Lecture Three, Thinking and Being

My horoscope the other day qouted the French author Andre Gide, "Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose site of the shore."

Oh, uhm, I meant sight.

There was a slide in this weeks lecture material which immediately reminded me of last weeks content. Illuminating Harold Innis' idea of "monopolies of knowledge" a point reads, "those who control knowledge (all information and data in addition to the products of literacy and science) through the dominant media of a given society also control reality, in that they are in a position to define what knowledge is legitimate. Thus, monopolies of knowledge encourage centralization of power."

But the internet is supposedly democratic! We are all allowed to write what we want, read what we want, communicate in whatever way we want, watch porn, write anonymous letters to the world, organize hippy festivals in the desert, find the movie you want to watch for free, find the right hate group you've been looking for..

But, and this is not a radical idea, there is a level of control which exists. Ex. A) google re-writing history ( a fatal mistake for many ) after Huricanne Katrina. My issue with googlemaps presenting pictures of New Orleans before the huricanne as the image of what it looked like at the after the hurricane is that it misleads anyone outside of the state. One would look at those pictures and believe the huricanne was not as bad as the media made it sound or that aid was not needed; countless issues arise.

When things like that happen on the internet, it is cause for alarm. We are all quite well adapted to it, it seems though. Even if google manipulating images is brought up at the water cooler, kudos to those who take an interest in questioning 'democratic anonymous authorities' but we still take it all with strides. What's a girl to do, though?

I brought up Andre Gide and last week's lecture for a reason. When Everett discusses the "technological magic" or the "click theory" and we question Innis' idea of the "monopoly of knowledge" then I wonder how far we actually are in a digital world. I think maybe I should revisit Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto, because I am finally starting to question the effectiveness of the digital world to almost 'infiltrate' (what a funny word) our world and practises and everyday doings! Digitality et al forms the shores we wander on daily. I'd like to find a new ocean.

I claim the 'computerization of everything,' I do. Everett claims digitextuality is taking over the way we percieve the world, and Innis informs us that there is such a thing as a monopoly of knowledge created by those who control the dominent media.

It's a little eerie and I fear I sound like a conspiracy-theoriest, but whose world do we live in?

It seems like although I never play video games and stopped reading sci-fi novels after I turned 16 ( because I did read them before that, I won't lie) I'm still living in a virtual world.

I just wonder if our imaginations are being co-opted without us even realizing it. The escape we all used, especially as kids, will soon be dreaming of digital paradises, and then we'll be so worked over that the organic alternative to the digital world (being a day dream believer) will be lost to a Jurrasic Park, sans dinosaurs or leafy trees but with a plentitude of wires, ear buds, and a jungle of zeros and ones.