Five Questions for Jeff Chester - 2/5/2007 - Multichannel News:
MCN: Isn’t the Internet already about as commercialized as it could be?
JC: But the Internet and all digital media is on the verge of a major transformation. It will be able to better deliver these multimedia, virtual-reality enriched, precision ads. And it will be ubiquitous on all the so-called triple play platforms. So as the saying goes, you ain’t seen nothing yet. And as my book [Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy] talks about, the fact that they’re working on neuroscience now, the ad industry, and they’re working with cable and others, and are really trying to push the envelope with brain behavior. To really figure out, OK, how do we use multimedia to bypass the conscious mind, to reach deep into our emotions? The fact that they’re actually doing that — to me it takes it to another level of concern.
I think Jeff Chester does interesting work, and I suggest that people check him out, but I find these kinds of claims a little dubious. Multimedia already bypass our rational minds, that’s the nature of moving image arts. Juxtaposition of disparate images and sounds are not rational; they are physically stimulating experiences that are essentially emotional. How we construct meaning is vastly more complex than simply having our neuro-buttons pushed by programmed images and sounds. This doesn’t mean they don’t influence us, but we don’t exist in isolated chambers in which we only experience media messages (such as was the case for for Alex de Large in A Clockwork Orange, who is featured in the above image).
It’s appealing to think someone controls our lives, because it excuses us from taking responsibility for our thoughts and feelings. A lot of media critics always qualify their theories by stating that things could be really bad, but you are the escape clause, and they are right. But sometimes I wonder if they really believe that.
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I definitely agree Antonio, it’s appealing on certain levels to place responsibility elsewhere. Just how responsible and in control we are of our own internal and, to degrees, external experience can be frightening. Many people relinquish responsibility and even control to others when that fear overcomes them, or simply allow habit to be the determinant of their experience, which is just another form of shirking responsibility. What would it look like though, to have a media that really forced us to be responsible for ourselves so we can be the primary force driving our experience, as opposed to one that aims for the opposite?