Day Seven: Nakamura, cyberpunk, and internet culture

So, beyond a brief hand-wave at having read and enjoyed Snow Crash, Neuromancer, and both its sequels, I'm going to ignore most of what was said in class and focus my commentary on the last five minutes of class.

Because I can.

You can't stick a sign on everyone's keyboard saying "Leave your preexisting social constructions and schema at the door!" Culture, which is the real issue under discussion, is so ingrained into our very being that the idea that we can just set it aside and walk away is almost laughable. Even on the internet, where physical appearance is removed from the first impression on most forums, culture is inescapable.

This shouldn't be a terribly surprising fact. Communication is inherently a cultural act. Every comment is made in a cultural context, and it has been suggested (in a lit. crit work that I can't find a link for now), that without shared context, communication is impossible regardless of linguistic difficulties.

So, if we cannot leave our culture behind when we log on, does this mean that the Internet is a cultural dead-end? Are we doomed to remain stuck in last century's cultures forever?

No!

Culture is emerging in communities across the internet. One particular example that I'm a member of, a community which exists around a shared continuum of stories, provides a very good example. Though jump-started by revolving around a fictional continuum, we are beginning to generate our own culture. We have our own social structures, our own legendary figures (both fictional and real), and our own shared language which is approaching the incomprehensibility of the English spoken by biologists or computer scientists.

This is the true strength of the internet as a cultural machine. Old cultures will not magically reform or disappear, but the internet allows the creation of new cultures, based on interests and hobbies rather than geographical location. To paraphrase Randal Munroe (who draws a hilarious webcomic), I look forward to the day when "where are you from" can be answered with "the internet", and people ask "what part?" instead of "no, seriously."

Days three and four: Southland Tales

In the discussion at the end of day three, Shawn mentioned that the movie was full of amusing side-references for sharp observers. Having been enjoying it as a form of cinematic dadaism, I decided to reach for the big guns, the internet.

After a single-paragraph summary that only very loosely explained the matter, TVtropes summed up the movie as "an American Akira that manages to match the imagination and multiply the incomprehensibilty." It was at this point that I realized I was in trouble.

(As an aside, Dwayne-the-Rock-Johnson does the cutest pensive-look-and-finger-twiddle ever. That, right there, completely sold the character.)

But yes. Panopticism. An interesting movie to consider, as it so deliberately plays on the ideas of surveillance, voyeurism, and a media-driven culture. My first (and thus probably trivial) observation was that all the techs who work at USIdent wear transparent lab coats - in a "who watches the watchers" moment, the very dress code at USIdent is designed to further reinforce the idea that secrets are not only bad for National Security (TM) but also completely impossible to keep.

Towards the end of the film, the news is spooling off weather reports of "record highs throughout the southland" as rain pours down. This was (to my mind) the culmination of a theme that was building throughout the entire film: surveillance systems fall apart because people are boring. The watchers, growing tired of yet another hour of jaywalker-alerts-at-43rd-and-Westlake switch over to watching Krysta Now! instead, and society, realizing this, falls apart in the background.

The riots at the end of the movie contrast with the abandoned USIdent control room to point out the other main problem with a panoptic system: Replacing enforcers with powerless eyes is all well and good until the rioters outnumber the enforcers. Panoptic dread is no replacement for a good RSA or two.

We didn't quite get to the end of the movie, but from what I've heard, the ending only makes things weirder. In response to a movie without a clear, concise ending, have a blog post without a clear, concise conclusion.

Day two - Panopticism, society, and crazy French dudes!

Pet Peeve Of The Day: "White People", once again. There's no real way around it, and it was probably the best brief summary of the situation possible, but I still see it as one of those big warning flags that a rant is incoming.

The main point I'd like to hit on, though, is when the guy said (a bit defensively) "What if I don't want to be a part of the system?" I was really tempted to say "there's a cell for you too." The whole "rebel against society" act/persona/whatever is so standardized it's nothing more than another facet of society, and still most definitely a panoptic structure in its own right. Example: "I'm a rebel, I own a Dell." It's laughable because in the little box of "I'm an artsy rebel against society", the Mac is the only acceptable computer. I'd continue on and talk about how Macs are nazi computers, but that's irony beside the point.

The other thing that I noticed - he was wearing a baseball hat backwards. Way to fit the stereotype of the rebel, there. When was the last time you saw a "rebel against society" wearing a fedora? Or a clown hat? Or an early renaissance jousting helm? Wake up! You're not rebelling against anything! You've bought into the commercial ideal of the iRebel, which is (to quote a friend), "just the same with a different paintjob". (And, I might add, more money spent on your part.)

And then we get into commercialization of culture, which was really covered quite nicely in class.

To the person who asked simply "Why?" when it came to Foucault: Why not? Are you so afraid of new ideas that you're trying to pretend they don't matter? Do you just not like to think?

Overall opinion on the class: Guardedly optomistic. This is making me think, and as long as it keeps going in that vein instead of turning into a platform for indoctrination, it'll be of more value than many classes I've taken.

Day one, post one, all that good stuff.

So, for those of you who happen to stumble upon this, this is a blog of my thoughts and commentary on AmSt (or DTC) 475, Digital Diversity, at WSU, summer 2010. Per Shawn's instructions, I won't hold back in critiquing anything, so if you're a classmate reading this, I'm really not very sorry at all for ripping your idea apart.

There were three big things that came up in the class that made me wince - the phrases "patriarchy", "white privilege", and "white people". Not to prejudge this course, but in my experience, when they come up with relation to a discussion on culture, they're huge, brightly-colored warning flags that someone is about to start ranting. I really have no desire to be told (yet again) that I'm a horrible person because I happen to be white, upper-middle-class, and Christian, especially not in a forum where I will (potentially) be graded on how closely I pay attention, take notes, and agree with it.

Speaking of which (and this is aimed specifically at Shawn), yes, I take notes on my laptop. I'm not on Facebook, instant messenger, WoW, or what have you. You're welcome to make spot checks if you wish. I just learn a lot more thoroughly when I write things down, and I can type much faster and more legibly than I can scribble. If you'd like, I can switch to pencil and paper, but the laptop is my preferred writing platform.

Being the free-form Wikipedia surfer that I am, I'd stumbled upon the idea of the Panopticon before, albeit without considering its social implications. I'm already looking forward to the discussion tomorrow (or later today, as the clock ticks), so I'll put off most of my discussion on it until then. However, this much was a possibly obvious insight: Society at large is a panopticon of sorts.

And I think that covers most of what I wanted to say...