Barney & Andrejevic

Barney argues that, despite claims that technology eventually results in increased employment opportunities, the focus should be on how the individual is affected when their job title is made obsolete, ""...it is less important to determine how many jobs are created relative to those eliminated than it is to understand the manner in which existing jobs vanish at such an alarming rate" (135). Barney refuses to believe that while one sector may lose some jobs, these jobs can be taken up by a different industry because technology is universal. Technological growth isn't limited to one sector of the work-industry, therefore, inevitably all sections will eventually experience the same job loss to machines or automated systems, "Indeed, it is true that some job growth has occurred in high-technology service areas...However, these gains tend to be offset by massive employment reduction in other service areas...Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind that the technological innovations eliminating employment in the manufacturing sector are simultaneously being deployed in the service sector, compromising the latter's ability to simply absorb the losses experienced in the former"(138). He doesn't appear to be particularly impressed with call centers outside of the country, another way that technology allows workers and jobs to be displaced (or replaced) for a fraction of the cost. Barney also discusses the telework market at some length, describing it as a rapidly growing practice for people to perform their work at a place other than the 'traditional' workplace. Although this idea of working from home sounds nice, Barney writes, "most people for whom telework is their only work are employed in either low-level administrative/managerial tasks, or clerical, sales and service occupations. Of this second category - the workers most vulnerable to the various pathologies of teleworking - the majority are women, trapped in a homeworking situation that has been described as a 'female-dominated work ghetto'" (145). People in the teleworking business can often be cheated out of fair wages or work much longer hours than they would if they were working in a traditional office space. Therefore, while this 'working from home' may sound nice and convenient, Barney writes that it is actually detrimental to the worker itself, though it may benefit the company itself financially.

In answer to this week's prompt, I would say that Barney thinks that the optimists are merely ignoring the obvious downsides to technology entering the workplace. For example, instead of thinking about how technology causes jobs to be lost in all job markets, the optimist might simply focus on how technology lowers costs and creates jobs elsewhere. Similarly, the teleworking concept might seem like a very flexible and convenient way to work, but the optimist might not think about how they are unfairly compensated for their long hours, etc. I thought his comments about how having a working knowledge about computers no longer counts as any kind of skill and won't advance in the workplace if they remain at this 'unskilled' level. Those who don't possess any computer skills are not merely unskilled, they are the people that will remain unemployed.

Andrejevic begins his book with a discussion of contextual ads and how Google uses information from its search engine an email service in order to target specific ads to its users. His idea of an enclosure, a space where actions generate information about itself, questions ideas of surveillance, "...when we go online, we generate increasingly detailed forms of transactional information that become secondary information commodities: information that may eventually be sold to third parties or used by marketing for targeted advertising campaigns" (2). Just as physical enclosure eventually began to separate people into different classes, those involved with production and those who sell their lands in order to facilitate the production, digital enclosure also creates boundaries between people. He separates them into those that control private interactive spaces and the people who agree to certain infringements on freedoms or other conditions in order to gain access to goods and services, aka the average user. Andrejevic writes that the more people depend on technology in order to communicate or shop or educate ourselves, the more people have to enter privately owned spaces or 'enclosures' (4). He also goes on to describe the unequal access to privacy between the user and the controller. While the user must continually give up certain private information, it is almost impossible to know anything about the controller or what they decide to do with the information that they can get from the user.

One example that Andrejevic describes at some length is TiVo, he describes this as another way that people are being manipulated into giving up information about themselves. He writes, "The defining irony of the interactive economy is that the labor of detailed information is being offloaded onto consumers in the name of their own empowerment...we are invited to actively participate in staging the scene of our own passive submission - and to view such participation as a form of power sharing" (15). I think that Andrejevic would say that the optimist is just oblivious to the obvious duplicity of the controlling corporations. The user willingly submits to giving up somewhat (or very) private information, but only in exchange for specific goods or services. Andrejevic's ideas about the digital enclosure are pretty interesting and seem pretty well-grounded in evidence, however, I just have a difficult time looking at transactions on the internet so skeptically or pessimistically. I will be interested in hearing everyone's thoughts about his theories on Monday and/or Wednesday.

Kelly & Lurie

Kelly's article, We are the Web, outlines how businesses weren't ready to accept the internet as the 'next big thing.' Also, though the idea of the hyperlink was intended to expand information access and knowledge, Kelly writes that it accomplished much more than this, "The revolution launched by Netscape's IPO was only marginally about hypertext and human knowledge. At its heart was a new kind of participation that has since developed into an emerging culture based on sharing. And the ways of participating unleashed by hyperlinks are creating a new type of thinking - part human and part machine - found nowhere else on the planet or in history." The explosion of the internet over the past 15 years has allowed the world to be viewed in ways previously impossible. Kelly attributes the growth to individual users, not by corporations, which is perhaps their lack of enthusiasm about the internet in its beginnings was not so very detrimental, "What we all failed to see was how much of this new world would be manufactured by users, not corporate interests." He goes on to further describe the benefits of hyperlinks, he says that it becomes powerful in sharing information across millions of people. In 2015, Kelly predicts that the web will continue to be controlled more and more by active participants. However, Kelly asks the question, "If everyone is busy making, altering, mixing, and mashing, who will have time to sit back and veg out? Who will be a consumer?" His other article, "The Web Runs on Love, Not Greed" gives a somewhat idealistic overview of the internet as a space where people go for entertainment and to share with others, and not as a money-making venue. He writes, "As the Internet continues to expand in volume and diversity without interruption, only a relatively small percent of its total mass will be money-making. The rest will be created and maintained out of passion, enthusiasm, a sense of civic obligation, or simply on the faith that it may later provide some economic use." I suppose that most people use the internet for their personal pleasure, but I also think that as the internet begins to dominate business groups, the economic portion will also increase exponentially. 


In Lurie's essay, he writes how the current government (from 2003) is ruled by conservatives, but how this ideology of fear and conservatism will change by how information can be found, "The architecture of the web, and the way users navigate it, closely resembles theories about the authority and coherence of texts that liberal deconstructionist critics have offered for thirty years" and then goes on to say that "surfing mimics a postmodern, deconstructionist perspective by undermining the authority of texts." The way that people use the internet is apparently the same way that deconstructionists look at different texts, in that they are more interested in the process of how information is received, than the actual text itself. Though this makes some sense with his argument, I'm not sure that surfers on the internet actually care about how the web is all linked together or if they are more interested in being entertained, or getting the information they want. Obviously, however, Lurie disagrees, "Its influence is structural rather than informational, and its structure is agnostic." 


I do agree with his argument that the internet invites the reader to switch back and forth between pages, finding a different set or source for information than that person might initially expect. He makes this point in his paragraph about the Constitution online, saying that links will lead the viewer to be skeptical and perhaps doubt the information they might have previously believed. He finally mentions a paradox that technology creates, writing that, "Technology undermines traditional belief systems even as it creates a belief in a kind of heavenly paradise, a kind of Technopia." I guess what he means is that the deconstructionist understanding of the internet, while undermining how much people can trust their information by linking them to other sources, also has such great access and worlwide prevalence that it can create this idealized world. 

Gilder, Negroponte, and Barlow

In responding to the question of whether or not new media can me an emancipatory tool, it seems clear that Gilder identifies the movement from television to the computer as one that will greatly expand individual freedom. He initially describes television as a monolithic force, one that quickly overtook the telephone and the radio; he also states that its effect on the population was one of mass influence, rather than an extension of freedom, "Television heavily determined which books and magazines we read, which cultural figures ascended to celebrity and wealth, and which politicians prospered or collapsed" (Gilder 8). Gilder goes on to articulate the technical limitations of television. He takes issue with the fact that television audiences are passive and without control, while those operating networks and stations decide what (and when) their viewers will see and feel. Indeed, the invention of the computer to replace the television seems inevitable as soon as its technology was developed, "No longer was there any justification for allowing television to hog the spectrum. No longer was there any reason for video to use a vulnerable, complex, inefficient, and unmanipulable signal. No longer was there any logic in leaving the brains of the system at the station" (17). Gilder expresses excitement about the change from the television, which dictates what people think, to the telecomputer, which he hopes will accomplish the opposite, "Rather than exalting mass culture, the telecomputer will enhance individualism. Rather than cultivating passivity, the telecomputer will promote creativity" (18). I agree that the computer does promote individualism, but in this way, it can also be a restriction on freedom. When people are isolated from one another, what changes can they bring? I suppose that freedom doesn't mean actually changing anything, but having the ability to do so...in this way, I definitely see the internet as emancipatory, although many people don't use it to achieve new levels of personal freedom.


I found Negroponte's book (or the chapters that I read) to be contradictory at times. In some chapters, he would suggest that personal computers and advancing technology will promote great individualism, that machines would be able to understand the individual greater even than other human beings, "True personalization is now upon us...The post-information age is about acquaintance over time: machines' understanding individuals with the same degree of subtlety (or more than) we can expect from other human beings, including idiosyncrasies...and totally random events, good and bad, in the unfolding narrative of our lives (13). Other times, he would write that the digital age promises a unification of people, "The harmonizing effect of being digital is already apparent has previously partitioned disciplines and enterprises find themselves collaborating, not competing. A previously missing common language emerges, allowing people to understand across boundaries." I suppose that it is not Negroponte being contradictory, but it is just the nature of new media itself that it both establishes strong individualism in addition to bringing people together. However, this 'harmonization' depends on the type of people it's able to bring together. Like Negroponte writes, perhaps a 50-year old steel mill worker cannot fully appreciate the effects of the digital age, and so "as we move more toward such a digital world, an entire sector of the population will be or feel disenfranchised." This, of course, begs the question of whether or not these people should even be taken into consideration? It seems callous to ignore them because they're 'too old' or just ignorante of new technology, but a certain amount of isolation between different social groups also shouldn't hinder technological advancement. After all, Negroponte writes that the access, the mobility, and the ability to effect change are what will make the future so different from the present." 

Barlow's first essay, "A Declaration of the Independence of Cybersspace" is certainly an idealized version of what the internet could be. Perhaps rightfully, he condemns the government for attempting to place restrictions on a medium that he states they should not control. In describing cyberspace, he writes, "We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity." I suppose in some ways this is true, though prejudices are certainly present online, as well as in the 'real' world. Also, it isn't true (at least today) that people are free to say or write or post whatever they like online, without repercussions... but I suppose this regulation isn't coming from the government itself. Probably, Barlow doesn't object to censorship of some kind on the internet, but the idea of the government regulating its contents really bothers him, but I wonder, if the result is the same, why it would matter? There is probably a reason for this, but I don't know enough about the politics and authority of government to actually answer my own question. Barlow goes into the economics of cyberspace in "Selling Wine without Bottles: The Economy of the Mind on the Internet" and writes of the complexities of responsibility and jurisdiction online, "The greatest constraint on your future liberties may come not from government but from corporate legal departments laboring to protect by force what can no longer be protected by practical efficiency or general social consent." Barlow certainly believes that the internet can promote great personal freedom, but the political and economic contemporary attitudes don't allow for it maximize this ability. 

Plant & Haraway

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?

Plant's essay uses Freud's thoughts on the contribution of women & weaving to society to reach her own conclusions on female import in technological advancement, "Freud pulls aside the veils, the webs of deception, the shrouds of mystery, and finds nothing there, only 'the horror of nothing to be seen.'" (Plant 256). Though I find diminishing a women's capability of changing the world into a simple contribution of weaving, Plant takes this argument in an interesting direction when she writes that the act of weaving, as well as the machine itself, initiated much technological change. Not only does weaving actually produce a useful and necessary product, she expounds on the social effects of this act, "Thus, a piece of cloth is saturated with the thoughts of the people who produced it, each of whom can see it and be transported to the state of mind in which they worked" (258). From Plant's work alone, I have difficulty answering the first prompt which asks how new media might have looked if women held a more prominent role in theorizing the future. She certainly suggests that women are capable of contributing to the technological world and that they have, in fact, led to many advances we have today. I'm not sure if Plant thinks the new media world would be different, her writing does suggest a social aspect of technological advancement absent in the male writers we've read thus far.

Haraway's work, "Simians, Cyborgs, and Women" begins with an introduction about cyborgs, "The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centres structuring any possibility of historical transformation" (150). I admit that I had difficulty understanding aspects of this piece, she seemed to focus quite a lot on boundaries and how new media might help to break or destroy these perhaps not inherent differences between machines, people, males, females, etc, "Late twentieth-century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed, and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines. Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert" (152). Though this statement sounds rather cryptic and frightening, her piece does not exactly condemn the breaking of these boundaries. In fact, she goes on a bit about how women and feminists are forced into categories based on value and contributions and certainly does not seem content to blindly accept the roles that women have inhabited, even if these roles are as radical feminists. She writes,
"to be feminized means to be made extremely vulnerable; able to be disassembled, reassembled, exploited as a reserve labour force; seen less as workers than as servers..." (166). However, Haraway also doesn't seem to think the direction of new media is that favorable, maybe because the media and technology we have today are not changing any of these preconceived roles of feminism and women?

Hayles & Turner

In the first chapter of How We Became Posthuman, Hayles focuses greatly on the idea that information can be separated from any physical entity where it might be housed. Since this book was written quite recently, I think that when she talks about contemporary ideas or beliefs, the ideas she refers to are probably not obsolete or unknown to us. She writes, "...a defining characteristic of the present cultural moment is the belief that information can circulate unchanged among different material substrates" (1). This, I believe, is an assertion that many would agree is accurate, especially when mediums like the internet and the television have gained such a prominent role in people's lives. Of course, our class has discussed at length whether information really can be introduced and shared through new media without undergoing some slight (or significant) change in meaning or impact. Hayles probably doesn't think that information gets passed along without any change, but sees information as something that doesn't rely on a specific material in order to have meaning.

Regardless, Hayles goes beyond this seemingly benign statement that information can pass through different mediums into something perhaps more complex and difficult to reconcile when she writes, "...a conception of information as a (disembodied) entity that can flow between carbon-baed organic components and silicon-based electronic components to make protein and silicon operate as a single system. When information loses its body, equating humans and computers is especially easy, for the materiality in which the thinking mind is instantiated appears incidental to its essential nature" (2). 
Perhaps on of Hayles' points is that technology is reaching a point where the human being (as a physical structure) is no longer essential for sharing information. Indeed, it seems that if there were a way to separate (as she writes at the start of this book) the mind from the body, the development of ideas and innovation might not suffer too great a loss, "...information is increasingly perceived as interpenetrating material forms...From here it is a small step to perceiving information as more mobile, more important, more essential than material forms. When this impression becomes part of your cultural mindset, you have entered the condition of virtuality" (19).


In response to the blogging prompt for this week, I would say that although Hayles does, of course, respond to social and technological changes, she also helps to create this new world. Hayles observed the treatment of information and technology and began to identify this idea of being 'posthuman' to the way that she (and others) were starting to think, "...an 'I' transformed into the 'we' of autonomous agents operating together to make a self" (6).

Turner writes in From Counterculture to Cyberculture, that Stewart Brand initially fears nuclear threats because"...an invasion might prevent his achieving personal independence and on how it would force him to become a member of a gray, uninspired, Orwellian mass" (42). Turner goes on to describe human culture and interaction as an information system, one that seems capable of being regulated and maintained. It seems difficult to understand the nature of culture, which Turner brings up, when it becomes something necessary in order to preserve society instead of a natural and, perhaps, organic process. He writes, "At a moment when humans threatened to destroy themselves with  nuclear weapons, concrete expressions of culture offered a way to help them move forward and escape annihilation" (44). If human interaction can be understood as an information system, then these 'concrete' demonstrations of culture appear to be something quite manufactured. However, unlike Hayles, Turner also seems to stress the importance of the individual and he summarizes the views of Ruesch and Bateson when he writes that they "...viewed social life as a system of communication and the individual as both a key element within that system and a system in his or her own right" (53). Whether or not the individual's capacity to share information is important and whether this ability is linked to a physical structure is not explored, but it is interesting to think about. If Turner takes Hayles' ideas that information can pass from one material to another without change and it can also be separated from human beings, then perhaps it is not the individual that is a key element of the system, but rather the information they can contribute.

Hayek

Much of Hayek's essay, The Use of Knowledge in Society, focuses on problems of power and authority. At the beginning of this piece, he identifies the first problem of making an effective economic order as the random and chaotic dispersion of knowledge and information in society, "...the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess" (H3). This complicates another important aspect of the economic order in establishing the leaders of such a society. Whether there should be one centralized plan or competition among many different planning groups is problematic, Hayek writes that the most effective plan will be the one "under which...we can expect that fuller use will made of the existing knowledge" (H7). I found his argument about the differing types of knowledge to be very observant, he differentiates scientific knowledge (which many think of as the only type of knowledge) from the knowledge of 'time and place' (H8). There is definitely some apprehension or lack of respect for knowledge that individuals might gain just from being very familiar with their circumstances or situation in life; instead there is definitely a focus on formal education and 'scientific' (and therefore, valid or legitimate) knowledge.

Hayek uses the distinction between different types of knowledge to address how specific economic problems might be addressed. First of all, he states that economic problems "arise always and only in consequence of change" (H12). As change is essentially inevitable, it seems safe to say that there will probably always be economic problems of some kind or another. What is not as easy to determine is who who will have the knowledge to correct or face the challenges of such problems - will it be a man of scientific knowledge or someone who has a great knowledge of 'time and place'? Hayek writes, "If we can agree that the economic problem of society is mainly one of rapid adaptation to changes in the particular circumstances of time and place, it would seem to follow that the ultimate decisions must be left to the people who are familiar with these circumstances, who know directly of the relevant changes and of the resources immediately available to meet them" (H17).

At last, I see some reference to the media, when Hayek highlights the problem of how an individual (or even a group) might communicate with others to get information they need in order to best deal with specific circumstances. I found it odd, but true, that a person doesn't actually need to know what happens in order for the information to reach him or why certain events are taking place - instead, "all that is significant for him is how much more or less difficult to procure they have become compared with other things with which he is also concerned..." (H19). A system of communication in the economic system is the price system, which conveys information to a large group without giving specific reasons for why prices might be high or low. Indeed, this information is basically irrelevant. I definitely appreciated Hayek's unique perspective on mass communication as an economist. I found it much easier to understand than some of our previous theorists and I also found it, perhaps incorrectly, to be more grounded in fact and more accessible to a contemporary economic system and audience.

Debord & Bauldrillard

Debord focuses quite a lot on the idea of the spectacle, which he defines as "a social relationship between people that is mediated by images" (12) and epitomizes the prevailing model of social life" (13). I found the idea of the spectacle a difficult one to understand as Debord suggests it is made up of a series of contradictions - for example, spectacle is subordinate to social practice, but also appears to be the goal of social practice. He writes that the spectacle says "'Everything that appears is good; whatever is good will appear'" (15). The prompt for this week asks why Debord finds the modern electronic media and perhaps Debord believes that the spectacle is a direct result of modern media, capable of distorting the human senses and controlling the way things are viewed. On page 17, he identifies a person's sense of sight as being the most easily deceived, therefore it is the job of the spectacle to "elevate" a person's sense of sight to the realm, which their sense of touch used to control.

The spectacle seems to encompass a variety of meanings and suggestions, in one paragraph on page 18 Debord states that "at the root of the spectacles lies...the specialization of power," and then later suggests that the spectacle is not inevitable, more of a result of a society that chooses its 'technical content' (19). The spectacle results also from a loss of unity, as he says, and thrives or exists most successfully in a society that is fragmented or separated. When the way people understand society and begin to perceive the world as one of commodity, then the spectacle again becomes apparent (29). Debord writes, "the spectacle is another facet of money, which is the abstract general equivalent of all commodities" (32); his discussion of the economy and spectacle indicate that the spectacle forces the world to be perceived in terms of economic value and can only exist as long as the economy survives as well. Though I'm still very confused about Debord's spectacle, what I understand is that Debord believes that actual human interaction in society has been replaced by images and duplications of this interaction, understood as the spectacle. The mass media facilitates this degradation, perhaps a reason Debord seems to condemn the mass media as it exists today.

Baudrillard disagrees with Enzenberger's claim that the mass media attempts to manipulate mass culture and cannot be understood by the Left "because the Left has failed to conceive of them as a new and gigantic potential of productive forces" (279). Like Debord, Baudrillard writes that the mass media 'fabricates non-communication,' perhaps it attempts to replicate ideas of communication, but it actually prevents reciprocal communication" (280). The very position that communication holds in society is potentially what disturbs Baudrillard because it is revered as something necessary that allows for free exchange of information, but in reality, it is the media that holds the power. He disagrees with Enzenberger's assertion that mass media allows for a great number of people to participate in a 'productive social process' because "there is no response to a functional object" (281). In response to the prompt, I would say that both Baudrillard and Debord find the modern mass media's attempts to replicate communication problematic in that it alters the way that people understand their relationship with the media and with other people. They begin to see their relationship with other people as a series of images and they believe an interaction with mass electronic media to be reciprocal, when in fact Baudrillard identifies it as a relationship between unequal power.

Barthes & Foucault

Barthes' discussion of mythology and semiotics seems to be timeless in that it applies to any point in history (that had a language) without difficulty. He mentions that any object is essentially fair-game for being made into a sign or symbol of mythology, which he explains when he writes, "Every object in the world can pass from a closed, silent existence to an oral state, open to appropriation by society, for there is no law...which forbids talking about things" (Barthes 94). I admit I found his arguments regarding the differences between the sign and the signifier and the signified (around page 98) to be quite confusing although perhaps what he intends to show his readers is that the way that the relationship between all of these different functions and roles create a mythology around the meaning of a specific sign or symbol. Barthes writes, "...myth hides nothing; its function is to distort, not to make disappear" (107). I guess this makes sense, but wouldn't giving some kind of seemingly false mythology about anything essentially erase it's 'actual' meaning, if there is one? If a mythology cannot make something disappear, what can?

Barthes goes on to say that "myth is a value, truth is no guarantee for it" (109). I thought his example about the newspaper heading on page 117 to be quite interesting. He states that the headline, in this case, "The Fall in Prices: First Indications. Vegetables: Price Drop Begins" will immediately lead consumers to the conclusion that these price drops are due to action by the government. However, this myth can immediately be destroyed if the consumer decides to read the sub-heading, which attributes price-drops to seasonal abundance of vegetables. Apparently, it doesn't matter that this myth can be so quickly seen through, what is important is that the message about the government was received at all. I would say that the message is definitely given and received, but I am less sure about the actual impact it has. Barthes writes, "...a myth is at the same time imperfectible and unquestionable; time or knowledge will not make it better or worse" (118).

I saw a similar argument appear in Foucault's essay "What is an Author?" For example, when he mentions how some names are endowed with meaning (he uses Aristotle, Shakespeare, etc), this is certainly a form of mythology.  Foucault writes, "...an author's name is not simply an element of speech....Its presence is functional in that it serves as a means of classification...finally, the author's name characterizes a particular manner of existence or discourse" (452). It is interesting to think about how actual role an author plays in their own writing and how a mythology about their abilities or writings, etc can affect how their work is received. Indeed, Foucault suggests that how literary discourse depended heavily on the author, date it was written, etc, "the meaning and value attributed to the text depended on this information" (454). Barthes' definitions of the sign, signifier, and signified could be applied in this scenario...is the name of the author the sign, the actual author the signified, and the text the signifier? I honestly don't know, since Barthes believes that these definitions change when language becomes myth, but I wonder if Barthes believes language can exist without myth?

McLuhan

I found McLuhan's idea that the medium is the message to be quite a challenging idea, depending on the media in question. For example, as McLuhan describes on page 9, the electric light is not often thought of as a communication medium because the content of the message is difficult to unveil and when the content is not obvious, how can there be any message? He writes, "..it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action" (9). He brings up this point again in chapter two "Media: Hot and Cold" when he explains the difference between hot and cold media. I understood hot media to be, as he states, a form that requires little participation, and one that "extends one sense in 'high definition'" (21). Conversely, the cold media is one that is high in participation and completion, which he seemed to relate with the types of people who are interested in increasing knowledge and education. I wonder if he explains in this chapter (and perhaps I missed it) why the two different types of media are identified in this way. Perhaps it can be understood in this quote "Intensity or high definition engenders specialism and fragmentation in living as in entertainment, which explains why any intense experience must be 'forgotten,' 'censored,' and reduced to a very cool state before it can be 'learned or assimilated" (23-24).McLuhan's point about how the print culture of a country or society homogenizes its people is still a very relevant concept, he writes, "...men in such a culture who have to be homogenized Dagwoods in order to belong at all" (17). The print culture gives the people a sense of individuality as well as bringing them all together in innovative "patterns of enterprise and monopoly" (23).

To address the prompt of why Marxists might have a problem with McLuhan's ideas about the "medium being the message," I have to admit that I had some difficulty in coming to any reasonable conclusion. Perhaps by ignoring (or devaluing) the content of the media and focusing instead on the media itself, people lend themselves more easily to manipulation or control. It seems that those who control the media (the bourgeoisie) simply use the power of their control of the medium itself to influence others. McLuhan seems to predict a future, if it is not here already, where people don't even understand the way they are receiving information or entertainment and blindly accept it as something they earned or deserve. Does this mean that Marxists value the message more than the medium, even if this message is directly given by the bourgeoisie? I suppose that as more people gain access to print (and other forms of media) the content and media begin to change in a way that reflects a greater scope of a social public.

Weiner & the Future of Communication

Weiner expresses both positive and negative views of the future  in regards to utilizing machinery as a means of communication. He begins his work by acknowledging that machines are progressing to the point that they are either simulating or, indeed replacing, human behavior. I found it somewhat complicating that, as machines begin to resemble humans more and more, then they must eventually fit the unique definition of humans that Weiner has assigned, in that they have an "impulse to communicate" (2). If human beings constantly build and upgrade machinery to use in place of humans for communication, I do not know that machines will achieve the 'desire' to communicate...but if they replace humans, will human beings have this desire as well? Weiner writes that animals are able to communicate, but describe humans as having a "desire for communication...is the guiding motive of their whole life" (3).

I'm afraid I had some difficulty understanding Weiner's remarks on how the world is made up of patterns. What I eventually gleaned from this argument was that he was making a point about the difficulty of translation and how, perhaps, patterns are not quite able to match up. However, the complexities in translation do not affect ideas of control, as long as messages are still able to influence the person who receives it. In respect to this idea, Weiner writes, "Control, in other words, is nothing but the sending of messages which effectively change the behavior of the recipient" (8). Using this idea, machines are capable of controlling people, other machines, and vice-versa. I think that Weiner encourages the use of machines in place of people for some tasks and he doesn't seem to express any fear about the replacement of humanity by machines, etc. His ideas are quite practical in that if a machine can accomplish the same job as a human being (and probably more efficiently), then this avenue should certainly be done. Indeed, he seems to perceive it as a matter of human dignity and respect, "...any use of a human being in which less is demanded of him and less is attributed to him than his full status is a degradation and a waste" (16).

Later on, in chapter 11, Weiner discussed the future of communication machines. He uses the example of the chess-playing machines to exhibit the limitations and also the potentials of machinery in adapting to various circumstances (whether through experience or rigidly defined rules depends on the machine). Weiner states that the invention of such machines is not merely for "ostentatious narcissism," but could also be useful in the military realm. However, machines do not appear to be at this level yet because they have not mastered probabilistic thinking. Weiner, writes, "He will not leap in where angels fear to tread, unless he is prepared to accept the punishment of fallen angels" (211). Weiner concludes this chapter by saying that machines will never be able to answer our questions, unless we ask the right ones? But I wonder, what are the right questions? Must they account for the limitations of machinery or of human kind or of both? Perhaps we will address these questions in class this week.

Enzenberger & Habermas

Enzenberger seems optimistic about the emancipatory potential of modern culture because he recognizes the limitations of modern communication devices (such as the tv or the radio), but also identifies the necessary changes that would allow these devices to be more reciprocal. Although technology had not advanced to the point where the masses could participate in the production and proliferation of modern communication, he identifies potential in current technology. For example, although he writes that "...in its present form, equipment like television or film does not serve communication but prevents it" he later states that this is not technically a problem (97). The transistor radio can be used for reciprocal purposes, but is currently prevented for political reasons.  He does have some more pessimistic views of communication, notably when he explains the role of manipulation in communication.

Enzenberger suggests that in order to perhaps equailize the amount of manipulation in the media, "a revolutionary plan should not require the manipulators to disappear; on the contrary, it must make everyone a manipulator" (104). Social control, as Enzenberger writes, will pacify these ubiquitous manipulations...his ideas are optimistic, especially in the modern day, because communication through technology has now become available to almost anyone with access to a computer. Enzenberger also writes that the 'class character' of the modes of production have been removed, since microphones and cameras have replaced printed text (124). As a Marxist, this idea might appeal to Enzenberger because the education that might have only been available to the upper class would allow these social elites to produce writing, also understandable to other educated members of society. By allowing people to speak their thoughts and not write them, a greater number of people can become 'manipulators' of media.

I found Habermas to be more optimistic than our previous readings in that he could foresee a time when the public and private spheres would come together as the culture of one became integrated into the society of the other. He writes, "however exclusive the public might be in any given instance, it could never close itself off entirely..." (37). He later identifies the newspaper as a communication device that becomes a method of the public 'transmitting and amplifying' their culture and ideas (183). Although at this time the newspaper does not allow the cultures to be consumed by those outside a particular sphere or class, he does seem to recognize the potential for it to be more of a tool of both the private and public sectors, as their cultures become more closely linked. In this way, Habermas echoes Enzenberger as he seems to support and predict a time when a majority of a population is able to become contributors to a society's modern culture.

Arendt & Benjamin

According to Hannah Arendt, an intellectual can fulfill a damaging role in the maintenance of mass culture. Mass culture has a somewhat complex definition, as it comes with negative connotations because it is the product of the masses, rather than the wealthy and educated stratus of society. There is more than one kind of intellectual, and it is the intellectual responsible for manufacturing mass culture, who can also be blamed for its gradual decay. The entertainment industry is perhaps a necessary component of society as it fills the ever-growing spaces between work and labor, Arendt writes, "The products needed for entertainment serve the life processes of society...they serve...to while away time...Vacant time which entertainment is supposed to fill is a hiatus in the biologically conditioned cycle of labour..." (Arendt 281-282). She believes that entertainment is not dangerous to culture until it starts to modify cultural objects or works in a way that degrades, or even changes them from their original intent (that is, to last through interminable changes in mass culture).

I must say that I felt that some of Arendt's thoughts were quite pretentious; she seemed to be appalled at the idea of others lifting themselves into higher social circles of society through "cheap" learning. Though I agree that learning about culturally significant works of literature or art merely for the sake of gaining social prestige is not admirable, I also do not find it to be a particularly heinous crime. In fact, it seems that learning about these items (no matter the motivation) is better than not learning it at all.

I am also unsure whether or not Arendt believes intellectuals are capable of reestablishing a form of mass culture that do not corrupt past works. She does state that intellectuals now are either 1) responsible for the gradual decay through the manufacturing of mass culture or 2) suffering from a 'malaise in mass culture' because he is surrounded by these manufacturers and has since become indistinguishable from them (283-284). Maybe the intellectual is the one who can understand that changing or abridging works for their popular consumption is harmful, but how is that an important role in society if they still do nothing?

Benjamin identifies intellectuals as a social group, not a particular branch of individuals who may be superior in education or ability, etc. He believes their import is based on their position in production, not particularly how they contribute to contemporary cultural values (88). While Arendt mentioned class in order to separate past contributors to culture to today's much larger population that influences 'mass culture,' Benjamin focused much more on the proletariat versus the bourgeois. While the bourgeois can provide education and means of production to intellectuals and writers, "important writers provide the most factual foundation for solidarity with the proletariat (91). Arendt seems to believe strongly in the preservation of original cultural works, while Benjamin states that those that matter in a society are able to adapt and produce with improved mechanisms, more capable of meeting their contemporary society's demands.

Generally, I interpret Arendt's views on the intellectual in society and mass culture as  idealistic. Entertainment is not harmful as long as it does not encroach on past cultural events, which I think is quite difficult. Of course, 'dumbing down' culturally historic works of literature or music or art is not preferable, but it is a realistic means of spreading it to a much wider audience. Benjamin's views were harder for me to understand, though I believe he found value in the intellectual aligning themselves with the proletariat. Arendt does not argue against this, but her ideas seem to support the values of the bourgeois and the higher education necessary to understand beauty and culture.