As we come to the end of my current Master’s course, Social Dynamics of Communication and Technology, we’ve spent a large amount of time talking about Todd Gitlin’s book, “Media Unlimited,” and Neil Postman’s book, “Technopoly.” Both Gitlin and Postman are critics of the technology revolution we have experienced. Gitlin believes we are overwhelmed by the barrage of communication/messages we are constantly being hit with (Gitlin 2007), while Postman argues that new technologies alter our understanding of what is real (Postman 1992).
Recently I’ve spent time reflecting on what we’ve been discussing and reading throughout this course. As I consider the technologies we’ve reviewed, I’ve also taken time to think about where and what my life would be without them.
I am 45 years old. How you view that age really depends on how old you are. To my kids who are 12 and 15, I am old. To my mother-in-law who is almost 73, I am young. To my husband who is my age, I am just right. To me, technically speaking I realize I am “middle-aged” – but in my mind, I am young.
Over the course of my lifetime I’ve seen changes in technology that I’m not sure can be equaled in any other time in history. I’ve used ditto machines to make copies before we had copy machines. I learned to type on manual and electric typewriters. The first computer I used was a TRS-80 – it had a monochrome screen, used computer code to execute commands – no programs or applications were pre-written – and we saved everything on floppy disks. My first cell phone was a “brick phone” – the size was similar to red bricks used to build houses and it weighed about three pounds; my husband had a “bag phone” in his car. These days I have a cell phone – a “smart phone” – that fits in the palm of my hand. I can surf the Internet, check my email, text my kids, and oh by the way, I can talk on the phone too. I do work on a Net Book – a smaller laptop computer that has a color screen, wireless capability, and a hard drive equal to 3,200 TRS-80s . All of these are technological advances that I believe both Gitlin and Postman would question whether they are good or not. I have to say, I think they are fantastic.
Recently I’ve been doing a lot of research on the on the online pornography industry. This is an industry that has been at the forefront of the technology curve since the printing press was invented, and has continued on that track. The pornography industry changed the media its product produced on, which helped to advance the sales of both the VCR and the DVD when they were initially introduced to the public. Over and over again, if people involved in the pornography industry didn’t help develop a key technology, the industry was willing to take risks and adopt the technology in order to gain an advantage over other industries. Some key examples of the technologies that were implemented into the pornography industry early in the life cycle of the technology are instamatic cameras, online video and audio streaming, online credit card/Internet transactions, spam, Internet fee-based/subscription services, online pop-up ads, geo-location software, Internet cookies, wireless services, video-on-demand billing, digital-rights management software, and viruses/scanning software. These days consumers may not see all of these technologies as beneficial, but the technologies might not have been adopted at all had members of the pornography industry not adopted them (Egan 2000).
I’m not going to argue whether the pornography industry is ethical or moral – that’s not what this post is about. What I do believe is that it is an industry that has taken full advantage of technology and because if the industry’s willingness to take risks and adopt new technologies, businesses and consumers around the world have benefitted.
Change is often difficult, and sometimes it’s not good. But when I look at the technology advances that I’ve experienced in my lifetime, I’m ecstatic about what has happened. Thanks to the same technology that both Gitlin and Postman would claim dehumanizes us and makes us lazy, I am able to keep in touch with people I haven’t seen in person in years. I am more productive and efficient at work. I am able to take courses from a university that is over 1,500 miles away from where I live, and I am interacting with people from all over the nation.
References
Egan, T. (2000, October 23). Erotica, Inc.—A special report; technology sent Wall Street into market for pornography. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/
Gitlin, T. (2007). Media unlimited: How the torrent of images and sounds overwhelms our lives. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company.
Postman, N. (1992). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. New York, NY: Vintage Books
