Douglas Rushkoff : ONLINE
How could the breakfast readers of Melbourne possibly benefit from the musings of a cyber-writer from the other side of the world? Why should the innocent trees of South Africa be sacrificed to provide printing space for the rantings of a New York-based media theorist?
Because, like it or not, thanks to the advent of interactive technology we are in each other’s faces – we’re living in one big interconnected world from now on. So it’s best we all try to find a way to get along. It’s no secret that “globalisation” is on the short list for the word best suited to describe the character of the coming century.
As the university and military communications network, formerly known as Arpanet, makes its final transition towards a people’s global digital infrastructure, politicians, economists, governments, businessmen, marketers and social activists are jockeying for position. Just who has a say, and who doesn’t, in shaping our media- based global culture matters more than we can understand right now.
Neighbour, it’s time we sat down and discussed a few things. First, let me make an unconditional apology for the past, present and future actions of my countrymen. We Americans have always understood media as a “Western” thing. For too long we’ve seen ourselves as the broadcasters, and the rest of the world as consumers of our content. From Dallas to Baywatch, CNN to MTV, media help us foist the American Way on to the eager and reluctant alike.
This is partly why the worldwide growth of the Internet seemed like such a threat at first: more American values, and products, distributed more efficiently around the globe. What our media empires didn’t realise, of course, is that the wires they were using to extend their reach do not have directional allegiance. Information passes back and forth with equal speed and force.
Although the people who paid for the Internet may have thought they were simply creating new markets for computers, modems, software, and other things American, they did something else entirely: they decentralised mediaspace and compromised their own authority.
For, while broadcast media empower the programmer, interactive technology empowers the cultural organism. The wires that were meant to serve as conduits for social programming serve instead as channels for feedback. Rather than securing America’s position as the dictator of global values, the Internet has unleashed the world upon America. Neither will be the same again.
While broadcast media tend to deaden and desensitise, interactivity is a wake-up call. The tendrils of global mediaspace are like neural pathways, physically extending the brains and even the hearts of all who choose to log on. Hardwired together, the participants of the global digital infrastructure comprise a new sort of life form. Indeed, the media are alive. It is we.
And we are not alone out here. For every 14-year-old sharing her opinions in a Usenet conversation, there is a company trying to lure her on to a website where she can buy an interactive Barbie. For every activist group attempting to unite the world in opposition to environmental irresponsibility, there is a wired economist dedicated to promoting right-wing libertarianism under the rubric of “open markets” and “global capitalism”. For every college student developing a piece of shareware to help us filter out spam mail, there is a software firm developing a new web browser that will require an expensive upgrade of RAM and processor speed to operate effectively.
In a sense, this is a how-to column. But instead of teaching how to set up a shell account or wire a network, I’ll be exploring how we can direct this so-called revolution to mutually beneficial goals. Although the Internet looks a lot like a “strip mall” these days, it still heralds the potential for a responsive, networked, global culture on a scale unimaginable less than a decade ago.
The Interactive Age is not about technology; it never really was. It’s about wresting the tools of media from those who would program us into submission, and then using them to foster more organic relationships with one another. Only then can we begin to grapple with what a global community might really be about.
In South Africa, you’ve certainly acquired a taste for the power and promise of media tools. Deprived of television until the mid-Seventies, even the richest whites could only keep abreast of global media through private screenings of 16mm films. The introduction of television – and eventually CNN, MTV, Madonna and friends – initiated a chain reaction of resuscitation, inspiration, and expectation. No matter how inane, this new cultural iconography fomented change. When I asked Nelson Mandela if he was afraid South Africa’s own culture might be overwhelmed by Madonna and Nike, he responded, “There are ways we ‘need’ to be overwhelmed.” He was right: it was a matter of time before your connection to the media made divisive rule impossible.
The introduction of interactive media to the world at large is as dramatic a challenge to “business as usual”. No matter what the Western world likes to believe, South Africa was a not an isolated example of racial division and cultural oppression. In many ways, it was simply a more openly practised version of what’s occurring on a global level to this day. If e-mail and the World Wide Web can do to the world what Madonna did to apartheid, then I’m all for it.
(c) Douglas Rushkoff
— Douglas Rushkoff has written extensively on the Internet, pop-culture, cyber culture, media and technology. He serves as a technology and culture consultant to the United Nations Commission on World Culture, and has lectured at Harvard and Princeton. His published works include: Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace; Playing the Future; and Media Virus! Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture. Rushkoff can be contacted at www.levity.com/rushkoff