Chapter 10 - New Media Culture

Summary

“Any one of our new media is in a sense a new language, a new codification of experience collectively achieved by new work habits and inclusively collective awareness.”

MARSHALL MCLUHAN

Although this dictum may seem ancient as it was written in the book The Medium is the Message: An Inventory of Effects in 1967, today we are witnessing that its predictions have become a reality. TV, video, medical scanners or CT Scans, ATM machines, closed-circuit television (CCTV) security equipment, computers, games, cell phones, and the internet not only surround us, but without our being conscious of it the new media have changed the way we look at reality and the way we act. In many cases, media technology has created a new reference, a kind of understanding never before known. ▶10.1 ▶10.2 ▶10.3

Do you remember when Habibie gave his testimony from Germany in a virtual trial—about giving up East Timor—held in a courtroom in South Jakarta in 1999? The video conferencing technology which was used dismissed how we define the physical presence of a witness, and virtual presence promptly became part of jurisprudence. In this event, space-time on two different continents was united by a media machine in a definition of real-time. From this immaterial presence, we can also understand why the Bali bombing terrorists didn’t have to be blown apart themselves. They simply sacrificed a cheap cell phone and altered the ringtone to become a long-distance bomb triggering device. Clearly that event was a crushing blow to our sense of humanity. But there is still a bitterness left by these violence worshiping Laskar (militants) as if they are mocking us. While the mainstream celebrates the cell phone as a lifestyle gadget, they expertly exploited this media technology to become a political statement. ▶10.4

BEYOND VISUAL CULTURE

Functionalism and entertainment seem to define our mainstream society’s relationship with the new media. The fact is we are consumers not innovators. Another point is that perhaps we never experienced reading culture (books), listening culture (radio), audio-visual culture (TV), and cyber culture (internet) in that consecutive order. As a result, when we entered into the last two cultures mentioned, we were gasping or even greedy. ▶10.5