White Noise: An A-Z of the Contradictions in Cyberculture by Andrew Calcutt
Inspecting and analyzing the cyberspace and the phenomena dwelling inside it from a deconstructive angle, Andrew Calcutt gives back the historical, contextual and human aspects of the cyberculture in the book White Noise: An A-Z of the Contradictions in Cyberculture. He picks up 26 contradictions in the current Internet era that he found intriguing to look into, arranges them alphabetically as the titles for each section of his book, and presents each one with elaborate and demonstrative examples. The book is indeed a very enjoyable piece: lots of inspiring and reflective thinking wrapped in the cute alphabetical structure as well as his accessible and clear wording.
This book was published a decade ago, yet the issues it noticed are still bouncing around with sparkles in the contemporary society. Discussions about the impacts of the Internet on democracy/diversity, war/peace, concerns about equality/elitism, free/fee, risk/safety in the virtual world, and inquiries about anarchy/authority, journalism/personalism, and so on keep being brought up from time to time. That situation has proved the rightness and necessity of Andrew Calcutt's efforts in weaving in the historical strings inside his book.
Throughout the 26 contradictions, Calcutt manages to draw out the time line of each issues that have been mistakenly viewed as "new" or "unique" to the cyberculture. For example, in the section of journalism/personalim, he points out that "narrowcasting", and the fragmentation it directly or indirectly resulted in, has taken place before the age of Internet. The show-up and popularity of specialized publications as well as cable TV can be regarded as some of such examples. And as Mark mentioned in the last seminar, the panopticon design examined and further developed in Michel Foucault's study about the prison (Discipline and Punish) is in fact executed in the society today while the Internet has observed and recorded and offered accesses to individuals' activities online. The brilliant novel written by George Orwell, 1984, is another prediction and warning of human beings future that has somehow been realized nowadays (thinking about the "Big Brother"). So, rather than focusing on how the Internet (or technology) contributes to the "creation" of the cyberculture, maybe it is more proper to say that the Internet has helped to amplify and extremize the concepts that have been long evolved and developed in the human society.
Calcutt's deconstructive reading/writing of the Internet is another impressive feature of this book. Using binary oppositions (boys/girls, play/work) as the start point of his thinking, Calcutt cuts through the boundary lines between each contradiction and reveals the twined nature of the cyberculture's duality. Again, the instability of signification is not news at all. The contradictory chaos has been sitting in the seperating lines between each opposition before the birth of the so-called "cyberculture". And again, these contradictions might have been maximized because of the development of the Internet, and thus are gaining more and more attention. Calcutt is obvious aware of the fact. He analyzes the 26 contradictions with a historical eye which helps to relocate the floating "cyberculture" into its social contexts.
The lacking of the online resources or references might be a concern point for its reader. Yet in my understanding, I figure that Calcutt diliberately excludes such information because his focus is more on rooting the cyberculture into the historical, contextual, and human ground it is supposed--but has been overlooked for a long time--to be in.
This book was published a decade ago, yet the issues it noticed are still bouncing around with sparkles in the contemporary society. Discussions about the impacts of the Internet on democracy/diversity, war/peace, concerns about equality/elitism, free/fee, risk/safety in the virtual world, and inquiries about anarchy/authority, journalism/personalism, and so on keep being brought up from time to time. That situation has proved the rightness and necessity of Andrew Calcutt's efforts in weaving in the historical strings inside his book.
Throughout the 26 contradictions, Calcutt manages to draw out the time line of each issues that have been mistakenly viewed as "new" or "unique" to the cyberculture. For example, in the section of journalism/personalim, he points out that "narrowcasting", and the fragmentation it directly or indirectly resulted in, has taken place before the age of Internet. The show-up and popularity of specialized publications as well as cable TV can be regarded as some of such examples. And as Mark mentioned in the last seminar, the panopticon design examined and further developed in Michel Foucault's study about the prison (Discipline and Punish) is in fact executed in the society today while the Internet has observed and recorded and offered accesses to individuals' activities online. The brilliant novel written by George Orwell, 1984, is another prediction and warning of human beings future that has somehow been realized nowadays (thinking about the "Big Brother"). So, rather than focusing on how the Internet (or technology) contributes to the "creation" of the cyberculture, maybe it is more proper to say that the Internet has helped to amplify and extremize the concepts that have been long evolved and developed in the human society.
Calcutt's deconstructive reading/writing of the Internet is another impressive feature of this book. Using binary oppositions (boys/girls, play/work) as the start point of his thinking, Calcutt cuts through the boundary lines between each contradiction and reveals the twined nature of the cyberculture's duality. Again, the instability of signification is not news at all. The contradictory chaos has been sitting in the seperating lines between each opposition before the birth of the so-called "cyberculture". And again, these contradictions might have been maximized because of the development of the Internet, and thus are gaining more and more attention. Calcutt is obvious aware of the fact. He analyzes the 26 contradictions with a historical eye which helps to relocate the floating "cyberculture" into its social contexts.
The lacking of the online resources or references might be a concern point for its reader. Yet in my understanding, I figure that Calcutt diliberately excludes such information because his focus is more on rooting the cyberculture into the historical, contextual, and human ground it is supposed--but has been overlooked for a long time--to be in.
Check Lubomir's review on this book: http://newnewmedialp.blogspot.com/2009/05/review-white-noise-a-z-of.html
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