See also: http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/dloads.htm (takes about 17 minutes to download at 500kbps and is roughly 80 minutes long)
So, what I would like to do with the project is look at items like the film linked above, and discuss how the internet has been socially transformed from an archival/research tool into a medium of socio-political information distribution. Sub-topics I am interested in regarding this are subversive publication and discourse communities, open access to information, non-mainstream discourse methods developed through internet technologies, etc. etc..
The problem I am having is that I am horrible at framing projects like this in terms of "scholarly/academic" questions/arguments. In Dr. Huot's Literacy:... class, a colleague of ours often asks if it is possible to "use the master's tools to dismantle the master's house" and items like _Zeitgeist_ seem to be doing just that: using the internet (a creation of the military-industrial complex) to distribute information directly opposed to "the master's house."
I don't want to limit myself to this movie alone, and am beginning to scour the interweb (har har) for more subversive material (surely, there is more than enough material in this area). What I am concerned about is whether or not there is any theory/scholarly analysis of this sort of subversive use of the internet that I should specifically be looking for. Anyone know?
Totally inappropriate in terms of our project? I intend to frame my paper on new means of discourse, distribution, writing using the internet as a gateway/medium/etc. Too broad?
E.
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Elliot - I'm not sure about the actual movie (I've read a lot of criticism about its claims), but I like where you're going with the idea.
As far as the Internet, you don't have to look far to see how it has the power to ruin political careers; just last week (at least for me) a friend told me about the fact that Sarah Palin was blessed by a Kenyan Witch Hunter at her church, meaning A.) Sarah Palin believes in witches and B.) she endorses the actions of a man who uses "witch hunting" as a socially-accepted mechanism (in Kenya, I guess) for persecuting women. So, I log onto YouTube, and I immediately find two videos: one of the actual ceremony, and one of Palin talking about how wonderful the experience was. I also Googled the subject and found many reputable articles about the Witch Hunter himself.
What does this have to do with writing technologies? I think I’m getting to that. There were many laughs had about what a knucklehead Bristol Palin’s baby daddy (in the parlance of the times) was when people found his MySpace; after that, he (or McCain’s campaign HQ) changed his profile to make him less redneck-y and more socially acceptable.
There’s also the case of the whole “Lipstick on a pig fiasco.” Someone at a message board I read, using nothing but Google, read through some old interviews with Obama and discovered that this is an expression he had used in the past—and in matters completely unrelated to Sarah Palin. This person also discovered that McCain, too, is a user of this expression, and pointed out where he’s said it in the past. Now that virtually all public affairs are recorded an archived online, it’s almost impossible to escape from the stupidity and/or contradictions of your past. The Daily Show points this out all the time, and they do an excellent job at something the mainstream media should really be paying attention to.
All of this makes me think that—with everyone in America having either a MySpace or a FaceBook—how hard it will be for anyone to hold public office 20 years from now. Would you vote for a mayor who, when he was 19, went by the MySpace name “420everyday” and had animated pot leaves decorating his page? I would, but that’s beside the point.
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