Monday, July 21, 2008

All Over the Place

I have remained blog-silent for so long (actually, forever) that now I feel I’d like to say a lot, and I am afraid I am going to be “all over the place.” I’ll try to get to the point, and I will restrict my comments to the recent exchange between Mark and Dave (below)...

When I first read Mark’s post on the democratic potential of the Internet, it made me think not so much about whether the Internet is or not a revolutionary democratic medium, but about the frequency and use of this type of discussion (perhaps Dave would call this a meta-level thought). No doubt, that thought was prompted by the fact that I was also reading at that time two texts that I use in class. One was the concluding chapter to Janice Radway’s “Reading the Romance.” The other, a portion of Javier Callejo’s “La Audiencia Activa” (probably the best piece of audience research ever produced in Spain).

Radway devotes a significant part of her conclusions to discussing whether or not reading romance novels has any practical utility for improving the social and family situation of women. Callejo, in turn, discusses how participants in the focus groups he conducted often accused other members of the family (usually those in less “powerful” positions) of being addicted to television (constantly watching useless programs, not doing anything worthwhile with their time, etc). Radway is speaking from what seems by all accounts a genuine concern for the well-being of women, while Callejo’s subjects seem to be using television to play power games within the family. However, I feel that there is a line of continuity between Radway’s discussion and Callejo’s subjects’ comments. They are all talking about how we do not use the media properly or how we do not extract all the potential of those media to change our personal, family or social situation. They are all judging “others” in terms of their media use. I think that the issue of the democratic potential of the Internet (note that “democratic” is equivalent to “good”) belongs to the same kind of discourse. And I have to confess that I feel uncomfortable with it. The same way I don’t like it when people tell me some media is bad for me, I don’t like it when people say “it’s great, but people don’t use it properly or enough”.

Technology opens up possibilities (or closes them off). And the fact that those possibilities are allowed is precisely what leads to the discussions and debates mentioned above. If you only have a land line and you do not answer a call, the caller will probably assume that you are out. But if you have a cell phone and you don’t answer a call, the caller will probably feel you are not a good cell user (after all, cells only exist so you can answer calls at any time from anywhere). It is the possibilities that the technology opens that allows others to criticize, evaluate or ponder your behavior: are you a good reader, a good TV viewer, a good Wikipedia contributor, a good citizen? (I have to confess that ever since this blog was started I have felt the need to live up to the possibilities it opened to me, and I have been somewhat anxious about not living up to those possibilities… I am starting to feel more relaxed now).

And, when the technology increases our possibilities to do things, can we say that something new is happening or is it just the same old? Well, I think the answer is rather arbitrary. If we define and name a certain animal in a certain way, and then we find a specimen that matches the description in every respect but one, we have two options: make our definition more complex to account for the observed variation or use a new name to refer to this specimen which is only slightly different. In my opinion, the name is not that relevant. What really matters is that we carefully study these animals and their behavior.

And this leads me to Dave’s latest post (which, by the way, reminded me of Dominique Wolton’s “Eloge du Grand Public”). I think what Dave is describing is a more complex world. While the audience is fragmenting, there are also certain events (contents, products?) able to attract unprecedentedly large audiences. Both things (fragmentation and agglutination) are taking place at the same time. And this is so because the technology is opening up possibilities and some people (not all, there are still too many lazy bums!) are taking advantage of some (not all, that would be impossible for anyone) possibilities. And that is enough to make our world much more complex and blur previously clear distinctions.

I don’t know if I made sense, but I feel better now :)

No comments: