CRDM 701

Week 11 - Karla

Hi all.  I will try to keep this entry from becoming too lengthy and unwieldy, focusing on just a few of the points/quotes that were particularly significant to me.

In "The Bias of Communication" Innis traces development of communication technology across geography and time.  As he states, "The relative emphasis on time or space will imply a bias of significance to the culture in which it is imbedded? (33).  Innis demonstrates through his research how various cultures throughout history used means of communication to confront issues of either space or time, depending upon factors such as politics or economics to determine which necessitated greater attention.  Are the current methods of communication in the U.S. more focused on space or time?  Obviously, the country is part of a global network community that exchanges information and ideas on a regular basis, and, therefore, bridges the spatial gap (at least to an extent).  However, the quick pace at which everyday life moves requires communication that can link people together despite temporal distances.  Is there a greater balance on the emphasis of time and space now, or can we still see a leaning toward one more so than the other?

Innis later writes, ?We can perhaps assume that the use of a medium of communication over a long period will to some extent determine the character of knowledge to be communicated and suggest that its pervasive influence will eventually create a civilization in which life and flexibility will become exceedingly difficult to maintain and that the advantages of a new medium will become such as to lead to the emergence of a new civilization? (34).  The amount of time required to be considered "a long period" presumably extends beyond a couple/few decades, but assuming that online communication continues/increases far into the future, how may we expect it to affect "the character of knowledge to be communicated"?  What signs do we see now (if we see any) of how online communication is shaping information and what such changes may indicate for the information we later value and the ways in which we value it?

Carey asserts in "Space, Time, and Communications:  A Tribute to Harold Innis," ?Even if society were like an organism, there would be some controlling element, some centralized brain in the body, some region and group that would collect the power necessary to direct the nerves of communication and the arteries of transportation.  There would be no transformation of the great society into the great community by way of disinterested technology but only in terms of the ways in which knowledge and culture were monopolized by particular groups? (152).  We have discussed power dynamics a lot throughout the semester, and I like that Carey inserts "[e]ven if" in his reference to society as an "organism" because the interest in conceiving of society in such a way seems, at least in part, driven by a desire to emphasize the interconnectedness of different groups and how individuals work together.  Nevertheless, as Carey suggests, despite cooperation, there is still some "centralized brain" that directs the other constitutive parts and that, in this way, exerts control over the others, as it may determine the means and access to the means available.

Building on the power implications, Carey later writes, "In granting freedom of the press, the Constitution sacrificed, despite the qualifying clause, the right of people to speak to one another and to inform themselves.  For such rights the Constitution substituted the more abstract right to be spoken to and to be informed by others, especially specialist, professional classes" (163).  Further, "even though literacy can give rise to a form of democracy, it also makes impossible demands.  Literacy produces instability and inconsistency because the written tradition is participated in so unevenly" (164).  Innis believed in an oral culture that enabled a greater sense of democracy, as the oral tradition "could not be easily monopolized" (166).  An oral culture may perhaps be better able to ward off the compulsion of people to "become 'consumers' of communication as they become consumers of everything else" (169).  There would still be the problem of some being better speakers than others, however, whether due to having more knowledge of a specific subject or more eloquence when speaking, and, as a result, perhaps having greater value as communicators than others. 

In their introduction, Packer and Robertson state, "Carey, a Deweyan, writing against the dominance of a transmission model, refuses to detach community from face-to-face interaction; whatever the scale, democracy depends on the foundations of group life" (7-8).  Because so much interaction/communication has shifted to forms other than face-to-face, and the groups of people who interact through those means (such as by online chat or audio) are arguably communities, do we modify our understanding of community as a result of the changes in communication or do we do so to open up the way for those advancements in communication?  Basically, do we grant "community" an elasticity because of a felt need to do so given that much communication occurs through means other than f2f, allowing us to avoid seriously restricting how we conceive of community in a time when some people are only connected by the digital?  Or, do we privilege other reasons for modifying the way we perceive of community?

Referring to Packer's work, the introduction notes, "First, transportation has become increasingly dependent upon communications at the behest of safety and security.  Second, this linkage depends upon a conceptualization of how to use transportation and communications technologies to 'govern at a distance' - that is to ensure the smooth flow of power relations across increasingly vast distances through the exertion of as little direct action as possible" (6).  Packer's "Becoming Bombs:  Mobilizing Mobility in the War on Terror" of course speaks to this subject of "govern[ing] at a distance," as he writes, "Safety as a set of practices and a legitimizing discourse has been both a goal of biopolitics and a means for ensuring discipline and implementing a control society" (379). 

Packer later argues, "When life is not equally invested as a desired ends by state and citizen alike, life is no longer only that which must be groomed and cared for, but rather it becomes a constant and immanent threat which needs diffusing or extinguishing" (381).  The ability of individuals to become bombs and to use their means of mobility to threaten the lives of others contributes to the fear of movement and the effort to use transportation as a method of governance.  As Packer states, "It is not who is a threat, but what vehicular movement can be used to predict a threat" (392).  I think the issue of mobility is particularly interesting in terms of identifying the "other" and establishing an agenda of "us" against "them" in relation to international warfare.  If we look toward the "movement" rather than the "who" to anticipate future threats, how may this impact our creation of the "enemy"?  Packer comments, "The identity of the driver is of no consequence; traditional identity categories come not to matter, only movement" (392).  I am reminded here of comments I hear people sometimes make about suicide bombers and how those statements pertain more so to the use of mobility to harm others than necessarily to the perpetrators of the violence themselves (For example, claims a suicide bomber is cowardly for using a car to blow up others as opposed to walking up to someone and killing him/her with a gun).  There is still a judgment about the person who enacted the violence, but it becomes directly linked to the method used to kill, rather than purely a reflection on how that person is perceived for wanting to destroy another. 

On a not especially connected note to what I have been saying, the reference to the "driverless automobile" (385) is really striking given that there are now vehicles that park themselves, or at least that is how they are marketed.  However, the driver still assumes responsibility to an extent, such as by being responsible for mashing the accelerator or brake.  The push to remove the driver from the vehicle seems particularly interesting in light of discussion about VR attempting to remove the creator from the program, or even negating the necessity of physical embodiment in a virtual world.  The move to extract the physical/human body from the technology opens up much room for research, and with my own paper topic about online therapy I see this to be the case.  Material I have come across argues for or against disembodiment as helpful for therapeutic communication, and, of course, there were past computer programs that users became so attached to (even though the users realized they were speaking to computers) that they continued to communicate with them as though they were "real."  How necessary is physical presence to the technology and/or to communication? 

So, I did not manage to limit the length of this post too effectively . . .

Posted at 12:41PM Nov 07, 2007 by kmlyles in General  |  Comments[0]