Our focus on technology and its integration into our everyday lives on an hour-to-hour basis has forced me to question if courses that I am enrolled in, “Rhetorical Bytes” for example, will exist in the future. So much of our being and living in this century is online or in “cyberspace”. Having an online presence has become so “normalized, appropriated, altered, and domesticated in to our everyday lives” (Nayar 3) that I predict that in less than a decade there will be little distinction between culture and cyberculture as a result of our inauguration of new media into our learned literacy.
In Walter Ong’s essay he argues that literacy is learned. I think that new media has become our learned literacy. As a result, our definition of literacy feeds into our ever-evolving cultural values that “position, represent, influence, and affect races, class, gender, sexuality, and identity in particular ways” (Nayar 3). Yet, with a shift towards cybercultures, new media, and in our values there are costs that may not have been intended or even expected. Externalities, such as vast marginalization, are a given when approaching shifts in literacy and culture. An introduction to New Media and Cybercultures, by Promod Nayar, brings to light some of these externalities.
Nayar defines the digital divide as a social issue. In his opinion inequality accompanies the internet access as it expands and as humans in certain cultures, and in turn geographic locations, become more reliant on the Internet. Issues of access, class, and techno-elitism are topics that must be considered as well. For example, one can argue that elitism, through maintaining power in the hands of the white male, further enforces both gender and race polarization. Nayar shows the presence of elitism when he writes about the “distribution, working, and structure of the mobile phone, router, and .com website that the ordinary person uses is controlled by” a certain “technoclass” or technoelite that he defines as predominantly white males (Nayar 17). In this sense, the Internet is simply reinforcing social issues that society has been working to address since its existence.
With technology come many externalities, some positive and some negative. We, as a society, have to face the realities that cyberculture and new media are not simply present in the technological realm, but in our reality as well as the two continue to merge and until there is no differentiate across cyberspace and real life space. Technology is changing the way we interact, communicate, socialize, vote, and see ourselves in different platforms through new mediums.
In Walter Ong’s essay he argues that literacy is learned. I think that new media has become our learned literacy. As a result, our definition of literacy feeds into our ever-evolving cultural values that “position, represent, influence, and affect races, class, gender, sexuality, and identity in particular ways” (Nayar 3). Yet, with a shift towards cybercultures, new media, and in our values there are costs that may not have been intended or even expected. Externalities, such as vast marginalization, are a given when approaching shifts in literacy and culture. An introduction to New Media and Cybercultures, by Promod Nayar, brings to light some of these externalities.
Nayar defines the digital divide as a social issue. In his opinion inequality accompanies the internet access as it expands and as humans in certain cultures, and in turn geographic locations, become more reliant on the Internet. Issues of access, class, and techno-elitism are topics that must be considered as well. For example, one can argue that elitism, through maintaining power in the hands of the white male, further enforces both gender and race polarization. Nayar shows the presence of elitism when he writes about the “distribution, working, and structure of the mobile phone, router, and .com website that the ordinary person uses is controlled by” a certain “technoclass” or technoelite that he defines as predominantly white males (Nayar 17). In this sense, the Internet is simply reinforcing social issues that society has been working to address since its existence.
With technology come many externalities, some positive and some negative. We, as a society, have to face the realities that cyberculture and new media are not simply present in the technological realm, but in our reality as well as the two continue to merge and until there is no differentiate across cyberspace and real life space. Technology is changing the way we interact, communicate, socialize, vote, and see ourselves in different platforms through new mediums.