Working Title: Mediated Revolutions

I am putting my senior capstone proposal up here because I really want feedback as I continue with my research. 

Suggestions, comments, feedback. Please let me know what you think.

Key Idea:

Throughout modernity, societies have undergone major changes as a result of technological advances. The restructuring of labor, communications, the global market and networks on a local and global scale mark some of these changes. Our concept of identity too is shaped by technological innovations and the expansion of new and all-pervasive forms of media. Through a comparative historical analysis, a pattern may emerge that illuminates these processes.  How has the interplay between technology and major socioeconomic and political changes in the past two hundred years charted a path whose endpoint is revolution? For my thesis project I wish to address this question by providing a historical context for the so-called  Twitter and Facebook revolutions in the Arab world. While focusing on the latter, my aim is to find historical patterns by comparing them  with the Revolutions of 1848. I hypothesize that the effect of the industrial revolution on the political movements of that time are homologous to the effect of information technologies on the current sociopolitical turmoil.

In order to properly discuss mediated revolutions I will first define the factors involved: revolution; industrial revolution; technology and media; and the information age. Hannah Arendt refers to revolutions as violent changes in power that follow a predictable framework,^[1] yet “what distinguishes these modern revolutions is that they exhibit (albeit fleetingly) the exercise of fundamental political capacities – that of individuals acting together, on the basis of their mutually agreed common purposes, in order to establish a tangible public space of freedom. It is in this instauration, the attempt to establish a public and institutional space of civic freedom and participation, that marks out these revolutionary moments as exemplars of politics qua action.” (IEP)

The Industrial Revolution can be understood as a series of mechanical, communication and technological advances ⏤ starting with the steam engine (1775) and harnessing of the electromagnetic currents (1821) ⏤ which lead to a rapid increase in populations, scientific progress, urbanization, factory work, mass communications and global markets^[2].

Technology and media as I will address them are dissimilar but linked. Prior the rise of the industrial revolution, they were considered one in the same. The printing press and telegraph were technological advances but they allowed for a growth in media. In the current realm, media has outweighed technology as the significant factor in change. The Information Age is perhaps the most difficult factor to define because it is contemporary. While mass media became a powerful and mandating force in the 1950s, and computing arrived in the home in the 1980s I define the true beginning of the information age as 1991 ⏤ the year Tim Berners Lee created the world wide web. The information age is designated as the era in which data and information is easily and accesibly shared at near instant speeds to a near infinite network. The connectivity and productivity of the internet has reshaped our sociosphere.

The Industrial Revolution brought capitalism, global industrialization and an emphasis on large scale market economies that depend on highly intangible elements. This change in the concept and structure of labor prompted Marx and Engels to reexamine the sociopolitical structure. The concurrant change in media and communications ⏤ changes which were first evident with the international installation of the telegraph system ⏤ led to a disruption in national identities and the European revolutions of 1848. In the industrial revolution innovations made at the most fundamental level of technology led to social changes, political changes and changes in the concept of identity.

Without the changes in labor due to the technologies of the industrial revolution, and the changes in how we saw ourselves in our communities due to the increasing advances in media, there would have been no socioeconomic drive behind the communist revolution and the 1848 Spring of Nations. The industrial revolution’s technology was reflected in modernity’s socioeconomic restructuring. The mid 20th century mass media that proliferated our society has fundamentally changed not only how we communicate with others, but how we perceive of ourselves. These changes in technology and media have a domino effect which continued through our conceptions of the self and identity in the modern age.

The patterns within history do not always occur at the same rate. Global, technological, political and personal identities change and evolve over time - but some faster than others. Revolutions serve as the acccelerant. Geopolitical systems are propelled forward by revolutions in  order to keep pace with the advances in self and global conncectivity.

A major component of my senior work will be applying these pattern to today’s global system. How does the historical formula appertain to the current changing socioeconomic and political spheres?

Today’s information age is built upon the concept of freedom and democracy of ideas. The sovereignty of the Internet has remained essentially unthreatened by invading systems of governmental control. This is in part due to the nature of the internet and its founding; the internet was not created with a central control, it was built as a network between people. New media has been built upon this open and free infrastructure, encouraging those who use it to not only participate, but to create networks. These tangible networks exist in a hybrid economy^[3]. The inflatted market price of information has transformed the user of new media from consumer into producer. This commoditizion of the individual in conjunction with the base truth that the internet exists as a free space has fundamentally changed how we are connected to the world and see ourselves on the extremes: internationally and locally.

The current economic structures have been altered by new media in much the same way that the change in labor in the 19th century gave rise to Marxism. The information age’s wealth and power lies within the networks. These social order shifts, seen over the past 20 years and still occuring are fueling the current political movements. As we apply the pattern to contemporary times, we see that the Arab Spring is not a Twitter revolution  ⏤  but its  initial spark was the media.  technology.

Methods of Investigation:

My methods of investigation for my senior work will incorporate comparative historical analysis. I will be sourcing academic journals, ancient and modern philosophical texts, political philosophies and media theorists. I will rely heavily on the Marxist concept of a mediated society  ⏤ in this analysis I will view social changes and revolutions mediated by technological advances. To further substantiate my claims I will incorporate a study of economic models in connection with political and global movements.

This project will be done in parallel with my senior work at Parsons. My senior work for Culture and Media studies will consist of an macro historical analysis in which patterns are identified, defined and analyzed and applied to contemporary events. For Parsons, however, I will be examining the issue on a micro scale. I will apply the patterns determined in the historical comparative study to the micro situation of the current Arab Spring conflicts. This will be done on a comprehensive level through mass data collection and visualization. I hope to be able to use the indepth data analysis conducted through information design as a method of investigation for the wider scale study.

While the two senior works are intrinsically related I will be conducting them independently.

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[1]“A revolution must devour its own children, just as they knew that a revolution would take its course in a sequence of revolutions, or that the open enemy was followed by the hidden enemy under the mask of the “suspects,” or that a revolution would split into two extreme factions ⏤ the indulgents and the enrages ⏤ that actually or “objectively” worked together in order to undermine the revolutionary governement, and that the revolution was “saved” by the man in the middle, who, far from being more moderate, liquidated the right and the left as Robespierre had liquidated Danton and Hebert.” (Arendt, 51)

[2]“The number of people increased vastly... The growth of new communities shifted the balance of population [and] a flood of unskilled, but vigorous, Irish poured in, not without effect on the health and ways of life of Englishmen. Men and women born and bred in the countryside came to live crowded together, earning their bread, no longer as families or groups of neighbours, but as units in the labour force of factories; work grew to be more specialized; new forms of skill were developed, and some old forms lost. Labour became more mobile, and higher standards of comfort were offered to those able and willing to move to centres of opportunity.” (Ashton, 1)

[3]Commercial economies build values with money at their core. Sharing economies build value, ignoring money... But between these two economies, there is an increasingly important third economy: one that builds upon both the sharing and commercial economies, one that adds value to each. This third type -- the hybrid -- will dominate the architecture for commerce on the Web. It will also radically change the way sharing economies function... The hybrid links two simpler, or purer, economies, and produces something from the link." (Lessig 177)