New Media Reader Introduction and The Guild

1. Technophobia, library versus social space
Both the web series "The Guild" and "The New Media Reader" challenge a common misconception of computers or the internet as isolating devices. The stereotype of the gamer is of a troll-like, Asperger's ridden, thirty year old teenager afraid to leave his parent's basement, and immersing himself instead in a delusional, solitary virtual reality. Apocalyptic visions of a computer dominated future abound, as in the recent film Wall-E, where human beings live in self contained internet pods, unable to see the reality, or the fellow humans, beyond their computer screens. Why so much fear of the internet?
As Janet H. Murray points out in her introduction, "Inventing the Medium," computer programs were initially invented around two themes, archiving information, and promoting social interaction and networking. Even today, the most popular sites, google, and facebook or myspace continue these two first goals. Doesn't the internet promote connections between people rather than isolate. In "The Guild," the protagonists certainly have created fantasy personas to hide from their real lives, but the central conceit and humor of the show derives from the surprising ways in which their online relationships cross over into the real world.
I think the fear of the internet derives from its twin roles. Because of its identity as a carrier of information, people have trouble seeing computers and the internet as a medium for creativity and artistic expression. They feel somehow gypped or cheapened when "virtual reality" does not coincide with "reality reality." This is illustrated by Murray's example of the therapist computer program, which upset people who thought it was supposed to provide real advice, when it was intended as a humorous creative project. It seems as though the interactivity of the medium is what takes it to the next level. Maybe when people have such an intimate relationship and put so much of themselves into the medium, they have have trouble either in accepting that in might be fantasy or untrue, or don't want to take it too seriously.
2. Image versus Text
I was surprised that Murray was focused on the computer as an outgrowth of text or literary traditions, and barely mentioned the role of the image. The development of New Media seems to parallel the development of photography and film a century before. These mediums were initially conceived for documentary and informational purposes, and had trouble gaining recognition as artistic tools. People who are worried about video games making kids violent, or are in an uproar about people's assumed online identities, reminds me of the myth of people running out of the theater when seeing the first moving picture of a train.
Also, the "potato root," non linear thinking that Murray describes as characteristic of new media, seems to stem from the culture of images, which is also intimately connected to the twentieth century war traumas, and Borges' labyrinthine prose. Computer and internet technology seems to me a natural outpouring of the vast, disjointed archive of individual images that form the modern consciousness.
3. Personal Inspiration
Of course, "The Guild" was inspiring in its low budget production and subsequent success. I have always had a secret dream of being a controversial youtube celebrity. All I need is a gimmick and a thick skin. Maybe internet stardom should be my semester goal.
Also as someone who has worked on internet archives, I have been thinking about the artistic possibility of the archive. The thin membrane between information and fantasy on the internet makes this idea more appealing. An archive could be used to tell a fictional narrative, and it's circular, non narrative format could make it more convincing and all encompassing, like a Borges Labyrinth.