“film must be considered as a highly mutable site of international economics and individual emotional responses, encompassing technologies of reproduction alongside patterns of reception. Although film has arguably been a global enterprise since Hollywood began to aggressively develop the international market in the 1920s, film culture became global in a new way in the 1980s when cinema was reconfigured as a vertically integrated industry in the wake of deregulation policies.” (Druick, 2004)
The Internet lends itself to the verification of McLuhan and Williams’ theories. One of the off-shoots of this digital revolution is social media, which has radically altered the framework of cultural analysis within media spaces. In this realm there seem to be a conflict between hackers and the hacked. In this world of ‘cat and mouse’, it is quite unclear which contingency is which. Amid the
“mass exhibitionism of Facebook oversharing, the irreverence of YouTube Poop, or the spectre of Wikileaks upending global diplomacy, social media has effectively erased the distinction between hacker and hackee, between the producer and consumer of media, creating the world of the produser (Bruns), wherein a mashup-remix ecosystem of metadata and free-floating signifiers prevails as an emerging new cultural order.” (Gow, 2010)
Technology such as the Internet greatly facilitates communication between nooks and corners of the ‘global village’. Although McLuhan is not alive to witness and analyse this new flux of cultural exchange, he did see its antecedents and made some valid observations: “[t]he Western world is imploding…. Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man–the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society.” (Driedger & Redekop, 1998) Although the technological simulation of consciousness might not yet have started, McLuhan’s application of the term “implosion” can be interpreted as a reference to ‘technological convergence’. Websites such as Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc have not only become household names across the world but have entered standard dictionaries, underscoring their ubiquitous presence in modern life. But what is missing from McLuhan’s observations is its omission of the political-economic framework that operate new media outlets. Though McLuhan did not live to witness the Internet age, his observations of the Television underplay the political and corporate factors that functionalize the medium. McLuhan is seldom interested in why a technology is ‘achieved’, but it is a critical question for Williams. For the latter,
“all technologies have been developed and improved to help with known human practices or with foreseen and desired practices. So, for Williams, technologies involve precisely what McLuhan dismisses. First, they cannot be separated from questions of ‘practice’ (which are questions about how they are used and about their content). Second, they arise from human intention and agency. Such intentions arise within social groups to meet some desire or interest that they have, and these interests are historically and culturally specific.” (New Media, p.82)
Chomsky and Herman too come to the aid of Williams’ argument. As noted in their ground-breaking work ‘Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media’, mainstream media outlets are mostly privately owned business corporations which are dependent on advertising revenue for their profits. In this arrangement, one can expect what sort of content and culture that would be promoted through the medium, namely that which promotes the interests of the owners, advertisers and privileged consumers. Hence, powerful media technology, when controlled by private business interests, perpetuates a culture that conforms to elite interests. (Edgley, 2000)