On Technology, Society and Change

Technological Visions and the Rhetoric of the New
The Hopes and Fears That Shape New Technologies

I'm still waiting for this. . .

This was an excellent reading. Many of the issues brought up in this chapter are ones that I've struggled with about technology for quite some time. In Technological Visions, the authors, Marita Sturken and Douglas Thomas first discuss the concept of binary thinking, a concept of polarization that implies (I think correctly) that we basically choose one of two ways of looking at technology: it's either going to save the world for future generations or ultimately destroy the world as we know it. There doesn't seem to be much grey area in between and certainly no consensus about it. My struggle is that as I witness tech advances, my longing for the past with less of it increases. Why is that?

Related to this, what seems to be funny about technology is that its benefits are never as good as prognosticators predict and never as bad as doomsday prophets would have us believe. I think technology will always fall somewhere in between, but we just can't seem to accept this. I think the authors are spot on stating, "Technological change continues at a rapid pace but the visions that define it remain caught in a repeating cycle of overly simplistic binary frameworks" (p. 2). I don't think we have a choice in this or by now, we would've changed our way of thinking. It's just how we're wired and besides, anything more complicated is too hard to comprehend.

Just like electricity was embraced as a transformative force that promised freedom, democracy, and enlightenment, I think it's just human nature that we seem to be stuck in this endless cycle of hope and disappointment with technology since it cannot possibly fulfill such expectations. Do you think this kitchen of the future is coming to us anytime soon? I love the authors remark (p. 3) that society's capacity to project concerns and desires on technology operates as a primary form of social denial; the belief that a new technology can solve existing social problems reveals a refusal to fully confront the deeper causes of those problems and the complexity of human interaction. What a gem.

We humans continue to hope that the "next big thing" will save us from ourselves, only to be disappointed again and again. But we seem to need this. We need these visions and the metaphors because they give us hope. I think this is where the concept of an afterlife comes in. Somewhere, someday, we'll be transcended to a place where we won't be constantly let down, our expectations crushed.

But, darn it, utopia always seems to be just out of reach. It's no wonder that technology is so closely tied with metaphors of transportation and mobility. They imply this transcendence, that we can be somehow lifted out of our worlds and be taken to a new spiritual height, to get to where we need to be - wherever that is - and get whatever it is that we think we need. In my favorite dreams (yep, even better than those kinds of dreams) I can fly like a bird. Oh, what a feeling. If technology could help me have those more often, it'd be all I need with tech.

I was unfamiliar with the concept of ahistorical visions until this reading. Ahistoric visions (those that transcend actual history) of technologies are directly related to the fact that in popular imagination, technology is often synonymous with the future (p. 6). This creates serious problems in predicting the future - and why we seem to get it wrong so often. An example that comes to mind was the paperless office, the office of the future, its first prediction made in Business Week in 1975. In the future, we wouldn't need a single sheet of paper, not even a Post-it. All handled electronically. Let me jot a note to look into that.

Walt Disney became a very wealthy man feeding us a future where everything was going to be perfect. 

A perfect tomorrow coming

I remember as a kid just loving Disneyland's Tomorrowland. Its theme: A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow, Just a Dream Away. Particularly enchanting was General Electric's Carousel of Progress with the family being transported in four sequences through time (even the dog!) It was such a buzz I could rotate around that theater all day long, imagination ablaze in anticipation of a world surely to come, and soon. What happened to that future? The Carousel has since been moved to Yesterland.

I love John Perry Barlow's remark (p. 12) on The Future of Prediction. He says, "It is the rhetoric of predicting the future that brings it into being, that we create the future we believe we deserve." Barlow seems to imply that the future can be invented by setting into motion a vision of what it should and will be. What an optimist. If we just embrace this certain rhetoric of new technology, we can use it to to shape the future. I hope he's right, or wait, do I?

Convergence Culture:

Worshiping at the "Altar of Convergence"

Here might be that technological afterlife notion from above put into practice.

The New Orleans Media Experience in 2003 (p. 6) was a festival showcasing game releases, and a venue for commercial and music video concerts, theater performances, and panel discussions. As author Henry Jenkins wonders in Convergence Culture, was "worshiping at the altar of convergence" to a New Testament God threatening destruction unless attendees followed His rules? Here's that dystopian concept again. He, like the attendees had come to New Orleans hoping to glimpse tomorrow before it was too late. Stuck between the 1990's dot.com bust of moving too quickly and the dangers of moving too slowly (the recording industry's file-sharing dilemma, for example) all were there to get it just right this time with investments, predictions, and business models. Although the show pressed everyone into the future, roadblocks to convergence were apparent - it's harder than it sounds and people have to work together. Has it happened since the author's remarks of 2006?

On the hardware side, the iPhone and iPad seem to be getting it closer. While the old vision of convergence was that one central device does everything, I think the downside to this it that the device's original functional intention seems to get lost. As Jenkins states, it's impossible to find a phone for just phone calls anymore while saleskids smirk like my daughter does when I tell her I'm considering a Jitterbug phone because I can't see the keys on today's cell phones without my reading glasses. Try as we might to have a fully integrated system, if and when one part breaks down and needs repair, we're left with nothing, like an HP All-in-One printer on the fritz.

Hello. . . again.

I think the author gets it right when he remarks (p. 24), "Don't expect the uncertainties surrounding convergence to be resolved anytime soon." With our converged TV, internet, cell phone, and land line, a power outage from a storm this past summer put us out of commission - brought on by and now at the mercy of Mother Nature. I dropped my Uverse remote last week. A few buttons were pushed while it bounced off the corner of the coffee table. TV gone and wouldn't come back. Call AT&T. Perfect convergence ultimately is reserved for the afterlife, where all media is compatible and in the unlikely event of a problem, a technician picks up the line without going through a cumbersome phone tree to get him.

On the content side, true to Jenkin's word, media producers will need to renegotiate their relationships with their consumers. In the meantime, knowledge about important social issues still gets delivered to us in convergent ways. Time magazine's cover story last week was on Alzheimer's disease. This special report is a collaboration with Maria Shriver, whose study, The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Takes on Alzheimer's, produced with the Alzheimer's Association, investigates the disease's epidemic. (Her father, politician and activist Sargent Shriver, was diagnosed with the disease in 2003.) Shriver first discussed the report's findings on ABC's This Week on Oct. 16th. The full report will be available as an e-book from Simon & Schulster and details are posted on the als.org website. Although not delivered through a singular device, heightening Alzheimer's awareness through a magazine story, a TV show, an e-book, and the web, I think this is convergence culture at work. Not every pressing social issue receives this breadth of coverage from so many media outlets simultaneously, but this example does show we can move in this direction.