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Preface xiii
the reclamation of older perspectives (McLuhan, Baudrillard) whose
relevance to cyberculture is arguably greater than it is to media culture.
Chapter 4 considers the interrelation between broadcast and network
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mediums , and argues that they are quite distinct in their social implica-
tions but are also parasitic on each other. In this light, what is called ‘con-
vergence’ is really an outcome, rather than a cause, of such parasitism, a
consequence which is mistakenly seen to be only working at the level of
technical causation, or predestined historical telos. But this distinctively
broader meaning of convergence can only be arrived at if correspondingly
broader meanings of network and broadcast are deployed, to spheres not
confined to media and communications. In the context of such criticism,
media technologies, whether they be broadcast or interactive, increasingly
reveal themselves as urban technologies, which are constantly converging
with the logics internal to other urban technologies (the shopping mall, the
freeway). For example, the argument that virtual communities restore the
loss of community that is said to result from the one-dimensionality of
the culture industry does not contrast virtual and ‘physical’ communities,
which can be done by looking at the dialectic between media culture and
urban culture. Raymond Williams’ under-regarded concept of ‘mobile pri-
vatization’ is explored as a departure point for the way in which media
extend social relations on the basis of private spatial logics.
Finally, the economic complementarity of broadcast and network
mediums is established. Life on the screen is one in which individuals are,
if they so choose, able to live a culture of communication without the
spectacle and advertising fetishes of broadcast. However, in an abstract
world of communicative association this new mode of ‘communication as
culture’ itself provides a market for communication products, both hard-
ware and software, that is growing on a scale which is rapidly catching up
with the political economy of broadcast.
Chapter 5, ‘Interaction versus Integration’, critiques various models
of interaction (instrumental views of communication, transmission views,
‘mediation’ views) as not being able to adequately address the socializing
and socially constituting qualities of various media and communication
mediums. In doing so it turns its attention toward the promising body of
theory which can be gathered under the heading of ‘ritual communica-
tion’. This comprises works such as James Carey’s Communication as
Culture and is informed by anthropological perspectives and New Media
theory. An argument is made for the need to develop an understanding of
‘levels’ of ritual communication: face-to-face, mediated and technically
extended. The advance that John B. Thompson makes in this regard in The
Media and Modernity is a useful stepping stone, but one that is based on
interaction rather than ‘integration’. Integration formulations (Meyrowitz,
Calhoun, Giddens) are then explored in order to demonstrate the short-
falls of the interaction model as well as to sketch a model which can begin
to attend to the complexity of both broadcast and network forms of
communication processes.