Critical review - 'What Just Happened?", a chronicle from the information frontier - James Gleick.

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 Pete Broks- C56

 ASSIGNMENT II

             David James                 

CULTURAL MEANINGS OF POPULAR SCIENCE

CRITICAL REVIEW-“WHAT JUST HAPPENED”

A CHRONICLE FROM THE INFORMATION FRONTIER” JAMES GLEICK

This discussion will explore a number of key issues that Gleick raises in his book, ‘What Just Happened?”, that charts the decade of the nineties. As the book consists of individual essays, rather than a grand narrative, it represents a variety of different takes of technology and public consensus at different times. As Gleick acknowledges , this sometimes results in mistakes and oversights but overall, serves as an excellent spring board in exploring some of the wider issues. This discussion will aim to place the events of the last decade within a cultural and chronological perspective and will  question whether we are truly in the Information Age or whether still on the threshold. This will in many ways then, explore the postmodern era itself and to assess to what extent we are truly on the brink of something and if so what is it, and who does it affect. When we talk of The Information Age, we are discussing the Capitalist or First world. It is important to acknowledge the billions of people not on-line, who are to a large extent, unaffected by our ‘Information Age’.

 “What Just Happened?” traces the telecommunication and global explosion that occurred in the capitalist world of the nineties.  The birth of Internet technology had transformed the exterior: the work-place and also the interior of the individual; an individual who could connect to a world of  instant  access,  information, freedom and diversity. Gleick describes the synergy of telephone and computer technology in 1992 as “conjoining to make something greater- a dyad” but questions whether we have truly reached the Information Age, pointing towards our still very unelectronic reliance on the document and use of paper.  He asks whether people still frightened of too much information and why? Are we scared of too much money or too much happiness? Not necessarily, but what we are scared of it seems, is a loss of control.

 As Gleick observes in the article Inescapably Connected “We are not alone. The network knows where we

are”. (GLEICK 2000:p282). He says that information is everywhere and as we know, not always as secure as we’d like. Cyber-terrorism, viruses, and credit-card fraud are a major concern and represent a threat to national security as well as to the individual. He calls this a frightening intelligence built in to the electronic infrastructure that knows in an instant where you are, who you take calls/e-mails from, your credit rating, what kind of restaurants you like,”(GLEICK 2000:p 282). For convenience and innovation this may be a good thing, but do we need portable e-mail devices and pseudo artificial software that track us and predicts our movement. Gleick says these inventions are an invasion of our lives and privacy many people are not comfortable with phones or computer technology still.  “We are still self-conscious about the unshackling of our phones and will use telephones as lifelines even more than in the past; will have to grapple with new questions of etiquette and social propriety”. (GLEICK 2000: p 62). Will the public use of cellular phone remain a sign of ostentation and antisocial rudeness?  This is the pressure of public speaking which many people wish to avoid and may be why many people refuse to leave answer phone messages or go outside to talk. Equally, this may be the reason why we will talk to a complete stranger intimately on-line but cannot bear the same in person and ultimately, why many prefer the electronic medium or even the written form?  Not necessarily a lack of confidence in the person but in the verbal medium itself. Electronic communication is easier, it allows more time, removes the tension of proximity and risk of error. Consider the ‘Telephone transformed into almost anything” where Gleick describes the AT&T C.E.O who when his telephone rings grumbles “Why didn’t the caller use electronic mail instead. Voice is so retrograde, so intrusive. (GLEICK 2000: p27).   If this is the case, as society becomes even further fragmented then surely the spoken word may retreat even further. Text messaging has underlined this possibility as it seems, even more and more people are choosing to detach themselves from the pressure of public speaking.  So is the information future out of control then not just as method of communication that isolates the user from real interaction but also as a commodity of late-capitalist ideology. In   1995 in Washington Unplugged, Gleick slates the charges being levied for access to information. He says that the Information age for the United States is worth billions and that most of it is locked away where you can’t get at it. Therefore, with access to information, restricted in this way, one could question whether we are still in The Age of Paperwork rather than electronic Information, as the exclusion of the developing and Third World compound. For in this respect, whatever system we discuss, be it electronic or political, again we are always referring to the Western notion. It is possible to draw some striking comparisons between now and the Reformation of the 15th and 16th Century.  In this way, as the decentralization of the printed press accelerated the pace of change within society, and seemed to empower the individual, so to does the Internet, appear to facilitate this function. When the Acceptable Use policy was dropped in 1994, allowing universal access to the previously academic and business network, it seemed the individual was like in the Reformation, given access to previously guarded knowledge. However, just as with the printed press, it is important to recognize that again this environment is still controlled and is elitist. Before, it was education that allowed access to the knowledge and power within the printed word and if illiterate, this was  denied. With electronic knowledge, as Gleick supports, this access has evolved within the capitalist framework so that finance=control rather than education. Most people can read and write, but not all can afford computers, modems and electronic subscriptions where knowledge has become a commodity. This is The Postmodern Condition that Lyotard coined in 1979 where he expressed his distaste over the mechanization of knowledge. This restructuring of how information is organized, and synthesized within society is only of benefit, if it can be accessed and is one of the reasons why the Internet is problematic. Lyotard sees knowledge as a, “ terrain for conflict between modernity and post modernity.” This is the result of the formation of late capitalist ideology that looks to individual progression and material gain, as the mechanisms that drive it.

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 So what is postmodernism and postmodern science itself? Postmodernism “stresses the relativity, instability and intermediacy of meaning,” (P180 Chaos and Entropy: Science as Culture) and favors a fragmented perspective. This is often a focus away from society and an analysis of the individual instead- this is a postmodern trait. Here the criticism and fear exhibited is of the ‘me generation’ that Tom Wolf coined in 1970 and the realization that it may be too late to change the world or system and ultimately, that only the individual can advance within a world they cannot change. “It abandons humanism, and although focusing ...

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