Mythic storytellers have crafted some of the most exciting and powerful tales in human history. These stories of gods and heroes explain the foundations of the world we live in. They attribute real phenomena to the actions and decisions of mythical beings; in Norse mythology, lightning is caused by Thor's hammer. Vincent Mosco, author of The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and Cyberspace, draws on the power of myths to provide an engaging view of myths created from technological progress. As described by Mosco:
Myths are stories that animate individuals and societies by providing paths to transcendence that lift people out of the banality of everyday life. They offer an entrance to another reality, a reality once characterized by the promise of the sublime.
The above quote is just a small sample of the language Mosco uses to weave his own tale. Mosco shows that with the advent of each new technology, myths are created heralding the beginning of a new age. The telegraph, electricity, radio, television, and most recently the internet all promised to usher in the “end” of era and bring about a new dawn for mankind. While today these claims are amusing and often humorous, Mosco shows how these same factors play out in the modern myths of cyberspace, and how we can learn to examine the truth behind each of these myths.
Mosco makes this poignantly clear during his examination of the belief that information technology is ending both distance and politics. In his review of others' works, it is commonly believed that with the aid of the internet, distance no longer matters, and a new space, namely cyberspace, is arising to fill the void left by traditional concepts. The traditional borders between countries and organizations have been transcended. Some enthusiasts about information technology extend this influence to the social realm, claiming that it also helps eliminate the boundaries between different social groups. For the ending of politics by information technology, it is regarded by many to be the process of empowering ordinary people. The insecurity experienced in traditional politics is decreased, resulting in the redistribution of political power.
Up to now the early chapters in his book tend to leave the impression that Mosco has no intention to bring forward his own opinions on that “ending story”, as those chapters are full of quotes from others. However, toward the middle of the book this suspicion dissipates:
This is very much an ever‐ending story. For it tells the story of how the end came several times before the birth of cyberspace. Almost every wave of new technology, including information and communication media, has brought with it declarations of the end.
The aura of the so‐called digital sublime begins to lose its mythical colorfulness. A brief historical review by Mosco of the main revolutionary technologies – telegraph, electricity, telephone, radio, and television – shows the evidence of this ever‐ending story. Information technology has no more mythical power than earlier technologies. He points out how quickly promises from these technologies collapse into banality, the mundane routine of everyday life. However, only in doing so, is the social impact of these technologies the greatest. For instance, electricity was once heralded as a magical wonder at first; but it literally had to disappear into the woodwork before it mattered at all.
As Professor of Communication with joint appointments in sociology and political economy at Carleton University in Canada, Mosco has been working on the social, political economic, and cultural aspects of telecommunication, mass media, computers and information technology. In this book, it is not surprising that he ends with a perspective of political economy, based on the path paved by the first five chapters. It repeats the myth of post‐industrialism but from a different angle. This time it focuses on a concrete manifestation: Ground Zero in Manhattan. This chapter makes a connection between myth and the political economy of the internet by examining three areas: digitalization and commoditization of communication, corporate integration and concentration in the communication industry, and the deregulation of the industry. The points made in the final chapter of this book are very compelling and we recommend that if you read just one chapter of this book, read this one. The final chapter really ties the book together and presents Mosco's belief in the power of myths in our information society.
Overall, although this book is depicting an already notorious picture of the bursting of digital bubbles, it is still worth reading for its outstanding insights into the nature of information technologies by retrospecting the history of earlier technologies. If Mosco could make his point consistently clearer in the part related to political economy, this book would be of more value.
