Page 218 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

208 Communication, Commerce and Power

cabled continent in the world - will further raise the profile and
significance of direct broadcast technologies among US government
and corporate officials. Again, the essential importance of DBS lies in
its status as a truly transnational communication system whose eco-
nomics - involving enormous overheads and relatively minute per
household delivery costs - impel the internationalization of informa-
tion-based commodities.
Rather than technological advancements compelling the domestic
re-regulation of US communication activities, 'inevitably' followed by
the liberalization of international communications, the role of tech-
nology more accurately can be characterized as tools and/or catalysts
accommodating corporate-based forces. Technological convergence
and signal compression, both significantly advanced through digitali-
zation, continue to facilitate the transnationalization of capitalist
activities. To some extent, unlike the assumptions implied in the
paradigm of cultural imperialism, ignorance has played an important
role in the history of US foreign communication policy. Through the
technological, legal and economic complexity of telesatellites and
related developments, established corporate interests generally have
benefited from the fragmentation and leadership vacuum that has
characterized US policy. According to Edward Ploman, 'government,
administrative, industrial and academic structures' have tended to
'work against frontier crossing between disciplines, technologies,
bureaucracies- and mental categories.' 17 This, in turn, has facilitated
the general movement away from behavioral regulation toward struc-
tural regulation, and this movement has been an expression of long-
term TNC efforts to control rather than compete in the emerging
information economy marketplace.
In relation to the intellectual capacities of mass publics to organize
some form of sustained counter-hegemonic movement, the develop-
ment of DBS provides little grounding for optimism. Despite the
realisation of a de facto free flow of information regime and the
practice of receiving information from around the world directly
into one's living room or onto one's computer screen, it is unlikely
that DBS or its use in conjunction with an inter-active information
highway infrastructure will promote much more than a deepening of
existing disparities. In less developed areas of the world, for example,
beyond the availability of a supply of electricity, access to direct
broadcast services will depend on the ability to purchase or gain
access to a television set or computer monitor; the ability to pay for
either a satellite dish or cable connection (assuming one is available);