Baym: Concluding Chapter

In her conclusion to "Personal Connections in the Digital Age", Nancy Baym condenses many of her opinions on digital communications technology into a statement reflecting how, generally, we ought to perceive these technologies and their roles in our lives in her opinion.  In a chapter entitled "The Myth of Cyberspace", she contends that seeing the online world as a completely separate space from our own in which we are free to create entirely new selves, networks and ways of communicating is flawed.  No matter what we do or where we are, we inevitably carry with us our social background and practices, and even in supposedly free online spaces the constraints of gender, race, religion, nationality, and class identity usually remain (if sometimes altered from the form they take in the physical world).  This same logic applies in explaining why the presence of new technologies does not irrevocably change us for the worse without our control.  Briefly, Baym compares the effects of new mediated technologies to the effects of mass media in popular culture (advertising, television, etc.).  When watching a tv show or advertisement, people rarely absorb the messages it conveys uncritically and unconsciously: rather, they interpret its messages through their own personal lens of beliefs and experiences.  This is not to say that ads and tv do not posit messages or have an effect, but to say that if you remain conscious and savvy as to the objectives of the advertisers and producers, you can to some extent protect yourself from these effects.  This is a phenomenon exacerbated in the nascent technology of the Internet, where people have more control than ever as to how they choose to use, interpret, and adapt the media they use.  So far, it seems, we have used it to connect and communicate, the norms of which are still being worked out.  Doubtless, the affordances of digital media effect our use of them, encouraging us in one way or another.  But those media do not come out of nowhere, and the people who use them do not either.  What we want and need from our technologies influences how they develop and how we use them, as much as the figures they privilege.  In conclusion, Baym suggests that as a principle, separation of 'mediated' life and 'real' life is flawed.  One is not in direct conflict with the other, and digitally mediated communication cannot be taken out of the context of the 'real' world in which it was developed and continues to exist.

This is, in essence, the crux of the matter, and it is a point I am personally very grateful for.  Almost all discussion as to the role of the Internet and new communication technologies I have seen continues to refer to it as a separate space, independent from daily reality.  Baym offers an alternative viewpoint none too early, a complete refiguring of this discourse that takes into account the reality that nothing ever occurs out of context.  The illusion of a 'cyperspace', perpetuated by Internet dwellers and Sherry Turkle alike, obscures this reality and turns discussion of the Internet into a fruitless, endless pursuit when in reality, history shows us that it will soon be as domesticated a technology as writing.  I do not think that there is no point to discussing the Internet or its role, and I do not believe it has nothing special to offer us.  I have seen and experienced too much evidence to the contrary to believe that.  But I do believe, or at least hope, that if more people came to think of the Internet as being a technology we all experience and adapt to in our own way, within a context where both the 'irl' and 'online' worlds are equally real, we might have a more productive discourse and be more aware of the technology's effects, and what we can do to adapt with them.  As we better understand the Internet, we can better make use of it, and our experiences can be productive and enjoyable, rather than resentful or harmful.  In point of fact, as far as I'm concerned, the Internet is too powerful for us not to try to grapple with it in this way, for it is when we refuse to do so that both the darker aspects of online culture (flaming, trolling, illegal torrenting, etc.) and the more dangerous responses to it (SOPA, PIPA) are allowed to occur.  Perhaps, if we followed Baym's advice, we could find a constructive solution to these problems, and as new problems invariably develop, we could find a way to handle those too.