A response to Will's 'SOS' that is apparently too long for a "comment" #feelingpowerless

(pretend this is a comment written below Will's post…)

Some very thought provoking questions! While we began to touch on them in class, I’d like to expand a little more on some of my thoughts from seminar…

When it comes to culture industries and personal consciousness, I find it difficult to separate the two altogether. I’m not as concerned with Hansen’s ‘overemphasis’ on the culture industries in relation to personal consciousness, as much as I am skeptical of his optimism (as you, Will, seem to be as well). This brings me to your questions about the extent to which the culture industry structures our personal consciousness and memory, and also digital media’s control over our personal consciousness:

The culture industry is mobilized by dominant media, which we participate in on a daily basis—both actively and passively (I acknowledge that my perspective is situated in our contemporary moment of Western culture, and that I’m a student in a program predicated on access to various technologies). I think that the growth of digital media has provided a variety of avenues through which we can engage our personal and public environments. Sure, TV alone might not pose much of a threat to personal consciousness, but this is only one vehicle of the culture industry. Devices and technologies are intended to be consumed in our deepest state of distraction. Boredom becomes a symptom of apathy, risking withdrawal from critical interpretation. If we look at Facebook as a technology of the self, we can see the ways in which we construct an identity relative to a technology. We meld into its structure, which determines the parameters of our self-curation. Personal consciousness becomes public consciousness, and vice versa. While I appreciate Hansen’s discussion of technogenesis and the (seemingly) symbiotic relationship between human beings and technology, I still can’t help but question the level of power we actually possess. We input our information into digital spaces, in turn becoming calculated and calculable. Technologies turn bodies and affect into information, and this is used for economic and political purposes. The body, in a sense, becomes the medium. This capacity to produce and circulate affect replaces commodification and labour. We ought to keep in mind that governmentality is not hierarchized, and that digital technologies reconfigure and disperse power. It is incredibly pervasive. While cultural theorists like Adorno and Horkheimer (whom Hansen nods to in his article) go so far as to align the administration of culture with the rationality of domination, I’m not sure I would agree to that extent... I don’t think we’re necessarily an appendage of machinery, but I do think it’s important to consider the ways in which culture and consumption are reduced to a formula and transmitted via digitization.

Returning to the idea that the body is a medium, it’s important to consider the effects of biomedia. Devices such as the FitBit, or the fingerprint access to iPhones, etc. collapse human beings and technology. It’s even in the name: iPhone, iCloud, iThis, iThat…the individual and technology fold into one word. They are inextricable, and I think this kind of language embodies (and perhaps helps mobilize) the shift we are experiencing in contemporary Western cultures, where the proximity between humans and technology is closing. We see this relationship echoed in the film, “Noah”. The viewer is closely proximal to Noah, who is in turn proximal to social media technologies. Noah engages multiple platforms in a state of partial distraction, and these platforms mediate his experiences of romance, friendship, and strangers. Technology, in many ways, is the life support of his relationships; his access to them relies on the functionality of technology. As McLuhan suggests, it is difficult to separate technology and culture. So long as we submit to digitization and technologies (and it’s difficult to imagine a world in which we don’t, without renouncing certain privileges), we exist within the parameters of Freedom. As Dr. Ironstone has reminded us on many occasions: “We can have whatever we want, as long as it’s on the menu”. We ought to be aware of the ways in which we are governed by technologies, as they not only circulate affect and commodities, but also ideologies. In order to effect any type of social change, we ought to be aware of our own participation within digitization.

(I wish I had a more “punchy” conclusion, but I’m tapping out.)