The Circus of Participation

Networked culture grows increasingly dependent on the participation of the online millions. At the same time civic participation is on the decline. Robert Putnam demonstrates this in his book Bowling Alone. But online people click away. That brings its very own problems:  Participatory panopticon? (also earlier version here) "The idea of the emerging participatory panopticon scares a lot of people. That's not surprising; after all, there are numerous ways in which a world in which millions of us carry always-on, mobile networked recorders could lead to invasions of privacy, harassment of the powerless, and an increased coarsening of public discourse. But if we accept the notion that the participatory panopticon is a likely consequence of otherwise desirable improvements to communication and information technologies, it becomes incumbent upon us to think of ways to use it as a tool for good."
Not unrelated is the story of congress staff members tampering with wikipedia entries of congress members. Also fascinating is the Washington Post story that credits email, texting, and blogs as key contributors to the fury over the Danish cartoons. In the theatre of participation there is also Participate.net-- an initiative of PBS, Salon.com and XM Satellite Radio. Users/producers can submit short videos, podcasts and text stories for reuse by the facilitating parties. With all these calls for participation the question comes up  1) Why would I  participate in  a given forum more than once? 2) Who gains from my contribution? 3)  What is the urgency of the  forum, or, is the content of the project worth supporting?  If we don't ask these questions we merely drift from one participation-seeking economy to the next. We loose ourselves. We waste time. What makes us come back to a site, a list, a forum, an online participatory design project? Richard Coyne talks about the issues of the emerging alternative economies and the gift economy that surrounds it in "Cornucopia Limited." And the creator of a site says: Come and leave a gift on my site. Upload your image here.  Come and dance to the tune of hierarchies of the gift economy. Artists are often exceedingly naive about participation. Opening a room online does not mean that people will come and stroll inside! Some blogs remain private media forever. Other, more populist, sites get 80.000 visitors a day.
Participation becomes perhaps the measure of success for a site. Cultural production is successful if it takes on social meaning, if it is consequential. This, today, and in this context, is perhaps measured in clicks. Each contribution a vote? Each visitor to your site an indicator that you do good work? Such speculations are misleading in the face of google bombing and *participatory social engineering.* Visits to your site can be manufactured and thus do not truly represent how viral or inviting your site may be. Online games, for instance, represent stunning attention economies. Full immersion can be achieved. You talk to, insult, or sing to the other players while participating in the distributed spectacle. While not making a moralistic claim against games- I would argue that they function in the mainstream (not some niche art game scene) as a way of forgetting. What the French filmmaker Godard claimed for TV ("television is about forgetting") is also true for games. Players dive into them, participate in the online world and somewhat forget themselves. The problem is the game itself but its use. Technology is not the problem per se but the way it is socially used, is. Some games require players to participate in the game for many hours a day. If we do not think through our own commitments, our own participation and the worthiness of our dedication then we are merely mice running panicky from one flicker to the next. How much time is left to feel ourselves in this flood of input? In between using and producing, listening, and watching and reading...  when do we think for ourselves?  Within the participatory circus how do we become more than merely a sponge of the other?