Inventing Electracy

REBECCA WEST

It is instantaneous and universal. Electracy exists everywhere, including the classroom, and its culture includes all members of society. I wonder if the rate of ilelectracy is the same as illiteracy. There are still certain people who refrain from particpation in electrate culture and some who would like to but can't, either because they are ilelectrate or because they don't have access. I would guess that virtually everyone in a city would have access, but some rural areas still not. And, of course, there are different levels of electracy just as there are literacy--one may be able to read at a grade school level, which would greatly limit their ability to participate in a literate culture, and one may be able to send and retrieve email and surf the web (with limited search skills) but be limited if they don't know how to manipulate and use the multitude of tools available. So there might be pockets of subcultures in electrate society just as there are in literate societies. Status is invariably embedded in the different levels of electracy. Is the learning curve the same in electracy as it is in literacy?

In Ulmer, the realm of electracy is entertainment (as opposed to science and religion). If this is the case, then the new mode of understanding our world is through the interpretive lens of enjoying or not enjoying what we encounter (pleasure/pain axis). So if in the oral world legitimacy is monitored and sanctioned through that of religion, and in the literate world only scientifically backed information is valid, how does that translate in an electrate world? Could it be that only the most entertaining and pleasure producing information is legitimate? Following Ulmer, if science/literacy usurped religion/orality in validity, does that mean that entertainment/electracy with usurp science/literacy? Even though oral culture still exists, and the literate world will as well, perhaps the electrate world will provide a new paradigm for interpreting and understanding our world. Entertainment value is greater than scientific value.

In some ways electracy mimics orality. For instance, the idea of intellectual property and authorship did not exist in oral cultures, but in written cultures became paramount. In electracy, that authorship and individual ownership is threatened. In oral cultures, entertainment was also paramount (pun intended) because a storyteller or orator had to entertain to hold the audience. In literate cultures, one could pause when reading if tired or bored, and resume again at a later time (an individual act). Also, the words will remain the same, untouched. In oral and electrate cultures, if one left the arena, or site, one could come back later and the information might be changed. Further, oral and electrate cultures have more of a communal nature--it takes many to participate in an oral or electrate event, and only one in a literate event (almost a precondition to reading is solitarity). Have we come full circle?

Ironically, electracy unites as well as divides humanity. Obviously, it unites us because we can instantly communicate with anyone and everyone at the same time (akin to Virilio's "general accident"). And also obviously, it is a solitary [physical] act. One could use the imagery of the matrix in the movie of the same name: a gigantic mechanical universe where all humanity is gathered, yet they exist as solitary physical beings, plugged in to keep the machine (the Internet and other electrate venues) alive. In Matrix Reloaded, Zion exists as a kind of oral culture, living in primitive conditions underground and hidden. The only real freedom is to be unplugged. Even with wireless fidelity, there still must be a "hotspot" nearby in order to gain access. The matrix is our mother, as Ulmer reminds us, and our electrate identities are born there. The odd thing is, though, that we do not die in the matrix, we have the ability to live forever, which might be what Ulmer is getting at with his MEmorial. We not only can create collaborative monuments to tragic events, we can do so with our own online identities. Although this sounds like a good thing, some "coppertops" might want to unplug, but they can never get rid of the portals that bound them to the machine. Their electrate identities remain intact and available to others who are still plugged in.

Ultimately, I like the idea that a world based on entertainment as the legitimizer might replace that of the current scientific paradigm, with all the possibilities (and, of course, problems) that might bring.