This week we look into the changes in the media, the society and our cultures. As we all know, the landscape of media has been transforming rapidly during the past decades, so as our society and the culture. One might ask: do technologies change the society? Or does the society determine the progress and reach of technologies? However, before discussing the intertwined relationship between technologies and cultures, it is important to examine the central idea - flows. Essentially, flow is an imperative element which facilitates and affects the technologies and cultures we share in everyday life. Examples of these flows include the flow of various languages in the Australian society, the transnational and global flow of goods and information, the flow of citizens across borders and within a nation, and the flow of cultures.
This 'machinic' ecological way of thinking gives us an insight to the 'specific and isolated technologies' as the participants in a broader natural and cultural flow (Murphie & Potts 2003, p, 31-33). One of the reasons to explain why our contemporary culture is so determined by technology is 'not as fundamentally technological as it might seem' (Murphie & Potts 2003, p, 32). In fact, it is our thoughts and culture that have finally aligned themselves with the technology flows that they work best. Just as smartphones, they only became existent few years ago and subsequently, it has established its status as a necessity in our urban space.
Similarly, technologies have their own flows. Deleuze and Guattari have made a fascinating metaphor:
Technologies, just like 'rivers and streams, [...] are produced by particular contexts and change as these contexts change. They flow into each other, accumulate in larger rivers or split into deltas, Some are like creeks that emerge rom hidden underground sources and sink back into them quite quickly.'
It is these kinds of media/technological flows that keep the development of our society going. When treating technologies as singularities instead of plurals, its advancement can be seen ever so clearly. From the invention of black and white photography which humans pride themselves on, moving on to the quick-moving still images which form a movie - or, as Murphie and Potts call it, the 'Gatling gun in the cinema', then to digital images that almost everyone can create nowadays with a Smarphone or digital camera. These movements indicate that there are constant mutations and new developments in these technological flows, but only because they are flowing. These kinds of media flows across time and space, and more and more changes are resulted due to the collusion of different media forms (think the assemblage of printed books and digital devices).
According to Marimba Ani, a culture is a 'people’s immune system' (2010). Indeed, when talking about our cultures and technologies, it is hard to ignore the shifts in our lifestyles/immune systems with the ever-changing technologies. Media and technological changes are like dynamic organisms mutating over time. Just as Marshall McLuhan put it, 'medium is the message', the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived (1964, p. 38). And with technological advancement such as the introduction of colour television, a 'global village' was created. Looking back to my childhood (10-15 years ago), I had never heard of high-tech gadgets like iPads or Kindle. All I had to entertain myself was a landline phone to gossip with my friends, a vintage piano, a television with 24-7 news and Disney channel or later in my teenage stage, HBO and MTV, and a desktop which I used to go online occasionally for trivial emails and school work. The culture during my early teens was either to play with mainstream Barbie dolls or create toys of our own. Yet, today, 20 years since I was born, I find myself acting like a recovering smoke addict with a nicotine patch, fidgeting and feeling so empty whenever my iPhone is out of my reach. Other than that, I am actively engaged with the Internet through my laptop for at least two hours every day. From being an innocent child watching whatever's on the television program and inventing all sorts of weird games 15 years ago, to the information and social media addict whose life is tied around technologies, such change is profound even for an individual, let alone the whole society. This brings us to the next point: do technologies impose changes on cultures? Or vice versa?
Although it is hard to generalise and pinpoint the relationship between cultures and technologies, a better mechanism to explain it would be cultural materialism and poststructuralism. Unlike Marshall McLuhan's one-sided idea of technological determinism, which proposes that the cultural significance of media does not lie in their content, but in the way they alter 'the patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance' (1964, p. 27); Rather, cultural materialism treats technologies in isolation, 'as if they come into existence of their own accord and proceed to mould societies in their image'. In contrast to technological determinism, cultural materialism takes significant factors involved in technological development into account, including social attitudes and beliefs, political intention, specific decision-making, and economic interest (Williams, 1975, p. 126). For instance, the advent of television would not have been embraced by the public and afterwards transformed the world's culture if those specific circumstances such as political support, economic interest and societal readiness, were not present. Only with the desperate need of communication and an emphasis on families after the First World War, the development of television was able to blossom under favourable government policies and economic interests to make profits. And with these external factors, television has consequently shaped the culture. This proves that there is not an 'inevitable cultural result of a new technology', as several variables are present in affecting the movement of technologies (Jones 1988, p. 214).
Another quality of technology to note is its neutrality. With reference to Murphie and Potts, 'technologies do not determine; rather, they operate and are operated upon, in a complex social field' (2003, p, 22). It is the way technologies are used, rather than any intrinsic properties of those technologies, as argued by Barry Jones (1996, p. 231). However, technologies are simply too influential that they cannot be regarded as neutral. For example, in the argument of 'the Internet increases cyber-bullying', some may argue that nature of the Internet technology itself is neutral, it is the way it is used that counts. As a counter argument, it is apparent that by the very presence of the Internet, it gives a brand new platform for people to abuse others, either physically (think videos of brutal bash on YouTube) or mentally (think name callings or other forms of personal attack on the Internet). Name calling can be hurtful enough in real life, with the addition of the Internet platform, its scale can be increased from a personal level to a regional, national or even transnational level. More harm can be done by collective bullying in the anonymous cyber space than in person. Hence, the fundamental changes introduced by the web can refute the claim that technologies are neutral.
In conclusion, the non-neutral technology, even though plays a major part in influencing cultures, it is important to take various external factors into account. Technological flows explain the machinic ecology of production and no technology, culture or media would function without such 'machinic assemblage' of flows.
References:
Ani, M. 2010, 'What is Culture - Marimba Ani', from YouTube, accessed 20 March 2013, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItHbLahuPBw>.
Jones, B. 1996, Sleepers, Wake!: Technology and the Future of Work, 4th ed, Oxford University Press, USA.
McLuhan, M. 1964, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, McGraw Hill, Canada.
Murphie, A. and Potts, J. 2003, 'Theoretical Frameworks’ in Culture and Technology, Palgrave Macmillan, London, p. 11-38.
Parikka, J. 2012, "Introduction: Cartographies of the Old and New”, What is Media Archaeology?, Polity, Cambridge, p, 1-16.
Williams, R. 2003, Television: Technology and Cultural Form, 3rd ed, Routledge, London.
Blog word: Event (given in lecture 1)
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