Nancy Baym and The Digital Age: A Brief Overview

In framing the debate over digital media and their influences on users, Nancy Baym describes the more pessimistic side as Determinists:

The tendency is to think about new technologies deterministically, asking what they do to us, and whether that is good or bad. Thus we see concerns that mediated communication damages our ability to have face to face conversations, degrades language, undermines our connections to our communities and families, and replaces meaningful relationships with shallow substitutions... Determinism can be recognized from its causal construction. The media are positioned as cause, the people are positioned as changed. (Personal Connections in the Digital Age, pg. 150-51)

Even the most casual readers of this blog should recognize that Postman and Carr would fit very nicely into this "Deterministic" caste. Baym's strength throughout her book is not that she outright denies these claims, but that she carefully shifts the emphasis by asking different questions. She makes this shift most explicit at the end of her book:

To ask whether mediated communication is as good as unmediated interaction, or whether online relationships are as good as unmediated relationships, is to miss the point. It is not a question of either/or, of one versus the other. It's a question of who's communicating, for what purposes, in what contexts, and what their expectations are. There are circumstances in which mediated interaction is preferable to face to face interaction, circumstances in which it is worse, and others when it's interchangeable. (pg. 153)

In some ways Baym, like Postman, also casts the discussion in terms of form and content, but she is far more accepting of different kinds of content. She asks important rhetorical questions in order to see what form would be most appropriate - an experience I had recently when I wanted to wish my father-in-law a happy birthday: text (my preference), email, or phone call. Purpose and expectations required that I make a phone call, but in other contexts with different expectations - the purpose being the same - I could appropriately wish someone a happy birthday on Facebook.

Baym rightly describes technology as mirroring our culture and simply allowing us to do what we would otherwise want to do more easily - shaping us along the way (e.g., she says digital media are "developed and deployed in social and cultural contexts" pg. 153). She denies that technology could cause any kind of revolution in and of itself (a very different sentiment than Postman, according to whom the revolution had already arrived). In the end she sees our relatively quick appropriation of digital media for socially-oriented purposes as evidence that we will not lose interpersonal relationships, identity, and community in the ever-changing digital age.

This last bit of optimism could sound a bit like the technological Marxism that Postman brings up at the close of his book, but I think Baym makes some important arguments that make this conclusion sound less speculative than "progress for progress's sake." All in all, I recommend Baym's book as a good interlocutor among the more negative voices of Postman and Carr. 

Amusing Ourselves to Death - Part 4

This will be my last treatment of Postman, and the following quote does well to leave the reader with a clear idea of Postman's concerns. Whether you agree with him or not, Postman goes out with a bang:

To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple... Introduce the alphabet to a culture and you change its cognitive habits, its social relations, its notions of community, history and religion. Introduce the printing press with movable type, and you do the same. Introduce speed-of-light transmission of images and you make a cultural revolution. Without a vote. Without polemics. Without guerrilla resistance. Here is ideology, pure if not serene. Here is ideology without words, and all the more powerful for the absence. All that is required to make it stick is a population that devoutly believes in the inevitability of progress. And in this sense, all Americans are Marxists, for we believe nothing if not that history is moving us toward some preordained paradise and that technology is the force behind that movement. (AOD, pg 157-58)

Since finishing Postman's work, I've also read Nicholas Carr's The Shallows, and Nancy Baym's Personal Connections in the Digital Age. In one way or another these books seem to rely on Postman, even if not explicitly. I've intentionally left The Shallows out of these discussions because while  it was certainly more developed and, in my opinion, less speculative - it nevertheless seemed to be a sophisticated update to AOD.[1]

On the other hand, Baym relies on commentators like Postman (and Walter Ong along with their contemporary counterparts like Carr) as opposing voices in the debate. While I think she is generally very moderate in her appraisal of digital media and its influence on relationships, she does come out in stark opposition to what I've recorded here from Postman.

I will offer a quote or two in the future to briefly orient the interested reader to Baym's position, especially in relationship to Postman, since I've spent so much time here covering his perspective.

I've really enjoyed Amusing Ourselves to Death. It helped me formulate better questions about digital media and gave me some important framework through which I was better able to understand the history of the debate around new media - especially as I read Carr. Postman gives a lot of credit to the prophetic power of Aldous Huxely (who suggested that technology would turn the enemy from a suspicious thug to a smiling entertainer), but I think regardless of where we fall in the debate it is safe to say that Postman was ahead of his time in a lot of important ways as well.

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[1] We've also talked about Carr's article in RWS511, so much of the discussion would seem redundant. 

Amusing Ourselves to Death - Part 3

The second half of Postman’s work is rather uneven with his stronger chapters acting as bookends to what I expected to be a more constructive collection of essays. His opening chapter entitled Now… This talked about televised news and the changing nature of journalism in the digital age. I’ve covered this chapter elsewhere in conjunction with some contemporary discussions on networked journalism and I think Postman is at his most prophetic in this chapter.

The next few chapters fall pretty flat. He takes on televised religion and politics in turn by basically applying his general critiques in the first half of his book to more concrete phenomena, but the chapters are so generic that they are virtually interchangeable and I don’t think they do much to add to his argument.[1] In fact, I think there are some problems in his chapter on politics in particular.

Postman argues that the dominant metaphor for American political discourse is the television commercial (pg. 126). His critique, as anyone reading the book or my blog should anticipate, is twofold: commercials are too short to mediate any serious talking-points (much less initiate community-wide conversations), and that since commercials are image-based they are unable to make claims. Technically, he argues that claims must be made through language:

More precisely, it must take the form of a proposition, for that is the universe of discourse from which such words as “true” and “false” come. If that universe of discourse is discarded, then the application of empirical tests, logical analysis or any of the other instruments of reason are impotent… By substituting images for claims, the pictorial commercial made emotional appeal, not tests of truth, the basis of consumer decisions. (pgs. 127-128)

Since the commercial is the controlling metaphor for political discourse, this non-refutable nature of television advertisements also applies to the realm of American politics.

I’m not naïve enough to argue that elections are won on reason alone. I grew up during MTV’s relatively successful Rock the Vote campaigns and vividly remember the question that resonated the most with young voters during Bill Clinton’s run for office: boxers or briefs? President Obama made excellent use of YouTube in his campaign, and the most powerful artifact from his run was the “Hope Poster.” And, of course, George W. Bush turned the 9/11 lapel pin into a portable monument that has shaped the picture of patriotism in the U.S. Even pop-culture is in on the joke (just watch the opening 60 seconds and pardon me for using television to make, or at least supplement, an argument):

But any student of rhetoric should object to some of Postman’s conclusions. Images can’t make claims? Pathos isn’t a legitimate form of (reasonable!) argument? In what strikes me as a glaring counterexample, Postman (just one page later) talks about a politician who used a commercial to “project himself as a man of experience, virtue and piety,” all of which seem to be refutable claims. What is the difference between “project” and “claim” or “argue”?

In the end, my problem with Postman (as I’ve written before) is that most of his objections could be answered by insisting on teaching people how to read images. Increased visuality requires a shift in educational emphases (a point that he fails to acknowledge in his chapter on education, and instead makes the argument again television contains no arguments, just narratives; pg. 148). If a class like RWS 744 existed at a high school level, would televised arguments be as subversive as Postman suggests? One of my favorite quotes is from William Blake and I think it is appropriate here:

This life’s dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you look with, and not through, the eye.  

We need to concern ourselves with teaching people to look “through the eye” otherwise Postman’s critiques are, in general, fitting.

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[1] If I were, for a moment, to put on my confessional protestant and seminary graduate hat I would recommend that all mainline evangelicals read Shuffle off to Bethlehem as it serves as a relevant critique of American Christianity’s obsession with celebrity and their appropriation of entertainment  models. 

Quick Quote (and some clips)

Television is at its most trivial and, therefore, most dangerous when its aspirations are high, when it presents itself as a carrier of important cultural conversations. – AOD pg. 16

Television’s conversations promote incoherence and triviality… the phrase ‘serious television’ is a contradiction in terms. – AOD pg. 80

[[Before a short response I offer two qualifications. The first is from Postman who acknowledges some benefits of television in its power to persuade people of righteous causes where rational argument might lack influence (17). The second qualification is my own: while I am going to argue that Postman is off base in his understanding of television as a medium his points are nearly identical to criticisms of Facebook that I have made elsewhere. I intend to get to Facebook as a rhetorical space at some point in the future, but I want to acknowledge similarities in the two situations up front (and I hope to distinguish my argument from his in important ways later on).]]

While I agree that television can present itself as a carrier of important cultural conversations, I also think it is often said carrier as well as being, in itself, a cultural conversation. This goes back to the point I made toward the end of the last post – technology is bound up in culture as a product that is shaped by and reshapes its viewer. The popularity of television generally among various demographics and different shows’ performances both popularly and critically are the stuff of cultural conversations. Obviously television provides a unique space wherein different shows can present their own reality and important metaphors unfold within those realities, according to the inner logic of each show (or genre). Why is it that Huxley’s “Brave New World” can seriously speak prophetically to issues of status, identity, technology, and community within our own culture but a television show that attempts to accomplish the same thing would be deemed trivial? Certainly both mediums can accommodate a wide variety of genres[1] – why must everything that is on television be relegated to entertainment? And why can’t important cultural conversations be entertaining (much like Huxley’s work)?

As a bit of a television fiend, I would be remiss if I didn’t offer some examples of television taking itself seriously and having important cultural conversations:

This powerful clip from Mad Men won't embed, but it is definitely worth clicking over to. 

And perhaps a couple of examples of television taking itself less seriously but still raising important cultural issues (if even through absurdity):

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[1] Of course there is a difference between a mediums ability to accommodate and its conduciveness to a particular genre. Postman would say that accommodation is irrelevant, but then what makes books different? This goes back to my last post – we simply need to be equipped with the skills necessary to interact with television more critically and then what objections remain? We can go back over printed text? That’s what DVRs are for!

Amusing Ourselves to Death - Part 2

The concept of truth is intimately linked to the biases of forms of expression. Truth does not, and never has, come unadorned… which is a way of saying that the ‘truth’ is a kind of cultural prejudice. Each culture conceives of it as being most authentically expressed in certain symbolic forms that another culture may regard as trivial or irrelevant. – AOD, pgs. 22-23

Postman moves his argument into the realm of epistemology in his discussion of cultural truth-telling and preferred mediums. Basically, truth-telling takes many modes and cultures determine which modes are more reliable. Postman suggests that some forms are better than others and thus have an overall positive effect on a culture. He claims that, already in his day, “television-based epistemology has had grave consequences for public life [and] that we are getting sillier by the minute” (24). Later he says that this epistemology is not only “inferior to a print-based epistemology but is dangerous and absurdist” (27).

In the next few chapters that close Part 1 of AOD, Postman makes many claims that I’d like to address if only briefly, but the primary claim that he sets out to support in the rest of his book is found in the above quotes. In order to demonstrate the superiority of a print-based epistemology outlines the many tools necessary for (critical) reading, and takes the reader through a short (and largely misleading) tour of early America.

His delineation of all the tools required to read and comprehend any print-based text is too long to post (but the interested reader can refer to pages 25-26) – and this is done rather purposely. He basically describes all of the skills that a person employs – most of which are achieved unconsciously – to accomplish what we might call critical reading. Some of these skills include ignoring the aesthetics of the printed letters to recognize their symbolic function (i.e., on must be able to read “I’ll” and not resort to marveling at all the straight lines), as well as “knowing the difference between a joke and an argument” (26). In fairness, these are rather absurd examples in a list of otherwise legitimate actions, but they are included in order to compile a dauntingly long list in order to make an argument by implication: the medium of television is not conducive to this level of scrutiny, and since it requires less interaction and skill it makes for a weaker epistemology. The implicit argument is made more explicit in Part 2, so I’ll deal with it in his terms later, but doesn’t this have more to do with an underdeveloped concept of television as a specific genre that requires a different (though similar) set of tools for a careful reading? In the growing field of visual rhetoric scholars have argued that images (both still and moving) have a language and syntax and are, indeed, argumentative.[1] I will grant, of course, that television is often a more persuasive medium than print and it probably has a lot to do with a lack of critical interaction. Not every printed text receives or requires a critical reading, and print is an older technology about which people have had time to develop critical, analytical tools – similar to the ones which are continuing to be developed for visual rhetoric.[2]

Postman then moves to American history. The early settlers and the next few generations are given a rather romanticized treatment as Postman walks through publication and speech practices in early America. The point he seems to communicate is that the print-based culture of early America lent itself to higher literacy rates (though he admits that’s a difficult statistic to pin down), more analytical discussion, better grammar, and longer attention spans. I won’t respond to much of what he argues because a lot of it strikes me as silly. To favor an older form of language because of its complexity is sociolinguistically untenable. Language changes but remains rule-governed – to favor an older language variation because of its syntactical complexity can only be motivated by a conservatism that restricts language in ways that it cannot be restricted.

I will close this post with two, overly-brief responses to a couple of Postman’s examples. He holds up the Great Awakening as an oratorical event which succeeded largely because the preachers used “printable” speech and it encouraged literacy through intelligent debate (see pgs. 42 and 54). Having spent a significant amount of time looking at the Great Awakening – as a historical event as well as the culture in which it unfolded and the practices and theologies of its major players – I can only say that Postman is hilariously and irresponsibly off the mark. Charles Finney in particular took advantage of the anti-intellectual spirit running rampant in America at the time to win people over through staged spectacles, embellished visuals, and often-incoherent speech.[3]

Finally, Postman recalls a 7 hour debate (which was apparently shorter than most) between Lincoln and Douglas wherein the audience was encouraged to eat between speeches to come back refreshed. According to Postman, several hour long speeches were commonplace at this point in America’s history which leads him to ask: “What kind of audience[s were] these?” (44). It seems to me that these were the types of audiences who would eventually invent telegraphs, radios, televisions and the like – perhaps in an effort to make presidential debates more palatable. Remember that these technologies spring up from cultures and don’t autonomously act upon them – a point which Postman acknowledges but doesn’t address (79).

Andrew Fletcher was a Scottish politician and writer who lived from 1655-1716. He lived and worked in print-based culture when he wrote the following:

Let me write the songs of a nation; I don’t care who writes its laws.

It is interesting to me that Postman so romanticizes the pre-television, post-printing press era as preeminently literate and paradigmatically reasonable when others recognized existing mediums which bypassed peoples’ literacy and reason and made for effective persuasion.  

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[1] Postman denies both of these claims explicitly on pages 50 and 72. I would recommend Anthony Blair’s “The Possibility and Actuality of Visual Arguments,” and James Monaco’s “The Language of Film: Signs and Syntax.”

[2] In fact, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my fellow graduate students are required to include a section on visual rhetoric when they teach undergraduate Rhetoric and Writing Studies courses. This generation of students is being taught to interact with various forms of texts at a critical level.

[3] I refer the interested reader to Nathan Hatch’s “The Democratization of AmericanChristianity.”

Quick Quote

“Each medium, like language itself, makes possible a unique mode of discourse by providing a new orientation for thought, for expression, for sensibility.” 

“A person who reads a book or who watches television or who glances at his watch is not usually interested in how his mind is organized and controlled by these events, still less in what idea of the world is suggested by a book, television, or a watch” – AOD pgs. 10-11.

Like Walter Ong and Marshall McLuhan before him and Nicholas Carr well after him, Postman suggests that the mediums with which we interact restructure the way we think (though, in fairness, it isn't a necessary point for him; see pg. 27). Furthermore, those things we encounter daily present a picture about reality or a worldview which is rarely met with critical engagement. So to bring up the example from my last post: what idea of the world, or less generally, what idea of American political theory is presented when policy is discussed in 140-word Tweet? I think that our President’s Twitter presence is meant to communicate more about our President than it is to disseminate information, but what is the communicative effect on the millions of followers who read political theory accommodated for the Twitter-verse?[1]

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[1] It should go without saying that I am in no way appraising the politics of our President. He is a product of our culture and found himself in a technological turning point that almost demanded he broadcast himself on YouTube and have a Twitter account. At this point I’m still just interested in the form/content discussion. 

Amusing Ourselves to Death - Part 1

A lot of conversations among the laity about digital media and their cultural consequences seem to inevitably reference the prophet-like Neil Postman and his seminal work, Amusing Ourselves to Death (AOD). I have read scholars in both the academic and popular arenas whose works borrow substantially (and explicitly) from Postman. As I continue to work through AOD I can see why Postman is continually referenced, but I also see a need for a bit of nuance that involves more than simply updating and reapplying Postman’s principles for digital 

mediums/technologies and cultures as they exist 25 years after AOD was published.

Postman begins his work by suggesting that Las Vegas is the living metaphor for the United States. We are an entertainment-obsessed culture that demands that all forms of information be disseminated through entertaining mediums. Television provided a means by which everyone with a television (or an inviting neighbor who had one) a chance to see the presidential debates. Apparently this is the first time that politics could be corrupted by an entertainment-oriented medium (as if pamphlets and speeches could not reduce the serious business of politics to a silly spectacle). Because everything and everybody has embraced this entertainment model, Postman suggests that Americans (in particular) are on the verge of 

amusing themselves to death.

An important point that Postman makes, and one that I think demands some thought as we interact with new media in today’s culture, is how forms determine and limit content. He argues that smoke signals, for example, aren’t equipped to communicate philosophy – “its form excludes the content” (7). He also suggests that since most political discourse happens on television that political philosophy (which isn’t amenable to digital media) takes a back seat to a candidate’s appearance since the language of television is largely visual and not typographical.

While Postman can sound like script-favoring luddite at times, I do wonder how much thought goes into our current uses of technology and how they alter or supplement a message simply by design. What is the rhetorical effect that a campaign speech has when it is broadcast on YouTube as opposed to printed in a political pamphlet or newspaper? Since Postman makes mention of it, what are the chances of an overweight politician becoming President now as opposed to when Taft ran for office? It seems that mediums necessarily act rhetorically insofar as they shift emphases (which they accomplish by design). A news story on television is often told with the reporter on scene and the oral “text” of the story provides a background narrative for the images which rule the day in a visual medium. The same story told on NPR or in the New York Times is going to necessarily rely less on images because of their limitations.

As I continue to think about new media and the growing world of social networks I think it is important to look at the forms these technologies take and content that users fill them with. Should we simply take a pragmatic stance on the form/content discussion or is there an ethical component to our technology usage? I often wonder how appropriate a space like Facebook is for serious conversations when it is designed to be in constant flux and indiscriminately mixes news with Farmville scores. Is Twitter going to be the next space for formal policy debates? President Obama[‘s social media staff] has weighed in on political issues in less than 140 words before, but in that case does the content match the form? Is that even a question that needs to be asked? I think it is.