This Digital Divide Has No Bridge

There is a digital divide that will never be completely bridged.  Lately there has been much politically correct discourse on the implications of technology and the haves verses the have-nots.  As I sit glued to the banter of such conversations I feel as though I am trapped inside some sort of nightmarish PTA meeting in which all the middle class soccer moms desperately want to ensure that no child gets left behind.  Idealism is great for the middle class.  Such lofty notions of liberal equality only serve to soothe the guilt of "white-bread" wealth.  Scholastic discourse is comprised of the rich.  Certainly most involved in such debate are not heirs to vast fortunes, but the majority are privileged by generational wealth.  Most modern scholars live as queens and kings in comparison to the vast populace of our shared world and it's economy.  This fact is the elephant in the room that seems invisible to the bright eyed optimists living off of student loans arguing for the equality of technological access and literacy.

There have always been divisions created by economics.  Some feast while others famine.  Despite all the best intentions this FACT of life will never change.  This same situation resonates within the ideals of technological equality.  Of course human communication is being exponentially changed by our technological advancements.  Just as movable type revolutionized the dissemination of knowledge and literacy, so to is the digital revolution changing the dynamics of communication and culture connectivity.  The specifics of these two situations are the same.  Yes movable type allowed for vast numbers of people to have access to knowledge that was once replicated and controlled by authoritarianism, but not everyone was allowed this access.  Just because literature was more readily available did not insure that all humans were given/allowed access to this new availability of knowledge.  As it was then so too is it now.  Equality is an ideal.  There has never been true equality- nature does not work this way.  Evolution is a verifiable fact.  To suggest that we humans and the tools that we create are separate form the nature of Darwinism is moronic.

So to the bleeding hearts of the middle-class-political-correct-club I simply suggest that you count your blessings.  Yes equality is a moral goal to be sought after culturally, but lets not fool ourselves into believing that our daily luxuries were bestowed upon us without the subjugation of the impoverished.  This digital divide has no bridge for evolution is a harsh mistress.

Zen Market Driven Enlightenment

Advertising is everywhere.  We are all walking billboards with our loyalties stitched, screened, embedded, and sometimes even tattooed of our peripherals.  We clamor for it and repulse against it at the same time.  the modern consumer has become adapt at tunnel vision due to our over saturated landscapes filled to the brim with quantized slogans and market appeal.  Often it seems that trends towards anti-advertisements have become the vanguards cry.  So easily do the loud voices of idealistic scholars chastise the realms of the market driven campaign.  Suggestions and discourse on the matter turn to politically correct treaties delegating appropriateness of time and place.  These naive conversations neglect to touch on the realities of our consumer driven culture.  We all participate in the proliferation of marketing and advertising.  Having our cake and eating it too was never apart of the contract.  Someone has to pay for the party.

Understanding these simplistic and yet complex parameters for our modern day media experience can facilitate an enlightened sense of exposure to the ad driven marketplace.  Understanding that marketing is a necessity can lead to a symbiosis of audience and marketer.  Often personalized ad campaigns at the betwixt of new media can facilitate an exchange where in ad audiences creates a feedback loop in which informative marketing can behove both audience and marketer.  Another significant marketing movement capitalizes on an audiences experience.  Ads have become emersive with sponsored applications and lifestyle compatibilities.  These trends will only beckon greater efficiency.  We may be able to tunnel vision our way through a slogan free world but we will never be able to completely free ourselves from our own market filled desires.

Anonymously Yours

The subject of anonymity has been the topic of inquiring minds as of late.  Of course lines and sides have been drawn over the impacts of this seemingly "new" phenomenon.  Anonymous mob mentality can be a very dangerous thing.  It can spark revolutions that over throw existing power or might even shame or bully individuals towards destructive behavior.  Anonymity allows for a greater involvement in actions and speech that otherwise might turn the identifiable individual away in fear of social reprisal.

Anonymity is not some new trend.  Writers throughout history have created pen names for themselves for a variety of reasons most commonly as a means of protecting themselves from public backlash against their opinions and or to allow for a broader sense of artistic freedom within the means of their expressed medium.  The apparent rise in anonymity within the contexts of new media is just a reflection of the same set of justifications that Samuel Langhorne Clemens accessed when creating the famed writer Mark Twain.  There are infinitely more individuals about the global net publishing user created content.  It only makes sense that many of these content creators might choose to represent themselves through anonymity.  Of course this can and often does get whacked completely out of proportions.

Examples of this new understanding of anonymous mob mentality can be seen in political action involvements and within spheres of despicable behavior.  The anonymous group spurred from the infamous site 4chan have created several instances where their combined anonymity has shifted and changed events towards both positive and negative outcomes.  In this sense they have become a force to reckon with that is both heroic and dastardly.  Due to this groups antics, Anonymous has become both a visual and cultural icon.  The big debate of this argument comes into apparent sight when we attempt to elicit control over such a broad influential group whose members are but ghosts within the net.

I feel that the existing fear associated around the concepts of online anonymity begin to take root once the ideals of control and responsibility become undefinable.  When no one individual can be assessed with blame and or guilt for specific actions and speech, fear ensues.  It is an out of date social model to believe in individualized responsibility.  The global connectivity offered by the Internet has created communities outside of time and space.  These communities act as a hive and there is no chance of containing an enraged hive.  Thus becomes the pivotal point at which society at large must recognize the force of the anonymous group.

Information Dissemination and the New Digital Paradigm

Due to the influxes of new media there is now a new breed of activism that is changing all the rules of the game.  New levels of instant communication now exist that can spread the flame of political cause across borders within the blink of an eye.  Certainly in these situations some government factions due attempt to block and censor these new layers of communication.  this can be accomplished to a specific degree but often is not able to quell all attempts towards message propagation.  Somewhere someone will find a way to get the information out into the public arena.  All it takes is one line out to enable the world a glimpse of current political uprisings.  If the information has legs- it becomes viral.

In this new knowledge ecology brought about by the digital revolution, information seeks to become known.  In this manner pertinent knowing seems to filter its way to the top of the data minutia and onto the tips of the journalists expose.  Julian Assange's  Wiki Leaks can be taken as a prime example of this new manner in which information before unseen has found it's way into the public debate.  Of course there are many opposing arguments to the Wiki Leaks phenomenon, but what can not be argued is it's impact.  This new transparency is the new model upon which future political structures will be built.  All of this will be spurred by the grass roots lone wolf renegade journalist finding that one line out onto the digital either to propagate their story.  If the story has legs - it becomes viral.

The Google Eye In The Internet Sky

Google is now the big eye in the internet sky.  They have their hands in almost everything.  Though every new venture that Google attempts does not always end up smelling like roses, the company itself is leading the vanguard charge and staking claim to a wide range of unsettled or sparsely pioneered wild west.  They did start out as a rag tag outfit in some dorm room- the internet start up fairytale- but have now expanded beyond the edges to where only a challenger touched by the hands of the Gods could rival or even take down the empire that Google has become.  Is this a tumultuous development that all those in the free world should rise up against?  Many rhetoricians fear and question the future of the Googlization of Everything, but though their moto and battle cry "Do No Evil" might not harken the same angelic ideals as it did before corprate shares hung like gillitines over the necks of Google's top dogs, it still speaks volumes in that very few leaders of any industrial or technilogical revolution screamed at the walls of Jericho with such a politically correct and bright and sunshiny call to arms.

The invention of the printed word due to the Gutenburg's printing press often becomes the model of human evolution in regards to thinking and the disemination of knowledge when we are disecting and predicting the onslaught of exponitial change that the internet and the digital revolution has brought to modern man.  Certainly there are many correlations, but within this treatise on Google's omnipresence I wish to employ another model.  John D Rockefeller and several other parteners created the Standard Oil Company at he hight of the rise of the global demand for kerosine and gasoline deue to the invention of the combustabol engine.  At the time fortune hunters were all out seeking the next great cash of oil reserves, but Rockefeler and his crew sought a different angle.  They initiated to become the only oil refinery conglomerate to sasiate the ever growing need for engine fuel.  Due to brash bussiness tactics and a lot of blood sweat and tears Rockefeller created an empire that dwarfs Google.  Many writers have discussed and cronicalled John D Rockefellers rise and interesting enough he too seemed to have idealistic for the betterment of human kind ideals swathing umungst his moral intelect just as google's captain's of industry wish to "Do No Harm".

The Rockefeller family and empire often gets allot of flack.  They are often the subject of conspiracy nut jobs attempts to connect aristocracy to some sort of Illuminati world dominance, but if you really take a truthful look at the circumstances one will indelibly find out that much of the Rockefeller  fortune was disseminated throughout the United States in the forms of social charitable institutions.  Many library, hospitals, university, government buildings, and museums are all accountably traced back to large donations made by the Rockefeller Foundation.  It is easy to try and suggest malice undertakings about those in positions of industrial power, and of course corporate evil is real, but there are those that fate and ingenuity have betrothed as leaders revolutionized industry.  Just because you were smart enough to climb to the top of the hill does not mean that you house evil intentions.  Certainly those at the top of the food chain must stay within the scrutiny of the public eye, but there seems to be allot of haters around quibbling over the latest technological convergence.  The invisible hand of economics has and always will be the guiding light of these quandaries.

Net Neutrality

I never really understood the implications of Net Nuetrality.  I Just usumed that the Net was still the "wild west" and always would be.  Today, for me a middle class white boy, there is a wide range of freedoms associated with the net, but that is all changing.

If it were all left up to the guys who created the internet there would be no censorship or controls placed upon the net.  Their motto as put by Jonathan L. Zittrain in his book "The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It "We reject: kings, presidents, and voting.  We believe in: rough consensus and running code."  This type of strategy is what has lead us to the net we know today and the concepts of Net Neutrality.  It is an open ended approach where in whatever information is fed into the system is reconfigured into and out of packaged bytes of text. (text in the sense of media)  Of course the whole thing is far more complicated than my rudimentary understanding could even attempt to portray within this far too short treatise, but that is the gist in layman's terms.  Where the whole trouble of Net Neutrality comes into play is when we begin to consider the network and its physicality.  Right now these typed symbols are being converted into electrical impulses that are being sent out amongst the net to a server somewhere in which this blog resides.  Who knows how many wires, patches, switches, and router thingy doodads these words travel as I post this highly insightful discourse.  Someone, or rather a group of someones own all of those wires, patches, switches and doodads.  All of this hardware exists and is maintained by large corporate conglomerates.  As we all know to well, corporate conglomerates only care about the bottom line- MONEY.

Given the realities of consumerism and the exponential growth of the net though wireless device demands, we can only attempt to fathom the net's future.  The crux of the situation within the sphere of Net Neutrality is that all bits are treated as equal regardless of the media application they are designed to run at the end of the networked chain.  This mode of operation is probably due for, and is assuredly under corporate planning schemes to undertake, a complete overhaul.  That is specifically; expect things to change.  These changes might not feel so warm and fuzzy while they are being developed into the public net usage.  Certainly tiers of net bandwidths could and will probably be sectioned off where in the consumers willing to pay for higher bandwidth service will receive adequate positioning amongst the information ques.  Wireless data plans are already beginning to slice up the access pie into pieces that only the upper middle class can afford and justify.  Having access anywhere and everywhere is awesome, but paying close to $100 a month for that privilege really sucks...especially when you are a student and your gross income for the year is way under what most middle class suburbanites consider reasonable or even tolerable.  Net Neutrality will only exist within the reaches of your pocket book.  It's a pay to play world out there, and despite the intentions of the original internet designers, your bits have got a price tag.

Privacy

Privacy is a huge consern.  It is esspecially important within this didgital revolution.