Article Brabazon of Tara made me rehash the steak, which is the fear of social consequences of so-called. new media. For conservative journalists and scholars iPod has become sort of a whipping boy, the symbol of the widely despised iPod culture: culture of consumption, "iPodyfikacji" all walks of life and isolation. Times journalist, Andrew Sullivan , expresses those concerns as follows:
technology has given each of us to his own universe in which there is no possibility spotkania nieznajomego, usłyszenia utworu, którego sami byśmy nie wybrali, czy opinii, która mogłaby skłonić nas do zmiany zdania. Nastąpiła atomizacja poprzez małe białe pudełka i telefony komórkowe.
To, czego boi się Sullivan, Christine Rosen opisała jako egocasting : zjawisko spersonalizowanej konsumpcji na żądanie, niezrównanej kontroli nad przyswajanym przekazem. W skrajnej formie egocasting przypomina błąd konfirmacji: poszukiwanie tylko tych treści, które potwierdzają nasz punkt widzenia. Skutki są do przewidzenia: ograniczone wystawienie na obce treści, consequently, intolerance for other opinions, fetishization of taste and lack of common cultural reference point (because if everyone listens to their favorite music and reads only the messages on the sites from which a political profile is correct, it is difficult to talk about participation in the same culture).
criticize the culture of new media often point to the fact that using an iPod or internet we lose contact with "real world":
Locked into their party, they were not thinking about how to lose hours of his daily life ( Brabazon )
Not so long ago, I was on a trip and realized I had left my iPod. Panic. But then something else. I noticed the rhythm of the other, the sound of an airplane, taxi driver reviews (...) I felt a little more "connected" and aware. Try it. Somewhere out there is the real world, which has its own soundtrack ( Sullivan).
Actually, you can talk about the personalization of the public sphere, making up for the omnipresent MP3 players. One button allows you to "turn off" around the world (or at least his voice as) or give it a completely different character (who does not know the feeling when a favorite music gray way to work is an exciting plan for the video.) Listening to music, go through the public spaces while maintaining the comfort of being in their own bubble. Enclosed is not invisible wall interact.
not hard to guess what the message comes from the purely speculative (because as far as I know no one except Michael Bull is not yet carried out a study on iPod users) articles: iPod is antisocial technology that prevents people from engaging in the public sphere and leads to the atomization social. That is nothing new. Those same charges appeared previously in relation to the internet or even walkman. Besides, if this happens again, we often begin a conversation with a stranger on the bus? Probably not. The bus situation of physical proximity in the absence of psychological closeness probably reaching for the iPod as the deliverance from inconvenient silence screams of children. And the fact that we listen to only what you want? Is this not a protection against bombarding us from every ideological chaff advertising?
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Tara Brabazon's article made me rehash the good old discussion about the social consequences of the so-called new media. For conservative journalists and academics the iPod has become sort of a whipping boy symbolizing the widely despised iPod culture: consummerism, iPodification of all activities and isolation. Times journalist, Andrew Sullivan , voices those concerns as follows:
Technology has given us a universe entirely for ourselves — where the serendipity of meeting a new stranger, hearing a piece of music we would never choose for ourselves or an opinion that might force us to change our mind about something are all effectively banished. Atomisation by little white boxes and cell phones.
What Sullivan fears, Christine Rosen calles egocasting: personalized on-demand consumption of content in which receivers excercises an unparalleled degree of control over what they consumes. In its extreme, egocasting shares some similarities with confirmation bias, a tendency to search for new information that confirm one's preconceptions and avoid information and interpretations which contradict prior beliefs. The consequences are fair enough: limited exposure to unwanted content which in turn leads to intolerance towards different ideas, fetishization of taste and lack of common cultural reference point (when everyone consumes highly personalized content, then it's hard to talk about a common ground or shared culture).
Those who criticize the culture of new media often point to the fact that by using an iPod or the internet we lose contact with „the real world”:
Locked into their party shuffle, they were not thinking about how hours of their lives were being lost each day. ( Brabazon )
Not so long ago I was on a trip and realised I had left my iPod behind. Panic. But then something else. I noticed the rhythms of others again, the sound of the airplane, the opinions of the taxi driver (...) And I felt just a little bit connected again and a little more aware. Try it. There’s a world out there. And it has a soundtrack all its own. ( Sullivan )
Indeed, the personalization of the public sphere by the omnipresent mp3 players is a fact. One button allows us to „shut off” the world around us (or at least its audio dimension) or change our perception of it (when a favorite song transforms the gray wold around us into a music video set). iPod people create their own “bubble” inside which they pass through the public spaces at the same time maintaining their own personal space. Invisible walls that they build around themselves protect them from engaging in unwanted interactions.
It's easy to guess what message Sullivan and the likes want to send. They view iPod as an anti-social technology that prevents people from engaging in the public sphere and leads to atomization. In other worlds, nothing new. It's all been said before about, say, the internet or Sony Walkman. And besides, how often do we engage in a conversation with a total stranger that just happens to be on the same bus? Not too often, I think. In a situation of psychological distance in physical closeness (like on a bus) we'd much rather grab our iPod in order to shut off the inconvenient silence pierced by children's screams. And the fact that we listen to personalized music? Doesn't that help us avoid being bombarded by all those media messages constantly targeting us from around?
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