A rchive Date
[ 30-05-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Mass Media ]
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[Cyberspace is not the final frontier
By HARTLEY STEWARD
Toronto Sun
January 18, 2000
It is quite possible I am a born Luddite, resisting progress with every breath, but I still cannot see the Internet as anything other than simply another communications device. To be grand about it, one might refer to it as a new medium, but I find even that overreaching.
Its impact on the world will be a result of the speed it adds to our ability to communicate. People to people. Business to business. Scammer to scammed. Seller to buyer. Writer to reader. Like that.
But as far as I can see, the advent of the Web has brought nothing new of a creative nature to the world. If it has inspired a new art form, I have missed it. Other "new media" have also added speed to global communications, but some of them have inspired real and exciting, hitherto unknown, forms of creativity. Of art, if you will.
When the first caveman extracted colouring from the elements around him, including his own blood, and drew a likeness on a rock wall, the medium spawned an art form. In this case painting. Weren't we blessed?
When the first lonesome soul brought a stick down on a hollow log and liked the sound, why the new medium, probably first meant for communication (Hey, I'm out here, can you hear me?) was, in fact, making music. Blessed again, for sure.
The printing press and moveable type made books possible and gave birth to the penny press in England and eventually the daily newspaper. Not art, to be sure, but at least new.
Radio brought us theatre for voices and a challenge to our imaginations. Television, the sitcom, I guess. Hardly art, hardly a challenge to our imaginations, but unique and creative in its way.
Information superhighway
What of the World Wide Web?
The information superhighway that has so galvanized the attention of mankind as we begin the 21st century and upon which seems to rest so much of our hope for the future. What of this basket into which we are putting so many eggs?
It seems to me, so far, to be only a tool to help us do what we already do - only faster. It has not added, to my mind, anything new, let alone anything creative, anything that might be called art, to our universe.
Nonetheless, modern man seems to be consumed by it and its possibilities. New companies, with even the slightest connection to the Web, are distorting the world's economy. Firms, just a year or two out of the family garage, still unsure where their profits lie, are attracting an astonishing amount of the available investment capital.
Share prices in these fledgling enterprises have made a mockery of the old balance sheet measurements of worth. Companies which actually make something, create things which add to the world's wealth and turn an old-fashioned profit in the process, are trivialized by comparison.
A friend of mine has been planning a public offering for several years to fund growth of his highly competitive firm. His is a manufacturing company, which makes a product which is sold, wholesale and retail, in the old-fashioned way.
He keeps delaying the move because he cannot, for the life of him, make himself heard amidst the racket created by the hi-tech firms as they extract from the marketplace so much money.
Brave new world
The world has decided where the future lies and has voted with its money. We are on this bandwagon with a vengeance, convinced it will take us to the promised land, to a brave new world. Sure it will make a profound difference in our world.
I think we are heading for a fall.
I think the World Wide Web will not live up to the hype - and the hope. It will begin to show its limitations. It will disappoint us like a new lover with big promises, little substance and nothing new to offer.
We will begin to understand that an online "community" cannot replace the neighbourhood bar. That online retailing is nothing more than catalogue shopping. That an e-mail has no timbre and cannot warm the heart like a real voice. That online pornography is not sex. That love is not to be found in a chat room.
The online world will not bring us together. It will isolate us even more, each person and his computer becoming a world unto himself. We will be a lonely bunch, indeed.
At which time, I suspect, we will get real about our expectations for cyberspace.
Steward appears Tuesdays and Sundays. E-mail: hartleysteward@canoemail.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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