Behind the News
Is Technology Ruining Your Morals?
Two recent articles by Lakshmi Chaudhry and Michael Agger show cultural criticism at its boorish, insipid worst.
By Gal Beckerman Fri 19 Jan 2007 04:57 PM
Like Chaudhry on the Internet, Agger believes that the technology, though it might have value in and of itself, has been corrupted by its users, sullied by the hands of the unwashed masses, the "thousand jackasses" it has apparently launched. Violence has now been caught on camera phone, ergo camera phones cause violence. "There have also been news reports of graphic videos showing beatings and accidents, such as an unfortunate boy in Birmingham, United Kingdom, who impaled himself on his bicycle," Agger writes. "Teenagers have employed cell phone cameras for old-fashioned humiliation, too: The parking lot fight is now captured on video and shared. To be an adult is to be grateful to have escaped the digital hazing of high school." We wonder where Agger went to school - in his pre-cellphonian vision of the world, boys apparently don't taunt other boys.
The camera phone has destroyed our private lives, made us lose perspective on what is important and what isn't (that old "democracy" problem again) and allowed us to bug celebrities more than ever ("Let's say you're in Asbury Park and you see Bruce Springsteen with his kids. The old impulse would have been to ask the Boss if you could take your picture with him. The new impulse is to snap the shot with a cell phone camera and sell it to a site like Scoopt. No wonder famous people don't want to hang out with us").
Both Chaudhry and Agger's arguments suffer from a deep confusion of cause and effect. Technology did not invent narcissism -- or idiocy, for that matter. People have always desired fame, long before American Idol and YouTube made it seem more accessible. People have always been voyeurs and exhibitionists. That the Internet and camera phones have facilitated the ability to show yourself, of that there is no doubt. But by blaming the technology instead of those who are using it, both are terribly misplacing their anger.
And there is something deeper that these essays reveal. They stink of a distrust of any technology that gives people power to project themselves, pining, it seems, for a golden age when only an elite had access to the means of cultural production (and projection). Well, the beautiful thing about democracy and capitalism is that the people get what the people want. The jingle bell farter does not become famous unless he can do something else (Chanukah tunes, maybe?) that makes his fame sustainable. The method of broadcasting the fart has nothing to do with it.
The rantings of Chaudhry and Agger are not really about cell phones and the Internet. They are about their own disgust with what they feel is an epidemic of bad taste that puts the likes of Paris Hilton on a pedestal. If people used YouTube and their blogs to intelligently debate the finer points of Habermas and Derrida, Chaudhry would chill out. If they used their cell phones to take photos of sunsets and not car crashes, Agger would be less derisive. What they are really expressing is their disgust with American cultural tastes. But writing honestly about that might actually expose them for what they are: prigs.
CJR
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Walter Underwood
Fri 19 Jan 2007 07:36 PMPerhaps Chaudhry and Aggers should read George W. S. Trow's essay "Within the Context of No Context". Way back in 1980, he observed that there were only two social grids that mattered in America, the grid of 200 million and the grid of intimacy. The only people who fully participate in both are celebrities. So of course we all want to be celebrities.
Lakshmi Chaudhry
Mon 22 Jan 2007 04:53 AMI'm puzzled by the interpretation of my article as an anti-technology screed. It's an odd way to characterize a piece that traces the complex ways in which cultural mores/ideas both shape and are shaped by technology, be it the gatling gun, the automobile or in this case the internet.
You write: "People have always desired fame, long before American Idol and YouTube made it seem more accessible." Umm, really? That is news indeed to someone has a whole section in her article on the long history of fame, and our preoccupation with celebrity.
The article also isn't so much about the internet, as the specific uses of online technology -- be it blogs, myspace, youtube etc. -- that have been the most successful in recent years and received the most media attention. And it points to the disconnect between the rhetoric about the "we" -- community, collaboration, collective wisdom etc. -- and reality that Web 2.0's greatest successes have been fueled by the individual desire for public attention.
There are plenty of other uses of the internet that are truly about activism, social change, collaboration etc. but I was looking mainly at the ones our mediaculture celebrates most noisily because it feeds into the larger cultural fantasy of "making it".
As for the business about being more narcissistic as a generation, well, it's only fair that you or anyone else who disagrees should offer research that counters the studies I refer to. But then again, just calling me a prig just works fine -- especially on CJR which has done stellar work holding journalists accountable for making unsubstantiated, unsourced claims.
But then again what would an ancient crone like me know. Now where did I put my walking stick...
Kevin Arthur
Tue 23 Jan 2007 07:19 PMWow, talk about screed. I think this is pretty unfair to Agger's article, which is a bit more nuanced than is implied here. I'd bet the same is true of Chaudhry's article, which I haven't yet read.