While this rather low-quality image known as “The Dress” has nothing directly to do with energy transition, it has many layers of meaning that are related to my project. I will argue that The Dress is both illustrative of interpretative difference and metonymic of virality. The former pertains to my investigation of how different habits of perception and styles of thinking relate to conflicting conceptions of the risks and affordances of energy transition in Austin. The latter relates to the way new modes and patterns of information sharing offer both new potentialities and setbacks to organizing collective endeavors like energy transition.
One of the hooks of my project concerns interpretive difference. The Dress is a deeply ambiguous image. Most people see the dress as either blue and black or as white and gold, but very few people can switch back and forth to see both. These differences involve a mental process called the color constancy, which describes how human visual systems incorporate environmental cues to provide a consistent understanding of an object’s color despite constant changes in the actual frequency of light reaching our eyes. In this case, The Dress presents enough conflicting information that our visual system can apparently processes it as either a shadowy image of a dim blue light shining on a white and gold dress, or as a bright yellow light shining on a blue and black dress. I personally cannot see anything but the former, even though I now know that the actual dress is indubitably black and blue.
Here, I am using this ambiguity as an illustration or index of differences in perception that are located at a level of embodied experience that is beneath that of ideology. To make my point, Keane describes semiotic ideology as “a fundamental reflexive dimension of the general human capacity to use signs” (Keane 2018, 65 emphasis added). But this image indexes a fundamental pre-reflexive dimension of the human capacity to see and distinguish objects. It reflects our unconscious habits of interpretation that are between the binaries of ideology and biology, culture and nature, that give shape, color, and texture our conscious experience.
In a different way, The Dress is illustrative of semiotic ideological conflict, as attempts to explain the multiples ways of seeing the image became important turf upon which to defend various conflicting semiotic ideologies. Soon after it went viral on the internet, The Dress found its way into both scientific and philosophical discourse. Scientists tended to explain the phenomenon in terms of the visual system and “how people are wired” (Rogers 2015). While philosophers tended to argue that thought mediates between the object and the perception (BBC 2015). That is, the scientists and philosophers took different grounds (the physical body/systems of thought) from which to interpret the variable (different color interpretations). Furthermore, much like the science wars of the 90’s, individuals in both the science camp and the philosophical camp, to different degrees, tended to question the very legitimacy of the other’s approach (see here).
This is reminiscent of the semiotic ideological conflict erupting from divergent assessments of the risks and affordances of energy transition in Austin. Those recommending aggressive transition goals take the unknown, yet surely devastating consequences of continued carbon use as their ground. While those trying to temper the transition-rate tend to conceive of political-economic and technological restraints as the ground. Each side believes the other is being unrealistic and irresponsible.
There is a helpful allegory to be made here. Much like how the different color perceptions of The Dress (the figure) rested upon different perceptions of the lighting conditions (the ground), energy transition is as much about determining what we are incapable of affecting or unwilling to alter (the ground), as much as it is determining what we can change and how to change it (the figure).
Lastly, “The Dress” also serves as a metonym for the way contemporary social media infrastructures enable information to “go viral.” A primary strain of my research traces the way data is collected, evaluated, transformed into evidence and disseminated in ways that are at least intended to impact social behaviors. The development and frequency of use of social media platforms has enabled virality as a profoundly new, rhizomatic way for information and infulence to spread. Though far from being the first of its kind, “The Dress” is metonymic of this rupture in previous ways of producing and sharing information on a global scale.
What are the implications of “virality” for the way we think about the relationship of knowledge and power? In this case, “The Dress” sparked a new line of research into human sight and opened up a teaching moment, where people reconsidered the implications of a unique capacity for differences in perception. People have also been able to use social media to spontaneously organize in creative ways, such as making an egg the most popular image on Instagram. Though, often, what goes viral isn’t as innocuous as an egg or a curious optical illusion.
Social media is a prominent social force that influences thought, tastes, and behavior to such a degree that it both threatens traditional approaches to democratic politics and has revolutionized the way companies think about advertisement. On the one hand, disinformation campaigns are frighteningly effective at swaying the opinion of lay and expert audiences alike (Tucker et al. 2018). Celebrity social media influencers, too, wield considerable power, a fact that is reflected in the tremendous prices at which their endorsements are bought—up to $500,000 for one post (Karmali 2017). And though the cult of celebrity has long been used to move merchandise, the Fyre Festival fiasco makes apparent how the skilled manipulation of images and influencers on social media can be used to construct and maintain castles in the sky at an impressive scale and for extended durations of time.
In my research, I am interested in social media as one mode of social, technical, and political influence among many. Though it is also distinguished as a notably distributed and powerful mode. I therefore ask how social movements, like clean energy movements, can/are utilize(ing) or imitate(ing) social media platforms to help their cause? One example was provided to me by an interlocutor who previously worked at Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). He helped develop an app that enabled ERCOT to directly communicate with energy consumers. They put out their request for their consumers to voluntarily reduce energy demand in a way that could be shared and “go viral.” And it worked! He sees the future, carbon-free grid as being intimately tied to this type of data sharing and collaboration.
While this rather low-quality image known as “The Dress” has nothing directly to do with energy transition, it has many layers of meaning that are related to my project. I will argue that The Dress is both illustrative of interpretative difference and metonymic of virality. The former pertains to my investigation of how different habits of perception and styles of thinking relate to conflicting conceptions of the risks and affordances of energy transition in Austin. The latter relates to the way new modes and patterns of information sharing offer both new potentialities and setbacks to organizing collective endeavors like energy transition.
One of the hooks of my project concerns interpretive difference. The Dress is a deeply ambiguous image. Most people see the dress as either blue and black or as white and gold, but very few people can switch back and forth to see both. These differences involve a mental process called the color constancy, which describes how human visual systems incorporate environmental cues to provide a consistent understanding of an object’s color despite constant changes in the actual frequency of light reaching our eyes. In this case, The Dress presents enough conflicting information that our visual system can apparently processes it as either a shadowy image of a dim blue light shining on a white and gold dress, or as a bright yellow light shining on a blue and black dress. I personally cannot see anything but the former, even though I now know that the actual dress is indubitably black and blue.
Here, I am using this ambiguity as an illustration or index of differences in perception that are located at a level of embodied experience that is beneath that of ideology. To make my point, Keane describes semiotic ideology as “a fundamental reflexive dimension of the general human capacity to use signs” (Keane 2018, 65 emphasis added). But this image indexes a fundamental pre-reflexive dimension of the human capacity to see and distinguish objects. It reflects our unconscious habits of interpretation that are between the binaries of ideology and biology, culture and nature, that give shape, color, and texture our conscious experience.
In a different way, The Dress is illustrative of semiotic ideological conflict, as attempts to explain the multiples ways of seeing the image became important turf upon which to defend various conflicting semiotic ideologies. Soon after it went viral on the internet, The Dress found its way into both scientific and philosophical discourse. Scientists tended to explain the phenomenon in terms of the visual system and “how people are wired” (Rogers 2015). While philosophers tended to argue that thought mediates between the object and the perception (BBC 2015). That is, the scientists and philosophers took different grounds (the physical body/systems of thought) from which to interpret the variable (different color interpretations). Furthermore, much like the science wars of the 90’s, individuals in both the science camp and the philosophical camp, to different degrees, tended to question the very legitimacy of the other’s approach (see here).
This is reminiscent of the semiotic ideological conflict erupting from divergent assessments of the risks and affordances of energy transition in Austin. Those recommending aggressive transition goals take the unknown, yet surely devastating consequences of continued carbon use as their ground. While those trying to temper the transition-rate tend to conceive of political-economic and technological restraints as the ground. Each side believes the other is being unrealistic and irresponsible.
There is a helpful allegory to be made here. Much like how the different color perceptions of The Dress (the figure) rested upon different perceptions of the lighting conditions (the ground), energy transition is as much about determining what we are incapable of affecting or unwilling to alter (the ground), as much as it is determining what we can change and how to change it (the figure).
Lastly, “The Dress” also serves as a metonym for the way contemporary social media infrastructures enable information to “go viral.” A primary strain of my research traces the way data is collected, evaluated, transformed into evidence and disseminated in ways that are at least intended to impact social behaviors. The development and frequency of use of social media platforms has enabled virality as a profoundly new, rhizomatic way for information and infulence to spread. Though far from being the first of its kind, “The Dress” is metonymic of this rupture in previous ways of producing and sharing information on a global scale.
What are the implications of “virality” for the way we think about the relationship of knowledge and power? In this case, “The Dress” sparked a new line of research into human sight and opened up a teaching moment, where people reconsidered the implications of a unique capacity for differences in perception. People have also been able to use social media to spontaneously organize in creative ways, such as making an egg the most popular image on Instagram. Though, often, what goes viral isn’t as innocuous as an egg or a curious optical illusion.
Social media is a prominent social force that influences thought, tastes, and behavior to such a degree that it both threatens traditional approaches to democratic politics and has revolutionized the way companies think about advertisement. On the one hand, disinformation campaigns are frighteningly effective at swaying the opinion of lay and expert audiences alike (Tucker et al. 2018). Celebrity social media influencers, too, wield considerable power, a fact that is reflected in the tremendous prices at which their endorsements are bought—up to $500,000 for one post (Karmali 2017). And though the cult of celebrity has long been used to move merchandise, the Fyre Festival fiasco makes apparent how the skilled manipulation of images and influencers on social media can be used to construct and maintain castles in the sky at an impressive scale and for extended durations of time.
In my research, I am interested in social media as one mode of social, technical, and political influence among many. Though it is also distinguished as a notably distributed and powerful mode. I therefore ask how social movements, like clean energy movements, can/are utilize(ing) or imitate(ing) social media platforms to help their cause? One example was provided to me by an interlocutor who previously worked at Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). He helped develop an app that enabled ERCOT to directly communicate with energy consumers. They put out their request for their consumers to voluntarily reduce energy demand in a way that could be shared and “go viral.” And it worked! He sees the future, carbon-free grid as being intimately tied to this type of data sharing and collaboration.