Neil's E-learning and Digital Cultures Blog

Reading the chapter from Hand, 3 recent events that could perhaps be described as having global resonance, struck me; the on-going economic crisis, the summer riots in England and “The Arab Spring”. The situations Hand describes seem to relate directly to all 3 situations in that all of them implicate “planetary information culture”. Much has been made, in all forms of media, of the spread of fear and panic by online reporting and comment engendered by and in turn exacerbating the economic crisis . Following on the heels of the “Green Revolution” in Iran and the “Arab Spring” elsewhere in the Maghreb, Western commentators have fallen over themselves to draw social media connections and links to the riots in England.

Were they checking their social media?

Though Hand’s chapter is more descriptive than prescriptive, it is hard to say where such events fall in his analysis of positions. He was writing after 9/11, at a time when many people felt the need to go online to talk about what they had experienced and how they felt. Perhaps this was more of a reflective reaction. People need to talk about harrowing and disturbing events. The internet with its vast range of chat rooms, boards and discussion fora provides such an opportunity. In this case, all anyone needed was the internet access and basic internet skills. Perhaps, at such a time of distress, the potential of the internet seemed to be one of healing and recovery. Indeed, as Hand discusses, digital technology presents us with both promise and threat with the former promising a massive extensive of the flow of information whilst the latter brings disorganisation and an element of reflexivity.

If we don't learn to adapt to the changes around us, will we fall off?

Hand’s 3 Key Motifs are Access, Interactivity and Authenticity. He links these to the economic, technical, political and social spheres of our lives. And therein lies the rub. If all we need the internet for is to express ourselves then we have achieved that goal. There are endless opportunities to do so from commenting on newspaper articles to chat rooms to social media. Hand talks at length about the flow of information and how the “promise side” sees this as inclusive citizenship, affording democratic empowerment and choice. But little is really said about the nature of this information and its application. For someone of my generation, one of the most powerful images is that of Colin Powell sitting at the UN with his proof of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. This was presented as information and yet the “neterati” are still commenting on its lack of veracity. It strikes me, in 2011, that we are still far from having truly ubiquitous convergence, truly ubiquitous access. So, for me, the issues Hand raises are only partially dealt with in his chapter.

In the chapter, Hand refers to the liquefaction of territorially located culture. In the cases mentioned above, that liquefaction took on a physical element, too. If the promise of the internet is interactive culture, when does the interaction begin? Which language will it use? While we ponder the role of machines in our lives and the investment of our time and consciousness in the virtual world, how accessible is any of it outside the networks which created it? If hierarchical knowledge is to give way to horizontal information, surely that information must in turn be recreated as knowledge. But in what context? In the last month, the first web addresses using Arabic letters have been launched. Soon, with the rise of Hindi, Mandarin, Arabic, Farsi and other languages which use scripts quite different to the languages of European origin, the net will take on a different aspect. Will the empowered citizens of Western democracies take the time to learn Urdu and Pashto so that they can fully acquaint themselves with the information present on websites presented in these languages before undertaking actions which will directly and irreparably affect the spatial, temporal and local realities of those territories?

Hand is perhaps too glib in his notion of permeable national borders and his references to democracy, a notion he never defines. His notions of history are also called into question: “contemporary culture has been technologised on a scale and with a speed that is wholly unprecedented.” Has it? Think about the effect of the railroads in the American West in the 19th century. A different sort of technology but not without consideration. There seem to be elements of nostalgia in the discussions of online citizens debating crucial issues; the early town halls of New England come to life in virtuality. But, without being glib myself, most comments online seem to have more to do with celebrity weddings and divorces than policy. Perhaps this is an element of “the commodifying tendencies of late capitalism”. Though, it should be noted that “early” capitalism was also rather interested in commodification. Read any book on the Roman Empire and you will quickly note that it was all about the commodities. If Kim Kardashian’s wedding was put up against Obama’s reform of the American health system, which would create more internet buzz?

Going back to my earlier “planetary events”, I wanted to apply the different theories to these particular situations. First of all, the economic crisis arguably confuses most people who try to understand it. I do not see where online communities of concerned cybercitizens have had any impact at all on the decisions that have been made. The “privatised society of atomized consumers” may bay at the moon as they watch their portfolios shrink and their investments shrink but do their online howls of protest and demands for action have any effect. Rather like protestors in the real streets of Athens, they may cause a ripple, but at the end of the day the decisions that matter are taken regardless of their pain and outrage.

The riots in the UK during the summer were simply images on a screen as I lay in bed in Bangalore. The commentators assured me that Twitter and Facebook were somehow making the confrontations easier. Then others would say that the police were monitoring these tools and arresting people before they had even left home “the penetrative embedding of technocratic control and surveillance within previously ‘public spheres’”. Where the cyber element of the economic crisis seems to suggest the powerlessness of the atomized individual, the UK riots imply at least some role for “Cyberia”. As with any sword, it has two edges and can cut both ways.

If any “empowerment” is to be seen, I believe it lies in events generally grouped together and rather inaptly named “The Arab Spring”. (Living in the Middle East, I have been asked where this name comes from. It is a Western cultural construct which neither elucidates nor illustrates but rather mashes up the reality of both Prague and Cairo.) As this blog is public, I am constrained by my territorial realities in what I can say. In fact, my employers have warned us about the dangers of public posts. What is clear about the recent changes of government in North Africa is that the internet or the cyber world or whatever name we wish to use played a significant role in that very flow of information described by Hand. I think what is truly significant here is best expressed by Saskia Sassen in Hand’s chapter:

“much of what happens in electronic space is deeply inflected by the cultures, the material practices, and the imaginaries that take place outside electronic space.” p28

In other words, just as certain Western journalists in Cairo and elsewhere wanted to portray the events they were witnessing in the terms of the American Revolution, a closer look at the blogs coming out of those cities and countries would show that there was a far deeper Islamic consciousness at work. We see what we want to see. Western reporting often missed the point because it failed to grasp the culture; the deep, rich and ancient culture, that informed the blogs and the postings and the online reporting. Twitter, Facebook et al did not cause the changes of government; brave people did. But the tools of the internet allowed them to communicate, to be reflexive in a way that had not happened in their generation and to discuss ways of challenging the political hegemony as well as the ideological domination of certain parties or personalities.

Do all revolutions look the same?

To sum up, I would like to look at a very personal example which, for me, encapsulates both the utopian and dystopian worlds discussed by Hand. A few days ago I downloaded the new University of Edinburgh app to my iPhone. I gazed at it in wonder. Nearly 30 years ago, I first walked into the library in George Square and wondered how I could ever find anything in that vast place. Now, in my hand, I had access to that building’s stored treasures and more. I had access. I could interact with skilled technicians to find things I needed without ever leaving my sofa on a distant continent. But it costs me. As I am regarded as an overseas student, I pay 100 pounds a week for that access through my course enrolment. On top of that it costs me 40 pounds a month for internet access at home. Then there is the running cost of the hardware that interfaces with that information and makes it available to me. The magic is there, of that there is no doubt. But just as history is written by the victors, the magic is shaped by factors by the realities of human existence. Machines may frighten us because they threaten our sense of power (“The computer says ‘No!’”) But it is still the human element that pushes the button, designs the interface, pulls the plug.