Week 6 – First segment on historical change
February 18, 2010
What are the main arguments in the two readings for this week?
Which one do you prefer and why?
In his article, Ess criticized the cosmopolitan position to be an idealistic take on the impact of the internet on society. According to him, the belief in an electronic global village and technological determinism are romantic views that naively assume the world as a macrocosm of parties, essentially monolithic in seeing universal communication and democracy as the road to prosperity.
Just as Ess strikes down the cosmopolitan view as naïve and ethnocentric in its democratic idealism, Bettig’s article vehemently critiques the capitalist system for expanding its market forces to corrupting the internet as another space for elites to regenerate their capital by manipulating market demand and state officials, thereby taking advantage of proletariats in the electronic age.
Bettig’s anti-capitalist position appeals to me more than the cosmopolitan perspective. As an anthropology student, I find the cosmopolitan ideal to be ethnocentric because not all countries hold the same cultural values as the west. In fact, enforcing the ideology of democracy on non-western countries is an undemocratic premise in itself. Assuming that non-westerners want the same technological infrastructure established in the west is also hypocritical of democracy. We live in a highly capitalistic society and the criticisms of the Marxist position on our consumer-based society have more tangible resonance than assumptions of technology as a means to proliferate an ideology that issues like poverty can be eradicated through public discourse.
As post-secondary students, we experience the tendencies Bettig pointed out in the radical tradition, namely the expansion of intellectual property rights and the growing commercialization of information. I think the fact that the majority of our school’s computers are dell, with Microsoft programs, and that our library extends to online article databases, relates to Bettig’s point on elite alliances made in the communications sector to control and gain profit from the acquisition of knowledge. We pay to go to school and in doing so we pay to have access to such resources.
Podcast subscription: CBC The Current http://cbc.podcast.com/show/2685/
My account’s playlist: http://my.podcast.com/krozal/playlist.rss
Week 6 – First segment on historical change
February 18, 2010
What are the main arguments in the two readings for this week?
Which one do you prefer and why?
In his article, Ess criticized the cosmopolitan position to be an idealistic take on the impact of the internet on society. According to him, the belief in an electronic global village and technological determinism are romantic views that naively assume the world as a macrocosm of parties, essentially monolithic in seeing universal communication and democracy as the road to prosperity.
Just as Ess strikes down the cosmopolitan view as naïve and ethnocentric in its democratic idealism, Bettig’s article vehemently critiques the capitalist system for expanding its market forces to corrupting the internet as another space for elites to regenerate their capital by manipulating market demand and state officials, thereby taking advantage of proletariats in the electronic age.
Bettig’s anti-capitalist position appeals to me more than the cosmopolitan perspective. I As an anthropology student, I find the cosmopolitan ideal to be ethnocentric because not all countries hold the same cultural values as the west. In fact, enforcing the ideology of democracy on non-western countries is an undemocratic premise in itself. Assuming that non-westerners want the same technological infrastructure established in the west is also hypocritical of democracy. We live in a highly capitalistic society and the criticisms of the Marxist position on our consumer-based society have more tangible resonance than assumptions of technology as a means to proliferate an ideology that issues like poverty can be eradicated through public discourse.
As post-secondary students, we experience the tendencies Bettig pointed out in the radical tradition, namely the expansion of intellectual property rights and the growing commercialization of information. I think the fact that the majority of our school’s computers are dell, with Microsoft programs, and that our library extends to online article databases, relates to Bettig’s point on elite alliances made in the communications sector to control and gain profit from the acquisition of knowledge. We pay to go to school and in doing so we pay to have access to such resources.
