‘The Internet has empowered the marginal, the talentless, and the librarian in all of us. If punk gave everyone carte blanche to pick up a guitar and scream at the world, so the World Wide Web has allowed everyone the opportunity to share their small world-view with anyone with time to kill’.
The writer, the journalist Dylan Jones (From ‘Icon: Frank Sinatra’, GQ July 2007, p. 68), here gets at a valuable aspect of Internet content and its seemingly inevitable trivialising nature, something I have had to grapple with while working on this site. But he is, on a more serious note, missing something equally valuable.
It is telling to take a good look at these two sentences and the way that they ignore the often ignored fact the Internet is not really a voice for everyone, but a potential and potentially limiting voice for everyone with access to a computer and a certain degree of technical know-how. The same is perhaps true of punk rock, his earlier referent, but at least punk, which may have been accessible to more people as creators than, say, classical piano, but which was still limited by economic and other factors, made no real claims to being a world-wide or universal phenomenon.
The idea of the ‘World Wide Web’, and the ubiquity of the term itself, is by contrast a utopian promise, a dream not only of universal access but of universal participation in a major cultural forum. That it has failed singularly in creating this utopia is so blindingly obvious that it perhaps should pass by without mention. The fact that it makes this promise – and the fact that this promise is so often believed – is in itself very interesting, especially if we want to draw connections between the persistence of technological utopianism and the Christian tradition of eschatology that it grew out of.
The World Wide Web, in its very name, promises the democratisation of knowledge, despite the fact that similar claims were made about the telegraph, the telephone, the printing press, the railroad, the radio, and the personal computer, and despite the fact that these claims have never been validated, at least not without studiously ignoring the facts. Indeed, such promises were made as far back in time as the emergence of the written word, which was itself reliant upon a series of potent technologies. All of these things, especially the printing press, have had a democratising effect on the production and distribution of knowledge, but at the same time all of these things have also played an important role in the creation of new elites as well as new forms of cultural and technological poverty. As James Carey writes,
There is, however, a more stringent sense of the meaning of a monopoly of knowledge. When one speaks, let us say, of the monopoly of religious knowledge, of the institutional church, one is not referring to the control of particles of information. Instead, one is referring to control of the entire system of thought, or paradigm, that determines what it is that can be religiously factual, that determines what the standards are for assessing the truth of any elucidation of these facts, and that defines what it is that can be accounted for as knowledge. Modern computer enthusiasts may be willing to share their data with anybody. What they are not willing to relinquish as readily is the entire technocratic worldview that determines what qualifies as an acceptable or valuable fact. What they monopolize is not the body of data itself but the approved, certified, sanctioned, official mode of thought-indeed, the definition of what it means to be reasonable … Instead of creating a ‘new future,’ modern technology invites the public to participate in a ritual of control in which fascination and technology masks the underlying factors of politics and power. But this only brings up-to-date what has always been true of the literature of the future. This literature, with its body of predictions, prescriptions, and prophecies, is a cultural strategy for moving or mobilizing or arousing people toward predefined ends by prescribed means.[1]
Incidentally, we also must keep in mind that data, the Internet’s forte, is not the same as information, which is not the same as knowledge, which is not the same as wisdom. There are more steps in the democratisiation of knowledge than simple access, as anyone who has read an undergraduate essay which cites only online sources will readily attest. It is indeed one of the curious paradoxes of the Information Age that there is perhaps a greater degree of access to data than at any point in history at the same time that fewer and fewer people have access to the sorts of knowledge and critical skills that are necessary to navigate the morass of rhetoric, misinformation, and simple ignorance that is characteristic of the Internet. However, this utopian rhetoric raises a serious question that is not granted enough serious consideration: given that significant numbers of people on this planet have never even used a telephone, just how world wide can the ‘World Wide Web’ possibly be?
In fact, it is possible to argue that the label ‘World Wide Web’ is in reality another way of distinguishing the part of the world that matters – the world of the wealthy, the (largely) white, and the self-consciously modern – from the rest of the world in all of its poverty and backwardness. This is nicely illustrated by a popular image from 2007 showing Internet access density (thanks to the artist, Chris Harrison, for making this accessible on his website):
This image puts the lie to the idea of a truly World Wide Web, as much of the world is simply missing, or sunk in darkness. The areas that are portrayed as blank spaces on this image are sadly predictable and follow more or less exactly the patterns laid out by economic oppression and exploitation in global capitalism. The same is true of the following visualisation, from the same source, this time documenting Internet traffic:
Here even more of the world simply fades into the blackness of technological backwardness, raising another very real question: is the Internet a part of the solution to the staggering problems that these maps speak of, or is it simply another part of the problem, another way of delineating the haves from the have nots?
In the end, the truly marginal are not the solitary toilers sitting in front of computer screens sending out their worldview for general consideration (and, we assume, validation), but are instead those who lack access to even the basic tools that advertising and other interested cultural forces have told us are necessary for authentic communication, not to mention the billions who lack access to clean water, basic health care, or simply enough to eat.
Though this may seem to be taking all of this in the direction of conspiracy and needs a good deal more investigation to be anything more than conjecture, I want to suggest that the label ‘World Wide Web’ is both a utopian promise and a shield from precisely this sort of criticism. This, of course, is the result of a range of factors and not simply a choice made with the deliberate goal of creating and maintaining socio-economic inequalities, but that doesn’t make it any less damaging. There is no reason to be a Luddite about all of this, and no need to retreat to a facile, outdated technological determinism; there is, however, a real need to pay attention to the cultural and economic aspects of information technology, from the quill to the computer on which I write these words. As Erik Davis writes, resorting to what is a not unjustified hyperbole, ‘Without turning to face our own terminal screens, without sharpening critical wisdom and cultivating compassion, the Internet may only become a new brand of bondage’.[2]
McLuhan, and those, like Baudrillard, who were influenced by him, have made this point over and over again, and made it well: technology is never ideologically neutral, and to think otherwise is indeed dangerous.
[1] James Carey, Communication as CultureEssays on Media and Society(New York: Routledge, 1989): 194-195.
[2] Erik Davis, TechGnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Information (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2004): 380. He elaborates: ‘In the long run, I suspect that some of the most valuable and productive aspect of postmodern thought may lie in its confrontation with digital technology, whose alien cunning it helped to articulate and whose posthuman possibilities it helped to unfold … cyber-culture also embodies the channel-surfing decadence, depthless fragmentation, and smug obsession with self-referential codes and jargon that characterize postmodern culture at its worst.’ Davis, Tech, 388.
The Dunedin School 
You said, “In fact, it is possible to argue that the label ‘World Wide Web’ is in reality another way of distinguishing the part of the world that matters – the world of the wealthy, the (largely) white, and the self-consciously modern – from the rest of the world in all of its poverty and backwardness.”
I could just as easily concluded from the same data, “In fact, it is possible to argue that the label ‘World Wide Web’ is in reality another way of distinguishing the part of the world that matters – the world of the (largely) English and Romance language speaking – from the rest of the world in all of its non-Englishness and backwardness. ”
Your illustrations (and props to Chris Harrison for posting them) are, as you point out, data. They do not represent information or even knowledge, let alone wisdom. Yet you seem to use it as knowledge when you say, “The areas that are portrayed as blank spaces on this image are sadly predictable and follow more or less exactly the patterns laid out by economic oppression and exploitation in global capitalism.”
They also follow the patterns laid out by those who speak English, most particularly the internet traffic map. Yet I never hear any mention of English speaking as a contributing factor to the economic oppression and exploitation in global capitalism. Why is that?
Finally, this map parallels the spread of Western Civilization. If we charted the spread of steam power and railways, I daresay it would look remarkably like this. If we charted the spread of paved roads and automobiles, the same. The electric grid. The spread of democracy. The existence of colleges and universities. Airline traffic. Telephone lines and phone calls. Printing presses, books, and publishing houses. Democracy. Constitutional republicanism. Existentialist paintings. The rise and fall of neckties. Rock and roll. Postcolonialism. I could go on, but you get the idea that no matter what the idea or technological advance, it is going to spread in largely the same pattern.
So what is this datum indicative of? Economic oppression and exploitation in global capitalism? Um. Yeah. If that works for you, go ahead. Next thing you know someone is going to use the internet to rail against using the internet to promote economic oppression and exploitation in global capitalism. Reminds me of Dennis in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Fair enough. As I noted, this is a work in progress.
The English-speaking and Romance language-speaking parts of the world are often one and the same with the wealthy and self-consciously modern parts of the world. All of these things – language, modernity, technology and the rhetoric used to frame it culturally – are part of a larger complex whole that we could call globalisation and the attendant, if often unconscious, economic exploitation that comes with it. The maps are indicative of the ways in which these things are inextricably interrelated, nothing more.
The fact that these same patterns were true of printing presses and other technologies is really part of my larger point; these sorts of technologies are tied up in global economic processes that tend overwhelmingly to privilege the parts of the world that develop and disseminate these technologies, along with the rhetoric of democratisation and universalisation that supports them. All of these things are, again, part of the spread of Western civilisation, for better or for worse.
I’ve been compared to many worse things than Monty Python, whose collective logic was often impeccable.
Eric,
It was your Cinema as Exorcism that drew me to this blog, so you’ve set a high bar for yourself. You have some very good points that would benefit from having some rhetorical barnacles scraped off.
For instance, you say, “The fact that these same patterns were true of printing presses and other technologies is really part of my larger point; these sorts of technologies are tied up in global economic processes that tend overwhelmingly to privilege the parts of the world that develop and disseminate these technologies, along with the rhetoric of democratisation and universalisation that supports them. All of these things are, again, part of the spread of Western civilisation, for better or for worse.”
You are standing at the threshold, now step through the door of this idea and see where it leads. Marco Polo brought back the technology from China of wood block printing that paved the way for moveable type. So why did the press flourish in Europe and not Asia? I believe the reasons are numerous and complex.
The first century church went both east and west. So why did the church flourish in Europe (despite the Great Schism) while in China it slowly faded away? Check out The Jesus Sutras for what Christianity looked like in a Buddhist context: http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Sutras-Rediscovering-Scrolls-Christianity/dp/0345434242 You will see both similarities and differences to Christianity in the West.
I think Mel Gibson tries to explore some of the reasons why in Apocalypto that civilization travels the course that it does. I think he does an interesting parallel with “The Great Tribulation” of Revelation followed by an apocalypse, albeit in a non-Christian setting of pre-Columbian natives. Without going too far down this road, though, I think it is worth exploring that even if the playing field was level from a technological perspective, the power of Western ideas has a tremendous attractive power that competing ideologies lack. I think it is worth exploring why that is.
What do you think it is? What gives the West an ideological advantage when confronting cultures? Why is it that Western dress is adopted the world over and not some other culture? Why is it that Bollywood pumps out so many movies, yet so few of them penetrate the West? Meanwhile Western movies are bootlegged into nearly every corner of the world? Why?
We could go on with this for days, but here are a few more comments (and thanks for yours) … Why is Western culture dominant? Well, it certainly isn’t due to some innate cultural and intellectual superiority, which you may or not be driving at here. That being said, and to make a hideous generalisation, the Western world’s belief in itself as superior has played a big role in its massive success on the global stage. Why else would the British polar explorers blithely ignore the example set by the Inuit peoples in northern Canada and go tramping across the wilderness without dogs or fur coats and with heavy oak writing desks and silver teaspoons in tow?
The short, snarky answer is that the West is better at marketing itself and enforcing its values. That, and it has bigger guns to back up the marketing people when things go badly. The Western (another generalisation, I know, but we are in the land of ideal types here) ideological advantage is tied up inextricably with (or simple is) its technological genius and its military might.
A bit more involved answer to the film question: Hollywood films go global for the important reason that they are designed to go global. As far back as the early 1930s, when Hollywood executives brought in consultants from Germany’s Nazi government to consult on films that were critical of Germany, big-budget Hollywood films have been conscious of the profit available on the world-wide market. They are made with overseas sales in mind, which partially explains the rank stupidity of many American films, which now have to pander to the lowest common global denominator if they want to recover their staggering budgets. Avatar, after all, is the most popular film of all time, if we go by the numbers. Bollywood films are shot for Bollywood audiences for the most part, for viewers steeped in Indian and Hindu visual culture, which is inaccessible to many Western audiences (there have been exceptions of course, like 2001’s Asoka the Great, about India’s legendary Buddhist king, but even these moderate breakthroughs cannot compete with even the trashiest Hollywood films, like Waterworld, which turned a very tidy profit overseas despite tanking badly in the US).
There have been numerous attempts to answer the lager question as to the West’s ability to dominate. Guy Debord would say that it is largely due to the hollow but highly, even uniquely seductive spectacle of Western popular culture (Avatar again, which, while a piece of racist trash, is still gripping entertainment, much as it pains me to say). Homi Bhabha would say that colonial cultures adopt the ways of the West in an attempt to emulate or simply co-opt the brute power that it represents in order to drive the Westerners out by turning their own narratives and strategies against them. The actions of some new religious movements exhibit a similar paradox. The Ghost Dance movement in the American Southwest and the movements knows as ‘cargo cults’ in the South Pacific are good examples of this twin desire to possess Western colonial power and to free oneself from colonial domination. We can also think of New Zealand Maori accepting Mormon missionaries and even (often temporary) conversion because the Mormon missionaries were American and were thus seen as opposed to the British. Adopting Western clothing, on this logic, is a way of aspiring to Western power, even if the desire underneath that adoption is to free oneself from the Western model.
Though there doubtless are many people in every part of the world who have wholeheartedly embraced various Western cultures or systems of law and government, there have always been people who have fought assimilation with their last drop of blood.
I don’t have any complete answers to most of these questions and the answers are always going to be dauntingly complex, but we cannot imagine a level playing field with technological advantage set aside, as technological advantage is integral to the whole history of European colonialism and its success. We cannot level the playing field after the game has already been played and won by those who established the rules and plowed the pitch in the first place, and who enforced those rules through technological means.
“You have some very good points that would benefit from having some rhetorical barnacles scraped off.”
Shit, Eric, have you stooped to employing rhetoric again? Haven’t you learnt anything from my constant objectivity and unrelenting logic?
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