Formation of Digital Culture

Locke and Poster discuss two drastically different movements of media; however, both can be seen as the basis for digital culture and what it is today. Digital culture is the radically new idea about the ways in which we think about and view info. Digital culture is three dimensional and goes against the structured idea of the grid by revealing it to readers. This culture changes the ways in which people view an author, perceive time and space, and distinguish design. Digital culture is ever changing, and is significantly different than the enlightenment ideas about print media.

Locke’s article, “Of Ideas,” discusses the revolutionary idea that knowledge comes from experience. He explains that there are two parts to the idea of experience. First is sensation, or the ways in which we take in qualities and interact with the world. “When I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean, they form external objects convey into the mind what produces there those perceptions” (186). Locke explains sensation as the main source for all of our ideas. The second part of experience is reflection, or the way we step back and think about all of our sensations in order to create broader ideas. Reflection established the space of learning and is how we build upon experience and knowledge. This explains the basis for why publishing exists. People wrote down information in order for others to gain knowledge and learn from their ideas. Locke’s description of publishing and the sharing of ideas can be seen as the base from where digital culture grew.

Poster’s article, “Authors Analogue and Digital,” discusses the emergence of digital culture as a change from print to computer writing. He explains this transformation in media as a shift in the way that people think about information. “The shift in the material form of the sign from print to computer writing may be approached initially as a change from analogue to digital” (79). Poster describes analogue as the relation of similarity or comparing like things. Analogue was about making copies that looked identical to the original. Poster explains the radically new idea of digital culture however, as the way we create copies that are not similar. We are no longer bound to making identical copies. The idea of digital has changed the ways in which readers trust authors, perceive time and space, and distinguish design.

Where is Imagination?

In Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s article “The Culture Industry as Mass Deception,” they discussed how culture plays a critical role in nearly everything. They claim that culture has made everything become identical in a sense since nowadays films, radio, and even magazines make up a uniform system. Why has it come to this?

Horkheimer and Adorno claim that it may be the result of having to reproduce large quantities for consumption. There are only a few production centers that need to provide for many consumers. This, naturally, requires that there be an adequate amount of organization. Since the process was originated around the consumers’ needs, there was little to no resistance at first. But now things just seem to be too uniform.

So the question comes into play: why don’t we just make some changes? Horkheimer and Adorno claim this is because “any trace of spontaneity from the public in official broadcasting is controlled and absorbed by talent scouts, studio competitions, and official programs of every kind selected by professionals” (1037). This, in the end, puts a large nail into the coffin of creativity and uniqueness.

Culture even shapes the way we think in different ways. We each are our own individual but the uniform nature finds a way to reach us all through different means. Something has been provided so that none of us may escape a story. There really isn’t a stress on subject matter any more but instead on classifying and labeling consumers. This allows different magazines or television stations to adapt their story to be more suiting for their audience. Through this means, everyone receives the headline the media would like us to hear and can apply any information to our lives accordingly.

We are so exposed to mass-produced products that we aren’t even aware of how much we as consumers are being handled. Consumers simply appear as statistics businesses use to organize charts and determine how they can better reach everyone. Horkheimer and Adorno blame a lot of what is occurring on the sound film. These films are designed to give us quick facts. There is so much going on in them that a spectator is unable to differentiate what really makes a world and what is in the world they are viewing. The failure to make this distinction is taken back to the real world where they become a molded consumer.

Where is the distinction between culture and our own beliefs? How much can digital culture interfere with our own belief system before it destroys man’s imagination entirely? Substance needs to be something today’s culture rethinks.

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In order to fully understand what digital culture is and its influence on the lives of its consumers, you must look at it from two sides. The first side is the person who does not feel influenced by digital culture and who grew up in an era where digital media was unheard of. On the other side are the people who are immersed in the digital lifestyle and whose lives essentially revolve around it. Digital media, in this sense, does represent an end to certain traditions and despite its many advantages, creates challenges, too.

In Horkheimer and Adorno’s essay, the two discuss the “culture industry” and industrialization and how it has made us accept what happens and what others do without active response or resistance. They state that popular culture is similar to a factory that produces standardized cultural goods, through film, radio, magazines, etc, to manipulate us into a passive state. Regardless of if we have little money or all the money in the world, the pleasure we get through digital culture make people content and submissive, simply because it is an easy pleasure. Horkheimer and Adorno are successful and convincing in showing that this mass-produced culture industry creates false needs that are only satisfied further by capitalism. In a sense, they could be saying that digital culture is false hope, false happiness that is driven by a capitalistic agenda who have little care for the feelings of those who consume it. “Mass deception” then, seems quite fitting.

Yet from the outside, it is hard not to be engrossed in digital culture. We have come to the point where not using it is nearly impossible. It is difficult to imagine where it might go in the future, and how production and publication will play out.