Lest We Think The Revolution is a Revolution”

a) My Group in class read “‘Land of Equal Opportunity’ And ‘Land Of Difference’” on pages 301-305. The first two paragraphs of this section focused on computers and the internet creating an electronic landscape in which everyone is believed to have equal stakes, equal access and equal opportunity. This landscape is a new frontier in which is available to anyone who values individualism, innovation and competition. Cynthia Selfe, through subtle example, keeps expressing these views as American views. This I believe to be saying that the views or ideas are only true for Americans and not for other societies around the world. The third and fourth paragraphs reiterate the same message that advertisements play upon the American fascination with traditional values. Americans cultural memory is persuasive and therefore advertisers try to capture that ideology in their messages. The last four paragraphs of this section focus on how technological progress characterizes what Americans know how to accomplish and how advertisements play on this idea and try and create a sense that technology provides security. Then Selfe explains that the idea that America and its institutions provide a Land of Equal Opportunity, for some people; and also that advertisements do not actually promote unification of races, sexes, class or other differences.

b) In recent discussion, there has been conversation between American ideology on computers and the internet, and the reality of what they actually stand for. In an article, “Lest We Think The Revolution is a Revolution,” author Cynthia Selfe, portrays the three American Narratives as the “Global Village,” “Land of Equal Opportunity” and the “Ungendered Utopia” as false. The Internet and advertisements have taken those Narratives and turned them into the “Electric Colony,” the “Land of Difference” and the “same old genders.” In one of Selfe’s main claims she states, “Computers, in other words, are completely socially determined artifacts that interact with existing social formations and tendencies-including sexism, classissm, and racism- to contribute to the shaping of a gendered society” (pp. 306). What Selfe is trying to portray through this claim is that computers have not created but uphold simple worldly tendancies as sexism, racism, and the separation of social class, to create the world in which we live. I hold that this statement does hold some merit in the discussion American ideology versus reality, but I do not believe that computers are to blame for all of the revised Narratives. To blame computers of such a high crime is completely illogical. Computers are just a tool used to access stores of information and programs. If anything to blame it is the internet and advertisements that create the Narratives that shape the society in which we live. Advertisements create a false image that almost no citizen can obtain. They create a front for what big companies and corporations want people to do, to want to look like and to buy. The internet takes these crafty advertisements and customizes them so they apply to you. Maybe you shop online for a new pair of jeans or a shirt one day. The next time you go onto the internet it has become a screen of flasing and dizzying advertisements about clothing and what the new trends are and how you should look and do your hair and even tie your shoelaces. Companies create these images for average people to desire after. If anything is to blame, it is not the tool, but the craftsmen. The internet and advertisements create Narratives that shape our society into whatever they want and benefit from.