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Chapter 4 | Michael S. Cross (continued) There are many groups ... who have also made a weapon of resistance, and they are using it. And ... there are indigenous, there are workers, there are homosexuals, there are lesbians, there are students, there are young people. Above all there are young people, men and women, who name their own identities: “punk,” “ska,” “goth,” “metal,” “trasher,” “rapper,” “hip-hopper,” and “etceteras.” If we look at what they have in common, we will see they have nothing in common, that they are all “different.” They are “others.” And that is exactly what we have in common, that we are “other,” and “different.” Not only that, we also have in common that we are fighting in order to continue being “other” and “different,” and that is what we are resisting for. And we are “other,” and “different,” to the powerful, or we are not like what they want us to be, but rather just as we are (EZLN, 1999). The Zapatistas have another message. They, and their supporters abroad, have employed electronic media with great sophistication. The rebels first reached the news media of the world by fax. Then the Internet came into play. Groups across the continent had sprung up to oppose the North American free trade agreement, communicating with each other by Internet. The Zapatistas were able to connect with this network as well as an existent network — or, as they referred to it, a “hammock” — of indigenous groups (Cleaver, 1994). The use of the new media to coordinate protest was confirmed in the most dramatic terms at the Seattle demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in December 1999. The Canadian Intelligence Service, the national security force, has expressed its concern over the ease with which the Internet and cellular phones permitted a large number of disparate groups to harmonize their efforts. Indeed, CSIS points out, “The Internet has breathed new life into the anarchist philosophy, permitting communication and coordination without the need for a central source of command and facilitating coordinated actions with minimal resources and bureaucracy” (Canadian Security Intelligence Service, 2000). Canadians have played an important part in these activities and, as this is written, similar preparations are underway to confront trade negotiators in Québec city.4 This is of broader significance than political protest. The Internet brings us close to McLuhan’s contention that, with the simultaneous nature of electricity and its extension of our senses, “Men are suddenly nomadic gatherers of knowledge, nomadic as never before, free from fragmentary specialism as never before — but also involved in the total social process as never before...” (McLuhan, 1964). Commonplaces about net research and telecommuting are small parts of the emerging reality. Internet chat and e-mail are new forms of interaction, ones closer to the acoustic than to the literary. People use them, at least for personal communication, as they use speech. Short forms, symbols, uncompleted thoughts, the Internet correspondence requires the recipient or participant to fill in the gaps, to be involved, in the same way that speech conversation does. This is unlike literary forms which strive for completeness, rather than cooperative involvement (Gleick, 1999).5 New interactive media have usually been discussed in terms of their potential for global communication. Yet clearly they have local significance, as instruments for communicating regional and community concerns, at the same time as they open the world at large. This is consistent with the different layers of mediation that operate in our reception of media. The capacity to download music, for example, permits people to sample music from many cultures. It also has the potential to enrich their own cultures. Cheaper creation and distribution of music could allow local artists, whose work is uneconomic in the traditional music business, to find an audience, and an income (Dolsma, 2000). The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission has chosen not to attempt to regulate the Internet. This is presumably because of the obvious technical difficulties in doing so, rather than for considered reasons of policy. Given our experience with previous attempts at national regulation, this is sensible. But it is not enough. The CRTC could do much to advance local and regional cultures by encouraging government to invest in broadband infrastructure. If every home had cheap, rapid access to the Internet, Canada could begin to test the potential of electronic media for cultural enhancement. Then Marshall McLuhan would be, at last, a prophet honoured in his own country. |
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