The Audiovisual Strikes Back

'I wanna know your name' the song talks about the ability of media to either project or conceal the user's identiy. At the same time the entire video takes place in an isolated communicated created by the use of technology to produce 'music'. The end of the song and removal of the technology signals a chaotic and unethical the dispersal community. Some allusions can be drawn from the video. Is the postmodern era so dependant on technology that a removal of it could result in cultural death?

According to Castells the history of the internet is rooted in the national security and defense of the global powers including U.S defense juggernaut, the Pentagon and CERN, “the Geneva based, European high energy research center that developed the World Wide Web (www)” (Castells p. 15). It began as the ARPANET and was originally intended to be an information gathering or ‘intelligence’ tool, however the computer scientists enlisted to create and manage it had other plans “a scientific dream to change the world through computer communication” (Castells p. 19). Once it was deregulated however it became an initiative supported and improved by users and network to network enthusiasts. A kind of war between private software companies emerged after the deregulation when the internet and operating systems became commodities for sale in the capitalist economy. The internet as we know it today was built around and by individuals at government institutions, universities (particularly the hacker community) and scientific research centers. Apart from the companies, independent users designed their own software systems such as UNIX and Linux and released them freely over the net to the public. All these events have lead to the current technology age of expansion and rapid real time information sharing we experience such as electronic mail and communication with individuals and locations around the world.

The internet expanded as quickly as it did as a result of the autonomous nature of its networks. The realization by its users of its potential as a tool or platform for empowerment and liberation through the provision of information fueled it pervasion. Additionally, the internet is dynamic in nature due to the continual improvements made to it by users enabling it to be relevant to the societal outfit and move fluidly with it. Limited control of the internet remained in the hands of the U.S through the process of being in charge of the assignment of domain names and protocols which are essential for the compatibility with international users through developing a standard.

Now that the internet has permeated through the fabric of society and is created by society Castells asserts that “The internet is, above all else, a cultural creation”. I agree with this statement in that users have incorporated in everyday norms and values. However, the relationship between users, society and technology is more complex than just being a tool created for pragmatic use. Internet users create meaning through the use of internet technology but the internet simultaneously defines the user i.e. it creates a type of user. The type of internet use creates sub cultures that exist inside the realm of the internet but that are also defined by the parameters of the internet. The lines of the producer and the consumer become blurred and merge into the coined term the ‘prosumer’. According to Castells the internet is made up of four subcultures: the techno-meritocratic, the hacker, the virtual communication and the entrepreneurial cultures (Castells: 2001). The four cultures operate in a hierarchical structure where, in my opinion the, hacker culture is the most important sub culture because all the other cultures operate in relation to their activities. The techno- meritocratic culture is concerned with making a contribution to field of technology and its contributors with gaining status among their peers and the in the industry in general. However, the entrepreneurial culture is the one that has enabled technological innovation to spread through society the way it has “The entrepreneurial current that developed by commercializing the process of technological innovation in computing” (Castells p. 38). The hacker community is made up of genuine programmers involved in creative programming autonomously operating in the pursuit of knowledge governed by ethical values and codes. There is another kind of technological explorer one that ventures into the dark side of technology by using their power irresponsibly. These ‘evil’ hackers are referred to as crackers and the fabled characters portrayed in movies leaving a wake of discombobulated layman users as their signature footprint. These evil hackers created a market category for the entrepreneurial culture through the need for antivirus and antimalware software. There is a direct link between the youth popular culture to the hacker culture because of the element of rebellion and self determination which the hacker culture is perceived to be.

This link between a virtual culture and a ‘real’ culture makes segue way into the extension of the internet and communications into the real world. New cultural and identities have formed as a result of the internet and technology era such as the dj subculture and house music movement. There is a rise in the gaming culture and gaming consoles such as Sony Play station 3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii are real amenities that people assign ‘use value’ to. Instead of going to the gym an increasing number of people invest in Wii Sports the interactive real sports experience from Nintendo. Technology is a new form of retreat where people escape to a world they can construct and in a sense control because of the possibility of attaining benefits real or intangible which might not necessarily be the case in reality. In the musical sphere often real instruments are replaced in favor of synthesizers which are said to produce a more ‘real’ sound than the actual instrument. Technology is being used to enhance the musical quality as opposed to artists perfecting their skills to enhance the music. We see a shift from just programmers being producers in the cyber world to ordinary people creating social networking programs where they extend themselves and materialize their alter egos virtually. Thus the internet is an immaterial space that people can appropriate according to their needs. It is a space where Einstein’s relativity of time is perpetuated through the ability to stop or reverse time and its effects “The search for human eternity, through the annihilation of time in life, to the realization of cosmological eternity, through the respect of glacial time. Between subdued temporalities and the evolutionary nature of the network society rises on the edge of forever” (Castells, p. 468). My interpretation of this statement is the fact that the extensions of ourselves in the virtual world will outlive us by virtue of not being real in the physical sense they defy time and nature. Physical businesses require less and less space and open up online stores having a far greater reach internationally because the virtual world is not locked by national borders or ethnic divides. Thus the internet has acted as a steroid for the international political economy.

Additionally, the internet has changed the order in which business is conducted by first creating an idea (progress begins with the mind) that is reified on the internet in a type of buzz marketing and as a byproduct delivers a product or service. The internet and technology has as afore mentioned caused a change in the previous power dynamics between the disseminators of information and the receivers. It has challenged the theory of reception and language by illustrating that the message is construed by the receiver according to the context of the individual and also by the mediator. The introduction of the third screen i.e. portable technology in the form of smart phones, iPads, mp4 players etc. has given the receiver even more control through providing them with the choice to select what messages they receive, the form and time. Technology has facilitated interaction between sender and receiver and produced different types of media consumers based on consumption habits “The key issue is that while mass media are a one way communication system, the actual process of communication is not, but depends on the interaction between the sender and the receiver in the interpretation of the message” and “while the addressees filled it with aberrant meaning according to their particular cultural codes” (Castells, p. 335). This has lead to a division in the mass audience and transnational media companies targeting specific market audiences. On the internet itself the user’s movements are monitored so that adverts can target a captive audience.

Presently we are on the cusp of the post-postmodern era where life is increasingly defined by our technology. Technology becomes the prosthetic self replacing the things our physicality was intended for rendering the creators useless perpetuating dependency.

World Wide Wabbit

In the episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends there is intertextual reference to one of the leading computer brands demarcated as a pear on Bloo's computer and an illustration in the episode of how easily information can be disseminated and how previous methods of sensorship are now null and void due to data storage technologies.