Charles and list-folk: This reminds me of on area of my work (there's always more to learn though). Utopian visions for electronic communication technologies happen with every such technology, as pointed out by James Carey (his Communication as Culture (1989) is one of my favorite comm books). (There is a citizen utopia, which I think comes first, and is about democracy, but this always seems to move over to a consumer utopia, so nowadays the net isn't about global democracy but global shopping and b2b...) However, we're not living in some amazing utopia (or are we, sort of). These visions must fade over time (this is post-hoc reasoning though). What I mean is, we wouldn't have had the "the Internet will change everything and utopia etc!" discourse if, say, cable television had succeeded in doing so, or TV, the telephone, the telegraph. We get used to the new technologies once they are not so new. The utopian discourse fades. I think that is what you are seeing. I believe it is called something like "creeping normalcy" (we slowly adjust to change, the undergrads are perhaps more used to it since as you point out it is "normal" for them). I would have thought that they would relate better to the stuff they've experienced, and had a harder time with the histories they are not familiar with. (I've read and seen that history is not what you've lived though, so perhaps the detachment helps them with perspective.) The telegraph was amazing, the first technology to really separate transportation and communication. We don't even use it any more, although we use its technological descendants (there is more to be said there), and Western Union (US perspective, sorry) wires funds nowadays. Like Internet visions of utopia, it is passé.... my $0.02 ndp... -------------------------------------------------------------------- Nathaniel D. Poor Ph.D. Candidate Dept. of Communication Studies http://www.umich.edu/~natpoor On Friday, May 16, 2003, at 01:29 PM, Charles Ess wrote:
Dear aoir-ists (like the Greek...)
We're in the midst of finals grading, but I had a rather extraordinary experience with a class that has raised a question for me - or, rather, you (I hope).
I teach a "Global Futures" course, the capstone of our general education curriculum (Global Perspectives) which restructures liberal arts education to focus squarely on becoming "liberated persons who participate meaningfully in a global community." We look at a lot of texts, ranging from Biblical and Islamic utopias to Plato's Republic to Erich Fromm's _To Have or To Be_ - all of which, somewhat to my surprise, the students really like. (These are largely critical of consumer society - but the students see the criticisms and agree with them in varying degrees.) In that context, I've also been using an anthology by Erik Bucy, _Living in the Information Age: A Media Reader_ which offers a terrific selection of essays from a range of perspectives on a range of topics, including the role of the Internet in catalyzing a new revolution that would help realize Enlightenment dreams of greater democracy, freedom, and prosperity.
My assumption was - in keeping with a lot of the common wisdom of higher education specialists, sociologists, etc. - that my students, as having grown up with the Internet and being deeply immersed in electronic media, would find these readings directly relevant to their lives.
Imagine my surprise when my sections this year (fall '02 and spring '03) with near unaninimity (sp) agreed that this selection of readings could be dropped with no loss to the class!
Their summary judgment: especially the more radical visions of the Internet and the Web (ala Barlow and many others) leading to a new Renaissance, etc. just seemed "so '90s"!
For them, it appears that these technologies are utilitarian in the most boring of senses; precisely because they have grown up with them, they seem no more "revolutionary" than cars or telephones - even cellphones. Rather, these technologies are really, merely tools for them. While as a researcher and ethicist, I think there are all sorts of questions to be asked as to impacts of using these technologies - for them, these questions are far less pressing than examining the impacts of globalization on economies and the environment, for example. (And, FWIW, these are not, as a group, especially "liberal" students.)
I've no idea if my students are representative of anything. But I was _stunned_ by this - especially as it so sharply contrasts with the buzz and excitement about all of these things in other quarters.. At the same time, it fits with a comment Phil Agre passed on a couple of years ago as we were discussing the apparent death of postmodernism. I asked him why he thought it had passed, and his simple comment was: because the art students aren't interested in it anymore.
This may just be an excuse to avoid grading papers and a waste of bandwidth - but I'm curious if this strikes a resonant chord with aoir folk who actually _research_ these things?
Cheers,
Charles Ess Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html Co-chair, CATaC: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac/
Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23
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