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Summary Communication Technologies and their Impacts
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This is a summary of the reading material and lectures for Communication Technologies and their Impacts
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Communication Technologies and Their ImpactsCM1007
This summary covers:
Fisher, D.R. & Wright, L.M. (2006). On Utopias and Dystopias: Toward an Understanding of the
Discourse Surrounding the Internet.
Winner, L. (1997). Technology today: Utopia or dystopia?
Brock, G. (2013). Chapter 01: Communicating whatever we please.
Kormelink, T.G. & Meijer, I.C. (2017). What clicks actually mean: Exploring digital news user practices.
Loiperdinger, M. & Elzer, B. (2004). Lumiere’s Arrival of the Train: Cinema’s Founding Myth.
Casteltrione, I. (2015). The Internet, social networking Websites and political participation research:
Assumptions and contradictory evidence.
Morozov, E. (2011). The Google Doctrine.
Morrison, S. & Gomez, R. (2014). Pushback: Expressions of resistance to the ‘evertime’ of constant online
connectivity. First Monday.
Roberts, J. & Koliska, M. (2014). The effects of ambient media: What unplugging reveals about being plugged
in. First Monday.
Breuer, J. & Bente, G. (2010). Why so serious? On the relation of serious games and learning. Journal for
Computer Game Culture.
+ lectures
ESMEE LIEUW ON 1
,Fisher & Wright – On Utopias and Dystopias: Toward an Understanding of
the Discourse Surrounding the Internet
Article is about Napster, an Internet-based music sharing software
• Whether the software has made the world better or worse depends on whom you ask.
• One side of the issue is voiced in the words of David Boies, lead attorney for Napster,
who says that “this is a new technology that threatens … control.”
• On the other side, the technology has been called a part of the revolution by mainstream
sources such as Time Magazine.
Introduction
• Similar polarized discussions have focused on many different aspects of the Internet
since it became accessible to mass society in the early 1990s.
• Given the different responses to the Internet's effects, it is important to consider the
discourse surrounding this medium of communication as it will likely affect how the
technology is utilized by society in the future.
• The question of whether the Internet will remain largely free of regulation or whether it
will be commodified is an important one
• We argue that the utopian/dystopian dichotomy found in the discourse surrounding the
Internet is consistent with what Ogburn (1964) describes as a cultural lag → suggests
that the effects of technology may not be visible to social actors until sometime after its
introduction.
Cultural Lag
• One possible way to begin to understand the extreme interpretations of Napster and
other applications of the Internet is to turn to William Ogburn's work on the cultural
lag.
• Has its critics:
1. It is technologically deterministic: Ogburn works as though technology is an
autonomous independent variable affecting the dependent variable of culture.
2. The cultural lag also suffers from a teleological bias (= the notion that the
identification of a problem is carried out by a single, unified culture)
• Even with these weaknesses, this theory of technological diffusion and adoption is very
useful in understanding the extreme responses to applications such as Napster as well as
other technologies of the Internet.
• Definition of cultural lag: This theory explains the time lag between a technology's
invention, its distribution to society, and the social adjustment that follows
• In Ogburn's theory, some technologies are quickly followed by social institutional change
and others are not.
• Cultural lags exist because “technology moves forward and the social institution lags
behind in varying degrees” → occur “when one of two parts of culture which are
correlated changes before or in greater degree than the other part does, thereby causing
less adjustment between the two parts than existed previously.”
Esmée Lieuw On 2
, • Ogburn points out that there are four stages to a cultural lag: technological, industrial,
governmental, and social philosophical
• The theory states that industry is the first sector to adjust to and acquire the technology:
▪ After the industrial sector responds to the new technology, government
structures adjust. → One of the main ways is by regulating it.
▪ Without governmental structures dealing with and regulating technology, the
fourth stage of the cultural lag, that of social philosophies, cannot adjust.
▪ It is not clear that this lag inevitably causes suffering to humanity, however it
does, in the words of Carey, cause the “satanic and angelic images that have
surrounded, justified, and denigrated” technology without realistically assessing
its actual capabilities and limitations
• Cultural lags are difficult to distinguish → “lags are not visible because they have been
caught up. They are visible phenomena largely at the present time” → Ogburn's theory
of cultural lag states that hindsight hinders identification of historic lags; once the lag has
disappeared, the period of the cultural lag is forgotten.
• The fact that both of these technologies have been perceived as being “variously
imagined as harmless and harmful” in their social effects:
▪ Television as a utopian technology that would cause “equalization of many
different types of people” (++) → democratizing force that would bring culture,
education and information to the masses
▪ Television has been accused of homogenizing American culture and its
“regional spheres” (--)
• The Internet has been said to be as powerful, if not more powerful than these older
technologies → “shaping our lives in the century ahead”
• As the Internet's capabilities grow and its effects extend to more and more of the world's
population, predicting how the technology will develop and how it will change society is
a difficult task (impossible to forecast effects on society)
• Napster provides an ideal case of the continuing changes on the Internet
• Computer and networking technology “is producing a sweeping set of transformations in
every corner of social life” (give a voice to the powerless & giving powerless access
to the world)
Utopian and Dystopian Visions of the Internet
• Perhaps the most salient aspect of the utopian position is the implied notion that there
are technological solutions to social problems
• The communitarian argument suggests that the Internet will facilitate civic
engagement by increasing the ease of communication among citizens by transcending
geographic and social boundaries.
• The populist model emphasizes technology's role in altering the interaction between
citizens and government.
• Ward (1997) points out that the mechanisms of change are typically described in terms
of on-line referenda and initiatives.
• Utopians posit that cyberspace will make it easier for people to communicate both
politically and otherwise → with Habermas's main interests, arguing that the
communicative action, which emerges as a result of this interaction, can limit the
subversion of deliberative democracy at the hands of market-driven imperatives.
• The dystopian position has its roots in understanding the phenomenon of the
experience → emphasizes the potential of the medium to affect communication in such a
Esmée Lieuw On 3
, way that it may negatively alter the practices and spaces of communication that had
previously nurtured democracy.
• The dystopian argument claims that democracy crumbles as the social fabric of society
becomes fragmented and people become more isolated from one another.
• Participants at the center of an information-based communicative structure and those on
the periphery of that structure will be less connected than ever before. In addition, the
Internet is expected to disturb political life through what Derrida calls “accelerated
rhythms” (= impeding thoughtful deliberation)
• Besides utopian and dystopian visions, there’s also technorealism (held by
journalists/technology professionals/academics) = It usually presents a more tempered
view of the Internet's effects on society because the medium is too new to determine its
effects
• Both privacy and content on the Internet have been a subject of great social concern and
represent two of the most dominant debates about the potential negative effects of this
communication technology → ex. cyber-lurkers and personal information being obtained
Discussion and Conclusion
• As the technology diffuses across American society and more people log on to the
Internet, dystopian and utopian claims about the technology's capabilities grow.
• At the same time, people around the world are celebrating the democratizing capabilities
of this new technology
• Ogburn's notion of a cultural lag points to the future while focusing on the present. In
doing so, the idea also aids us in understanding the extreme responses to the technology
and helps us to be more critical of the academic literature on the subject.
• James Carey (1988) states that new communications technologies repeat old patterns of
diffusion. “We are dealing with an old story rather than a new one. Although the
computer and satellite have reduced time to a picosecond, an instantaneous present, and
the globe to a point where everyone is in the same place, this is simply the latest chapter
in an old tale.”
• Although actors from all sides of the issue argue over the utopian and dystopian effects
this technology will have on business and society, in time society will adjust to the
cultural lag and interpretations will become more realistic.
• In order to understand realistically this technology that is changing society, we must
recognize the extreme readings of its effects as what they are; products of a cultural lag
between the diffusion of the Internet across society and society's adoption of the
technology.
Esmée Lieuw On 4
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