Digital Ethnography
| By Dana Goldstein - May 8th, 2007 at 1:42 pm EDT |
| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
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Tags: class, digital divide, Internet, Journalism, Net Neutrality, Web 2.0
Tags: class, digital divide, Internet, Journalism, Net Neutrality, Web 2.0
If you want to get all misty-eyed about just how special the Internets make this day in history--our heretofore unheard of ability to connect with one another, find information, and create content--watch this video from Mike Wesch, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University. The video brings up some provocative questions about how individuality, authorship, and other cultural constructs are challenged by Web 2.0. Here's another question: Why aren't we doing more to bring Web 2.0 to everybody? When will high-speed Internet become a public utility like water or highways?
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That works great for major metropolitan areas, I agree.
But as for everything else...
I've been in plenty of different parts of America, both large and small. It's rare you find a public library these days that doesn't have high-speed internet.
Is it less convenient to head to your local public library to use the internet if you're too poor to afford it in your home?
Yes.
Is that a bad thing?
Not necessarily.
Modern American poverty is largely cyclical - it tends to hinge on poor choices that lead to more poor choices that lead to kids growing up in broken homes where they grow up to make their own poor choices. Study after study has shown that the greatest predictor of how your socioeconomic status will change over time isn't your current wealth level, it's whether you possess bourgeois habits that are conducive to success.
For those who are too poor to afford internet access, heading to the library, keeping your voice down, and having to share a scarce resource can't *hurt*.
If the public libraries have internet access, we've done our jobs.
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As for the video, I found it to be a lot of empty ponderousness, while saying the usual stuff about Web 2.0.
This part of your post jumped out at me:
""The video brings up some provocative questions about how individuality, authorship, and other cultural constructs are challenged by Web 2.0.""
This seems to be the new 'in vogue' facile sentence construction these days: "This _____ raises troubling/provocative/challeng ing questions about A, B, and C," followed by no elaboration on what the writer thinks those questions are or how they might be answered.
What questions do you feel he raises about individuality and authorship? *Which* cultural constructs?
And what do you think the answers to those questions are?
That said, you've got to admit, it's a pretty standard trope at this point.
The biggest example that pops into my mind is Katrina - virtually every time the hurricane comes up, the phrase "which raises troubling questions about race and class" pops in.
(IMHO, Katrina has serious class implications, though not necessarily racial ones... but they ought to be discussed forthrightly. "Raises questions..." tends to be a form of weasel wording.)
It's an insinuation without any entrée into discussion, really.
He said we'll have to rethink:
Copyright
Authorship
Ethics
Aesthetics
Rhetorics
Governance
Privacy
Love
Family
Ourselves
In the interest of practicing what I preach, I'll start:
Copyright - IP-related yes, otherwise no.
Authorship - Doubt it... most nonstandard arrangements like Wikipedia are pretty good at making clear exactly what your claims to authorship are (or aren't).
Ethics - We'll extend it into new territory, not a rethink.
Aesthetics - No.
Rhetorics - No.
Governance - Not really. Piracy issues are exacerbated by the web, but that simply raises their profile, rather than requiring a 'rethink'. Citizens may relate to their governments more efficiently, but for the most part in the same way they always have.
Privacy - Yes.
Love - No.
Family - No.
Ourselves - Rethinking yourself is always nice, but I doubt YouTube will force us to.
...See, was that really so painful? :)
And I say: It's not a scarce resource; it's a basically infinite resource. And what this means is that people who would come to public places to use the internet cannot use it to its full extent. They can't enjoy the privilege of voluminous consumer-related information at any time that has such great potential save people money.
And what if a poor person also happened to be concerned about STDs or lbgtq issues? Should they be denied the ability to find this information without screen monitoring and people over their shoulder? How about people who would have to spend real money to get to a public library, like those in rural areas?
Dana didn't say anything about wi-fi, but that's a smart way to extend access cheaply in urban areas. The United States should not allow unavailability of significantly useful services. Why? I can't believe I'm going to say this, but: because Congress said so. Link
By 'scarce resource', I meant that if there are 5 computer terminals in the library and 10 people waiting, you have to wait your turn in line.
...And if the time-slot you've signed up for is 30 minutes away, you're in a library, so you're disproportionately likely to spend that time reading books.
Not bad in the "cultivating bourgeois habits" department, eh?
""
And what if a poor person also happened to be concerned about STDs or lbgtq issues? Should they be denied the ability to find this information without screen monitoring and people over their shoulder?""
They should lobby their local library for better privacy policies, then.
By that logic, my policy also provides opportunities for people to learn about participation and activism in civic institutions at the micro level - another good habit learned. Huzzah!
""How about people who would have to spend real money to get to a public library, like those in rural areas?""
I've been in plenty of rural areas, quite poor ones as well. By and large, the public libraries were still there for the using.
By the time you're talking that level of "out in the boondocks" that there isn't even a library, you're talking a limited enough number of people that it can fairly be dealt with at the state legislature level rather than being a national issue. Yay for federalism.