hence the Internet proves fertile ground for activists who wish to create group artifacts that espouse particular political perspectives.  But, in the interest of full disclosure, I need to admit that the one idea that alienates me from many of the current dominant trends in thinking about the relationship between the Internet and art is that I think the phrase “political art” is an oxymoron.  Naturally one can discern political themes in artifacts, but when one starts a work with the objective of asserting a particular political perspective then one is doing public relations, or marketing, or good old fashioned “politikin’” You can produce great music, powerful images, and memorable moments doing politics, but since the message is predetermined by policy, I have trouble seeing it as art, which remember, I define as an exercise is self-exploration and definition.

For that kind of transcendent definitional art, the Internet can offer safe harbor for the artifact.  A lot of sticky issues lie behind that simple sentence.  They all stem from my "anti-semantic" assertion that the artifact is the artist.  The question is this: To what extent is a facsimile of the artifact really the artifact? Much of my own art is, at least in part, digital.  Drawings and/or photographs are scanned into Photoshop, are digitally manipulated in that environment, and then printed out - sometimes repeatedly - on different media.  I would assert that subsequent iterations of those files could produce an artifact that would be identical, and hence the same thing as, any other output of the file. One could make commercial differentiations based on signature, chronological order, etc., but in terms of the artifact being the artist, the Internet could offer an artifact better "security through ‘replicability’" than any museum vault.

For artifacts created non-digitally the case initially seems less clear. Still, when we consider sculpture, music, paintings, etc., we enter an arena where, if we cannot already create functionally identical replicas, we will soon have that capability. Differentiating between different castings from the same mold was an arcane debate in the 1900s.  It will become functionally meaningless as our ability to do 3D rendering from either digitally created files or digital files created from scans of three-dimensional objects comes of age.  I recently read of a woman whose entire lower jaw had been rendered in 3D with a computer “printing” technique called “laser melting where layers of a metallic powder are built up and fused together with a laser.”  When the jaw was implanted, the patient could talk, chew and breathe with an ease long absent from her life.  Thus could Michelangelo's David be converted to a series of 1s and 0s or perhaps qubits that will allow for the creation of perfect replicas of any size, texture and color, including ones exactly matching the “original.” Seems to blur that entire notion of “the original,” not?

True, the idea of "Hey! Run me off another David!" makes me a little queasy.  And I can envision an entertainment conglomerate buying up the rights to the David and selling "personalized copies" with "a true-to-life rendering of your very own face."  Yeech.  I am still a tad too attached to the idea of "the hand of the master."  If the artifact is the artist, then - ethically and artistically - the replicated artifact must remain true to that which the artist created. When we step off that path we run the risk of bumping into the Stepford Wives. But in the final analysis, the artifact is a stimulus that triggers the firing of neurons in the mind of the individual experiencing that stimulus.  To the extent that the replication duplicates that pattern of stimuli, then I think we can assume that the recreated artifact recreates the artist.

No, no.  You do not want to go there. You do not want to start down the "Well, if what we are really looking for is ‘neurons firing a specific pattern’ why don't we just .  .  ." road.  Why?  Because identical stimuli fire neurons resulting in radically different “patterns of perception” in different people.  You look at someone on the street and wonder, "Who let them walk out of the house like that?"  They glanced in the mirror and thought, "Lookiiing gooood!" Same stimulus, worlds of difference in "the eye of the beholder."

I strongly believe that we need to somehow interact with an actual artifact, that we cannot try to make a leap to some kind of direct neural stimulation.  For me the art that strikes the deepest chord is art that, through the creation and sharing of an artifact, creates a relationship between the artist and another individual, often an unknown individual.  When I was a younger man, with dreams of life on the stage still large before my eyes, it seemed important that the artifacts in which I played a part should be seen by many.  Similarly, ensemble work seemed the most fulfilling - the troupe performing for the many. Not so much anymore.  These days "from my head and heart to yours," seems more fitting.  The feeling of, if not the reality of, an interpersonal, dyadic relationship is increasingly important to me - in my teaching, in my life, in my art. So I am interested in media containers, be they physical or digital, that are amenable to those kinds of expressions.

The Internet, as a container, is not designed specifically for art. As a matter of fact the Internet is perhaps the most flexible, least content-specific container yet devised.  If it has a "content preference" it is only the one that we bring to it. Currently people who self-identify as artists seem fascinated by the nooks and crannies of the Internet container that are new to us: the ability to display an artifact to, and receive feedback from, large numbers of individuals.  We are also intrigued with the ability to involve large numbers of individuals in an Internet process that "feels" expressive, the ephemeral nature of the "artifact" notwithstanding. Those are certainly legitimate expressive uses of the container.  But, they are not the ones that attract me. 

Art situated in electronic social networks - either unique networks created for an expression or commercial entities like Facebook employed for an expressive project – are, for me, too reminiscent of middle school cafeterias.  They are spaces that, under the guise of sociability and inclusion, are actually more prone to the public competition and posturing for which at least the largest social network was originally intended.  No doubt interesting work will grow in those spaces. However, another positive aspect of this flexible container that we currently call the Internet, is that we are free to walk away from the areas in it that have no appeal.  So, I choose to stroll away from the cafeteria that boldly hangs out the sign: "Home of Internet Art" and seek greener pastures elsewhere.

And it just so happened that this morning I chanced upon a space in the container that I found far more appealing: vipartfair.com.  It appears to be the Internet equivalent of a huge art fair in a major city: lots of artists displaying their artifacts in virtual booths.  Nobody implying I need to "like" them.  Just the "stuff,” and I browse at my leisure.  The interface is rich, but needs some getting used to.  Still, it seems quite well done - "grown-up," if that makes sense.  Nobody is rushing around, hollering and posturing. Nothing "pops up" or "rolls over." Despite a wildly eclectic collection of artists, the “fair” has that "touch of calm and insight" that I associate with transcendent definitional art.  No doubt others would find it tiresome.  There are obviously some “Con”temporary works mixed in with the interesting pieces, but all in all, an intriguing show.  However I note, with some dismay, that the exhibit "closes" tomorrow.  I suppose that artists in the new container will often mold the container to retain not only the form, but also the assumptions of older containers.  I might like it. I'm not sure.  It seems that "closing" the fair on a specific day reduces the "cheapening effect" that accompanies the convenience of 24/7 accessibility to everything.  Besides, when I signed up to enter the fair the curators assured me that I would receive notice of, and access to, future fairs.  So I assume more of the art I like awaits me.

So here we are, back in the eye of the beholder, in the Internet of the user, in the art of the moment.  There was a time when I would have felt the need to close with "the proper perspective."  There may be one.  Still, when I think about the myriad ways in which art and the Internet may intersect, it strikes me as foolhardy to assert that I know what that "proper perspective" is.  You want truth, certainty?  Not here.  Maybe in that cafeteria back down the hall a bit.  .  .  .
.

Felix the Cat and the Mimeograph Machine

.

I do have a fuzzy recollection of those days when, as a young man, I would fall into bed, exhausted from the day, and find myself instantly asleep. Clearer are the memories of days of seeming unremitting stress as I struggled to pull my life into some semblance of, first, harmony, and then later, health.  Those days presaged whirligig nights of blanket fights that raged from dusk ‘til dawn. I awoke as exhausted as before the bout.  Thankfully, it has become better in these calmer years. Better, yes, but sometimes really weird.

I no longer retire with much expectation of sleep.  If it comes it comes, I can take it or leave it.  Night is, far more predictably, a time for meditation and the freedom to engage in conversation with someone who completely shares my interests and perspective.  I refer, naturally, with no slight intended to my dear wife, to myself.

It grows increasingly clear as I bumble through my 60s that enlightenment is a personal journey.  The only commonality we share with others on the trip is the ever-receding horizon.  As a result, the person closest to our heart is not the one who chatters along about plans for tomorrow or next week.  It is instead the one most tolerant of our inclination to stare dreamily into space, going where "no man has gone before," and where we all must travel alone.  I refer, of course, to our morning mirror buddy, ourselves.  If we happen to live with someone who not only tolerates us, but genuinely cares for us - that is truly wonderful. 

All of which is, of course, unnecessary prologue to the strange perceptual experience I had the other night.  I say "perceptual experience" because the line between a waking meditative reverie and a sleeping dream has become thin enough to ignore.  The “experience” had to do with Felix the Cat and a mimeograph machine.  In a scene reminiscent of Fantasia, an endless stream of Felix the Cat models spewed out of a mimeograph machine and marched downstairs, in search no doubt of the excellent scallop and garlic pasta dish Christine had made for dinner. I would awake, toss and turn, go back to sleep and Felix would march on.  The connection between Felix and the mimeograph may not be immediately obvious, but it does make sense.

Those who do not study the media may be unaware that Felix the Cat was the very first TV star.  In 1928 the experimental TV station in New York W2XBS needed a moving image to calibrate their primitive cameras. They put a 13-inch tall papier-mâché model of Felix, a current print and film star, on a record turntable and spun him around.  And there he sat for 2 hours a day for almost a decade, transfixing the handful of employees and engineers who could receive the gradually improving image on a fuzzy, black and white two-inch screen.

During that same era the stencil printing, or mimeograph, machine was gaining some popularity in business offices around the country.  My memories of that particular piece of technology spring from my first teaching jobs in the early 1970s.  I recall being particularly entranced with the first electric mimeograph machines where the hand crank was replaced by an electric motor that allowed the copies to spill from the machine at seemingly blinding speed.

The implications for the Internet may not be immediately obvious – still they are there.  You see, the most amazing thing about Felix spinning around in front of the primordial TV camera and the pages marching out of the mimeograph machine, like brooms under Mickey's spell, was the technology that produced them.  Felix transfixed us because of how he got to that tiny little screen - pictures through the air - awesome.  Same for the mimeograph machine.  Dozens of copies at the flip of a switch - hundreds if you wanted them.  OK, so you couldn't read the last few dozen, but look how many there are!!

We are currently entranced with the incredibly cool ways that the Internet gets stuff before our i-s. That's not a typo, I mean our iPhones, our iPads, our iPods and all the other iLike things that we stuff into our pockets.  Mr. Jobs sure got that one right - as did the guys in the Googleplex and the kid over at Facebook.  We are in love with seeing things on screens - we are in love with the technology that the Internet mainlines into our lives. The content? Well, that's lagging a bit behind. Angry Birds?  Come on now.

It has often been thus with new forms of technology.  Mature content flourishes in mature technology.  In mature technology the issue is not "What can I do?"  The concern is "what can I say?" In mature communication media content dominates; combining nuance, depth and subtlety in pursuit of conceptual clarity is a primary concern. 

In new technologies the fascination is with "What can I do?" Make pictures move, stuff Morse code into a wire, send print, speech and moving images through the air.  Look what we can DO! Isn't that cool?

  The disparity between “do” and “say” usually sorts itself out.  Eventually the "Wow cool, look what I can do!" fascination fades and the subtlety of insightful content creation resurfaces - often more vibrant than before.  It is then that new art forms evolve, communication becomes increasingly nuanced.

  However, it strikes me that the unprecedented speed at which new layers of communication media are evolving is warping that traditional process.  Content struggles to keep up with capacity - hence messages struggle to gain maturity:

"Look, I can point my phone at the bar code next to that coat in the window and click this little thingy and - since I put my size and address info onto the store's website - I can buy it right now, at 3:00 in the morning!!"

"Do you want the coat?"

"No, not really, but how cool is that app!?"

See what I mean?  I'm not saying that there isn't worthwhile content out there in cyberspace. There is. However, at this point in time, increasingly the tail wags the dog. Actually the tail is wagging the puppy.

.

FOMO & IBBI

.
It is getting to be "beach time" here in North Carolina.  The snowbirds have begun their southern trek.  Houseboats bloom on the Intracoastal Waterway and RVs swarm the parking lots along NC 12.  The gentle aroma of sunscreen competes with the magnolias.  For many it will be a summer at the beach very similar to those I remember from my own childhood summers, spent along the beaches of Lake Michigan.  Roasted hot dogs, gritty soda, sandy samores, sand in the pages of my book, sand in my swimsuit, well, sand everywhere.  But in at least one way a summer at the beach will be different for today's children: the buckets have changed.

I remember building sandcastles with the one bucket that came with the pail.  You pack the damp sand into the bucket, flip it upside down, give it a thump, and "voila!" there was a tower, or part of a wall, or whatever.  You took the shovel and carved it into the necessary "castle element." You drizzled turrets with a wet sand slurry.  I have since learned that such an approach is completely passé.  The contemporary beach child has a set of forms that would make Frank Lloyd Wright envious.  Turrets and towers, crenelated walls; you name it, it is there in their Super Sandcastle Set.  The new containers allow them to shape sand in ways I never imagined.

The same is obviously true of the Internet.  No, really.  Think about it, the Internet changes the shape of our communicative world. It provides new containers, new molds, for culture, society, art and politics.   My recent polemic against smartphones was not so much an attack on the "container" itself, .i.e. the smart phone.  Instead I was objecting to the notion that we are trying to stuff all the sand on the beach into that one container and when we turn it upside down we don't always get what we wanted; rather we get what the container is capable of producing.

Consider if you will FOMO.  I had no idea what FOMO meant until recently when I read an article in The NY Times that informed me that FOMO was text-speak for "Fear Of Missing Out."  And what, you might well ask, does Fear Of Missing Out mean?  It is, the article informed me, a new 21st century anxiety.  The syndrome appears to be driven by social media messages that shoulder their way onto our various screens, touting all the wonderful things currently filling the lives of our "contacts".  The author, it seems, had just settled down for a rainy night of cocooning - popcorn and Netflix movie at the ready.  But then her phone started flashing.  "Status updates" began pouring in from her friends:  "We're out here at Fancy Place!"  "Awesome Group!"  "Food is Wonderful!" "Killer Cocktails!" and, of course the unspoken message, "Anyone Who Isn't Here is a Loser!"

She was immediately besieged with FOMO.  But she fought back.  While not able to make the ultimate sacrifice and actually turn her phone off, she did turn it over so she couldn't see the messages flashing.  She seized control of her technology, tossed Orville in the microwave, and fired up Netflix.

Point is, we are sold communication technology on the presumption that it will make our lives better and, when we keep the upper hand, it often does.  The problem is that our new culture containers often drop unsuspected and distorted forms out onto the sandcastles of our lives.  The author wanted her technology to deliver Netflix and comfort, but FOMO tried to sneak in.  Some degree of FOMO is probably unavoidable as we use technology to keep us connected to life.  My iPad just beeped to warn me that I had a dentist appointment in 15 minutes.  Plenty of time to call, apologize, and reschedule. But if I want my technology to do those things for me, I have to be ready for a little FOMO and keep plenty of popcorn in the cupboard.  Or you could just text back "IBBI!"  Oh, you haven't heard of IBBI?  Not surprising - I just made it up. It stands for "Irritated By Banal Intrusions."

So when someone posts: "Changed the color of my toenail polish!" or "OMG! Little Tommy spit up on the cat!" just shoot back: IBBI!

Maybe we could make an app for that .  .  .  .
.

Varying Degrees of Intrusion

.
It is, no doubt, another innovation designed to deliver us from our more slothful evil twins.  And, come Monday, thousands of folks will roll out of bed, unaware that their clock radios had automatically “Fallen Back” in the tiny hours of Sunday morning.  They will head off to work right on time, with clock radio, computer and cell phone throbbing along in silent syncopation with the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory. Personally, I found it just a bit creepy.

I have come to accept that my cell phone will keep track of the vagaries of time zones as I wander around the country or the world.  That falls within its job description, that’s why no one wears a watch anymore, except for bling appeal.  A cell phone is supposed to “reach out and touch someone” as Ma Bell was wont to say, back in the less politically correct 1980s.  But my clock radio?  How did it know that it was supposed to “fall back” at 2:00 a.m. on this particular Sunday morning?  My wristwatch in the drawer didn’t know it was supposed to “fall back.” The microwave didn’t know it was supposed to “fall back.” The oven clock didn’t know it was supposed to “fall back.”  How did the clock radio know it was supposed to “fall back”?  To whom, or to what, is my clock radio talking in the middle of the night?

I realize that it is probably no great feat of programming to tell a machine when “Spring Forward,” 2:00 a.m. on the second Sunday in March; and “Fall Back,” 2:00 a.m. on the first Sunday in November, will occur for the next gazillion years and put it on a chip the size of a gnat’s eyelash.  But how does the radio know what “today” is?  I didn’t “set up” the date when I pulled it out of the box.  I just plugged it in and toggled up the correct time.  So how did it know where it was, in its infinite calendar, the moment I plugged it in?  How did the radio know if it was June, July or January?  You see, it had to know that if it was going to "Fall Back" at just the right instant.  If the answer is “the chip just knows,” we are neither comforted nor amused.  What else does the chip know?

We hear a lot about privacy in digital spaces these days.  It usually centers around the improper use of information that we, at some point via some device, intentionally tossed out into “Cyber Cloud Cuckooland.”  This sentient radio is, to my somewhat paranoid mind, a bird of a different feather.  The radio – without my instructions or permission, mind you – appears to be in communication with some entity that feeds information into this appliance in my home.  “Well, duh.  What does a radio do, dude? It brings stuff into your home – like music and words.”  True, but we did not request this channel. We were not informed of this channel.  "Back channels" are supposed to be the stuff of spy novels.

Perhaps my paranoia stems from my deep understanding that communication is transactional.  If a device can store or receive “Spring Forward” or “Fall Back” data without my instruction, it is technological child’s play to give it transmission capacity as well.  Want to walk a little way down that path with me?  Consider Microsoft’s new gaming rave, the Kinect.  It sounds awesome.  Three cameras peer into your home and allow you to interact with games as if you were actually up there on the screen.  No wires, no remote, you move, it sees you and reacts.  Now consider that last sentence all by itself: No wires, no remote, you move, it sees you and reacts.  You perceive, perhaps, the reason a shiver just ran down my spine.

When someone seems to look the latest multi-gigabyte gizmo gift horse in the mouth, it is easy to cry “Luddite!” and trot out the myriad wonders that technology has given us.  I do not deny them.  I have no desire to live in some seemingly bucolic past where we spent most of our lives finding or raising food, where, in lieu of vaccines, children died of the measles, and, think about it – there was no Novocain! But, I must repeat a favorite mantra: the role of technology in society is a continual negotiation, we ask and the engineers respond.  The first part of the equation must dominate.  We must be thoughtful when we make demands, and bestow limitless trust upon, the technologists who create our toys.  Our most powerful tools can also be our most dangerous weapons.  Human intent defines the difference.

Garth Brooks wrote, “Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.” There is an oblique B-side to that hit: “Be careful what you ask for, you may get it.”
.

Can it Scratch Glass?, or Of Scarcity and Value

.
Major cultural transformations occur when events create imbalances in traditional social relationships.  Those imbalances eventually find new equilibrium, but the interim can be unsettling.  This early evolution of the Internet in American culture is one such event.  The Internet’s complex interweaving with all aspects of our lives nudges any number of traditional relationships towards reconsideration.  Among those is the dynamic that has long existed between scarcity and value.

On its surface that relationship is a straightforward one – the scarcer a resource, the greater its value.  Of course, scratching that surface reveals the details in which the devil revels.  The first obvious proviso is that the resource possesses intrinsic characteristics that make it desirable – we can eat it, or clothe ourselves with it, communicate with it, it is beautiful, or powerful, or makes us so.  Those intrinsic characteristics, in combination with its scarcity, make the resource valuable.

Complicating the equation further is the notion that all scarcity is not the same.  There are at least three important variants.  The default definition is natural scarcity – characteristics, elements and resources that simply do not occur that often.  About 1 in 10,000 people have perfect pitch, that is a naturally occurring scarcity, and one whose value increases if that one person also happens to be musically gifted, hence piling scarcity upon scarcity.  Second, there is manufactured scarcity.  Nobel Prize winners are of this type of scarce resource.  Only 543 have been awarded to date out of a world population of about 6.8 billion souls.  Talk about scarce!  However, the value of a Nobel Prize winner is an iffy calculation.  They are of significant value to research institutions and universities who point to “their” Nobel Prize winners as evidence of organizational excellence.  But to the average person on the street these incredibly scarce individuals have no greater inherent value than the next passer-by.  

The final type of scarcity is manipulated scarcity.  Manipulated scarcity occurs when an already scarce resource is artificially manipulated to increase its scarcity and hence its value. Diamonds are often accused of possessing this manipulated scarcity.  Data are sketchy in this area, as a matter-of-fact, I occasionally wonder if the purported information about the number of diamonds in the world is itself being manipulated to establish a "diamond mythology" that adds to the value of the gems.  The "mythology" narrative is based in the accepted natural scarcity of diamonds.  You don’t plough them up in the back garden when putting in tomatoes.  However, delicious rumors circulate that DeBeers has a stash of diamonds secreted away that exceeds the number of diamonds currently in circulation.  One also hears tales of discoveries of massive new diamond finds in this or that remote locale.  The icing on the cake is, of course, blood diamonds – a political manipulation of scarcity.  If the world market “de-legitimizes” diamonds from certain sources, scarcity, and value, of "legitimate" diamonds spiral.

The scarcity/value dynamic currently being disrupted by the Internet that raises my concern is the one that plays out among the variables of information, knowledge and wisdom. I have talked about this phenomenon before, but let me refresh it for you

Information:  This is the “Dragnet” part of the dynamic: “All we want are the facts, ma'am.” Information equals facts, the data as we are best able to discern it.  The boiling point of water at sea level.  The number of traffic tickets written in San Francisco in February, 2009.  Data, facts, information.

Knowledge: Knowledge grows from an inspection and ordering of the information.  It is the recognition of patterns in the information that allow us to make assertions regarding the relationship between behavior and outcomes; “if/then statements.”  If 10,000 traffic tickets are written in February in San Francisco, and if the average fine is $20.00 and if the average rate of payment is 68% within 30 days, then one might assume that approximately $13,600.00 in revenue will be available from those tickets by the end of March.  

Wisdom:  Put most simply, wisdom is the ability to discern from among all the potential “if/then statements” those that should be affirmed and pursued to result in the greatest good.  The end of wisdom is thoughtful, compassionate belief and felicitous policy.   The absence of both in most human endeavors is, at least, indirect evidence of the paucity of wisdom currently in play in our world.  Agreement regarding the nature of wisdom will always be slippery, but I am concerned that the Internet increases wisdom’s scarcity by flooding the world with component parts – information and knowledge – of questionable validity.  Let me explain.

Prior to the Internet there were cultural hedges to the dissemination of raw information.  Census data, the data from the Hubble telescope, satellite images from all over the world – none of this raw information was available to distract the private citizen.  Those data streams were gathered and analyzed by individuals and organizations with recognized expertise in the interpretation of that data.  The next step in the process – turning information into knowledge – also rested primarily in the hands of specialists who vetted the “if/then statements” that form the core of all professional literature.  The concerned private citizen then could, ideally, peruse the various conclusions of the experts and make a rational decision regarding which version of knowledge struck closest to truth and could, in rare instances, follow that truth to wisdom.

Now let us return to diamonds for a moment.  How do we know that a diamond is a diamond? Cubic zirconia and other faux diamonds are getting very good, and manufactured diamonds are reaching gem quality.  The informed consumer can make good calls based on brilliance, clarity, color, etc.  But if one is buying or insuring a diamond, your great aunt Lady Rutherford’s opinion isn’t quite enough.  You want a gemologist to break out the scientific instruments to peer into the depths of the stone, to note any flaws, to certify quality, color, and perhaps place of origin.  For a thing to have value you must, at the very beginning of the process, know that the thing is the thing it claims to be.

Back to the Internet.  Peter Steiner drew an iconic cartoon published in The New Yorker on July 5, 1993, that showed a dog seated before a computer, turning to a dog on the floor.  The dog at the computer says, “On the Internet no one knows you’re a dog.”  As recent news stories about Facebook and RapLeaf make clear, that assumption is now bogus.  The contemporary Internet now knows not only if you are a dog, it knows your breed and the most intimate details of your pedigree.  Reality has inverted.  The problem now is that it is difficult for us, the users of the Internet, to know if the page on our screen was composed by a purebred canine or a mutt. Is it a diamond, cubic zirconia or cut glass?

Imagine you walk into a handball court, filled knee-deep with stones that appear to be diamonds.  As a matter of fact there are several hundred perfect diamonds scattered throughout the glittering hoard.  If you can find them, you can keep them.  What do you do?  And, no, the back wall is Plexiglas, all the gems can scratch it.  This is what currently confounds our use of the Internet – there is a surfeit of information, an excess of asserted knowledge, and no reliable path to wisdom.  The cubic zirconia is pretty and may well get us the best route to tonight’s concert venue.  The online reviews, however, reviews are cut glass tossed into the court – some by the bands publicity staff masquerading as discerning fans, others, perhaps vitriol lobbed in by competitors or former lovers.  Not much chance of consistently informed opinion, less still of encountering wisdom .  .  . the odds of grabbing a diamond are one in hundreds of thousands. 

Still, the diamonds are there – that is what drives me crazy.  Out there, in a medium designed for distraction, amidst the masses of trivial, self-serving, ignorant, foolish, bogus, and malicious pretenders, are diamonds of exquisite perfection.  Finding them, however, does not lie within the purview of search algorithms or crowd sourcing, both of which are driven by well-intentioned but fatally flawed bias.  So how do we find them? How do we mine for diamonds instead of data?  I do not know.  But there is something sparkly over there .  .  .  . maybe if I rub it against the other pretty pebbles .  .  .  .

The problem with this "aimlessness" is that we tend not to tolerate it for long. We are inclined to a desire for certainty.  Hence, in lieu of a reliable path through information to knowledge and on to wisdom - we grab the bauble that catches our eye, that seems to fit best with our other gems, regardless of source or pedigree.  We stuff it in our pocket and walk out of the handball court:

"Wisdom be damned, don't I look good with this stuff?"

.