Summary: Selfe

The author of “Lest We Think the Revolution is a Revolution: Images of Technology and the Nature of Change”, Cynthia L. Selfe writes of image; how “they tell rich and powerful stories about the social contexts in which they are produced” and how they are “laden with cultural information, shot through with the values, ideological positions, and social understanding” (294). The importance of images and ads are what leads into her main focus of the three narratives that Americans believe technology will fulfill and the revisions that she has made to make them more realistic to our society. The “global village” is the first, Selfe states that will connect all of the people in the world as the network of computers will “[bind] together the people of the world regardless of race, ethnicity or location” (294). Selfe then contradicts this narrative with the fact that this narrative is “quite terrifying” will cause American citizens to surrender their privileged status’ and lose the economic benefits that our society has as being “one of the most highly technological nations in the world” (294). Because of these consequences, she revises this narrative by calling it “the electronic colony”. In this colony, technology is reached worldwide but “different cultures [and different people] exist to be discovered, explored, marveled at—in a sense, known and claimed by—those who can design and use technology” (295). Which means that our roles in the world stay the same; “Americans are the smart ones” while the rest of the world “are the recipients of technology and its benefits, those who use the technology that we control” (295). The second narrative is a “land of equal opportunity” that “focuses on equity, opportunity, and access” for everyone. (301). Selfe uses ads from multiple companies as examples of the lack of equity in the reality of the narrative. The images shown are all typical “American families” that represent luxury and freedom and explain “that technology uninfluenced by traditional American values can run amuck, especially in a postmodern world” (302). Selfe claims that “America is the land of opportunity for only some people” and “is a commodity generally limited to privileged groups within this country” (304). The third and last narrative is of “the un-gendered utopia” and the idea that technology will create a society in which gender roles are abolished and men and women will live equally. Selfe calls the revised edition “the same old gendered stuff” because of how unwilling our culture is to change. To have this “un-gendered utopia” we must “learn how to understand people outside of the limited gender roles that we have constructed for them in this country” (306). Selfe sums up the revised version of this narrative by stating that “the new electronic landscape retains a value on innovation, hard work and the individual contributions of people of both genders, but only as they are practiced appropriately—within the traditionally gendered contexts we have historically and culturally ratified for women and men in our culture” (307). These narratives express how much Americans expected technology to transform their culture but in reality, we let our values manipulate technology instead of the other way around.

In the second narrative of “the land of equal opportunity”, Selfe claims that “these ads are what my grandmother would call ‘mighty white’. There is remarkable absence in all images of people of color, and poor people, and people who are out of work, single-parent families, and gay couples, and foreigners” (304). I found this quote interesting because of the fact that advertisement companies use only the “typical American family” and yet, the ads are still successful among the general population. Selfe continues her argument by stating that “if technology is to improve the lives of Americans regardless of race and class and other differences, our collective ability to envision such a world is not evident in these images” (305). This quote reinforces the idea that our society has influenced technology to our values because of these images. Instead of using technology to create a sense of equality throughout the world, we use it raise the status of Americans and display the power that we have over the rest of the world.