Secrecy draws and marks, as it were, the boundaries of privacy—privacy being the realm that is meant to be one’s own domain, the territory of one’s undivided sovereignty, inside which one has the comprehensive and indivisible power to decide ‘what and who I am’, and from which one can launch and relaunch the campaign to have and keep one’s decisions recognized and respected. In a startling U-turn from the habits of our ancestors, however, we have lost the guts, the stamina, and above all the will to persist in the defense of such rights, those irreplaceable building blocks of individual autonomy. (28)

 

Recently the founders of social media app, Snapchat, turned down an offer of $3 billion from Facebook and a subsequent $4 billion from Google, meeting with fierce criticism from the tech and business worlds. People questioned this potentially foolish decision made by a couple of 20-somethings with no prior business experience, who don’t currently even control the central patent of their own technology, tied up in litigation with one of the other founders. The app itself, and its founders decision to do the unthinkable and say no to these colossal firms is an interesting case in terms of where the internet and these technologies might be headed.

 

In the literature surrounding changing information environments there is a reoccurring theme of a shift from the private to public—this idea of a wired society defined by a public sphere its members can not avoid. To participate in our culture means to participate in this public arena. In Liquid Surveillance, Bauman and Lyon point to an erosion of anonymity due to pervasive use of social media, cheap cell phone cameras, free photo and video web hosts, and a general shift in society’s view on what ought to be public and private. “Everything private is now done, potentially in public — and is potentially available for public consumption; and remains available for the duration, till the end of time, as the internet ‘can’t be made to forget’ once recorded on any of its innumerable servers” (22). Pointing to drone surveillance combined with the surrender of personal privacy inherent in social media use, Bauman discusses how the most remarkable feature of contemporary surveillance is the way it has somehow managed to force and cajole oppositions to work in unison. Traditional forms of panoptical surveillance (you never know when you are being watched, so should behave as if you always are) are being recast as the hope of never being alone. With social media and this shift to public living the “fear of disclosure has been stifled by the joy of being noticed” (23). People are ready and willing to consent to the loss of privacy in order to participate in this culture of being seen and validated.

Within this context, Snapchat takes on an interesting significance. This exchange of ephemeral content can be seen to represent a kind of fantasy of escape from this pervasive system of surveillance. Snapchat doesn’t save user data, it knows nothing about its users. Each of the millions of photos that are sent are erased from a third-party server within seconds of being received. Unlike other forms of social media that have become mandatory tools for building an essential legitimizing online identity, Snapchat is subversive and cool.

Bauman and Lyon argue that in a society that has been reshaped in the likeness of the marketplace, its members are simultaneously promoters of commodities and the commodities they promote. “The test they need to pass in order to be admitted to the social prizes they covet demands them to recast themselves as commodities: that is as products capable of drawing attention, and attracting demand and customers” (32). These comments take on a further significance combined with Robert McChesney’s claim that “personal communication, mass media, and market information have been subsumed within the new order so that distinctions are passé” (3). Within this environment in which traditional boundaries between the private and public, personal and commercial are broken down, the internet becomes a space for a kind of constant self-curation, in which you are ever aware of the persona your actions online create. Snapchat represents an escape from this anxiety of accountability, in which its users can enjoy brief moments of supposed freedom. Its founders’ decision to remain independent seems to align with this image. In addition it brings to mind a fantasy about competition being a click away, that giants like “Microsoft and Google…are in mortal fear for their very survival if someone were to develop a better algorithm in her garage” (136).

Of course, as McChesney points out in Digital Disconnnect, these huge firms are much more than an algorithm and a stack of patents. While cloud computing represents a brilliant way to make the internet more efficient and less expensive, it is really in the hands of a few giant firms. Google’s enormous server farms serve as an example of this domination. And where does Snapchat store its infrastructure and unopened snaps? Google’s cloud computing service, App Engine. Even if the company were to remain independent, the answer to the question of how to generate profit might come from further dependence on these internet giants. Snapchat can’t offer advertisers any user-generated content to target, which is the way social media apps turn a profit. An article in Business Insider provides one simple and brilliant possible solution: simply connect users’ accounts to Facebook or Twitter and advertisers can target users in Snapchat based on that data. All Snapchat would need to do is sync its application programming interface with these other sites. It is yet to be seen in what direction Snapchat will go or if they will survive, but the recent news surrounding the app is certainly interesting and relevant in light of this ongoing discussion.

Sources

Bauman, Zygmunt and David Lyon. (2013) Liquid Surveillance: A conversation. Cambridge: Polity Press.

McChesney, Robert W. (2013) Digital Disconnnect: How capitalism is turning the internet against democracy. New York: The New Press.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/breakout/meet-the-23-year-old-kid-who-turned-down–3-billion-for-snapchat-010309114.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-data-monetization-through-advertising-2013-11

In his essay written as part of a Library Science graduate program in the 1970’s, Andre Cossette responds to what he sees as a theoretical weakness in the field, developing a philosophy of librarianship in an effort to separate the nature of librarianship from its technical practices and define an ultimate purpose. Inspired by ideas of another writer in the field at that time, Jesse Shera, Cossette suggests the following definition: “Librarianship is the art and science of the acquisition, preservation, organization, and retrieval of written and audio-visual records with the aim of assuring a maximum of information access for the human community” (1976, p. 33).

Since the publication of Cossette’s essay, advances in information and communication technology have greatly impacted the modern notion of information and its storage and retrieval. While some librarians and library leaders may still cling to this notion of librarian as gatekeeper, in today’s world of open access to information this perception is increasingly challenged. Libraries struggle with how to use and exchange bibliographic data in an increasingly networked, linked data environment. As they become just one of many options for information access, and arguably fall behind in terms of user experience, libraries seem to be at a crossroads and in serious need of a redefinition in terms of aim, objectives and function.

In the Fall of 2010, the editors of Library Journal organized an online summit, eBooks: Libraries at the Tipping Point, where Eli Neiburger, the IT and Production Director at Ann Arbor District Library gave a talk in which he enumerated the ways in which he sees “libraries are screwed”. Stating that the traditional value of libraries has been the local copy, Neiburger goes on to describe how this notion of a copy has lost its embodied value in an information market where there is no longer a difference between transmission and duplication. To transmit a digital object is the same as to duplicate it, and in our constantly connected culture where you can download anything from anywhere, “the idea of having a local copy only makes sense to a hoarder”. He goes on to describe digital materials already being produced that libraries cannot circulate and how little sense it makes asking the modern patron with persistent internet access to wait to receive a digital object. The very idea of owning a copy of media is something that could potentially become an alien concept to future users, and this is all happening at the same time as tax payers are forced to decide what municipal services they can do without.

Out of this belief that the circulating collection itself has become outmoded, Neiburger offers a potential look at the future, by looking to the past. The original use of libraries was not to purchase commercial content for the community but to store the content of the community. He sees the future of libraries as resting on this community data—but not just data about the community; also the creations of the community. Through access to production tools, event venues, and a permanent non-commercial online space for the patron’s creative works the library becomes a platform for the community.

One great example of what Neiburger describes may be the “4^Th Floor” at the Chattanooga Public Library. Their website describes the vision as such:

The 4th floor is a public laboratory and educational facility with a focus on information, design, technology, and the applied arts. The 14,000 sq foot space hosts equipment, expertise, programs, events, and meetings that work within this scope. While traditional library spaces support the consumption of knowledge by offering access to media, the 4th floor is unique because it supports the production, connection, and sharing of knowledge by offering access to tools and instruction.

Providing technology tutorials, demonstration days, field trips, art and design lectures, and access to 3D printers: the 4^th floor combines art, technology, and education in its mission to help the community re-imagine ways to “incubate, educate and create”. Perhaps this type of community space represents one possible future for libraries?

What is clear is that libraries have lost their once monopolistic role as information providers and as we head into a new digitized era, the value of the local collection will continue to be challenged. We need to reposition ourselves in this shifting environment, finding ways to provide unique experiences and content if libraries and librarians hope to remain relevant. The library as a physical community space still seems to hold a great deal of value. This becomes even more crucial in our corporate driven culture in which non-commercialized public spaces are disappearing, and venues for public political interaction are few and far between.

However, libraries need to employ a greater degree of self-awareness in order to provide these open intellectual spaces. In his essay, The Myth of the Neutral Professional, Robert Jensen discusses how the ideology of political neutrality keeps librarians and other professionals from understanding the relationship between power and the professions. Pointing to the fact that the 20^th century has been defined by three developments of great political importance: democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power from democracy, Jensen states that the, “liberal, pluralist, and democratic features of the system are constantly in tension with capitalism and the state” (2008, p. 89). In a democratic society, where the state does not have direct control of the institutions where intellectual work is done, the myth of the neutral professional serves as propaganda, a way to neutralize professionals who have been “given the resources that make it easy to evaluate the consequences of that distribution of power and potentially affect its distribution” (Jensen, 2008, p. 91).

As places for people to engage in politics as participants and not simply spectators disappear, the library represents one of the last remaining public spaces for people to come together and engage ideas. Jensen points to the importance of programming within this context, explaining that while programs should not advocate a single viewpoint, the choices involved will inevitably be informed by individual politics. “In all of these situations, the question isn’t whether one is neutral, but whether one is truly independent from control and allowed to pursue free and open inquiry” (Jensen, 2008, p. 95).

In seeking out this independence, the ideas of social theorist, Herbert Marcuse seem relevant. Included in the collection of essays, Critical Theory for Library and Information Sciences, Ajit Pyati of the University of Western Ontario explores how Marcuse’s theories might apply to LIS, specifically the influence of “technological rationality”. Writing during the height of the advanced industrial society, Marcuse’s idea of a form of technological dominance serving to institute new, more effective, and more pleasant forms of social control is relevant to a discussion of how discourses of information technology are being used to perpetuate capitalist logics of consumption today. Pointing to the commodification of information and the decline of the democratic public sphere, Pyati finds Marcuse’s theoretical concerns about technology relevant in terms of bringing social justice concerns to the forefront, counteracting repression, domination, and injustice as well as also pointing out the potential liberating possibilities of the technological society.

For freedom indeed depends on technological progress, on the advancement of science. But this fact easily obscures the essential precondition: in order to become vehicles of freedom, science and technology would have to change their present direction and goals; they would have to be reconstructed in accord with a new sensibility—the demands of life instincts. Then one could speak of a technology of liberation, product of a scientific imagination free to project and design the forms of a human universe without exploitation and toil. (Pyati, 2010, p. 240)

Marcuse’s words bring to mind Chattanooga and the 4^th floor, as well as Neiburger’s assertion that libraries must find ways to offer unique experiences and content. Pyati states, “As a field that bridges both the academic and professional worlds, LIS is in a unique position to train public intellectuals who can speak for issues in the public interest and advocate for socially just outcomes in the information society” (2010, p. 246). Perhaps the future will see what Shiraz Durrani and Elizabeth Smallwood describe as a “people-oriented library service” in their essay The Professional is Political: Redefining the Social Role of Public Libraries. For this type of library to exist, there must be a clear understanding of the social forces within which the library services operate in order to develop a service that is open to all and reaches out to those that have been excluded in the past. Libraries must stop operating in isolation from outside progressive forces and join with organizations such as youth groups, unions, and political organizations. “But before libraries reach that stage, they need to liberate their minds from the social, cultural and political norms of class-divided society…we will need to see the whole picture and not just the aspects we are shown” (2008, p. 125).

More than thirty years later, Cossette’s simplistic definition of librarianship no longer seems to rings true. Although the technical aspects of library work may still mirror what he described, the absolute necessity for librarians to reinvent themselves in a new cultural, technological and political landscape will force members of the profession to confront these issues whether they are ready to do so or not.

 

References

Cossette, Andre (1976). Humanism and libraries: An essay on the philosophy of librarianship. Duluth, MN: Library Juice Press.

Durrani, Shiraz, & Smallwood, Elizabeth. (2008). The professional is political: redefining the social role of public libraries. In Alison Lewis (Ed.), Questioning library neutrality: Essays from progressive librarian (119-140). Duluth, MN: Library Juice Press.

Eli Neiburger (2010, September 29). Libraries at the tipping point: how ebooks impact libraries. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd0lIKVstJg

Jensen, Robert. (2008). The myth of the neutral professional. In Alison Lewis (Ed.), Questioning library neutrality: Essays from progressive librarian (89-96). Duluth, MN: Library Juice Press.

Pyati, Ajit. (2010). Herbert Marcuse: liberation, utopia, and revolution. In Gloria J. Leckie & Lisa M. Given & John E. Buschman (Eds.), Critical Theory for Library and Information Science (236-247). Denver, CO: Libraries Unlimited.