This semester has been a journey into the nature and issues surrounding new media, or more accurately, new digital media. Whether it is the Internet, cell phones, digital video, wired networks, or wi-fi, we have attempted to define it, its issues, and its impact on individuals and society. This has been accomplished through varied readings of the current scholars in cyber-studies. My first observation is that, as a whole, the authors have been advocates of the cyber-utopian view that digital technologies will cure the ills of society. From increased citizen participation in the democratic process to equality and social justice for under-represented ethnic and social communities, digital media, and its accompanying technologies will free the masses. With the advantage of 20/20 hindsight (may of these books were published in the late 1990s and early 2000s, ancient times in cyber-history), we have seen that this early utopian view has not come to fruition and in some cases it has actually increase the gap between information haves and have-nots.
It is this point, "access", that has been a major theme through much of the readings and the subsequent class discussions. What we have seen is that access is a multifaceted issue and not the simplistic hardware and technology issue of early Internet policy debates. Leah A. Lievrouw’s essay in Media Access (eds. Bucy & Newhagen, 2004) does an admirable job of bringing the various issues and hypothesizing about access into her model of the information environment (p. 274). It attempts to show how the various dynamics of technology and infrastructure, content, uses and gratification, relevance, individual cognitive ability, usage and non-usage, social organization and culture (among many other variables) work together—or at odds with one another—to facilitate or hinder an individuals access to new media. Simplistic in its design, the model helps to illustrate the process of information acquisition, a process that is valid regardless of the media being “new” or traditional. A point that brings me back to my often-trumpeted claim that new media is subject to the same processes, theories, issues, accolades, and faults as any communication medium—newspapers, radio, or television. A quick review of my previous blog entries shows my question of the semester, “why does it continually surprise the scholars, policy experts and the public when digital media acts like the previous mass media and not in their utopian vision?” Digital media is a tool for communication, whether its machine-to-machine, human-to-machine, or human-to-human it is still just a tool—granted a very cool tool.
However, here is where I say that maybe there is sometime different about new digital media. My professor, Lance Porter, asked more than once, “Is there something inherently different about new media?” I have usually been one of the first to say “no,” it is not different just quicker. Now though I wish to explore a different line of thought, inspired this weeks reading, Society Online (Howard & Jones, 2004), and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985)—read for another course I took this semester. In his essay, Steve Jones discusses the rise of the computer networks and the “network” metaphor for almost any connected entity—“religion, science, politics, and medicine—indeed, the gamut of human and natural behaviors—can be viewed from a network perspective” (cited Barabási, p. 327). He goes on to discuss how the increase in network speeds is quickly making instantaneous communication a reality. Jones quotes Tom DeFanti, co-director of the Electronic Visualization Lab at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who envisions a time when networked immersive virtual reality devices will allow individuals located at various locations to meet at a time and a place of their choosing—a technology that creates a virtual space that is “better than being there.” The instantaneous nature of the technology is nearly already here—emails sent whenever from where ever, cell phones and sat phones that allow constant voice, text and data access from anywhere in the world, and searching and information at “your finger tips” via the Internet. It is this instantaneousness of the technology that makes me wonder what the impact will be on society.
The breaking-up of time from space, makes me wonder about unexpected consequences. What could happen if one no longer needed to go anywhere, because the technology let you be anywhere at anytime and in any time—past, present, or future? Postman cites Lewis Mumford (Technics and Civilization, 1934), that the invention of the clock [a new technology in the 14th century] had “the effect of disassociating time from human events.” It changed how people thought about time and space, and things and processes. Mumford argues that this invention, nurtured the belief of “an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences,” and diminished the role of God and nature in man’s machinery timed world. It separated man from the natural elements of sun and seasons, now we are at the cusp of further separating man now from the natural environment of “place” or location. People will not only be “disassociating” time, but also “place” from human events.
My intention here is not to be a naysayer, but to only say maybe we should think of the possible consequences of everything and anything being instantaneously available—information, data, conversation, entertainment, etc… American society loves cool new stuff with little forethought to its negative implications. Hype and marketing will never let us forget to the benefits to society this next "new thing" will bring, but little attention is paid to problems. It seems that we, as a society, have become more rude, dissatisfied, and impatient because of our current near-instantaneous technology of cell phone and email. People can initiate contact with another at a moments notice and they expect near instantaneous reply, regardless of the other persons situation. If people get instant gratification in the digital world, how will they deal will the “mañana” reality of the physical world? What will come next?
Postman suggests that each new medium brought with it new and unexpected consequences to human thought and behavior. Speech brought rhetorical conversation, print allowed more thoughtful and deliberate discourse, and television trivialized ideas, so only time will tell what impact to thought, and discourse new digital technologies will bring to or have on society. As an optimist, I believe time, innovation, unexpected uses (popular culture), market competition, and unpredictable humans (resistant communities) will moderate or solve the problems, difficulties, and quarks presented by new media, just as they have with all previous media.
Person note: When I signed up for this class I thought, "great a new media course for my first semester, I can have an easy course in my comfort zone." I was wrong, this course has allowed me and forced me to challenge, explore, and probe my preconceived notions of new media. I suspect, like many in the class, I though of new media in turns of technology, design, hardware, and economics. This class has opened my eyes to a new field of inquiry, critical cultural studies. More than any other graduate (masters) course I have taken in the past, this class has expanded my vision to further my scholarship of exploring new media, political communication and its impacts.
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