Response #2 - Don't Be So Sterne About The Internet

While reading the chapter on culture studies and how it looks at the Internet, it was very tempting to want to interpret the reading as the interpretation of textual analysis, rather than looking at the construction of the Internet. It was hard because I have been partly conditioned to defining Internet practice and its characteristics and methods for sharing information across the spectrum of millions of on-line users. As I first began reading “Thinking the Internet,” I noted in my head the girl who subconsciously uses the internet as part of her daily routine, while she also goes about her schedule attending classes, meeting up with friends, studying, etc. It is weird to think that since the Internet and all its information-sharing and receiving capabilities, that its mundane use is much the same as the use of a telephone and a car radio.
However, what Sterne was implying in the reading is that to look at the Internet as a cultural study, a scholar or someone who wants to learn more about the Internet’s discourse, you must approach with the sense that it has cultural roots. Simply, it derived from the re-figuration of old medium form. Sterne called this multilayered textuality. An example that sort of applies to the idea of cultural roots in the realm of Communications, is that of Christianity and how the instructions and principles that Christ demonstrated on Earth applies very much to our culture today as it did back then. The styles of clothing, the slang and how people talk, and the modes of transportation and communication may be different, but, the religious principles, such as loving your neighbor as yourself, still apply. The same is true for the Communications technologies, and how the telegraph has evolved into the Internet tool, yet its purpose of sharing information to people through time and space instantly is much the same.
Our technologies can be used for immoral purposes, but, they do have its benefits. When used appropriately, they allow our society to be time-efficient and progressive. Cell-phones can be praised highly in the case of emergencies. Email can allow Grandma Doris to talk to her granddaughter who lives 500 miles away. While I’m sure there are things about the Internet such as pornography - which, in most cases, instills an overall negative impression of the Internet as a whole on people – people should not regard what can be useful as “The Deb’il.”