Guaconics: a new field for socioeconomic study

I seriously doubt that this term existed before it came to me while I was half asleep this morning. I have no clue if anyone has started focusing on research in this area, although I have read articles in The Atlantic which directly impinge upon it.

Guaconics is the study of the socioeconomic interrelationships of Internet Access and Social Media. Short for Group Union Access, it studies the impact of 1) How you standardly access the Internet (do you own access to the Internet, or utilize access points such as the public library? If you own your access methods, do you predominently access using mobile computing, or a desktop/laptop? Within those, which OS family do you predominently belong to, iOS, Android, OS X, Windows, Linux? What browser do you utilize the most?) 2) which Social Media providers do you have accounts with, and within that, which ones you are most active on? 3) If you have a Blog, which provider is it with? 4) Which Information Aggregators do you utilize? 5) Which Original Article publishers do you most rely upon? 6) Which Satire sites do you frequent, and do you realize they are satire? When you see something shared from a Satire site, do you recognize that it's satire, or do you think it's factual? 7) Do you check the sources of information you come across on the Internet as to whether they are impartial, or if they are putting an ideological spin into the information they provide? Do you access the sources for the information they provide, to see if they are providing a valid interpretation of the source documents? Do you investigate the validity of the source documents?

What got me started thinking about this was 1) An article in The Atlantic which discussed the impact Facebooks like/share algorithms which determine what shows up in your feed had upon the 2016 Presidential Election, 2) theSkimm only providing access to their added content via an iOS app and The Week only providing an iOS digital subscription option, and Instagram only providing full functionality to mobile users; you can't post pictures or download pictures from a desktop, only from mobile platforms.

I'm a late joiner, when it comes to Social Media. I just tried to determine when I joined Facebook, and found that this wasn't information they provided as part of your account information, but I know it was after I moved to Tacoma, WA in 2012; I only joined Twitter this year. I started this Blog in 2008, but after an initial period of high activity, for a great many years I posted little or nothing at all; Blogger is a less useful platform for Blogging than some of the competitors, such as Wordpress, but I'm reluctant to change platforms. I came late to cellphones, first obtaining one in the 2001, when I transfered my father's cellphone account to my name, and didn't get a smartphone until a couple of years ago, when I was forced to upgrade my existing phone because its communication interface was no longer supported, and saw that I could get an Android smartphone contract for only $5.00/month more than a non-smartphone. To date, I've gone online via my smartphone less than five times, and those were all cases where I was blocked from accessing the Internet via my Windows 10 Desktop, and needed to contact Microsoft Support. Yes, I'm an aberation within modern society. That was already clear, since I've only posted one picture of a cat on social media; the number of cat pictures I just saw while looking through Instagram was significant, from many different sources. I installed iTunes this year, and have yet to add anything to it.

Anyway. The article in The Atlantic made me aware of something I'd been peripheraly aware of, but it hadn't really sunk in. There are a number of Facebook friends where many posts show in my feed, and a number where I no longer see any posts. I'd just assumed it indicated that, like myself, they didn't post that often. Not so. Your Facebook feed is filtered based upon what you like/share, to increase the number of like/shares; this ties in with Facebook's revenue source, as it allows for closely targetted advertising. So Facebook does this purely from a revenue generating perspective, and hadn't really considered what impact it had upon people interacting with people of differing viewpoints, and how people access information sources. Neither, really, had anyone else, until the aftermath of the 2016 Presidential Election Campaign, trying to determine how the Left had so misjudged what the results would be.

[Now we move away from Guaconics, to commentary on our current society. As usual, I can't stay on track to save my life.]

Not entirely true, as it becomes clear that certain Conservative PACs had looked into this, and had seen just how much it could multiply the impact of their advertising expenses; they could zero in on those most likely to respond positively to their message, while keeping their opposition completely in the dark about the fact that they were doing any advertising at all. Not to say that the Left wasn't doing the very same thing, but nowhere near as well; the Left is nowhere near as unified as the Right, it appears.

All segments of the Left seem to have something in common, the belief that you can effect social change through legislation; it is true that you can change how people behave in public based upon fear of punishment, but that is coercion, not a change in how they really view the world; anyway, while all segments of the Left share this belief, they are fragmented as to which of the social changes they would cause via legislation is the most important.

The Right, although having some disparate philosophies and ideologies of their own, is united in their viewing social change forced by legislation as infringing upon their personal liberties guaranteed under the Constitution, and was able to unite behind a candidate who promised to repeal as many regulations as possible; that there might be real negative impacts upon them as a result wasn't as important as that the legislation had been enacted without their consent; the Left focuses on the negative results of unrestricted personal liberties, in that an individual's freely made actions can negatively impact others, while the Right focuses on not wanting their actions restricted any more than absolutely necessary for the functioning of a society.

This is not to say that there aren't those who are grouped within the Right who wouldn't legislate social change themselves if they had the power to do so, in regard to enacting legislation to institutionalize things based upon their own strongly held beliefs, they just don't view legislation based upon their interpretations of Holy Scripture as limiting individuals personal liberties guaranteed under the Constitution, as God's Laws supercede Man's Laws.

Both sides are blind to the irony of it's being acceptable to enact legislation forcing others to act outwardly in accordance with their own beliefs while resisting legislation that would force them to outwardly act in accordance with someone else's beliefs.

And, there are those who would deny being part of the Right, who support their legislative actions to repeal regulations because they oppose regulations in general, as an unConstitutional restriction of personal liberties, but oppose legislation by the Right to enact regulations, for that very same reason. They don't want anyone enacting regulations to restrict freedom of choice, that would impose other's beliefs upon anyone. They have a far rosier view of human nature than I have, in regard to the society they believe this would result in; I've read some Libertarian SF, and it flatly contradicts the historical record of what life was like prior to the regulations they oppose being enacted.

Which gets to where I stand in regard to these issues. Which is to say, with none of these groups, while in some ways with all of them.

I will not argue as to whether anyone has the right to impose their beliefs upon others. I will merely state that any examination of the history of our species shows that once you get a group of any appreciable size someone ends up being in charge, given dominance by those who support that individual's agenda. Many different methods of selecting the individual(s) in charge have been tried, with varying results as to their competency. The period of time a given individual is supposed to be in charge has varied, from a few scant months to life appointments. In all cases the individual purportedly in charge has only remained in that position so long as they have had the tacit approval of the populace as a whole, and the active support of the economic leaders and the civil/military law enforcement structures; while it helps to have the support of the various political organizations, given the active support of the economic magnates and the armed forces, that can be despensed with. Tacit approval of the populace as a whole translates into their not being in armed revolt; other resistance is ultimately futile given the support of the Captains of Industry (or their period equivalents) and the Armed Forces, and given solid enough backing by the military, even the Captains of Industry can be dispensed with. I admit this is a very dark perspective on our history, but I also believe it is accurate. It is a reality that only those interested in having power over others will seek to attain a position which gives them power over others; no one aspires to management who doesn't desire the authority to see that things are done the way they think they should be done. The greater the amount of authority required to implement their vision of how they think things should be, the higher in the power structure they will seek to be. This applies equally to those whose vision is simply that they want to be the one giving all the orders, as to those who have a grand vision of how society should be structured for the benefit of all of its constituents; they all have a vision of how things should be that requires them to obtain a position of dominance to effect. As a result, power over others accrues to those who seek to have power over others, and can obtain the support of the established apparatus for selecting those in positions of authority; a military backed coup is an established method of selecting those in a position of authority, and is probably more faithful to the origins of civilized society than anyone is comfortable acknowledgeing. It definately is a more accurate description of the founding of the United States of America than you will find in the history books; it speaks very highly of the leadership of the American Revolutionary forces that they actively sought to establish a system of checks and balances upon themselves and their successors to prevent the development of a situation such as they had found themselves in, where there was sufficient popular support for the armed overthrow of the established government that it was successfully attempted. As it was, their original vision was nowhere near so broad as has been attributed to them in the years following. Yes, they established an elected representative leadership; read up on who initially was granted the franchise, and they won't seem quite so enlightened as they are made to appear. Trust me on this (DON"T! DO go read up on this!), if those same criteria were in place today, adjusted to reflect inflation, the vast majority of the current electorate would not be enfranchised.

On military support for those at the top of the structure. So long as the military is composed of a representave sampling of the population as a whole, it is unlikely to support the violent suppression of established civil liberties, if those civil liberties have the support of the population as a whole. If it ever comes to pass that the military is composed primarily of the adherents of one faction within society, it will become amenable to suppressing the civil liberties of those that faction disagrees with. This, in and itself, is an argument for a universal draft of all elegable citizens to serve time within the military. An all volunteer military is much more amenable to the long term cooption of its leadership positions by members of one faction than a military constituted upon universal conscription; while it can, and has, been accomplished in both situations, it is much more difficult to do with universal conscription, provided there is a means for promotion from the lowest ranks to the highest, such that it doesn't develope an effective caste system, where upper leadership is drawn from a pool that preselects for a desire to be in a position of military leadership and can afford the cost of attending a military academy. This is not to deny that service families have been the backbone of every military within the history of our race, but where you have service families, their values can, and most likely will, diverge from those of mainstream society; really, they have, or there wouldn't be distinct service families as opposed to the rest of the citizenry; just how those values differ from the majority populace is a crucial datum regarding their willingness to cooperate with an overthrow of the established civil authority, either by cooperating with those at the top not stepping down when they are supposed to, or assisting someone else in supplanting those currently at the top. Universal conscription is also a more effective method of exposing your citizenry to those of different economic, eductional, and cultural groups than any other, provided that military units are not comprised of heterogenous groups. By having your citizens serve alongside a representative sampling of the population as a whole they are given an exposure to those outside of their self-selecting socioeconomic polity, with, hopefully, beneficial results in regard to how they judge those members of the other socioeconomic sectors of society at large; of course, they may just have their pre-existing beliefs confirmed, but at least then they'll have some solid basis for their beliefs based upon personal experience in a semi-level playing field. At the very least, it should show them that there are hard workers and slackards within all segments of society. And it has to stick in the craw of those who volunteer for military service, for whatever reason, the disdain for this service expressed by a significant number in the liberal left. While it is very arguable that a significant percentage of the military actions we've been involved in since the Second World War didn't turn out all that well, that is not, ultimately, attributable to the military, but to their civilian overseers. The rules of engagement forced upon them, the sub-contracting to private firms things that should have been left to the military, the various constraints upon their actions that were purely political rather than operationally necessary. Changes to military hardware dictated by the economic benefit to a given Congressman's home district rather than what represents the best value in actual conflict. You do the best that you can, but it's hard to win a three legged race when you don't have a partner and you're an amputee.

On preferential treatment as a means of righting past socioeconomic wrongs. It will only be successful to the extent that those individuals who are the recipients of that preferential treatment demonstrate that they can do the job. Case in point, speaking from my personal experience with the negative results of preferential treatment established for this purpose. When I worked at the Chicago Public Library, the actual process of ordering the items to be purchased for our collections was outsourced; in other words, we still made all the decisions in regard to what was to be ordered, but teh actual process of contacting teh various publishers and book jobbers to order, tack, and pay for the items once received, was outsourced. When the Chicago City Council approved doing this, they added the stipulation that it had to be contracted to a minority-owned business within Chicago. Well, there weren't any minority-owned businesses within Chicago with experience in this area, and the firm that got the bid, we never successfully ordered a single item via them; this was in the 1990s, the Internet was in its infancy. They didn't answer the telephone number we were given to contact them, they didn't respond to our written letters. So, we relied upon the fall-back policy that thankfully had been approved; after three attempts on different days to contact them, we could go ahead and process the order ourselves. This is probably one of the worst examples that could be provided of the negative aspects of preferential treatment, in that someone who proved themselves unable to do the job was given the job purely because of legislated social engineering. If they prove themselves capable of fulfilling the requirements of the job on a day to day basis, I have no problems with preferential treatment as a route to eliminating the impact of past discrimination. Speaking purely as a manager, I'd prefer to get the applicant who will do the best job possible out of those applying for a given position, but so long as they discharge the listed job responsibilities, I'll go along with preferential treatment as a a method of helping people out of an economic situation forced upon their ancestors, where it negatively impacted their ability to get the background necessary to do the job; given the discrimination my father experienced, and in his case it was based upon his having his right leg amputated below the knee, I recognize the reality of what discrimination can do; dad was refused a promotion, and then requested to train the individual who got the job because he was the best qualified individual to train him in the responsibilities of the job, based upon the fact that he was an amputee. They said so to his face. It was an accounting firm. How does his missing the lower part of a leg impact his ability to do accounting, or to supervise others? Obviously it didn't, since they wanted him to train the individual who got the job. This was in the 1950s, the ADA would have prevented them from being that open about why they made their decision today; it still happens, but they have to be much more subtle about it. Dad wasn't having any of it, he quit then and there. Fortunately, there was a market for experienced accountants at the time, so he wasn't unemployed for long. What drove dad to where he quit wasn't that someone else got the job, but that a less qualified person got the job based upon non-rational discrimination, and they acknowledged that this was the case to his face, and then added insult to injury by asking him to train the person who actually got the job. My expereince, and my father's experience, is why my support for preferential treatment as social engineering has the caveat that they still have to be capable of doing the job; it does no one any good to be hired over someone else and then end up being fired because you can't actually fulfill the responsibilities of the position, and I have to say, again speaking as a former manager, that it's a lot harder to fire someone from within a group being granted preferential treatment than it is to fire someone not in such a group, because of the level of documentation required to withstand charges of discrimination; it's not enough to document that the specific individual isn't doing the job, you have to document how everyone in equivalent positions is doing to show that, in fact, they are the one doing the poorest job of all, and that it falls below the minimum acceptable performance levels, and that no one who is being retained falls below those levels; in an ideal world this level of documentation would exist as a matter of course, but the reality is that no one can afford the time and effort involved, no one is staffed at that level. I've seen it succesfully done once, at the Chicago Public Library. In that case it had a positive impact upon another worker who had been hired for similer reasons, but who was discharging his responsibilities in good order; his self-esteem went way up, because he truly internalized that if he wasn't doing the job, he'd have been fired; seeing this other chap get fired for not doing his job was the beginning of an incredible change as he realized that he really was valued for what he was doing, and he started actively improving a lot of things in his life. It was amazing to watch. It's been twenty years since I've had any contact with him, and I've forgotten his last name, but it's stuck in my mind how his realizing that he'd held onto his job through merit really turned his world view around. Which does point out the major problem with preferential treatment, no matter who is getting that preferential treatment, how the nagging question of if you really measure up has to wear at those who know they have received it and aren't sure they are truly worthy of the position they hold must be; of course, in general, the only ones that's going to bother are those who do measure up in the truly important things.

The other thing that impacts my feelings on the above matter is this. I'm a retired librarian. I'm a white male. For a very long time, in libraries, you had a greater number of female librarians than male librarians, yet the Library Director was always male. And he might not even have an MLS. Case in point, again at the Chicago Public Library, there was an individual who the City Powers That Be wanted as Library Director, who didn't have an MLS. Now, this wasn't going to fly, because Illinois State Law requires Public Library Directors have an MLS. So they hired someone else as Library Director, and created an assistant position for the guy they really wanted in the job, and gave him all the actual responsibilities; needless to say, paying for two top administrative positions rather than one loused up the Library budget big time. The guy was an ass. He didn't have the background for the job, and really fucked things up. I'm not going to name him, anyone really interested can do the research and find out. I will name his immediate successor, because she's now the Librarian of Congress, and did an absolutely bangup job during the time she was in charge at CPL; it was only for a couple of years, then she moved on to bigger and better things, but Carla Hayden is one sharp cookie, who impressed the hell out of me. She's the first female Librarian of Congress. She's the first African-American Librarian of Congress. She's the first Librarian of Congress in over sixty years to actually come from a background of working in libraries. Those of us who have had the experience of working for her, however indirectly (hey, I was an L2, which is the lowest supervisory Librarian position at CPL, I never had any direct interaction with her) are very, very pleased at this, because we all think she's done a great job. And if you look into her background, she's worked her way from being a front line Children's Librarian to where she is now on merit; while there may have been some preference at times, she always excelled at the job once she had it. Yes, she was appointed while Barack Obama was President, and she is friends with the Obama's, but she was also best qualified for the job amongst those being considered. Major caveat, she was able to do all of it on merit because her parents were well to do and she could afford to go to the good universities. So in her case, all being part of a "preference" group did was wipe out discrimination due to her being female and Black; once given a level playing field, she did it all on her own abilities. Which, ideally, is what preferential consideration as part of social engineering is supposed to do; give people the opportunity to show they've got what it takes while attempting to undo the impact of generations of deliberate discrimination, which, when it works, helps to prove that it was indeed discrimination rather than the discriminated upon group's innate lack of ability in that field, since, when given the chance, they got the job done.

Oy. I've been working on this for hours. As usual, it has wandered very far astray from where I started.