Power to the People

A reflection on Nancy Baym’s Personal Connections in a Digital Age: Chapter Two and Amber Case’s lecture: “We are all cyborgs now”.

Web 2.0 is certainly a classification of “new media”, or better defined by Nancy Baym: “a new medium of communication” (Baym 22). To many, something new in one’s culture can be either intimidating or refreshing, and often both. Although the idea of Web 2.0 and the services of the Internet are nothing particularly new, both concepts are constantly evolving, keeping people on their toes about whether to feel liberated or violated by the media.

In discussing the relationship between media and culture, one must dissect each term to its basic affiliations. Through a modern perspective, media is often associated with technology, which is then associated with machinery. In turn, culture is associated with society, which is then associated with people. Therefore, the essential relationship between media and culture is linked to the comparison between machines and people.

People have always used tools and machinery to enhance their physical skills. However, as cyborg anthropologist, Amber Case, explains, new media is “not an extension of the physical self, but an extension of the mental self.” Case also bluntly concludes that “we are all cyborgs” due to our use of technology for social enhancement. By use of the word “cyborg”, does this mean that the bridge between people and machinery has been demolished?

True, it seems that people are under the command of their technology. With mobile phones and laptops at their fingertips, many people are on-call twenty-four seven. Many people have complained about a text message that woke them up at four o’clock in the morning, causing great disturbance. However, although many people may complain, they will always have the choice and ability to turn their phones off at any point in time. Though some people may argue that they “must” be available through technology in case something important happens, Baym describes a significant amount of Twitter posts as being “pointless babble” (30). This same category of message can be easily applied to text messages and other instant notifications.

From a dystopian perspective, people are becoming machines and therefore culture is becoming media. From a realist standpoint, this perspective is not so negatively accurate. New media has become a part of modern culture just as sports and fashion have. People can choose their role in different sports, whether they play, coach, watch, promote, fund, or ignore. People have similar choices in fashion based on their personal definition of style whether it is trendy, casual, athletic, et cetera.

People will always have choices in handling new media and technology. These choices are what give the people the power over the machine. Though the machine may emanate signals to make people believe that they want it and need it all of the time, people have the choice to separate themselves from their technology. People are the creators of machines. Therefore, it is impossible for the machine or technology or media to have complete control over people, society and culture.

In a society where technological demands are used to communicate culture, this notion may be hard to believe, but from a soft deterministic view, media and culture shape each other. Reflectively, technology and society shape each other, allowing machines and people shape each other. More accurately, in the creation process, people shape machines for communication, and in turn, machines help to shape people’s reach and mobility of communication.

The media has not yet taken over. People still have the power to shape their culture through their choices to use and manipulate their machines.