Internet technology and the myth of cultural decline

Technology and Society

All print media including books, newspapers and magazines are in deep trouble today thanks to new developments in technology, as are traditional methods of classroom instruction and school curricula. To that extent the Internet can be described as a revolutionary invention that has altered and transformed the way information is presented and conceived. Individuals are learning and creating innovative ways to contribute to relevant knowledge at an excessive speed, and the Western world has become dependent on this technology and also more aware of its negative side. Whether the technology in our surroundings is causing human beings to become distracted, affecting our communication skills, or making them stupider is a question that has to be addressed.

This memorandum will describe these issues of trivialization and the 'shallow-ing out' of contemporary American culture, most of which are either as deliberately exaggerated and sensationalized as the Internet itself or being blamed on the wrong culprits and confusing the symptoms of social decay with the cause of the disease. In reality, capitalist consumer culture has long since encouraged all these trends toward banality, shallowness and narcissism, even before the invention of the latest round of communications technology. Academics eager to cash on the newest and latest social concerns are writing many trendy books today about how postmodern society is also becoming post-literate, dehumanized, shallow and superficial, with brains being rewired away from deep thought, memory and concentration to sending short text messages and jumping from one website to another. None of these concerns are new, but date back to the invention of all earlier forms of mass communication and entertainment, including radio, television, movies, and even comic books. For over one hundred years, capitalism has been constantly devising newer and better ways to provide mass entertainment, advertising, escapist fantasies and distraction for a profit, and cell phones, YouTube, Facebook and Google are really just more of the same in that key respect.

Rewiring Education and the Brains of the Young

In the 1950s, television, rock and roll and comic books were supposedly causing students to forget how to read, while in the 1980s the decline in math and science test scores compared to Asian countries was supposedly putting the nation at risk. Today, the culprit for a mediocre education system is the Internet, social media and cell phones. For example, in Matt Richtel's article "Growing up Digital" teenagers who should be doing their summer reading, not surprisingly prefer Facebook, YouTube and other distractions to Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. Now Vonnegut was a genius, of course, and one the greatest American satirists since Mark Twain, but frankly his popularity reached its peak about two or three generations back and his books are more appealing to teachers than today's generation of students (Richtel 2010).

Harvard Medical School researchers like Michael Rich are warning parents that young brains are being rewired by the new technology, which favors visual experience and immediate gratification over deeper cognitive abilities. Television had the same effect, of course, and programmed viewers to expect a commercial break every eleven or twelve minutes, thus shortening their attention spans, and also to assume that most major problems would be resolved after twenty-five or fifty-five minutes when the episode ended. Movies were also able to do this in about ninety minutes, not including the advertising before the start of the picture. Internet and cell phone technology are even more accelerated than television, and young brains are "rewarded not for staying on task, but for jumping to the next thing" (Richtel 2010). Teachers are being forced to create their own websites and communicate with students through iPads and email to keep up with the times, while students are becoming "addicted to the virtual world and lost in it" (Richtel 2010). All things considered, there have always been worse substances to which young people can become addicted, and all the narcissists, alienated loners and obsessive-compulsives described in these warning books and articles always sought sensations, diversions and distractions in other activities before the age of the Internet.

Unsupervised use of computers and cell phones is commonplace today because both parents are working, and usually longer hours than thirty or forty years ago. This is caused by the need to have two incomes to maintain at least the illusion of a middle class level of affluence, which is more difficult today than in the past. Half of all students age 8-18 are using the Internet or watching TV at least 'some' of the time while also attempting to do homework, and adults are simply not around as much as they used to be to control such distractions (Richtel 2010). Television has existed since the 1940s, however, and radio, record players and regular telephones even before that, and in their day all of these were at least as distracting as the Internet and hand-held communication systems. Sociable students gravitate toward Facebook or sending hundreds and thousands of text messages, while isolated loners prefer online movies, music and video games and "do not socialize through technology -- they recede into it" (Richtel 2010). Pediatricians have found that video games caused more sleep disturbances than TV and cause more deterioration in memory as more emotionally stimulating information crowded out boring subjects like Latin and vocabulary. In the past, though, all of them would have been just as easily distracted by something else besides the Internet or other virtual activities.

Ethics and Privacy Concerns in Relation to the New Technologies

Medical and mental health care professionals operate under strict ethical and legal guidelines concerning the protection of client confidentiality. Without an atmosphere or trust and confidentiality, these professions that gather the most sensitive kind of personal information simply cannot function at all. This has become even more difficult in the era of cellphones, the Internet and electronic mail, for which few ethical rules exist. Among these are the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) which includes a Privacy Rule requiring protection of all confidential information transmitted by phone or electronically. In the last ten years "we have become so accustomed to relying on technology that careful thought is not always given to subtle ways that privacy can be violated" (Corey 227). In an environment with relatively new technologies like email, cell phones, voice mail, clients are rightfully concerned that violations of privacy and leaks of confidential personal information have become more common than ever before. Legal and ethical guidelines prohibit the disclosure of confidential medical, psychiatric and legal information to unauthorized third parties. All providers have to be especially careful about passwords and access codes to voice mail, email and answering machines, or sending information via email and cell phones to persons or organizations other than their clients. Confidential information should never be sent to workplace computers or phones since employees have no right to privacy there. In fact, employers have the right to monitor email and phone calls in their location or using their own telephones and computers, and also to monitor the activities of employees with hidden cameras and other spy devices, so workplace privacy can hardly be said to exist at all.

Corporate Marketing, Public Relations and the New Social Media

All of the new social media on the Internet like Facebook, You Tube and Twitter are providing businesses with new and useful information every day, as well as marketing tools that they could not obtain anywhere else. At the same time, they can also damage the brands, images and reputations of companies almost overnight and on a global scale. If marketing campaigns can rapidly go 'viral' then so can attacks and public criticism, which will be viewed by thousands or even millions of people in a very short time. Companies like United Airlines, Adobe and Cisco Systems already learned these lessons when faced with public criticism from customers on the Internet that simply exploded and ballooned out of their control very rapidly, while they had no plan or capability in place to respond. Jay Milliken and Jeremiah Oywang moderated panels at the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association (SVAMA) that discussed marketing and crisis and reputation management in the age of Twitter and Facebook with representatives of major Silicon Valley companies Adobe, Cisco Systems, Wells Fargo and Zuberance. All of them had very negative experiences with criticism and complaints on the new social media, although they were also beginning to use these for sales and marketing purposes, as well for improving customer service and brand performance.

Established brands are struggling with how to engage with customers in a social media world, as brand consultant Jay Milliken explained when he discussed the real cost of waiting to participate in social media. All of these Internet conversations are going to occur constantly whether companies participate in them or not or simply decide to monitor them, although the risks of remaining idle are very high (Milliken 2010). United Airlines discovered this when a musical group called the Sons of Maxwell made a You Tube music video about a very negative experience they had a Chicago's O'Hare Airport. They were travelling from Halifax, Canada to Omaha with a transfer in Chicago, and noticed that the baggage handlers were tossing around their very expensive instruments like they were of no value. They destroyed a $2,500 Taylor guitar that cost a great deal to repair and the airline refused to take any responsibility for the loss or offer any reimbursement -- not even vouchers for future flights.

In response, the band made this music video that showed moronic United Airlines employees tossing around the passenger's luggage and customer service representatives who ignored all complaints and refused to even consider offering compensation for any damaged items. On You Tube, this video went viral and soon had eight million views worldwide, which did far more damage to United's image and reputation than any costs it would have incurred from paying for the repair of the guitars. After all, United Airlines had spent millions on public relations campaigns to improve its public image, but one music video like this destroyed all those efforts very quickly. In response, United ordered all its executives to start monitoring websites like Flyer Talk every day, in order to find similar complaints about its services before another incident like this did even worse damage to its reputation. As Milliken emphasized, companies no longer have any choice about whether these new social media are going to have an impact on their business since messages like these are going to be posted regardless of what they do. Their only choice is to decide how and when they are going to respond and manage public comments and criticism (Milliken 2010).

Corporations have many crisis communications plans to take account of every contingency from natural disasters to product failures, and these will have to include online criticism and public attacks that will damage their reputation and brands. Given the nature of the Internet, thousands or even millions of people can view these Twitter and Facebook postings in a very short time, and they can quickly go 'viral' and spread globally almost overnight. Ignoring these criticisms will not make them go away and the damage done will only increase greatly the longer the company waits to respond. Cisco Systems found this out when a woman with just forty followers on Twitter mentioned that she had just gotten a job with the company that paid very well, even though she hated the work and the long commute. No one would have expected that this would have turned into a major public controversy but it did when other Cisco employees discovered this tweet and kept reposting it. Even Oprah Winfrey learned about it and asked the company if it wanted to participate in a show on "How to Lose a Job at Cisco," and this seemingly minor incident that emerged literally out of nowhere convinced the company that it had to have some type of plan in place to deal with impacts on its reputation from the new social media (Owyang 2010).

Adobe learned that dissatisfied customers had begun to create their own forums on the Internet, complaining that their products like Acrobat did not function well or took too long to download, and soon these became international. Adobe ignored this and thought it would simply go away, until it got to the level of hundreds and thousands of posts that were really damaging the brand. In time, companies also learn the competitors can also create negative sights like these and even pay people to post on them, and indeed this happens all the time on the Internet. In the end, though, Adobe used its own "evangelists" to monitor sites like these and post information, and also forwarded all negative posts to product development and customer service to improve its brand. It found that social media could influence sales and public reputation on a whole new level that brand and performance marketers would be unable to accomplish no matter how large a budget they had. Posters on these sites could serve as a virtual sales force as well, with a conversion rate five to ten times greater than any known conventional marketing method. When they sent emails to their friends they were ten times more likely to be opened than of a company had sent them directly, and the persons who received them were also ten times more likely to make a purchase if the product had been recommended by their friends. If done correctly, no other sales or marketing campaign would ever come close to matching results like these, or at a lower cost, which is yet another indication of just how powerful these new social media have already become (Owyang 2010).

These examples from Adobe, United Airlines and Cisco Systems all demonstrate that the new social media like Twitter, Facebook and You Tube have become very important in a short time, far more so than even the most sophisticated companies had ever imagined. Very damaging public criticism from disgruntled employees and customers can appear literally from nowhere and spread very quickly, from just a few posts to thousands or even millions of people worldwide almost overnight. Nothing like this was possible or even imaginable in the era before the Internet, although governments in the Middle East and around the world have also learned just how powerful these new electronic media are -- and they have often learned to fear it. Businesses should learn to fear it as well, since public attacks and criticism can go 'viral' in a day and have the potential to destroy a company's reputation just as fast. It does not matter if the criticism is fair or unfair, bogus or legitimate, and any business that simply ignores it in hopes that it will go away is running a major risk.

Conclusion

All companies should be monitoring the Internet and social media sites for information and attacks that pertain to their brands and corporate image, and be in a position to respond to false information as well as valid complaints about their products and services. As Adobe found, this policy of monitoring and responding appropriately not only corrected misinformation but also improved its products and services. In addition, it learned how to use its own "evangelists" to market new products to friends and achieved results that no conventional sales and marketing campaign could ever have matched, no matter how well funded. In short, the new social media are here to stay and are only going to become more important in the future, so for better or worse, all companies are going to have to learn how to adapt to these and use them to market their products, improve customer service and avoid server damage to their image and brands.

Whether the Internet and the new social media have made postmodern society more narcissistic, shallow and self-absorbed is also a matter for debate. Christopher Lasch and other social critics were already denouncing the culture of narcissism and instant gratification among Baby Boomers and Yuppies in the 1970s, long before cell phones, the Internet and personal computers. In the previous decade, pop artist Andy Warhol remarked that in the future everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes, which may become literally true with Facebook and YouTube. Jean Twenge's book about The Narcissism Epidemic is merely the latest in a long line of such trendy titles condemning the banality and self-absorption of consumer capitalist society. A capitalist economy that depends on mass advertising and consumption has to encourage a great deal of narcissism, pleasure seeking and self-absorption rather than the old Puritan-evangelical ethic of an agrarian society. In the past, the margin of survival was very thin and most people were hardly above subsistence level, so saving, thrift and self-control were essential. Capitalism in the 20th Century depending on the spending and self-indulgence of the masses, and if they were unable to borrow and spend then the result would be recessions and depressions like those in the 1930s -- or today. In this sense, all the money, time and effort expended on texting, Googling, and social networking are just more of the same, as are the attempts of advertisers to profit from them in any way possible. Any 'avalanche of narcissism', shallowness and self-promotion that exists today began a long time ago, and the new technology is mostly a reflection of that reality rather than its cause.