Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Technology

Can Robert Johnson bring more blacks online?
Black Entertainment Television's founder is launching a $35 million African-American portal site. Will it help mend the digital divide?
By Raymond Rawlinson
[10/06/99]

Technology: View from the top
Linux at the bat
Red Hat's Marc Ewing steps up to the plate against Microsoft in the billion-dollar free-software ballgame.
By Andrew Leonard
[10/04/99]

Why Microsoft doesn't rule the Net
Redmond's observers keep counting on the software giant to become a Net company. What's wrong with that?
By Mark Gimein
[10/01/99]

A worm in the Apple?
QuickTime 4.0 is like nothing you've ever seen on a Mac. Has Apple broken its intuitive user interface?
By Daniel Drew Turner
[09/30/99]

Forbidden romance?
Why are electronically published romance novels not receiving the blessings of the traditional steamy-fiction industry?
By Janelle Brown
[09/29/99]

Complete archives for Technology

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Rushkoff, the media theorist who wrote "Cyberia" and "Media Virus," was an early champion of the Net and the utopia it would create; here, he has done an about-face on the topic. Now, he's reassessed our world and seen the dark side of the Information Age. He argues that communication technologies are not being used for enlightenment, but to hawk products in an even more targeted fashion, thanks to data-mining. "It is a recipe for technologically induced obsessive-compulsive behavior, as our desires are repeatedly amplified and then fed back to us. The one-to-one future differs from the marketing we're subjected to today online in its speed and specificity," he observes.

The catch, of course, is that the unnerving side effects of technology that Shenk, Gleick and Rushkoff detail are all our own fault. "There is no 'they' who can reverse this process without our consent and participation," writes Rushkoff. "For without our complicity, they are powerless. Without us, they don't exist."

Instead of trying to slow down and limit messages, we demand the speed, the technology, the input, the choices: As Gleick writes, "We humans have chosen speed and we thrive on it -- more than we generally admit. Our ability to work fast and play fast gives us power. It thrills us." Gleick dismally describes why networks are shaving down the time of the blank screens between television shows (we're talking milliseconds here): because we demand more channels, and those channels demand advertising to stay alive, and those advertisers demand eyeballs, and because our eyeballs are unwilling to sit still for just a few seconds to see what's next. Because we, remotes in hand, have the power to see what else is out there, and therefore we will.

Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything by James Gleick Pantheon Books 324 pages Buy Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything by James Gleick Coercion: Why We Listen to What "They" Say by Douglas Rushkoff Riverhead Books 336 pages Buy Coercion: Why We Listen to What "They" Say by Douglas Rushkoff The End of Patience: Cautionary Notes on the Information Revolution by David Shenk Indiana University Press 160 pages Buy The End of Patience: Cautionary Notes on the Information Revolution by David Shenk

These three books all seem to have a deep nostalgia for the way things used to be, a lingering sense that things might have been better before we became addicted to our speedy media and technologies. Not that the authors are preaching that we should blow up our computers -- these books are far more thoughtful than that. These writers clearly love their e-mail and tech tools, even as they flip them over to examine the slimy critters scurrying around in the dark underneath.

Though they argue that we are losing ourselves to overstimulation, these authors don't want to halt the advance of technology. Yet, they don't offer any concrete solutions. For example, Shenk's solution for his perceived dilemma -- the possibility that we will become so engaged with our technology input that we will become incapable, quite literally, of stopping to smell the roses -- is simplistic. He writes that we must "relinquish power back" to authorities, giving politicians, rather than individuals, responsibility for managing our technological advances: "Important aspects of our health, safety, justice and economic and political stability must be entrusted to public officials -- public servants -- who work to maintain larger social interests in our behalf."

I'm not so convinced, however, that the alarmist and generally Luddite government always has my best interests in mind; or that most politicians are knowledgeable enough about technologies to make informed decisions about them. Another remedy proposed by Shenk is to teach kids to think critically: "How can we best build that bridge to the next century? By teaching every eight-year-old to read, every 12-year-old to be skeptical about what he or she reads, and every 18-year-old to distinguish corporate hype from reality."

A worthy goal, if vague in its application. Rushkoff's solution is more blindly pessimistic: "In the worst case, by pacing and leading ourselves into abject despair, we may force ourselves to find remedies more profound than Prozac. We may choose to take the time to distinguish between what we're told and what we really want. We may even find a way to think for ourselves." Gleick offers a similar assessment, watching the graph of progress speed toward infinity: "Maybe when the slope ahead gets impossibly steep, acceleration gives way to paralysis," he muses.

Next page | Can we slow down the pace of change?