The Technology and The Society

The Technology and The Society

Raymond Williams

T(V)-Rex?  

I know this subject has been beat to death, but after reading The Technology and Society it really does feel like studying a relic of the past.  Not even like record player to MP3 player past, but like hoop and stick to Playstation past.  As good a job as Williams does dissecting the effects of television on society, there doesn't seem to be any point to applying these questions as written.  

New Questions

I'm thinking of a different set of questions: "How has the internet changed our world?"  "Is it determinist or symptomatic?" "Is it primarily based on content or or based on form?"  While Williams' analysis is valuable as a template for current research on the internet, it's primary subject is no longer relevant. Mostly because of forces beyond the scope of commercialism.  People are naturally attracted to a more participatory medium.

Remember USENET?

Why has the experience seemed to lack a degree of depth recently?  Why did the old internet experience (roughly from its commercial debut in the 1990's until 2000) seem better despite it being more simplistic?  Back then, the majority of websites were more personally expressive.  You could "surf" for hours, picking up on a trail of links, and be completely immersed.  Today, you "Google" a keyword term, get what Google thinks you're looking for, often a wiki entry, and the experience stops there.  Most efficient, but efficient doesn't always equal interesting or engaging.  It's all about going from point A to point B as quickly as possible, hence the rise of the "app", where you point and click in fell one swoop, and are brought to what you're looking for even faster.     

Catching Up

At that time the internet was more about content because the form was one-way, just like television, and radio before it, and therefore more intuitive because people had seen it before.  The control of content was only in the hands of the people who controlled the form.  User demand overwhelmed creative supply, forcing the few suppliers to maximize their efforts at creating rich content. 

Today, control is available to anyone in form and content.  Besides there being so many suppliers that competition seems almost pointless,  people don't even know how to compete because the form is still in  major flux.    Flux in terms of technology, and flux in terms of dealing with this new model of inclusion.  Like desktop technology, internet technology will mature, possibly soon. Apple's latest operating system instead of adding features, actually reduced features, because they hit an innovation wall and it was actually a better product with less.  Likewise internet technologies seem to be running out of steam,  For example, since social media's debut people have been looking to it as the next source of great wealth. Tools like Blippy have clearly gone too far.  It allows everyone in your network to see what credit card purchases you have made in real time. 


 Once the innovation has run it's course and people start working with what has stuck around, I think they're be more immersive experiences on the web.  As usual, the market will ask consumers for more and more technology growth. This is happening right now with mobile (3G, 4G. 5G...), but that seems to be hitting a wall as well, with two companies buying masses blocks of TV ad time to promote who's coverage map is better in Appalachia.  It's too bad nobody's watching...