Our next discussion topic focuses on the question, "Will the next half century of the Internet have the same effect as the last half century of television?" Ray McInnis will lead our discussion. Ray is a graduate of the University of Washington's School of Librarianship, and has been in the Reference Department of Western Washington University's Library for over 30 years. He is the author of several books and numerous articles on bibliographic instruction, critical thinking, reference theory, and intellectual history. His most recent project was guest editor of a special issue of Social Epistemology, on the theme, "Discourse Synthesis." For Greenwood Press, he is both a consultant for developing reference books and editor of his own series, Reference Sources in the Social Sciences and the Humanities; the highlight of his series is a set of ten "Concept" dictionaries. Holding professor rank, Ray has received honors that include an appointment as adjunct professor of history (1986) and receipt of the University Diversity Award (1994).
Please join us in exploring answers to the intriguing question, "Will the next half century of the Internet have the same effect as the last half century of television?"
A century from now, future historians will characterize the last half of the 20th century as the "Age of Television." At the century's turn, these same historians will claim, a new age developed, now (in 1996) loosely called the "Age of Cyberspace."
As a communication medium, television is renowned for entertainment, but as a tool of education, it is generally judged to be wanting. The chief complaint about television is that it produces a society of passive learners, who may possess a "quiz show" type of cultural literacy, but who lack any skills in lifelong learning.
However, to get a little perspective on this, we can start with radio. In the October 8, 1924 issue of The New Republic, an editorial claimed the following about the newest technological innovation, radio:
"Radio is not a mechanical fad which will sweep the country, as bicycling once did, and then disappear. While its present popularity is partly attributable to novelty, it is here to stay. As improvements are added (conceivably including radio transmission of motion pictures), it will become well nigh universal.... (Radio can be) a useful assistance to independent thinking. ... But here comes the rub. In most parts of the country full ninety percent of the non-musical material on the air is sheer rubbish, not worth the attention of any one with more than an eight-year-old mind." From our perspective in the 1990s, can television be characterized in much the same way?
Without too much debate, for example, we can agree that television's impact upon American society has been truly revolutionary. Out of the era of television, major changes in human behavior have occurred, definitely, as one need only cite the astonishing statistics about television watching behavior. Currently each American citizen spends a reported average of four hours per day, seven days per week watching the tube. As consequence, television defines our culture. It virtually dictates everything from how we spend our time to how to maintain our most personal hygiene standards to what vehicles we buy.
During the last 50 years, along with television, you also have to include such other things that have dramatically changed our lives as the interstate highway system, the birth control pill, employment of women, a major shift in divorce rates, the list can go on indefinitely. Without the interstate highway system, for example, it is difficult to imagine McDonald's, Burger King, shopping malls, suburbs, "gated" communities.
Even though they live in densely populated situations, people tend to become more independent, insular, separated from neighbors, etc. How would it be possible to work eight hours at the office, buy gas, buy groceries, order heating fuel, and then watch television, and seemingly function effectively in today's civic culture? However, the above list does not include any civic obligations, except, say, grudgingly paying income taxes, and at best this activity is "passive." And for an additional proof of this decline in civic participation, one needs only point to decline in rates of voting.
For me these things, too, have had as much impact as television, and all mesh into the framework of increasing personal isolation and apolitical passivity. In the area of improving multicultural awareness and understanding, for example, television has at the best "mixed" results. Consequently, one has to ask the question: Will the Internet merely perpetuate, or even exacerbate, television's record of having little or no effect in improving relations between different groups of people?
Robert Putnam, the Harvard University political scientist, using the now famous image, "Bowling Alone," notes that perhaps the largest impact upon American society by television is in the domain of "social capital" and "civic engagement." Putnam uses the label, Bowling Alone, because he wants people to recognize that the trend of disengagement from civic life is not limited to participation in do-gooder organizations like the League for Women Voters.
Putnam's image of "Bowling Alone," at least for me, says it all about the decline in civic participation. The mystery concerns the disappearance of both social capital and civic engagement in America. By "social capital," Putnam means features of social life -- networks, norms, and trust -- that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared objectives. (Whether or not their shared goals are praiseworthy is, of course, entirely another matter.) For Putnam, the term "civic engagement" refers to people's connections with the life of their communities, not only with politics. And the perpetuation of a democratic community -- whether city, county, state or nation -- requires cultivation of informed decision-making skills by all citizens. In other words, can we claim that a connection exists between the level of civic education attained by persons in a society and that society's ability to maintain a democratic system of government? As anyone can confirm by looking on the World Wide Web, in an effort to characterize the situation, someone has even coined the term, "Couch-Potato Democracy."
Since its publication in the January 1995 Journal of Democracy, "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital," this the inquiry into what is happening to civic engagement in America has become the talk of the nation (http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/journal_of_democracy/v.006/putnam.html). (A friend reported that Putnam even made TIME this week.) "Bowling Alone" argues that while the total number of bowlers in America has increased by 10 percent between 1980 and 1993, "league bowling" -- that is, the number who bowl as members of organized leagues -- has declined by 40 percent.
Figures like this are also bad news for American democracy. Weekly church going is down. Union membership has declined by more than half since the mid-1950s. PTA membership has fallen from 12 million in 1964 to 7 million. Since 1970, membership in the Boy Scouts is down by 26 percent; membership in the Red Cross is off by 61 percent. The people trying to make these organizations go, Putnam notes, often incorrectly assume that they have done something wrong; that they have a lousy director or something. But they need to see themselves as part of a broader picture -- a pattern of civic disengagement.
If individuals become associated with political groups on E-mail, rather than turning to civic groups, whose interest is, say, revising the current city plan, instead the currently available evidence suggests that he or she gravitates toward "like-thinking" groups, the easiest to point to being of course groups associated with the formation of "militias," "white supremacists," "NIMBYs" and the like. It's the "converted preaching to the converted."
Please don't get me wrong; I know that people also use the Internet for other things as well, but regardless, it is unlikely that they intentionally join a group designed or improve their city parks.
Community in its traditional sense is people who reside within or share a specific geographical location confronting one another with differing ideas and working out solutions by compromise and consensus. With such things as the Internet, these traditional limitations of community are breaking down. Today, for example, we think nothing of conversing via email with anyone anywhere on the globe, providing of course he/she has the appropriate setup.
Likewise, the World Wide Web is gaining in a similar way. However, this astonishing change in behavior stemming from an innovation in technology does not translate into a greater sense of "community". When these groups talk with one another, the evidence suggests that they are merely reinforcing already established prejudices. It's the "converted preaching to the converted."
Further, because each of us is basically "anonymous" on the Internet, it provides a convenient screen for "flaming." That is, the hateful things we see written on the Internet would certainly be less likely voiced if each of us had to face the person to whom our venom was directed. In contrast to the anonymity of the Internet, in the civic communities of which Putnam speaks, people of a variety of opinions come together on town council meetings and endeavor to work a consensus of how the local government will operate.
In other words, the decline in community of which Putnam speaks includes participation in town meetings, voting, and other civic obligations that involve "engagement" with the people who make up one's community, whether local or state or national.
In the last several decades, we have witnessed sharp growth in national "mailing list" organizations, ranging from the American Association for Retired People to the Sierra Club to the National Rifle Association. Although highly significant in political (and commercial) terms, these organizations are not really a counter-example to the decline in social connectedness of which Putnam speaks, since they are not really associations in which members meet one another. Their members' ties are to common symbols and ideologies, but not to each other, and in a sense it more closely evokes a picture of the associations resembling those of the Internet rather than face-to-face social engagement.
Let's put it this way. As with television, then, the Internet has the potential of changing dramatically the sense of community, even to the detriment of the lofty ideals of the American republic. In this new marketplace of ideas, what will be the impact of the Internet on publication patterns as we know them? It is well-known that we, as humans, almost inevitably take the path of least resistance. If an inferior encyclopedia is available online, will it be our inclination to use it, instead of going physically to the library for a specialized encyclopedia, or to personally seek out the scholarly apparatus that supports the specialized encyclopedia? Will publishing houses fold, change policies, or otherwise adapt to survive?
Will the economic pressure on higher education result inevitably in the education industry emphasizing the Internet, as a stop gap for educating the masses of people demanding education for the future?
For me, in other words, just as radio did not, just as television did not, the Internet (1) will not create a society of learners, nor (2) will it create a society of people actively seeking to achieve better understanding of each other.
But I think the fourth phase may be very different for the Internet than it has been for TV. The impact of radio and television has been very broad but also rather shallow. I can watch a science program like Nova and learn some significant things, but I cannot "stay tuned" to Nova to explore the topic more deeply nor can Nova offer me links to other televised content about that topic. The Internet offers opportunities for both. I suspect that the Internet's fourth phase will see the development of a "deep structure" within the web. The depth of that content may or may not come to rival the content of a typical research library today, but libraries will hopefully be in a position to influence the shape and scope of that deep structure as it evolves.
The evolution of the Internet, much like that of television, will be driven by private investment, public policy, technological innovation, and user involvement. In areas where three or four of these forces converge on common interests, evolution will take place quickly. In areas where these forces pull toward divergent interests, the developmental process will be uneven. The innovation of the VCR, for instance, has enhanced Nova as a learning experience for me by allowing repeated viewings. But changes in public policy may threaten the program's continued funding.
Another major difference, of course, is that the Internet's barriers to personal participation are much lower, making it a less passive medium than television. It's a lot easier for me to host my own Web site than my own talk show. That potential for personal participation may hold the greatest promise for the Internet as a tool for learning and personal growth.
First, I have not heard of this particular four-part formulation. Is is associated with an explanation of TV as an influence upon human behavior? Or is it original with Don? And I'm not sure what Don means by "the larger culture with it and the culture impacting each other in unforseen ways."
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