Initial reflections on inter-relating Bell and Hand readings.
Bell, D (2001) “Storying Cyberspace: Material and symbolic stories” in An Introduction to Cybercultures pp. 6-29 Abingdon: Routledge
Hand, M (2008) “Hardware to Everywhere: Narratives of Promise and Threat” in Making digital cultures: access, interactivity, and authenticity pp.15-42, Aldershot: Ashgate
I was glad that I read Bell first as he gives a good account of the various forms of material histories of digital technologies as well as the impact of our symbolic understandings of these technologies. When I started to read Hand I noted the difference in the publications dates – Bell:2001; Hand: 2008 – and reflected that things had moved on quite a bit since Bell wrote. In fact, Hand talks about the first wave of Web studies focusing on cyberspace as something separate – either seen as a “technical fix for the limitations of western democracies or an autonomous realm for elites and self-excluders”. Hand argues that culture in all forms is thought to be digitized. Cyberspace is no longer conceived as something ‘out there’. Bell’s article, I had initially put in that first wave of web studies.
Having finished Hand, I am not so sure. Perhaps Hand’s article could be subsumed under Bell’s Political Economy Stories – albeit a very sophisticated and in-depth analysis of contemporary social and cultural thought. Hand successfully brings out how complex a field this is – counterpoising both utopian and dystopian arguments. And pointing out that they both fall into a narrative of inevitability. On top of this complexity, I think one still needs to add Bell’s symbolic stories. Because that is how we experience the Net and the film shorts we have seen are variations of well-known stories about worship, believers, control, lack of control, power relations etc.
But I need time to reflect more.
