The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading ─ Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine

The computer, writes Peter Lunenfeld, is the twenty-first century's culture machine.It is a dream device, serving as the mode of production, the means of distribution, and the site ofreception. We haven't quite achieved the flying cars and robot butlers of futurist fantasies, but wedo have a machine that can function as a typewriter and a printing press, a paintbrush and agallery, a piano and a radio, the mail as well as the mail carier. But, warns Lunenfeld, we shouldtemper our celebration with caution; we are engaged in a secret war between downloading anduploading--between passive consumption and active creation--and the outcome will shape ourcollective futures.In The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading, Lunenfeld makes his case forusing digital technologies to shift us from a consumption to a production model. He describestelevision as the "the high fructose corn syrup of the imagination" and worries that itcan cause "cultural diabetes"; prescribes mindful downloading, meaningful uploading, and"info-triage" as cures; and offers tips for crafting "bespoke futures" in whathe terms the era of "Web n.0" (interconnectivity to the nth power). He also offers astand-alone genealogy of digital visionaries, distilling a history of the culture machine that runsfrom the Patriarchs (Vannevar Bush's WWII generation) to the Hustlers (Bill Gates and Steve Jobs) tothe Searchers (Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google fame). After half a century oftelevision-conditioned consumption/downloading, Lunenfeld tells us, we now find ourselves with avast new infrastructure for uploading. We simply need to find the will to make the best ofit.

Peter Lunenfeld is a Professor in the Design Media Arts Department at UCLA. He is the author of Snap to Grid: A User's Guide to Digital Arts, Media, and Cultures (2000, 2001) and User: InfoTechnoDemo (2005), both published by the MIT Press.