The Limits of Consumer Choice as a Democratizing Medium

I used to think capitalism was inherently evil. It just seemed like, by its very nature, it created a distorted distribution of wealth, and put one person against the other in pursuit of elusive riches. Whether or not this is true, for the time being, it is our economic reality. So recently I've been trying to figure out how to work within this system.

I began thinking about how consumer choice has the ability to be a truly democratic means of governing corporations. If a consumer agrees with the practices and policies of a corporation, then they buy the product. If not, then they don't.

The problem with consumer choice are the clogs in information flow within our system. The consumer is not fully informed as to the practices of corporations, so they do not make fully informed choices. Much of this has to do with the media, or the lack there of. Fewer corporations owning more and more media outlets spells disaster for the free flow of information.

B.H. Bagdian made reference to this when he talked about the growing amalgamation of media outlets in this article The Endless Chain. He argues that corporations fight for more media domination for two reasons: money and influence.

The problem for the consumer lies in the fact that the media controls information. Without free flowing information, there is no free choice. Bagdian states : "In a democracy, the answer to government power is accountability, which means giving voters full information and real choices. In the media business it is not different; monopoly and concentrated control diminish real choice."

There is light at the end of this dark, bleak tunnel. The internet is becoming more and more a means of unclogging the information flow. Sites like Wikipedia, and the creations of weblogs is a testament to this. The limits to the internet, at the moment, has to do with accessibility. Information is only free and representative if everyone is connected.

Staying Connected to the Community

Despite growing up in an age dominated by the introduction of the internet, there have been times when I've been resistant to these changes in information exchange. Partially because the internet removes the need for face to face contact in order to obtain information, but also because the internet cannot replace real life experience.

However, it is starting to become apparent to me that perhaps the internet has a great potential to connect isolated individuals and groups. In Technology and the Circumpolar Village, V. Alia states "...new technologies could link with old ways and support an array of Inuit-run cultural literacy and communications projects." (Alia, 140). The internet could be a culturally unifying force.

What made me realize the truth of this idea was when I stumbled upon the CBC radio 3 website (http://radio3.cbc.ca) . I have always been a music fan, but have been disappointed in the dominant medias' (MuchMusic and MTV) representation of emerging Canadian artists. What CBC has done for Canadian music is create a centralized community, representative of artists from across the country, and dedicated to getting Canadian talent recognized. This creates a 'community of Canadian music', strengthening the connection of even isolated individuals to Canadian artistic expression.

Illness and the Use of Metaphor in Shaping Our Culture

In their article, Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson explore the way in which metaphors pervade much of language. They talk about how metaphors are shaped by culture, providing different meaning depending on the context. The metaphors lose value without a consensus on their meaning created through culture.

For example, take illness metaphors. Not the metaphors used to describe illness, but rather the metaphors created through the use of ‘illness’.

Illness is often used as a metaphor for a negative entity attacking, i.e. ‘Tibet was plagued by communism’ or ‘He was the cancer of our society.” In order for these metaphors to ring true, it must be assumed that people interpret ‘cancer’ and ‘plague’ as a negative threat, to be avoided.

That is not to say that illness is something that people should desire. However, ideas like this could possibly contribute to modern day views towards people inflicted with illness, as people to avoided. The most obvious example is AIDS. Although through education, we have made a lot of progress in changing peoples negative attitudes towards it, there is still a negative stigmatism attached to AIDS patients as something to be avoided.

Samuel Butler commented on illness and the attitude of society towards the sick in his novel Erewhon. In Erewhon, the ill are treated as criminals, and the criminals are treated as if they were ill.

Our society may not be so extreme, however that does not mean that negative attitudes don’t exist. I’m reminded of a time when I used to work at Subway, and one of my co-workers wanted me to bleach her hands because she made a sandwich for someone with AIDS.

So although culture does create the meaning in metaphors, it is also worth exploring the way metaphors shape culture and normalize ideas. Sickness is tragic, but it does not mean those inflicted with it should be avoided simply because they are ill.

The Dangers of the Thinking Machine

If computers can think, then I am terrified.

Human beings thoughts, and in turn actions, are largely restrained by emotions, such as empathy. Imagine a sociopath without the limits of intelligence that human beings possess. Sure, computers lack mobility. However, they have access to infinite networks of information. A thinking machine, acting in its best interest, could potentially take over the world.

This theme has been explored numerous times in science fiction. In The Terminator, a war occurs in the future between man and machine. ‘Skynet’, an artificial intelligence created by the military, spontaneously becomes conscious of his self. Fearful of the power of this suddenly conscious machine, the military attempts to destroy it. This ultimately leads to nuclear war, as ‘Skynet’ tries to preserve his existence.

If a machine can think, then there is always the threat of it becoming self-aware. Self-awareness is the realization of ‘I’, or the subjective self. If a machine can think, and it has memory of events, then it is only inevitable that it will realize that these past events make up his subjective self.

A. M. Turing argued in his article Computing Machinery and Intelligence that digital machines have the ability to think. His argument is based on a very narrow view of thinking. Ultimately his conclusion is that if a computer can imitate thinking, then it is in fact thinking.

However, it is my faith in the computers ability to recite, rather than think, that prevents me from worrying too much about the fate of mankind at this point in history. Of course, mankind has been known to stop at nothing in the name of discovery.

The Importance of Critically Examining Communication Processes

Living in the age of shrinking distances, a good understanding of communications is essential for survival. Communications permeate almost every inch of Western life. Take advertisements for example. You can barely drive down a dirt road highway without learning that there’s a McDonald’s, next left. In the city, advertisements have become part of the everyday scenery.

Not only have they become normalized in our everyday experience, they in turn have a normalizing effect on society. They convince us what is appropriate and what to strive for, whether we are conscious of this or not. We live in a land of free choice, but very few stray from the narrow swath of what’s acceptable. Those who do are outcasted, or pushed to the margins.

Cleanliness does not mean sterile. Beauty does not mean plastic perfection. Manhood cannot be encapsulated by a fast car. However, these are all popular ideas promulgated through advertisements.

Awareness of the effect of advertisements on society is just one example of why it is important to be critical of communication processes. In searching for meaning in this life, its easy to get herded like cattle into a place of comfort. Its easy to be a consumer and buy into the happiness of material goods and social acceptance. If you start to really think about the meaning in the lifestyle of the average North American consumer, life becomes meaningless... unless you believe in organized religion.

The Present and Future of Hairy Armpits

I shaved my armpits the other day.

I hadn’t shaved my armpits all summer. It was something I felt a kind of pride about.

As I was shaving off the growth, I suddenly started to relate my razor to Marshall McLuhan’s ideas about the medium being the message. The razor being the medium.

Shaving was the action of which I originally thought was the message. By shaving, I would buy into the media’s portrayal of beauty. I would fall into some ‘universal standard’, which would justify my buying of overpriced razors now...wrinkle reducers and age defiers later.

But maybe I was focusing on the wrong aspect of the situation.

Maybe I should have been focusing on the creation of the razor. What importance did it play in the way our culture has panned out?

My guess is that women didn’t start shaving their legs or armpits until the invention of the safety shield on the razor. I bet it started with the upper-classes, trying once again to distinguish themselves from those below them. With the advent of the industrial revolution, razors with safety shields could suddenly be massed produced on some scale, largely for sale to the ‘new wealth’ folks who wanted to be like ‘old wealth folks’.

So if this is in fact how history panned out, perhaps the razor represents how industrialization has created products that were of no use to us a priori. It created a new type of consumerism, based on the consumer’s irrational desires (to be like the rich), more so than the products actual usefulness.

This, in the case of the razor, altered our societies perception of beauty.

Advances In the Speed of Information Creating a Greater Gap Between the Rich and the Poor?

I don't have internet set up at my place. I thought I could go the whole school year without paying for its service, by depending on family, friends and other institutions. Within the first week of school, I see its necessity for a successful academic year. I've already caved and contacted the cable company.

In Harold Innis' article, "Minerva's Owl", Innis talks about how modes of communication become outdated, replaced by newer, more advanced forms.

T.V. replaces radio. MP3s replace CDs. Internet replaces human contact.

Today, the speed of information is incomprehensible. We live in a culture where there's little temporal distance between desire for information and gratification.

Millions have benefitted from this revolution, myself included. However, growing up middle class in a city center in Canada, its easy to forget that this information is not accessible to everyone.

The internet has an incredible potential to bring people from all kinds of backgrounds closer together. It has the potential to be a true 'commons', where the world can connect and share their experience.

However, those who do not have access to the internet get further removed from the global community.

A little while ago, I was reading opinions about Hugo Chavez on the BBC website. I respected him as a revolutionary, however, according the opinion page, it seemed that those who were actually from Venezuala did not.

Later on, I began to think about which Venezualans were likely to post an opinion on the BBC website. Well-educated, middle class. Obviously not who Chavez was likely to be representing. Those for whom Chavez was fighting, likely did not have access to the internet.

The point is that the internet can bring the world closer together, but one must remember that it is still a middle class dominated medium. Just as important as whom the internet is representing, is whom the internet is not.