Notions of a Platform
Early and developing possibilities for a new platform and mode of social media in a current, still shifting landscape spanning culture, society and technology.
FORMULATIONS ON FOOT IN AIX-EN-PROVENCE, FRANCE
While on foot, running with a certain regularity from Parc Jourdan to Lac de Bimont, passing by Bibémus either or both ways, while on the way formulating my ideas for helping us better engage — be it with our bodies, the environment, with people we cross on trails, paths and streets, with what we call home or village, town, city center, students and their learning, art and culture, society, religion, even politics — while thus conceiving and designing a possible means to have us more productively discover, form inform, participate in and understand the publics we are part of, or will become part of, the necessity of better technology — and a more respectful social platform — began to assert itself.
Respectful in the sense given to us by work following Immanuel Kant, work also germane to medical ethics, bioethics and the history of human experimentation, with which I had become all too intimately familiar, and was further situating by doing research at the colonial archives in Aix-en-Provence. Respectful in the much more difficult-to-provide but still attainable, providable sense of medicine and care. That I found to be missing or scarce outside of clinics and hospitals. Missing or scarce, also, in the communities formed or affected by social media and their technologies. Was that sense of respectful, either now or in the near-future, attainable, providable on a platform for communal and social connectivity?
“Growth, along with attention and expression — these were the primary modes of both engagement and technological success for platforms in existence.”
“But how central, we might wonder, are these modes of engagement to the work of creating, discovering and informing communities and publics, both those we belong to and those we will become part of?”
And would respectful be, or have to remain, in tension with successful? Certainly one could look to the platforms already in existence — and those promising to join them in popularity — and see that success would most likely be had in two modes: attention and expression. To capture the attention of users. To have them express themselves, either actively or reactively. Growth, too, was another mode of success (at least measuring it). This is, of course, why we are so often asked to join, to log in, then to add, find or invite an acquaintance or buddy, colleague or co-worker, mate, partner, peer, relative, significant other, then another, and another, as many as we possibly, interchangeably can, each placed under the category or label, friend.
Growth, then, along with attention and expression — these were the primary modes of both engagement and technological success for platforms in existence, and for those likely to join them, most all of which made mention of a shared objective to bring people and their communities closer together.
But how central, we might ask in return, are these modes of engagement to the work of creating, discovering and informing communities and publics, both those we belong to and those we will become part of?
I think we know our own answers to the question would range, possibly from important but not central, to essential but insufficient. I think we also know that the central, essential or indispensable modes of engagement that we would name in place of — or in addition to — growth, attention and expression would rarely count, would rarely be measured, would more rarely become understood as a measurable primary effect, or focus, under the rubrics for success commonly employed for platforms in existence, even those to come. And so rarely, then, do we (and will we) feel that our primary task upon clicking and logging in is to form something with someone, to build, to uncover, to inform, to co-educate, to mutually understand and to reciprocally respect — each of these an essential and necessary mode of engagement for dutifully and productively participating in and possibly improving communities, environments and societies that surround us.
“Rarely do we feel that our primary task upon clicking and logging in is to form something with someone, to build, to uncover, to inform, to co-educate, to mutually understand and to reciprocally respect — each of these an essential and necessary mode of engagement for participating in and possibly improving communities, environments and societies that surround us.”
“The name — Publiks, that single word — would carry within it the necessary senses of pluralness and plurality, the hardness, too, of their co-existence, its knot.”
I kept running, through July and much of August, along Bibémus to and from Bimont, with a now practiced regularity, honed through the summer’s heat and sun and pain of repetitive exertion, and started to know the contours, feel the shape of what Publiks would become. The name — Publiks, that single word — would carry within it the necessary senses of pluralness and plurality, the hardness, too, of their co-existence, its knot. The K would, I knew now, be as important as the s, if not more, hence its prominence in the eventual mark. The hardness of its end-sound on the page, the difficulty of the work it would ask, entail, require, would also make its success stand out. That success would entail the same difficulty, the same hardness of co-existence, the same sharpened, attentive request, or demand, connoted by scholarship’s translation to respect of Kant’s Achtung, whose value and worth are most clearly recognized, most deeply and rewardingly felt in its absence — or when provided after it had been withheld.
Privacy, or rather its absence. Surveillance. Research, even, on humans without their knowledge. The respect of informed consent — that hard, very difficult, but now essential part of contemporary bioethics and care — was what kept being absent on platforms deemed successful. And communities of respect, communities of consent, communities of informed consent, were part of what Publiks would help make possible and provide.
Part of. I was in Aix-en-Provence to research the high imperialism period of Francophone international medicine, from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. And it was not lost on me that contemporary bioethics and medicine had chosen to try to deliver on only one aspect of Kantian respect — specifically, informed consent — and that the fuller sense of Kant’s Achtung was also missing and scarce in the imagined communities and care practices of early twentieth-century international health. Missing and scarce, also, in the articles of commitment to health and peace for peoples and states, as delineated in the 1919 Covenant of the League of Nations. An organization echoing in form, intent and name Kant’s elucidation of an international league of peace — foedus pacificum — of freely associating states. Nations consenting to work together, but only with their sovereignty fully respected. Missing and scarce here. For even in this ground-breakingly beneficial covenant, this coalition for health and peace, was written into a constitution the seeds of eventual failure, placed onto those pages a selective accordance of Kantian respect and freedom to states and territories, a voted and agreed upon choice to withhold such consent, freedom, respect and sovereignty from a set of state and individual bodies.
“Freedom required form, in any period. Especially freedom for people and states of ethnic and racialized difference. Sovereignty required, for them, success at freely, respectfully associating with others in an international platform. With all its promises and tensions. ”
“Privacy, or rather its absence. Surveillance. Research, even, on humans without their knowledge. The respect of informed consent — that hard, very difficult, but now essential part of contemporary bioethics and care — was what kept being absent on platforms deemed successful. And communities of respect, communities of consent, communities of informed consent, were part of what Publiks would help make possible and provide.”
To be thinking through Publiks while researching such beneficial failures was to recognize, intellectually and intimately, the painful ironies of a historical and geopolitical fact. That freedom required form, in any period. Especially freedom for people and states of ethnic and racialized difference. That sovereignty still required, for them, success at freely, respectfully associating with others in an international platform. With all its promises and tensions. And that what I was hoping Publiks could possibly take on was, also, the hard and difficult-to-provide aspects of respect not attended to even by bioethics, medicine and contemporary care.
That while Publiks could not, should not be an analogue to the League of Nations, nor could it or should it be an analogue to the United Nations. Nor to the African or European Union. Nor to a government, state or treaty. That while it should not simply set itself up to mirror and repeat the difficulties, impasses and successes of such entities, it could in part complement them, as part of its mission, could still set out to help people work toward better, improved grounding for their communities, societies, states and selves, as they are located and lived beyond the platform. Publiks could thus assist in that hard, difficult work of co-existence in pluralness and plurality, and that quest toward a free and deeply respectful association with others.
“Success would entail the same difficulty, the same hardness of co-existence, the same sharpened, attentive request, or demand, connoted by scholarship’s translation to “respect” of Kant’s Achtung, whose value and worth are most clearly recognized, most deeply and rewardingly felt in its absence — or when provided after it had been withheld.”
“Publiks could help people work toward an improved grounding for their communities, societies, states and selves, as they are located and lived beyond the platform. Publiks could assist in that hard, difficult work of co-existence in pluralness and plurality, and that quest toward a free and deeply respectful association with others.”
My runs continued, of course. And later, when my research took me to Algiers, Algeria, I would more fully hear that hard, exigent version of publics, Publiks, the repetition of which I also heard in the music played during those runs throughout the summer, under more heat and sun, the driving, percussive, polyrhythmic drum, horn and base that underwrote the repetitive calls and demands for the respect of civil liberties and rights, that undergirded the insistence on a fuller and more human citizenship, locally and globally, supporting an auditory architecture for reform, a soundscape that envisioned, at the very least, a fuller, more consistent and more humane interpretation of constitutions, as well as their amendments. Hard, rhythmic calls, therefore, for movement in community as well as sound, in bodies at once legislative and personal, that would formalize itself in the specifying purposes I would arrive at for Soul Publiks and The Body Republik.
But now, in mid-August in Southern France, my first ideas for a platform had clarified. Beyond what I already had as a Publiks Site. To a platform more capable of fulfilling the originating mission of a new private company, Publiks Inc, that I would now officially found. Both committed to improving public awareness, public knowledge, the public interest and local and global interrelationships. Both concerned with peoples, communities and societies in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australasia and Europe. Both committed to growth, attention and expression as important facets of success for a platform, a company, but more importantly for our users and visitors. And so both committed, too, to prioritizing the less easily measurable but hardly less indispensable modes of consent, dignity, knowledge, privacy, reciprocity and respect.
“And so company and platform would be committed to prioritizing the less easily measurable but hardly less indispensable modes of consent, dignity, knowledge, privacy, reciprocity and respect.”
