RSS Feed MenuCapitalism and the internet have largely defeated Big Brother’s forces of information control. As our eyes bulge at the all you can eat data buffet, though, can society muster the discipline to eat the veggies that make government of, by, and for the people possible, or will we citizens fatten ourselves on endless desserts that inhibit our capacity for active democracy? Ideas matter, and we must make sure that they continue to matter. Technology must serve ideas, not sever them from the public discourse.
Although a Chinese teenager trying to Google “Tiananmen Square 1989” might well disagree, on the whole, more information is available now in more places than ever before. Shakespeare and SportsCenter, Plato and pornography, all are available in the pocket of a middle-class Westerner or at the African net café. In the noteworthy year of 1984, Neil Postman surveyed the pre-web world and bemoaned the rise of an image-based media that was dulling the population’s literary-rooted decision making skills. Amusing Ourselves to Death saw the coming defeat of centralized propaganda but feared the continued rise of a Brave New World:
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.
Since that time, the internet has opened up unparalleled access for voters who want to drill down beyond TV sound bites, and the de-centralization of the media makes information control much more difficult. Unfortunately, these benefits are being washed away in a flood of frivolous noise that threatens to distract any thought process well before it reaches a critical level. Tightly constructed accessible arguments that once flowed to millions from a William F. Buckley or a C.S. Lewis still exist, but such nutrient rich meals must compete with mounds of cheap cerebral carbs on YouTube and TMZ. Apple’s famous 1984 Super Bowl ad spoke of technology defeating an Orwellian order. 2009’s Alec in Hululand shows that we are instead happily skipping down Aldous Huxley’s dystopian path; disturbingly content to laugh at our inability to do anything else.
Wisely, the RNC recently convened an open technology summit. Obama’s techies used social networking and texting to effectively mobilize a plugged-in generation around vague calls for hope and change. The challenge for the GOP will be to master technology in the service of relevant conservative principles while resisting the downward gravitational pull that the medium itself exerts on the message.
Recently, via what appears to be a fair election (following a very unfair campaign), the people of Venezuela paved the way for an ongoing Hugo Chavez Show. Although it might prove to be a defining moment for an entire continent, few North Americans noticed because an octuplet mom demands our attention first. Blessedly, our political traditions are strong enough, for the time being, to insure that Barack Obama is in the White House no more than eight years. And this President, despite his sizable cult of personality, is certainly no Hugo the Great. Yet, if we spend this time in the political wilderness merely looking to Twitter the next great Republican one word slogan, our ideas, rather than turning the tide of government expansion and societal decline, will simply be swept away by the waves of distraction.
JJWFromME // Feb 23, 2009 at 9:45 am
I doubt that Bill Buckley belongs in the same sentence as C. S. Lewis. And as for “Technology must serve ideas, not sever them from the public discourse,” I think technology must serve *reality first*, and then ideas. The problem with the modern conservative movement is that it couldn’t see beyond its ideas–its *ideology*–which blinded it from reality. This was one of the most perverse aspects about the Bush administration (among many): http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/149156.php Your point about Huxley, however, is right on. His dystopia is much more relevant to today than Orwell’s. But movement conservatives used the tools of distraction that Huxley warned us about long before liberals did. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cuG_Dp2Gqk#t=2m35s
The only thing liberals could then do is to go *around* the reality-blinding, “New Class” that conservatives had created:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/jim_sleeper/tanenhaus_neo-conservatives_conservatism
…and reverse the “assault on reason”, and try to create something that would get things reality-based once again. As opposed to: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/14/palin-fox-news-newsweek
There is not just one “reality based community.” Anyone who attempts to live a realistic life that is not based on fantasy and propaganda qualifies for membership in something that is the very opposite of monolithic. By the way, I think a lot of Obama’s appeal lies in the fact that he’s the anti-George Bush. He makes a statement that We Are Not George Bush–a statement that a lot of people can passionately get behind.
sinz54 // Feb 23, 2009 at 11:00 am
JJWFromME: Obama’s “NotBush” appeal will wear thin real fast, as did Reagan’s “NotCarter” appeal and Lyndon Johnson’s “NotGoldwater” appeal. Defining yourself in terms of what you are against works well in a political campaign. But if you win the election, then once you start governing, the electorate’s problems are now your problems, not your predecessor’s problems. Sooner rather than later, you have to unveil your own philosophy of governing, not just reminding the electorate how your predecessor screwed up. Otherwise, a strong GOP candidate could emerge in 2012 claiming to be “NotObama”–and millions of folks like me would respond to THAT.
sinz54 // Feb 23, 2009 at 11:06 am
I find the author’s suspicion of the Internet puzzling. The notion that Americans always enjoyed reading about personal-interest stories rather than international affairs, didn’t start with the Internet. Tabloids and sensationalist newspapers have existed in this country for a long time before the Internet. And the Internet has already proven its worth for conservatives. It was the conservative blogs like LittleGreenFootballs that exposed 60 Minutes’ purported “Bush National Guard documents” as forgeries in 2004. That led directly to the firing of producer Mary Mapes, and ultimately to the resignation of reporter Dan Rather. The public ridicule of these liberals (and of those many liberals who had rushed to their defense) might even have provided crucial votes to help Bush win re-election in 2004. LittleGreenFootballs and a few other blogs also exposed the “fauxtography” scandal of 2006, in which stringers for the wire service agencies were caught doctoring photographs of the Israel-Lebanon War to paint Israel in a bad light. The blogosphere performs a valuable function as a watchdog over the mainstream liberal media, which is predisposed to favor liberals, hate conservatives, oppose Israel, and love the Third World.
JJWFromME // Feb 23, 2009 at 11:12 am
Yes, of course. You have to govern. But I’m happy to compare records between the parties on the ability to govern. Of course, the movement conservative New Class is working overtime to distort that record, in conflict with the facts:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/changes-in-money-wages-and-amity-shlaes/
And I expect it will continue to do so, ongoing with the present administration:
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/01/accounting_identities_and_straussian_economics.php
JJWFromME // Feb 23, 2009 at 11:20 am
I’m actually sympathetic with the idea that the Internet has the capacity to distract and distort, as well as communicate good ideas and the truth to the electorate. This dialog between Cass Sunstein and Henry Farell did a good job of discussing the upsides and downsides: http://crookedtimber.org/2008/03/03/deliberation-vs-participation-in-blogs/
sinz54 // Feb 23, 2009 at 6:02 pm
JJWfromME: All forms of human communication, not just the Internet, have the capacity to distract and distort–as well as the capacity to inform. It’s more a question of social networking than of the communication medium: Why are you communicating with others? What are your goals? What do you hope to gain? What do you hope they will gain? You may be trying to teach, or to inform–or perhaps to bamboozle and mislead. You could be doing any of those things while standing on a soapbox on a street corner. Or at a town meeting. Or you could be doing them on the Internet. There’s a tradeoff between communication just to debate ideas among folks with diverse viewpoints, versus forming a political movement in which all folks are united around some common policies or principles. The former is good for brainstorming and keeping open minds, but it has trouble coalescing into a movement because there are always lots of dissenters. The latter is quick to activism, but too prone to groupthink and self-righteousness. Among conservative blogs, New Majority seems to fall into the former category. RedState seems to fall into the latter category.
JJWFromME // Feb 24, 2009 at 8:10 am
Great quote from Postman’s book talking about the limitations of broadcast media: “[F]orms of public discourse regulate and even dictate what kind of content can issue from such forms. To take a simple example of what this means, consider the primitive technology of smoke signals. While I do not know exactly what content was once carried in the smoke signals of American Indians, I can safely guess that it did not include philosophic argument. Puffs of smoke are insufficiently complex to express ideas on the nature of existence, and even if they were not, a Cherokee philosopher would run short of either wood or blankets long before he reached his second axiom. You cannot use smoke to do philosophy. Its form excludes the content.” The Internet is a medium that allows for much more sophisticated content than TV and radio, and with many more participants, too, which much more access to knowledge. Part of the success of movement conservatism has been to make a virtue out of the limitations of broadcast media. You can get away with speaking in grunts, because the media you used was congenial for that. It’s a different media atmosphere now ; ).
dendup // Feb 24, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Marshall McCllullan was able to categorize media as either hot or cool. Radio was hot becauseyou hear what is actually said. (My experience of Reaganwas quite different than most people’s because we didn’t have a TV at the time.) MM said TV was “cool” because the resolution was low enough so the viewer’s interpetation of was fequently stronger than the actual content. Kennedy benifitted from this in his debate with Nixon because it was easier for viewers to project their hopes etc onto him rather than the “hot” Nixon. The internet confound this schematic. The resolution is extremely high, and so is “hot”, but the viewer interacts actively with the acctual content making it “cool”. It’s no accident that Republicans do well on radio since their presciptive approach fits with the “hot” medium. If they want to do well on the internet, hey need to findw way to let the viewer activelyinteract ie change the content. The stronger one’s insistence on “first principles”, the harder it is to positiely involve some one who does not already share them.