"Becoming spies--for our own good" and bad

These two authors explore the possible negative effects of technology on culture and society. Andrejevic’s work focuses on the consequences of an internet culture that allows users to monitor themselves and others by use of a simple search engine or social networking site. Personally, I completely agree with what he’s getting at. By creating a blog, signing up for a Facebook or Twitter account, and even being included in a story in the local newspaper, people are allowing themselves (maybe unknowingly) to be searchable entities on the web. Despite the “privacy settings” available on some of these websites, the information is still present on the web, and someone, somewhere, has access to it. I recently discovered Twitter’s scary privacy policy, which caused me enough anxiety to close my account after doing a quick Google search of myself:

Our Services are primarily designed to help you share information with the world. Most of the information you provide to us is information you are asking us to make public. This includes not only the messages you Tweet and the metadata provided with Tweets, such as when you Tweeted, but also the lists you create, the people you follow, the Tweets you mark as favorites or Retweet and many other bits of information. Our default is almost always to make the information you provide public but we generally give you settings to make the information more private if you want. Your public information is broadly and instantly disseminated. For example, your public Tweets are searchable by many search engines and are immediately delivered via SMS and our APIs to a wide range of users and services. You should be careful about all information that will be made public by Twitter, not just your Tweets. (http://twitter.com/privacy, emphasis added)

As Andrejevic says, “...forms of monitoring that might once have been considered borderline stalking have become commonplace and routine—a fact with implications not just for the ways in which we represented ourselves to one another, but also for shifting expectations regarding privacy and surveillance” (228). I know that a great people use Facebook like this - as a tool for finding out information about a person before they meet them, and consequently judge them based solely on what is viewable on their profile. Barney talks about the possible effects of surveillance on workers in his piece, stating “Close surveillance stifles independent effort by promoting excessive conformance to norms established by higher-level authorities” (163). I can relate to both of these author’s points of view about the negative impact surveillance and technology can have on individuals. Barney talks about how democracy calls for all citizens to have access to new technology. It seems the more connected we become, the more control and access we grant to corporations, the government, and any curious individual.

Trippi, Lurie, and Kelly: Optimistic Viewpoints of the Internet Age

All three of these writers converge on a similar idea: the internet gives people power. Power to deconstruct, in Lurie’s opinion, power to interact in Kelly’s, and power to engage in Trippi’s. Lurie goes so far as to state that “the most powerful and pervasive source of moral relativism [is] the Web. Technology undermines traditional belief systems even as it creates a belief in a kind of heavenly paradise, a kind of Technopia.” The internet allows users to delve into creative processes, explore and research ideas, and express beliefs. And as Kelly points out, most of the information out there has been created by the users. In reality, we’re helping each other learn/explore/understand by compiling a giant web of information, largely by ourselves. The internet, as these writers see it, is definitely optimistic. Trippi states wholeheartedly that the internet connects us all, and “collective power is our greatest wealth” (205). With a technological tool as pervasive and accessible as the Internet, possibilities seem nearly endless. Kelly and Lurie point to innovations such as hyperlinks, that expand information on one source to multiple, opening the eyes of users to different viewpoints and perhaps, as Lurie and Trippi argue, a liberal, well-informed mindset.

Not only could the internet be influencing our views, it also is remembering everything that we put into it, creating what Kelly calls “the Machine”. He states, “The more we teach this megacomputer, the more it will assume responsibility for our knowing. It will become our memory. Then it will become our identity. In 2015 many people, when divorced from the Machine, won't feel like themselves - as if they'd had a lobotomy.” I feel like this is already occurring, long before the world of 2015 Kelly is creating. The iPhone, Blackberry, or Android phones can readily be seen as extensions of this Machine. These devices can behave like a phone, hold personal and business-related information (photos, memos, music, e-mail, contacts, the list goes on...), all while being connected to the Web, allowing posting on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc., as well as simple informational inquiry. It seems that more and more people (myself included) honestly rely on these technological devices, and treat them like extensions of themselves. Without these devices that allow for increased connectivity to the outside world, I believe that people feel as Kelly suggests—not themselves, and maybe in very extreme cases, “as if they’d had a lobotomy.”

Modern Media and Freedom of Expression

I think that this idea is encapsulated in Gilder’s work when he says, “Rather than exalting mass culture, the telecomputer will enhance individualism. Rather than cultivating passivity, the telecomputer will promote creativity. Instead of a master-slave architecture, the telecomputer will have an interactive architecture in which every receiver can function as a processor and transmitter of video images and other information. The telecomputer will usher in a new culture compatible with the immense powers of today’s ascendant technology. Perhaps most important, the telecomputer will enrich and strengthen democracy and capitalism all around the world” (18). It’s true that the computer/internet has allowed for a fluidity in areas of free speech and creative expression. Through websites such as youtube and vimeo (and countless others), anyone can create a video and share it with the world and be recognized for how good or terribly bad (as in the case of Rebecca Black’s Friday video) it is. This blog speaks to the idea that modern media is freeing, in that I can pretty much say whatever I want here. As Negroponte points out, “increasingly, the tools to work with and the toys to play with will be the same. There will be a more common palette for love and duty, for self-expression and group work”. Again this idea that the computer will allow users to explore multiple dimensions of themselves in one place, satisfying their desires to work and to have fun. What Barlow discusses also touches on this freedom of expression that comes with the internet and personal computers. He says, “digital technology is...erasing the legal jurisdictions of the physical world, and replacing them with the unbounded and perhaps permanently lawless seas of Cyberspace”. Is this a bad thing? I don’t believe so. I think this endless exchange of ideas will do exactly what Gilder believes it will, “strengthen democracy and capitalism all around the world”, by allowing a freedom of speech in a very public arena that cannot help but spread ideas (18).

"From all work to all play"-the consequences of a society structured around technology

Sadie Plant points out in her essay that throughout history, women have been given jobs that are characterized as “menial, minor, secondary”, which in some cases, as with the loom and computer programming, have turned out to be quite the opposite (264). As Plant argues, historically, patriarchy has disregarded women’s work simply because it is done by a woman, and neglected the importance that such work has had on developing culture and society. In regards to the question, “How might the new media world have looked different had women, and particularly feminist women writers, been more prominent in theorizing the future during the decades of the 70s, 80s, and 90s?”, I think it is safe to say that their outlook about growing technology would be bad. The move towards technological innovation is making the world evolve at a faster rate, while humanity stays behind and relishes in its achievement of creating a hypothetical “better world”. As Haraway states, “we are living through a movement from an organic, industrial society to a polymorphous, information system – from all work to all play, a deadly game” (161). This is “a deadly game” because of the advent of what Haraway calls “cyborgs”, which in my mind would be human-like slaves to society. She argues in her piece that, “The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential” (151). Haraway is expressing here a fear of the “offspring” created by a military, patriarchal, and capitalist society, that historically has treated women as second-class citizens, but she is hopeful that the cyborgs will rebel against that particular aspect of the society that has created them. The machines and technology are everyday growing stronger, better, faster, while humanity is blasé, treating the advancements as opportunistic and helpful. What Sherry Turkle talks about in her essay is just that – a move from activity to passivity with the help of computers and “virtuality”. She states that this change is causing a “devaluation of direct experience” (Turkle 237). With the creation of virtual worlds and a separation from RL (real life), Turkle asks, “Instead of solving real problems—both personal and social—are we choosing to live in unreal places?” (244). It seems that the more technology advances, the more people want to live within it – whether it’s through a Facebook page or an MUD – and that’s frightening. As leisure time becomes increasingly spent in front of a computer or television being entertained and less time exploring the world and its issues, who will be around to argue for social and political change?

Cybernetics and Becoming Posthuman

Cybernetics, a theory that both Hayles and Turner touch on, can be defined in many different ways, but as I understand it, in cybernetics, a system’s changes affect its behavior. If we think of society as a system that runs on technological information and innovation as well as culture, then it can be seen as cybernetic. As breakthroughs are made in technologies that allow information to travel readily from one source to another, the system must change to accommodate the cultural and social implications that accompany this change. An example of this is the growing availability of the internet. Knowledge has begun to change due to the ability of a person to quickly access information in the thousands by using a simple search engine like Google. Thus, it can be said that the changes in the world directly affect developments in knowledge, technology, and society, but at the same time recreate the world by moving it in a new direction of development. Turner acknowledges this when he says that, “Networked forms of commerce, and the integration of information technologies into them, quickly began to seem like stages in a natural, rather than a socio-technical, progression. Suddenly mankind ha[s] entered a new stage of evolution: the scientists of the artificial-life movement, wrote [Kevin] Kelly, ha[ve] already shown that ‘evolution is not a biological process. It is a technological, mathematical, informational, and biological process rolled into one’” (203). Humanity is constantly evolving, and as Hayles points out, this is how we are becoming posthuman—individuals change with the system as well. A posthuman understands the world from multiple perspectives, and is willing to change perspectives. Hayles uses a sort-of Darwinian interpretation of how humans can become or are posthuman in this sense, when she says that, “Organisms respond to their environment in ways determined by their internal self-organization. Their one and only goal is continually to produce and reproduce the organization that defines them as systems. Hence, they are not only self-organizing but are also autopoietic, or self-making” (10). Therefore, not only can we adapt to a changing society by changing ourselves, we can change society so it will adapt to our changing knowledge and culture.