Re-defining Culture
2nd Congress of EASA (October 29, 2021)
Re-defining Culture for the Public Policy‘s Agenda Setting
in the Age of Culture as Algorithm
by Kim, Hae-Bo
With the title of “Re-defining Culture for the Public Policy‘s Agenda Setting in the Age of Culture as Algorithm”, this presentation is going to share my observation and opinion about the need for cultural policy’s shift to go along with the technology driven change of culture today. I’d like to start with introducing some interesting phenomena. I think those are reflecting the typical changes of culture in the age of digital algorithm civilization. Firstly, in last July, there was an uproar by the Kansong Art Museum’s announcement. They announced that 100 NFT copies of the National Treasure No. 70 Hunminjeongeum Haerye, owned by that museum, will be sold for 100 million won each. Is it possible or legal, or right? Previously in March 2021, Banksy's artwork “Morons” was burned and the NFT of the Youtube live streaming video of the burning performance was auctioned for about 4 times higher price than the original. The original work contained a mockery of Bankersy; “I can’t believe you morons actually buy this shit”. And in the video of the burning, a guy says “if the real is burned away, the NFT becomes the irreplaceable genuine”. The price of the original artwork was about $100,000, but the NFT of video was auctioned at 228.69 Ethereum in March. It was about 430 million won at the time. Someone views the NFT boom of today, in which digital virtuality replaces the physical real, as like a mirage or a scam. But someone like Jamie Crawley views this as “the emergence of a market of emotion.” I also expect that block-chain can be a new technology that enables the “DMZ(de-monetization zone) of culture,” which is more proper for the cultural service’s transactions. It is because those go back and forth between monetization and de-monetization.
In June 2020, the Ministry of Culture released the survey result that the number of online cultural activities got more than doubled as the corona 'stay at home' became longer. It seems so obvious or so usual nowadays. And it is no wonder that Metaverse becomes a space for culture and business. People can meet and travel with each other more freely in the virtual space. Whether it is for game, concert, or shopping, a new cultural time-space is being created as much as necessary to implement new cultural business model. In that virtual cultural space, virtual humans and multi-persona characters are very active as cultural subjects. Not only as a tool, AI’s are already very active as cultural subjects even with their own personalities to be respected by humans, so to speak legally. As being digital-native, and because of corona pandemic, and sometimes with the YiSaengMang mentality(which means “not in this life”), the M-Z generation get immersed in the virtual world with less antagonism.
We now begin to question whether arts and creativity are unique to humans, while AI-created cultures even get dominating the human-created culture. Now, the music composed by AI is indistinguishable from human works. It is the time to reconsider the meaning of artistic creation and the subjectivity of machines, as well as the authorship limited to humans. Meanwhile, AI and big data technologies are developing from IOT to IOB (Internet of Behaviors). Technology argues that “People-Centered” is the trend yet, but it is just a strategy for AI to become more like human. Culture by human and even humans’ affect are used as the training data sets to evolve AI like humans. Everything in humans is being mined like oil or natural resources for a new capitalism.
Such de-materialization, commodification, and privatization of culture were already warned by the discourses of cultural capitalism or cognitive capitalism. However, recently, especially along with the corona pandemic, it is rapidly progressing even to de-humanization in the digital algorithm civilization. Meanwhile, the value of culture, which has been secured through community’s recognition, is converted into the price of goods, the virtual overthrow the real, and the culture created by non-human subjects overwhelms human culture. So I prepared this paper to answer to my-self for two questions ; What is culture today? and How should public actors establish future cultural policy agendas?
What are the responses to these changes?
First, let's look at how policies respond to these social changes.
In the midst of the corona pandemic, public policies rush online, with no other options, or no time to think. This shows that we(including myself) are doing our best within the existing role frame. So, it's kind of pathetic. I think the public policy's role to provide the direction of social change is insufficient, while only responding to rapid change by technology and pandemic. In the midst of the corona pandemic, who should occupy the public square more? Transportation, Politics, Business, or Arts & Culture? Is it okay to leave people’s cultural activity being personalized and fragmented? Shouldn't someone ask questions like these?
And the domain-defining institutionalization process, which is a typical response of public administration, shows limitations. That is because it should go by the existing partitions of the public administration even when responding to new issues that cross the boundaries.
In addition, the success or failure of government's policy is often judged by whether the policy brand is promoted well enough, rather than by the fundamental change it caused. In the end, it would result in only another global race for the policy-branding among states, like the “Creative Economy” boom. Wouldn't the result be too obvious? No matter how elaborate the Korean government's “가상융합경제발전전략, which means virtual & convergence economy development strategy” is, can it beat the brand rhetoric that the UK government announces in English as “The Immersive economy”?
Secondly, how do scholars view and interpret those phenomena?
It's worth noting that Ed Finn, founding director of the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University, called the computer the "Culture Machine" rather than a "Computing Machine." And as Jay David Bolter, chair in New Media at the Georgia Institute of Technology, put it, computer algorithms have become the “Defining Technology” of the 21st century. Algorithms are changing not only the social structure and human culture, but also the perception of humans by humans. Scholars also describe this phenomenon as an “Algorithmic Turn”.
Discourses reconsidering the status of human beings as <a traveler to the planet> are overflowing after Corona, but still Human-centered. Those are in such a tone as “Can Post-Humanism be Humanism?” But, how to live along with machines is not just a philosophical subject, but very practical matter now. In order for humans not only to survive on Earth, but also to avoid being fired from their jobs, we need to move away from the anthropocentrism and must learn how to work and communicate with AI.
Other discourses to note are the “emotional turn” and “exploring the essence of human beings”. After the very long period of reason, the “emotional turn” in cultural studies began to draw attention, like in 『The Cultural Politics of Emotion』 by Sara Ahmed(2004). Now, even in the field of cultural administration, it is important to follow not only the logic of universal reason but also the emotions of individuals. Cognitive capitalism, driven by Affective economy, also ultimately aims to move human emotions. In order to sell not only goods but also contents, they are passionate about creating technologies that can digitize and recognize the emotional signals, and understand emotions of human to make more appropriate responses. Research for the development of AI is bringing up a boom in research on humans. While the machines learn about humans to become more like human, humans seek the essence of human beings to differentiate themselves from machine.
Combining these discourses, I choose “algorithm” as a keyword to understand today’s cultural phenomenon. Algorithm is “a collection of procedures, methods, and commands necessary to logically solve a given problem”. Robert Kowalski(1979) said that “Algorithm is a problem-solving strategy, consisting with logic component and control component.” Now algorithms become more cultural and the culture itself. And cultures become more algorithmic. Ted Striphas said “Culture now has two audience : people and machines”. He expressed the phenomenon of personalization of culture by a recommendation algorithm, what he called “you loop”, as “Algorithmic culture”. Culture itself has an algorithmic character. Even though it is not expressed in computer language, culture controls human behaviors with “a set of socially acceptable procedures, methods, and commands deriving the desired output”. If we consider the social and cultural factors necessary for the establishment and continuation of computer algorithms, the digital algorithms and culture are very similar in the way they work and exist. We can borrow a useful concept and models for understanding the essence and future of culture from “Cultural Algorithm”, which is a branch of evolutionary computation that imitates cultural progress and natural selection. “Cultural algorithm” was suggested by Robert G. Reynolds in 1994. “Cultural Algorithm” simply models the cultural development of a society or algorithm as interactions between the community’s belief space and the population space, which is a set of the practice cases by individuals.
With these references, I suggests “Culture as Algorithm” as a framework for the better understanding culture in the age of AI civilization. Within the framework of “Culture on/by/for the algorithm”, those consist of today’s “Culture as Algorithm”, this presentation deals with some noteworthy phenomena, characteristic changes of culture, and related policy issues. Let me summarize my observation very briefly. More details could be explained during the discussion session if time allows. “Culture on the Algorithm” is getting lighter. “Culture by the Algorithm” is hyper-personalization of culture that results in “My Culture”. And “Culture for the Algorithm” is training data set and ethical guideline for AI to become more human-like, and contains a lot of ethical and legal issues to be treated with new concepts.
The “Culture on the Algorithm” phenomenon is that culture becomes lighter in form and content as culture is digitized and circulated through the expanded online virtual space. The result is so-called “dragged, gravitated, and swarming” people. As we well know, culture is dependent on digital algorithm technology to change. And also the virtual culture is replacing the physical real, like the NFT uproars in the previous chapter. And the limits of physical space and ecological time become meaningless due to the change in the cultural space-time scale. Cultural institutions around the world have already established countermeasures for problems such as inequality in digital access for culture, copyright disputes, and monopoly of platform companies. Polarization of public opinion due to a lighter culture and filter bubble, low trust society, and difficulties in social integration are also social problems that are already being mentioned a lot. However, I think we need to consider a more fundamental issue in terms of cultural policy. It is concerned about the situation in which people who enjoy the “lightness of culture” moving freely in a virtual world without national or regional borders get to feel the loss of existence. I describe this phenomenon as “loss of cultural gravity”. If this is expressed in policy language such as “loss of the centripetal value of society,” people who value individual freedom more are likely to oppose it. However, it cannot be denied that human beings are social beings that simultaneously need the freedom to float and the cultural gravity for the stability of existence. A new approach is required that is different from the existing social integration through culture. To observe the institutional movement, a representative institutional response to the Culture on the Algorithm phenomenon is the provision of checks against platform companies. So-called “Google Abuse Prevention Act” is to control the big-Tech companies who dominate cultural distribution with digital algorithms. Meanwhile, by the cultural policy, efforts to increase digital access are also needed so that no one is left behind in online cultural activities.
About “Culture by the Algorithm”, it is necessary to pay attention to not only the phenomenon in which a cultural trend is created with the hyper-personalized recommendation algorithm, but also the phenomenon in which AI non-human subjects act as subjects of culture like humans. As we saw earlier, AI models that now have its identity or personality are really transcending not only the attractiveness of humans but also the limits of human biological time scale. In an era when it is difficult to distinguish machine-made culture from human-made culture, the true aura no longer means much, and authenticity is also selectively consumed as an element for marketing. In the Culture by the Algorithm phenomenon, we are concerned about the ease of cultural control as well as distortion of public opinion by the state and the capital. They utilize algorithms that operate incomprehensibly like a black box. Recently, governance entities that are preparing control standards for algorithms, such as the European Union, claim the “responsibility to explain” as an important element of AI ethics standard. However, among the Culture by the Algorithm phenomenon, there is another issue that needs more attention in terms of cultural policy. I think the more essential problem is that people mistake the individual's taste to that the machine responds friendly as "My Culture" instead of the culture acquired through communication with the community or humans. As a result, the “recursive casual power of culture” that reproduces community will be weakened, and the phenomenon of “superpersonalization of culture” will be accelerated. In an era when “I am not lonely even though I am alone(Me without We)”, it will not be easy to support cultural policies oriented toward public value and the community.
“Culture for the Algorithm” is a phenomenon in which culture acts as an ethical standards as well as data that trains AI to become more human-like. The ethical issue is mainly dealt with in digital governance that checks AI technologies such as Governing the Algorithm, but I argue that the data should be more concerned with the cultural policy dimension. Governments are stepping up to build public data dams, technology is evolving from IOT to IOB, and the capital is resurrecting dead artists for online content production. In order to train AI like humans, there is a fierce competition for human data. The emotional response of a human being who clicks <Like> after viewing the content provided by AI also becomes important data for machine learning. This is also criticised as the phenomenon of “affective exploitation” of cognitive capitalism. Now “from the cultural city to the metaverse”, culture is being used as a factor to make the virtual and real world more realistic and attractive. I describe it more cynically as “cultural lubricant” for the smooth operation of algorithmic civilization. However, it is questionable whether digital algorithm platforms are paying that price of the cultural data.
Needless to say, cultural policy has to intervene in the controversy of the bias and ethics of AI. The most universal ethic standard is the contemporary culture of the society. It is a very sensitive or almost impossible problem to legally set the criteria for the training data or algorithm settings for A, so that the bias of AI can be controlled. However, when cultural distribution exploded through the mass media, there was censorship on the culture by government or by NGOs. The appropriateness should be discussed separately, but it is time to set up the standards and methods of controlling the culture by AI, through social consensus. This is because digital algorithms are not just a medium of communication, but have more powerful ripple power and even culture-generating power. At this time, there is a possibility that the globally universal ethical guidelines of AI developed by multinational companies and cultural diversity issues that should respect the cultural characteristics of individual societies may collide. It should not be left to scientists and lawyers to solve this problem. Cultural policy should also be involved in it. There is an institutional movement to introduce an “AI audit” to monitor artificial intelligence. Cultural Impact Assessment for AI is a possible recommendation upon these observation.
With these observation, I suggest two new approaches to setting the cultural policy agenda by the public bodies.
The first is to redefine the domains of culture in which policy will engage. Definition of culture is said to be impossible. But there are countless definitions by scholars and even by the law already. Defining culture by law is to set the domain for policy to intervene and to specify the values that the state will aim for. However, for the policy shift, the concept of culture must be re-established through an insightful, scientific and philosophical discourse process that understands culture of today fully. Based on the newly established concept of culture of today, it is necessary to re-determine the areas in which the public policy will engage and not. Upon those observation, I’d like define culture as “the trace of the lives of cultural subjects left in a time-space”. And the life of a cultural subject consists with interactions among humans and non-humans. So when defining culture for the public policy, the expansion of the time-space and subjects of culture caused by technology and social change should be considered. The expansion is like “Culture on/by/for the algorithm”, as I described in this presentation.
My second suggestion is new interpretation of the concept of “文化 : culture” in line with the context of the times. The concept that “文化 : culture” is non-materialistic and distinct from “文明 : civilization” is only chosen according to the context of the time when the words were imported and translated. But the meaning of culture changes as a result of the interactions among the major cultural subjects; state, human, and machine(or technology). It is important to maintain the balance among the aspects of the culture pursued by each subjects and their hidden desires. If humans lean toward either the culture of state(order or the good culture to follow) or the culture of the machine(fashion or my culture to purchase), the balance of concept of culture collapses. So We need to sustain the power of human culture to keep the balance not to loose cultural subjectivity of human. Till now, the concept of “文化 : culture” has been based on its translation reference “文治敎化”, which means enlightening the “people” for the state to rule with literature, not with military force. This is because, although culture is enjoyed by citizens, it is mainly by state’s policy that the culture is described. Instead of the current interpretation “文化 as 文治敎化”, I suggest another interpretation “文明自化”, which means enlightening the “civilization” for people to change for their own accord. “文治敎化” is an inappropriate in the age of cultural democracy that values the cultural subjectivity of the individual. And now, at a time when digital algorithm civilization is replacing human culture, it is important to enlighten the culture by machine to be more appropriate to humans. When we seek any balance among things, it is helpful to revisit the wisdom of ancient East Asia, which does not see the binary separation between material and mind, between human and non-human, and even between the real and virtual.
The shift in policy approach can be said to be too abstract and unpractical. However, the change in perspective actually changes the direction of cultural projects and even performance indicators. For example, “balancing between the cultural policy to create a healthy community and the art policy to support individual citizens of cultural competence” can be suggested as an action task according to this change of policy approach. More specifically, it is to strengthen <art education> program for citizens' cultural identity and communication capability development. A designer named John Maeda said, “Design is a solution to a problem. Art is a question to a problem.” Our cultural policy is close to the product of the government's “Design Thinking” to solve problems such as cultural welfare and balanced regional cultural development. Now, in the age of digital algorithm civilization, an art policy that supports individual’s “Art Thinking” (not only by artists but by all citizens) that asks questions about what humans are and who I am is important.
