It’s fitting that our last reading takes us farther back
than any others. Selfe and Selfe’s essay was published in 1996, around when I
started using the internet. The authors comb through the chattering on
listservs, a medium that is quaint and outdated to us, to draw conclusions
about computer use that resonate nearly 20 years later. They look back through
history, from the public forums of ancient Athens, through the salons of
Enlightenment Europe, and find that even when a new public sphere opens up to exchange
ideas, it is still constrained by the dominant ideologies of its culture
(338-9).
The authors repeatedly drive home the point that computer
networks are firmly rooted in military research, and are “war machines”
(343-4). The opening up of these networks to civilian use is, they say, a way
for states to push their populations toward spaces that allow new and free
expressions of ideas, but are also regulated. In this sense, computer networks
are still fundamentally shaped by their roots in war, and broader state
control, such as “computerized records of citizen criminals, computerized lists
of welfare recipients, computer-supported census records” (342). I immediately
think of contemporary revelations of government cyber-spying on its own citizens
and across the globe. I imagine these aren’t revelations at all to Selfe and
Selfe; such use was implicit from the birth of computer networks.
But the authors point out that, while powerful state and
corporate interests may still have zones of power in computer networks, there
are also zones of impotence (348). While these networks were designed for
control, there are way to subvert them. Selfe and Selfe refer to such actions
as “tactics,” which are “small and—at some levels, partially invisible—ways of ‘making
do’ within an oppressive system that reproduces its own power constantly and in
extended ways” (349). They give the example of technical writers (who were
probably among the earliest regular internet users who couldn’t program) going
outside of their employers’ restrictions to seek digital information and
connect with others who shared their professional and personal interests. This
still happens today, though it’s not exactly revolutionary to turn to the web
to quench curiosity. I think of contemporary “hacktivists” such as Anonymous as
the current practitioners of tactics. Their use of computer networks to strike
at businesses and governments they disagree with are conscious displays of
subverting what they consider an oppressive system.
The authors ponder whether the novel approaches to computer
use in the 90s are paving a road to humanity becoming “cyborgs.” I don’t think
they use that word in a literal sense (although technologies to make that so
aren’t far off), but rather in the sense that we treat our machines as
extensions of ourselves. We are “makers of the machine, and this activity has
made us partially machine ourselves” (352). As we’ve discussed several times
this semester, our digital literacy doesn’t just add to our lives; it
fundamentally changes how we live. The authors think that our cyborg-selves are
able to break down barriers. We can “recode, rewrite, reconstitute not only the
text of their own bodies, but also the larger cultural/economic/ideological narratives
and mythologies of the male-dominated war State, the cultural body politic”
(353). This strikes me as more triumphalist than reality has proven. While our
ever-present machines have given us new and strange abilities, old barriers
remain, and new barriers may still be raised.
Ideology is key to this reading and is exactly what I wanted us to hit on. At UNO, we experienced its ideology when we ran into problems using the Adobe software. The Cloud, the latest answer to everyone's problems with technology, promised to keep us consistenty current. That may be true at home, but at UNO, we are only as updated as the UN system allows us. And this decision is entirely political. Adobe charges the UN system for every upgrade, forcing (or at least pushing) UN to issue a directive of updating only at certain times, which goes against the whole idea of the Cloud. Having the Adobe software available campus wide was suppose to help us (teachers for exampel) when in fact it has hindered us. Look what happened when the Premiere Pro group tried to present their software. There is a different version of PP on my office computer, my home computer, the Creative Production Studio, and the library classrooms. Given that the software doesn't allow you to work backwards, having access to the cloud has been trying especially from a pedagogical perspective. It has proven to be a frustrating experience that I can only complain about.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many areas of life that are affected by digital literacy, more than I ever imagined. Along with the many freedoms and conveniences (affordances), there are responsibilities. The end of the semester was a bad time for my faithful old PC to crash and die and yet, in many ways, it has been good for me. It forced me to push myself past some (weird, I know) mental blocks/resistance and update myself. I never thought very deeply before about the political issues surrounding the digital landscape, but just becoming more aware has challenged that as well.
ReplyDeleteIt will be strange if cyber-warefare soon becomes a way of the future in terms of international diplomacy. Already fringe online groups have been able to demonstrate the economic damage capable through online attacks. One of the most recent events related to this surrounded the release of the comedy "The Interview" where it was alleged that North Korean hackers attempted to leak the film as well as damaging emails from within the production company behind it. This act completely changed the potential of the movie, forcing an online release of the film rather then the planned theatrical showings. In the past, hacker groups like Anonymous have managed to take several organizations web presence offline, ranging from the Church of Scientology to the Department of Justice. If an attack like this takes place between countries and is made public, it could widely change the way international diplomacy is viewed, as well as the concept of international war.
ReplyDeleteScience fiction doesn't seem quite as farfetched as it did even in the 90s - that man and machine may merge in some unalterable capacity. The idea of a bio-machine is probably more symbolic than anything—most people don't take it as far as someone like Ray Kurzweil—but it is obviously grounded in both excitement and fear. As our reliance on technology increases, so too do the possibilities of exploiting that technology. I'm not sure if this is significantly different from the pre-industrial eras in human history (the possibility of being exploited), but the pace of growth makes it seem so.
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