At Stanford, Professor Fred Turner has written a critique of Facebook's art culture (both the Analog Research Laboratory and the Artist in Residence Program), putting Facebook in the context of art programs that came before. Excerpt:
"First, the Lab’s posters have linked calls for labor to calls for self-transformation. In the industrial era, a motto like “STAY FOCUSED AND KEEP SHIPPING” would represent a straightforward professional exhortation: DO YOUR JOB. But set in the same type as a poster reading “WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU WEREN’T AFRAID?” and placed in the same sorts of locations, the corporate slogan can become an answer to a request for self-discovery."
That second link you posted was excellent. It's a very cutting criticism.
"When the Analog Research Lab posts a picture of Dolores Huerta on the walls of a company whose engineers have no unions, it demonstrates its own power to transform the most embodied and institutionalized political movements into acts of decontextualized expression. On a poster, Dolores Huerta’s image becomes a sign, emptied of its history, and repurposed. A picture that might once have inspired marches in the street by impoverished farm workers now offers wealthy engineers an opportunity to celebrate the variety of identities their company embraces. In the workplace, that embrace may mean a more diverse set of em- ployees. Online, it means a larger, more varied set of communities and social experiences to mine."
I have told my coworkers that walking around in some sections of the office feels like walking around in Eastern Germany. Pretty much the same posters and also the obvious disconnect between the messages in the posters and reality.
This is a well-researched and frequently discussed topic in critical theory circles. What it means is not much up for debate anymore.
It means corporations have more in common with authoritarian regimes than is obvious. They are systematically cold and all-powerful, and merely acting out the typical series of behaviors that cold and powerful organizations act out. By definition, corporations have no social commitment to the society within which they operate and this seems to be at the heart of the issue.
Be careful to note the difference between authoritarianism and socialism. They do not favor one another. In fact, they are mostly in opposition if anything. Socialism concerns social and economic structures and authoritarianism concerns governmental structures.
You might like a book called Brave New World by Audus Huxley. It’s a science-fictional narrative that explores the potential of human society to succumb to these cruel structures.
I think they know it helps to mold people one way, to get them to "drink the cool-aid" as it were, in a cool "Soviet retro" kind of way. Art in ideology isn't much different from art in propaganda (i.e. advertising), it serves similar purpose.
Honestly, this article seems like a very silly argument. Why would you want to push yourself in a bubble - you become enormously successful, and forget the pain and suffering that everyone else in the real world is going through?
Facebook is meant to connect people. That clearly wasn't the intention when it was created, but that's the direction that lots of people brought it together to try to create.
To be angry at posters whose intent is to bring about egalitarian ideals - I mean - I don't get that. That's the same of what Soviet propaganda wound up doing. And who do we have as a result - Putin? Give me a break.
The key component with any art, with any system, is understanding your own relation in the system. None of us are perfect. Society may reward us with the riches kings of the last century would slaughter whole populations for - but you don't have to be one of those people.
These are not microaggressions to a predominantly white, affluent, male population. These are people crying out 'let me be free - like you'. The fact that they have to package it up in some way that leads to non-offense is offensive.
Why does feminism and equal rights bother SV so much? Why does being aware of real chaos, real unfairness in the world bother people who work on computation so much? These problems aren't going away. People are treated like shit, they are murdered, tortured, spoken ill of for generations - all because of some idiotic, collected measurement - some group of people decided was standard.
Art cries out when people are no longer allowed to. Why isn't this obvious? It's scary? It's hostile? Is anyone even thinking of what these actual people go through, what they live with, what terror they face - every single day?
That's fucking sad and terribly ironic. We are so tied into 'our moment', 'our impulse' that we lose empathy for real people. Facebook. A place to connect people.
I don't see any actual posters on this publication. But honestly, this complaining is ridiculous. How sensitive can you be to work in your perfect ideal environment that you directed yourself towards, you planned for, you created - and you can't deal with a poster saying 'don't forget the little people?'
That's sad. If you want to understand why communism made sense to people, it's because there was extreme imbalance. You give your data away every time you interact with something that isn't you. Why do you think you have any more security than a Jew in the Holocaust, a Muslim during 9/11? Just... Why do you act on that fear to secure yourself for life, when you've likely never been discriminated against to that level? Why does it hurt you to have to know that people in the world literally go through this?
I'm not speaking directly to you, btw. I don't have proof your thoughts align with this publication. That's what cleaves the essence of discrimination.
Is anyone else tired of the whole "inspiring" stuff? When a company does this I always think that's just a cheap way to squeeze more out of employees. I'd much prefer to be "rewarded" or "enabled" or "respected".
http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-facebooks-little-red-b...
At Stanford, Professor Fred Turner has written a critique of Facebook's art culture (both the Analog Research Laboratory and the Artist in Residence Program), putting Facebook in the context of art programs that came before. Excerpt:
"First, the Lab’s posters have linked calls for labor to calls for self-transformation. In the industrial era, a motto like “STAY FOCUSED AND KEEP SHIPPING” would represent a straightforward professional exhortation: DO YOUR JOB. But set in the same type as a poster reading “WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU WEREN’T AFRAID?” and placed in the same sorts of locations, the corporate slogan can become an answer to a request for self-discovery."
http://fredturner.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/Turner-Art...