In light of its hype of technical innovation, rhetoric of hyperbole, and
claims of universality, the world wide web very much needs the critical perspectives
of contemporary cultural theory. The essays in Herman and Swiss's collection
offer an excellent variety of critical interpretations of the commercialization
of the web, myths and metaphors of cyberspace and other "posthuman"
spinoffs, cybertopias and emancipatory promises of new identities and communities,
and hypertextual epistemologies and literacies. While remaining properly skeptical
of most bids for the technological sublime made by zealous promoters of the
web, most of these cultural critics accept the importance of the web in our
economic, social, and personal relations. There is no Luddite among the fifteen
contributors and thus little tiresome nostalgia for the good old days of books,
linear reading, and face-to-face communication. Recognizing that the web's
claims to revolutionize postmodern social and personal life usually ignore
a long history of modern technological and cultural innovation, the contributors
understand that post-industrial capitalism and contemporary globalization,
along with such instrumental technologies as the world wide web, represent
a shift in the dominant economic, technological, and even epistemological
paradigms.
Several contributors address how the commercialization of the web typifies
new modes and forms of capitalism. Sometimes postmodern economics simply adapts
traditional methods of alienation, reification, commodification, and the accumulation
of surplus value, as Robert McChesney argues in the first essay. The web has
not cut prices of products, sparked competition, reduced the power of corporate
giants, or encouraged independent inventors and entrepreneurs. The same can
be said of the exaggerated claims for cyberspace as the transcendence of location,
materiality, and the geographical concentration of capital, Vincent Mosco
argues in his contribution. New technopoles in California's Silicon Valley,
New York City's Silicon Alley, and Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor are
good examples of how capital continues to colonize actual places. Andrew Herman
and John Sloop point out that many new modes of capitalist control and manipulation
rely on the web's promise that individuals can transcend the "meat"
and achieve disembodiment and virtual "freedom" in cyberspace.
Despite such gloomy prospects for the nearly total commercialization of the
web since 1998, several contributors find various cracks in the system that
they imagine might be opened wider to offer genuine resistance, even new liberty.
Herman and Sloop argue that the cultural critic must disrupt the utopian rhetoric
and futurist hype of the web, although this seems to me to offer very little
resistance to commercialization. After all, just how many cultural critics
are out there reading, linking, and resisting? When I logged onto this volume's
website (www.multimedia.drake.edu/mmp), I was visitor 147. I doubt we're numerous
enough to start any revolutions. I am equally skeptical of David Tetzlaff's
cautious enthusiasm for the anti-corporate ethics of groups like Hotline Community,
which encourage software piracy while condemning "leeching" (downloading
without uploading). Much as I agree with him that corporate sanctimoniousness
about the theft of "warez" is just another way of legitimating the
new capitalism and its virtual properties, I find the web hacking and piracy
he describes no more subversive than teens hanging out at the local mall,
scarfing fastfood and occasionally shoplifting. I consider even more dubious
Greg Elmer's contention that the spate of website design awards and dizzying
cyberpromotion might offer some alternatives to the normally commodified discourse
of the web. Every new mode of capitalizing the web is likely to produce its
parodies and satires, but we will have to assess these reactions in terms
of the number, diversity, and socio-economic authority of their audiences.
Avant-garde and strategically Luddite web artists, for example, have challenged
repeatedly and quite variously the rhetoric of the web, but few people, even
among the most compulsive surfers, spend much time at such sites.
Steven Jones makes a better case for progressive politics by pointing to
the disparity between the current state of news and reportage on the web and
its promise as a new mode of journalism. We still have the opportunity to
reinvent the public sphere and its communicative protocols by means of the
web, but we will have to think beyond the instrumental qualities of a medium
exploited so relentlessly by successful e-businesses. Nancy Kaplan calls for
new theorizations of how reading and literacy are defined by hypertext and
the web, suggesting that there may be progressive possibilities in the new
modes of thinking and understanding that such different discursive protocols
encourage. Especially important is Kaplan's argument that technological changes
result from, rather than cause, more profound cultural and social transformations.
Like Jody Berland and several others, Kaplan encourages us to reconsider the
sources of postmodern economic, social, and cultural changes in modernity,
including links between the web and such electronic media as the telegraph,
telephone, film, radio, and television.
Although several contributors, notably Theresa Senft, discuss ways the web reinforces conventional hierarchies of race, class, and gender, this volume does not offer much news about the exclusion of minorities, the privileging of white masculinity, and the overdetermination of patriarchal sexuality (especially via pornography) on the web. Occasional references to the dominance of English as the primary language of the web do not make up for the fact that the volume neglects contemporary debates regarding such monolingualism's contribution to the American Electronic Empire. Most of the contributors draw on a wide range of postmodern critical theorists, such as Foucault, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Derrida, Haraway, and Bhabha, but there is little critical consideration of this theoretical tradition. Lyotard never learned to use a wordprocessor; Derrida has only recently and quite tentatively addressed the new protocols of the web. I think we need a new tradition of theorists familiar with the social, economic, cultural, and technical intricacies of the web and net. Finally, the book's website is not particularly impressive. Although the editors encourage the reader to take advantage of the many links provided on the website, only seven of fourteen contributions to the volume have any links and some are as banal as Prodigy's homepage. In sum, The World Wide Web and Contemporary Cultural Theory is a useful collection of critical essays that at their best offer helpful analyses of the underlying social, economic, and cultural changes represented by the worldwide web and in other cases somewhat tenuous hopes for regaining the emancipatory potential of a medium that has been thoroughly corporatized.