Page 180 - Communication Theory Media, Technology and Society

Holmes-05.qxd 2/15/2005 1:00 PM Page 163

Interaction versus Integration 163
physically absent’ (93–4). For Giddens, these regularized transactions
become system-like within time-space envelopes that have their own dis-
tinct set of time-space conditions that are tied to technology, institutions
and social organization.
James Slevin (2000) adopts the ontological contours of Giddens’
account of time-space distanciation by way of its influence on Thompson’s
theory of communication and cultural transmission. Slevin’s particular
contribution is to rework the disembedding thesis by arguing that the
Internet combines three aspects of cultural transmission in a unique way:
as a technical medium, as an institutional apparatus, and as a form of space-
time distanciation. 27
A technical medium (e.g. print, analogue or digital communication)
is distinguished by its capacity to store information and reproduce it (as
in ‘mass reproduction’, for example), as well as its availability for partici-
pation. The Internet, Slevin argues, is a powerful super-medium which is
capable of strongly realizing all of these attributes. However, we cannot
understand the significance of this without also understanding institu-
tional contexts which govern the technical medium. For example, it is
very easy to eulogize the Internet’s capabilities for interaction, but it would
be naïve to do so without also pointing out its potential for surveillance.
The ways in which the Internet is used lie outside its material/technical
substratum, and have more to do with the modern state and its institu-
tions, which have their own culture. Thus, surveillance, for example,
could be said to have always been practised by the modern state, but the
technical means of carrying it out have changed.
There is yet one other form of change, however, which Slevin adopts
from Giddens and Thompson, which is the ‘degree of temporal and spatial
distancing involved in the circulation of information and other symbolic
content’ (Slevin, 2000: 69). Slevin argues that technical and institutional
apparatuses of the transmission of culture not only produce time-space
relations, but also respond to them. For example, disembedding may facil-
itate greater numbers of persons who will never meet each other to virtu-
ally interact, but it can also contribute to conditions, like globalization,
which require more complex and powerful technical and institutional
means of connection. ‘The pressure and opportunities for mobilizing
time-space during the exchange of information constitute the “grounding”
for the way in which such exchanges are organized and sustained’ (69).
For Slevin, the Internet provides a ‘grounding’ for a new level of dis-
embeddedness, which he contrasts with mass communication, but in a
way in which Thompson’s interaction-based comparison is revised. Four
key aspects of mass communication are challenged by the Internet as
super-medium. Firstly, the Internet is a relatively ‘open communication
system’ which does not require ‘large scales of expert systems for the pro-
duction of content’. Second, the Internet does not just ‘equalize’ the relation
between sender and receiver, but blurs the dichotomy between the two,
although this ‘may vary from encounter to encounter, from application to