Norman Solomon

The Hollow Media Promise of Digital Technology

This is the time of year when media campaigns for the latest digital products are apt to go into overdrive. Schools are back in session, and the holiday sales blitz is getting underway. For the latest computerized gizmos, that means an escalating media drive -- revving up news coverage, PR hype and advertisements. Often it’s hard to tell the difference between the three.

At the risk of sounding like a techno-scrooge, I take a dim view of media excitement about the very latest in digital gadgets. No doubt the new versions of laptops or handhelds offer many virtues. But umpteen gigabytes can never make up for a media culture and a political environment largely out of touch with human empathy.

The new mega-gig innovations are marketed as awesome pluses without downsides. But one big problem is that we’re encouraged to believe in purchasing our way into solutions. Huge expectations for satisfaction from the multimedia Internet -- and rampant enthusiasm for faster and more compact technologies with the latest dazzling features -- routinely get us into thinking like consumers with the speed of a broadband download.

Rarely mentioned is the economic stratification that the digital wonderland both reflects and exacerbates. While computer prices have come down in recent years, the overall costs of partaking in the online world are another matter.

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Digital Hype: A Dazzling Smokescreen?

As each new season brings more waves of higher-tech digital products, I often think of Mark Twain. Along with being a brilliant writer, he was also an ill-fated investor -- fascinated with the latest technical innovations, including the strides toward functional typewriters and typesetting equipment as the 19th century neared its close.

Twain would have marveled at the standard PC that we take for granted now. But what would he have made of the intrusiveness of present-day media technology -- let alone its recurring content?

It's getting harder and harder to drive out of cell-phone range -- that is, if you really want to. And judging from scenes at countless remote locations, many people would rather not forfeit 24/7 phone access for conversations that involuntary eavesdroppers hear half of. (Virtually always, it seems, the more boring half.)

These days, mainstream media fascination with blogs and the bloggers who love them often seems to assume that the very use of the Internet enhances the content or style of what has been written. It's a seductive cyber-fantasy. Speed is useful, and so are hyperlinks and visuals-on-demand, but -- fortunately or not, depending on your point of view -- there's no digital invisible hand that can move any piece of writing very far along the road to worthwhile reading...

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