Against
the machine: Being human in the age of
the electronic mob
By Lee Siegel
Spiegel & Grau (2008)
We are all under attack from the “electronic
mob,” according to Lee Siegel.
Lots has been written about the democratic
potential of the internet. For example, Howard
Rheingold’s book on the topic is called Smart
Mobs: the next social revolution.
While boosters of the internet talk about
“demassification,” in fact it produces more standardization. Many of the information sources on the
internet provide information through algorithms based on popularity—such as
Google search returns. The New York
Times online replaces “All the news that’s fit to print” with sidebars giving
links to the 10 most e-mailed, blogged and searched items.
The individual gets customized information through tools like Google Reader—what Nicholas Negroponte calls “The Daily Me” and others call “crowdsourcing.” Siegel has another word for it—the “youniverse” that only reflects back to the user what he/she wants to hear. Mass customization is really a new form of standardization.
But it is a standardization that at the
same time promotes an extreme individualism through the illusion of choice,
access and increased opportunity for individual expression. These produce the feeling of individual agency,
but not the reality. The anonymity of
putting out ideas without a real name attached, as is often the case,
encourages a lack of accountability and reflects an absence of the positive
influence of institutional ethics.
So what does Siegel want? Siegel sees his work as being one of
unmasking “the emperor’s new modem.”
Like Neil Postman, who laments “the surrender
of culture to technology,” Siegel wants some institutions that operate on ethical
principles and social responsibility. For example, Siegel contends that the “the
culture needs authoritative institutions like a powerful newspaper.” Without that, he suggests, we are subjected to
the “electronic mob.”
Yes, but….. Short of a total global
ecological disaster, we are not likely to abandon the new tools and
networks. But we can try to shape them,
to work at creating responsible, democratic and ethical communication systems
that are not new forms of commodification and profit centres.
Ironically, Siegel himself was caught up in 2006 in a blogging situation that was not either responsible or ethical, in the view of many. He had been a blogger at the
Siegel created a pseudonym and joined in the blog wars in defense of himself and against what he called ‘blogofascism.’ Creating a pseudonym to defend your self is labeled as creating a ‘sock puppet’ and he got fired from the magazine when it was exposed.
Despite this, Lee Siegel does us a favour
by challenging the hyper-promotion of the new technologies by those who profit
from them and by those who are uncritical proponents of a new world, without
looking below the surface at the social dangers that lurk in the very structure
of the technology. Without challenges
like his, we will never get to the task of shaping technology to fit our social
values, rather than the other way around.
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