Yes! My inspiration for blogging has returned. I keep reading Inge’s me2u blogs . . . damn she’s got some good stuff.

I’m now maybe 20 books behind in my blogging. I guess I’ll have to learn to be more concise—rather than examining EVERYTHING that I think is interesting. About 3 books ago, I read this one

Strangelove, Michael. (2005). The empire of mind: Digital piracy and the anti-capitalist movement. University of Toronto Press: Toronto.

It was not the idea of digital piracy that piqued my interest; rather, I wanted to expand my knowledge of communications theory. So, a friend suggested I read some Marshall McLuhan and Strangelove. After reading McLuhan’s Gutenberg Galaxy, I picked up what I could find of Strangelove in the AU library. This was it.

Being somewhat paranoid about my personal privacy and the dangers of online systems, Strangelove’s book put me a little at ease. To us paranoid fuddy-duddies, it is calming to know that it is still difficult for governments and corporations to control our every move and plant our every thought. I like the fact that the Internet is still, to some extent, a virtual DMZ.

As a student studying the uses of digital technology in the field of Education, I look to the new online technologies as a means of interaction. Strangelove’s book supports the notion that through the Internet people can access a diversity of ideas and bond through shared experience. Interestingly, he also notes that the Internet can also cause a disjunction between groups of differing opinions and ways of life. This is the tension between the ongoing flourishing of individual cultures and the effects of globalization.

I am also struggling with the concept of technological determinism. I would like to think that human beings shape their own world and that technology takes second place. However, as I explore the shift from orality to literacy (as per Ong) to electronic culture (as per McLuhan and Innis), I cannot see how we can separate technology, society, and the individual (see the FRAME model—chapter coming out soon). Innis and McLuhan offered “the basic insight that there is a relationship between the structure of thought and the structure of communications media” (p. 44). Here is another relevant quote:

Innis argued that a dominant medium of communication generates a bias within a cultural system. Innis’s thesis was that an empire is intimately shaped by the type of communication system it employs – within European civilization of the Middle Ages, parchment created a bias toward ecclesiastical organization, while the printing press generated a bias toward political organization. Innis’s argument that electronic communication generated bias within civilization toward rationality and ethical bankruptcy of capitalism needs to be adjusted in light of the unforeseen bias embedded within digital networked communication. In contrast to the marketplace and imperial bias of corporate media, the Internet exhibits a bias toward decommodified cultural expression. (p. 43)

Some of the fun aspects of Strangelove’s book include his chapters on subversion and the Web. Strangelove discusses how radical movements are either marginalized or adopted into mainstream society, thereby losing power. Corporations and political entities do this all the time.

Just recently I noticed a subversion of a no-longer-subversive online network. There is a new article on Computer World, “Facebook has a Whopper of a problem with Burger King Facebook campaign.” I really had to laugh . . . it works on so many levels. This humorous story seems to be an example of where a corporation is hijacking a social network for its own purposes. Of course, I realize that Facebook is a corporation that I assume makes money by supplying people’s personal information to companies through the Facebook applications that the corporations supply (correct me if this is inaccurate). Sounds rather parasitic, doesn’t it? But, Burger King has gained media attention and notoriety by attacking its own information supplier. (I added the link to the article in my Facebook status report; I will be curious to see if Facebook kicks me out of the system—in which case, I will ask Burger King for a free hamburger.)

Well, that’s all for today . . .