Deliberativeness

I have noticed my own difficulties in maintaining the mindset that Free Labor had so wisely suggested we assume at the beginning of the semester: one in which I try to understand what ideas each author genuinely has to contribute, rather than jumping right in to critique and problematize everything each author asserts.

I have had to remind myself of this mindset advice especially frequently with the Jenkins reading. Perhaps these efforts will be useful for my final paper, which is on self-surveillance and mental self-disciplining.

I am impressed by the parallels and intersections in the descriptions of the (digital) world offered by Jenkins in Convergence and by Stahl in his "gametime" construction. Trying hard to maintain my Zen-like non-judgmental mental control, I could say that Jenkins and Stahl see much of the same empirical data and draw very different conclusions about its potential long-range outcomes. Jenkins appears not to buy (capitalist pun) the Stahlist assertion that immersion in the digital world significantly deactivates deliberative capacities. Could it be that one of the characteristics that Jenkins wants to attribute to the collective intelligence evidenced by ad hoc "knowledge communities" (57) is a sort of deliberative effect that is greater than the deliberativeness of any of its individual (somewhat overwhelmed and non-deliberative) players?

It is interesting to note here the two distinct meanings of "deliberate" associated with its two distinct pronunciations: "to think about issues and decisions carefully" and "slow, unhurried, and steady." Jenkins may believe that the group process of knowledge communities can link these two meanings, even if each of the individual participants cannot.

I think Jenkins is likely to be wrong in this belief, and that the belief itself could serve to blunt useful critiques of communicative capitalism. Okay, maybe the whole purpose of the belief is to deflect critiques of communicative capitalism. Away goes the Zen mindset again! I would like to think that Jenkins could be proven false empirically if the investigation could be framed and conducted with enough deliberateness.