Digital Culture Studies

I am not often afraid of technology, but there are exceptions. This is one.

I caught Lee Siegel on a late night chat show this week (daily show or colbert), talking about his new book, Against the Machine, Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. I haven’t read it yet - I have the library getting me a copy, via interlibrary loan for some light spring break reading, because watching Siegel talk about his feelings regarding internet use was frustrating, and I always love reading a book that makes me angry :)

There is likely more to his thesis, but the general premise in his interview is that the internet is isolating, and that we are conversing with people we don’t even know, hiding behind usernames, elevating the most banal of interaction to cult-status while the cyber-mob tramples down creativity, intelligence, and freedom. Internet users are like drug addicts, the best of themselves sucked dry by the half-life avatars they pilot through the vapid, commercial-driven construct of the web, blah blah blah….. it isn’t anything you haven’t heard a million times before, and while I could point to a dozen reasons why he is wrong, I will merely ask one question: how is being online any more isolating than reading a book?

We ought to ban books, really - its an activity that isolates our kids, encourages them to sit for hours, staring at the page, and they don’t know anything about the person who wrote those words they are reading. My God! The horreur!

ahem.

Perhaps Mr. Siegel isn’t the best person to critisize the internet, or how people use it. After all, he was suspended from the New Republic for creating a pseudonymous second log-in account in order to post in the comments section of his own New Republic blog posts, in order to make it appear as if he had great support among his readership. That second account, under the name “sprezzatura” was always quick to praise Siegel, and just as quick to excoriate Siegel’s detractors within the comments.

It is the very worst standpoint in conservative academic thought to insist that the masses are unable to adequately care for their themselves, and that better minds, such as Siegel’s, ought act as their cultural gatekeeper. The internet is killing society, but luckily, high-minded thinkers like Siegel are immune. It is the common people that cannot be trusted to use the internet. After all, when we do, according to Siegel:

“Perhaps your husband is, at this very moment, shut away in his office somewhere in your home, carrying on several torrid affairs at the same time under his various aliases: ‘Caliente,’ ‘Curious,’ ‘ActionMan.’ When he emerges from his sequestered lair, red-faced and agitated, is it because he has been arguing for moderation with ‘KillBush46′ on the political blog Eschaton, has failed in his bid to purchase genuine military-issue infrared night goggles on eBay, or has been desperately masturbating while instant-messaging ‘Prehistorical2′?”

(quote via Salon)

Moral Panic! Reefer Madness! Invasion of the Body Snatchers! Teh interwebs can haz cheezburger! I have more to say on the topic, including the delicious irony that Siegel, a man that rails against irony, was promoting his book on an ironic comedy program, but the joke was too obvious, and also, I need to go see what is happening in that lair of ours.