[Week 8_1] Divisions...

In 'data deprivation', Schiller argues that corporate power has been growing to govern the flow of information that are crucial to today's life. He points out three important aspects in which it has taken place: deregulation of economic activity, privatization of the public functions, and commercialization of social activities. Though information is proliferating in this age, we are deficient of the necessary social information(p271). However, even taking Schiller's solid explanations into account, there are not many possible measures to counter those trends. Re-regulation and restoring private commercial sectors to the public would be an easy answer in theory, but not very realistic. Can the public domain be restored without sacrificing (capitalistic) efficiency? Not very likely. All you can force the corporates to pay taxes and contribute to build other new parts of public domains.

Norris notes three kinds of digital divide, which are the global divide, the social divide and the democratic divide. He mainly sticks to the divide of the hardware, which can in his view be overcome by more and cheaper technology. However, in my view digital divide is not about simply hardware. It is about how some people know how to gather and utilize information, while others cannot but merely follow the models and rules set by the former. The episteme setter get all the big money and power, while the follwers are spending time and money desperately and vainly to keep pace with them. These things cannot be easily fixed even with $100 laptops w/ Wikipedia Offline installed on them.

Finally, Lasch talks about how the modern technologies have been invented and implemented to reduce dependency on skilled labor, to achieve total control. However, it is not one-sided. Some technologies are chosen by the managers, while others are chosen by workers, playful teenagers and others for their own purposes and style of life. Total control is only possible when the most prominent field of decisions - the market - is governed by a single force. Sure, the corporates have much more power than anybody else. But let's not give up hope already...