According to Yochai Benkler, in his book The Wealth of Networks, the past fifteen years has borne witness to radical changes (enabled by technology) in the organization of information production, which have caused a series of social, economic and cultural adaptations that have structurally changed the “networked information environment.” (Benkler, 2006) Benkler views the emergent “networked information economy,” as one that has displaced the industrial information economy that typified information production until the emergence of Web 2.0, a term coined in 2004. (Shuen, 2004) It is typified by a “decentralized individual action,” or, “new and important cooperative and coordinate action carried out through radically distributed non-market mechanisms that do not depend on propriety strategies.” (Benkler, 2006) Benkler also points out that exponentially more people own and have access to the “material requirements for effective information production and communication.” (Benkler, 2006)
As a result, digital technology has become so engrained in everyday life, so much so that it has become “inextricable from mainstream social needs and conventions.” (Varnelis, 2008) Just as the ‘spectacle of the television’ was inseparable from post-modernity, this shift socio-cultural shift is characterized by a contemporary culture intrinsically linked with “maturing digital and networking technologies.” (Varnelis, 2008) The resulting “network culture,” is not “limited to technological developments or to new media” but extends to the realm of fine art, which itself is becoming ‘networked’ art via the increasing number of online museums, galleries, virtual tours of art institutions and production of digital art. (Varnelis, 2008) However, where post-modernity created a dialogue between high and low culture by injecting cultural products into fine art (as seen through works by Barbara Kruger, Jeff Koons and early on, Andy Warhol), networked art takes this act one step further by breaking down the distinction between the two. And in the case of digital art, where digital media and communications technologies are the medium, it becomes difficult to categorize cultural productions in terms of either ‘media’ or ‘art.’ The witty nature of such products, which are present in both galleries and advertisements alike, add credence to Alan Liu’s suggestion that “whether a cultural artifact is cool or not matters more than its status in high and low.” (Varnelis, 2008)
As harvesters of cool and curators of the hyperreal, networked cultural production habitually draws on reality, from reality television to blogs to MySpace to YouTube to the art gallery to create products that are marketable. The result is that art produced in the networked culture has a heightened sense of immediacy, which feels more mediated, and less authentic. Even reality television is scripted, while audiences continue to flirt suspension of disbelief in order to maintain that what they are viewing is in fact real. The ‘reality’ of what they are viewing is often connected with an amateur production and viewer empathy or amazement. Today’s audiences do not want to feel they are receiving messages from ‘the powers that be’ they like to believe they are generating the messages. And in many ways, this is true. Even Google has changed their algorithms to prioritize content that is ‘culturally relevant.’
While many like to claim this is the ‘democratization’ of media, a more apt term is ‘post media condition’ (or ‘post-media’ as is said in the New Media Art world), a concept initially used in contemporary art criticism, but which has found recently spawned several meanings. (Quaranta, 2011) The phrase was first introduced in the writing of Félix Guattari (Soft Subversions, in 1996, prior to the mass adoption of the internet) and intended to reflect upon the revised role of media, as a tool of dissent, and one that will forever change the relationship between the producer and consumer. (Quaranta, 2011) The term was later picked up by José Luis Brea, who used it to “map out the network communities and networking practices deployed by the new “media producers” to illustrate the ways in which mass media was being used as a tool in grass-roots cultural movements. In 1999, Rosalind Krauss turned the phrase to ‘post-medium’ condition in observation of the “decline of the Greenberghian concept of medium-specificity.” (Quaranta, 2011) However it is used, post media accurately describes the landscape in which today’s networked culture lives and flourishes; where boundaries--between media and reality, high and low culture, producers and consumers—are abolished.
Therefore, it is important for organizations who desire to be modern, influential and relevant to consumers, to dissolve traditional silos and become more fluid, accessible and technologically advanced. In this ideal, post-modern state, the time and space compression, as well as the variety and frequency of communication, can be dizzying--especially to generations who have not matured with digital technologies as part of their everyday lives. However, for “digital natives”—a term which describes the generation who has never experienced life without computers (Quaranta, 2011)— this could help explain why social networks and online communities built around common interests are thriving: it is our need for a sense of community that makes the creation of a ‘third place’ necessary in today’s media landscape.
Oldenburg described the ‘third place’ as being “important for civil society, democracy, civic engagement, and establishing deep feelings of community.” (Oldenburg, 1989) More than a meeting place, it is the space created for the “acknowledged social need for, and the deliberate pursuit of, a sense of place.” (Oldenburg, 1989) In this vein, the third place retains what is valuable in the ‘mouseion’ (or physical place for inspiration and learning), and adds what is practical in the virtual world, to create a unique, hybrid space where the museum can service the public in multiple capacities. Social media contributes to the creation of this environment by connecting two worlds: online (via the museums’ website and auxiliary sites and services) and offline; on museum grounds and in the surrounding community.
