What does it mean to live an ethical or moral life in the digital age?
Some of the reading we have done this semester has focused on what the Internet is doing to us: its making us more “stupid”, its giving us attention-deficit, its hurting our social interactions. However, I feel that, after experiencing this course, it is important to understand you can’t separate “real life” as offline life and “not real life” as online life. Together, your offline and online life makes up your “real life” in today’s world. Though am I sure that digital technologies are affecting our perceptions and the ways we think about and understand the world, most technologies change society in this way. This is the basic concept of medium theory—that the medium itself influences our culture and society. Therefore, it is the way we use these technologies and the choices we make that determine how a technology will deeply influence us.
If, like Turkle and other critics, you separate what is “real” and not “real” in life in a digital age, it allows you to think of yourself in two different ethical settings and moral climates. And that is a very big problem. If you feel that the morals and ethical values you exhibit in the physical world do not apply to your online world, you may do things that could be considered corrupt or unethical by society and others. In fact, this was Paul Miller’s original intention when he decided to give up the Internet for a year. He had experienced the theories that the “Internet was corrupting us” and the we could live a “truer”, “better” more “authentic” life if we live simply in the “real”, physical world without the connection to the online.
Yet that is not a good way of thinking when we examine what it means to live in a digital age. This extremist view of “the Internet is destroying humanity” takes away the responsibility humans should take for their actions. While, yes, the choices we have to make as humans and the interaction landscape is changing, it is essential we modify our current morals and ethics to fit within this new climate rather than raise the alarm and retreat into old ways. The aspects of anonymity and separation of “action” and “immediate consequence” online does present people with the opportunity to do things society may consider “bad”. Nevertheless, people have always done “bad” things, and the Internet isn’t making people evil. Instead we must live with the same moral center online that we currently live with in the physical world.
Miller agreed with this thought at the end of his experiment and realizes that, though the Internet is changing the way we think and act, we can’t let it own or consume us. That really, in today’s world, there is so much interaction between the virtual and physical that the lines have blurred and it is nearly possible to live a full human life with one but not the other. The separation theories cast humans as the victims and the digital world as the aggressor. Yet, with that stance, we will get nowhere. We must take responsibility for our use and our choices in the digital age, and realize how the Internet might be affecting us. We must be aware. We must adapt. Indeed, Miller realized that without the Internet he was missing out on certain wonderful aspects of human life today that are enabled by the online world. Human connection, arguably one of the most vital parts of the human existence, is changed by the Internet, but it is changed for both the good and bad. When Miller separated himself from the virtual world, he actually lost human connections in many ways. Though he did improve some face-to-face relationships, he could have done that if he had been aware of the ways the Internet was changing him and had adapted. Cutting yourself off only ignores the problem, and learning to acclimatize to the digital age provides a solution.
Of course, one can’t expect everyone to act fairly and morally all the time. This is why humans establish institutions that develop regulations and laws to aid people in living better and more just lives. Thus, it is essential that we create and establish a “netiquette” online—that we ensure that the online world has been examined by a justice system and governmental regulations have been added and adjusted using the modification of physical world laws to apply to situations in the virtual world.
We also must code for and create digital technologies with the intentions of them being used morally and for goodness. While creators and programmers don’t really have any control of how people will use their creations, they do have some control over what possible ways the technology may be used. This is seen in the flaw of the argument “Guns Don’t Kill People, People Do”. While, sure, guns don’t make choices or have intentions to kill people, they are an inherently violent tool created to help people kill people. The argument, in reality, should follow something closer to “Guns kill people, and people kill people”. It is both the technologies and our use of them that determine whether they produce good or bad outcomes. As such, we must create ethical digital technologies and use them while employing our physical world moral values.
In previous classes we had discussed the concepts surrounding the Internet as a community, and came to the conclusion that the Internet and digital technologies instead function as a network. In this reading, we began to examine Manuel Castell’s theory of the “network society”. This marks a shift in the way the current economy and society as a whole operates structurally. The shift has been described as one from “industrialism” to “informationalism”, or a movement from an emphasis on the production of goods to the production of knowledge. The “network” is largely about the communication of information, and digital technologies greatly aid in the ease and speed of this transfer. Yet, his was not the first theory used to describe or explain an “information society”, or the society of the digital age. Castell’s theory of a networked society draws from numerous previous theories developed throughout the past few decades that attempt to explain the economic, cultural and structural transition from any medium to the next—in this case the “electronic”/industrial/modern era to the current digital or potentially “post-modern” era.
The capitalist economy has been observed by numerous theorists to cycle through periods of prosperity and decline. In the long-wave theory these cycles are divided into four phases—that of expansion, peak, first adjustment and plateau, and panic and decline. Personally, I felt I could relate these cycles very easily to the occurrences of the recent recession. However, this original theory did not give a satisfying explanation for why capitalism cycled this way. Schumpeter made the observation that innovation and entrepreneurialism was essential for this cycling to occur. This development of new ideas and new technologies followed a system of “creative destruction”, where these technological and cultural shifts would continually destroy and rebuild the capitalist system. Though neither of these theories are accepted as completely valid, it is important to note the critical significance of ideas and knowledge in driving capitalism.
As we have seen with the invention of digital technologies, society has been hurt and helped in a variety of ways by these inventions, and in some ways that have yet to be fully understood. Nonetheless the major change between pre- and post-digital era can be seen in the change from mass production of tangible goods or a manufacturing-based economy to an economy based on information industries and the wealth of knowledge or intangible goods. Though this is not post-industrialism in the sense that is not completely a shift from manufacturing-based to service-based economy, it still exhibits some of these characteristics. However, post-industrialism’s prediction of the rise of the professional has actually yielded the opposite—the digital age shows the rise of the amateur or the mass amateurization of society. Also, the new economy does not necessary spotlight the individual as suggested in post-industrialism; it instead allows for a focus on the individual and the community. Specifically, the actual change in recent years is more similar to a shift from Fordism to post-Fordism. Fordism as a concept focused on the production process as one based in efficiency, discipline, standardization, repetition and hierarchal management. Post-Fordism, on the other hand, attempted to describe the situation after counter-cultures rejected the “mass society” model. This focused on flexibility, specialization, decentralization, globalization and training/knowledge. We can see these “decentralized networks of team work” in the job market of today’s society, and we increasingly see a trend of fragmentation parallel to concepts of post-Fordism.
However, is this current networked society really a rejuvenation of capitalism (59)? Is the digital age and information age a result of economic crisis and a restructuring of the economy and society into a new capitalist system? Miller believes this to be true. I, on the other hand, believe this may not be entirely true. In our recent readings, we considered the idea that the digital age could present a new socialism. Still, I see the capitalist potential of this new society, and this is why I believe the future will have to tell which direction the structure leans toward. The information age and digital technologies have created a commodification of knowledge, which would make information the currency of the contemporary capitalist system. We see this in how our personal information and “privacy” is sold as an intangible good to advertisers and corporations, and this does correspond with capitalism. The decentralization that occurs does foster a free market and bolster ideas of capitalism, yet it also breaks down certain hierarchies and closes gaps of disparity. This shift has distributed power, which can either give opportunity to the individual or spread the power to everyone rather than having them work for a scarce amount of power in a free market setting. The “networked society” emphasizes sharing and community rather than solely individual capital gain, and there as not as much “competition” seen in web culture as there would be in a free market. This may be due to the lessening of scarcity found in a digital society, and therein lies the problem. How does a capitalist system based on the competition over a set amount of resources function in an era where this scarcity may no longer exist?
Consequently, the new economic and structural system of the future may be a hybrid system, perhaps some new concept of social-capitalism? Societal systems before the digital and information age revolved around concepts of scarcity, but the world of today is moving toward “weightless” or intangible/virtual goods and services—ones focused on the sharing or communication of knowledge or information. Therefore, in a society based on knowledge and information as wealth and power, innovation is key. As such, are current intellectual property laws hurting or harming this new social-capitalist system? If innovation is “the lifeblood of an information economy”, are the laws of today starving this system? It is, of course, important to protect creators and certain levels of invention, yet if we are to continue to distribute power it is important we do not get sucked into a structure following “information feudalism”. For example, Brazil was having serious medical issues with AIDS patients, but the United States had a very expensive patent on the medicine they needed. The Brazilian government made the decision to “steal” this “intellectual property” to help the Brazilian population and sell the medicine at a more affordable price. However, the US medical company fought back, claiming an infringement on their ideas and property. Who is right and wrong in this situation? In the new digital information age, it is important to find a way to protect and enhance both the individual and the greater community, and this is where the balance between socialism and capitalism is essential.
Collective Action in the Digital Age: How digital networks are changing the ecosystem of information and interaction
Many of our structures and institutions in the physical world are dictated by scarcity. The space for tangible things on Earth is relatively large but inherently limited, and often the hierarchies and systems humankind creates are built around organizing and distributing limited resources that exist. It promotes specialization and, in turn, has created the concept of “professionalism” or experts that study and work with some sort of scarcity. Yet the scarcity of a resource is often relative, and, in many cases, shifts in technologies can reduce scarcity and allow for the spread of a resource (such as literacy, information, photography, etc). This reduction alters ideas surrounding the “professional” in a field where scarcity of a resource is essential for its existence and can spark a “mass amateurization” of something that was difficult to do before the creation of the new technology. The Web, as a new medium and technology, has made incredible leaps in reduction of scarcity. Information and resources in a digital world are conceivably limitless, and the ease of creation allows for amateurs of a field to operate on a similar level to professionals.
As such, the ecosystem in which information exists today has changed dramatically from what it looked like before the invention of digital technologies. The Internet democratizes knowledge and potentially breaks down many traditional hierarchies. Consumers and “ordinary” people can readily create, access, alter, and spread information, and therefore the professional’s monopoly on info is taken away. Digital technologies greatly reduce the creation and distribution costs of information, greatly increase the ease of information creation, and greatly increase the ability to find like-minded people. Self-publishing, or the act of creating and circulating information, has now, not only become quite easy and inexpensive, but has also developed a reasonably fast and widespread delivery. This allows for the simple creation and distribution of ideas, and possibly plans of action, very quickly over large geographic areas. It is not then hard to imagine how effective digital technologies can be in spreading awareness and rallying group support.
In this way, the ecosystem of today’s communication and human interaction has also changed with the invention of the digital world. The Web allows people around to the world to quickly and easily share and collaborate on information and messages. It intrinsically creates networks and groups of people through connection. This ability to spread awareness and connect people has made the world of today one where many situations or injustices are brought to light, and the process of “waiting out a scandal” is no longer really possible. Digital technologies increase the ease of sharing information, remove barriers of growth for a social movement, allow for interaction and coordination of a movement due to the low cost of information aggregation, and promote collective action (or the assembly of a group that takes action together) due to the ease and speed of turning thought into action. These new technologies “altered the spread, force and duration of [a] reaction” because they “removed two old obstacles: locality of information and barriers of group reaction” (Shirky, 153). E-mail has been particularly useful in sparking group action due to its low-cost and instant communication. The Internet, at its foundation, seems to have been built for bringing people together and connecting one another due to its form as a many-to-many communication medium. Previous technologies have been one-to-one or one-to-many, so this new level of widespread interactivity has extraordinary crowd forming potential and potential as a rallying point for group action.
The amateurization of information and communication that the Internet and digital technologies provide allows for the instigation of both positive and negative collective action. The digital age has aided social movements, revolutions and riots. It seems that “flash crowds”, much like a flash flood, can more easily coordinate and come together in the physical world through the use of digital resources like social media, smartphones and BBM messaging. Social networking sites can be used for both destructive group behavior and social movement activism. However, it seems that, with digital technologies, violent crowds are more readily formed due to the group member’s perception of two concepts—legitimacy and power. With digital coordination, a crowd can develop an identity before it assembles, therefore increasing how legitimate they feel their cause/disobeying act is. Also, the sheer size and connection of a crowd forming through digital coordination increases the crowd’s perception of how much power and individual agency they have. Riots and violent crowds pre-digital could be broken up by the police and would have a reasonably difficult time reforming or re-coordinating. Yet with digital technologies “a crowd that’s always connected can never really be dispersed” (Wasik) and a lot of the time police’s traditional attempts at crowd control seem to fail.
Nevertheless, digital technologies do promote general collective action, and consequently can also promote positive collective action, such as the mobilization of social movements fighting for rights and equality. Still, social tools don’t create collective action; they simply remove the barriers and obstacles that make rallying a movement difficult. Additionally, the collective action cannot be achieved unless the digital technologies are integrated into everyday life and society/culture adopts the use of those technologies as regular behavior. Today’s feminist movement, third-wave feminism, is often critiqued for lacking in clear theory and political action. The first two waves of feminism were highly politically involved and used strategies such as consciousness-raising, protests and marches to fight for social change and gain awareness and support. Compared to its predecessors, third-wave feminism does seem to lack in these aspects—relying on personal narratives and academic analyses to create awareness and critique culture. However, it seems possible that digital technologies may be exactly what the third-wave needs to mobilize the movement and turn thought and concepts into organized action. This new digital feminism, or perhaps viral feminism, could get a culture involved in the movement in new ways and perchance defy some of the post-feminist backlash that currently exists.
A variety of new social and political movements may come from these new ecosystems and web culture. Though a “new socialism” does sound somewhat daunting, it may turn out to be incredibly beneficial to humanity in a time where capitalism is struggling. A digital socialism would provide a hybrid system that elevates the individual and the group at the same time through methods in these new information and communication ecosystems: sharing, cooperation, collaboration and collectivism. This system could potentially grant more autonomy to individual while bettering the communal, and provide solutions in places where traditional socialism lacked. The Internet already fosters peer production, social cooperation and collective information, so the further encouragement of this may give rise to an amazingly viable system. I’m interested to see where collective information might go, and to see if “Big Data” may have the potential to combine information in ways that provides answers to today’s problems we believe unsolvable.
“Friending” and Friendships: How digital and social media affect human relationships in today’s society
Human beings are social creatures. We crave connection and derive happiness from our relationships with other humans. Sayings like “money isn’t everything”/”money can’t buy happiness” or lyrics like “all you need is love” attest to this human condition. It is our instinctual and natural tendency to build communities and seek out others. Until recently, in fact for most of our existence as a species, human interaction has been purely based on face-to-face communication. However, as technology began to factor into our interpersonal communication, human interactions and relationships morphed and changed. Nowadays, we often interact through electronic and digital media, and more specifically create human connections through digital social media. What does this mean for connection, identity, personality, and relationships (especially friendships)? How does the digital environment of modern society shift the way we communicate with one another and understand ourselves?
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn are some of the more popular social networking sites in today’s world. Now, with the development of smartphones, we are not only able to be in constant contact with all of our friends and family via phone calls and texting, but we are also constantly connected to everyone in social media networks as well. Horning notes that phones allow for conversation channels to always be open, and we can no longer provide the “not at home” excuse for not answering someone’s attempts to contact us. In the past, availability and presence were intrinsically linked, but now we are always virtually present but may or may not be physically available. He voices his concern about rejection from others or what others may think of him if he lacks in responses—but I feel that these concerns seem to not truly play out that way. In my experience, constant contact has made communication even more casual—rejection of and disregard to phone calls and text messages occurs all the time and among young people is often considered a social norm. If you are upset that your attempt at communication has been ignored, it is generally looked down upon to voice those thoughts and can be seen as an “overreaction”. I believe the same type of misconception is voiced when Rosen says that that the online world is “unfettered by social boundaries of the real-world” (Rosen). Although many situations do occur online where there are issues involving anonymity and harassment online, I would say there is a decent level of social etiquette in the online world. It is not a free-for-all situation, and in my experience almost all of my friends and family interact with each other online similarly to the way they would present themselves in the “real social world”. She mentioned a moment where a friend may post something profane on your wall, but in today’s world your online profiles are so closely tied to your “real world” identity I would argue that may not happen due to the fact that all of their (and your) friend’s and family may see the message.
These social norms directly relate to concepts of obligation associated with friendship. In the physical world, communication and human exchange requires a certain level of “listening” and comprehension/response. However, online interaction and friendship is far more focused on getting attention than listening and exchange. In the “Facebook marketplace”, friendship is morphed into “a game of self promotion” (Horning). The self and identity becomes a brand that you promote and advertise to your Facebook “friends”, and online human interaction essentially becomes an endless sales-pitch of self. In the same way Rosen equated painted self-portraits to social media profiles, social networking sites allow you to present an image that is self-seeking expression of self. Social media demands that we constantly collect friends and status and constantly perform a self-promoted version of ourselves. Traditional ”real world” definitions of friendship require the occurrence of mutual revelations in a private space, yet social networking creates the paradoxical concept of the “public friendship”. These websites and networks create a friendship environment of narcissism and bureaucracy. Online friendship is essentially about “collecting, managing and ranking the people you know” (Rosen) and is therefore inherently hierarchical and bureaucratizing. A major difference between off and online friendship is this emphasis on status—usually offline friendships are based on companionship, but, regularly, online friendships are related to public status. Though the Rosen article is fairly dated, this striving for status is even more relevant to social media sites like Twitter and Instagram where your “popularity” is directly related to your “followers” and “retweets”/”likes”. It seems that the digital age has morphed our interactions and friendships into that of greater quantity and lesser quality. The idea of “weak ties”, that we read about in last weeks readings, is again brought up in this context of a social network rather than a “community”. Social networking sites require constant maintenance of your status and must be regularly added to, tweaked and adjusted to aid in this quest for attention and higher rank. Perhaps one of the most compelling points, I believe, she makes is her article is this: “in investing so much energy into improving how we present ourselves online, are we missing changes to genuinely improve ourselves?” (Rosen). Personally, I think about all the time I spend maintaining and managing my social media profiles and I wonder, what could I accomplish if I spent that time creating something to better humanity or working on something to help myself and/or others? What could the world potentially develop and achieve if the massive amount of times spend on social networking sites was directed toward other activities?
I did notice, however, that the Rosen article did seem quite dated. First, there was the extensive analysis of Friendster and Myspace, which seemed somewhat irrelevant when analyzing social media of today. Yet, the methods for analysis can indeed be applied to modern social networking. Second, there were a number of references that seemed to parallel some of the scholars we have critiqued in class. She makes the claim that we may be giving up face-to-face contact for virtual contact and that online friendships can become surrogates for offline friendships, but we now know this is rarely the case. Some of her argument seemed similar to Turkle in the separation of the “real” and the “not real” when it came to intimacy, and I feel that this may have detracted from her larger argument outlining the fact that social media’s emphasis on attention, self-promotion and status in regard to friendship may deter human relations online.
Community and Networks: An exploration of the evolution of human interaction
Communication scholars, when analyzing digital technologies in contemporary society, often refer to a concept of “community” or “ sense of community”. This can even be traced back to McLuhan’s reference of a “global village” which invites an inference of some form of global community. However, the term “community”, in the sociological sense, has a considerably contested definition. Miller cites to basic definitions: community as “very specific forms of social groupings tied to a common place and mutual interdependence” and community as “any for of social grouping” (185). Take note of the word “place” in the first definition, as it will be a defining concept later in my essay. Through this definition of inherent togetherness, literature frequently contrasts notions of community and grouping with isolation and individualism. As such, a sense of nostalgia is created for a time when communities were “strong” and individualism was less apparent. The theories of gemeinschaft (community) and gesellschaft (association) reflect this view and parallel it with the early modern era sociological shift from localized rural areas to industrialized urban areas. When technologies and human living organization changed, the ways in which humans interacted changed as well. In city life (gesellschaft) people created individualized one-dimensional relationships rather than the multi-faceted interdependent relationships found in rural cultures (gemeinschaft). The spatial order of “community” altered and moved from local to national to eventually international. People belonged to nations rather than small, local communities in the modern era. This created an atmosphere that increased mobility and the ability to form relationships while simultaneously fostering a strong sense of individualism. Capitalism constant pursuit of progress continued to re-spatialize the world and further separated “time” from “space”. Communication, and consequently community, in the contemporary world is now no longer necessarily linked temporally and spatially.
So, what does community mean in today’s digital society and culture? Can “virtual communities” truly exist? We must first understand how digital technologies and the Internet have affected human interaction. As with anything, scholars and critics identify both positive and negatives of the Internet in relation to communities. Miller recognizes four online “communities”—communities of transaction, communities of interest, communities of fantasy, and communities of relationship. Some of the positive analyses of Internet “communities” he gathered were centered around the idea that online relationships allow people more choice and control over how they would like to live their social life. In physical communities there is a sense of obligation to relationships that is related to your location and place. However, when socializing online people are able to seek out relationships and therefore build the communities that they desire to be a part of. There is also potentially no material limit to online communities and allows the creation of groups that are less exclusionary than ones in the offline world. This desire for “choice” reminded me of Turkle’s idea that we are seeking out more and more control and power over human interactions. Some of the negative analyses of Internet “communities” Miller gathered were based more on a trend toward individualism. This also parallels much of the reading we have done on the current movement toward a world full of “narcissists”. It seems there is a good deal of compelling evidence showing that the digital world may be making us more selfish and can often reinforce our own opinions and current ways of thinking. Regardless, he makes the point that the reality of human interaction online is most likely somewhere in between, affecting us both positively and negatively. The offline and the online life are both integrated into everyday life and therefore cannot be separated when in comes to human relations and communication. Miller says that online, instead of referring to “the” community, we should refer to “my” community—for what is the Internet if not an “ego-centric network of relationships centered around one’s self”.
In a way, modernity has freed us from the “tyranny of place”, but in doing so has also separated us from a traditional sense of community. We have evolved toward a structure of interaction not based on space but instead based on time—relationships are created person-to-person rather than people-in-place. Therefore, networks, rather than communities, are a better term to use when describing human interaction in today’s world. Relationships become increasingly specialized, and individualism within a network seems to be the modern way of thinking. An interesting development Miller alludes to, but never says, is the correlation between the arguments he makes about the evolution of human interaction and medium theory. His reference to Castells and “network society” particularly jumps out in this sense, especially when acknowledging a change from a “space of places” to a “space of flows”. Did the creation of the Internet, circuitry technology, and digital technologies, in fact, spark the change in the way modern humans interact? Or did the change in human interaction help develop the idea for “network” technologies? Just as Turkle claims we give machines human qualities, it seems that we also give humans machine/technological qualities—humans in today’s society are “networking” when they interact with one another. Essentially though, Miller claims that we no longer really exist in traditional communities, and that the online world has no communities. A community implies a specific spatial context (place-to-place connection), but a network is based on person-to-person relationships. The mobility and technology of the late-modern world has lessened the influence of “place” and has shifted our attachments and social relationship structures to that of networks over communities.
Shifting Identity and Reality in Digital Society: How social media shapes our perceptions
Much of the reading we have done as of late has dealt with concepts involving technology and loss—often digital technologies role in losses of humanity and reality. Though I do agree with many of the points made in Alone Together and Born Digital, these arguments seem to frequently have an alarmist and/or nostalgic tone. I believe this emphasis on loss over gain, and the “scary” reality of a new digital future, distracts from their arguments as whole. The reading we did this week by Jurgenson shows how this separation between the offline and online, losses and gains, can fragment our world and divide reality in ways it really cannot be divided. He says that social media is now actually a part of us and digital technologies have changed the way we perceive the world. The separation misconception many people hold between physical and virtual reality, or digital dualism, has created an environment of obsession and fetishism with connection/online and disconnection/offline and the world pre-digital techs. We are nostalgic for a time when we could not “log on” and therefore develop a fetish all things analog, vintage and retro. We are proud of ourselves when we are not using our technologies, as if it some incredible feat of self-control, and this feeds the obsession of the offline and life apart of the digital. He believes the current relationship between the digital and the physical is the quite unhealthy, and that we must move toward a reconciliation of this false separation. Jurgenson claims that, instead of losing our sense of solitude and the value of being alone (which Turkle advocates for), “the ease of digital distraction has [actually] made us appreciate solitude with a new intensity.”
The online world is notorious in its ability to blur boundaries, and this includes personal and social identity, and the “real world” and the “virtual world”. Instead of fighting this tendency, we should embrace it, to an extent. Otherwise, we are left with backlash in the forms of this fetishism and nostalgia. However, I worry that Jurgenson does not take the claims about digital influences on human connections serious enough. Though he explains the state of the world, a world where it is impossible to disconnect, he seems to not give enough value to the consequences of this merging of reality including both the off and online. If social media is a part of us and changes the way we perceive the world, what does this mean for the reality of human interaction? With “twitter lips and Instagram eyes”, how will human communication and connection change, and is this a positive direction to be headed? His most insightful point, in my opinion, was the idea that “Facebook fixates the present as always a future past” (Jurgenson). This is my real concern: that people in the digital age no longer live in the moment. We are constantly taking in the world around us with the intent of capturing it, posting it/sharing it, and anticipating the reactions. This obsession with documentation is not entirely new, as it was also seen to an extent when the photograph was first invented. Still, I see this thought process all the time with my younger cousins—they are always thinking about the next scene they can Instagram and how many likes it will get, or the next funny blurb they can tweet and how many retweets they will get. Instead of experiencing these moments in the present, they are contemplating looking back on them in the future.
If the construction of today’s reality includes both the offline and online world, we can assume the construction of identity has followed a similar pattern. Identity is a performance and there are certain ways that people “perform” on and offline. Together, if we follow suit in the merging of the physical and the digital, identity in today’s world is constructed through ever sense of your world where you portray something and people then perceive and signify it. Interestingly though, Facebook provides a merging of the personal diary and public performance of self—essentially presenting a situation where the private and public spheres come together in a very public display of self. Also, social media allows for you to access memories so easily that this may change the way we, and others, perceive ourselves/us. If what we know and remember of past experiences is what constructs our identity, than social media provides a “memory surrogate” to influence our identity creation. Facebook is doing to memories what Google has done to facts, except instead of asking the question “is Google knowledge?” we now ask “is Facebook identity?” (PBS Idea Channel).
But what is reality? What defines the “real” and the “not real”? The debate about the concept of reality is not a new one. In fact, it has been contested since the beginning of philosophic time. A general consensus has been reached claiming that “real” and what constitutes “reality” is derived from perception. Coincidentally, the concept of identity also has a great deal to do with perceptions—how people perceive themselves in the world and how others perceive their actions and messages. In Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard refers to a concept of “hyperreality”, which is basically created through the simulation of reality that in turn masks reality. If this is the case, is online content a simulation and therefore a hyperreality? Are social media and the web instead creating a less “authentic” reality? Jurgenson explores the concept of beauty online, and notices that a great deal of online content is more “picturesque” than offline content—that concepts online are more pleasing in mediated representation than in physical, offline representation. If the picturesque and the beautiful rules the online world, than what does this mean for the offline world? This reminds me of the story in Alone Together where Turkle talks about the genuine/authentic Galapagos turtles and how children thought that a robot or representation would be just as real and effective in the display. Or how, in some cases, the children thought the simulation would be better than the “reality”, as in the case with the animals and the automatons in Disney World’s animal kingdom. Repeated perfection is statistically unattainable in nature. The saying “nobody’s perfect” does, in fact, come about from some underlying truth. But if the digital can continually adjust and recreate reality to provide us with a stream of aesthetic perfection, what does this mean for our perception of reality and authenticity? Social media has driven us to live more picturesque and “likeable” lives.
I do worry that if we continue to treat technology as a “lens” instead of as “utility”, we will lose sight of what it means to perceive the world in our natural state. Though I am not claiming that technology is somehow taking us away from the way nature intended humans to function, I believe there are benefits to experiencing the world in the moment, free from distractions and simulations. Like the story in Simulacra and Simulation, when does Baudrillard’s map actually “become” the city being mapped (PBS Idea Channel)? When we share photos and posts are we sharing experiences or simply sharing references? Then again, it seems that even in our traditional sense of “reality” we experience the world through a lens—through our own eyes (vision), our own perception and our own way of thinking. If this is the case, is there anything completely “true” or “real”, or is there instead a spectrum of reality that is experienced through many different “lenses”? Isn’t, then, digital technology merely another lens to add to the collection? Regardless of whether or not this is the case, society’s current obsession with technology does concern me, and it concerns me further when people develop the perception that simulation is entirely the same as simulacra—or that a simulation is better than a simulacra itself. Digital culture has shaped this perception and may have unforeseen repercussions in future constructions of identity and reality.
Internet Memes: What is art and literacy in the online world
In the print era, it took months, even years, to develop an art piece, or a thesis, or an invention. The process was slow, meticulous, rational, and linear—always moving towards something better in the promotion of progress. As we moved forward into the mass media era, the process of cultural change was faster than before but still relatively slow compared to where it is now in the digital era. The hierarchies of art, culture and language were still intact and the professional ruled over the amateur in those areas. Yet in this new digital age, the line between producer and consumer, professional and amateur, has blurred and the requirements that define art and literacy are being reevaluated. Has the Internet developed its own form of expression and communication? How does the language of the web affect culture?
Jurgenson defines a meme in his piece as “a unit of culture”. Generally, though, we think of Internet memes in the form of image macros of GIFs. Image macros usually follow a specific structure of an image and certain text placement, and “PBS Arts: Off Book” described GIFs as basically visual soundbits. These creations then proliferate online through retweets, resposts, reblogs, repins and remixes as they are shared and collaborated on by users from around the world. Often, memes have a humorous tone—they act as a joke, parody or satire of some idea, feeling, experience or event. As far as content goes, Internet memes almost have no limit to what subject matter they can critique, comment on or change. In this way, they are a form of human expression, and they are made by everyone, as opposed to creation in a traditional, professional media model. In fact, some scholars claim that the Internet’s capacity to create and ease of creation of user-generated content democratizes the artistic process. As “PBS Arts: Off Book” described, the people who make and watch Internet memes, and online culture in general, are becoming the same person. Memes, in a person-to-person sense, are usually relatable and it seems they have gained popularity in the way that people can identify them. Though many memes are consumed for a good laugh, this humor is only funny because people understand it and relate to the experience/silliness expressed by the meme. Some memes, on the other hand, are quick and effective commentary and idea-expression, and, even if they do utilize some form of humor, convey a message that may foster dialogue and discourse. Isn’t art anything that challenges your thinking or expresses an idea or emotion visually? And isn’t communication anything that makes or remakes meanings?
Internet memes, in their generative and productive nature, can change the overall narrative of an event by adding to or changing the context or meanings surrounding it. Recently, memes have entered the political sphere and have made a substantial impact on culture and on the methods through which we, as consumers, receive news and information. Political memes are often a critique of elections or of the current US government system. The critical aspect of these memes parallels the recent public mistrust of government and politics—the people seem to be dissatisfied with our political system and disenchanted by the government. When the development of modern media technologies—technologies that intrinsically allowed the people to observe and evaluate candidates based on appearance, persona and actions—occurred, it sparked a shift from politics to performance. This shift has caused people to become very cynical toward voting, government and politics, for it is very difficult to distinguish in this new political environment what is real and what is fake or put on for show. Jurgenson claims “memes inject authenticity into a political process that is over-performed.” The simple absurdity of, and lack of authenticity in, some aspects of government and politics in the US is most definitely transferred into the tone of memes. This can be seen in a meme like the Congress “This is why we can’t have nice things” image macro. Memes can influence a political narrative in the way that they reposition or reframe political events, beliefs, statements and meanings. Ironically enough, a meme makes a political statement while simultaneously mocking the political process. The Internet-user’s ability to critique politics and share opinions through Internet memes has made the public feel they have a voice in a democratic system that they perceive is broken. Social media creates a space where users experience a sense of participating in something “bigger”. The creation of Internet memes is our agency in a media world where big media attempts of maintain control through a top-down system. With the new bottom-up approach of social media and memes, we, as consumers and as the public, can now have an effect on news and culture. Moreover, these creations and critiques are happening at an incredibly fast speed due to the rapid nature of digital technologies. This can trigger a meme, idea or concept to spread virally on the Internet and quickly reach large numbers of people around the globe. However, this accelerated pace of proliferation also leads to a speedy downfall. Internet memes are rarely successful when they are commercialized and manufactured, and they will rapidly drop in popularity if mainstream media tries to adopt them. The aspects of authenticity and active, user-generated production are what make a meme successful online. In a democracy where the public believes their vote and voice doesn’t really count, the creation of Internet memes provides the people with a form of influence—a method of asserting their opinions and beliefs and refusing to play the role of passive consumer. Though I don’t believe a meme form like the animated GIF will overwhelmingly affect a presidential election, it could certainly impact culture and public thinking. In essence, memes provide an outlet for “a society that demands more agency, more personalization and more individual space” (Jurgenson).
The PBS Idea Channel claims that “people creating images and sharing them with strangers for the purpose of communicating their personal experiences” is art, and that is exactly what occurs on the Internet. In this sense I think that memes can most certainly be considered art, even if they are art in the crudest form, but the more compelling question is whether or not Internet memes are a language. Here’s the thing, isn’t art, in an abstract sense, language? It communicates meanings to people. And if that is the case, Internet memes may be even more of a “language” than art in the way that they are structured, shared and responded to. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines language as a “system of words or signs that people use to express thoughts and feelings to each other” or as a system that is “used and understood by a particular group of people”. I would argue that Internet memes, by both of these definitions, can be considered language. Memes say something—they make a statement, send a message. Think back to the political memes. Although they may not be an argument in the traditional written sense, they are certainly expressing an attitude or opinion towards a topic or subject. Memes are also used and understood by the people of web culture and operate within a system. In today’s world, literacy is no longer only print-based and linear. Instead, a new digital literacy has formed that is more sensory and network-like/circular. This new literacy or new way of thinking will be one of collaboration, sharing and aggregating. It will be fast-paced, expressive, and exploratory. The possibilities are endless. You can create (and re-create) infinite content in an online world. Perhaps the most exciting possibility for memes and digital literacy is the concept of an “international” language. Anyone and everyone can be involved in the development of GIFs and memes (as long as the people have access to technology, which is of course a big issue), therefore making the journey of an Internet meme a global process. The “Nyan Cat” video is a great example of how web culture from around the world can come together to create something that is shared internationally. If print media and mass media promoted nationalism, and nationalism specifically in regards to language, the digital era may be the promoter of internationalism. Again, we return to the idea of the Internet as McLuhan’s “global village”, where, in this digital community, memes exist as the form of communication and expression.
Internet Memes: Evolution and cultural change in the online world
Many of the arguments we have been discussing in class have surrounded the idea of whether the Internet should encourage creativity or security. Though the Internet is a medium built around creation and malleability, the principles used to regulate it currently mostly focus on protection and restriction. This is where the line between the “restricted” and “unrestricted” web is drawn. For the past few classes we have focused on copyright infringement and intellectual property, which are both issues that dominate in the “restricted” sector of the online world. These people want security, protection and attribution, and want to follow a system similar to the one used with previous media technologies. Yet the Internet, as a media technology, is a generative network in the sense that it “encourages and enables creative production and, as a system, possesses leverage, adaptability, ease of mastery, accessibility and transferability” (Davison). The concept of security is not there, the web is generative but vulnerable, and this is where regulation and the imposing of human law come in. We have coded for and created rules surrounding property of online material and protection of authorship. Interestingly enough, it seems through this process that we have in fact slowed the pace of memetic evolution itself. Often in class we have posed the question, is copyright bad for creativity? However, from this new perspective we must pose the question, is restriction and copyright bad for humanity and even restricting the evolution of culture?
Genetic evolution is only made possibly by mutations of genes within a species. These gene mutations are expressed as physical characteristics and allow for organisms to be more or less “fit” (or successful) in an environment. The genes that code for “fitter” characteristics are then passed on and so the mutation is carried forward. The evolutionary process is very slow, and would not be possible without the “mistakes” made in replication. The key is the idea of a “replica” in the sense that it may not be exactly, perfectly the same as the original. This small bit of transformation rather than direct transmission is what drives genetic evolution forward. Memes, as opposed to genes, dictate the behavior of an organism. In the broadest sense they are any cultural idea or behavior, and they are taught or learned rather than passed on through DNA replication. Memetic evolution has an incredible rate of change. Because a meme is subject to different perspectives and interpretations, the variations or “mutations” of a meme occur very quickly. This process drives cultural change and the progress of mankind in the conscious world. Science, art, politics and religion are only many possible through the evolution of memes.
The interesting thing about memetic evolution on the Internet and with digital technologies is that these memes are perfectly replicable. There is a standard pattern of 1’s and 0’s and that codes for everything in the virtual world, very similar to strands of DNA coding for living things in physical world. Davison defines an Internet meme as a “piece of culture, typically a joke, which gains influence through online transmission”. Davison explains the process of meme “replication”, similar to how one may describe DNA or gene replication, and he says memes begin with an ideal (or the idea behind the meme), which dictates the behavior (or the creator’s actions in service of the meme), which in turn develops the manifestation (or the observable meme, the record of the existence of said meme). Someone may then take the manifestation of a meme and interpret the ideal/meaning differently, therefore changing it and causing it to evolve. Following this process, there are many ways in which human perception will alter the “replication” of a meme, and this is what causes “mutations” that drive memetic evolution forward. Essentially, memes are malleable and replicable may not be the proper word to describe them (even if they have that potential in the online world). Instead of transmission, one should think of transformation in the evolution and engagement of a meme. The interesting thing is, who then first created the meme if each meme is transformed from another? Attribution is essentially the authorship of a piece of media. Internet memes generally disregard attribution in the promotion of an unrestricted web. Moreover the nonattribution/freedom of anonymity in regards to Internet memes is a large part of what drives these macro image submemes to evolve and grow in popularity. Zittrain says that this sense of community, sharing and involvement is what dictates the Internet meme subculture, and meme creators do not want it any other way. Of course, the lack of value for authorship in this setting brings up issues of copyright law.
Through other readings, I still believe some extent of copyright is necessary to promote innovation and creativity, but is interesting to think what might happen in the web was completely unrestricted. What might we develop culturally? Could we create something as great as famous inventions of the past? If memetic evolution online occurs faster than in any environment, what might evolve if we let the memes run free? In some ways I think it may better humanity, and in others it may hurt it. Already, memes have almost overcome genes evolutionarily speaking—in today’s world human’s that would not be deemed “fit” in a natural, survival-of-the-fittest environment are now able to live longer and pass on their genes due to advancements in medicine and science. The idea that humans, as an organism, have in some ways “outsmarted” nature’s pattern of evolution is amazing to me. Yet still, I believe a degree of attribution and protection is necessary online, and this is why I personally am swayed toward a more Creative Commons-like approach. Nevertheless, when thinking of memes and their worth in regards to cultural change, the distinction must be made though in the sense of whether it is a meme that serves the function of transmitting information and communication or serves the function of simply entertaining people. If we as a society could foster interaction, communication, interpretation and transformation of informative memes online, the human progress we produce could be of unprecedented worth. The issue is figuring out how to balance attribution and anonymity--to foster creativity but to still protect people in some ways. I thought Zittrain’s point was interesting in considering the idea that we develop a more compassionate system of communication online, where it is not about censorship but instead about understanding. Instead of impersonal coding and commercial regulation that dictates the restriction of meme use, this would follow the idea that the Internet is a community of sorts. As such, this might be seen in the development of a type of doctrine that follows the lines of an owner “requesting” the removal and image, text, or meme. While I believe this philosophy puts a lot of faith in humanity, I think it is important to consider the significance of memetic evolution and where the encouragement of it could take society and human culture as a whole.
Free Use versus Fair Use: The problem with current copyright laws
Early on in my educational career, I was taught how to cite works to support the arguments I was making in my schoolwork and organize them in the form of a bibliography. Your creations and arguments, my teachers told me, are far more effective and compelling when you provide evidence from the works of scholars and experts before you. This was when I learned the beauty of a quote in a piece of my writing. Utilizing people’s ideas in new ways allowed me to enhance my creativity and further my creations. Yet I cannot imagine having to ask each and every person I quoted and cited in my work for their permission to use a sentence or two from their work. Isn’t that essentially what copyright is now in the digital world? If writing in today’s world truly is the production of digital culture, there is no option in the digital world to cite or quote and without having it violate copyright regulations.
Big media corporations have created copyright policies that work within the confines of a read-only culture. Except this issue is, the Internet is essentially a read-write medium in the sense that it is incredibly malleable, remix-able and interactive to its core. A read-only model may have worked in the mass media era when technologies were less interactive and less participatory, but that is certainly no longer the case. This return to read-write interaction, as seen in oral cultures, encourages dialogue and fosters creativity. Trying to make the Internet act like mass media did is comparable to trying to fit a square peg into a round hole—you can’t force a read-write medium to be a read-only one. Eventually, the system will fail.
In this way, the copyright system has begun to fall apart. We are in the middle of an intellectual property war. The battle between free use and fair use rages on, and the media industry and the public cannot agree on what kind of copying should be legal. Lessig made an interesting comparison between prohibition and current copyright policy. The US government decided to go “dry” in hopes of bettering America and making it a safer place. Instead, it ended up having the opposite effect, increasing rates of crime and violence. These stricter policies only made the unwanted behavior worse. Eventually, the amendment was repealed due to its unsuccessful outcome. In the digital world, piracy is a big issue, but the current approach to stop this crime is not working. Instead of stopping the unwanted behavior, it is simply criminalizing the younger generation. Just as completely prohibiting the consumption of alcohol in America did not work, the strict laws surrounding copying on the Internet are also not working. Legal battles are rampant, money and time are being wasted, big media companies seem like bullies and Internet users are made out to be bad people. Are the costs of this war worth the benefits?
As technologies evolve, so must our policies and regulations that accompany them. The Internet, at its basic level, produces copies. Things are downloaded and are virtual rather than tangible. Lessig claims that copyright laws are “fundamentally out of sync with technology” and that they “need an update”. Again with the prohibition example, Lessig demonstrates how the development of wiretap technologies in prohibition legal battles is similar to the development of digital technologies and their relationship with copyright law. The wiretap was thought to be an infringement on the right of personal privacy to some, but according to previous law the wiretap did not technically violate these rights. This is similar to how old copyright laws are operating in the new online environment. Perhaps the current form of intellectual protection worked in the age of mass media, but with digital technologies that is no longer the case. To make a system work in the modern world, according to Lessig, we must not simply transfer old rights and protections into new eras and contexts without adapting them in some way. This is exhibited through the Buffy video case study. The uploader of this video obviously had to go through an incredible ordeal to attempt to prove his video what protected under fair use. His eventual conclusion was that our copyright enforcement system is “broken”. And it seemed true. Fair use is supposed to protect critical, educational and transformative works, which is exactly was his piece was. It was almost heinous what he had to go through to try to keep his creative work available to the public.
Moving forward, copyright law must look at “context” instead of “copy”. If free culture and free markets are to coexist in the online world, there must be a balance where remixes are legal but direct copy (piracy and plagiarism) is not. Fair use may need to be replaced by free use. Creativity will never be able to prosper to its full potential in the contemporary legal environment online. Since the Internet operates as a hybrid economy, there need to be policies established that protect both the sharing aspect and the commercial aspect of this technological platform. Youtube is an example of this hybrid economy in the sense that it has become a place where people talk to each other but also a platform of monetary gain. There is a certain sense of community, or “global village” so to speak, where there are expected social and economic norms.
I am not advocating for a society free of copyright. Copyright is necessary for the proliferation of speech and innovation. Instead, similar to what Lessig argued, I believe copyright laws need to be adjusted to the current technologies and needs to encourage both the amateur and the professional. Copyright should to revisit its original intent, the promotion of the progress of science and the useful arts. However, what I don’t think Lessig acknowledges in this piece is the power the big media companies have over the economy and the government. They certainly influence policy, and it is most likely going to be very difficult for copyright laws to adjust if these corporations have any say in the matter. Though prohibition may have ended in an effort to make America more peaceful, it was also party due to the government wanting to capitalize on the sale of alcohol. The copyright battle, though causing many issues and making America a far less peaceful country, has the money on the prohibitionist side. This will make it far more difficult to produce a solution and change policy. Still, the arguments Lessig makes in this piece are very convincing and leave me wondering what his plausible suggestions are for the future of copyright law.
Remix, Intellectual Property and Copyright: The battle between capital gain and the common good
If you were to ask an artist about a piece of their work or what inspired them to create said piece, they would most likely cite influences from other artist’s work or an experience they have had. As “Rip! A Remix Manifesto” observed, no one creates in a vacuum—creation and inspiration comes from something else. Creation, in fact, requires influence because our education system is set up as a system of copying and emulation. We learn the fundamentals, copy and memorize the “greats” of each field and then are set out into the world to develop our own ideas and inferences. This is the driving force of social change—copying, transforming and combining ideas, behaviors and skills to create and drive culture forward. This is memetic evolution. Throughout the history of life, genetic evolution has been the driving force of change within a population. However, now instead of genes we have memes (ideas/behavior/skills), and we, as humans, have used them to alter the natural progression of genetic evolution. As creation and technology has advanced, it has moved forward faster and faster due to the memes building upon one another. With the development of the Internet, this has further complicated social and cultural change. Remix, at its basic level, is a prime example of memetic evolution, for it is the copy, transformation and combination of memes.
However, in order to preserve the sanctity of the creator and allow them to make some profit from their meme, humans decided to restrict this evolution slightly (at first). Because of the creation and development costs, original works are more expensive than their copies. This is the basic idea behind copyright. The government intended for copyright to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” and therefore allowed for the inventor/creator to have ownership over his/her ideas for a short period of time in order to make a profit before it was released into the public domain. Yet this concept morphed into what we think of today as intellectual property. Somewhere along the line, the belief developed that you could own or control ideas/concepts—that if you “created” them, they were your property. Essentially, somewhere along this line, copyright got out of control. Mass media wanted ownership of everything, and wanted this ownership to never expire. Before technologies became highly interactive and the audience was more passive, this model worked to an extent. Conversely, with the digitization of culture, this model could really no longer work. The Internet is built on concepts of collaboration, sharing and interaction. It is incredible easy to copy, mix, transform, connect, combine, create and recreate content through the use of digital technologies. So what does this mean for copyright laws and regulations?
Well, it seems that there are two types of “copying” in the digital world: direct copying, which I would classify as stealing or piracy, and remixing or sampling, which takes other people’s ideas or creations and makes something new from them. Yet, big media companies would probably argue that there really is no difference, that it is all stealing and an infringement on copyright law and intellectual property. The thing is, is that big media companies are charging obscene amounts of money to use their content. “Rip! A Remix Manifesto” calculated that it would cost 4 million dollars for Girl Talk to put out one album if he were to pay what the producers were asking, and, honestly, his songs don’t even sound like the originals anymore. In recent years, the media industry has followed a trend of consolidation, where only a handful of companies have complete control of the media. Unfortunately, this means big media is just getting bigger and bigger, and therefore richer and richer. To me, these companies seem incredibly greedy. The video stated that almost none of the money paid in royalties for the use of songs is given to the artist; instead, it is paid to the media companies that own the rights. Does any of this seem fair? How is what is happening even close to the original intention of copyright? Our public domain is in crisis. Private companies are restricting the public’s ability to create and invent. The bottom line is everything is centered on profit, and there is no way that this can be good for culture and the people. The video “Rip! A Remix Manifesto”, spoke about how Brazil created HIV medicine that was affordable to its citizens, even though a large healthcare company had patented this medicine. The company was furious that their formula was being created for cheaper, and claimed their intellectual property had been compromised. Still, this medicine helped a great deal of Brazilians live more comfortable and longer lives. This brings up the battle between the common good and capital gain.
If we really are suppose to be a government that operates “by the people for the people”, shouldn’t our laws reflect the interest of the common good? Though I am nowhere near claiming making a profit is not essential for a healthy economy, our society’s focus on capital gain has escalated to new levels. Big corporations and the wealthy are constantly searching to gain more control, ownership and profits. In fact, in the United States, ten percent of Americans control seventy-five percent of the wealth. That means there is twenty-five percent of the US wealth for ninety percent of its citizens. Additionally, I imagine these big companies and copyright laws are restricting development of inventions and scientific advancements (as seen in the HIV medicine example). Where would medicine and technology be if their sole purpose were to serve the people and the environment? If big oil companies were not as rich, powerful and profit-driven, is it possible that we would have a consumer car that ran on water? Creative commons is a concept that was developed by Lawrence Lessig with the intention of setting culture free and promoting the common good. This would allow people to sample and build on previous works to create a better and more creative world. Though I do believe piracy and complete plagiarism should be viewed as crimes, I think that we must consider returning to intellectual property system more similar to the original idea of copyright. Sampling and remixing in an online world is the folk art of the future and is necessary to drive memetic evolution forward into a future where we can find a balance between capital gain and providing for the common good.
Bronies and Fandom: Digital culture’s role in identity
One incredible aspect of digital culture and the Internet is the sense of community it can provide to people. This is observed through the fandom and fan groups that thrive in the online environment. “Bronies” are an example of an unlikely fan community that have come together in celebration of the television show My Little Pony: The Magic of Friendship. The Brony fan base is largely twenty-something males, as opposed to the young girls for which the show was “intended”. And, let me tell you, after doing some Internet research, I have found that they are a very dedicated fan base. Bronies have produced tons of content, created forums and even come together in the physical world for an event called Bronycon. This social aspect of the Internet is another incredible characteristic of web culture. It allows for people to reach out to one another in ways they never would have been able to do before the digital age. It provides these “Bronies” with other “bros” and gives them a sense of community and a sense of place within the world. In the videos assigned, one man sited the fact that he had seven friends before he became a Brony and now he has a hundred or more.
The brony community grows everyday and gains more and more members. As such, they show just how incredible the Internet can be as a tool for created public movements or, potentially, as a tool for democracy—by the people for the people. In web culture, there is a balance between individualism and community and this could be a powerful characteristic when constructing democracy of the future. Bronies also show how creative fandoms can be, and how imagination and ingenuity can be fostered by web culture. In fact, “The Ballad of the Brony” was a user-generated documentary and demonstrates a situation where a consumer has become a producer. Perhaps the most intriguing part of this fan culture, is the actions that Hasbro (the owner of the rights to My Little Pony) has taken as a corporation. Unlike most media companies which generally try to enforce copyright protection and protection of intellectual property, Hasbro has instead taken a sort of collaborationist stance when it comes to Bronies. And the Bronies love them for it. It has also allowed for some really impressive creative and artistic work to come into fruition. I think this example shows how collaborationism can be successful when it comes to producer and consumer relations.
The major societal implications and power relations of the Brony phenomenon involve gender stereotypes and identity. What is “normal”? Normal is, in fact, a concept constructed by society and therefore is always changing. Gender roles and identities are also socially constructed. The PBS video stated that, in the near past, pink was a male color and generally worn by young boys. This is very different than today where the color pink almost always symbolizes female, and very “feminine” females at that. This gender norm is something that was created but is thought of as naturally true in society today. Today’s culture has then responded somewhat poorly to the idea that grown men are into a show that young girls like to watch. However, My Little Pony is a show that celebrates tolerance, love and the “magic” of friendship—why shouldn’t everyone watch it? To me, those seem like important lessons to learn if we are going to become a more accepting and considerate world. The series also seems to exhibit some postmodern qualities; showing diversity, globalism and the blurring of gender roles and race. What is identity in the online world? And is it possible that the web provides a space to step back from socially constructed identities and move into a more postmodern world? Web culture is highly involved with the concept of identity and this Brony case study shows how the Internet can play a role in shaping identities and breaking societal norms.
The Evolving Relationship Between Producers and Consumers: A fight for cultural control
For as long as there as been a media industry, there have been fans. Humans, by nature, express attitudes and opinions toward information presented to them. Mass media provided a sort of basis for fan culture, but only until recently has this fandom grown enormously and been so visible to the public eye. In the mass media environment, fans (or consumers) were generally considered more passive. This is because the level of interactivity associated with these technologies was relatively low--interactivity is dictated by how responsive a certain technology is to consumer feedback. However, in the digital environment, fans (or consumers) are generally considered far more active. Digital technologies yield high levels of interactivity and therefore promote audience participation. This new media environment provides fans with more power than ever before, and producers have begun to notice.
I believe one of the Internet’s most important and beneficial features is its potential for creation and its tendency to foster innovation and imagination. We, as digital users, are creating content everyday—whether it be a blog post, a tweet, a comment, a Facebook post, an Instagram image, etc. Creation, though, is simply the act of producing something or causing something to exist. Creativity, on the other hand, implies a certain level of thinking and has the connotation of creating something unique, useful and organized. Though much of what is created on the Internet is some form of remake, sample or remix, it is still a form of creativity for it puts certain content and meaning in new contexts which generate new meanings. The amazing thing about this fan culture and creative web culture is the sense of community it generates. It is far from the competitive, free market that the media industry operates within. Instead, fandom (and fan produced media) is about sharing, exploration, collaboration, contribution and participation. The Internet is a wonderful environment for fan creativity to prosper because consumers can create content at low costs, have that content reach large audiences, easily access digital content to use for remaking/remixing, and organize/share the work of other consumers through “tags” and “likes”. As fans continue to generate more and more content from more and more places around the globe, the amount of information and the perspectives from which that information derives from increases substantially. This contributes to the increase of diversity online, and therefore the greater number of content options for consumers and fans to choose from.
Nevertheless, as an artist myself, I am sometimes nostalgic for the times where creativity meant generating something new that was entirely your own. Still, in today’s world, I imagine much of the creative content to be imitations of art that has come before it (whether its intentional or not). There are some serious issues though in this fan-generated culture. First, both piracy and plagiarism at extreme levels still need to be managed. It is important we develop a creative environment where, on a basic level, artists and inventors (creators) have a right to their original ideas and intellectual property. Simply copying or stealing should be treated in the virtual world as it is in the physical world, and the standards we need to set to enforce this are vital to discuss for the future of the Internet. Second, is this “tyranny of the choice” (Palfrey). Although the massive amount of options and information does imply diversity, sometimes the sheer quantities can create fragmentation and consequently further reinforce people’s personal beliefs. This can continue to separate and segregate people’s beliefs, therefore strengthening partisanship and discouraging open dialogue.
Still, this fan culture, and web culture in general, is beginning to blur the lines between professional and amateur, producers and consumers, and private and public spaces. In this new world, who really creates or makes culture? We consume purely consumer-produced media content all the time on sites like Youtube. Thus, what is the process called when media originally produced by a media producer, then taken by a consumer and produced into new content, and then consumed by a consumer—or even consumed by a media producer! As you can see, this producer-consumer model can get complicated very quickly in the digital world, and, honestly, the traditional mass media production/consumption model may no longer apply online. Consumers can, of course, still consume media producer-produced content. Consumers can also take that content and produce something new, or produce something new entirely on their own and have it reach millions of other consumers. Producers may also consume consumer-produced media content and remake it into their own content if it is working. This has turned into an incredible cycle where there is an almost battle of sorts over who controls culture. This push-and-pull of producer vs. consumer has sparked many legal battles and has been the center of debate for a lot of recent public policy. Yet, I believe people may be missing the wonder that the Internet provides in this type of situation—it breaks down hierarchies and bolsters equality, bringing people together and bringing higher-ups closer to the public.
Is the Internet what the Founding Fathers may have been dreaming about? Is it possible digital culture may the savior of democracy? As we discussed in class, it seems that Reddit has shown the amazing potential for public collaboration, learning, discussion, dialogue and democracy. The web, at its core, is an enormous public space that brings communities together, and one that could bring policy makers closer to their constitutes. Digital culture is “reaffirming the right of everyday people to actively contribute to their culture” (Jenkins). In this way, the new digital environment could also reaffirm the right of citizens to actively contribute to decisions within their society and their government.
For media industry to survive, it must take some form of a collaborationist stance when working with fans and fan culture, for taking a prohibitionist one will only work short term. In regard to the debate over cultural control, I feel it is almost impossible to measure who makes meaning in our world today or who truly controls culture in a digital society because fans and producers have a fundamentally symbiotic relationship. However, if fans/consumers do not attempt to exercise their power over culture and society, the potentially democratic environment of the Internet may instead be overruled by a commercial, capitalist one.
In the digital world, we consume culture, knowledge and information at greater rates and quantities than ever before. Theoretically, the Internet could provide us with endless and infinite amounts of purely digital information. This is because the online world is not confined by the physical limitations of the tangible world. Where culture in the physical world is generally dictated by space, time, relevance, popularity, profitability, and societal significance, culture in the virtual world does not have to live by those constraints. This lack of limitation allowed for the birth of web culture and helps it continue to thrive. In its greatest, purest form, the Internet would provide us with an infinite supply of collective, thoughtful, and reliable knowledge and ideas that we could access to have endless conversations and discussions in a communal, democratic setting. This is the beauty of the Internet. You can talk and share with people who have similar interests to you, and interact with people and communities you may not have been able to before the digital revolution. You have virtually endless, and reasonably easy, access to massive amounts of information and culture. You have the power to create, change, add to, find, and discuss almost “anything and everything” (The Culture of Reddit). As an Internet user, you can follow Chris Anderson’s long tail down further and further along the curve and view large amounts of information that you probably would never have seen before the digital era. In the PBS Digital video, they stated that Reddit fosters a kind of learning culture that evokes thoughtful responses. In some ways, web culture exhibits a perfect balance of the individual and the communal.
However, here’s the thing, this would be great except not all humans are inherently good or perfect—in fact, not even close. This is why we, as a society, construct ethics and morals, and reinforce them with laws and regulations. In the online society though, there is not a lot of policy specifically tailored to the digital, and often regulations from the physical world are modified to try to fit in the virtual world. The expected forms and patterns of interaction found in the real world are not necessarily the social norms found online, and this can sometimes create a web environment that is chaotic, offensive, profane and hurtful. Anonymity and lack of record can especially amplify this type of behavior.
Consider the thought that, if you don’t have to indentify yourself and what you’re saying is not being archived/recorded, you are essentially free to think and say whatever you would like. This is, in essence, the environment that the website and online imageboard 4chan creates. There are generally no consequences or repercussions for your actions when you are able to function in this way. Therein lies the double-edged sword of anonymity. It’s ability to provide freedom gives users a way to feel safe and comfortable expressing themselves, but this freedom also gives users the power to do and say what they please without personal backlash. This raw, unfiltered, unrecorded, anonymous aspect of web culture allows users, in a way, to revert back to states of primal being. These freedoms remind me of an underlying argument in Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness. Take away rules and accountability and any man will act as he pleases, even if it is violent or evil. When you give a man the power to have to answer only to himself, anyone is apt to be driven to madness and cruelty as Kurtz, in the novel, was. Humans, as animals, are naturally power-seeking beings. We want dominance, to control the world around us, and to have the freedom to act upon our instincts--to do and say whatever we desire. Civilization harnesses these desires and tries to get us to work together and coexist in harmony through structure, laws and institutions. As we travel further and further into untamed web culture (and down the long tail), it is as if we are Marlow travelling deeper and deeper into the wild African Congo. Of course, another theme in Heart of Darkness is how civilization/imperialism still performs acts of evil and madness, but instead justifies them and attempts to prove their rightness. In today’s society, I’m sure this is still true, and therefore I am certainly not claiming that our civilization is in inherently good or perfect either. Still, as shown in the Reddit video, there are serious problems with sexism on their site, and this shows the bad side of Internet culture. Women are demeaned and spoken about in comments on the site that use very derogatory and offensive terms and phrases. In physical society this would be considered sexual harassment, yet online, people protest and claim these are simply acts of free speech. These online acts are hurtful and disempowering to women everywhere. 4chan has also had problems with child pornography because of user freedom.
Nevertheless, “web culture” is also positive in some ways as well. It is good in the ways that I cited at the top of this paper. It also is great that we, as people, are being exposed to more opinions, people, cultures, and knowledge than ever before. Crowdsourcing, or crimesourcing, is another positive aspect of online culture. As shown in the Ted Talk video, the 4chan users came together and identified an animal abuser in less than 24 hours, for which the abuser was subsequently arrested. There are other criminal investigation examples in the digital world of being able to reach more witnesses online, have access to more experts, view criminals social media profiles, etc, that have allowed law enforcement to apprehend and prosecute criminals they may never have been able to before. Like any form of media or technology, the Internet has the potential for good and bad because, of course, this is the potential people have.
Producers and Consumers: How the media industry is changing in a digital world
In the previous papers, we have generally focused on what the media, or type of medium, is doing to us. However, the reading we have had this week has been a little bit more focused on what we, as consumers of digital technology, are doing to the media industry. In the age of the Internet and networked public culture, the audience is becoming more mobilized and outspoken. The barriers between consumer and producer are beginning to blur—for nowadays consumers are often producers of new media online. Instead of the so-called “passive” audience of the past, today’s audience is more “active” and participatory. We, as consumers, will add onto and/or change the meanings of certain messages created by the corporate media industry.
The growth of the digital media industry has followed a few trends in its years of development including media convergence, interactivity, amateurism, horizontality, sharing, engagement, feedback, remixing, aggregation, a growth the amount/type of media available and a growth of niche groups. The individual has made way for the collective. Through this trend of media convergence (or the coming together of many technologies into one digital platform), there is more easily accessible media available online than with any other previous media technology. Due to the large quantity media offered, there has also been a trend of aggregation or curation, where websites and people will often act as media filters for the general public. In the online world of relation and collaboration, it seems audiences have more power than ever before, and this change has caused some previous major mass media industries to take a hit economically. Both news media and the music industry have been struggling with pricing, piracy and audience media creation/contribution. Although these trends have caused economic instability in some cases, many businesses and industries have been able to flourish in the online world. Various communication theorists claim that the web is a vehicle for democracy and that creativity is at an all time high. With this new aspect of consumer control, audience members (basically fans) are able to remix and remake the commercial media they consume and also create non-market media of their own.
Yet, how much freedom do we really have? Are we truly moving away from commercial media? This is the concept of the long tail theory—that with more and more content available the tail has grown and the short head evened out (had less of the “hits”). Anderson claims the model of media consumption changes in the digital world and more of the “hits” are spread out throughout the curve, therefore making it more distributed and less steep. Instead of a central, corporate power, the PBS video stated the web is moving toward a more egalitarian one where the artistic processed in democratized. Though I guess the web does democratize in some ways, and certainly has the potential to, I don’t believe it does all of what it claims. Aggregators and curators often direct consumers to the most popular of the least popular--the mainstream of the non-mainstream. Essentially, they construct the top charts of more obscure music genres. I think this phenomenon is reflected in the concept of “hipster culture”. Also, while everyone can create music and media, consumers tend to go for the mainstream, and, in a digital culture especially, therefore continue to make the popular culture even more popular. That’s not to say there is not a market for the little known, but I simply believe that we should not dismiss the 80-20 rule so quickly. In the case of music online, I still believe that about 20 percent of the supply accounts for at least 80 percent of the demand. High-profile curators such as iTunes etc drive the top 100 songs to continue to become more and more popular and the cycle of corporate popularity continues. Youtube also adds to this phenomenon by recommending the “top videos” or most watched videos, and so the popular videos continue to get more and more views. With media convergence, the most popular pop culture is as constantly readily available as the less popular media, and consequently perpetuates this cycle of escalating the popular to receive a great number of hits. Russell, Ito, Richmond and Tuters claim that the rise of digital technologies has allowed us to begin to move away from centrally organized knowledge and commercial media, and more toward non-market, distributed production. However, I would argue that corporate media and its ownership is far more concentrated than in the past (aren’t there only basically five major companies now that own all television/news?), even if there are more media topics and content available. Though yes, we may be shifting toward more networked and distributed knowledge, I believe commercialism is still running rampant. I am not arguing that niche markets don’t exist, but I would be wary to claim that we have moved into such a special-interest group, fragmented, and consumer generated culture (and subcultures). In regards to the long tail, I would argue that yes, the long tail (aka the media available) is growing longer all the time, but that this long tail is quite flat and, in fact, the short head may be growing even taller and skinnier.
The producer and consumer line is certainly blurring, and the effect this is going to have on traditional media will define the shifts in media and the economy in the upcoming years. “Convergence culture is not only a matter of industry and technology, but also more importantly a matter of norms, common culture and the artistry of everyday life” (Russell, Ito, Richmond and Tuters, 72). Can traditional news media and the music industry adapt and adjust to stay successful? Will they have to move toward a more collaborationist point of view and work with the audience, or can they effectively continue to take a prohibitionist stance by enforcing new regulations on the consumer? In the years to come, the audience will, most likely, continue to engage in even more interactivity and display a variety of diverse interests. It seems that for the reason, the media industry will have to learn to work closely with consumers. The balance between price and convenience is what dictates the value of goods online. How will creativity be handled in this media environment? Will copyright laws and property battles squash the consumer’s ability to imagine and create? I certainly hope not, for I believe one of the most incredible aspects of the digital environment is its fostering of innovation, ideas and artistry. Yet, when examining the arguments made by the scholars in our readings, I would be careful to assume that the media industry is becoming greatly democratized and widely diverse—in fact, I would argue that the digital and media convergence environment allows popular culture to thrive. Though we, as consumers, may indeed have more control than we have with past technologies, I do not believe we have as much control as we think.
Is Digital Technology Hurting or Helping Us? How the Web and digital media is affecting society and our minds
What is knowledge? What does it mean to know? To think? In recent years, people have begun to consider the concept of “knowing” in relation to computers, the Internet and other forms of digital media. Artificial intelligence is something that has been scientifically sought after for quite some time. But does something like Google, for example, “know”? Although it is filled with facts, does it have the ability to relate those facts to other facts? Ideas are not knowledge, their relation to one another is. It is the complex understanding of contractions that builds knowledge. We construct knowledge through the synthesizing of relationships between concepts. The short video we watched said that yes, Google is a form of knowledge. Yet, I don’t entirely agree. I think there is a level of understanding and creation that humans have in “knowing” that computers (and Google) does not have. Still, it is evident that digital technologies are having an impact on how we think and how we know.
Many of the arguments made in both the reading and documentary seemed either nostalgic or had the feeling of trying to scare the audience. They made claims that we are losing our ability to think deeply and maintain prolonged attention on pretty much anything. While I don’t disagree with these theories, these people critiquing the current use of technology utilized very traditional print based words--stating things like, my generations inability to form “linear” thoughts or that digital technologies are affecting our ability to “structure” things. However, I was more prone to agree with the people in the documentary who talked about the concept of gains and losses. With the integrations of each new technology into society we do lose things, but we also gain incredible things as well. We simply must watch and ensure that our losses do not outweigh our gains.
I feel as if maybe we are becoming “stupid” in the most recent, traditional sense of “intelligence”. One of the speakers in the documentary referenced us as the “dumbest generation”, and Carr writes about Google making us less intelligent. However, they frame this against our ability to read and write in the ways that they were taught. Perhaps the ability to read, analyze, form and structure a rational, step-by-step argument is no longer what today’s world demands. It could be argued that innovation, inventions and ideas are flourishing in the present and are even doing so at a more rapid pace than ever before. In this way, we may need to reevaluate the best way to think and our concepts of knowledge and intelligence. What and how is/are the best way to learn in the new digital environment? In the Frontline documentary, they examined schools where games and digital technologies were built into the curriculum—often with great success. Developing ways to work with the changes in the digital age and propagate goodness seems like the approach to take.
My concern in the digital society is balancing the needs of the primal human with the desires of the thinking, modern human being of today, and I am not sure that we are currently handling this balance very well. We cannot ignore what human’s need for survival when immersing ourselves in a digital world. Food, shelter and providing for yourself are some of the most basic anthropological needs, and if they are not being met, than you are not having a successful interaction with technology. In connecting to the Internet are we also disconnecting from our world? In regards to the industrial era, Frederick Winslow Taylor said, “in the past the man has been first, in the future the system must be first” (Carr). This level of efficiency is not the goal we should have moving forward. Instead, in the future, we should try to create a world where the man and the system work symbiotically and successfully. In these ways, to me, gaming often seems to be more addictive than productive. It reminds me of some combination between gambling and sports. There is the excitement, the ability to immediately repeat actions, the competition, the connection with others, and the adrenaline rush. Yet unlike athletics, gaming lacks any of the benefits of physical activity—and not just the fitness related ones, but the emotional and mental benefits associated with exercise. Gaming can distract you from functioning in a culture, benefiting your society, and providing for your basic needs.
What truly does scare me is the idea that we may no longer be able to work through things as humans and that some point we will be so overwhelmed with simple daily activities we won’t have time for creative expression and simple interaction/alone time. The issues I foresee are laziness and stress. I truly do feel like we live in an Age of Anxiety. People are constantly busy, and the times are certainly less simple than they were previously. Perhaps this is where critic’s sense of nostalgia stems from. Aren’t digital technologies supposed to make your life easier? Supposed to make it simpler and faster to perform tasks than to do them in the traditional way? In the digital era, there is always something you have to check or organize or adjust, and it leaves no time for you to focus on the creativity and engagement the web should promise. For a medium that is built on the idea of immersing the senses, engaging you, and connecting you, it seems to have, instead, developed into one filled with distraction and disengagement.
The saying, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is true in a sense. Yet as a technology, the gun is one constructed with the intention of some form of violence. Though, yes, the Internet is probably not inherently bad or inherently good for humanity and society, technologies are still biased in some ways. This is why it is important when building the future of the Web we integrate honorability, morality and ethics into the technology and create a Web that has a bias toward good: develop a “netiquette” and work by those guidelines. According to Turkle in the documentary, “technology challenges us to assert our human values”, but first we must decide what those human values are. We should not be scared of the concepts of “efficiency” and “progress” but should balance them with the needs of the people and the planet—focus on fostering insight, innovation, sustainability and bettering the world around us. Digital technology is most likely here to stay, so instead of panicking, criticizing and letting it control us, we must take charge and decide how we want to go forward. The development of print cultivated the creation of many brilliant and wonderful ideas and objects, but it also allowed for the dissemination of propaganda and the building of harmful empires. Still, I think that most would agree the good of print has certainly outweighed the bad. I believe that digital technologies have this potential too, but it is essential that we adjust the direction that they are heading to make this happen and to create a better future for generations to come.
The World of Web Media: Technological determinism and the future of the Internet
This week’s readings focused on the past, present and future of the Web as a medium and what consequences the features of this technology may have, or are having, on society. Many people, it seems, regard web media as the be-all and end-all of the future of technology and society—predicting its success or its demise. Through the extremes of these views the Internet may create a perfect and wonderful completely democratic society (as seen in Barlow’s A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace), or a frightening society where technology has taken over and the central government controls everyone. Yet these utopian or dystopian views of the web generally disempower the people and younger generations/the people of the future, and empower technology. Also, the negative views imply the “digital immigrant’s” removal of any faith in the “digital natives” and their ability to construct an adequate future.
The concept of technological determinism means the power technology has over a culture. The effect of this power is often alluded to by the connections observed between the dominant communication technology of an age and the key features of the society at that time. A technological determinist perspective commonly emphasizes a sort of inevitable tone surrounding technological change. According to this perspective, we, as a society, are reacting to the change in technology, and I found these concepts to be somewhat similar to several of the ideas found in medium theory. Yet, this reading we did by Robert Burnett on Web Theory really paralleled and connected some of the thoughts I have been having about the readings and in the class discussions. I thought he made some excellent points about being wary of completely accepting these theories and concepts, and understanding societal changes cannot be reduced to one simple factor without thoroughly considering their context. Also, people’s use of technology often subverts the original technological intention, therefore lessening the amount of presumed power a technology has over a society. He believes the Internet will neither wholly destroy nor save us, and I agree—I believe it is important to continue to have faith in humanity.
In terms of a form of communication or medium, the Web is a very interesting one to explore. Burnett considers the findings of H. A. Innis and Marshall McLuhan in regards to the tendencies (“biases”) that certain communications can exhibit. Innis concentrates on “space-bias” and “time-bias” communication, whereas McLuhan concentrates on “hot” and “cool” media. Innis claims that each communication technology demonstrates a tendency toward temporal or spatial concerns. For example, oral culture was more time-biased because it focused on linking the present with the past and often was less mobile. However, writing and print culture was more space-biased due to its focus on wide spread dissemination and exchange. It seems that the web could act as both, temporal in its ability to arcive information and spatial in its instantaneity of transfer over long distances. Nevertheless, Burnett argues that, ultimately, the web is space-biased due to its rapid exchange of information spatially and its fluid/unstable qualities. This was interesting to me because in our past readings the Internet is often compared to that of an oral culture, or a time-biased type communication. McLuhan’s hot and cool media deals mostly with the interactivity of a certain form of communication. Print, for example, is “hotter” because it is more fixed and complete, and there is not a lot of interaction. Orality and television are “cooler” because there is more interchange and are more dynamic. Though there is a great deal of text on the Internet, it is incredibly mutable and dynamic, and therefore would have probably been a very “cool” medium in McLuhan’s eyes. “The Web, when thought of as a medium is a hybrid that invokes the sensation of orality and contingency with the guided structure of a book or magazine” (Burnett, 18).
When looking toward the future of the Internet, generally the major issues that are cited are concepts of privacy, identity and access (Palfrey). Because the Internet is here, and probably here to stay, instead of figuring out to constrain it we should be discovering how to harness it to its full potential for good. The web has the ability to shape identities in ways technologies never have before, and the possessing the capability to protect what you want and share what you want in the digital world is becoming more and more imperative. Also, the gap between people with the access to and the know-how of digital technologies is continuing to increase. All of these problems must be address whilst moving forward as a society in the digital age. However, the longstanding debate when looking toward the future of the Web is this good/evil balance of the web as a technology, and whether it is more of a technology that promotes centralized power that is out of individual human control or if it is more of a technology that promotes democracy, human interest and the equal/open access to knowledge and power (Burnett, 20). Essentially, on the whole, does the web give power to people in society or take it away from them? When it comes to the effects digital media may have on our culture as a type of communication, this question is an important one to ask. Nevertheless, the more we discuss medium theory the more I begin to think of the saying, “which came first, the chicken or the egg?”. Though digital technology most likely shapes society, this shaping may be just as likely related to the content of the technology and people, institutions and powers connected to the creation of the technology itself. In regards to medium theory, it is important to consider the context of a form of communication within the culture.
In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.
John Perry Barlow, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
