Week Ten

Turner and Hooch Hayles: Counter-culture in a Posthuman World

These readings came at a perfect time for me, as I spent a bit of the break reading up on some futurist theories, from the likes of Ray Kurzweil and this fun site. There's a lot of similarities between those and Hayles' discussion on Posthuman cybernetics.

Basically, and this became more apparent as the Hayle text progressed, we're rocketing closer and closer towards a world with little need for human form everyday. Person-to-person interaction is becoming increasingly less needed as digital alternatives to everyday communications and commercial tasks present themselves. I think an argument could already be made that the idea of consciousness no longer represents itself in the brain but in the fingertips as they frantically pound keys to transfer thoughts to the web.

Although pure Posthumanist life in a cyber-world may be more of a technological inevitability than the cyber-fantasy of decades past, let's ignore that for a moment and focus on the present. As the title, and later the text, or Turner's work declares, counter-culture is now cyber-culture. And it makes sense. Counter-cultures tend to be youth-driven and thrive on platforms that tend to go against the norm. The French student revolts of the 60s, for example, that seem to pop up all the time in this course. Using street posters and hand made signs gave the students a unique voice and a feeling of connectedness within their group.

The balance is beginning to tip, but cyberspace has been a welcome home to counter-culture for the last couple decades. One of the great initial possibilities it provided was a voice for anyone to say anything. Given the state of mainstream media at the time of the rise of cyber-culture, this was huge. The movement has only continued to grow and expand, through popular groups of today such as Anonymous and Wikileaks.

But there's the tipping point. If it's popular and the majority of people are getting involved, is it still counter-culture, or just culture in general? What becomes of counter-culture and we move closer and closer towards a Posthuman society?

Hayle touches on the idea of interventions being made to change or halt the disembodiment process. I think that's where future of counter-culture lies. As the general public begins its gradual shift to a home on the digital range, movements may arise about just what it means to be human. Can we still be considered human if we shed our bodies and upload our consciousness, and if so, what do we consider those who opt not to? 

Week Something: Hayek

Rule of Law and the Media?

I'm struggling to see a connection between Hayek's piece and new media. I understand the arguments on a broader political level, and it certainly seems to fit in with other post-Marxist works, but what does it have to do with media? So I'll try to apply it to something I can relate to, which I'm starting to feel like I can only write about: film.

Does our political system provide a Rule of Law for media, specifically film, or is it one of, as Hayek calls it, "moral" arbitrariness? I'd argue most definitely the latter. Our constitution provides freedom of speech and press, and film certainly won a huge battle when it was granted first amendment protection. Yet as it has played out, it's a tenuous freedom of speech.

To shorten a long lesson of film history, a governing body was created a handful of decades ago as film was coming into its own and really beginning to say something. This body, the Motion Picture Association of America, sought to create a set of guidelines by which to approve the content of film. Today, we know these guidelines as ratings: G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17.

So far so good. Seems like a fine start to establishing a Rule of Law for film. Clear rules are being established and enforced in a consistent manner so that the system can become self-governing. Only problem is, the transparency stops at the letter of the rating. There is no defined list of what material constitutes what rating. None at all. The rating for each film is a pure moral judgement call on the part of the ratings board, and it's led to some terrible and puzzling decisions. The whole subject is discussed quite nicely in the documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated.

On the surface it's a thin Rule of Law, but in actuality the film industry of America is ruled in a completely arbitrary fashion. Factor in the also arbitrary obscenity laws and freedom of speech suddenly isn't so free. An NC-17 rating is a kiss of death for a film, regardless of the message it contains. Such a rating makes it nearly impossible to distribute or sell.

But is this a bad thing? Is it really so wrong for a moral system to control film? I truly don't know. I certainly agree with the MPAA in making it more difficult for younger audiences to see more mature content. But then there's that arbitrary cutoff of what content is too mature even for mature audiences, and it all falls apart. I don't think a more clearly defined Rule of Law would be good for the industry, but when it's already so steeped in moral judgement how could a new system even begin to steer away from that?

I don't know. Maybe it's impossible at this point. Maybe it's meaningless. Maybe the connection I'm trying to make between Hayek and the MPAA is tenuous at best.