Everett situates cyberspace as having similar antiseptic or idealized qualities as television did in late 1950’s according to Spigel. The emergence of television into the home exposes interesting discourses on what type of information is being inserted into the private domain of the home. It is known that television served to preoccupy women within the home, re-inform ideologies of their role in the home and also open a market of consumerism to women. These qualities were attached to the ‘economics’ of a home, which women were surely responsible for.
Everett relates the emergence of the television with that of cyberspace. Everett suggests that cyberspace is a racialized sphere dominated by whiteness, which includes high and low forms of technology. Therefore, like the domesticity surrounding television, cyberspace is also a marginalized sphere. As laid out by Jodi Dean the Internet is not an open democratic public sphere, but a sphere dominated by young white men. Rather than providing a platform for universal communication, the Internet re-informs racialized hierarchies as high technologies are associated with white people and low or non-technology culture is associated with black people.
Everett says that although blacks have become well acquainted with the internet and technologies, cybercritics and cyberpunk subcultures have created a figuration of an imaginary cyberfuture untroubled by the complication of blackness. This discourse lends itself to Tarryn’s presentation on the ‘facelessness’ of the internet, suggesting that there is no race, no gender or no age on the internet. The advertisements brought up in Tarryn’s presentation highlight a world that has no race and therefore no inequality. But I question whether the desire to eliminate race is an attempt to homogenize and eliminate minority races, rather than unify humanity.
You remind me of another discourse surrounding the Internet and inequality. It struck me that the commercials and discourses surrouding the Internet (such as the "1984" commercial, and the "unleash your potential" commercial), depict the Internet as being brought to the masses, as being brought to "the other", by Western creators. Westerners are the ones able to bring equality and peace through these new technologies that they have created. This discourse itself carries with it an inequality, and Westerners are depicted as the dominant, more intellgent, more "willing to settle their differences" subjects, thus setting up an imbalance from the get go.
ReplyDeleteTo go along with the video we watched by Michael Wesch on the "Anthropology of Youtube" I think we have to look at the fact that users create the content of the Internet. While media conglomerates play a role in shaping and creating content, we cannot loose site of the fact that users decide what is important, what to tag, what to re-post, what to share, and what becomes popular. There is no one person or one corporation telling us what is the most important thing. There is a little over-optimism for today lol.
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