What flaws underlie the assertion that global cyber-culture

democratises culture in general?

A Discussion on global cyber-culture, how it democratises culture and the

positive and negative impacts of that democratisation.

* * * *

Brendan Madden, Year 3 bDes (Hons) Textile Design

Coláiste Náisiúnta Ealaíne is Deartha, Báile áth Cliath

November 2008
 What flaws underlie the assertion that global cyber-culture

democratizes culture in general?

* * *

The assertion that global cyber-culture has democratised culture in general is a popu-

lar one and the claim is grounded in a great deal of evidence. We need only to look at

the recent election of Barack Hussein Obama to the Presidency of the United States

to see the tremendous impact that cyber-culture has had on politics. We need look

only to the very tangible freedom Broadband Internet provides to stay-at-home par-

ents, those who suffer from physical disabilities and others who for one reason or an-

other must remain at home. Now, for the first time, they can work from anywhere and

perform the same job to the same level of success as an able-bodied person unhin-

dered by a restriction on mobility.

We need only look at the new wave of ‘Garage bands’ that use My space and other

such services to bring their music and their personality to the people where it can be

viewed side-by-side with established bands and other ‘up-and-comings’. We need only

think of people who have achieved instant and worldwide acclaim, the winners of Big

Brother and Pop Idol and the scores of similar shows that have attracted millions of

viewers and fulfilled thousands of dreams across the globe. And there are so many

other examples of technologies and concepts that have given a voice to the unheard

along with the heard, to the underdog along with the favourite, and to the constrained

and restricted along with free. Inherent, however, in all these voice-giving technologies

are serious fundamental flaws. The reliance on cyber-culture as a sole vocal outlet, the

alienation of those who do not yet engage with the technologies, and the inability of

those who are not equipped with the skills to exploit the technologies to compete in a

sphere where the technologies should be merely ancillary. Another major flaw in the

assertion is that rather than democratization, it could be argued that the influence of

cyber-culture on general culture has brought about a mere shift in the balance of

power, placing it firmly in the hands of those who are engaged in cyber-culture.

Although it is true that ‘Global cyber-culture’ is a term that is shifting in definition all

the time, it is helpful to establish a working definition for the purpose of its discussion

here. In must books on the subject of cyber culture and cyberspace, the Author shies

away from even providing a broad definition and instead focuses on several threads of
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thought, areas in which information technology and communications cross paths. In

David Bell’s 2004 Glossary of Cyber-culture, Cyber-culture: The Key Concepts, there

is, somewhat ironically, no definition of cyber-culture itself. From reading through sev-

eral books, cyber-culture can broadly be defined as the culture of cyber-space, but it is

more than that, because with the recent advent of what has come to be called web

2.0, internet technologies, traditionally firmly within the domain of cyberspace have

flown into our global cultural lexicon. New verbs like, “youtubing”, “I’ll just google

that”, “Did you get my facebook?” and even more established ones like “blogging” are

such a part of our daily lives that we say them without thinking. When we want to talk

to friends and family abroad, we can write them a long email, or more frequently now,

we can just skype them. If we want to buy a vintage coat, it isn’t in the shops we’ll

look but on eBay or on the Bulletin Boards of a special interest group. When we want

to watch a TV show we don’t find out what time it is on, then sit down in front of the

television to watch it. Either we save it to DVR (The evolution of Video+) or we sim-

ply watch it on iTunes or online, whenever we want, on demand. So what is cyber-cul-

ture, what is cyber-space? Clearly it extends into our living room – press the red

button to view a different camera angle or to pause live TV –; and into our pocket. As

I look through the menu of my blackberry I see a tremendous array of functionality, -

messaging, an address book, a calendar and diary, the internet, a clock, stopwatch,

alarm clock, camera, video camera, Instant Messaging, Facebook, The Bible, A calcu-

lator, an mp3 player, a video player, a GPS navigator, a Dictaphone, Skype, games, an

automated live news feed from the Associated Press, a notepad, and so many other

things that formerly occupied physical space in my bag. When I get into the car, a little

message pops up on the screen of the car radio. “Phone 2: Brendan’s BB connected”.

When I am in bed and want to turn the sound off my hi-fi system without getting up.

I hit a button on my phone and it puts it to sleep. These things have all moved from

analogue culture to digital and back again, and now reside in both in cyberspace and

in tangible space, and that’s not weird or cutting edge, while the functionality of the

most advanced devices are ahead of what most people have, they are only marginally

so. It’s not second-life or something virtual. It’s truly IRL. (Bell, 2004, p.26).

So with that attempt to set the key frames between which cyber-culture makes its

home, we will move on to explore how it has democratised culture generally, and what
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the flaws and virtues of that “democratisation” are, as well as to consider the assertion

which in various words, that it is not a democratisation but a shift in the balance of

power. While every technology that was once exclusive to cyber-culture has gradually

filtered down into normality, and has eventually been adopted by those for whom the

electric fridge was initially a luxury and a novelty, by and large it remains the domain

of the young and IT literate, and can be alienating to those who do not consider

themselves to possess the ‘necessary skills’. Later of course, they will adopt these ‘new

technologies’ without even considering them to be ‘technology’, but that is several

years or even decades later.

The 2008 US Presidential Election was revolutionary in many ways, but the initial

revolution was not that one of the candidates was black, and another was a woman,

but that they all set up ‘My space’ pages, facebooks, and profiles on other social net-

working websites and allowed fans to add them as ‘friends’ in return for which their

new ‘friends’ would place a banner or a notice on their own personal myspace advo-

cating why their chosen candidate should be elected president. Barack Obama’s

weekly Youtube address made him cool, the flaw here though was that at the same

time, Hillary Clinton and John McCain’s Youtube sites just made them look desperate

and appeared not to be genuine, whereas Barack Obama, ‘one of us’ appeared to be

‘the real deal’. There is an element of truth in this. Barack Obama carries a Black-

berry mobile device identical to mine – minus the crack in the screen I hope – and en-

gages in the same cyber-culture that I do, whereas for Clinton and McCain it was not

something they were familiar with and was set up with the sole purpose of reaching

young educated and most importantly vocal (blogging) voters. While Barack Obama’s

page had the same purpose, it was not perceived as being as contrived because these

were things he engaged in his regular daily life. Is this fair? Is this democratisation? Or

is it simply the shifting in power from Digital non-participants or ‘Digital Immigrants’

to a digital native. Ironic because unlike McCain and Clinton who are both, bar gen-

der and age, traditional presidential ‘stock’ – WASPs, Barack Obama was the son of a

real life immigrant. The people who voted for Barack Obama, some of them not even

possessing a computer, but all of them affected by the juggernaut of his perceived

freshness and relevance, were all directly or indirectly influenced by his presence on

the Internet. Whether they used his site to make donations via PayPal, a technology
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they know well and trust from using eBay, or whether in order to gauge his opinion on

any given topic they read his blogs and watched his Youtube, or even if they blogged

or vlogged (video blogged) themselves, they did it in response to his initial presence

there in their cyber-culture, and they communicated with one another. The fans of

the other candidates did the same thing, but what they lacked was the source inspira-

tion, while McCain and Clinton blogged and vlogged, it was assumed they didn’t do it

themselves, that they simply handed their script to somebody else who uploaded it.

That’s probably true, but it’s probably true of Obama too.

Another area in which cyber-culture has democratised culture is the workplace. Leav-

ing aside the Bangladeshi call centres for Apple, “Please Sir, how may I be of help to

you today”, and the hiring and firing of employees by text message, cyber-culture, and

in particular high speed internet access (broadband) means that employees can work,

just as they can work in an office, but can do it anywhere in the world, including at

home. How this democratises the workplace is that when women (and men) have chil-

dren, rather than take maternity leave to care for them, they can continue to work by

email, by video conferencing (skype) and then on occasion, when they can, in person.

The same is true of those with disabilities. My cousin who was affected by cerebral

palsy, leaving her both physically disabled and with impaired speech, was able to be

the head of IT support for a national charity group. The telephone was easier to man-

age than F2F (face to face) conversation, and of course much of her work was techni-

cal, and done by email. A specially adapted keyboard made this easier. To the people

to whom she was providing support, she was the same as anybody else, and was able

to perform her tasks not only equally, but with the understanding from living with her

condition was able to perform her tasks better as she better understood the needs and

requirements of the charity’s clients. In a conventional office setting, whether it is

stated or not, the likelihood of a Human Resources Department choosing someone

who suffers from a physical mobility impairment or disability over candidate without

the disability is slim. Even if the ‘disabled’ person has more skill, and is more appro-

priate for the required tasks, the perception taken is that it is too much hassle, they’ll

have to convert their offices, they’ll need a ‘disabled toilet’, they’ll need a lift, and

they’ll need more space… All these excuses have little to do with the actualities of em-

ploying that person but are a result of the stigma attached to disability that exists
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within the minds of those who do not suffer from that disability, and by consequence

in the minds of those that do suffer.

Cyber-Culture is a sphere in which those with any physical disability can work without

being hindered or held back by that disability, and as people see those who they

thought incapable of particular tasks carrying them out with verve, they realise that

their perception of inability is wrong. It’s not fair just to say people are narrow-

minded and cruel and uncaring, - yes those things are true, but that’s a result of the

general culture within which they exist rather than a personal malice. The impact of

seeing people with disabilities work as well as able-bodied people is that people realize

that ‘they can’ and this leads to those with physical disabilities being able to get jobs in

the real world workplace. The flaw in the assertion that this democratises culture is

that people can end up being positively discriminated in favour of and be employed

not on merit, but on how it improves the corporate image of the company which is

cynical and wrong.

People tend not to consider the hordes of bands on myspace in the same context as

pop-idol candidates but in fact they are, and ultimately the same thing happens with

them. They are people, who we have not heard of, who stand up and perform in front

of us. Some of them are talented and charismatic and we will ‘vote with our clicks’,

blog about them, elevate them much in the same way as happened Barack Obama.

Others are an assault to our eardrums, or to our taste, and gradually, they fall by the

wayside. The democratisation of the music industry however is incredibly flawed.

Every band has a myspace page, both the established and the not-yet-established, and

ultimately everything becomes about money, which means that the bands that are

signed to major labels are pushed to the front of these sites and eclipse the often more

talented ‘unsigned acts’. It ends up not being the raw talented artists that get pro-

moted but the pretty marketable ones. There are of course exceptions, but that’s not

the norm.

This stems from the music industry’s determination not to adopt digital culture as it is,

and utilize it but to buy it and control it, which ultimately ruins the site and its credi-

bility, and eventually its stock market value. The authentic bands simply switch to new

sites and the whole thing starts again, as people leave gradually shift from one social

networking standard to another based on what is culturally relevant to them.

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The last point we which to look at, in conclusion to this brief discussion, is the sinister

aspects of the utilization of cyber culture as a means of expression. It is true that the

ability for anyone to write a blog or post a Youtube video is a wonderful thing. People

can become artists now, whether or not to popular acclaim, simply by their transform-

ing of their expression into art by its publication. They can call it art, and then if it is

perceived to be art, it is, but simply by ‘uploading’ it into the cyber-world, onto a par-

ticular site, and into a particular context, they make it art without having to say any-

thing, just the same as if a blank canvas sits in an art shop it is a blank canvas, but if it

hangs, lit and in a place of prominence, on the wall of a gallery, it is art. It is expres-

sion, it is part of our material culture and we will debate over it, we will ponder it, and

we will ultimately replicate it, or create a different response to it. All that is great, and

the fact that artists can now begin on the Internet and make their way into popular
culture is wonderful, but where the danger lies is when the cyber-world becomes the

sole source of expression of that person. If a person has 900 myspace friends and an

actively commented on blog, but never leaves their room, what is the cultural impact.

Where is the democratisation? It is there, for sure, in the cyber-culture, but it does not

translate into RL. This is a very risky thing, and there are scores of examples of this,

both personally known to me, and seen in international headlines. A friend of mine

was recently telling about some guys he was friends with, that he had met on the In-

ternet. He was telling me that he was hanging out with them on ‘Saturday night’ and

they had a few drinks together and a bit of a jamming session on the guitar.

I’ve ‘met’ friends of friends and even complete strangers on the internet and engaged

with them in dialogue and then eventually I have met them in person and continued

the dialogue online and now consider them to be my friends, these are people from all

across the world, from various socio-economic and demographic backgrounds, people

who I would not have had the opportunity of meeting in the real world. This cross-

cultural dialogue is democratisation, but it is inherently flawed because the majority of

the relationship doesn’t take place in real life but in cyberspace, ‘virtual life’. The same

is true of casual encounters with strangers that I have met in real life, where the rela-

tionship has continued and developed online - in cyber-space - and then as friends,

back into real life.

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I even pursued a romantic relationship with a girl from Northern Ireland largely

through texting and phoning and over msn, but with very little face to face. The rela-

tionship wouldn’t have been possible if it were constrained entirely to the real world,

and whether that is healthy or not is debatable, but it is certainly a democratisation

and a potential diversification of the ‘gene pool’.

These friends that my friend was talking about however, (sorry for the repetition of the

F word) were not people he had met, or ever planned to meet, in real life, but people

that he had met on a second-life system. The relationship of this ‘group of lads’ who

hung out and jammed together was in existence entirely in the virtual world, essen-

tially dependent on the transfer of data from one computer to another, but to them it

is real. That scares me, and I see it as incredibly flawed. If guys are spending their

Saturday nights in virtual relationships to the neglect of their real ones, there is a

major flaw in that democratisation. Yes, these people might be outsiders normally, but

to be an outsider does not mean that you are excluded completely from the real world.

The removal of outsiders from the real world, in a bizarre way, makes general culture

more democratic, but much in the same way as an island with a millionaire and a pau-

per has a GDP of half a million. The case that really caused me to wonder where this

democratisation of culture was going was the recent suicide of a Florida teenager who

expressed his wish to kill himself online, and then in front of hundreds of people, (via

web cam) went ahead and did it. If this took place in the real world, somebody would

have done something, surely?! But because this took place online, many of the viewers

saw it not as real, but as merely virtual. It was only after the boy, still on camera, had

gone unconscious, and had been unconscious for some time, that it occurred to one of

the viewers to contact the site administrators, who contacted the authorities, who

tracked the IP address and sent the police who found the boy. The video stopped

when a policeman put a blanket over the camera and turned off the video feed. While

his virtual avatar was still signed on and still existing in cyberspace in the cyber-cul-

ture, the Real Life boy was now dead.

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 select Bell, David J., (2004), Cyberculture: The Key Concepts, London: Routledge
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Aronowitz, Stanley, Barbara Martinsons, Michael Mensor, Jennifer Rich, (1996),

Technoscience and Cyberculture, London: Routledge

Syed, Matthew and Andy Miah, (2006) 'Digital era taking fans closer to action,'
London: The Times, October 18, 2006.

Adams, Tim, (2006), 'Goodbye, Cruel World...", Manchester: The Observer, Sunday
October 29, 2006

Hudson, Robbie, (2004), 'Crash Course in Cyberculture', London: The Times, Septem-
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