It is not technological utopianism per se that the digital discourse advocates but a new utopianism based on a new technological paradigm.
Moreover, even within the technological paradigm of Toffler’s Third Wave there are transformations so that not all information technology is created equal. I have pointed out already in Chapter 5 the shift in emphasis from information and communication toward the network as the central locus of contemporary technological revolution. Another fault line was drawn in the mid-1980s between the promise of big, centralized, mainframe computers (which have failed and gave us technocracy) and the personal computer (PC), which was construed as the carrier of a new promise of liberation (Dean 2002, 79–113). While both were in principle the same information technology, the PC was construed as the opposite of the supercomputer and, in fact, as a response to the pitfalls of the centralized computer. The latter accounted for an increasingly centralized, hierarchical, controlled, and technocratic society; the former promised to deliver a more decentralized, dehierarchized, and freer society.
The narrative regarding the naturalization of technology allows the digital discourse to reject a naïve, unreflexive version of technological determinism and technophilia. Those have been abundant in modern Western culture, perhaps even more so in American culture (Nye 1994; Segal 1985). As a general stance technological utopianism has been criticized through and through. Machines yielded greater productivity, yet they did not bring about the emergence of a “leisure society”; food processors chopped vegetables faster than women, but they did not necessarily liberated them from the toils of house labor (Cowan 1985; Wajcman 2004). How in posteuphoric times can the digital discourse still put so much trust in technology? The answer has a lot to with the naturalization of network technology. The construction of this narrative projects the message that the digital discourse is not duped by technology per se but rather specifically enthuses about network technology. Hence the recurring distinction in the digital discourse between network technology and industrial technology, specifically in regards to the measure of how natural these two technological paradigms are. In this formulation, industrial technology is constructed as the “Other” of network technology, upholding the positive “transforming fire” (Kelly 1998, 1) of digital technology vis-à-vis the negative effects of industrial technology and affirming the digital discourse’s optimism in network technology.
It is in this context that the digital discourse insists on a fundamental break between industrial, mechanic, analogue technology and the new network technology. Yes, concedes the digital discourse, with all the benefits of Second-Wave technologies, in the language of Alvin Toffler, its utopian promises have failed, and its damages were overlooked.<sup>3</sup> But Third-Wave technologies are a new story, and utopian dreams regarding their emancipatory and progressive potential are right to be rekindled. This mindset has already been quite ingrained into our common sense and language, where network technology is habitually referred to as “high”-technology, asserting its superiority vis-à-vis good old (but full of false promises) “modern,” “heavy,” or “industrial” technology.
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Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age