Name : David Garcia Time : 10.30-12.00 (Paradiso Hall) Subject: From Access For All To Access For What Date : Friday 19 January 1996 |
| Access FOR What Welcome to this the first debate in the Next 5 Minutes. I should begin by clearing up something which is puzzling people about the title of this debate which as you know is 'from access for all to access for what'. Why, I have been asked is it 'access for what' not 'access to what'. Surely, the issue of access is one of information overload. How do you get to the information you need? Where are the navigation tools? Of course these are important questions but 'Access to What' would be the wrong emphasis for this conference. It would be yet again to emphasise the consumer model of the traditional broadcast media. The whats out there for me to look at or buy or watch. I Want my MTV. By saying access for what, we are thinking of communications technology as creating shared works spaces. Spaces to act not just to consume. Spaces for users not just consumers. How powerfully are we affected by spescific media? Can we really separate the fact of whole societies passively consuming enormous amounts of broadcast television (in America on average 8 hours a day) from the postwar ideology of rampant consumerism? Is this the basis for all the excitement about the Internet? The believe it represents a (window of opportunity) a possible way out of the alienated and passive behaviour patterns embodied and reinforced by old style broadcast media. In this optimistic scenario the net, provides an opportunity for our whole value system to shift from one of passive and isolated acts of consumption to one active engagement, participation and communication. The rebirth of Habbermas's dream of communicative action. To those whose pessimism about the democratizing power of new media is based on emphasising the enormous zones of exclusion, the limitation of access to those with the money or the knowledge, we should remember that plain literacy was also once restricted to a priviliged few. Until this centurie's mass literacy campaigns which made it a basic civil right. It is vital that a similar campaign for mass literacy in new media is begun with the same urgency in the remaining years of this century. There will be many in the hall or on the platform with a sence of deja vu. They have been through the utopian moment when they thought a given medium had the potential to change peoples behaviour. Is every generation going to be disappointed? Will the old patterns reassert themselves. Will specific patterns of consumption become obsolete only to be replaced by new ones. Perhape new media will create more critical users, more flexible, less easy to manipulate in a classical way. But then we will need to watch for the new modes of manipulation more subtle and sophisticated. The sence of dejavu to which I reffered can be demonstrated by going back to radio. Here is a piece written by Brecht in the 20's. This is the early days of radio when there were as many of the same hopes as there are today for the Internet. This is what he said: "Quite apart from the dubiousness of its functions, radio is one sided when it should be two-. It is purely an apparatus for distribution, for mere sharing out. So here is a positive suggestion: change this apparatus over from distribution to communication. The radio would be the finest possible communication apparatus in public life, a vast network of pipes. That is to say it would be if it knew how to receive as well as transmit, how to let the listener speak as well as hear, how to bring him into relationship instead of isolating him. On this principal the radio should step out of the supply business and organize its listeners as suppliers".....
David Garcia (davidg@xs4all.nl) |
