TELECOMMUNICATIONS ACT OF 1996

Starting with 1980s and Reagan administration’s philosophy of easing restrictions on all businesses, big media companies became bigger. Bill Clinton’s administration continued this push towards deregulation which culminated in Congress approving in 1996 a new media law known as the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The bill was passed ostensibly to usher in new competition, which promised to lead to lower prices and higher quality programs on radio, television, cinema, etc. The logic of “deregulation” posits that the market regulates itself with maximum efficiency. However, what actually happened was just the opposite. The new law erased the limit to ownership of media, and this lead to a handful of gigantic corporations buying up radio stations, TV stations, telephone service companies, and film studios. Instead of diversity, particularly in radio, we now have standardized, conservative, and overly commercialized programs. Deregulation has helped an elite group but not the public at large. In the words of media scholar Robert McChesney, “When you hear the term ‘deregulation,’ you should substitute that. Deregulation means regulation purely on behalf of private parties, not on behalf of the public.” Economic globalization has followed this logic to a great extent. In the twenty first century with the project of globalization American film industry has a firmly established hegemony. When a cartel finances films, produces the same films, shows them in theaters mostly owned by the cartel, broadcasts and promotes its own productions on its own TV and radio stations, then it has total control of the industry. This is vertical integration all over again. Economically, there is no competition on the world stage to fend off the blockbuster films that come out of Hollywood and colonize the consciousness of populations around the globe.

But a new reality is emerging and people are pushing back against the new vertical integration. The Internet is at the heart of this up and coming reality!

AMERICAN SOCIETY & BIOETHICS

Americans live in a society that strives for an ideal democracy. It fosters freedom of speech and freedom of movement. Our society is also quite complex, comprised of people with different cultural, educational, economical, religious, moral, and ultimately philosophical backgrounds.

Now you take all of these differentiations and integrate them together, what do you get? An enormous  complexity, known as the United States of America. Any modern society has two major factions; the government and the civil (or civic) society, which from time to time exchange members and/or overlap in their actions. There has been a lot of discussion, thus far, about the role of government in respect to health care. Given that we are not senators, congress people, state legislators, governors, or other high-ranking powerful agents of government, we can consider our discussions a dialogue amongst members of civil society.

But what is clear is that we as individual members of civil society have different value systems, while at once also having a collective value system. So, generally speaking, what is it about our society that allows for access to decent health care to become a privilege and not a right? Is there a pressing need to reevaluate our collective value system? Every man and woman for himself or herself, is that concept at the center of our value system? But we seem to value patriotism. Is patriotism same as militarism or is it about loving one’s nation deeply enough to sacrifice for it when needed. Why do we say yes to the idea of decent health care for all, but collectively are reluctant to pay for it by way of taxes and personal sacrifice—when needed.

Why don’t we teach bioethics to our kids at K-12? We seem to value greatly our national security, but isn’t excellent health care for all of our citizens part of that security? Our civil society seems to distrust our government(s) to the extent that we display hopelessness towards any meaningful change. Do we fail ourselves as a result of collective poor ethics? Or are we just a work in progress as a nation and must learn from failures in order to succeed. FDR’s new deal put an end to the gilded age era, and we were on a decent path–concerning bioethics. But since the return of the gilded age some thirty years ago, we seem to be on the wrong path. Or are we just reaching a learning curve, which results in collective punishment of a large part of our citizenry, but will soon teach us ways in which to achieve our goal of excellent health care for all.

In the final analysis, bioethics matters, and it matters a great deal. A human life is not a commodity and ought not to be treated as such. Humanity matters, and it matters a great deal. A sick citizenry victimized by poor bioethics ought to be everybody’s problem and not just the uninsured or underinsured. After all we are all in this thing together, regardless of race, class, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. Aren’t we?  

KANT, QUANTUM REALITY PARADIGM & THE INTERNET!

Lately in my inquiry into the ways in which the Internet is shaping our reality I have been comparing Kant’s philosophy vis-à-vis quantum physics and what it ushers into our consciousness as a possible reality. Of course, as most historians of philosophy will agree, we owe Kant’s influential perspectives to David Hume’s challenge to classical philosophy.  After David Hume, folks were looking into closing the book on philosophy. But Herr Professor Kant who in his late middle-age decided to take up Hume’s challenge would have none of that. Upon responding to Hume, Kant famously pronounced that Humean skepticism awakened him “from his dogmatic slumbers,” hence starting a whole new chapter in philosophy. In his new and improved way to see the world, Kant looked at the mind with a brave new system of philosophical conception. He saw the mind as an active entity that utilizes intuition, perception, deep understanding, reflection, and reasoning. Kant believed that although our minds conceive of  “reality” as a result of experiencing that “reality,” we have no direct access to the “real world” as the ways in which we perceive the world is in fact warped by the limitations of our minds. So for Kant the real world is independent of our minds. Sounds like a footnote to Plato. Nonetheless, considered an original approach, Kant named this so-called real world the “noumenal world.” I wonder what he would be thinking in respect to the Internet and the how “the digital way” is permeating every facet of our lives in the developed world, and soon the rest of the globe as well. In some ways the Internet is mirroring what quantum physics has been theorizing. But more on that later. Indeed, we can refer to this way of experiencing reality as a phenomenal reality.  Many philosophers and social scientists claim the world we perceive is the phenomenal world. Then again, from a metaphysical perspective, one that is grounded in scientific thinking, we could argue that our whole experience of the world is a blend of the noumenal and the phenomenal. Kant would argue that our perception is obscured, given that we receive everything in terms of time and space, and science cannot help us there.  But there was no quantum physics in those days. So, following that logic we actually construct the notion of time and space.   So, what about the quantum paradigm? There are three things that distinguish the quantum world from the classical word.  Indeterminism, Nonlocality, and Holism. Indeterminism tells us that even if we know the condition and location of subatomic particles, from Newtonian physics we can’t know where these particles will be or what may happen to them in the future with certainty. The German film, Run Lola Run (1998) made by Tom Tykwer toys with this idea in a quantum fashion, where Lola runs against conventional reality. Non-locality proves that a pair of subatomic particles that come into interaction, can and often do disjoin and go to different places. However, it has been known–and exaggerated cinematically in Run Lola Run–that this interaction can, and does, affect each particle despite the fact that there seems to be a great distance between particles. Holism shows that the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. In short, even if we know all properties of quanta that are parts of a complex entity, such as a human being, the complex entity has a holistic property that we cannot know–and is changing all the time.  

In order to understand quantum reality, predicated on findings of quantum physics (mechanics), we need to acquire a new language. We cannot speak in Newtonian language and expect to be inside this paradigm. With the new language of course we can start asking questions like, “To what extent can we find freedom to gain access to the real reality?”

Freedom vs. determinism has been one of the most fundamental issues that have kept philosophers of past and present occupied. Given this fundamental problem at hand, how does quantum paradigm deal with freedom, consciousness and determinism or rather indeterminism? If Newton was right, and many still think he may have been free will is a convoluted notion. What if the future is determined because the physical reality presents to us the states of objects, conceived in time and space?  Conversely, Quantum physics, producing a sort of quantum realty, dictates much indeterminism. Ironically we have to employ Aristotelian logic to make sense out of quantum reality, hence the language problem we must solve. Scientific experiments have proven that subatomic particles are quite unpredictable and can be at two places at once. So, if we as human beings are made up of these subatomic particles, does it not make sense to draw a conclusion that we can be at two places at once as well? As I alluded to earlier, this of course requires a radical way in which we understand reality. We as human beings may just be indeterministic. As it stands, we simply have not acquired the tools to access the “real” reality. The internet is ushering in some of these new tools to help us to at least develop new metaphysical theories.    Someday, perhaps! Unless of course that day has come and gone or keeps coming and going!

HYPER-REALITY, THE INTERNET & PEDAGOGY OF CHANGE

In looking for ways to create a context in which humanity can find trajectories towards  social change it is crucial to recognize the hyper-reality of today’s global audiovisual culture. The realm of the hyper-real (i.e., reality-based TV shows, Hollywood movies, Disneyland, TV commercials, free-market utopia and other excursions into ideal worlds) is more real than real, whereby the models, images, and codes of the hyper-real come to control thought and behavior. This is the pedagogy of hyper-reality. The Internet has become the portal to deliver this pedagogy around the clock in measured time and asynchronously in “real” time.

Many individuals, full of anxiety about their existence, flee from what Baudrillard called, “desert of the real” for the ecstasies of hyper-reality and the new realm of computer generated motion pictures, and technological experience. What is at stake is the loss of meaning and spirituality of humanity. Neoliberalism has contributed greatly to this condition and agents of social change must pay close attention to neoliberal thinking. Understanding the Internet, which can be used to combat hyper-reality, is absolutely crucial to intellectuals who are concerned about bringing social change to the planet.  The techno-savvy planetary citizen can greatly benefit from “pedagogy” of the Internet for delivering the truth and connecting emancipatory movements. The role of the ethical intellectual in this realm becomes one of a learner of fast evolving technology (i.e., the Internet) and also a producer of theories that can in turn help others to better understand the complexities of the Internet and its relations to reality and hyper-reality.  Such knowledge production helps the planetary citizen to usher in social transformation.Neoliberal hyper-reality entraps citizens of the globe in a play of images, spectacles, and simulacra, that have less and less relationship to an outside, an external “reality,” to such an extent that the very concept of the social, political, cultural or even “real” no longer seem to have any meaning. The media saturated consciousness is in such a state of fascination with aesthetics and spectacle that the concept of meaning dissolves into oblivion. With evaporation of meaning, the potential opposition to tyranny of neoliberal ideology is also in danger of disappearance. We must use every tool available to create meaning and assign purpose to social justice. We generate theory, write it, and in creative ways deliver it via the Internet. One can hope.

MEDIA LITERACY

 

There is very little contestation to the notion that media representations help manufacture our view and understanding of the world. This affects children and adolescents the hardest.  A K-12 system of education must integrate teaching media literacy into its curriculum. How else can we in a multicultural global society teach our students about the ways in which power generates inequities and injustices. How else can we convey to the audiovisual generation that societal conditions are directly related to issues of  race, class, and gender. Recent studies by Sut Jhally, Stuart Hall, bell hooks, Douglas Kellner, Henry Giroux, Robert McChesney, and Riane Eisler  among others reveal the role mainstream media play in perpetuating these unjust conditions, hence helping with maintenance of Eurocentric-capitalist systems of power. Media literacy programs will enable students to look for alternative media, which can greatly help with creating a more diverse and democratic way of constructing images and worldview that could bring us closer to a just global society. We must accept and pronounce the fact that the media  are a powerful form of pedagogy—a social force. Developing a media literacy program in K-12 schooling requires a deep understanding and a critical perspective of the pedagogical role media like television, popular music, cinema, and advertising play in our society. Consider the Internet.  The Internet assimilates various media forms (e.g., books, music, film, animation, advertising, journalism, etc.) and in this cyber paradigm we have much pedagogy. The notion of net neutrality must be taken seriously and defended by educators and concerned citizens. My research is looking into ways in which we can create empowering models of media literacy and education to help our future teachers and civic leaders.