Page 97 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2014

AC/E digital culture ANNUAL REPORT 2014THEME 8Are the social networksany use to the culture industry?by José de la Peña Aznar @sandopenDiscussing the concept of culture, Wikipedia refers you to the more than 164 definitions listed in 1952 by the US anthropologists Kroeber and Kluckhohn. Nonetheless, in everyday usage it normally means chiefly two things: one is the taste for fine arts and humanities (what we call “high culture”) and the other is the set of knowledge, beliefs end standards of conduct of a social group, including the material means (technologies) that its members use to communicate with one another.Consequently, to relate “high culture” with the technologies human beings use to exchange their life experiences is to speak of culture twice over. In fact, all the changes in social behaviour and of the codes linked to new technologies and the Internet are beginning to be called, with good reason, “digital culture”. Of all the technologies that are changing our habits of creating, sharing and consuming information, the most recent and the ones that are having most impact are the social networks. They have been with us for more than ten years and they have succeeded in capitalising on human beings’ great desire to be sociable. It is estimated that 18% of the time we spend on line is devoted to social networks. And the percentage is growing year by year.This article discusses the encounter between “Culture” with a capital C and “digital culture”. Here we will speak of museums, literature, dance, theatre, film, painting, etc., focussing above all on examples, and on references to the creative use ofAC/Esocial networks that may be inspiring for cultural administrators in consonance with this Yearbook.The term “social networks” will be used in the broadest sense, including under this heading any platforms that allow the creation, sharing and consumption of user‐created content.In the expectation that the article will be more useful for the reader, there will be no references to the more widespread, but more basic and trivial, use of the social networks, namely just as one more unidirectional medium to publicise cultural programming. This use perpetuates the classic “I talk you listen” approach, asymmetrical, merely informational, that fails to take advantage of the main potential of social networks: interaction. In this article we will discuss more innovative, richer ways of working with social networks, ways that are more inspiring and in concord with the potential of these networks of individuals.THE RULESOF DIGITAL CULTUREIn his latest book, Steven Johnson discusses the fact that the social networks are peer networks, between equals, and are, in his opinion, the true “native” architecture of the online world, in the same way that hierarchical structure would be the dominant social architecture in the spheres of public administration, religion and business. A social architecture is made up of rules and conventionsWHERE WE ARE HEADING: DIGITAL TRENDS IN THE WORLD OF CULTURETHEME 8: ARE THE SOCIAL NETWORKS ANY USE TO THE CULTURE INDUSTRY? CURRENT PAGE...97