Unequaled variety of access comes with homogenizing standardization imposed by protocols

Evidence

A third effect of the digitalization of attention results from the increasing tendency of our different kinds of programming to extend across the whole of the planet. At the same time that digitalization puts forward thousands of texts, images, pieces of music and videos for my attention, giving me access to a variety that is absolutely without precedent in the whole history of humanity, it imposes inevitable effects of STANDARDIZATION, because a data flow can only circulate in a vector if it submits to the configurations and homogenising norms defined by its protocol. In the first years of YouTube’s existence, you could make (almost) anything and everything free access – so long as you cut it up into ten-minute sections. You can communicate any kind of writing to anyone anywhere in the world – on condition that it can be input by a keyboard (which makes it graphologically dumb) or a scanner (which wipes out any texture in the original paper). You can transfer any kind of music to mp3 – on condition that it complies with a level of compression that muffles the intensity of high quality recordings. A certain degree of standardization (that may be more or less damaging) is the price we pay to benefit from the ease of transmission offered by a vector. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 212

Categorization

• QUESTION: Citton names the standardization cost but barely starts the calculus of when it’s ‘more or less damaging’ — worth chasing a framework for judging tolerable vs. harmful homogeneity.
• XREF: connects to: Institutions inherently operate by reproducing homogeneity rather than diversity — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 20; Deviation itself gets standardized, not exempt from it; Law converts difference into sameness to enable formal equal treatment — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 82 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Institutions inherently operate by reproducing homogeneity rather than diversity #expands (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 20
• Deviation itself gets standardized, not exempt from it #expands (0.80)
• Law converts difference into sameness to enable formal equal treatment #exemplifies (0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 82