Siegel's Against the Machine: Review

Here is the link to the Goodreads review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/742375803

Despite its promising title, Lee Siegel's Against the Machine is less about the struggle to maintain our humanity in the digital age and more about his problem with how the internet age has completely bereft our society of creativity, impartiality, and pure artistic originality. 

My very negative preview of Against the Machine was for the most part confirmed by my reading it.  It is for the most part poorly written, with a few coherent statements and positive suggestions scattered amongst lengthy commentary on how the internet and its promoters have destroyed our culture and anecdotes about how the internet has turned its consumers or "prosumers" into distorted reflections of itself.  He is all about how the internet is people with no talent or originality selling their poor interpretations of things they did not create.  Value in this digital society is determined by popularity, not quality or artistry, and value is also based on marketability rather than detached enjoyment.  Siegel refers a lot to Alvin Toffler's Future Shock (review by my friend Melee here), making references to how we have become more or less the very society that Toffler predicted.  Between the lines of Siegel's ranting is a drawn-out elegy of the death of gatekeeping, regulated print culture, major media outlets and "real" art. 

Adam Thierer, Flickr

  Ironically, although he complains about the bias of our individual-based internet culture, this book is distorted with his own biases, which was disappointing since I chose to read this book based because I thought it promised objectivity.  Perhaps in writing this Siegel is presenting his book as an object lesson about how biased our individualized media is.  If this is the case, Siegel is trying to imbue us with his own negative perception of humanity and modern culture.  He has very little good to say about the internet or the people that use it.  Understandably, Siegel wrote this book to reflect on his very negative experiences with the internet.  So coming from a completely different perspective--where the internet can also be used as a source of good, uplifting content when created by good people for good reasons--Siegel perhaps would not blame me for thinking that he is missing half the picture.

What good points Siegel does make, as I have pointed out, are few and far between, but I will point them out just so we don't lose faith in the author's humanity. He does have a point that he says that the individualization/customization of the internet is not always a good thing.  While it surrounds us with the things we like, however, individualized media insulate us from things we do not like. The internet encourages the glorification of the self and the self's fantasies rather than bringing us closer to understanding other people.  Siegel claims that this contributes to the hate, bigotry, and misunderstanding on political blogs, comments, and other internet posts.  People just say what they want rather than trying to understand the other person's point of view. I do sympathize with Siegel's claim that detachment from people and media as means to an end is disappearing, but I disagree that it is totally lost--or ever will be lost, from society.

 What Siegel could have argued for better, if he argued at all, is a need for limited immersion in the internet culture.  Instead, he just rants about the Internet as a corrupt media, an enhanced societal enslavement and a failed democracy, and a culture that has fallen for corporate capitalism's trap.  He could have at least offered a solution to today's internet culture, if there is so much wrong with it--after all, in the prologue he says "Things really don't have to be the way they are."  So how can they be, Mr. Siegel? Really?

occidentalobserver.net

 I read this book on Kindle for PC.  Against the Machine is divided into three segments with three chapters each. It is fairly short, easy reading. 

Seeing the Good

Undoubtedly, I am one of the people that Dr. Burton saw at the guest lecture on Friday--because I saw him there. And the second half of the presentation totally validated my ambition to be a fantasy writer--creativity is one of my strengths, and I plan on putting it to good use.

However, the lecture also brought up the topic of video games and why they can be beneficial, even necessary. I never thought that being morally and individually opposed to video games would be considered a weakness. 

I think if I explained my background a little bit, then my perception on video games would make sense.  Both of my parents grew up before video games were invented, and when they first came out they were both too busy trying to take care of themselves--they were both single for a long time--to be bothered by them.  And my dad, especially, grew up in the mountains of north-central Arizona, where even access to television was very limited, so he has always tried to restrict my siblings' media use growing up, but to little avail. That being said, I understand my dad's initial aversion to video games. 

I played a handful of computer games and almost no video games growing up. When my younger siblings started taking music lessons, Dad had to give them incentive to practice their instruments, so he offered to let them play Y amount of minutes of any given computer game for X amount of practice time.  For the first few years it worked rather well.  But with every game interest would wane as they played through, then they would stop practicing, and then Mom and Dad would have to buy a new computer game to give them more incentive.  I would watch them playing for a few minutes but always told myself I had "more important" things to do.  I would also notice when Dad and my youngest brother got into a fight every time my brother lied about going over his computer time, and that only made me more averse to gaming. 

And the media wasn't very helpful at all, because I always heard stories about how people who played violent video games turned into criminals and how leading virtual second lives took away from enjoying reality and taking care of oneself.  I have spent my entire life looking down on people who play video games--including, I am ashamed to say, my closest friends.

Friday's lecture with Johnny Evers completely shook that image.  I had no idea that video games could teach you social skills and management skills and offer you a safe way to practice life.  Now I wish I'd known about games like "Civilization" that help you not only to build virtual worlds but teach you to manage them with money and decision-making.  Heck, if I want to be a fantasy writer, isn't that the sort of thing I'm supposed to be practicing?  Wouldn't that have been more useful than minoring in Anthropology?

And far from creating socially backward people, video games, Evers argued, improve social skills.  To think that if I had played social video games growing up that would have been a much better approach to navigating high school than curling up in the corner and reading when people started picking on me! And a year and a half ago I was struggling with depression--if only I had known about that game "Super Better" when I was trying to get through that! If there was any validity to Evers' claims, then I am really missing out.

I realize that a lot of these things are true only to a certain extent.  I am not blinding myself to the bad things about video games, they're still out there, but for the first time in my life I was opened up to the good.

So in that spirit, I decided to swallow my pride and try out the Moby Dick video game.  It was fun, but challenging. Does that game provide instruction in important life skills?  How about multi-tasking?