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.