Society

As is no doubt obvious by now, access alone is an inadequate way to think about the digital divide (even if it is the dominant policy perspective in this country).

Other central concerns involve empowerment, literacy, attitudes toward technology, perceived utility of content and a myriad of other issues related to the extent to which technology is embedded within a social or cultural context.

In other words, "communication as culture," again.

The Society Online chapter suggests that people of color are both using and being empowered by the Internet ... but in ways that may differ from white Americans' use.

* Is this a function of the fact that the online demographic for people of color skews very young?

* What are the implications for the future of a medium that, within our own country, is increasingly multicultural?

* How do issues of commodification (of both content and users) affect the self-construction of various social groups online?

* The author uses the metaphor of an airline, with economy, business and first-class users. What strategies would be effective for moving people up from "economy" class (where people function mostly as consumers of content and products)? Do the "airlines" of the Internet (who would be ...?) have any incentive to pursue such strategies? Is there a viable business model for a first-class airline?

The Warschauer reading on the digital divide also makes the point that the key to successful diffusion of technology is the integration of technology into existing social systems. People must have reasons to use it and the ability to do so.

In particular, literacy, including computer literacy, is a social practice, not just a cognitive skill. The meaning and value of computer use varies depending on the social context in which it is introduced and used.

* What sorts of policies might be needed to create incentives for use in diverse cultures?

* What role, if any, should Western societies play?

In his JCI interview, Carey touches on several of the themes he developed more fully in Communication as Culture and elsewhere. For instance:

Technology is at the center of culture. Technology embodies, realizes and expresses both the meanings and practices of our lives.

In particular, technology is central to the American creed. Our national story is embedded in the history of technology.

Technology works as both a symbol OF reality (it represents how the world works) and a symbol FOR reality (it shapes and creates that reality, too).

Time and space are social phenomena. Modern communication technologies contain a spatial bias: They erase geographical barriers and boundaries. Oral communication connects people over time.

What do you think?

Do you agree that "technology has come to stand for the nation in North America" (p. 120)? Is technology central to the story of other countries in the same way?

Have we lost forever the notion of a "Great Audience" that national television created? What does its replacement look like? What is the lost by such a transition and what is gained?

Are we, as Carey suggests, suffering "a cultural meltdown" as a result of (among other things) these changes?

Carey says that each communication technology shapes interaction "by placing strict constraints on what can be created, the arena in which it can be distributed, and the ability to store such creations in collective memory" (pp. 123-124). Do you agree? What are the implications of such technological constraints?

Carey says our society is becoming disembodied: "The human body has been fully abstracted from communication," which has been mentalized, "with consequences we do not as yet fully comprehend" (p. 125).

Want to take a crack at that one?

Communication technologies put pressures on geographic borders in various ways. Carey says this makes democracy more problematic; although geographic communities serve real human needs, virtual ones need not. Agree? Is physical territory a requirement for democracy?

"We have both more and less privacy" (p. 129). Although we are alone more (particularly when we use our media), our lives are increasingly open to inspection.

Do you agree that computers both enhance the power of the individual and deplete our individuality?

The article about the Argentine mailing list suggests that seeing technology as shaping us is simplistic -- and so is seeing us as shaping technology. Instead, there is a "mutual shaping" process, involving continual interactions in which users both transform and adapt to technological artifacts.

Members of online communities draw on cultural elements to delineate and sustain those communities. They do that largely by foregrounding “banal” aspects of their real-world culture (a cartoon, café society, vernacular speech patterns) -- things that people in geographic communities may take for granted as part of everyday life.

Can an effective national identity by constructed or maintained online? How does it avoid becoming isolated from the "home" culture? How does it avoid idealizing that culture?

Most of you are new to Iowa City, and some of you are from other cultures. What do you think of Boczkowski's idea that it is the banalities of everyday life in our "homeland" that we seek to preserve and reconstitute through our online (or other) communications?

In your experiences, how do online technologies facilitate or enable (or not) such a process -- or other ways of remaining connected to a place in which you no longer live but to which you still feel tied?

Critics have charged that the Internet is a form of (or a carrier of) 21st century imperialism.

The United States dominated Web culture for much of the first decade. Today, North American users comprise less than a quarter of a total audience nearing one billion.

More than a third of online users today are in Asia, including 103 million in China. And there are more Europeans than North Americans online.

Nor are we the leaders in penetration rates (percentage of population online). Per capita, there are more Danes and Swedes online, for instance, than Americans.

Over the past five years, usage in the United States has roughly doubled. In China, it has increased 358 percent. In India, it has increased nearly 700 percent. In some smaller countries, such as the former Soviet republics, growth rates since 2000 have been as high as 11,000 percent.

Love usage data? Then you'll love www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Still, the Internet remains dominated by Western (and largely American) cultural and economic values.

That said, an online world is much less a matter of geography, or even nationhood, and more a matter of the sovereignty of information of various kinds.

What do you think?

What values are implicit (or explicit for that matter) in the Internet? Which, if any, of those values might be considered universal, and which are culture-specific?

Is there such a thing as too much information?

Can the Internet (or any technology) bring us closer together, or is that merely utopian rhetoric?

Can we share anything other than very specialized interests?

Does the Internet enhance multiculturalism -- or subvert it? Or a little of both ...?

Who will change the most through diffusion of a global medium: the traditionally powerful or the traditionally powerless?