Resisting the Virtual Life: The Culture and Politics of Information
Edited by James Brook and Iain A. Boal
City Lights Books, 1995. 289 pp., $15.95
Reviewed by Stan Thompson
Media, governments, academics and more all have heralded the close of the 20th century as the smart age. An age in which we have smart TVs, smart cars, smart homes, smart factories, smart offices and smart weapons. Many have heralded the information revolution which will liberate us from our day to day drudgery and transport us into the world only written about in science fiction.
However, as the editors write in Resisting the Virtual Life, "The details of particular technologies, including virtual reality technologies, are less interesting to examine than is the life that these technologies express and help form. The appeal of technologies is often ideological and symbolic, giving concrete expression to values like control, efficiency, utility, punctuality, speed, transparency, hierarchy and power — values, in our view, too often detrimental to a more human life."
It is these values that Resisting the Virtual Life attempts to expose and combat by assembling a collection of contributions from a diverse group including writers, scholars, activists, artists and a software engineer. The contributions are grouped into three broad categories which attempt to take up the major issues regarding the use of technology both in today's world and historically.
The contributions cover a very extensive range of issues, and whilst most of the authors might not agree with each other on much, they all approach the various debates around technology with the need to question the general rush to rewire and build an infrastructure that would further an alienated life.
Most contributions recognise the vast gap between the utopian promises by the corporate and government sectors and the reality of the impact of technology on a world dominated by capital and the inevitable striving for profits. This analysis is of course nothing new, as Marx dealt with it in Capital: "If machinery be the most powerful means for increasing the productiveness of labour — i.e. for a shortening of the working time required in the production of a commodity — it becomes in the hands of capital the most powerful means for lengthening the working day beyond all bounds set by human nature".
However, some contributors espouse the liberation that the new technologies, in particular the internet, "will" provide by giving access to vast sources of information. These very same contributors also refer to personal liberation through technologies, as opposed to any direct challenge to the powers that control and direct the use of these technologies.
Mass liberation, it would appear, is achieved through the sum of the personal liberation of individuals. Presumably, there will come a time when governments will be electronically ousted out by the simultaneous pounding of keyboards around the world.
Fortunately, these contributions aren't representative of all that is in this book. Activists will find the leading section, "The New Information Enclosures", the most stimulating. In particular the contribution by Laura Millar, "Women and Children First: Gender and the Settling of the Electronic Frontier", contains what I believe to be one of the better commentaries, albeit a short one, on the issues of gender in cyberspace. Millar argues against the victim feminism espoused by some writers on this issue.
Howard Besser takes a look at the relatively free flow of information and participatory opportunities of the internet compared to the corporate, passive, consumption model and programmed interactivity of the information superhighway.
Besser reports that several surveys have shown that of "consumers" surveyed, around two thirds said they would be interested in using their TV or PC to receive free health care information, lists of services, product reviews and other similar information. News and community-based services also rated highly. Very few indicated a desire for video on demand or interactive shopping.
As we are already seeing, however, the flagship of the information superhighway is pay TV, which incorporates video on demand and interactive home shopping as its main marketing edge. One commentator described the information superhighway as an eight-lane highway into your home and only a foothpath out: interactivity is highly controlled and programmed.
Other contributions cover such topics as "Media Activism" and "Radical Democracy", "Making Technology Democratic" and a fascinating photo essay titled "The Banalities of Information", which attempts to bring cyberspace down to earth by looking at the integration of communications technology into everyday life.
Resisting the Virtual Life adds interesting new perspectives to a topic which tends to be overwhelmed by many too eager to proclaim the liberation of humanity through a collective uprising of modems. The book debunks many myths but occasionally perpetuates others. Nonetheless, it sets out to open up the debate on the issues we face regarding technology and significantly broadens our understanding and perceptions of this brave new world.