Digital technology, digital culture and the metric/nonmetric distinction
Introduction
Karl Marx was keen on criticizing the political economy of his day as part of his project to understand capitalism, or the new material and social conditions that were emerging at that time. In this article, I replicate Marx's strategy when looking at the digital transformation of society currently taking place. The goal is not so much to deny that society is undergoing a transformation following the rise and diffusion of digital technologies, but to reframe the way this transformation is being presented and interpreted. To reframe: literally, to frame again, to frame one more time, because it turns out that the way this transformation is already presented and interpreted (already framed) is very much intertwined in the same transformation – just like the political economy of Marx's times was part of the economic system that he wanted to analyse, so that it stood as an epistemological obstacle on his path.
The text is divided in three sections. I begin by distinguishing between digital technologies and digital culture to avoid technological determinism. Digital technologies are prevalent today thanks to the diffusion of a digital culture integrating them into a meaningful way of life. I define this culture by referring to Manuel Castells' works. Above all, it celebrates networks for (purportedly) allowing individuals to escape from bureaucratic structures and achieve freedom for themselves. Yet digital culture makes for an impoverished sociological imagination since everything is re-envisioned exclusively on a human scale and in a human format.
In the next section, I develop a twofold critique of digital culture. On one side, I use Mary Douglas's grid-group cultural theory to portray digital culture in terms of markets (as social form) and individualism (as cultural mindset). I then oppose digital culture with the other forms and mindsets identified by Douglas, hence bringing back what digital culture left aside. On the other side, I list five phenomena or possible occurrences that digital culture makes difficult, if not impossible, to conceive at all.
In the last section, I re-examine digital culture in light of two distinctions: medium/form and metric/nonmetric. This allows me to improve on Douglas' theory by stressing how different forms coexist side-by-side at any moment in time. Social forms correspond to recognizable patterns emerging in a crowd of individuals functioning as a medium of communication. Markets and individualism (associated with digital culture) are described as nonmetric forms inasmuch as they divide the whole crowd into distinct groups like as many topological zones. All along, the medium simultaneously harbors metric forms or flows fed by a turnover of individuals. While groups project an identity on individuals as insiders or outsiders, flows remain anonymous for the individuals feeding them need not to return to feed them again. Finally, this new model allows me to reinstate the phenomena or possible occurrences neglected by digital culture.
Overall, this article promotes zooming-out approach in place of a zooming-in one. The zooming-in approach aims at isolating the research object for analytical purposes. Yet, if the object is not so isolated in practice, it seems more reasonable to reaffirm or sustain these interdependencies in the analysis. Accordingly, a zooming-out approach consists in examining a research object by stepping away from it. The objective is to reconstitute a conceptual space where the object reappears as one element within a wider set of possibilities. We can then formulate an explanation (a tentative one, at least) for that one element by underscoring the rules prevailing throughout the entire set.
Section snippets
Defining digital culture
To talk about the digital transformation of society, I invoke the notion of a digital culture. The latter is modeled after the idea of car culture. After we have invented cars, we have reorganized the rest of society around them. Buying and owning a car has become a normal expectation for most of us, as well as driving one's car to go to work and to run errands. Commercial lots must include parking spaces and it is taken as granted that political authorities will keep on investing in road
Disrupting digital culture
Producing a sketch of digital culture (however tentative, however partial) is not enough for my project to move forward. The objective is to induce an epistemological break-up with digital culture by recalling what the latter actively leaves out. To take this next step, we must criticise Manuel Castells' interpretation for being too dichotomizing. Castells is not wrong in presenting networks in opposition with bureaucracies – their respective structural properties are simply not the same – but
Reframing digital culture, reclaiming social theory
Dismissing digital culture altogether would be a mistake: after all, it is a culture in its own right and as such, it awaits an explanation from social scientists. Instead we have to pursue a double strategy: uncovering the processes behind digital culture that account for its emergence on one side as well as for the emergence of alternative structures on the other side. While we have to conceive digital culture as a legitimate social phenomenon, we must seek to explain it in a way that
Conclusion
The digital transformation of society is certainly an important trend today, but I claim that understanding this phenomenon in its own term would only mislead us. We can gain more critical distance by distinguishing digital technologies and digital culture and by deconstructing the latter. Digital culture is real albeit merely as one possibility among many others. Making this point gave me the opportunity to deploy two new conceptual distinction: medium/form and metric/nonmetric. In the end,
Jean-Sébastien Guy is assistant professor in the department of sociology and social anthropology at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada. He has previously published in Current Sociology, Current Perspectives in Social Theory, European Journal of Social Theory and International Review of Sociology. He is currently writing a book on the distinction between metric and nonmetric in sociology.
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Jean-Sébastien Guy is assistant professor in the department of sociology and social anthropology at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada. He has previously published in Current Sociology, Current Perspectives in Social Theory, European Journal of Social Theory and International Review of Sociology. He is currently writing a book on the distinction between metric and nonmetric in sociology.