CRDM 701
Week 7 - Nick
A prevailing tension in readings about technology seems to be between technological determinism and a more symptomatic way of looking at technology. And yet invariably, in the readings we have read at least, the authors argue that this isn't the way to look at it at all. It's a false dichotomy, and we need to transcend it to look at, for lack of a better word that encompasses all the views, the larger picture. Such is the case with Williams who argues that technologies like Television aren't accidental and don't occur in a vacuum, but rather are shaped by what people want. He presents the historical case of television as his case in point, but I do think he is right. We want things before we have them. I've heard it said that science fiction gives us many of our great ideas for how the future should look and we sort of craft it in that way. Case in point, cell phones and the communicators on Star Trek. Do cell phones have to look the way they do? Is this really the most pragmatic look? Or do we have certain expectations based on desires that are based on fiction which is in turn based on what we know of reality? (Communicators worked very much like phones work. They were cordless phones, but they just looked different. Our modern cell phones actually do more than Captain Kirk's communicator did.)
Okay, so that got slightly convoluted. Moving on.
Douglas sort of feeds into McChesney chronologically by taking us from the early 1900s and the amateurs to the struggle for broadcast democracy and/or supremacy in the 1920s across the course of these readings. Douglas pointed out something that I found interesting, though. In his discussion of amateurs, he naturally discussed how the government tried to regulate the amateurs to some extent. They were annoying. BUT! By producing things like a call book of those who had passed the test to get a broadcasting licence, they actually, "...inadvertantly encouraged amateurs to try to achieve greater distances so they could communicate with their compatriots across the country." (Douglas, 293) What does this say? Well, to me this says that the negotiation between the government and the public (and, as we see with McChesney, the coorporate interests...they don't count as the public. They count as evil.) is ongoing and sometimes advances new mediums in unexpected ways.
And then, in the 20s, it advanced in all too predictable ways. Or, as McChesney would say, not predictable as it didn't have to happen that way. Actually, it's probably fairly sad that I consider it predictable as it shows how mired I am in the current times where such behavior on the part of corporate interests IS predictable. Was this takeover of the airwaves technologically determined? No. Was it symptomatic? No. It was coorporately determined, which plays back to what Douglas was saying all along, but in a sinister way. As McChesney pointed out, the public didn't want the radio to go the way it did. It was not a 'natural' progression of capitalism. It was the path desired by the commercial interests, and they had the power and the money to make it happen. They wanted the 50,000 watt transmitters and they got them, even if they had to steal the proverbial candy from the proverbial nonprofit baby's mouth. Which they did. A lot.
Returning to a less cynical topic, the negotiation I mentioned above is in full force today over the internet. Google is a company in the center of this maelstrom, and the public and governmental eye is ever upon them. Do they violate privacy by scanning your email for key words for advertisers? Are they too big? Do they sample AP news for free (the AP is a project for another class that I'm working on)? Or are they fighting for our rights as they claim they are doing when they refuse to allow the government access to their data on searches? How should this technology, this doorway to the internet, be used? How do we WANT it to be used? And so the negotiation goes on...
Posted at 12:33AM Oct 03, 2007 by nmtemple in Week 7 | Comments[0]
Week 7 - Kathy
Douglas? discussion of amateur radio use in the early 1900s in many ways seems to parallel the early use of the internet by hackers and tinkerers ? let me summarize a few points briefly and then make a few comparisons.
Early radio pioneer Lee De Forrest negotiated with AT&T, agreeing that he would stay out of the point-to-point transmission in favor of using it for broadcasting news and music, which the company saw as ?frivolous, a hobby, and certainly not a pastime that related in any way to its corporate goals? (Douglas, 1987, p. 293). The American Radio Relay League?s successful cross-country radio relays and the government recruitment of enthusiasts as ready-trained radio operators for WWI resulted in radio operators returning from the war eager to get hold of more advanced equipment. After Frank Conrad incorporated speech and music that could further the reach of radio beyond the level of enthusiast, broadcasting was seen as a way to extend radio use to that of the entire family and sell receivers. Next came commercial broadcasting, a push from the government for enthusiasts to ?back off? (more or less), and the depiction of radio as some unwieldy force best handled by corporations.
I say that this is analogous to the Internet since like radio, the Internet was originally a military technology. Hobbyists and tinkerers then took it up to see what it could do ? and after demonstrating the capabilities of the system, it was wrestled back to be used for corporate and capitalist ends. With the radio and Internet, no one minded people exploring the possibilities until it was realized that there was something interesting (profitable) there. Concerning radio, Douglass says that: ?Technological progress and systems building came at a cost? Control over radio technology put these corporations in an extremely powerful position, not just economically, but culturally as well?? (p. 319-320).
In discussing the beginnings of broadcasting, Williams (1974) points out that though it seems that though broadcasting as a social institution seems predestined by technology, it is ?no more than a set of particular social decisions, in particular circumstances, which were then so widely if imperfectly ratified that it is now difficult to see them as decisions rather than as (retrospectively) inevitable results? (p. 23). Likewise, McChesney (1993) points to the formation of commercial broadcasting as a set of decisions in his chapter on early radio regulation (General Order 40), pointing out that though many scholars gloss over the resistance to the current corporate structure of radio broadcasting, there was, indeed, resistance. The defeat of the reform movement was both a victory for commercial broadcasting and ?a defeat for the very notion that the public had the right to determine how best to structure broadcasting services? (p. 255?). He later warns that ?If no other lesson emerges from the early 1930s, then let it be that any viable campaign to reconstruct the media system must be part of a broad-based mass movement that is attempting to reform the basic institutions of U.S. society. (p. ?)
Applying this forward, I want to think about his warning seriously in relation to the pending re-structuring of the Internet (this time, on the part of corporations we know we can trust with the unwieldy series of tubes!). In order to ensure that the Internet remains open and democratic, people need to be educated and involved in policy. Net Neutrality campaigns are doing this, one of which McChesney is involved in. This goes back to his closing quote that borrows from Marx, talking about the responsibility of intellectuals to make a ?ruthless criticism of everything existing? and change things for the better, even in ?the darkest moment? (p. 270?). I like that he ?practices what he preaches? so to speak, and has made a career out of being a ruthless critic as well as by engaging non-academic communities toward social action (see http://www.savetheinternet.com/). I?m looking forward to more conversation about this idea of the intellectual being responsible for change in class on Thursday!
Posted at 11:28PM Oct 02, 2007 by kfoswald in Week 7 | Comments[0]
Week 7 - Jon
The Douglas, Williams, and McChesney articles helped me to consider some ideas for my revised research topic. Rather than focusing on Google Earth (GE) as a new type of simulation, I plan to analyze the historically changing nature of the map. Drawing on evidence from the 15th through 17th centuries when maps represented, literally, the discovery of the world as we know it, I hope to analyze how the shift away from maps for the purpose of exploration to direction / transportation is returning to a sense of exploration brought on by digital, interactive maps. GIS applications such as GE are central to this shift (or at least I hope to indicate them as such).
This sense of exploration is present in other communication technologies. For example, Douglas describes radio as a communication technology that allowed users to "skip across the country, to go to never seen and exotic places, all by turning a dial" (p. 307). The radio makes traveling vast spaces sound (pun intended) easy. With the "turn of a dial,"? one can experience something new, even "exotic." I would argue that GE accomplishes a similar task. Spinning the globe is "simple." Like turning the dial, one must only left-click and drag. The digitally represented map of the world moves. One has the power to explore places near (such as one's house) and far. Douglas also discusses the importance of "control" held by radio users, the ease by which one can turn the dial or turn the radio off. A similar sense of control rests in the hands of the GE user, who manipulates the interface to show what he/she does and does not want to see (by limiting viewed layers, map information, etc.). How important is outright control to a technology's popularity?
Raymond Williams's discussion of the privatized home reveals a similarly outward focus: "[The relationship between privatization and external sources] created both the need and the form of a new kind of communication: news from outside, from otherwise inaccessible sources" (p. 27). This "news from the outside" becomes accessible through the outreach aspects of GE, which are, ultimately, "windows" into the outside world, such as the United Nations Environmental Program and the Crisis in Darfur.
While critiquing the deregulationist argument, McChesney suggests how telecommunications technologies are often available to only the few: "the ability of consumers to benefit by the new communications marketplace is strictly determined by how much money they have. Hence, the market will be skewed toward providing numerous choices to those with larger incomes and tend to neglect those who are poor." The history of mapping, in general, and GE are no different. During the Age of Exploration, maps were created, owned, and used by and for the upper and, sometimes, middle class. Moreover, Google Earth is only available to those who have a computer with a fast Internet connection. The speed of one's connection is important because GE is a sizeable application that is, at best, a choppy experience on a slow connection. Those who are privileged with the best technology experience the highest quality GE. Also, some areas in GE are privileged over others. Instead of being represented by grainy, low quality images, they are depicted in photo quality realism.
Posted at 10:21PM Oct 02, 2007 by jtburr in Week 7 | Comments[1]