Suggesting Suggestions
Having been out of the picture during the last weeks I will try to implement the program by feeding some random general thoughts about what’s emerging from the whole interactive process. I will not discuss emergences as “results” in typical terms since I keep thinking of all of them as part of a system that is still up and running. It might eventually slow down and even stop in the next few months but more than dead I would eventually talk about latency, since pictures and posts are and will be there, mapped and tagged into interactive, socially networked systems. So, no results, just suggestions.
Collaborative Streaming and Individual processing
First off it has to pointed out that the individual connection to a collaborative source of data works as predicted, in terms that individual participants actually rely on items posted by others while processing their own personal narrative. Of course some participants even work as an independent channel, just featuring limited interaction, but it’s more an exception than the normal situation. Such Interactive process leads to different outcomes. Mostly, items posted by others trigger individual reactions based on previous experience, leading to specific processing of the reference. Interestingly, participants more likely rely on snaps uploaded by themselves when it comes to events or items that are available in multiple forms (pictures of the same airport for instance). In some cases the whole experience is processed on the basis of integrated references that are hardly interactive with previous similar ones experienced by other members of the community. Typically, stuff uploaded by others, both snaps or textual posts, gets interesting when it counts as a relevant term of comparison referring to some analogue event directly experienced by the active members of the community. Which leads to the emergence of Pattern and Themes…
Patterns and Themes
Some topics and themes seem to spread on the basis of polyngenetic emergence, say food, whereas other ones seem to be virally transmitted from one source to the whole community, say birds or geometric patterns. So, interaction basically leads to emergence of standards, that immediately develop into mutagenous forms. That is, as soon that a theme seems to be spreading among the community, the individual participant start differentiating their unique point of view on it, eventually pairing with some peers, that is teaming up on the basis of affinity.
Literal and Metaphorical
Some of my prediction concerned the involvement of methaporical filters when processing streamed items. A more careful assessment of data is very likely needed, but I’d say anyway that literal outscores metaphorical by far. Comparison is definitely very active as a processing strategy but proper metaphores, that is generalizations based on some universal meaning desumed from snaps, text or combos takes place on a very limited basis. It looks like individuals evaluate the collective streaming as a source of peculiar, particular events, meaningful in themselves, not just because they can be generalized.
(to be continued…)
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