Page 79 - Culture Technology Communication

64 Steve Jones

make the interface between man and machine seamless; and

create new legal and ethical problems outside the parame-
ters of existing policy and legislation.

Where do these assumptions originate? Have we tried to achieve
these things already, by other means, and with what success? Or do
they remain assumptions (or hopes), realizable or not? Our ethics
must spring from our beliefs, and as yet our beliefs about technol-
ogy are uncertain, just as the technologies we envision are not cer-
tain, and indeed are consistently in flux. But we do not need the
technology to look inside ourselves, we need only to inspect our be-
liefs and reflect on them, for they, and not the technology, represent
what we desire.
Other outcomes are just as possible, and to an extent are al-
ready making themselves present. Our use of an index, for instance,
is being replaced by a point/click/search paradigm establishing itself
through use of hypertext, electronic databases, the World Wide Web,
and the like. In education the busywork that teachers once handed
out via paper is often being supplanted by busywork via computer
and touted as somehow more beneficial to students on account of its
“interactivity,” though in such cases interaction is so loosely defined
as to mean anything from pushing a button on a mouse to attending
to an audiovisual presentation. These are outcomes, to use the con-
cept of electromotive force a final time, at “right angles” to the ones
most visible. They affect our everyday lives in innumerable ways, re-
main elastic but not breakable, affect our thinking and very thought
processes, but do not come at us in one fell swoop, and are often dif-
ficult to describe, much less to desire.
It is particularly important to note that, on reflection, each of
the above beliefs is rooted in the transportation model of communi-
cation, which is itself based on the primacy of the movement of cur-
rent through a wire and unreflective of the “right-angled” lines of
force. Each belief in its way has as its premise that moving messages
around more effectively will make these beliefs metamorphose to re-
ality. Perhaps this is not surprising, for in Western societies, to a
great extent, transportation has been a ritual activity. Unlike in our
public social lives, in many ways one of the few activities over which
we have a great deal of control is transportation. Our own bodily
“technology” evolved toward mobility, and we have used technology
to augment it. We are at the wheel of our car, our control panels in
front of us, regulating our own private environment. And cars and
driving are not the only area in which we increase control of trans-