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April 29, 2005
Little Brother: Watching Big Brother (1 of 3)
User-Generated Media Is The Only Reason We Are Not Living In An Orwellian Nightmare
When George Orwell suggested in his techno-futurist dystopian novel “1984” that citizens would voluntarily walk around with devices that transmitted their location to a centralized authority twenty four hours per day, it was one of many preposterous features of a society enabled by technology to go terribly wrong. He further envisioned the “telescreen” which is both a receiver and a transmitter. It incessantly relays messages from the Party and simultaneously allows the dreaded “thought police” to tune into the activities of any individual at any given time. Control of the news and entertainment are centralized and controlled under The Ministry of Truth.
Welcome To My Orwellian Nightmare
Today, I carry around a device that transmits my location to a centralized authority twenty four hours per day – my mobile phone. I have a 50” flat-screen TV just like the ones Orwell said would be in every home, and my TiVo knows my every media consumption move, right down to how many times I rewinded and watched the exposure of Janet Jackson’s breast during the superbowl. Control of the news and entertainment are centralized under a small handful of media conglomerates that dictate what I read, watch, hear and therefore to some extent, believe.
A Quick Look Back
Orwell published his classic in 1949, a time well before cell phones, set-top boxes and global domination of media by a small handful of megacorporations. The entire decade was dominated by World War II, the end of which launched the U.S. to the status of world superpower, challenged only by the USSR, which precipitated the Cold War based on a deep ideological divide, making communism (in this country anyway) a four-letter word. At the same time all of this was happening, television had just been made commercially available in 1947 with 13 stations and ENIAC, the first digital computer was completed in 1945. Hitler was eliminating artists who disagreed with his ideals. Many of them fled to America and influenced the art scene, as the center of the art universe moved from Paris to New York. Art became more abstract to show raw emotion and the school of Abstract Expressionism was born, chaotic and shocking to maintain its humanity during a time of insanity.
It is easy to see how George Orwell’s vision was developed at the intersection of new technology and the sociopolitical mood of the era, leading to the conclusion that technology could be deployed in a manner that centralizes and limits the flow of information to the people, thus eliminating individualism, democracy and freedom. Orwell wrote, "with the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end."
Orwell made that statement because he assumed the receiving and transmitting would be to and from a centralized Ministry of Truth. When media is created at the center of the network and broadcast outward, control of the message is possible because there is a bottleneck through which the message must pass. It is at that point that the controller of the media can influence the message to promote a particular opinion, ideal or agenda. This is fine, by the way, as long as the consumer of that media understands that they are consuming an opinion, ideal or agenda. When they do not, the media adopts the additional attributes that change its definition to propaganda.
I agree with Orwell that in a world where media production is centralized, technology can serve to limit rather than increase access to information, particularly the kind that is presented in a fair and balanced way.
The Opportunity Now
Well, I have an instrument that can receive and transmit simultaneously. It is my Verizon Wireless VX8000 camcorder phone and I carry it with me everywhere I go. Contrary to Orwell’s statement, though, I do not feel like my private life has come to an end. Rather, I feel that my transmitter/receiver is the beginning of a totally new media era that puts me in control of what I consume, but most importantly will soon enable me to consume content that other people have created and will enable them to consume content that I have created. The possibility of a massively multiuser participative mobile media network is right around the corner, and it is the thing that is going to kill the incumbent media companies unless they figure it out.
If they do figure it out, (and I mean in the way Kodak should have figured out the whole digital camera thing) it will accelerate a fundamental shift in the global media industry from centralized controller to distributed enabler. That would likely be a good (and very profitable) thing to do but would likely require the planned deconstruction of existing business models that have such organizational inertia driving them that it could be very painful to do. (Sort of like Kodak planning to get out of the film business and investing heavily in digital camera technology development.) I must say that in a lot of ways, I hope they do figure it out, because the benefit will be to consumers.
Little Brother Keeping Big Brother In Check
Let’s say you were near the 2004 Republican National Convention where several people were protesting and getting arrested for their raucous and dangerous behavior. Let’s further suppose you were not protesting but were arrested anyway while riding by on your bicycle and the policeman who arrested you falsely stated in his police report that you were aggressively resisting arrest and were responding violently. THE POLICEMAN LIED, but who is the judge going to believe? I promise that it is not you. As ridiculous as it should sound that in this country abuse of power is so common at even the lowest levels of government that you could be victimized and falsely accused and possibly imprisoned when you have done nothing wrong, that is exactly what happened to more than a thousand people that day. Now let’s say to make matters worse that a heavily edited version of a video of your arrest (the only video the police thought existed) served to corroborate the lying police officer’s story and that video was intentionally edited for that purpose. The evidence gets stacked against you. But what if there were dozens of citizens who captured your arrest on their camcorder phones, showing the unquestionable truth of the matter, and presented the unedited video to the district attorney? Would the DA throw the case out? Yes, and that is exactly what happened at the 2004 Republican National Convention as reported on the front page of the New York Times.
Distributed Media Promotes Democracy
If this sort of thing happens with any frequency at all, (like more than once, ever) the more people we have walking around with mobile connected camcorders, the better. When media production and consumption is distributed at the farthest edge of the network, into the hands of each and every individual, there is a greater chance (though no guarantee) that the truth will come out. If democracy lives or dies by the will of the people, then giving the people the ability to express themselves and transact their shared thoughts, opinions and agendas in a marketplace unencumbered by the political or other slant of any centralized controller is a way to promote democracy, if only of thought.
I would be remiss to not mention that such a marketplace for user-generated media will start to exist about three weeks from today when our first product, Rabble, launches. Rabble is blogging evolved for the mobile space, enabling users to take full advantage of the powerful media production and consumption devices in their pockets to express themselves anytime and anywhere. Don’t you think the least you should do is express your freedom by expressing yourself with Rabble? Yes, I do too.
In the first chapter of Orwell’s “1984”, On April 4, 1984 Winston Smith does something that was certainly a thoughtcrime and could at the very least land him in a concentration camp: He starts a diary.
Posted by Shawn Conahan at April 29, 2005 10:17 AM
Comments
Ok - after reading that post - especially the comments about the GOP's convention - I am totally obsessed with Rabble now. I view it as mobile activism, you know? Keep up the great work, I can tell that we have similar political views, so you must be a very smart person. :)
p.s. - The New York Times ROCKS (especially Maureen Dowd)
Posted by: -LiberalFury- at June 2, 2005 08:39 PM