Globalisation has unsettled established power structures, allowing for the rise of new information and communication technologies. But also, it is the rise of such technologies that allows for the unsettling effects of cultural and economic globalisation.
I was fascinated by Kress’s linking of globalisation, power, and changing modes of information. Information – both the ability to disseminate and access it – is indeed powerful. Throughout history, the power to control and distribute information has been concentrated in a minority of authority figures. As Kress notes, information flowed from the few to the many; however, new media has “produced the technological condition where all can publish to all” (17). I see this in the different ways my parents and I get our information. My parents are still avid watchers of television, and a number of trusted channels and mobile apps are their main information sources. On the other hand, I get most of my information when scrolling through Facebook or Tumblr, clicking on articles from established newspapers like The New York Times as well as posts made by random individuals in my virtual network. However, I do not see this generational change as an “abolish[ment] of the era of mass communication”, but rather an expansion of it (17). It is a democratisation of information, a “redistribution of semiotic power” that allows more people to make themselves heard (17).
Similarly, Kress discusses how the “distinction between the public and the private” has become blurred through the blending of formal writing and informal speech (18). I see this in my own changing relationship with writing and technology. I am amused by past warnings that the rise of e-mail would lead to the deterioration of ‘proper’ English as young people exchanged e-mails with friends, whereas now e-mail has been relegated to the more formal world of schools and offices, while we communicate with friends through texting and other mobile messaging platforms. That decreased distinction between formal and informal, public and private, is also a destablisation of societal power structures that control information and communication.
Kress argues that attributing these changes to new media is to “mistake the effect for the cause” (18). Instead, he argues, “[t]echnologies become significant when social and cultural conditions allow them to become significant” (18). These social and cultural conditions refer to globalisation, both economic and cultural. But the technology must exist in order to become significant, and more importantly, the technology is essential to rapid globalisation. Thus...
