I am somewhat frustrated by Convergence Culture. I think because I don't sense anything is really being said. Jenkins is taking us (me at least) on a tour of a familiar landscape. I already aware of most of this stuff and none of it, save the technology, is new. For example:
Ambiguity and cryptic/mythological/socially self-conscious/hidden messages intrigue people. This is present in gnostic gospels, claiming "hidden" knowledge (this is referenced, though undeveloped, in chapter 3). It is present in Freemasonry. It is present on Sgt. Pepper's cover. I take a cynical view of the "endless borrowings" (p. 100) within The Matrix, less philosophical discourse, more gimmickry enlisted to sell multiple viewing and DVDs.
DID ANYONE NOTICE JENKINS WROTE ABOUT ROOM 101 ON PAGE 101????
How is Janet Murray's notion of the "encyclopedic capacity"(p.118) of digital media new, except for the word "digital?" One of the first books I ever read as a boy was Treasure Island, it had a map, and it transported me into alternative world. If anything visual and digitized worlds are less satisfying because they place concrete boundaries upon the imagination. When you thought of Frodo did you see Elijah Wood before Peter Jackson? Can you ever return in your mind to the pre-Jacksonian Middle Earth? I am more interested in questions like this than Jenkins overview.
Also how can you discuss mediated digital alternate worlds without discussing Second Life (2003)?
Finally, I want to reference an obscure book that was very influential to me in my late teens or early twenties, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander. Mander, an ex advertising executive, argues that television cannot be redeemed as a technology. He writes about the power it has to create passive acceptance of ideas, centralized control and its relationship to authoritarianism and democracy, and commercialism. One thing he wrote though never escaped me. Mander talked about the way mediated experience privileges reality. When I watch the Gators play on Saturdays I think I am watching a football game, but I am not. In reality, I am sitting on a sofa in a dimly lit room staring at a black box with blinking lights and sound. The medium has the power to alter reality for me. That is something to think about, to be wary of.
Since reading Four Arguments my view of all video has changed. When the screen goes black between scenes or commercials, sometimes I see my reflection, sitting there staring at the TV, it gives me the creeps. Other times I have driven or walked up to a friend's house at night and seen several people staring at the TV while the blue light throbs through the windows and am disquieted. I am thankful for Jerry Mander's book and wish Jenkins was a little more critical.
I lost the first post....here it goes again!
ReplyDeleteI too get creeped out by the flickering blue lights that shine through people's windows at night, but I wonder how different that is from the bright computer screen I find myself staring at/hiding behind most hours of some days (I take days off from technology sometimes. It is fantastic.)I probably should be more critical of Jenkins as I read him, but I enjoy most of what he says. He does make some good points. But I've forgotten how divided and separate computer technology has made us. F2F has become an un-reality. Collaborative we may be, but it is separated and individualistic, not united, we stand. Has the physicality of collaboration become obsolete? Have we forgotten that we are real bodies existing on this real land?