Faith and the Concrete

My immediate reaction to Trippi was not to trust him. He gushes about the new age of democratization, grass-roots movements, and corporate accountability. The way he frames it, it sounds too good to be true. But I could only poke so many holes in his beaming praise for the internet. Really, a lot of what he says is true…or at least on its way to being true.

Up until now, we have been discussing the nature of online communities. Does the internet create fake connections while alienating users in the real world? Does community require embodiment or real-life proximity, or can it be achieved in virtuality? Trippi’s story in some ways showed how virtuality and real life can remain connected. The Howard Dean Meetup group, and the ‘meetup’ concept in general, is the perfect example. The group’s connection existed outside of the internet. The actual people met in Starbuckses and restaurants everywhere, and the online activists showed up in Vermont ready to propel their online cause into a reality.

I had to, once again, think about the connection between virtuality and reality. For this reason, the ‘Having Faith in Strangers’ idea was a particularly interesting part of his evaluation of the ‘new era’ of internet communities. First, do we value the voices of the public more as a result of the internet? Second, if we do, is it wise? Ideas can exist in the virtual world without having real life value. Howard Dean had tons of supporters online, but it doesn't matter unless he's in the White House. If we don't value public opinion more, why? Is it because people have no 'cumulative intelligence,' and are, in fact, less productive and useful in large groups? Or are people unproductive and useless because the TV era has accustomed them to passivity and idiocy? Third, and most importantly, does it even matter whether or not we value public opinion? Can opinions, expressed in the virtual world of the internet, really affect the concrete world? In some ways, no. You can want a flying pink Toyota Camry with all your might, but there's a limit to what a company can do with steel and rubber. But in another way, the internet IS connected to reality, and Trippi shows how it increases accountability in some ways, especially in business and politics. Because it is less controlled than top-down structured media, such as television, it is difficult for corporations or political candidates to hide secrets or ‘get away with’ substandard ethics or products. But does the public have real power in the virtual world? How can we, as disembodied voices in internet communities, force businesses to “stop polluting and start taking care of their employees” (204)? Those are real life things. Does cyberspace hold sway over concrete things like wages, medical care, and smog? Can we trust businesses? Even if this is true, can we trust people in general? Are they capable of dictating their demands through the medium of the internet in a way that can actually create concrete change? 
Furthermore, are companies really using our 'cumulative intelligence' to serve our needs? Was Trippi right when he wrote "we're not just consumers. We're citizens again" (209)? Is it grass roots really, or have corporations and politicians just gotten really good at making their operations seem democratic? I think the examples he offers contest his point. Ford's website allows buyers to pick the color of the new Mustang, and add a design feature. But Ford gives you the colors and design features, and just lets you put a little checkmark by your favorite. There is no forum where Ford-lovers suggest ways to improve the company. The website still limits your options to 'fastback or not?,' 'red or blue?'. This is not cumulative intelligence. It's just like offering more channels on television. You can choose, but the choices are predetermined. You are not really contributing any ideas, but are given the illusion of having a voice. This might increase sales by creating a community with an 'investment' in the product, but it is not the beautifully progressive and communal     innovation that Trippi paints it to be. Is this enough choice to truly be democracy, or does it still have elements of TV's 'top-down' structure? Will companies continue to progress until their ideas truly come from the public?

Gilder, Negroponte, and Barlow: information, freedom, and individualism

In another class, my professor was recalling a trip to South America. She said that people there were in unimaginable poverty, wearing rags and living in huts made of sticks and mud. But everywhere you could see extension cords running over train tracks and into the nearest town, because all of these people, despite crippling poverty, just couldn’t go without TV. George Gilder addresses this in his essays, writing that the televisions became “a substitute hearth” for poor people, a symbol of home and family, a comfort “glowing constantly” in the living room (8). He recounts moments in history: movements the TV fueled, events it recast and politicized. BUT, he notes, all of this is over. The television is not a sustainable medium anymore; the internet is replacing it. Why?

Now at first, I thought Gilder might be writing a sneaky socialist metaphor, what with “the overthrow of television was already assured at the moment of its initial triumph,” and all that talk about decentralization (10). But he claims later that “the telecomputer will enrich and strengthen democracy and capitalism” (18). He writes that original technology centralized control in the broadcast stations and made the individual machine weak and independent. The television’s only operation was displaying the work that was done by the broadcasting center… “the system’s intelligence” was all in one place (12). But then the televisions became the processors or the ‘translators. The ‘intelligence’ became decentralized, and the viewer could control how s/he viewed the message with a remote control. The television shifted from an extension of the broadcast center’s will to an extension of the individual’s will, and this idea became the PC. Now we are moving toward a network system, instead of a broadcast culture. Specialized interest publications are becoming common, because the medium does not have to debase itself to appeal to everyone. The internet can appeal to people’s “civilized concerns” because its market is “segmented” (20). I would be VERY interested to hear what you all think of THIS claim. As a google-searcher who is regrettably unaware of most existing double entendres, I beg to differ.  

Ok, so democracy I get. But how has decentralized culture helped capitalism? Specifically, I’m thinking of these ‘special interest’ publications he references. Sure, there may be more bird watching and embroidery enthusiast websites than there ever were television programs, but are they really profitable?

Also, thinking about ‘freedom of the net’ and all of Barlow’s stuff, how similar are internet service providers to broadcast stations? They do not have the power to decide what you see specifically, but to a certain extent they have the power to control who sees the content of the internet. If you don’t pay your bill, you’re cut off. I know this isn’t censorship exactly, but the information is only free comparatively. It is not actually available to everyone. Is it just like television but with more channels? Gilder says that individuals become processors and transmittors in the new internet culture (Kind of like Benjamin’s author as producer) (18). Does this solve the problem? 

Embodiment, action, and reality...what ARE we?

For another class, I once watched a film called Darkon. It was about people somewhere in the northeast who had created a ‘dungeons and dragons’ style world in a local park, and met to fight wars from cardboard castles, whacking each other with foam clubs. In real life, they were cashiers at Wal-Mart, or stay-at-home parents under the thumb of a domineering spouse. It was very similar to Turkle’s MUDs, and I remember feeling very bad for those people. On the one hand, they seemed incapable of seeing the divide between real and imaginary. On the other hand, they enforced it tirelessly. Wives in Darkon should not offend real-life spouses. No one ever saw Darkon friends outside of the park. It was only a game. But at the same time, a player was more likely to think of himself as a knight than as a cashier. One player even called out another in the parking lot of a Denny’s for ‘betraying’ him in the game. If I felt sorry for those people, it was nothing to my concern for the MUDders.

Turkle says that virtuality tends to cause us to see the artificial as ‘real,’ just because it is less technologically-mediated than the alternative. Well, at least the crazy Darkon players had conversations with real people. At least their friendships and their sense of self-worth weren’t dependent on a surge protector.

Turkle recognizes the potential of virtual life. It has the ability to give a political voice to people who feel that their ‘real’ lives are insignificant. It can make people feel like part of a community when they previously felt alienated. Her fear is that the honest and democratic grass-roots sensibilities characteristic of online communities will stay online. She is worried that these MUDders will abandon the real world in favor of the virtual one, where their “selves” are fluid concepts which they can shape, or change if they don’t like it. She writes, “If the politics of virtuality means democracy online and apathy offline, there is reason for concern” (244). Virtual life will no longer be resistance to an unfair reality, with the ultimate aim of changing the real world. It will simply replace reality.

Turkle points out two specific problems with this. First, virtual life tends to “make denatured and artificial experiences seem real” (236). We lower the bar for reality, and lose sight of what a ‘real’ relationship is, or what it is to truly have a conversation.

The second, and perhaps the most pernicious problem, is that virtual realities allow us to “believe that within it we’ve achieved more than we have” (238). We lose the ability to define ourselves or our accomplishments in terms of the real. Turkle cites MUDders who believe that playing another gender online gave them insight into live as the opposite gender. This kind of detached and ‘conceptual’ idea of what it is to ‘be a woman’ does not account for experience. No one can begin to know what it is to be a woman without that embodied experience. Indeed, Haraway also argues that this unified conceptualization of ‘being’ a woman is dangerous. It discounts experience, and reduces complex identities to an essentialist definition. Does the disembodied, virtual ‘self’ reduce identity in this way, too? In the end, what are we? Are we just our actions? Can ‘action’ be defined as commands we type on our keyboard? No. Just like Hayles, both authors would agree that embodiment and experience are vital. And gender experience is only the tip of the iceberg. Those who live in castles online might still live in dangerous apartments in real life. “Feeling” better about it won’t stop them from getting shot. They could be a millionaire online, but that won’t feed them in real life. Success happens in the real world, and you can’t fake it. Running away from it will only make it worse.

We cannot forget the material underpinnings of virtual life. Like Sadie Plant points out, we cannot skim over the “material past” with a “simple, linear” virtuality (264). Virtuality can only reach its true potential if it stays connected with what is really real.

Hayek...money and communication.

Hayek's work is all about formulating an effective economic system, which at first seems a far cry from the communication theory we've been reading. Benjamin and Baudrillard were concerned with mass manipulation, indoctrination, and subtle subjection through broadcast media. Hayek is concerned with “allocation of available resources” and who in society is suited for economic “'planning'” (Use of Knowledge 2). How is this related? In fact, he directly mentions the importance of communication, and the effects (and effectiveness) of mass communication, in his discussion of types of knowledge and the problems with centralized economic planning authority. Furthermore, his concern with society's producers and their role in mass communication puts Hayek in the category of communication theory and the discussion of mass media's influence on society.

Hayek writes that there are two kinds of economic knowledge. Centralized, generalized knowledge belonging to economists and 'experts,' and the “important but unorganized knowledge” belonging to individuals involved in the 'here and now' economy: the actual process of production (Use 2-3). While generalized knowledge allows for a “unified plan” for the economy, it does not permit change, last-minute problems, or circumstantial variations of time and place (Use 2). This immediate economic planning is “left to the 'man on the spot'” (Use 4). The problem with this fact comes when people discount the kind of knowledge possessed by the common man, and rely solely on the general rules and statistics of a “planner”. Hayek shows the practical problems of exclusive central planning in The Road to Serfdom. He writes, “when the government has to decide how many pigs are to be raised or how many busses are to be run...these decisions cannot be deduced from formal principles or settled for long periods in advance. They depend inevitably on the circumstances of the moment” (Road 74). In other words, they require decentralized planning characteristic of the free market. Business is a “constant struggle” requiring perpetual adaptation and quick reactions to change : “constant deliberate adjustments” (Use 4). Factories cannot be run by generalities and statistical rules, but Hayek argues that a planner with “limited but intimate knowledge of the facts of his immediate surroundings” is not fully equipped to plan an economy either. As such, planners need to receive some kind of general knowledge to integrate their decisions into a larger economic plan.

Essentially, Hayek is arguing for individualism in economic planning. How do you think he would mesh with our communication theorists? He believes that centralized knowledge cannot solve the daily problems in reality. Generalized formulas cannot adapt themselves to specific situations. Furthermore, individuals require extensive communication to integrate their decisions into a unified plan. I think of Baudrillard in this respect. Mass media is too general to ever accomplish more than a weak replica of communication, as it does not correspond to the 'here and now'. Giving the producers a voice is not a perfect solution, because their knowledge must be integrated for a truly unified 'conversation' (in this case, unified economic plan) to take place. Feel free to shoot that down. It's quite the stretch. What theoretical comparisons do you see in Hayek?

Debord and Baudrillard are just so alone...

Debord and Baudrillard in one word: alienation.

Baudrillard’s primary complaint about new media is that it does not permit interaction. Other authors have lodged similar complaints, but not this hopelessly. For Baudrillard, consumers becoming producers won’t fix the problem, and allowing an audience to respond to mass transmissions won’t substitute for interaction either. The whole media system is doomed, according to him, and the problem is in the fact that new media distances people, and substitutes transmission/reception broadcasting for reciprocal communication. Media today talks at the audience, not with them. In this way, modern media are not communication at all. Blogposts and television programs and radio transmissions and films and articles are not conversations. They’re all just one lone individual talking to himself in public.

 This lack of human communication cannot be fixed by allowing everyone to participate in media’s production. This just means everyone is talking to themselves, and their messages become even more jumbled and anonymous. There is no room for conversation in this model. Baudrillard’s definition of communication depends on the creation of a single message  by all of the communicators in a conversation. All the ideas and voices must be in direct contact, directly responding to each other, for there to be real interaction and real communication. So, essentially, there is no hope. At least not with media the way it is today.

Debord is similarly despondent. His argument brings back memories of all those Marxists from the beginning of the semester. Use a medium against itself by repurposing it for the cause, overthrow the consumerist society, etc. etc. But what I especially like was his new way of phrasing just how media dominates society and isolates people so they stay submissive: the ‘spectacle’. I kept imagining the ruling class flashing strobe lights and throwing glitter at the unwitting masses. But that’s not what it is at all. The spectacle is a fake mirror reality of sorts…it is media’s way of framing life: “a worldview transformed into an objective force”. We see reality through the distorted lens of media, and it becomes reality. But not really. And that’s the part that keeps us all alienated. We have to believe that the mirror world is the real world, but that means that we can’t interact with the real world. Our social relationships have to be carried out through the media, because they cannot exist outside of it without the whole illusion falling apart.

Debord and Baudrillard, I’m sorry you’re so lonely, but quite frankly it’s your own fault! I have a hard time believing Requiem for the Media was the product of lively social discussion.

Making and Reflecting: the Purpose of Language

Something kind of strange happened…I really liked Barthes. I think I must have read something by him before, or maybe I just heard about the structuralist theory, because his writing sounded familiar, and it was not too difficult to grasp what he was trying to say. Language is symbols which represent real life, but real life is not inherently a part of the symbol. This arbitrariness (is that a word?) of symbols is how language is used to describe things that aren’t in real life. That’s why sarcasm is possible, and puns and metaphors…and myths.

Barthes uses myths to illustrate how symbols can come to communicate something other than their precise translation: how a picture can be more than ink that looks like a person doing something. Symbols can recommend something without saying it outright, and that’s what makes them so powerful. We think that a symbol represents one real life thing, and only that thing, without any meanings hidden underneath. So any meaning we derive seems to come directly from that real life thing. The meaning seems to be inherent in the symbol, so we take it to be truth. We can’t see the interferences from the communicator. Words can be twisted to show anything, without even directly expressing an opinion. It is possible to state a fact in a way that recommends an opinion, while giving it the appearance of objective truth. The same goes for photography. It looks like someone just recorded real life. No interference. But the photographer can leave out things, or can frame something in a certain context so that they are hiding propaganda behind real life things. Essentially, language creates real life by hiding meaning in things which have no inherent meaning.

Foucault latches on to this concept of language making real life instead of reflecting it…especially when he talks about discipline. You can make someone believe something is right, you can essentially make people police themselves, by framing reality in a certain way through language. You can fill symbols with meaning that isn’t there, but feels natural because it seems inherent in the symbol. Punishment might discourage an action by influencing people to avoid certain cause/effect situations, but it can never make them believe that an action is wrong or right. It can’t change their mind like language can. This is what I read into it after reading Barthes, but keep in mind this meaning is not inherent in Foucault’s writing.

So the question is, do we buy it? I like to believe that when I interpret a photograph or a fact to form an opinion, it's me who is interpreting it. Is it all in the framing, or can we see a reality that isn't masked by symbols?

McLuhan and Everyone Else

First of all, let me just say I’m grateful we read our previous authors before McLuhan. Their concepts and arguments helped me a lot in reading McLuhan. In case you hadn’t noticed, he doesn’t necessarily define the words he uses, so our previous authors' theories sort of gave me a context in which to read his essays. For example, his distinction between content and medium mirrors Shannon and Weaver’s distinction between information and meaning, and McLuhan’s discussion of the phonetic alphabet and the meaning it has the potential to convey when compared to symbols such as the American flag (82) was comprehensible to me only because of  Shannon and Weaver’s logarithm explanation which, while almost completely lost on me, managed to explain that the medium, or type of transmitter, I guess, determines what you can convey in that it limits your choices of meaning to the combinations of information which the medium makes available to you . Similarly, his discussion of how media have unintended results, like the airplane’s effects on cities and economics (8), reminded me of Wiener’s warning against technology’s unforeseen consequences, and his emphasis on form over content as an effective way to influence people’s behavior reminded me of Benjamin’s argument for new, proletariat-friendly forms of communication. Without this existing information, McLuhan might have been completely incomprehensible to me, with his tangents about light bulbs and the temperature of television.

McLuhan’s theory that new media forces people to process information in new ways (all at once instead of in a linear fashion) of course made me question my own thought processes. At first, I thought I was a pretty linear learner. I don’t multitask very much, and I remember things that are written much better than things that are thrown at me in a thousand different ways. But, just look at that paragraph up there! ^ I couldn’t even read McLuhan on his own terms! I had to simultaneously compare his concepts to every other thing I’d ever read on the subject. Instead of reading Wiener, for example, and then adding McLuhan’s information on top of that, I was in a mental state that strongly resembled surfing the internet with multiple tabs open. All the concepts were jumbled in my head, with no beginning middle end structure to them at all. So basically, I want to know what you guys think on the subject. Are we ‘everything at once’ learners because of new media, or is that just the way the human mind works, and technology is finally catching up?