Abstract: This article examines the concept of self from the perspective of the self as manifest and reflected in consumption decisions. Within the consumer behaviour literature there is general acceptance for a high degree of autonomy in individuals' self-related consumption decisions. The assumption is that we can choose the type of person we want to be, and purchase, within income limits, the appropriate "props" to assist in achieving our goal. I argue that this view is simplistic and fails to appreciate the extent to which culture influences individuals' perceptions of the desirability of different "ways to be" and the objects that are considered appropriate to communicate specific personal attributes. The self-concept and consumption According to psychologists, individuals understand their self-concepts on the basis of observations of their own behaviours, as well as the reactions of others to these behaviours. If the self is viewed in terms of what actions are performed by the individual, consumption behaviours in modern consumer economies should be instrumental in the development and expression of the self-concept (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton). In the discipline of consumer behaviour, people are thought to derive their sense of self at least partially from the goods and services they consume. Through the consumption of the symbols contained in products, consumers attempt to enhance their self-concepts by using products to communicate particular personal characteristics to themselves and others. Consumption is thus argued to operate as an effective means of communicating identity and positioning oneself relative to others. Not just single products but constellations of products are required to effectively communicate this information to others (Solomon and Englis). Anthropologists recognise that every culture-member is both a source and a subject of judgements made according to object ownership. They also note the fracturing of social systems that have traditionally been considered suppliers of self-definition. These systems include family, religious, and community relationships, and their loss of influence allows greater individual control over self-concept formation and communication. As societies come to operate on a larger scale, the growing anonymity and diversification of duties result in identities being increasingly inferred from the ownership of symbolic possessions, rather than reliance on personal familiarity. In such an environment, stereotyping according to consumption is the norm. Stereotyping can be seen as a mechanism by which we can select between symbolic options to construct desirable versions of our selves. Advertising exists to inform us of the range of products and associated "selves" available, and thus provides a valuable service in our ongoing efforts to develop appropriate or desirable selves. In this sense the use of objects in the construction and maintenance of the self-concept is seen as a conscious, controllable process in which consumers engage to maximise their satisfaction (Ger). Consumers shop for a self-identity just as they would shop for a consumer good, and there is an assumed intentionality in their actions that stems from a conscious thought process. Another way of interpreting the relationship between the self and consumption is that communication of the self via consumption is not an optional activity, but one that is necessary for social survival. And not just one self, but multiple selves must be constructed and maintained for each of the different roles we play in life (Firat 1995). Some have suggested that an outcome of this need to exhibit multiple selves may be individuals who are alienated from themselves due to the discomfort of being unable to identify their own core selves (Havel; Ogilvy). Awareness of the stereotyping activities of others forces consumers into defensive modes of consumption that are designed to protect them from unwanted judgements. Self-representation via consumption thus requires planning and organisation, as opposed to being an optional pastime in which consumers can participate if they so desire. According to some analysts, this concern with presenting a desired image via consumption is actively encouraged as it is a source of ongoing consumption (Droge, Calantone, Agrawal, and Mackoy; Kilbourne, McDonagh, and Prothero). The close relationship between the self and consumption is seen as a necessary by-product of the need for high levels of consumption in capitalist markets (Murphy and Miller; Miller). Compelled into consumption designed to manage their images to others, consumers are not free to consume any products in any combinations, as such behaviour is unlikely to achieve the image outcomes they have been conditioned to desire. In order to communicate the appropriate self in a given situation, consumers must acquire specific products and consume them in specific ways. The power of choice of the individual in this scenario is more perceived than real, and this may leave consumers more susceptible to advertising and other forms of marketing communications than is currently acknowledged. The media can widely disseminate versions of social reality that consumers absorb as part of their understanding of their world (Davis 1997). For example, appropriate consumption patterns for individuals from different age, gender, and social class categories are specifically communicated in advertising messages (Holbrook and Hirschman). The role of culture The self as reflected in individuals' consumption decisions is culturally influenced in that different cultures and subcultures incorporate different objects into their sense of self (Belk). The relationship between the self and culture is reflected in the term "cultural anchoring", a term that describes the process by which certain products become part of an individual's self-concept (LaTour and Roberts). The self develops to operate within a culture, and in doing so reinforces that culture (Cushman). Consumers are conditioned to develop self-concepts that are appropriate to their age, gender, and social groupings (Levy). They feel compelled to fulfil the requirements of these classifications, usually accepting the role assigned to them by their culture (Firat 1991). Roles are culturally connected to a range of consumer goods that are considered crucial to the "correct" performance of the role, and culture is the force that specifically provides the associations between objects and social roles (Solomon). As described by Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton: "Thus, by a process whose beautiful inevitability recalls that of a cell duplicating and differentiating itself into a complex organism, the self through its own seemingly autonomous choices replicates the order of its culture and so becomes a part of that order and a means for its further replication." (105) The inherent nature of this drive to conform to societal expectations remains unapparent to consumers, allowing them the perception of free choice rather than coercion. In fact, the perception of free choice is of critical importance to the continuation of the prevailing system. But how is it that individuals do not appreciate the extent to which their efforts at self-development through consumption are culturally driven? Consumer researchers argue that people wish to feel unique in consumption, thus supposedly selecting objects that are somehow special or unique. Paradoxically, the objects selected are often mass-produced products and are thus common to many other consumers. The argument is that these products in their sameness can perform the valued function of communicating social integration, while permitting some degree of individuality in their combination. Fiske, Hodge, and Turner give the case of the ubiquitous T-shirt, explaining how this product simultaneously provides a mechanism for communicating group membership and individual difference. The generic form of the T-shirt symbolises conformity, while the vast range of T-shirt designs allows personal differentiation. To some, consumers' beliefs in their individuality are legitimate as small differences in product combinations are considered to be adequate to claim uniqueness. Another interpretation, however, is that such beliefs are a form of self-delusion, as small differences only camouflage the over-riding similarity between the consumption patterns of individuals. To conclude, consumption is used extensively in self-concept construction and maintenance in modern consumer economies. What is not always recognised is that the nature of the self-concept that is desired and the parameters for product usage to achieve the desired self-concept are highly specified by the cultural environment. The implication of this is that individuals are highly dependent on consumption for communication of their selves, to the point that the concept of the autonomous consumer who is free to choose between a multitude of product options can be viewed as a modern myth. References Belk, R. W. "Extended Self and Extending Paradigmatic Perspective" Journal of Consumer Research 16 (1989): 129-132. Csikszentmihalyi, M. and E. Rochberg-Halton. The Meaning of Things, Domestic Symbols and the Self. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Cushman, P. "Why the Self Is Empty" American Psychologist 45.5 (1990): 599-611. Davis, M. Gangland: Cultural Elites and the New Generationalism. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997. Droge, C., R. Calantone, M. Agrawal, and R. Mackoy. "The Strong Consumption Culture and its Critiques: A Framework for Analysis" Journal of Macromarketing 13.2 (1993): 32-45. Firat, A. F. "The Consumer in Postmodernity" Advances in Consumer Research 18 (1991): 70-75. ---. "Consumer Culture or Culture Consumed?" In Marketing in a Multicultural World J. A. Costa and G. J. Bamossy eds. California: Sage Publications (1995): 105-125. Fiske, J., B. Hodge, G. Turner. Myths of Oz. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1987. Ger, G. "Human Development and Humane Consumption: Well-Being Beyond the "Good Life"" Journal of Public Policy and Marketing 16.1 (1997): 110-125. Havel, V. "The Need for Tanscendence in the Post-Modern World" Journal for Quality and Participation 18.5 (1995): 26-29. Holbrook, M. B. and E. C. Hirschman. "The Experiential Aspects of Consumption: Consumer Fantasies, Feelings, and Fun" Journal of Consumer Research 9 (1982): 132-140. Kilbourne, W., P. McDonagh, and A. Prothero. "Sustainable Consumption and the Quality of Life: A Macromarketing Challenge to the Dominant Social Paradigm" Journal of Macromarketing 17.1 (1997): 4-24. LaTour, M. S. and S. D. Roberts. "Cultural Anchoring and Product Diffusion" The Journal of Consumer Marketing 9.4 (1992): 29-34. Levy, S. J. Meanings in Advertising Stimuli. Advertising and Consumer Psychology. J. Olson and K. Sentis eds. New York: Praeger. 3, 1986. Miller, D. Consumption and its Consequences. Consumption and Everyday Life. H. Mackay ed. London: Sage Publications, 1997. Murphy, P. L. and C. T. Miller. "Postdecisional Dissonance and the Commodified Self-Concept: A Cross-Cultural Examination" Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 23.1 (1997): 50-62. Ogilvy, J. "This Postmodern Business" Marketing and Research Today (February 1990). Solomon, M., R. and B. G. Englis. "Observations: The Big Picture: Product Complementarity and Integrated Communications" Journal of Advertising Research 34.1 (1994): 57-63. Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Pettigrew, Simone. "Consumption and the Self-Concept" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.5 (2002). [your date of access] 〈  http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Pettigrew.html  & gt. Chicago Style Pettigrew, Simone, "Consumption and the Self-Concept" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 5 (2002), 〈  http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Pettigrew.html  & gt ([your date of access]). APA Style Pettigrew, Simone. (2002) Consumption and the Self-Concept. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(5). 〈  http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Pettigrew.html  & gt ([your date of access]).

Abstract: "'Cogito ergo sum' is an insufficient measure of existence within Usenet. ... Without some sort of response beyond interior cogitation there is nothing to be perceived by other Usenet users." (MacKinnon 119) Much early research into computer-mediated communication (CMC) claimed that meaningful online interaction between individuals who didn't know each other 'in real life' was very unlikely, that online communities could never develop -- too restrictive seemed the medium, too lacking in extratextual cues to each participant's identity (like variations of the tone and style of one's language) to build relationships. Such views have been comprehensively refuted by now, of course: 'virtual community' has become one of the CMC researchers' favourite buzzwords, and it is widely accepted that the language of online interaction is rich with newly-invented cues that replace the body language and voice inflection changes that accompany oral communication -- smilies and acronyms are only the most immediately obvious of such tools. In any form of communication, we use these cues mainly to get our own identity across, and to uncover that of others -- beyond the actual content of the message, cues tell us how a speaker feels about what they're saying, whether they're sympathetic, angry, ironic, and more generally hint at a speaker's level of education, interest in the topic at hand, general state of mind, and much more. The different cue system of interaction on the Net may delay the communication of identity particularly for inexperienced users, but won't prevent it altogether -- the many closely-networked groups of participants on Usenet newsgroups are a strong testimony to that fact. The most celebrated benefit of online interaction is that we can now freely choose any identity we'd like to take on: leaving our 'meat', our bodily existence, behind as we 'jack in' to the network (to use William Gibson's terms), we can recreate ourselves in any shape or form we want. But to take on such identity is only half the story, and much like wearing extravagant clothes only in the privacy of one's own home -- on the Net, where merely physical existence is irrelevant, you have to show your identity to exist. Only if you participate will you truly be a part of the online community -- lurkers are nothing but insubstantial shadows of users whose potential for existence hasn't yet been realised. Like streams of subspace energy in Star Trek's transporter rooms, they haven't materialised yet, and only will with the creation of a newsgroup posting or Webpage, or any other form of communication. Even that is not the full story, though: just as oral communication requires at least a speaker and a listener, the presentation of an identity online also needs an audience. Again, too, the nature of the medium means that the presence of an audience can only be confirmed if that audience shows its presence in some way. "Without a visible response, a written statement remains isolated and apparently unperceived -- a persona's existence is neither generated nor substantiated", as MacKinnon writes (119). Disembodied as participants in discussion groups are, for their online identities to exist they depend crucially on an engagement in sufficiently meaningful communication, therefore -- this inevitable need to communicate thus is what makes online communities so strong, in comparison with similar offline groups where group members may simply refuse to communicate and still use this as a strong statement as to their identity. Online, those who choose to stand on the sidelines and sneer, as it were, don't really exist at all. This finding doesn't just apply to newsgroups and other discussion fora: Webpages similarly have little actual existence unless they are viewed -- much like Schrödinger's cat, they exist in a state of potentiality which can only be realised through access. Again, however, Web access doesn't usually leave any obvious traces -- the nature of the Internet as an electronic medium means that a site which has only been accessed once will look just the same as one that has had millions of hits. This is where the growing industry of Web counters and statistics servers comes in, services which offer anything from a mere count of accesses to a page to a detailed list of countries, domains, and referring pages the visitors came from. (And indeed, this very journal keeps track of its access statistics, too.) Descartes's physical-world premise of 'cogito ergo sum' isn't directly applicable to the online world, then. Merely to be able to think does not prove that you exist as an Internet participant; neither, as we have seen, does being able to write, or publish Web pages. As MacKinnon writes, the new credo for the information age has now become "I am perceived, therefore I am" (119) - videor ergo sum. Only this makes real the disembodied self-chosen identity which computer-mediated commu nication affords us. References Gibson, William. Neuromancer. London: HarperCollins, 1993. MacKinnon, Richard C. "Searching for the Leviathan in Usenet." CyberSociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. Ed Steven G. Jones. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1995. 112-37. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Axel Bruns. "Videor Ergo Sum: The Online Search for Disembodied Identity." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1.3 (1998). [your date of access] 〈 http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9810/videor.php 〉 . Chicago style: Axel Bruns, "Videor Ergo Sum: The Online Search for Disembodied Identity," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1, no. 3 (1998), 〈 http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9810/videor.php 〉 ([your date of access]). APA style: Axel Bruns. (1998) Videor ergo sum: the online search for disembodied identity. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1(3). 〈 http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9810/videor.php 〉 ([your date of access]).

Abstract: Invested capital demands growth. Growth is possible through the expansion of markets or through finding new products to sell, that is, by creating new markets. Thus, we have seen, over the last one hundred years, the commodification of more and more aspects of human life. However, what superficially looks like an ever increasing array of different products turns out to be, in essence, the commodification of just one human need, that is, the need for identity. Awareness of mind engenders the 'I/me' split. The 'I' is a knower, the 'me' is the known. The stuff that the 'me' is made of is discursive in nature. Stories are therefore the industrial engines of the identity economy and they are deployed all around us in print, in media, at work. As well they are encoded into material artifacts or into the social practices which are enacted via our access to identity services (be it travel, media, or latte). Most of us now work in the identity economy and indeed work out our identity in the process of helping others commodify theirs. Consider the following advertisement for Compaq computers. "A whole new Compaq what's in it for me and me and me and me and me and me... a lot. We're here to help you get the most out of computing, whether you use one PC or run a vast global enterprise network". Current deflation aside, the Internet may turn out to be the ultimate domain for commodification of human identity. Not only is any desire available to be vicariously satisfied at any time of the day (thus extending the market in time) but the domain of desire is global in its reach, thus rendering possible the vicarious experience of omniscience also. As the recent add for the Iridium network proclaimed, "Welcome to your new office, it measures 510,228,030 square kilometers" omniscience in a packet. The contributors to this issue of M/C dissect the work of identity in various ways. Common identities, shared by people within the same subcultures or national societies as such, are strengthened and maintained to a significant degree through shared, collective memories, as Patricia Leavy notes in her article which opens this issue and such "mass remembering" is "unconscious work necessary for the maintenance of social memory", she writes. Such collective memories are perpetuated largely through the media, and expanding on this thought Lelia Green explores the argument that consumption is indeed important work in a capitalist society. In our feature article for this issue, "The Work of Consumption Why Aren't We Paid?", she describes identity construction as "a major consumer project using raw materials provided by the mass media", but one which remains considered a voluntary activity. Marxian approaches to 'work' practically appear by themselves in dealing with such ideas. Warwick Mules aims to "open out Marx a little" by investigating the changed nature of the worker in early twenty-first century capitalism. The increasing interest in shares and stocks is only one sign of the fact that the surplus value produced during work is now often incorporated into the labour force itself; workers invest in their own lives and in the process become 'dividualised', motivated by a desire to become their future selves. Work time and free time blur in this pursuit. Frederick Wasser's article examines this point further by problematising the division between work and free leisure, especially in the light of convergent new media technologies which are used for both in equal measure. In the process, does the quality of our leisure time suffer as the opportunity, perhaps the reminder, to do some more work remains ever-present? And, in this dividualised, self-motivated workforce, what about those who value leisure over work? Andrew Butler uses the films of Kevin Smith to examine the effects of being a 'slacker' on one's own masculine identity. Characters in Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy appear to find it hard to escape from capitalist ideology, from the societal imperative to work: "the man without work is cast adrift, still in search of an identity". This is hardly a surprise, given the history of work ethics described in Sharon Beder's contribution to this issue beyond the protestant emphasis on work as a religious calling there rose a secular work ethic encouraging "ambition, hard work, self-reliance, and self-discipline" in the nineteenth century which Beder traces through a study of selected self-help texts and children's books of the time. And such work ethics continue to exist today, albeit in modified forms which link to the latest theories in business communication and cognitive psychology. Beyond the hokey new-age exercises which have been thrust upon workforces in the last decades, staff motivation does constitute a crucial factor in commercial success and effectiveness, and so, as Caroline Hatcher writes in her article, "emotion, and passion, as heightened emotion, have come to play a newly understood role in our work lives". Passions of a different kind, however, are evident in Jennifer Ellis-Newman's study which closes this issue. Investigating gender disparities in Australian universities, she found "subtle processes that continue to operate in some higher education institutions to prevent women from reaching their full potential" as academics, because of their perceived identity as women first, and academics second. This article shows that older problems do not vanish magically as we turn our attention towards new ones. How can these women help others their students establish and commodify their identity if their own identity as workers is thus continually undermined? In addition to this problem, the articles in this issue of M/C also question the nature of worker identity itself, and indeed the very nature of work and leisure at the beginning of this new century. Is there any bit of identity not engaged via the consumption of work and the work of consumption? As Gary Cross has extensively documented, the march of the work-and-spend ethic has been victorious over other community-oriented uses of leisure time for the last two centuries. Any account of commodification via the new media that ignores this tendency should take into account Cross's arguments that clearly document that "the task of creating conditions for personal and social expressions relatively unmediated by goods is hard work even if all insist that it should also be play" (112). References Cross, Gary. Time and Money: The Making of the Consumer Culture. New York: Routledge, 1993. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Bruns, Axel and Hearn, Greg. "Editorial" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 4.5 (2001). [your date of access] 〈 http://www.media-culture.org.au/0111/editorial1.xml 〉 . Chicago Style Bruns, Axel and Hearn, Greg, "Editorial" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 4, no. 5 (2001), 〈 http://www.media-culture.org.au/0111/editorial1.xml 〉 ([your date of access]). APA Style Bruns, Axel and Hearn, Greg. (2001) Editorial. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 4(5). 〈 http://www.media-culture.org.au/0111/editorial1.xml 〉 ([your date of access]).

Abstract: Since the re-branding of Free Software into Open Source in 1998, ‘open’ has become the buzzword for all things progressive on and off the Internet. In every domain, we find initiatives with an ‘open’ in their name: Open Law, Open Hardware, Open Culture, Open Publishing, Open Access or Open Archives are just some of the many concepts which are being retooled to serve the more or less defined public good in the Information Society. Yet despite this new-found openness to the ‘open’ there is very little critical discussion on the expansion of openness as a concept to many different contexts, ranging from the board rooms of global corporations such as IBM to the temporary media centers of the anti-globalization activists. On the level of political theory, the most important formulation of openness remains that of Karl Popper, published over half a century ago, in 1946. Popper had a very clear idea what makes a society ‘open’ – an institutional mechanism to detect, discuss, and rectify its own inevitable errors. The billionaire financier George Soros popularized Popper’s notion of the ‘open society’ in the late 20th century. A more common source of conceptual heft for validating open is the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, who juxtaposed the concept of a rhizomatic openness to the closure of branching and hierarchical structures. They were careful, however, to remind their readers that this was not a simple aesthetic or ethical choice. Yet, today the meaning of open’ is usually taken to be self-explanatory. In the same seemingly obvious way, ‘open’ always assumed to be a positive modifier, used indiscriminately and uncritically. With this issue of Media/Culture, we want to challenge the assumptions underlying the contemporary use of ‘open’ in technical, social and political discourse. Many of the seven essays in this issue take the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement as their point of reference but address questions of far more general nature. What is the impulse behind this sudden explosion of ‘openness’? What makes a community ‘open’? Is open really always better or does openness imply its own set of dangers and its own particular forms of exploitation? What are the aesthetics of openness? Together with the authors of the essays, we hope that this issue open m/c will start a more critical discussion of the concept of ‘openness’, so that we can assess its real potential without being sucked into yet another cycle of hype and disappointment. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Stalder, Felix & Wark, McKenzie. "Editorial: Open" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 〈 http://www.media-culture.org.au/0406/01_Editorial.php 〉 . APA Style Stalder, F. & Wark, M. (2004, Jul1). Editorial: Open. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 7, 〈 http://www.media-culture.org.au/0406/01_Editorial.php 〉

Abstract: As Earth heats up and water vapourises, “Adapt” is a word that is frequently invoked right now, in a world seething with change and challenge. Its Oxford English Dictionary definitions—“to fit, to make suitable; to alter so as to fit for a new use”—give little hint of the strangely divergent moral values associated with its use. There is, of course, the word’s unavoidable Darwinian connotations which, in spite of creationist controversy, communicate a cluster of positive values linked with progress. By contrast, the literary use of adapt is frequently linked with negative moral values. Even in our current “hyper-adaptive environment” (Rizzo)—in which a novel can become a theme park ride can become a film can become a computer game can become a novelisation—an adaptation is seen as a debasement of an original, inauthentic, inferior, parasitic (Hutcheon, 2-3). A starting point from which to explore the word’s “positive”—that is, evolutionary—use is the recently released Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change, which argues the necessity of adapting in order to survive. Indeed, an entire section is titled “Policy responses for adaptation,” outlining—among other things—“an economic framework for adaptation”; “barriers and constraints to adaptation”; and “how developing countries can adapt to climate change” (403). Although evolution is not directly mentioned, it is evoked through the review’s analysis of a dire situation which compels humans to change in response to their changing environment. Yet the mere existence of the review, and its enumeration of problems and solutions, suggests that human adaptive abilities are up to the task, drawing on positive traits such as resilience, flexibility, agility, innovation, creativity, progressiveness, appropriateness, and so on. These values, and their connection to the evolutionary use of “adapt”, infuse 21st-century life. “Adapt,” “evolution”, and that cluster of values are entwined so closely that recalling effort is required to remind oneself that “adapt” existed before evolutionary theory. And whether or not one accepts the premise of evolution—or even understands it beyond the level of reductive popular science—it provides an irresistible metaphor that underlies areas as diverse as education, business, organisational culture, politics, and law. For example, Judith Robinson’s article “Education as the Foundation of the New Economy” quotes Canada’s former deputy prime minister John Manley: “The future holds nothing but change. … Charles Darwin said, ‘It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change.’” Robinson adds: “Education is how we equip our people with the ability to adapt to change.” Further examples show “adapt” as a positive metaphor for government. A study into towns in rural Queensland discovered that while some towns “have reinvented themselves and are thriving,” others “that are not innovative or adaptable” are in decline (Plowman, Ashkanasy, Gardner and Letts, 8). The Queensland Government’s Smart State Strategy also refers to the desirability of adapting: “The pace of change in the world is now so rapid—and sometimes so unpredictable—that our best prospects for maintaining our lead lie in our agility, flexibility and adaptability.” The Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training, in setting national research priorities, identifies “An Environmentally Sustainable Australia” and in that context specifically mentions the need to adapt: “there needs to be an increased understanding of the contributions of human behaviour to environmental and climate change, and on [sic] appropriate adaptive responses and strategies.” In the corporate world, the Darwinian allusion is explicit in book titles such as Geoffrey Moore’s 2005 Dealing with Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of their Evolution: “Moore’s theme is innovation, which he sees as being necessary to the survival of business as a plant or animal adapting to changes in habitat” (Johnson). Within organisations, the metaphor is also useful, for instance in D. Keith Denton’s article, “What Darwin Can Teach Us about Success:” “In order to understand how to create and manage adaptability, we need to look first at how nature uses it. … Species that fail to adapt have only one option left.” That option is extinction, which is the fate of “over 99% of all species that have ever existed.” However, any understanding of “adapt” as wholly positive and forward-moving is too simplistic. It ignores, for example, aspects of adaptation that are dangerous to people (such as the way the avian influenza virus or simian AIDS can adapt so that humans can become their hosts). Bacteria rapidly adapt to antibiotics; insects rapidly adapt to pesticides. Furthermore, an organism that is exquisitely adapted to a specific niche becomes vulnerable with even a small disturbance in its environment. The high attrition rate of species is breathtakingly “wasteful” and points to the limitations of the evolutionary metaphor. Although corporations and education have embraced the image, it is unthinkable that any corporation or educational system would countenance either evolution’s tiny adaptive adjustments over a long period of time, or the high “failure” rate. Furthermore, evolution can only be considered “progress” if there is an ultimate goal towards which evolution is progressing: the anthropocentric viewpoint that holds that “the logical and inevitable endpoint of the evolutionary process is the human individual,” as Rizzo puts it. This suggests that the “positive” values connected with this notion of “adapt” are a form of self-congratulation among those who consider themselves the “survivors”. A hierarchy of evolution-thought places “agile,” “flexible” “adaptors” at the top, while at the bottom of the hierarchy are “stagnant,” “atrophied” “non-adaptors”. The “positive” values then form the basis for exclusionary prejudices directed at those human and non-human beings seen as being “lower” on the evolutionary scale. Here we have arrived at Social Darwinism, the Great-Chain-of-Being perspective, Manifest Destiny—all of which still justify many kinds of unjust treatment of humans, animals, and ecosystems. Literary or artistic meanings of “adapt”—although similarly based on hierarchical thinking (Shiloh)—are, as mentioned earlier, frequently laden with negative moral values. Directly contrasting with the evolutionary adaptation we have just discussed, value in literary adaptation is attached to “being first” rather than to the success of successors. Invidious dichotomies that actually reverse the moral polarity of Darwinian adaptation come into play: “authentic” versus “fake”, “original” versus “copy”, “strong” versus “weak”, “superior” versus “inferior”. But, as the authors collected in this issue demonstrate, the assignment of a moral value to evolutionary “adapt”, and another to literary “adapt”, is too simplistic. The film Adaptation (Spike Jonze, 2002)—discussed in three articles in this issue—deals with both these uses of the word, and provides the impetus to these authors’ explorations of possible connections and contrasts between them. Evidence of the pervasiveness of the concept is seen in the work of other writers, who explore the same issues in a range of cultural phenomena, such as graffiti, music sampling, a range of activities in and around the film industry, and several forms of identity formation. A common theme is the utter inadequacy of a single moral value being assigned to “adapt”. For example, McMerrin quotes Ghandi in her paper: “Adaptability is not imitation. It means power of resistance and assimilation.” Shiloh argues: “If all texts quote or embed fragments of earlier texts, the notion of an authoritative literary source, which the cinematic version should faithfully reproduce, is no longer valid.” Furnica, citing Rudolf Arnheim, points out that an adaptation “increases our understanding of the adapted work.” All of which suggests that the application of “adapt” to circumstances of culture and nature suggests an “infinite onion” both of adaptations and of the “core samples of difference” that are the inevitable corollary of this issue’s theme. To drill down into the products of culture, to peel back the “facts” of nature, is only ever to encounter additional and increasingly minute variations of the activity of “adapt”. One never hits the bottom of difference and adaptation. Still, why would you want to, when the stakes of “adapt” might be little different from the stakes of life itself? At least, this is the insight that the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze—in all its rhizomatic variations—seems constantly to be leading us towards: “Life” (capitalised) is a continual germination that feeds on a thousand tiny adaptations of open-ended desire and of a ceaselessly productive mode of difference. Besides everything else that they do, all of the articles in this issue participate—in one way or another—in this notion of “adapt” as a constant impetus towards new configurations of culture and of nature. They are the proof (if such proof were to be requested or required) that the “infinite onion” of adaptation and difference, while certainly a mise en abyme, is much more a positive “placing into infinity” than a negative “placing into the abyss.” Adaptation is nothing to be feared; stasis alone spells death. What this suggests, furthermore, is that a contemporary ethics of difference and alterity might not go far wrong if it were to adopt “adapt” as its signature experience. To be ever more sensitive to the subtle nuances, to the evanescences on the cusp of nothingness … of adaptation … is perhaps to place oneself at the leading edge of cultural activity, where the boundaries of self and other have, arguably, never been more fraught. Again, all of the contributors to this issue dive—“Alice-like”—down their own particular rabbit holes, in order to bring back to the surface something previously unthought or unrecognised. However, two recent trends in the sciences and humanities—or rather at the complex intersection of these disciplines—might serve as useful, generalised frameworks for the work on “adapt” that this issue pursues. The first of these is the upwelling of interest (contra Darwinism) in the theories of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829). For Lamarck, adaptation takes a deviation from the Darwinian view of Natural Selection. Lamarckism holds, in distinction from Darwin, that the characteristics acquired by individuals in the course of their (culturally produced) lifetimes can be transmitted down the generations. If your bandy-legged great-grandfather learnt to bend it like Beckham, for example, then Manchester United would do well to sign you up in the cradle. Lamarck’s ideas are an encouragement to gather up, for cultural purposes, ever more refined understandings of “adapt”. What this pro-Lamarckian movement also implies is a new “crossing-over point” of the natural/biological with the cultural/acquired. The second trend to be highlighted here, however, does more than merely imply such a refreshed configuration of nature and culture. Elizabeth Grosz’s recent work directly calls the bluff of the traditional Darwinian (not to mention Freudian) understanding of “biology as destiny”. In outline form, we propose that she does this by running together notions of biological difference (the male/female split) with the “ungrounded” difference of Deleuzean thinking and its derivatives. Adaptation thus shakes free, on Grosz’s reading, from the (Darwinian and Freudian) vestiges of biological determinism and becomes, rather, a productive mode of (cultural) difference. Grosz makes the further move of transporting such a “shaken and stirred” version of biological difference into the domains of artistic “excess”, on the basis that “excessive” display (as in the courting rituals of the male peacock) is fundamentally crucial to those Darwinian axioms centred on the survival of the species. By a long route, therefore, we are returned, through Grosz, to the interest in art and adaptation that has, for better or for worse, tended to dominate studies of “adapt”, and which this issue also touches upon. But Grosz returns us to art very differently, which points the way, perhaps, to as yet barely recognised new directions in the field of adaptation studies. We ask, then, where to from here? Responding to this question, we—the editors of this issue—are keen to build upon the groundswell of interest in 21st-century adaptation studies with an international conference, entitled “Adaptation & Application”, to be held on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia in early 2009. The “Application” part of this title reflects, among other things, the fact that our conference will be, perhaps uniquely, itself an example of “adapt”, to the extent that it will have two parallel but also interlocking strands: adaptation; application. Forward-thinking architects Arakawa and Gins have expressed an interest in being part of this event. (We also observe, in passing, that “application”, or “apply”, may be an excellent theme for a future issue of M/C Journal…) Those interested in knowing more about the “Adaptation and Application” conference may contact either of us on the email addresses given in our biographical notes. There are sev eral groups and individuals that deserve public acknowledgement here. Of course, we thank the authors of these fourteen articles for their stimulating and reflective contributions to the various debates around “adapt”. We would also like to acknowledge the hugely supportive efforts of our hard-pressed referees. Equally, our gratitude goes out to those respondents to our call for papers whose submissions could not be fitted into this already overflowing issue. What they sent us kept the standard high, and many of the articles rejected for publication on this occasion will, we feel sure, soon find a wider audience in another venue (the excellent advice provided by our referees has an influence, in this way, beyond the life of this issue). We also wish to offer a very special note of thanks to Linda Hutcheon, who took time out from her exceptionally busy schedule to contribute the feature article for this issue. Her recent monograph A Theory of Adaptation is essential reading for all serious scholars of “adapt”, as is her contribution here. We are honoured to have Professor Hutcheon’s input into our project. Special thanks are also due to Gold-Coast based visual artist Judy Anderson for her “adaptation of adaptation” into a visual motif for our cover image. This inspiring piece is entitled “Between Two” (2005; digital image on cotton paper). Accessing experiences perhaps not accessible through words alone, Anderson’s image nevertheless “speaks adaptation”, as her Artist’s Statement suggests: The surface for me is a sensual encounter; an event, shifting form. As an eroticised site, it evokes memories of touch. … Body, object, place are woven together with memory; forgetting and remembering. The tactility and materiality of touching the surface is offered back to the viewer. These images are transitions themselves. As places of slippage and adaptation, they embody intervals on many levels; between the material and the immaterial, the familiar and the strange. Their source remains obscure so that they might represent spaces in-between—overlooked places that open up unexpectedly. If we have learned just one thing from the experience of editing the M/C Journal ‘adapt’ issue, it is that our theme richly rewards the sort of intellectual and creative activity demonstrated by our contributors. Much has been done here; much remains to be done. Some of this work will take place, no doubt, at the “Adaptation and Application” conference, and we hope to see many of you on the Gold Coast in 2009. But for now, it’s over to you, to engage with what you might encounter here, and to work new “adaptations” upon it. References Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training. Environmentally Sustainable Australia. 2005. 28 Apr. 2007 http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/research_sector/policies_issues_reviews /key_issues/national_research_priorities/priority_goals /environmentally_sustainable_australia.htm 〉 . Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaux. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Denton, D Keith. “What Darwin Can Teach Us about Success.” Development and Learning in Organizations 20.1 (2006): 7ff. Furnica, Ioana. “Subverting the ‘Good, Old Tune’: Carlos Saura’s Carmen Adaptation.” M/C Journal 10.2 (2007). 28 Apr. 2007 . Grosz, Elizabeth. In the Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution and the Untimely. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. Grosz, Elizabeth. “Sensation”. Plenary III Session. 9th Annual Comparative Literature Conference. Gilles Deleuze: Texts and Images: An International Conference. University of South Carolina, Columbia. 7 April 2007. Grosz, Elizabeth. Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. New York and London: Routledge, 2006. Johnson, Cecil. “Darwinian Notions of Corporate Innovation,” Boston Globe, 15 Jan. 2006: L.2. McMerrin, Michelle. “Agency in Adaptation.” M/C Journal 10.2 (2007). 28 Apr. 2007 http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/03 mcmerrin.php mcmerrin.php 〉 . Neimanis, Astrida. “A Feminist Deleuzian Politics? It’s About Time.” TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies 16 (2006): 154-8. Plowman, Ian, Neal M. Ashkanasy, John Gardner, and Malcolm Letts. Innovation in Rural Queensland: Why Some Towns Thrive while Others Languish: Main Report. University of Queensland/Department of Primary Industries. Queensland, Dec. 2003. 28 Apr. 2007 http://www2.dpi.qld.gov.au/business/14778.html 〉 . Queensland Government. Smart State Strategy 2005-2015 Timeframe. 2007. 28 Apr. 2007 http://www.smartstate.qld.gov.au/strategy/strategy05_15/timeframes.shtm 〉 . Rizzo, Sergio. “Adaptation and the Art of Survival.” M/C Journal 10.2 (2007). 28 Apr. 2007 http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/02-rizzo.php 〉 . Shiloh, Ilana. “Adaptation, Intertextuality, and the Endless Deferral of Meaning: Memento.” M/C Journal 10.2 (2007). 28 Apr. 2007 http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/08-shiloh.php 〉 . Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change. 2006. 28 Apr. 2007 http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern_review_ economics_climate_change/stern_review_report.cfm 〉 . Citation reference for this article MLA Style Delamoir, Jeannette, and Patrick West. "Editorial." M/C Journal 10.2 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ? 〉 〈 http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/00-editorial.php 〉 . APA Style Delamoir, J., and P. West. (May 2007) "Editorial," M/C Journal, 10(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ? 〉 from 〈 http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/00-editorial.php 〉 .

Abstract: Who Are Carers? A carer is any individual who provides unpaid care and support to a family member or friend who has a disability, mental illness, drug and/or alcohol dependency, chronic condition, terminal illness or who is frail. Carers come from all walks of life, cultural backgrounds and age groups. For many, caring is a 24 hour-a-day job with emotional, physical and financial impacts, with implications for their participation in employment, education and community activities. Carers exist in all communities, including amongst Aboriginal communities, those of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, amongst Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex communities, and throughout metropolitan, regional and rural areas (Carers NSW). These broad characteristics mean that caring occurs across a wide variety of situations and care responsibilities can impact an even wider group of people. The ubiquitous nature of informal care warrants its consideration as a major social issue, as well as the potential impacts that these roles can have on carers in both short and long term contexts. Caring for a loved one is often an unseen component of people’s domestic lives. As will be outlined below, the potentially burdensome nature of care can have negative influences on carers’ wellbeing. As such, factors that can enhance the resilience of carers in the face of such adversity have been widely investigated. This being said, individual differences exist in carers’ responses to their caring responsibilities. The caring experience can therefore be argued to exist on a continuum, from the adversity in relation to stressful challenges through to prosperity in light of their caring responsibilities. By considering the experience of care as existing along this continuum, the place of resilience within people’s domestic spaces can be viewed as a mechanism towards identifying and developing supportive practices. Negative Impacts of Care A significant body of research has identified potential negative impacts of caring. Many of the most commonly cited outcomes relate to negative effects on mental health and/or psychological functioning, including stress, anxiety and depression (e.g. Baker et al.; Barlow, Cullen-Powell and Cheshire; Cheshire, Barlow and Powell; Dunn et al.; Gallagher et al.; Hastings et al.; Lach et al.; Singer; Sörensen et al.; Vitaliano, Zhang and Scanlan; Whittingham et al.; Yamada et al.). These feelings can be exacerbated when caring responsibilities become relentlessly time consuming, as demonstrated by this comment from a carer of a person with dementia: “I can’t get away from it” (O'Dwyer, Moyle and van Wyk 758). Similarly, emotional responses such as sorrow, grief, anger, frustration, and guilt can result from caring for a loved one (Heiman; Whittingham et al.). Negative emotional responses are not necessarily a direct result of caring responsibilities as such, but an understanding of the challenges faced by the person requiring their care. The following quote from the carer of a child with autism exemplifies the experience of sorrow: “It was actually the worst day of our lives, that was the day we came to terms with the fact that we had this problem” (Midence and O’Neill 280). Alongside these psychological and emotional outcomes, physical health may also be negatively impacted due to certain demands of the caring role (Lach et al.; Sörensen et al.; Vitaliano, Zhang and Scanlan). Outcomes such as these are likely to vary across individual caring circumstances, dictated by variables such as the specific tasks required of the carer, and individual personality characteristics of both the carer and the person for whom they care. Nevertheless, an awareness of these potential outcomes is particularly important when considering the place of resilience in the domestic space of individuals caring for a loved one. This conceptualisation of caring as being a burdensome task reflects many publicly held perceptions. If caring is widely viewed as compromising carers’ wellbeing, then there is likely to be an increased likelihood of carers viewing themselves as victims. This is particularly true amongst children and adolescents with caring responsibilities, since young people are most susceptible to having their personal identities shaped by others’ perceptions (Andreouli, Skovdal and Campbell). Resilience in Caring Adversity Despite the widely acknowledged potential for caring to have negative consequences for carers, it must be noted that the occurrence of these outcomes are not inevitable. In fact, much of the research that has identified increased stress amongst carers also finds that the majority cope well with the demands of their role (Barnett et al.). These carers have been considered by many researchers to demonstrate resilience (e.g. Barnett et al.; O'Dwyer, Moyle and van Wyk). The ability to respond positively despite exposure to risk or adversity is a key feature of most definitions of resilience (Luthar, Cicchetti and Becker; Masten and Obradović; Zauszniewski, Bekhet and Suresky). Resilience in this context can thus be defined as a psychological process that facilitates healthy functioning in response to intense life stressors (Johnson et al.). Since caring experiences are likely to continue for an extended period of time, resilience is likely to be necessary on an ongoing basis, rather than in response to a single traumatic event. A resilient carer is therefore one who is able to effectively and adaptively cope with extenuating pressures of caring for a loved one. This involves the presence of personal, social, familial, or institutional protective factors that enable carers to resist stress (Kaplan et al.). For example, support from health professionals, family, or community has been found to effectively support carers in coping with their role (Bekhet, Johnson and Zauszniewski; Gardiner and Iarocci; Heiman; Whittingham et al.). The benefit of support networks in assisting carers to cope in their role is widely reported in the associated research, reinforced by many examples such as the following from a carer of a person with dementia: “It’s a social thing, like, I’ve got friends on there… I find that is my escape” (O'Dwyer, Moyle and van Wyk 758). At an individual level, those who demonstrate resilient in the face of adversity demonstrate optimistic or hopeful outlooks (Ekas, Lickenbrock and Whitman; Lloyd and Hastings; Whittingham et al.), while simultaneously holding realistic expectations of the future (Rasmussen et al.; Wrosch, Miller, et al.; Wrosch, Scheier, et al.). Such attitudes are particularly significant amongst people caring for family members or friends with disabilities or illnesses. The following attitude held by a carer of a child with cerebral palsy exemplifies this optimistic outlook: “I look at the glass half full and say that “well, it’s only his walking, everything else is fine”. “So, get over [it] and deal with it” (Whittingham et al. 1451). Those who cognitively process information, rather than reacting in a highly emotion way have also been found to cope better (Bekhet, Johnson and Zauszniewski; Heiman; Monin et al.; Pennebaker, Mayne and Francis), as have those with a greater sense of self-efficacy or an internal locus of control (Bekhet, Johnson and Zauszniewski; Kuhn and Carter). However effective these coping strategies prove to be, this is unlikely to provide the full picture of caring experiences, or the place of resilience within that space. Associating resilience with adversity presumes a consensus on what constitutes adversity. Taking the typical approach to investigating resilience amongst carers risks making undue assumptions of the nature of individual carers’ experiences – namely, that caring equates to adversity. The following paragraphs will outline how this is not necessarily the case. And furthermore, that the concept of resilience still has a place in considering informal caring, regardless of whether adversity is considered to be present. Benefits of Care While a great deal of evidence suggests that caring for a loved one can be a stressful experience, research has also demonstrated the existence of positive impacts of care. In many instances, carers not only cope, but also thrive in their caring roles (Turnbull et al.). Elements such as positive relationships within caring relationships can both challenge and strengthen individuals – factors that only exist due to the specific nature of the individual caring role (Bayat; Heiman). Such positive elements of the caring experience have been reflected in the literature, illustrated by quotes such as: “In some sense, this makes our family closer” (Bayat 709). Rather than viewing carers from a perspective of victimisation (which is particularly prominent in relation to children and young people with caring responsibilities), recognising the prevalence of positive wellbeing within this population provides a more nuanced understanding of the lived experiences of all carers (Aldridge). Reported benefits of caring tend to revolve around personal relationships, particularly in reference to parents caring for their children with special needs. Reflective of the parental relationship, carers of children with disabilities or chronic illnesses generally report feelings of love, joy, optimism, strength, enjoyment, and satisfaction with their role (Barnett et al.; Heiman). The views of such carers do not reflect an attitude of coping with adversity, but rather a perspective that considers their children to be positive contributors to carers’ quality of life and the wellbeing of the wider family (King et al.). This point of view suggests an additional dimension to resilience; in particular, that resilience in the relative absence of risk factors, can cause carers to flourish within their caring role and relationships. In addition to benefits in relationships, carers may also prosper through their own personal growth and development in the course of their caring (Knight). This includes factors such as the development of life skills, maturity, purpose, social skills, a sense of responsibility, and recognition – particularly amongst young people in caring roles (Earley, Cushway and Cassidy; Early, Cushway and Cassidy; Jurkovic, Thirkield and Morrell; Skovdal and Andreouli; Stein, Rotheram-Borus and Lester; Tompkins). Recognition of the potential personal benefits of caring for a loved one is not intended to suggest that the view of carers coping with adversity is universally applicable. While it is likely that individual caring situations will have an impact on the extent to which a carer faces adversity (e.g. intensity of caring responsibilities, severity of loved one’s impairment, etc.), it is important to recognise the benefits that carers can experience alongside any challenges they may face. Circumstances that appear adversarial may not be thought of as such by those within that context. Defining resilience as an ability to cope with adversity therefore will not apply to such contexts. Rather, the concept of resilience needs to incorporate those who not only cope, but also prosper. Carers who do not perceive their role as burdensome, but identify positive outcomes, can therefore be said to demonstrate resilience though contextually different from those coping with adversity. This is not to suggest that resilience is the sole contributing factor in terms of prospering in the caring role. We must also consider individual circumstances and nuances differ between carers, those they care for, interpersonal relationships, and wider caring situations. Continuum of Care Awareness of the range of impacts that caring can have on carers leads to a recognition of the broad spectrum of experience that this role entails. Not only do caring experiences exhibit large variations in terms of practical issues (such as functional capacities, or type and severity of illness, disability, or condition), they include carers’ diverse personal responses to caring responsibilities. These responses can reflect either positive or negative dimensions, or a combination of both (Faso, Neal-Beevers and Carlson). In this way, caring experiences can be conceptualised as existing along a continuum. At one end of the spectrum, experiences align with the traditional view of caring as a struggle with and over adversity. More specifically, carers experience burdens as a result of their additional caring responsibilities, with negative outcomes likely to occur. At the other end of the spectrum, however, carers prosper in the role, experiencing significant personal benefits that would not have been possible without the caring role. This continuum makes a case for an expanded approach to stress and coping models of resilience to include positive concepts and a benefit-orientated perspective (Cassidy and Giles). In contrast to research that has argued for a progression from stress and coping models to strengths-based approaches (e.g. Glidden, Billings and Jobe; Knight), the continuum of care acknowledges the benefits of each of these theoretical positions, and thus may prove more comprehensive in attempting to understand the everyday lived experiences of carers. The framework provided by a representation of a continuum allows for the individual differences in caring situations and carers’ personal responses to be acknowledged, as well as accounting for any changes in these circumstances. Further, the experience and benefits of resilience in different contextual spheres can be identified. The flexibility afforded by such an approach is particularly important in light of individual differences in the ways carers respond to their situations, their changing caring contexts, and their subsequent individual needs (Monin et al.; Walsh; Whittingham et al.). As the caring experience can be dynamic and fluctuate in both directions along the continuum, resilience may be seen as the mechanism by which such movement occurs. In line with stress and coping models, resilience can assist carers to cope with adversarial circumstances at that end of the continuum. Similarly, it may be argued that those who prosper in their caring role exhibit characteristics of resilience. In other words, it is resilience that enables carers to cope with adversity at one end of the continuum and also to prosper at the other. Furthermore, by supporting the development of resilient characteristics, carers may be assisted in shifting their experiences along the continuum, from adversity to prosperity. This view extends upon traditional approaches reported in the stress and coping literature by contending that caring experiences may progress beyond positions of coping with adversity, to a position where caring is not understood in terms of adversity at all, but rather in terms of benefits. The individual circumstances of any carer must be taken into consideration with this framework of resilience and the continuum of care. It is unrealistic to assume that all caring situations will allow for the possibility of reaching the end point of this continuum. Carers with particularly high demands in terms of time, resources, effort, or energy may not reach a stage where they no longer consider their caring role to involve any personal burden. However, the combination of a coping and strengths-based approach suggests that there is always the possibility of moving away from perceptions of adversity and further towards an attitude of prosperity. Implications for Supportive Practice From the perspective of this continuum of care, the protective factors and coping strategies identified in previous literature provide a valuable starting point for the facilitation of resilience amongst carers. Enhancing factors such as these can assist carers to move from situations of adversity towards experiences of prosperity (Benzies and Mychasiuk). Research has suggested that carers who are less analytical in their thinking and less optimistic about their personal situations may find particular benefit from support systems that assist them in redirecting their attention towards positive aspects of their daily lives, such as the benefits of caring outlined earlier (Monin et al.). The principle of focusing on positive experiences and reframing negative thoughts is thought to benefit carers across all levels of functioning and adaptive experience (Monin et al.). While those entrenched in more burdensome mindsets are likely to experience the greatest benefit from supportive interventions, there is still merit in providing similar supports to carers who do not appear to experience the similar experiences of burden, or demonstrate greater resilience or adaptation to their situation. The dynamic view of caring situations and resilience suggested by a continuum of care incorporates benefits of stress and coping models as well as strengths-based approaches. This has implications for supportive practice in that the focus is not on determining whether or not a carer is resilient, but identifying the ways in which they already are resilient (Simon, Murphy and Smith). For carers who experience their role through a lens of adversity, resilience may need to be purposefully fostered in order to better enable them to cope and develop through the ongoing stresses of their role. For carers at the other end of the spectrum, resilience is likely to take on a substantially different meaning. Under these circumstances, caring for a loved one is not considered a burdensome task; rather, the positive impact of the role is pre-eminent. This point of view suggests that carers are resilient, not only in terms of an ability to thrive despite adversity, but in prospering to the extent that adversity is not considered to exist. The attitudes and approaches of services, support networks, and governments towards carers should remain flexible enough to acknowledge the wide variety of caring circumstances that exist. The continuum of care provides a framework through which certain aspects of caring and variations in resilience can be interpreted, as well as the type of support required by individual carers. Furthermore, it must be noted that caring circumstances can change – either gradually or suddenly – with the extent to which carers experience adversity, coping or prosperity also changing. Any attempts to provide support to carers or acknowledge their resilience should demonstrate an awareness of the potential for such fluctuation. The fundamental view that carers always have the potential to move towards more positive outcomes has the potential to reframe perceptions of carers as victims, or as simply coping, to one that embraces the personal strengths and resilience of the individual. As such, carers can be supported when faced with adversity, and to flourish beyond that position. This in turn has the potential to safeguard against any detrimental effects of adversity that may arise in the future. References Aldridge, Jo. "All Work and No Play? Understanding the Needs of Children with Caring Responsibilities." Children & Society 22.4 (2008): 253-264. Andreouli, Eleni, Morten Skovdal, and Catherine Campbell. "‘It Made Me Realise That I Am Lucky for What I Got’: British Young Carers Encountering the Realities of Their African Peers." Journal of Youth Studies  (2013): 1-16. Baker, Bruce L., et al. 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Abstract: The headlines of April 8, 1998 left little room for negotiation: "Mars romantics face the truth -- there's nothing out there" (The Australian); "Images form Mars scuttle face theory" (Courier-Mail). According to the reports, the infamous Face on Mars mystery has finally been solved. But has it? Such forceful pro-NASA/anti-anomaly media coverage should, rather than settle us into complacency, set mental alarm bells ringing. We should be asking the (interestingly portentous) question: if NASA did discover a Face on Mars, would they admit it? This paper suggests the answer is 'no'. In his essay "Social Intelligence about Hidden Events", sociologist Ron Westrum noted that if a person perceives a phenomenon that the person's society deems impossible, then the socially determined implausibility of the observation will cause the observer to doubt his or her own perceptions, leading to the denial or misidentification of the phenomenon (McLeod et al., 156). When Europeans arrived in Australia and sent back descriptions of a particularly bizarre creature they encountered here -- eventually named a 'platypus' -- biologists initially refused to believe it existed. Although Australia was (to Europeans) an alien environment in which new, and perhaps even radical, discoveries were expected and desired, an egg-laying furry underwater animal with a duck's bill, four webbed feet and a poisonous spike on its heel was just too much to handle. It was 'unacceptably new'. We have, as this example shows, heavy expectations about the future and the new, and are often reluctant to accept developments which differ radically from those expectations. For western culture, the exploration of space -- the final frontier -- has become synonymous with progress, with future and the new, and with moving away from a past and towards or into a future about which we already have many expectations. One particularly brutal violation of this conception of progress and the comfort of a confinable and predictable future would be the discovery of a 1.5 mile long, 1.2 mile wide humanoid face carved into the surface of Mars, staring back out into space (as was apparently photographed by the NASA Viking probe in 1976). It's hardly surprising, then, that the social institution perhaps most entrusted with propagating the dominant construction of the new and the future -- NASA -- should be the most ardent anti-Face voice in the controversy. (Readers interested in NASA's role in 'playing down' public curiosity in the Face and adjoining pyramids are recommended Professor Stanley V. McDaniel's The McDaniel Report, in which he cites many examples of NASA's deliberate misrepresentation of the geological and geometrical data gathered concerning the Cydonia region on Mars). Official confirmation of artificial pyramidal and humanoid structures on Mars would essentially dissolve dominant constructions of human civilisation's past and future. We would be forced to confront the possibilities that human civilisation has either had contact with extraterrestrial life some time in its past, or that humans have been capable of space travel and interplanetary colonisation before humans were thought to have even existed. Our 'present' would be equally damaged; our most cherished 'new' technologies would re-appear as inferior versions of those already developed -- they wouldn't be 'new' at all. The cultural (not to mention psychological) repercussions would be extreme. It is highly unlikely then, were such objects photographed clearly enough to remove uncertainty as to the nature of their origin, that NASA would release those photographs, since such a discovery would severely threaten its claim (and the scientific tradition it represents) to a monopoly of true descriptions of the nature of the physical world and the public position of science (Westrum, "UFOs" 272). I suggest that NASA's role in the public debate about the Martian enigmas should be approached with extreme scepticism. NASA's treatment of the Viking frames has indicated its willingness to misrepresent the data in a deliberate attempt to suppress public support of further investigation. Some reasons why NASA might take this course of action have been suggested above. We need not succumb to 'conspiracy theory' to explain NASA's behaviour, as conventional, if discomforting, sociological explanations are both simpler and more easily applied. Depending on how much power we afford prestige, we may or may not choose to accept the most recent NASA photographs of the Face as definitive. What we should not overlook, though, is that we do have a choice. References Bull, Sandra. "Images from Mars Scuttle Face Theory." The Courier-Mail 8 April 1998. Leech, Graeme. "Mars Romantics Face the Truth: There's Nothing Out There." The Australian 8 April 1998. McDaniel, Stanley V. The McDaniel Report: On the Failure of Executive, Congressional and Scientific Responsibility in Investigating Possible Evidence of Artificial Structures on the Surface of Mars and in Setting Mission Priorities for NASA's Mars Exploration Program.. Berkeley: North Atlantic, 1993. Westrum, Ron. "Social Intelligence about Anomalies: The Case of UFOs." Social Studies of Science 7 (1977): 271-302. Westrum, Ron. "Social Intelligence about Hidden Events" (1982) qtd. in McLeod, Caroline, Barbara Corbisier, and John E. Mack, "A More Parsimonious Explanation for UFO Abduction." Psychological Inquiry 7 (1996): 156-68. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Adam Dodd. "Unacceptably New: Cultural Factors in the 'Face on Mars' Controversy." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1.1 (1998). [your date of access] 〈 http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9807/mars.php 〉 . Chicago style: Adam Dodd, "Unacceptably New: Cultural Factors in the 'Face on Mars' Controversy," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1, no. 1 (1998), 〈 http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9807/mars.php 〉 ([your date of access]). APA style: Adam Dodd. (1998) Unacceptably new: cultural factors in the 'face on Mars' controversy. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1(1). 〈 http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9807/mars.php 〉 ([your date of access]).

Abstract: The Virtual and the Physical The structure of virtual space is a product of the Internet’s geography and technology. Debates around the nature of the virtual — culture, society, economy — often leave out this connection to “fibre”, to where and how we are physically linked to each other. Rather than signaling the “end of geography” (Mitchell 1999), the Internet reinforces its importance with “real world” physical and logical constraints shaping the geography of cyberspace. To contest the nature of the virtual world requires understanding and contesting the nature of the Internet’s architecture in the physical world. The Internet is built on a physical entity – the telecommunications networks that connect computers around the world. In order to participate on the Internet, one needs to connect to these networks. In an information society access to bandwidth determines the haves from the have-nots (Mitchell 1999), and bandwidth depends upon your location and economics. Increasingly, the new generation Internet distributes bandwidth unevenly amongst regions, cities, organizations, and individuals. The speed, type, size and quality of these networks determine the level and nature of participation available to communities. Yet these types of choices, the physical and technical aspects of the network, are the ones least understood, contested and linked to “real world” realities. The Technical is the Political Recently, the US government proposed a Total Information Awareness surveillance system for all digital communications nationally. While technically unworkable on multiple fronts, many believed that the architecture of the Internet simply prevented such data collection, because no physical access points exist through which all data flows. In reality, North America does have central access points – six to be exact – through which all data moves because it is physically impossible to create redundant systems. This simple factor of geography potentially shapes policies on speech, privacy, terrorism, and government-business relations to name just a few. These are not new issues or challenges, but merely new technologies. The geography of infrastructure – from electricity, train and telephone networks to the architectures of freeways, cities and buildings – has always been as much social and political as technical. The technology and the social norms embedded in the network geography (Eischen, 2002) are central to the nature of cyberspace. We may wish for a utopian vision, but the hidden social assumptions in mundane ‘engineering’ questions like the location of fibre or bandwidth quality will shape virtual world. The Changing Landscape of the Internet The original Internet infrastructure is being redesigned and rebuilt. The massive fibre-optic networks of the Internet backbones have been upgraded, and broadband access technologies – cable modem, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) and now wireless Wi-Fi – are being installed closer to homes and businesses. New network technologies and protocols enable the network to serve up data even faster than before. However, the next generation Internet architecture is quite different from the popular utopian vision described above. The Internet is being restructured as an entertainment and commerce medium, driven by the convergence of telecommunications technologies and commercialization. It is moving towards a broadcast model where individual consumers have access to less upstream bandwidth than downstream, with the symmetry of vendor and customer redesigned and built to favor content depending on who provides, requests and receives content. This Internet infrastructure has both physical and logical components – the telecommunications networks that comprise the physical infrastructure and the protocols that comprise the logical infrastructure of the software that runs the Internet. We are in the process of partitioning this infrastructure, both physical and logical, into information conduits of different speeds and sizes. Access to these conduits depends on who and where you are. These emerging Internet infrastructure technologies – Broadband Access Networks, Caching and Content Delivery Networks, Quality of Service and Policy Protocols – are shaped by geographical, economic and social factors in their development, deployment and use. The Geography of Broadband These new broadband networks are being deployed initially in more privileged, densely populated communities in primary cities and their wealthy suburbs (Graham, 2000). Even though many have touted the potential of Wi-Fi networks to bring broadband to underserved areas, initial mappings of wireless deployment show correlation between income and location of hotspots (NYCWireless, 2003). Equally important, the most commonly deployed broadband technologies, cable modem and ADSL, follow a broadcast model by offering more downstream bandwidth than upstream bandwidth. Some cable companies limit upstream bandwidth even further to 256 Kbps in order to discourage subscribers from setting up home servers. The asymmetry of bandwidth leads to asymmetry of information flows where corporations produce information and users content. Internet Infrastructure: Toll Roads and the Priority of Packets The Internet originally was designed around ‘best effort’ service: data flows through the networks as packets, and all packets are treated equally. The TCP/IP protocols that comprise the Internet’s logical infrastructure (Lessig, 101) govern how data is transferred across the physical networks. In the Internet’s original design, each packet is routed to the best path known, with the transport quality level dependent on network conditions. However, network congestion and differing content locations lead to inconsistent levels of quality. In order to overcome Internet “bottlenecks”, technologies such as content caching and Quality of Service (QoS) protocols have been developed that allow large corporate customers to bypass the public infrastructure, partitioning the Internet into publicly and privately accessible data conduits or throughways. Since access is based on payment, these private throughways can be thought of as the new toll roads of the Internet. Companies such as Akamai are deploying private ‘content delivery’ networks. These networks replicate and store content in geographically dispersed servers close to the end users, reducing the distance content data needs to traverse. Large content providers pay these companies to store and serve their content on these networks. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offer similar services for internal or hosted content. The Internet’s physical infrastructure consists of a system of interconnected networks. The major ISPs’ networks interconnect at Network Access Point (NAPs) the major intersections of the Internet backbone. Congestion at these public intersection points has resulted in InterNAP building and deploying private network access points (P-NAPs). Akamai content delivery network (Akamai, 2000) and InterNAP’s P-NAPs (InterNAP, 2000) deployment maps reveal a deployment of private infrastructure to a select group of highly-connected U.S. cities (Moss & Townsend, 2000), furthering the advantage these ‘global cities’ (Graham, 1999) have over other cities and regions. QoS protocols allow ISPs to define differing levels of service by providing preferential treatment to some amount of the network traffic. Smart routers, or policy routers, enable network providers to define policies for data packet treatment. The routers can discriminate between and prioritize the handling of packets based on destination, source, the ISP, data content type, etc. Such protocols and policies represent a departure from the original peer-to-peer architecture of data equality with ‘best-effort’. The ability to discriminate and prioritize data traffic is being built into the system, with economic and even political factors able to shape the way packets and content flow through the network. For example, during the war on Iraq, Akamai Technologies canceled its service contract with the Arabic news service Al Jazeera (CNET, 2003). Technology, Choices and Values To address the social choices underpinning seemingly benign technical choices of the next generation Internet, we need to understand the economic, geographic and social factors guiding choices about its design and deployment. Just as the current architecture of the Internet reflects the values of its original creators, this next generation Internet will reflect our choices and our values. The reality is that decisions with very long-term impacts will be made with or without debate. If any utopian vision of the Internet is to survive, it is crucial to embed the new architectures with specific values by asking difficult questions with no pre-defined or easy answers. These are questions that require social debate and consensus. Is the Internet fundamentally a public or private space? Who will have access? What information and whose information will be accessible? Which values and whose values should form the basis of the new infrastructure? Should the construction be subject to market forces alone or should ideas of social equity and fairness be embedded in the technology? Technologists, policy makers (at both national and local levels), researchers and the general public all have a part in determining the answers to these questions. Policymakers need to link future competition and innovation with equitable access for all citizens. Urban planners and local governments need to link infrastructure, economic sustainability and equity through public and public-private investments – especially in traditionally marginalized areas. Researchers need to continue mapping the complex interactions of investment in and deployment of infrastructure across the disciplines of economics, technology and urban planning. Technologists need to consider the societal implications and inform the policy debates of the technologies they build. Communities need to link technical issues with local ramifications, contesting and advocating with policymakers and corporations. The ultimate geography of cyberspace will reflect the geography of fibre. Understanding and contesting the present and future reality requires linking mundane technical questions with the questions of values in exactly these wider social and political debates. Works Cited Akamai. See 〈 http://www.akamai.com/service/network.php 〉 Eischen, Kyle. ‘The Social Impact of Informational Production: Software Development as an Informational Practice’. Center for Global, International and Regional Studies Working Paper #2002-1. 2002. UC Santa Cruz. 〈 http://cgirs.ucsc.edu/publications/workingpapers/ 〉 Graham, Stephen. “Global Grids of Glass: On Global Cities, Telecommunications and Planetary Urban Networks.” Urban Studies. 1999. 36 (5-6). Graham, Stephen. “Constructing Premium Network Spaces: Reflections on Infrastructure Networks and Contemporary Urban Development.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 2000. 24(1) March. InterNAP. See 〈 http://www.internap.com/html/news_05022000.htm 〉 Junnarkar, Sandeep. “Akamai ends Al-Jazeera server support”, CNET News.com, April 4, 2003. See 〈 http://news.com.com/1200-1035-995546.php 〉 Lessig, Lawrence. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Mitchell, William. City of Bits. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. Mosss, Mitchell L. and Anthony M. Townsend. “The Internet Backbone and the American Metropolis.” The Information Society Journal. 16(1): 35-47. Online at: 〈 http://www.informationcity.org/research/internet-backbone-am... ...erican-metropolis/index.htm 〉 Public Internet Project. “802.11b Survey of NYC.” 〈 http://www.publicinternetproject.org/ 〉 Links http://cgirs.ucsc.edu/publications/workingpapers/ http://news.com.com/1200-1035-995546.html http://www.akamai.com/service/network.html http://www.informationcity.org/research/internet-backbone-american-metropolis/index.htm http://www.internap.com/html/news_05022000.htm http://www.publicinternetproject.org/ Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Eischen, Emy Tseng & Kyle. "The Geography of Cyberspace" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 〈 http://www.media-culture.org.au/0308/03-geography.php 〉 . APA Style Eischen, E. T. & . K. (2003, Aug 26). The Geography of Cyberspace. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6, 〈 http://www.media-culture.org.au/0308/03-geography.php 〉

Abstract: Creation is at a most basic level a somewhat lasting combination of parts arranged in new ways. On the one hand there is creation by competitive selection from random mutations. On the other is the deliberate work of authors masterminding creations. What these two processes tend to have in common is that the parts that go into the creative process are treated as rather neutral objects, much like clay to be shaped in meaningful ways. But what if the parts have a say in the process? Could the medium itself become a prime mover in acts of creation? If the parts that combine are not passive but can interact on their own, much like molecules in chemical reactions, then we fall into a new area between deliberate authoring, adaptive randomness. In this zone of interacting components and reflexive looping becomes a mechanism of creation. The Work of Hands Drawing Drawing Hands by the Dutch graphic artist M. C. Escher models the process of looping interaction. The lithograph shows a right hand that draws the cuffs of a left hand emerging out of the paper to draw cuffs on the right hand. In and out of the paper, the two hands draw each other into existence through this paradoxical loop. Escher's picture shows an implacable symmetry. The two hands are mirror images. They seem to belong to a single nonexistent person. Now imagine that Drawing Hands becomes an animation. The hands continue to draw each other in a circular process of creation. But there are two variations. The first animated version preserves the symmetry and yields an infinite regression of identical persons. In a second version, one of the hands overcomes the temptation of symmetry and draws a slightly different one. This second hand introduces further changes. The drawing process loops back to the first hand. Change continues to propagate through this open loop. If the hands cooperate, the creative possibilities of this mutual play could become endless. Think of these two versions of Escher's Drawing Hands as models of different types of reflexive creations. The first loop makes its own creator through a simple logic of self-interaction. If the process continues indefinitely, a repetition of self-made portraits would remain alone forever in the separate spaces of an endless regress of drawings within drawings of unbroken symmetries. The second animation shows a reflexive process of creation that relies on a loop of cooperative interactions without predetermined structural closure. It breaks with symmetry, or rather, does not rely on symmetry at all. Each hand is a separate autonomous agent, so to speak, entangled in a mutual process of construction. The introduction of reflexive differentiation yields a richly interacting universe in a shared space. Dialogues and Other Participations This second model reflects Luce Irigaray's insistence that nature cannot emerge from a singular entity. She notes that nature is at least two. It is male and female, for instance. There has to be a concert of differences between at least two partners to yield nature's richness. One creator is not enough, nor is one theory of everything. They cannot account for the diversity of life that is at the heart of nature. We need to begin with at least two distinct components. Irigaray notes that all speculation about overcoming the natural in the universal forgets that nature is not one (35). Just as importantly as having initial diversity is the presence of a mechanism that lets the diverse parts play. Nothing would come about in the absence of constructive interaction. There has to be a looping mechanism to link the different interactive partners. Physicist David Bohm applied this perspective to science. He saw nature forming itself through a dialogical process of mutual participation among radically different components. Furthermore, he observed that the process of dialogue is new to science itself. Bohm envisioned a participatory science. Science has been mainly based on the concept of arriving at one unique truth. But if scientists could engage in a dialogue, that would be a radical revolution in science—in the very nature of science (38). Mikhail Bakhtin introduced a sense of dialogue into the realm of art. He noted that discovery at the cognitive level is an act of creation closer to invention. For Bakhtin, art does not unveil or represent something that is already there. Art creates it in a dialogic concert between the artist and the medium. The medium includes the tools of the craft, subject matter, artistic communities, and a world filtered by artistic visions. Works of art result from a cooperative construction through dialogue between all these components. Creation happens through the dialogic confluence of different insights coming together in a loop of interactions. Bakhtin observed that the value of a work of art is not isolated and absolute. It lies in the work's potential or capacity to engage others in a creative dialogue. Language itself developed because of its interactive potential: it grew up in the service of participative thinking and performed acts (31). Bakhtin concluded that events, from the arts to the sciences, could only be described participatively. Without dialogue, isolated creative seeds would not blossom. Participants would not appreciate each other's insights. The circulation of dialogue and its engaging power is what facilitates the interaction of separate potentials that otherwise would not develop. In this sense, creation is participatory. It does not happen by itself. One hand creates another, and a different hand loops back to carry co-creation one turn further. In this dialogic process all is more or less subject to change, including how the evolving creation deals with its environment. Knowledge becomes pragmatic. Rather than an ensemble of absolutes, such as laws or truths, knowledge is more of a practical map to navigate an uncertain landscape. In this view, a truth, scientific or otherwise, is only as permanent as the interactive vortex that gives rise to it. This loop of co-creation goes beyond classical conceptions of truth and symmetry. What sets it apart is the cooperative use of differences in a circulation of mutual participation. In this model, feedback loops and differences work together as an engine of creation that runs on interactions. This engine of sorts spins loops that become self-maintaining vortices of innovation. From Closed to Open Loops Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela pioneered the concept of autopoiesis in biology. An autopoietic system is basically a self-made and self-sustaining ensemble. To represent an autopoietic network, Maturana and Varela gave the example of the cell as a closed system of production. They noted in passing that the cell has to allow for some crossing of its own boundaries to exchange materials with the environment. Yet essentially, autopoietic mechanisms are closed with respect to its system of organization (135). The groundbreaking work of Maturana and Varela on self-organization gradually led to deeper reflections on how a system c an maintain identity and yet be more open to exchanges with its environment, or, in other words, how an autopoietic system could operate as an open loop. The problem is that such reflections lead to a vast frontier mostly unexplored. There are no maps yet to begin making solid inroads into open systems. An inspiring exploration of open systems is Stuart Kauffman's Investigations. Although the term open seldom appears in his work as a category, its traces abound in this inquiry about creation in biological systems. Kauffman uses the concept of an autonomous agent where Maturana and Varela envisioned autopoietic systems (8). A free-living cell, for example, is no longer a closed, passive agent communicating through tightly guarded doors. Kauffman views the cell as actively interacting with its environment, yet at the same time able to maintain its self-identity until it dies. From the cellular to the universal, how is that possible? How can creative and destructive interactions yield life-enhancing innovation? Investigations is about biospheres taken in the general sense of living systems. The point of departure is the realization that biospheres cannot be prestated in their configuration space. This implies that we will always have uncertainty in any system, not just in quantum mechanics or in mathematics. As a consequence, we cannot state if any system is closed. Systems will always appear open, either because they are intrinsically open or because we cannot find their closure. Kauffman pictures autonomous agents propagating their systems of organization into all adjacent spaces where they can possibly migrate. Over their life spans, these agents maintain identity while propagating, by constantly repairing their systems as they go. They are also open to innovation because such repairs may entail adaptations to new environments. Both functions are the work of looping interactions within the environment, as living systems constantly check the adaptable viability of repairs and changes. The autonomous agent is like a hand feeling the environment, while the environment is another hand sensing the agent's actions. This forms an open co-constructive loop that is in effect an engine of innovation. We have yet to find the inner details of such engines. Kauffman thinks that innovative ecosystems may obey basic laws of nature yet to be discovered. But here his scientific approach may be touching a traditional home base rather than stretching further into the constructivist science he has imagined (269). Kauffman indicates that his investigations can only propose some partial and tentative ideas that cannot be proven at all in any formal sense. This in itself is an indication of an open scientific approach that departs from more traditional ones in the way basic ideas are generated. What is critical in Kauffman's approach is a sense of looping back to well-established areas that work and then jumping ahead to far reaching conjectures. This is the gesture of an explorer: moving further into the unknown, but also revisiting home to mark emerging trails through reinforcing loops that stretch out with each iteration. This process recalls Bohm's sense of dialogic or participatory science. Kauffman engages in a dialogue between traditional and innovative views without allowing one perspective to take over entirely. Kauffman concludes that the universe in its persistent becoming is richer than all our dreaming (139). For us the perceivers, as well as players and actors, our dreams are not isolated from our perceptions of the universe. They are not kept in different spaces but are engaged in a dialogical process of co-construction in the space of human imagination. Our co-created dreams and perceptions loop away from us to probe and map the unknown with an increasingly dialogical human touch. In scientific cultures, the notion of pre-existing laws of nature is being redrawn. As this gradual reconfiguration of scientific concepts develops, the quest for possible natural laws may be transformed, at least for the near term, into working principles that help us model phenomena. The fact that models work within their domains of application does not imply necessarily that their rules are actually laws of nature itself, or even that such laws might even exist. This subtle difference moves the scientific discourse from the metaphysical to a more human level where science is starting to feel increasingly at home. The same applies to artistic cultures, or to any other culture for that matter. Like hands drawing, we design architectures and adaptive rules to work in our environment. Different design principles can be viable, even if they are mutually contradictory in some way. Previous metaphysical concepts about unique designs of nature no longer have to hold back our hand, either in art or in science. Certainly they don't hold back innovation in media and technology. The basic work of trial and error helps creative hands co-design in ever-widening loops of reflexive interaction. This does not exclude other traditional creative procedures. Only now we have a richer palette of constructive alternatives. Acknowledgment I wish to thank Stuart Kauffman and Walter Fontana for inspiring conversations on innovation during my residency at the Santa Fe Institute in January 2002, and Quinnipiac University for supporting my research. References Arata, Luis O. "Reflections about Interactivity." 1999. Online. Internet. Available 〈 http://media-in-transition.mit.edu/articles/index_arata.php 〉 . Bakhtin, M. M. Toward a Philosophy of the Act. Austin: U of Texas P, 1993. Bohm, David. On Dialogue. New York: Routledge, 1996. Escher, M. C. Drawing Hands. http://www.etropolis.com/escher/hands.htm Irigaray, Luce. I Love to You. New York: Routledge, 1996. Kauffman, Stuart. Investigations. New York: Oxford, 2000. Maturana, Humberto and Francisco Varela. Autopoiesis and Cognition. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1980. Links http://media-in-transition.mit.edu/articles/index_arata.html http://www.etropolis.com/escher/hands.htm Citation reference for this article MLA Style Arata, Luis O.. "Creation by Looping Interactions" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.4 (2002). [your date of access] 〈 http://www.media-culture.org.au/0208/creation.php 〉 . Chicago Style Arata, Luis O., "Creation by Looping Interactions" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 4 (2002), 〈 http://www.media-culture.org.au/0208/creation.php 〉 ([your date of access]). APA Style Arata, Luis O.. (2002) Creation by Looping Interactions. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(4). 〈 http://www.media-culture.org.au/0208/creation.php 〉 ([your date of access]).

Abstract: “Live free or die!” (New Hampshire State motto) Should individuals be free to make lifestyle decisions (such as what, when and how much to eat and how much physical activity to take), without undue interference from the state, even when their decisions may lead to negative consequences (obesity, heart disease, diabetes)? The UN Declaration of Human Rights enshrines the belief that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. The philosophy of Libertarianism (Locke) proposes that rights can be negative (e.g. the freedom to be free from outside interference) as well as positive (e.g. the right to certain benefits supplied by others). Robert Nozick, a proponent of Libertarianism, has argued that we have the right to make informed decisions about our lives without unnecessary interference. This entitlement requires that we exercise our rights only as far as they do not infringe the rights of others. The popular notion of the “Nanny State” (often used derogatively) is discussed, and the metaphor is extended to draw on the Super Nanny phenomenon, a reality television series that has been shown in numerous countries including the UK, the US, and Australia. It is argued in this paper that social marketing, when done well, can help create a “Super Nanny State” (implying positive connotations). In the “Nanny State” people are told what to do; in the “Super Nanny State” people are empowered to make healthier decisions. Social marketing applies commercial marketing principles to “sell” ideas (rather than goods or services) with the aim of improving the welfare of individuals and/or society. Where the common good may not be easily discerned, Donovan and Henley recommended using the UN Declaration of Human Rights as the baseline reference point. Social marketing is frequently used to persuade individuals to make healthier lifestyle decisions such as “eat less [saturated] fat”, “eat two fruits and five veg a day”, “find thirty minutes of physical activity a day”. Recent medical gains in immunisation, sanitation and treating infectious diseases mean that the health of a population can now be more improved by influencing lifestyle decisions than by treating illness (Rothschild). Social marketing activities worldwide are directed at influencing lifestyle decisions to prevent or minimise lifestyle diseases. “Globesity” is the new epidemic (Kline). Approximately one billion people globally are overweight or obese (compared to 850 million who are underweight); most worryingly, about 10% of children worldwide are now overweight or obese with rising incidence of type 2 diabetes in this population (Yach, Stuckler, and Brownwell). “Nanny state” is a term people often use derogatively to refer to government intervention (see Henley and Jackson). Knag (405) made a distinction between old-style, authoritarian “paternalism”, which chastised the individual using laws and sanctions, and a newer “maternalism” or “nanny state” which smothers the individual with “education and therapy (or rather, propaganda and regulation)”. Knag’s use of the term “Nanny State” still has pejorative connotations. In the “Nanny State”, governments are seen as using the tool of social marketing to tell people what they should and shouldn’t do, as if they were children being supervised by a nanny. At the extreme, people may be afraid that social marketing could be used by the State as a way to control the thoughts of the vulnerable, a view expressed some years ago by participants in a survey of attitudes towards social marketing (Laczniak, Lusch, and Murphy). More recently, the debate is more likely to focus on why social marketing often appears to be ineffective, rather than frighteningly effective (Hastings, Stead, and Macintosh). Another concern is the high level of fear being generated by much of the social marketing effort (Hastings and MacFadyen; Henley). It is as if nanny thinks she must scream at her children all the time to warn them that they will die if they don’t listen to her. However, by extension, I am suggesting that the “Super Nanny State” metaphor could have positive associations, with an authoritative (rather than authoritarian) parenting figure, one who explains appropriate sanctions (laws and regulations) but who is also capable of informing, inspiring and empowering. Still, the Libertarian ethical viewpoint would question whether governments, through social marketers, have the right to try to influence people’s lifestyle decisions such as what and how much to eat, how much to exercise, etc. In the rise of the “Nanny State”, Holt argued that governments are extending the range of their regulatory powers, restricting free markets and intruding into areas of personal responsibility, all under the guise of acting for the public’s good. A number of arguments, discussed below, can be proposed to justify interference by the State in the lifestyle decisions of individuals. The Economic Argument One argument that is often quoted to justify interference by the State is that the economic costs of allowing unsafe/unhealthy behaviours have to be borne by the community. It has been estimated in the US that medical costs relating to diabetes (which is associated directly with obesity) increased from $44 billion to $92 billion in five years (Yach, et al). The economic argument can be useful for persuading governments to invest in prevention but is not sufficient as a fundamental justification for interference. If we say that we want people to eat more healthily because their health costs will be burdensome to the community, we imply that we would not ask them to do so if their health costs were not burdensome, even if they were dying prematurely as a result. The studies relating to the economic costs of obesity have not been as extensive as those relating to the economic costs of tobacco (Yach, et al), where some have argued that prematurely dying of smoking-related diseases is less costly to the State than the costs incurred in living to old age (Barendregt, et al). This conclusion has been disputed (Rasmussen et al), but even if true, would not provide sufficient justification to cease tobacco control efforts. Similarly, I think people would expect social marketing efforts relating to nutrition and physical activity to continue even if an economic analysis showed that people dying prematurely from obesity-related illnesses were costing the State less overall in health care costs than people living an additional twenty years. The Consumer Protection Argument Some degree of interference by the State is desirable and often necessary because people are not entirely self-reliant in every circumstance (Mead). The social determinants of health (Marmot and Wilkinson) are sufficiently well-understood to justify government regulation to reduce inequalities in housing, education, access to health services, etc. Implicit in the criticism that the “Nanny State” treats people like children is the assumption that children are treated without dignity and respect. The positive parent or “Super Nanny” treats children with respect but recognises their vulnerability in unfamiliar or dangerous contexts. A survey of opinion in the UK in 2004 by the King’s Fund, an independent think tank, found that the public generally supported government initiatives to encourage healthier school meals; ensure cheaper fruit and vegetables; pass laws to limit salt, fat and sugar in foods; stop advertising junk foods for children and regulate for nutrition labels on food (UK public wants a “Nanny State”). The UK’s recently established National Social Marketing Centre has made recommendations for social marketing strategies to improve public health and Prime Minister Tony Blair has responded by making public health, especially the growing obesity problem, a central issue for government initiatives, offering a “helping hand” approach (Triggle). The Better Alternative Argument Wikler considered the case for more punitive government intervention in the obesity debate by weighing the pros and cons of an interesting strategy: the introduction of a “fat tax” that would require citizens to be weighed and, if found to be overweight, require them to pay a surcharge. He concluded that this level of state interference would not be justified because there are other ways to appeal to the risk-taker’s autonomy, through education and therapeutic efforts. Governments can use social marketing as one of these better alternatives to punitive sanctions. The Level Playing Field Argument Social marketers argue that many lifestyle behaviours are not entirely voluntary (O’Connell and Price). For example, it is argued that an individual’s choices about eating fast food, consuming sweetened soft drinks, and living sedentary lives have already been partially determined by commercial efforts. Thus, they argue that social marketing efforts are intended to level the playing field – educate, inform, and restore true personal autonomy to people, enabling them to make rational choices (Smith). For example, Kline’s media education program in Canada, with a component of “media risk reduction”, successfully educated young consumers (elementary school children) with strategies for “tuning out” by asking them to come up with a plan for what they would do if they “turned off TV, video games and PCs for a whole week?” (p. 249). The “tune out challenge” resulted in a reduction of media exposure (80%) displaced into active leisure pursuits. A critical aspect of this intervention was the contract drawn up in advance, with the children setting their own goals and strategies (Kline). In this view, the state is justified in trying to level the playing field, by using social marketing to offer information as well as alternative, healthier choices that can be freely accepted or rejected (Rothschild). Conclusion A real concern is that when people are treated like children, they become like children, retaining their desires and appetites but abdicating responsibility for their individual choices to the state (Knag). Some smokers, for example, declare that they will continue to smoke until the government bans smoking (Brown). Governments and social marketers have a responsibility to fund/design campaigns so that the audience views the message as informative rather than proscriptive. Joffe and Mindell (967) advocated the notion of a “canny state” with “less reliance on telling people what to do and more emphasis on making healthy choices easier”. Finally, one of the central tenets of marketing is the concept of “exchange” – the marketer must identify the benefits to be gained from buying a product. In social marketing terms, interference in an individual’s right to act freely can be effective and justified when the benefits are clearly identifiable and credible. Rothschild described marketing’s role as providing a middle point between libertarianism and paternalism, offering free choice and incentives to behave in ways that benefit the common good. Rather than shaking a finger at the individual (along the lines of earlier “Don’t Do Drugs” campaigns), the “Super Nanny” state, via social marketing, can inform and engage individuals in ways that make healthier choices more appealing and the individual feel more empowered to choose them. 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