One quote I found interesting is from the book ‘An Introduction to Cyber-cultures’ and it links in with some of the topics raised in this weeks lecture, where Terranova would say that the internet acts as a “’high-tech gift economy’ where labour is freely given, where ideas and products can be freely circulated in ways that are profoundly anti-capitalist.” (Bell, 2001, 20) Moreover, this is supported by Lessig (lecture) who promotes open source software; manipulation etc providing it’s all free. This could be a contradiction to what was mentioned in the lecture about Chomsky believing that capitalists work in a way to make media work as to not undermine capitalism through the structure of what is put through on the internet, for the use of commercial gain within society. However, this is concerned more with traditional mass media where everything could be manipulated through the one way channel of information. Another point that interested me was this notion of “attention economy.” How the internet is a more complex than other media because there isn’t a direct source of communication whereby the audience are acceptant or not. XXXXX
I would still say that although there is an unlimited amount of freedom on the internet what is shown can still be edited, re-formed and manipulated in different ways. Users are free to write what they want, but it may not always be the case that it stays that way when on the internet. This demonstrates how essentially the internet is democratic - with it being produced by culture, yet there are still controlling elements which come from political production. XXXXX
There are just a few thoughts from this weeks lecture.
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Watch out for your fingers getting carried away beyond your brain Cara. Some of this is nowhere near as clear as you usually are?
ReplyDeleteEven old broadcast media is affected by the Inet isn't it? YouTube is full of videos 'catching TV with its pants down' so to speak. Media personalities cannot get away with any double standards -they will be exposed on the Inet.
However, even on the Inet, Chomsky's point about basing our statements on capitalism's assumptions rings true doesn't it? Whilst websites with completely different notions of how the world should be understood exist(e.g. white supremacist survivalist americans). They don't reach general discussion -largely because the seem patently 'mad' (indeed, if we take Foucault's points about the discursive nature of being 'mad', then that is exactly what they are).
A couple of questions from reading this is that do you think there should be more or less influence from 'controlling bodies' that could monitor the Internet? Also, couldn't 'political production' also be defined as culture?
ReplyDeleteThe Internet is perhaps the best example of democracy for us, in that it goes away from the hegemonic society we're in, but it could be important to have some control over the Internet, as human nature being what it is there'll always be some who abuse it. This freedom could easily be taken away!
my word that just sounded patronising!
I think that with the idea of more moderation on the internet, it raises the issue with me that even could this ever actually be upheld? Because of how large the internet is and the many different produsers who have got used to producing websites/giving opinions etc, it would be near impossible to start policing what can happen on the internet. Also, going back to Turkle's idea of personas, you could argue whether there would ever be someone with enough authority to police the internet? It would be easy for someone who's been cautioned to create a new persona and continue abusing the internet! In a perfect would the control would be enough to make people with decent intentions be able to give their opnion, and people with corrupt intentions be moderatored. This however in my opnion will never happen!
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