Douglas Rushkoff
Thursday September 28,
2000
Media is a consensus. It's one of the ways we
establish what is going on in the world around us. That's why it's
so important that the mediaspace remains open and free of
censorship. We should all have a say in what it is we think is
happening, and a chance to contribute to the conversation.
The internet provided us with just such an opportunity -
particularly because it was free of the kinds of legal and business
pressures that restrict more mainstream and broadcast media.
Demonstrative, martyr-making arrests of hackers and college-age
Napster users notwithstanding, the greatest enemies to free
expression on the internet are not paranoid law enforcement, a
greedy recording industry, or even an elitist ICANN board, but us.
The emergence of a new, interactive mediaspace offers us an
opportunity to redefine the very language of power. Sadly, our
readiness to accept the tools we are given, in the form they are
given, as well as the rules they come with, reduces our role to
passive consumption, and threatens to end the digital revolution
before it has even begun.
The ability to dictate what we think about is controlled, to some
extent, by the people who decide on the content of our media - which
headlines will be printed, which groups will win recording
contracts, and which stories will appear on the evening news. The
ability to dictate how we think is controlled by the people who
produce the tools of media - the browsers, file-sharing programs,
and networks through which all this content is disseminated and,
with any luck, discussed.
For a long time, the content and context of our media served to
maintain the status quo. Interactive media - from computers to
camcorders - posed a threat to both. They gave us the ability to
fill newsgroups, web pages, and even cable television channels with
our own stories, images, and ideas. A gossip columnist like Matt
Drudge was able to force Newsweek's hand during the Clinton/Lewinsky
scandal, and thousands of young programmers were free to imagine new
ways for people to communicate with one another - then create them.
It seemed as if no one could control anything, anymore.
Those of us worried about censorship focused on government as the
main threat to progress. We thwarted their early efforts at limiting
the spread of "objectionable" content, and declared the internet
beyond the province of any government agency. The problem with
suppressing the role of government is that it gives business free
reign. It's like using antibiotics to combat bacteria; when the
bacteria are killed, fungus grows unabated.
As a result, the internet became a privatised zone, and
altogether more insidious forms of censorship emerged.
The first, stoked by fear of hackers, spam, and internet porn,
was the mass migration towards the internet's safe havens. Many
people still believe that using America Online or another corporate-
branded ISP as their access provider protects them from email
viruses. These users succeed merely in shielding themselves from the
kinds of content that unseen corporate censors feel is dangerous.
Like people who buy the edited versions of their favourite music CDs
at WalMart, they'll never know what they're missing. And all this,
of course, is completely legal.
Likewise, the slow conversion of a public telecommunications
infrastructure into a privately controlled direct marketing platform
turns it into a territory where the only meaningful currency is
cash. Ideas spread based on their ability to generate revenue, more
than interest or thought. The ultimate broadcasting tool is the
business plan, and while certain media pranksters - like Rtmark.com and Etoy.com - are learning
to create performance art pieces that exploit this principle, the
bottom line on the internet is the bottom line.
This is why most forms of online activism concern issues of
market. The Napster phenomenon is a consumer revolt. While it may
eventually influence the way artists and record companies sign their
contracts in the future, since when is our role as a public voice to
negotiate on behalf of Britney Spears?
In the best light, Napster users are fighting for their right to
distribute data that one of them has paid for. It's a business
angle, and the more it's fought for, the more like business people
its advocates become.
So much for the content of new media providing new ways of
understanding the world. We're fighting over distribution of the top
40.
On an even more fundamental level, the tools we use to navigate
and even create the landscape of new media make many assumptions for
us, of which we are increasingly unaware. The internet's functional
standards are set by companies like Microsoft, through processes
that are anything but transparent. Participating in the internet
through a web browser is like experiencing the outdoors through a
screen door. Our choices are filtered, and our participation is
limited to typing in our credit card numbers and clicking "buy".
Artists indirectly censor themselves by using programs like Adobe
Photoshop to create graphics, Dreamweaver to design web pages, or
Macromedia Director to make interactive environments. Most
university courses, understandably, teach students how to use such
software (often made by their own donors) rather than how to
recognize its underlying agendas. Students graduate with a fine
understanding of the media landscape, but haven't a clue that it was
assembled quite arbitrarily.
Lest we forget, the internet was a mediaspace before it was a
marketplace. Now that monetary values are assigned to our online
activities, there's much less room for alternative value systems to
be entertained.
These days, we get very few reminders that computers are
modelling systems, and that the market-driven internet itself is
just one of the models they can create. The efforts that do break
through our complacency are usually destructive hacks on corporate
websites, or viruses that make our email programs go crazy. We
unilaterally condemn such attacks because they cost real people real
money. They threaten what we think of as the very lifeblood of the
internet.
But the people who launch these attacks are demonstrating,
however maliciously, that the code is not yet set in stone, and that
model itself is still up for grabs. It's the only way we can still
hear that message. I'm not sure whether this speaks worse of them,
or of us.