Negative week (and the last one!!)

After a brief moment of optimism, we return with this week’s readings to a darker vision of the future of modern life. Clearly, Barney and Andrejevic disagree with writers like Kelly, Trippi, Gilder, and Lurie about the effects of digital media on our lives. But what is the central reason for this disagreement: what, in other words, do the optimists “just not get” about digital media, according to Barney and Andrejevic? Do you think that the latter two writers might consider the work of the optimists to be a twenty-first century version of what the Marxists called “ideology”?

Also, a brief note: for those of you puzzled about what Andrejevic is talking about when he references the notion of “enclosure,” Wikipedia has a fairly solid and brief overview of the term.Barney, might possibly be the most annoying theorist we have read this semester. 10 pages in, I was already sick of listening to him bitch about everything and anything. The writers of last week might have been unrealistic idealists, but it was a nice change. To be followed by Prometheus Wired is just torture. To Barney, capitalism is the perfection both productivity and alienation. When we transfer these qualities into the digital age, we not only continue to further productivity, we also displace human labor. He adamantly argues that the world is suffering from a loss of jobs and that the jobs that are created are horrible. First, I just want to say that I have read research that service jobs actually suffer less volatility than traditional jobs in the manufacturing sector, just because people are less likely to change the behavior of service purchases than goods, like say in recession time. This also trumps his accusation of work that is turned into bits being invaluable and replaceable. I also don’t trust all the wonderful statistics he quotes. They are way to specific; it’s like he finds years or sectors that promote his views rather than looking at empirical studies. It annoys me. I also find it hard to call him a media critic. He’s more like a media complainer. True, there is a problem with new job mismatch and transition, but I think the idea is that these are the windfall losers in a social change that is supposed to be utilitarian at least in the fact that overall social welfare is increased. Also, I think the chance for low income individuals to work from home is not an overall bad thing. He makes a big point about the degradation of women, but overall, I think it only empowers women. Yes, they will work even more, but it gives them a very real sense of contribution that they would not be able to have if they could only work away from home. Am I saying that there are not problems associated with working from home? No, not at all. But Mr. Barney wasn’t even willing to consider that there might be positive sides, when I know that there are; to me, this discredits much of what he say. To me, this made it hard to identify how much of what he said was worth listening to (and I am sure some of it is) and what was not.

Okay, I am done complaining and ready to give a real response on Mark Andrejevic. I feel he is over pessimistic, but that is a reasonable response to the idyllic writers of last week. And yes, I think he would consider them to be consumed with optimistic ideology. A world that is self-policed through the golden rule is just never practical. Reading Mark A. as a response to last week’s writers is just much more telling than if I had read him as is. The caution he preaches is in stark contrast to the optimism. Last week, we celebrated the complete customization and individualization of computers as progress and success. Here, it is a threat, a manipulation of consumers in which they are asked to participated. I thought he has an amazing definition of the ever expanding enclosure. Overall, I thought he presented actual occurrences in ways that I doubt many people had thought of them before. For examples, how enclosure is both a transaction and  a division of social classes. That being said, although I was intrigued by what he said, I do not agree. I think that consumers have made a choice to be in a transaction where convenience and entertainment are traded for information. My generation is aware of the vast amounts of information collected on us with every click of our mouse. Honestly, I don’t even mind. As long as its only used to target me with advertisements, I almost appreciate it. I like the efficiency of only watching commercials that might be relevant to me J  

Optimism that I like-ish Trippi

It really is amazing to me how Trippi paints Howard Dean’s campaign as a new democracy in which the internet equalizes and brings truth. And in many ways, I think he is correct. With the internet, we get to discuss, we get to find our own information, we get to make our own decisions. The days of polar issues are no longer quite as necessary. Americans can sometimes have more than two opinions on issues, which was rare in the past. Do I think he is overly optimistic thought. Maybe, but he at least acknowledges that problems will come with greater use of the internet. “The world ahead won’t be perfect. There will be new problems” (227) But what I do not like is that he seems to feel that these problems will not be as inherent as the current systems “But I  am not worried. The internet is a the best solution to the problems we can create. It is a problem-solving medium that runs on the combined power of a billion computers,  on the remarkably innovative power of people” (227). And I am just not sure how true that is. Yes, the internet gives us access to more opinions and information. But at the same time, television has begun to be a much more inclusive media. The internet might have more capabilities, but it still has the potential op putting power in the hands of the select few. The original information must come from somewhere, regardless of who that is. At least when we know that all of our information is coming in from three news stations we know who to monitor, who to hold accountable for correct information and who to call out if it’s wrong. On the internet, possibilities are endless and responsibility is diminished. In a way, I am not even allowed to assume the information I obtain form these medium is accurate unless the source also has an offline sector (Like the New York Times online).

All of this is not to say that I don’t agree with Trippi, in the long term. “These are not just markets anymore. They’re communities . And we’re not just consumers, we’re citizens. We’re looking for companies, politicians, and institutions that will build the best communities” (209. The internet is making us demand a lot more of companies that want to stick around, that want to be in our good graces. However, the internet, the making of the instant and anonymous also gives people a sense of impermeability while being able to permeate everyone else. If I want to make a scam company, easier on the internet. False information, easier on the internet.

However, (last switching of sides) my favorite quote Is “Americans must participate fully in democracy for it to work. And I believe the Internet is the best tool we’ve ever created to help achieve that” (226). Near the middle of the reading, Trippi comment on how so much of what the populace wants, the most democratic populace in the world, doesn’t seem to happen. Yes, the internet isn’t perfect, it might even be more flawed than Trippi lets on, but I agree, it is probably the most democratic technology we have invented. Those possibilities also make it a scare technology, because they could work the other way, but the old systems are only digging us further into bribery, debt, and consumerism. At least with the internet we have hope positive change. 

Let's get Optimistic! Again!

One of the common themes that runs through this week's readings is the inherent emancipatory power of modern digital media. What do you make of this? Can media as such be liberating?

Negroponte is undeniably optimistic about the future the digital age promises. Hence the referral of this as the “An Age of Optimism.” His optimism mostly lies in the distinction he draws between information in bits and information in atoms. Atoms are bound by the physical and therefore by laws and political agendas. Bits on the other hand are “borderless, stored and manipulated with absolutely no respect for geological boundaries,” as Negroponte points out, they cannot be held up at customs. Most importantly though is “the access, the mobility, and the ability to affect change that will make the future so different from the present.” Although this may seem vague, he also provides many solid examples. To me, the most intriguing was his illustration of the way the digital age may view work. Going back to the readings we did on Stewart Brand, it struck me how Turner emphasized how Brand and those of his generation were as afraid for their loss of freedom and individuality by communism as by the mundane middle class work industrial life offered them. Hence, Brand and many others who wanted to emancipate themselves from the dredges of daily life turned to technology and what was to become a digital world. To Negroponte, this has resulted in “the crisp line between love and duty will blur by virtue of a common denominator – being digital” I think this definitely has a case and point, the nerds of the past are being replaced by socially capable nerds who want to mix their work with fun and play.

Barlow explores similar but different avenues of emancipation to be rendered by modern digital media. He echoes Turkle in the conviction that cyberspace is different from the real world. It is democratic and self governs where in the real world we need to come together to consent to be regulated. In cyberspace this has not happened, because there has been no need for consented regulation. In a way, I agree with Barlow, but in some ways I don’t. I understand that he may have a point about the inadequacies of government regulation. I also trust that trying to impose old standards on something so inherently different will only prove problematic. However, cyberspace and the real world are not as separate as he makes them out to be. They are not two separate worlds. And since there is some serious overlap, you cannot regulate one without regulating the others especially with so many business going on the web. Regardless, his made for the most interesting reading.

Gilder takes me back to McLuahn and the argument of cold and hot media. I think his emphasis on the computer as a much more democratic process of viewing, editing, and making your own images has been proven over 100 times correct, and it definitely has affected the way the populace view media. My favorite quote “the telecomputer will enrich and strengthen democracy and capitalism all around the world” ha ha. Love the fear of the Japanese. I enjoyed and understood the reading, but I felt the beginning did not add much to the media theory we already read, and end was just him giving drastic end of America’s supremacy warnings?

Overall, I think that these authors are correct, just as many of the others were. New technology always seems to move us towards a more democratic system. It always comes with its problems, but the great levilizing power of media changes cannot be denied.