Posted by joseph nechvatal on January 06, 1996 at 08:10:21:
In Reply to: Re: deep shit posted by Stephen Pusey on January 04, 1996 at 18:52:48:
I talked to Howard about it & he sent me this- interesting.
We NeedBetter Technology Criticism
By Howard Rheingold
Even enthusiasts - especially enthusiasts - ought to skeptically
examine the objects of our enthusiasms. I've been waiting for a wave of
anti-Internet books. From the look of the first wave, recently arrived, I
hope the second wave is better.
Clifford Stoll's best-selling book, The Cuckoo's Egg, was the first
person account of the detection, stalking, and capture of a KGB-sponsored
computer-cracker. Cuckoo's Egg moved forward because it was a gripping
story of intellectual detective work. And the book carried an important
ethical message concerning the way we use technology. Computer networks,
Stoll eloquently pointed out, are built on trust. If too many people break
into too many computers, and too many people begin to mistrust the medium,
global many-to-many communication will lose its value.
Stoll's current effort, Silicon Snake Oil, is again
autobiographical, but this time, there is no story, just a theme: computer
and online enthusiasts should turn off our computers and get a life.
Certainly he's correct, but only in regard to a small proportion of the
online population. Stoll raises important questions about the way many
people abuse their enthusiasm for the cyber-life, and his plea to unplug is
one worth making. But when Stoll began to resort to sweeping
generalizations that could cause people some harm, he lost me. For the
Alzheimers' and AIDS caregivers who find online support, the infirm,
disabled, elderly, or just plain frightened people who rarely leave their
apartments after dark, the Net is a lifeline. Certainly, we should look at
inflated claims of technological utopia with a skeptical eye, but unless
one is gifted with omniscience, I don't see what qualifies any mortal to
judge the quality of another person's life.
I sometimes despair when I find it hard to get my twenty-year old
friend Justin, an intelligent and informed and deeply wired guy, to read
entire books. My underlying suspicions that online media are changing the
way we think set me up to become enthralled by "The Gutenberg Elegies,"
Sven Birkerts' romantic description of the rich virtual realities that
enthusiastic book-readers create in our heads, and which are now threatened
by the neo-barbarism of words on screens. Yes, words on screens are
different from words on paper, and I agree, reading words in a traditional
book is a different kind of experience. But there are reasons, not all of
them evil, why the Internet is the fastest-growing communication medium in
history.
My enthusiasm for Birkerts' paeans to the glories of book-reading
faded when it became clear that the author didn't understand the technology
he was criticizing. Birkerts' perhaps justifiable revulsion with and
rejection of reading words on screens made him blind to the attractions and
some of the strengths of the technology he rejects.
"Resisting The Virtual Life," edited by James Brook and Iaian A.
Boal (1995, City Lights Books) is an anthology focused on political
analysis of new communications technologies. Not all the contributors hit
the mark, and you have to adjust for each author's political biases, as
always, but this anthology does something Stoll and Birkerts fail to do:
Zeroing in on the hard realities of political power behind the scenes of
the mass-media spectacle, the authors get at some of the questions citizens
ought to be asking ourselves now: Is the "rhetoric of the technological
sublime" blinding enthusiasts to the dark side of communication technology?
Is the price of progress ultimately going to be a kind of enslavement to
the mechanical world we've created? Are the technologies we now embrace
likely to lead to the loss of privacy, increasing government or commercial
control of our thoughts and bodies, constraints on our freedom of
expression and choice?
If you embrace the virtual life, don't do it mindlessly; read what
the best critics have to say. For clarity of vision and communication,
Lewis Mumford's 1967 classic, "The Myth of The Machine" is still the place
to start. "Resisting The Virtual Life" updates the technological
background. I'm still waiting for someone to get the big picture on the
ways our machines are remolding our minds.
Post a Followup
|