Of Starr, Science Fiction, Socrates, & Swift

Paul Starr, The Creation of the Media (Introduction & Chapter 1)

My initial dive into Starr’s book was a bit like nails-on-a-chalkboard. It’s been quite some time since I’ve read non-fiction, especially a political/historical text. That being said, I found myself reading in ten page chunks, which actually turned out to be a valuable reading experience because I had more time to digest the text. I found myself constantly thinking about how some of the material not only relates to the time period Starr is discussing, but also our own culture and how rapidly technology and the media have changed since I’ve been on this earth. (26 years and counting…)

I enjoyed Starr’s emphasis on the “information revolution” as a series of events that are interesting to examine in-and-of-themselves, as well as in relation to other socio-political movements occurring. I am often frustrated by writers to who claim that ONE MOVEMENT in history or literature or music or art dramatically changed the rest of the world/time. So, I rather enjoyed Starr’s style of examining, not only the particular, but also the techno-socio-political gestalt and global as well.

Honestly, Starr’s Introduction did not make me want to read the first chapter. I felt like it was quite rushed, filled with jargon and definitions, and it felt rather ‘textbooky’ to me. However, after going back and looking over my notes, Starr did make some assertions I found useful upon reading Chapter 1. I rather enjoyed his assertion that “A new technology may have particular consequences because of its architecture, not because that is the only way it could be. Architectural choices are often politics by other means, under the cover of technical necessity” (Starr 6). I think ideas of governmental control in relation to the flow (or lack of) information provided to citizens is what interested me most while reading Starr. As an avid reader of Science Fiction, often a government or agency’s ability to withhold, alter, or program (not just computers, sometimes people) the information a population receives is what makes societies become utopian or dystopian within a text—Big Brother is watching! or Believe in The Books of Bokonon!—right?  All of the discussion of sneaky governmental methods for controlling the flow of information (stamp taxes, “Printed by Authority”, licenses, etc.) fascinated me!

Also, I found the history of the commodification of printing and bookselling fascinating. Starr’s discussion (25-6) illuminated how publishing is the penultimate example of capitalism. The changes in technology (handwritten—printing press—typewriters—computers—to now, the internet! Oh, and I-pads-pods-phones) that cultures experience, not only greatly affect their ability to access information, but also their ability to think critically and examine the culture/spirit/historical place in which they exist(ed). Socrates is famous for saying, “The unexamined life is not worth living” during his trial where he was being charged for corrupting the youth and undermining religion and the government (basically, he pissed off the wrong people). The depiction of Socrates in Plato’s Apology, is an excellent example of a government controlling the information a group of people had access to. Not only were they putting Socrates to death for spreading “false ideals;” the government was threatened by the message of free thought Socrates spread.

Socrates’s death is somewhat analogous to the Starr’s discussion of the danger associated with newspapers in the 1500’s: “Newspapers could be especially dangers to authority because of the immediacy and potential political sensitivity of news; they also seemed an affront and a vulgarity to some guardians of custom and social prerogative who upheld the traditional norms of privilege in political communication” (33). To link my earlier point about political dystopian Science Fiction to Socrates and Starr, the government’s ability to limit a populations’ access to information—whether it be by intergalactic warfare, biological weaponry, microchip brain implants, computer-hacking, sentencing one of the greatest philosophers of all time to death, or creating licensing and stamp laws to limit and shut down newspapers—access to information (whether it be free or something we pay for) is necessary to our existence. I can’t help but believe that it’s difficult to examine one’s own place it the world if one is not provided with information about the state of the world. That being said, I’m glad newspapers fought the good fight for us! And way to go Harley for getting Swift and Defoe to write propaganda! Where would this world be without Gulliver’s Travels?

“I could perhaps like others have astonished you with strange improbable tales; but I rather chose to relate plain matter of fact in the simplest manner and style; because my principal design was to inform you, and not to amuse you.” –Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

 Finally, I rather enjoyed perusing the APS and Wikipedia-ed myself (you know, when you click on link after link and end up on a page that has nothing to do with what you're actually supposed to be researching?) Maybe I should changed that to wikied (it's a technical term). So, I now have a nice little article for class from The New York Observer about Drunkards! since I typed in "pernicious children" after reading about pernicious children's books for a bit.