Wk 8 | 19th and 20th C. Technologies
"Look what God hath wrought." -- Samuel Morse, May 1844, in the first telegraph ever sent.
Briggs and Burke's (2002) discussion of the soaring hype that surrounded the development of the rail system in the U.S. (pp. 122-123) reminds me that technological progress is dependent as much on rhetoric as it is on innovation and hard science. Americans had to be persuaded that these new "iron roads" were a promising invention for the future of the country in a century that saw an unprecedented number of new inventions and new persuasions, following the Industrial Revolution. While it was easy to get consumed in the adrenaline rush of the steam engine and railway, the authors' inclusion of dissenters "who refused to treat total railway mileage as an index of civilization" reminds us that the rhetoric surrounding new technologies is often perceived as a billowing puff of hot air (p. 126). This is one area in which the rhetoric of technology provides ample insight, as we can study not only the observable impact of new communication/transportation technologies but also the rhetorical exigence that had to be created for each technology to take root. I similarly found it interesting that Briggs and Burke noted that any attempt to separate the history of transportation technologies from the history of media technologies would be an "artificial" (p. 134). <discussion question> What other examples of transportation (or more simply, "mobility,") and media communications could we draw from perhaps the last 50-60 years that make the division seem equally artificial? Do any of these have the same revolutionary impact as the confluences of late 19th century telephony and transit? </discussion question> If you're going to say "the Internet," as I was at first tempted to do, I'd ask you (me?) to be more specific as you (I?) tie it to transportation technologies or accompanying shifts in transportation culture.
In Marvin's (1988) argument, I was struck by the simple profoundness of one statement in particular about the dramatic dimension of any given communicative message: "its dramatic appeal and excitement depend partly on the knowledge that others are also watching with interest" (p. 152). To pop culturalize this for a minute, <dq> if an episode of "Lost" upends everything you knew about reality, but no one else was watching it, would it still matter? </dq> Though Marvin's main focus is on the "democratic medium" of the 19th century spectacle, I think it's a rather short leap to apply that discussion to the shared emotional impact and "yearning for shared intimate contact" (pp. 153-4) among loyal viewer communities of TV shows today. Marvin's accounts of worshipful descriptions of the electric light lead me to another question, slightly unrelated, but only because I don't want to dwell on Marvin, <dq> Is there a modern equivalent of the electric light spectacle, one that similarly "expresses the unlimited potential that was a staple of 19th-century discourse about the future of electricity"? In other words, what is the 21st century equivalent of electricity, in terms of the surrounding rhetoric of excitement? Can we even have a similar phenomenon without the corresponding need for a very public display of it? </dq>
From Marvin's spectacle, then, I move to Schivelbush's (1986a) bluntness that "the railway put an end to [the perceptive] intensity of travel" (p. 53). I see a corollary between our cultural losses in the two articles, one a loss of emotional investment in the publectricacle grandeur of the 19th century and the other, a loss of introspective appreciation for the act of witnessing the world you pass through in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Bringing the light bulb into the home made it quotidian and robbed it of its mystery, and propelling the train through geographical space as a projectile robbed travelers of the "balanced relationship between landscape and geography" (p. 53). And the lighted carriage car? Sin against nature. Thanks a lot, devil trains. It's because of you that I put on my sunglasses and earbuds as I read my textbooks on the bus every morning to shut out the other passengers around me who similarly can't appreciate the pastoral landscape of Western Blvd as it whizzes past at 45 mph and who don't want to have a "coach conversation" with their riding companions on the 11C (1986b, p. 74). As Marvin (1986b) writes of the railroad compartment, so it strikes true of us that depend on public transportation: "The face-to-face arrangement that had once institutionalized an existing need for communication now became unbearable because there no longer was a reason for such communication" (p. 74). <rhetorical question> What reason compels me to communicate with the people I sit directly across from for only 12 minutes? </rhetorical question> <dq> What can we possibly explore through discourse that will do more than scratch the surface of shallow small-talk? How do any of you broach these conversations? </dq>
And finally, I move from the swelling seas of anonymous faces in the compartment to the distant yet connected network of anonymous tappers on the telegraph. I was amazed by Stubbs' (2003) depiction of the telegraph operator as all-powerful and all-mischievous, and how the operator served to solidify gender oppression. "This desire to control more closely the unpredictable human operator helps explain how the telegraph industry came to prefer women as operators" (p. 95). Stubbs' further discussion of the telegraph literature emphasizes this point, as these stories focused on the perceived weakness and vulnerability of female operators. Who knew this could be such an issue for something as "quaint" as the telegraph?
So, in closing, I'd like to leave my discussion of the readings with this: Though on the Internet, nobody knows
you're a dog, on the telegraph, nobody knows your dog is transgendered.
Finally, If I am to weigh in at all on the Jordan-David-Jason conversation, mine will be a light contribution -- about 145 lbs. (ha cha!). But to clarify: blaming the waning impact of the U.S.'s technological developments on the rise of other countries' mobile technologies gives far too much weight to mobility as the "it" technology, in my opinion. And I think Jason is right to attribute some of our diminished status as cutting-edge to industrial outsourcing, but I think we'd be remiss not to bring up the impact of 9/11 on immigration that partially plugged the so-called "brain drain" effect: top minds from countries around the world used to flock to the U.S. to conduct pioneering research, thus increasing American brain power at the expense of other countries, but Homeland Security policies made it more difficult than ever just to get here. And, with developing cultures of innovation springing up in East Asia and the sub-continent (and yes, maybe Scandinavia), the temptation/incentive to stay at home and innovate is becoming easier to succumb to. <discussion prompt> Our loss is felt beyond the obvious financial benefits (as David mentions), for the inventors and distributors of a new technology also get to own and shape the rhetoric surrounding its perceived exigency; they assume the powerful discourse of control that can accompany its development, if handled correctly (as Edison did with the electric light--see my wiki entry this week for more). And while one could make the argument that the discourse of control/distribution is inconsequential in a user-driven or ground-up market of decisions about demand, I think we'd still need to consider the rather influential role that major corporations can play in limiting the release of new technologies. Additionally, although I might be willing to concede that the world is becoming flatter in regards to the use of similar technologies, I think we need to remember that all technologies will fail without an adequately developed culture of support for them, which in turn must be developed like rhetorical infrastructure by those who debut the innovation. In this regard, the world is not technologicall unified or technologically equal. </discussion prompt> Any concrete example I provide here (iPhone and AT&T, maybe?) will, I fear, tee up a straw man argument, so I will leave it to class to sort out the rest of the conversation.
Alternative titles for this blog post:
- ATTN: Briggs and Burke STOP Please cease elaborating history of broadcasting STOP Attention spans waning STOP Fear discussion stifled by details STOP
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