Antiseptic technology
I'm reading Emergence by Steven Johnson right now, and it's set me thinking about how we sanitize the future. At the start of the book, Johnson talks about Jane Jacobs' theories of urban development and how neighborhoods form. But as the book progresses, he only briefly touches on demographics and associated issues of class and race. At first, I didn't think it was a problem. In fact, I barely noticed it. But as Johnson moves into what eventually starts to look like technophilia and the idealization of emergent software, some of his examples give me pause.
One of the central tenets at the heart of emergent behavior is the idea that acting locally produces global results. If enough people walking along the sidewalks of the Lower East Side interact, the sum of their interactions is a self-regulating system. What's missing from this analysis, aside from one chapter analyzing the history of how the "lower classes" have fit into theorists' understandings of emergence, is a set of social "mirror neurons"--as Johnson starts to discuss emerging emergent technologies (hee), Emergence loses a lot of its socioeconomic value and Johnson's argument gets sanitized. Johnson talks about every TV coming with TiVo (or something similar) and connecting to something like the internet to create TV "neighborhoods" based on individual and global user preferences. In the midst of this argument, he refutes the idea that TV and the internet contribute to user isolation based on the fact that the technology aids communal emergent behavior.
So what's the problem?
If you don't have money, you won't have a TiVo. The communities that could potentially form won't account for the impoverished, and entertainment will continue to alternately misrepresent, ignore, insult, and exclude the poor. While media may be tailored to certain "communities" through TiVo, the same groups who have traditionally been excluded by the top-down system of the networks will still be excluded by the bottom-up system because they won't have access to the technology required to form their own communities, and thus the impoverished (and possibly other groups, this is just the obvious one) lose what little grip they had on media solidarity.
I'm still enjoying Emergence, don't get me wrong. But I'm concerned about the blanket sanitization that today's zeitgeist chasers exhibit. Just talking about technology's potential to shape thought isn't enough. Neither new technology nor bottom-up self-organization is inherently ethical. It may be useful, but many of the social problems that were around before bottom-up technology will still exist during and after it. Focusing on the technology without moral discourse draws attention away from those problems.
Even my beloved Star Trek, which early on incorporated race, rarely explores issues of class and never concerns itself with sexual orientation. Looks to me like technology glosses over social problems rather than fixing them. Hmm.
EDIT: Here's something entertaining and mildly relevant! The blog software I use, greymatter, has quotes on just about every page you work with. In the "preview" page, this quote came up:
"The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create."—Leonard Sweet
Labels: economics, internet, race, sexuality, technology, television
6 Comments:
Overall I do think that much of what we see on t.v. is NOT in only in fact aimed at your aveage middle class straight/white/college educated, but also in a way alienates that group as well by reminding them that they will never be able to afford a Lexis or big fancy vacation or whatever else an average middle-classer (thinks) they might want.
That's not a bad point. My point mainly was that it's aimed at middle-class *and up* (but not down) on the income scale, but I'd love to hear you elaborate.
Yep, interesting that bottom-up really becomes 'middle-up' when you're talking about technology.
I have a question, though (one that I'm not sure I articulated when we were talking about this on the subway): does entertainment have a duty to address those who can't afford the technology to participate in it?
Sure, the government needs to disseminate info to every citizen, and everybody should have access to news. But why does NBC need to make sure anybody can watch "Heroes?"
I'm wondering if Steven Johnson is really just saying, "Hey, if we all had TiVo, we'd get entertainment that really speaks to us on niche-levels!" If that's all that he's getting at, then I don't think his failure to account for the exclusion of the poor/self-isolating who don't have TVs is a big problem. Of course, it does make the whole train of thought a lot less soulful.
Elaina - yeah, I think the TV's definitely the biggest method of consumer culture indoctrination. It amazes how much more TV ads affect me than ads in print or on the internet. Something about being forced (ok, not really forced) to watch them and the whole multi-sensory experience makes them much more powerful. I wonder if we'll all pull away from consumerism a bit with the rise of the net as an entertainment source and products like TiVo, which allow us more control over how and when we experience ads.
Yes, you're right it does only go middle and up, and it's true something about the t.v. ad seems to captivate us because of so many sensory factors at play. I really feel that in this country we really like to place and put away the poorest in the nation, as if we are sweeping them under the rug or putting our blinders on. Our slums are out of the way places (i.e. the bronx. who goes to the bronx?) It's almost as if it's out of mind/out of sight that we like best because it makes us not have to face others who are less fortunate, and also it is a way for politicians and others to pit the middle class up against the poor in blaming them for the middle class's inability to gain socio/economic status. That those in power (whether it be media, politics, corporations, etc) find a functionality in keeping everyone just where they are. Functionally it works because it keeps them above the middle class and poorer classes. It also works because they have somehow found a way to make the middle classes believe what's keeping them down are the poorer classes. And yet, still no one is concerned with helping those in poverty rise above it. We'd rather blame them for our problems and strive to maintain or middle-class-ness (heh) or somehow move into the upper class stratosphere, which as we know is very difficult.
on the tac of what you were saying about TV as the biggest method of cultural indoctrination--media/culture in general carry more ideological power and weight than does, say, traditional politics. as spiderman's grandpa tells him, with great power comes great responsibility.
my concern is less that people who can't afford TVs can't watch "heroes" than that they may find themselves in a position similar to that of the Romanian inhabitants in "Borat"--where they are misrepresented and spoken for in the media without their consent or (in some cases) knowledge. Short of creating a PR nightmare, those who can't watch don't have control because they're not affecting the financial result.
You make a very good point. I like how many assume that having t.v. or other access to other media must equal having an open mind and/or broader views than say the countrymen of a developing Eastern European nation or that having this access makes us any less in a "bubble" than someone who doesn't. We're still equally ignorant of each other! (But definitely the misrepresented groups get the crappiest end of the stick for sure.)
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