New Culture and Technology - Essay Example

New Culture and Technology Introduction New technologies play a crucial role in today’s society. Given the intimate interaction between human beingsand technology, it is no doubt that it has affected human lives as much as any other factor in history. Technology, however, also interacts with the process of culture formation and individuals’ definition of self, illustrating an even greater impact in the lives of human beings. While there are those who argue that such change will create freedom and liberation of man in the form a new digital culture; there are still those who argue otherwise warning of the possibility, in the words of Foucault (1973), of ‘the death of the subject’ (cited in Schirato, 2003). Hence, in understanding the impact of new technologies what has become of culture? Cultural Studies: Lewis Barker on Technology In Chapter 11 of his book Cultural Studies entitled “The Culture of New Communications Technology”, Lewis (2002) discusses the interaction between culture, history, and new technology, and how such interactions impact on the formation of culture. As he argues, contrary to conventional cultural analysis where technology is understood in terms of its deterministic character in defining history and future social and cultural trends, a proper understanding of the role of new technologies in the formation of culture requires moving away from “periodization analysis” towards the study of “ideological and discursive disputes … associated with new communications technology” (p.381). Culture, according to Lewis is described as the “assemblages of meanings and meaning-making processes”, is a continuous process where “forms and facilities may simply be overlaid onto pre-existing processes and experiences” (p.382). Hence, it is the product of language and discourse. Understanding how different factors, in this case new technology, impact on its formation therefore requires understanding its impact on language and discourse. Instead of treating technology in terms of periods or epochs, Lewis analyses new technology insofar as it affects language and the formation of meaning. Technology with relation to culture is therefore seen within the context of communications technology and its particular formation of meaning, in relation to other existing formations of meaning. Lewis illustrates this point by looking into the different forms of culture and the corresponding technologies that emerged through it. Beginning with oral culture, Lewis describes it with orality. Oral language, according to Lewis (2002), is associated with the increase of migration and travel across the globe where the need for more sophisticated means to communicate and transfer information became imperative (p.382). It therefore served as the means through which culture is communicated. However, since it is fixed in terms of time and space, it is dependent on memory and limited by an individual’s ability to abstract and imagine symbols and concepts (pp.382-383). Thus, oral culture is therefore characterised by repetitiveness, ritualistic symbols and practices, and a perpetual focus on the present as a result of the communication technology utilised at the time. What is apparent, however, is that the emergence of technology is preceded by a cultural need. It is therefore contrary to periodization analysis, which treats technology as the cause (p.380), rather than the outcome of a cultural need. Within writing and print culture, on the other hand, the impetus for a new technology was caused by the changing social arrangements from nomadic tribes to agricultural settlements, which required the need for tools to facilitate the management and control of resources (Lewis, 2002). Unlike oral language, writing and print technology are not bound by time nor limited by the constraints of memory and personal interaction. Thus, information dissemination became easier allowing the spread of ideas and ideologies. However, since it requires skill and equipment, it also created division and dominance, with its underpinning concepts of power and isolation. Hence, print and writing culture is characterised with durability, new economic arrangements, reason, and competing ideologies; as well as authorship, privilege, societal division, and ultimately power (pp.384-385). However, despite the emergence of writing and print culture, oral culture was merely subjugated as opposed to destroyed, giving it a new cultural meaning. With the spread of colonisation, the need for global means of communication became apparent. Thus came about the invention of the telegraph, which liberated communication from the limits of space and time. Telegraphy is therefore diversified, with respect to the emergence of various knowledge, identities, ideologies, and cultures from different parts of the world; although homogenised, insofar as news sources are concerned, creating large global conglomerates who can acquire the new technology; and minimalist, encouraging impersonal communication (pp.387, 388). However, it also encouraged the commercialisation of society. The culture of telegraphy therefore, by overcoming the bounds of time and space, created new formations of meanings – telecommunications, newsprints, and global news media conglomerates (p.387). The need for two-way field communications, on the other hand, leads to further development of the telegraph into a point-to-point radio system. As Lewis notes, reasons for its development include: the need to bring “personality” to the isolation and alienation brought about by the telegraph; the need for the government and large commercial conglomerates to reach the private sphere through families; the need to find new markets for consumer commodities; and the need for the government to gain direct access to its citizenry (pp.388-389). As a result, broadcast culture, through advertising and public broadcasting proliferate both “commodity sexualisation” and personality politics. It is important to note, however, that just like previous forms of new technologies such as oral language, the telegraph still existed within this new cultural formation by performing new functions. Looking into the interaction between new technologies and culture, Lewis (2002) therefore rejects the determinist approaches towards technology. He agrees with Michaels’ (1986) work in citing that instead of producing revolutionary and predictable outcomes, technology produces cultural tensions and transformations that are both dynamic and fluid (Lewis, 2002: p.391). Culture, in this respect, is therefore transitory and this transition is facilitated by new technologies (p.393). Thus, as illustrated by the Warlpiri people of Australia, technology does not necessarily have to follow a linear progression; instead technology will be adopted and rejected by people insofar as it can be assimilated into their own cultural formations (p.391). As Lewis notes, different people adopt new technologies differently (p.393). Hence, given that the adoption of technology into a culture creates its own formation of meaning, the introduction of new technologies such as modern media can therefore create both positive and negative effects depending on how people give meaning to them. Cultural formation is therefore seen as an open system as opposed to the closed model of technological determinists. The openness of cultural formation, insofar as new technologies are concerned, is best illustrated with today’s new technology – the Internet. In this respect, Lewis identifies two general streams of arguments. On one hand, some critics hail the emergence of global computer networks as enhancing democracy, creating virtual communities, and liberating the subject from the constraints of modernism. In this respect, contrary to broadcast media, which has become inherently “positioned”, or televisual broadcast media, which reduced democracy to personality politics; the internet, in the form of hypertext is deemed more democratic (pp. 394, 395, 400). Citing Poster’s (1995) arguments, Lewis identifies this stream of thought with the construction of virtual communities, with its own virtual geography where members are bound through personal interests, values, or predispositions (p.401). New technology, particularly the internet, has created a free public sphere where individuals take on new forms of identity – the virtual identity (402, 403). As Lewis notes, new technology, and its potential to transform human knowledge also brings about the potential to construct new forms of identity that are abstract and eternally flexible, such as a transgender and ageless cyborg (pp. 404, 405). Hence, indicating a form of digital utopia. On the other hand, there are those who see new technology as creating an essentially transgressive formation of cultures and sub-cultures that may require scrutiny and caution. Referring to hacker, cyberpunk, and cracker sub-cultures, whose aim is to destabilise the ordinary use of computer network technologies, these sub-cultures represent social practices, identity formation, and meaning making that revolves around the rebellious punk rock concepts of the youth (p.406). Focused on anarchy, global protests, and language warfare, such transgressive cultures aim at deconstructing modern concepts that constitute culture. In turn, it has also created a new formation of sexuality where its unregulated production and consumption has removed the constraints that hold back broadcast culture (p.410). Hence, while Lewis agrees that interactive computer networks, like the Internet, is a new technology that is filled with immense potential in creating the digital utopia, such that it today what capitalism was in the past, he still rejects technological determinism arguments that this utopia is inevitable (p.412). He warns of the fact that like any new technology, the internet is still an enabling technology, whose use is plagued with contradictions and is victim to the digital divide (p.414). Nonetheless, he still sees the Internet’s potential to disseminate culture and recommends improving access to the Internet and computer network technologies. Lewis Barker on the Subject: A Critical Discussion Lewis’ piece therefore provides a comprehensive account of the interaction between technology and culture and the impact such interaction has on society and identity. As he argued, understanding this relationship entails understanding the social arrangements prior to the emergence of the new technology and the effect of the new technology on the formation of meaning through its spatial and temporal effects on communication, all of which depends on how individuals in a particular culture accept these technologies. Focusing on how individuals in a society accept culture therefore requires understanding the rationality of individuals. In this respect, Lewis echoes Winch’s (1970) view that the “standards of rationality in different societies do not always coincide” (p.97). Thus, new technologies will always be viewed differently by different societies, which in turn will lead to different impacts on their cultural formation. As Sahlins (1995) notes, “different cultures” have “different rationalities” (p.14). Lewis therefore rejects technological determinism because technology will be assimilated into cultural formation differently by individuals. Hence, just as broadcast technology was viewed differently by the Warlpiri people of Australia, the Europeans also viewed the poison oracle differently from the Zande (Winch, 1970). More than providing a survey of the interaction between different forms of new technology with culture, Lewis therefore gives important observations on the methodological approach used in studying cultural formation and new technology. In this respect, Lewis provides a better understanding of the formation of identity, as illustrated by Hall (1994), in which the purity of the subject becomes irrelevant to “the recognition of a necessary heterogeniety and diversity; by a conception of identity which lives with and through, not despite, difference; by hybridity” (p.401). This is echoed by Lewis, whom in rejecting technological determinism necessarily calls for a process of articulation, as Rutherford (1990) calls it, to better understand culture and technology. However, unlike Rutherford who views articulation in a manner that rejects a priori notions of “social, political, and class formations”, Lewis seems to call for a process that takes these arrangements into account because as he argues, with respect to technology, new technologies often emerges as a response to particular cultural needs rooted in the social conditions in a prevalent time (Rutherford 1990: 19; Lewis 2002: 382). Thus, in explaining whether the current new technology – interactive computer networks – will lead to the “death of the subject” or not, if the new technology will create a more democratic community, or if the new technology will lead to greater homogeneity or heterogeneity, Lewis (2002) seems to consider these as irrelevant questions, with respect to culture and identity formation. Instead of giving answers to these questions, he argues that the more important issues involve how these new technologies can be used and given value within the context of culture to exploit its possibilities for cultural expression, while at the same time using its so-called transgressive and destructive effects to challenge modern concepts and achieve our cultural needs (p.418). In the words of Lukes (2000), this entails asking “what are the factors at work that inhibit its being effective or more effective than it is” (p.16). In this regard, Lewis (2002) seems to provide an answer – the technological gap that seems to be inherent with every new technology (418). As Lewis (2002) has illustrated throughout his essay, one of the inherent problems with new technology is that like the emergence of capitalism, it has suffered from the problem of access. While capitalism deepened global inequalities in treating labour and capital as commodities, the technological gap present among individuals, across societies, and among countries, has created the same effect on information as a result to the limited access to these technologies (Lull, 2000). The telegraph, when it first came about, for example, despite its messianic promise, has created more opportunities for centralisation and control because its high costs created limited access (Lewis, 2002). Thus, as a more powerful technology, interactive computer networks can therefore produce this same negative effect at a greater intensity because of the same technological gap. Hence, if one considers the problem of democracy as a cultural need, it will be difficult to address this problem if the technology itself – interactive computer networks – is not accessible to individuals. Hence, going back to the argument against technological determinism, while technology does not entail determined effects, it still has the potential to be used determinedly for the service of dominant groups who can control and access them. As Schirato (2003) notes, “technology is neither neutral, nor committed to the Truth, but is deployed in a way that is always interested, because it is always made available for someones profit or power or pleasure” (p.146). Conclusion Technology is undoubtedly a very powerful tool within the context of cultural formation. As Lewis (2002) has illustrated, its spatial and temporal effect on communication affected the language and discourse, inherent to culture. However, while it is easy to consider technology as a revolutionary tool, which can change culture, it must be assessed not in terms of technological determinism, but in a manner that necessarily rejects this view. By understanding technology and culture in these terms, one can go beyond asking what effects technology has on culture towards the more important question of determining how these technologies can be made to serve our cultural needs. This therefore entails addressing the cultural gap inherent with every new technology. Thus, in asking whether or not interactive computer networks will lead to a digital utopia or dystopia, it seems that the outcome can go both ways. Furthermore, given that different societies have their own rationality and cultural needs, using new technologies differently and at different times; interactive computer networks can also have different impacts on different societies and cultures. What is imperative, as Lewis (2002) notes, is that new technologies and its effect on culture are critically assessed, with respect to a society’s cultural needs. Word Count: 2,483 words (including title and sub-topics) References Hall, S. (1994) ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’. In P. Williams and L. Chrisman (eds.). Colonial Discourse & Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. New York: Columbia University Press. Lewis, J. (2002) ‘The culture of New Communications Technology’. In Cultural Studies: The Basics. 2nd edition. London: Sage Publications, Ltd. Lukes, S. (2000) ‘Different cultures, different rationalities?’ History of the Human Sciences. 13(1): pp. 3–18. Lull, J. (2000) Media, Communication, Culture: A Global Approach. Cambridge: Polity. Rutherford, J. (1990) ‘A Place Called Home: Identity and the Culture Politics of Difference’. In J. Rutherford (ed.). In Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. London: Lawrence & Wishart. pp. 9-27. Sahlins, M. (1995) How ‘Natives’ think. About Captain Cook for example. London: University of Chicago Press. Schirato, T. (2003) ‘The Global Subject and Culture’. In Understanding Globalization. London: Sage Publications. pp. 131-160. Winch, P. (1970) ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’. In B. Wilson (ed.). Rationality. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. pp. 78-111. Read More