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· · · · · · A E C F O R U M - "M E M E S I S" · · · · ·
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Mems and Cultural Imperialism
Americaphobia and the Engineered Fear of Progress
by Douglas Rushkoff
As an American promoting the Internet and its associated culture, I’m often
accosted by well-meaning intellectuals fearing the spread of monolithically
American ideals – nationalist, consumerist memes – over potentially free
electronic pathways. It’s a fear that grounds itself in some obsolete
notions about the nation-state, propaganda, media, and imperialism. If
anything, it demonstrates a surrender to a pessimistic brand of social
science originally designed to buttress the crumbling bastions of
imperialism that survived World War II. The fear of a freemarket of ideas
is more than just a fear of capitalism run amok; it is a fear that one’s own
favorite memes will be demolished in competitive, neo-Darwinian battle for
the survival of the fittest or best-marketed meme in an Old World-style
imperialist struggle for ideological territory.
The Internet doesn’t promote imperialism – it eradicates it. If the
Internet looks American, it’s not because we Americans made it so. As I see
it, new media and interactive technology "Internetized" America. Because
these media proliferated here first, American media and new media have
become intertwined and, in many cases, indistinguishable. The underlying
force threatening the paranoid enemies of so-called American Imperialism is
progress itself. If progress and looks American, that’s not America’s fault.
The near-disastrous success of fascism during World War II got a lot of
people scared. It seemed as though a society free to express its unfettered
will would succumb to genocide. More than just threatening a particular
race, such fascist uprisings threatened status-quo Imperialist regimes. The
lesson of World War II for the social scientists of the day was that
populations can be unpredictable. With the advent of the atomic bomb, such
unpredictability was no longer tolerable to those who use to wage war in the
past. Their new agenda, and the task that befell social scientists, was to
develop techniques to help reduce the instability associated with
freewheeling progressive cultures.
The social sciences transformed themselves into vehicles for social
pessimism. Populations were to be controlled, metered, and reduced to
coercible segments. Coercive technologies like one-way television, radio,
and print media aided those who controlled them in their efforts to
manipulate the public will into complacency. This was justified by the
example of Nazi Germany: a responsible elite must regulate the otherwise
dangerously whimsical popular sentiment, lest it spin out of control.
They did their job too well, and implemented a set of media networks that
grew into a world of its own: the datasphere. What they didn’t realize was
that every wire and connective media pathway would eventually be
bi-directional. Feeding tubes turned into feedback pathways, and the
interactive mediaspace was born.
As regular people got online, into camcorders, or even just onto the radio,
surprisingly anti-establishment, evolutionary ideas began to spread –
seemingly of their own accord. Concepts like "memes" – the ideological
equivalent of genes – drifted into the common vocabulary and world view of
the interactive media participants.
This was, perhaps, the scariest development of all for the social scientists
bent on slowing down culture and subverting popular will. Everyone was
becoming neo-Darwinian. "Survival of the fittest meme" is the law of
cyberspace. Good ideas spread, bad ones fade away. No one is in charge to
arbitrate. Control is lost, and culture reverts back (or, as I see it,
evolves forward) into a natural, unchecked collective expression. To the
old guard, this is Malthus himself advocating eugenic warfare.
So now, as a last ditch attempt to curtail the inevitable, we hear arguments
about how the Internet is spreading "American Cultural Imperialism." This
is a hate-mongering, racist appeal to the vestiges of xenophobia,
nationalism, and cultural elitism still extant in nations throughout the
world who are considering taking part in the fledging global community.
It won’t work. The Internet is no more American than electricity. It may
have been invented here, but electrons have no national allegiance. And
soon, neither will we.
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Douglas Rushkoff
rushkoff@interport.net
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