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?