When Old Myths Were New

“When Old Myths Were New: The Never Ending Story” (117-140), Chapter 5 of Vincent Mosco’s book The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power and Cyberspace highlights the various hype that has surrounded each new innovative technology over history. He uses the term “historical amnesia” to refer to the widespread tendency we have to forget the myths of technologies past and buy right back into the myths of technologies present. The “life changing” technology that JUST came out will evolve; what we find so ground-breaking right now will be built upon to create something more advanced, life changing and ground breaking (again.) As Mosco has pointed out, we have bought into the hype of technology since electricity, the telegraph, the phone, the computer...In each era, people have thought “this is it, THIS will change everything forever." Mosco writes that by taking a look at the previous technologies that have been historically hyped-up; we can better understand the myths we have today.

“One of the more useful ways to understand technological myths, including the myths of cyberspace, is to excavate the tales that accompanied the rise of earlier ‘history-ending’ technologies.” (117)

The notion that a new technology is “life changing” is what brings us to our ongoing arguments of "good or bad”- these days about the Internet and Web 2.0. But these new technologies will just be natural and banal to generations to come, just as we are so used to having the phone that we do not debate its negative effects on us. The myths of technologies past, such as the phone, have died and the technology became natural and integrated into our everyday lives. It now serves its purpose; which is to add to our ability to communicate with other human beings and didn’t quite live up to its hyped-up description. The intention of communication technology was always to make knowledge available to the masses and not just limited to the elite but has it lived up to its hype? This magazine description shows the discourse surrounding electricity in its inception and demonstrates the usage of the positive aspects to create the illusion of its life-changing powers.

“Look from the distance at night, upon the broad space it fills and the majestic sweep of the searching lights, and it is as if the earth and sky were transformed by the immeasurable wands of colossal magicians and the superb dome of the structure that is the central jewel is glowing as if bound with wreaths and stars. It is electricity!” (121)

The myth is not entirely false; rather it highlights one aspect (the blinding positive aspect) of the technology and puts it up front, obstructing our view of everything behind it. Up front: Web 2.0 enables the mass public to communicate with each other for the greater good of the world. Behind: Web 2.0 enables third parties to use and take all of our personal information for market research and turn it into profit. The emergence of something new somehow erases its predicators in our minds.  And the myths can go on forever. If we give into these myths; knowing that the technology is not only what it pretends to be, I think it can be properly utilized to our advantage and not solely to the advantage of its creators and profiteers.

Myth will often follow our cultural likes, dislikes, fears and ambitions at the time are. When these things change for us as a culture, the previous myths become irrelevant and new ones are created in order for us to participate in the beliefs and norms of our era. In order for a myth to ‘stay alive’, we need these oppositions we come up with for each new thing. If we keep looking at technology as being good or bad at face value, we keep the myth alive. In our debate of the good and the bad, our good points are always surrounding the myth (the sales pitch, basically) and the bad is how this myth affects us negatively-not how it actually affects us negatively. The hype of course outweighs the blurry bad effects it may have on us in the beginning. When we see technology only as it is presented to us by its makers, who undoubtedly exaggerate its capabilities, we lose all sense of reality. I would compare it to watching those exercise machine infomercials and actually believing you will look like the model on TV when you buy it. When we are constantly transfixed  by something by its mythical power, we are more inclined to buy the “next big thing;”  throwing our money into the pockets of corporate conglomerates and continuing to allow this dynamic of big companies and media corporations to be the main source of our information.