| New media vs. Totalitarianism |  |  |  |
| Posted by admin | |
| Wednesday, 25 March 2009 12:24 | |
|
by Azly Rahman ( dr.azly.rahman@gmail.com) Any country undergoing cybernetic changes but at the same time secretly installing totalitarianism will have a difficult period managing change. It is like allowing Otto Von Bismark or Josef Stalin to walk the length of Bintang Walk, Kuala Lumpur or Times Square, New York City cross-dressed in high heels. Difficult period. Unless there is no longer Open Sky Policy. No longer surveillance satellites up above colonizing minds down below. No longer broadband to expand minds or limit our perception of reality. No longer high-speed means to disseminate revolutionary ideals. The Internet will curb the enthusiasm for leaders to become totalitarian. It will tame regimes. It will bring them down. Cyberspace is a strange world that brings together secretly the consciousness of men. A keen observer of the primacy of Digital and Cybernetic Literacy in Malaysia will conclude that something interesting is happening -- as revolutions vacillate between the beautiful and idealistic cybernetic world and the ugly, mundane, and chaotic physical world. Especially in the world of Malaysian politics. An ethnographer of MUD (multiuser domains) will have a field day reading online postings and finding patterns of counter-hegemony. Already Print technology is dying a slow death. Broadcast Technology is now the main suspect for poisoning the minds of the masses. Radio died a long time ago. Video killed the radio star, said a rock group. Earlier, Gutenberg succeeded in printing a thousand copies of the King James Bible, replacing Oral Literacy and speeding up colonialism hence. Who's afraid of the "Virginia Wolf' of Cyberspace? I once wrote a 'poem' below on the fantasy called 'technology' -- Digital Technology. An ode to bloggers Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. There was non among the myriads of men that existed who would pity or assist me; and should I feel kindness towards my enemies? No: from that moment I declared everlasting war against the species, and, more than all, against him who had formed me and sent me forth to this insupportable misery. Sometime ago, after reading Plato's narration of a conversation between King Thamus and the inventor Theuth concerning the impact of new technologies on society, after reading media guru Neil Postman's work Technopoly, and after deep reflection on the idea of the Luddites (a movement that "raged against the machine" during the Industrial Revolution), I penned verses which I find suitable to honour Malaysian bloggers in their onward march towards creating a spectre that will haunt the state-owned print media. Here it goes: P H A E D R U S II Background notes: They say that there dwelt at Naucratis in Egypt one of the old gods of that country, to whom the bird they call Ibis was sacred, and the name of the god himself was Theuth. Among his inventions were number and calculation . . . and, above all, writing. . . . To [the king, Thamus] came Theuth and exhibited his inventions . . . when it came to writing, Theuth declared: "There is an accomplishment, my lord the kind, which will improve both the wisdom and the mentory of the Egyptians. I have discovered a sure receipt for memory and wisdom." "Theuth, my paragon of inventors," replied the king, "the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practise it. . . . Those who acquire [writing] will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful. . . . What you have discovered is a receipt for recollection, not for memory . . . ( Phaedrus, 95-96) And it was in the year 2020 And Theuth my inventor par excellence O' Thamus, Wise King of Cyberjaya This invention called blogging O' wise King Thamus O' King They will be Renaissance men and women O' Thamus wise ruler of Cyberjaya And Plato's academy will be history For the sage Mandelbrott did once spoke Wise King Thamus, A further elaboration concerning the death of authority: O' Theuth Master Inventor My greatest apologies Wisest of all Kings You and your kingdom destroyed by technologies of Virtuality?
Comments (4)  ... written by Margeemar, March 25, 2009 12:36:27 On one hand Najib says that Umno must embrace the New Media (The Internet) to stay relevant, on the other hand he bans the New Media (Online Media) from covering the Umno General Assemby. Umno must be afraid of something and wants to hide it from the rest of the World. Either way Umno is falling apart...More http://margeemar.blogspot.com report abuse disagree 0 agree 6 ... written by asguard, March 25, 2009 14:19:27 Najis a tyranny person... but he speaks he says another thing and when he does something ...he will always denied its not his doing ....! report abuse disagree 0 agree 0 ... written by chuckmoore, April 05, 2009 01:32:59 Prof Azly, I get pretty tired of this new media versus old media thing, which confuses the form with the content. Those print newspaper publishers owned by BN component parties have had online editions (new media editions) even before the alternative media have been online, so just as the dissidents and opposition can go online, so can the ruling establishment. The reported demise of newspapers in the west are the result of their growing crisis of credibility in the minds of their readers, irrespective of whether they read the publication in print or online. So this old media versus new media argument is moot and does a disservice to correct understanding by obfuscating the issue, when the real issue is between the mainstream media and the alternative media. Mainstream media will fail as readers desert them for alternative views online, not mainstream media views online or in print. The Internet is also not going to bring about some universal consciousness and I wonder what you must have been smoking when you wrote this article or you are too caught up in the New Age. Achieving a universal consciousness requires all reaching a monolithic viewpoint but views as there can only be one truth but opinions on the World Wide Web are far from uniform but rather intensely antagonistic and are unlikely achieve any uniformity for a very long time or more likely - never. In fact, we might better achieve an approximation of uniformity of opinion by smoking ganja. At the end of the day, as Chairman Mao said, political power grows through the barrel of the gun and millions of backsides typing away onto Cyberspace isn't going to achieve much in the face of physical power. What have all the websites of conspiracy theorists, bloggers, protest marches and even votes against the establishment done to stop the US$#700 billion bailout of banks and finance houses, what have they done to urge the US president to end the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan and bring the troops home? What will drive the US imperialist out are the Iraqi freedom fighters and the Taliban fighters who are killing off the troops of US and other imperialist invaders on their home soil, as the heroic Vietnamese patriots did in Vietnam with great sacrifice of their blood and lives. So get off your high horse and spare us your eloquent philosophy, prose and poetry. Get your head out of Cyberspace and take a look at the real world. report abuse disagree 0 agree 1 ... written by gycgocnt, April 08, 2009 15:43:49 It's not a Cyberspace brings down a regime, it is Knowledge that make the game over for a regime. Knowledge is Power, this is shouted by many politician in Malaysia. They tell the people to acquire knowledge, but just limited to school's text book, and the text book will give them many 'A' in the PMR/SPM/STPM. Don't believe, just recall memory, developed nation student use their Knowledge to create plane, firearms to protect their country, but Malaysia student don't even know how to create a grenade, they just know how to produce 'A' in exam, and they not even realised sometimes the passing mark of public exam go below 30% in the paper! report abuse disagree 0 agree 0 |
(2).jpg)
