_Critical Cyberculture Studies_ edited by Adrienne Massanari, David Silver, and Steve Jones examines critical approaches and methods in cyberculture studies. The contributors’ positions on the diffusion of new media and new technologies vary throughout. All contributors, however, call for theories and methods that examine new media and technologies from a wide breadth of epistemological and theoretical perspectives. In general, it appears that new media studies are characterized by an exceptional openness towards theory and method. This experimental approach towards theory and epistemology inspires a valuable interdisciplinary approach toward new media that offers a nuanced and prescient understanding of evolving technological and social situations. For example, Heidi J. Figueroa Sarriera’s essay from this anthology warns against discussing the possibilities of cyberculture as distinct from material reality. This is a properly ontological claim -a claim about the nature of reality. Sarriera's argument seemingly dispels common notions of technological innovations, such as that they are asubjective and distinct from the human subjects and from nature. To Sarriera, the machinic and the natural are all one. They are all processes of production. In this unity, there is no such thing as either man or nature now, only a process that produces the one within the other. Sarriera identifies an ontological immanence of the Information Age: humans and machines are all one process. In other words, there is no such thing is a human nature that is separate from machines. Normally we think of technology’s being as a third realm, not human and not natural. It is seemingly conventional wisdom that machines act of their own accord. But Sarriera and the contributors of this section of the book do not consider new technologies to be anonymous and asubjective. In other words, subjects do not stand behind these machines, but rather create them, work within them, and interact with them (or don’t) in an infinite chain of production. Considering their genealogy, all machines are created by other machines and other subjects in an infinite dialectic of production. In this selection of essays, Beth E. Kolko, similarly claims in, “Cultural Considerations in Internet Policy and Design: A Case Study from Central Asia,” that the slower speed at which people from non-Western cultures adopt technology is related to the fact that technological interfaces are designed using Western signification. This further illustrates my point from “Thought Paper One,” that technological innovations and media infrastructure are only as functional as the society that creates, maintains and innovates them. In recent years, corporate concentration of American-based culture industries has seemingly been dominant in this process. Media consolidation’s encroachment into, or engulfment of previously autonomous developing spaces impacts all levels of the economic periphery’s civic life and culture (such as that found in Central Asia). As Kolko argues, developing economies have been characterized as being isolated and with low productivity with respect to First World standards. The developing world represents a Sisyphean challenge, or an insurmountable process of developing an endogenous or locally integrated and successful information technology system that can then integrate itself successfully into the global market. Historical and global forces have seemingly created dependent markets in these regions with little regard to local relevance or capacity for globally competitiveness. The processes of new media development and regional hegemony has “real-world” effects on lived space by effecting personal, cultural, and state sovereignty as traditional values and customs are undermined in the face of Western hegemony. In the way I see how the natural, technological, and social world relate among each other, a plethora of economic, social, and technological forces crash into each other, and negotiate with each other to form ecologies: among community members, within institutions and among nations states. Technologies are only as functional as the society that creates, maintains and innovates them. This is the issue with cross cultural transfers of technologies; they change social systems in places they do not originate in and with subjugate consequences. Some technological optimists argue that mere access to technological apparatuses will inspire the economic periphery to become more information rich and, consequently, economically competitive in the global market. However, if civic empowerment and competitive economies are the goal, then, as Kolko and I have argured, perhaps addressing state policies and business procedures that systematically engender inequalities among individuals and nation-states, that are clustered among predictable demographic characteristics, is the first thing to address, rather than addressing why individuals or regions are incapable of accessing technology in ways that empower them.
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_Critical Cyberculture Studies_ edited by Adrienne Massanari, David Silver, and Steve Jones examines critical approaches and methods in cyberculture studies. The contributors’ positions on the diffusion of new media and new technologies vary throughout. All contributors, however, call for theories and methods that examine new media and technologies from a wide breadth of epistemological and theoretical perspectives. In general, it appears that new media studies are characterized by an exceptional openness towards theory and method. This experimental approach towards theory and epistemology inspires a valuable interdisciplinary approach toward new media that offers a nuanced and prescient understanding of evolving technological and social situations.
For example, Heidi J. Figueroa Sarriera’s essay from this anthology warns against discussing the possibilities of cyberculture as distinct from material reality. This is a properly ontological claim -a claim about the nature of reality. Sarriera's argument seemingly dispels common notions of technological innovations, such as that they are asubjective and distinct from the human subjects and from nature. To Sarriera, the machinic and the natural are all one. They are all processes of production. In this unity, there is no such thing as either man or nature now, only a process that produces the one within the other. Sarriera identifies an ontological immanence of the Information Age: humans and machines are all one process. In other words, there is no such thing is a human nature that is separate from machines. Normally we think of technology’s being as a third realm, not human and not natural. It is seemingly conventional wisdom that machines act of their own accord. But Sarriera and the contributors of this section of the book do not consider new technologies to be anonymous and asubjective. In other words, subjects do not stand behind these machines, but rather create them, work within them, and interact with them (or don’t) in an infinite chain of production.
Considering their genealogy, all machines are created by other machines and other subjects in an infinite dialectic of production. In this selection of essays, Beth E. Kolko, similarly claims in, “Cultural Considerations in Internet Policy and Design: A Case Study from Central Asia,” that the slower speed at which people from non-Western cultures adopt technology is related to the fact that technological interfaces are designed using Western signification. This further illustrates my point from “Thought Paper One,” that technological innovations and media infrastructure are only as functional as the society that creates, maintains and innovates them. In recent years, corporate concentration of American-based culture industries has seemingly been dominant in this process. Media consolidation’s encroachment into, or engulfment of previously autonomous developing spaces impacts all levels of the economic periphery’s civic life and culture (such as that found in Central Asia). As Kolko argues, developing economies have been characterized as being isolated and with low productivity with respect to First World standards. The developing world represents a Sisyphean challenge, or an insurmountable process of developing an endogenous or locally integrated and successful information technology system that can then integrate itself successfully into the global market. Historical and global forces have seemingly created dependent markets in these regions with little regard to local relevance or capacity for globally competitiveness. The processes of new media development and regional hegemony has “real-world” effects on lived space by effecting personal, cultural, and state sovereignty as traditional values and customs are undermined in the face of Western hegemony.
In the way I see how the natural, technological, and social world relate among each other, a plethora of economic, social, and technological forces crash into each other, and negotiate with each other to form ecologies: among community members, within institutions and among nations states. Technologies are only as functional as the society that creates, maintains and innovates them. This is the issue with cross cultural transfers of technologies; they change social systems in places they do not originate in and with subjugate consequences.
Some technological optimists argue that mere access to technological apparatuses will inspire the economic periphery to become more information rich and, consequently, economically competitive in the global market. However, if civic empowerment and competitive economies are the goal, then, as Kolko and I have argured, perhaps addressing state policies and business procedures that systematically engender inequalities among individuals and nation-states, that are clustered among predictable demographic characteristics, is the first thing to address, rather than addressing why individuals or regions are incapable of accessing technology in ways that empower them.
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