Digital Media, How’d You Get In My Head?

There’s actually another response to the discussion on fears surrounding digital media and kids, and it goes well beyond “just chill.” It actually calls for some attention and enthusiasm. It even responds to the question of whether or not the advent of such easily accessible digital media marks a truly unique moment in media history. According to Ken Jordan and Larry Lessig, it does, and they’re saying, “Get excited!”

Jordan’s article on digital media use in the music world is outright exuberant. Some might say radically so. Still, his ideas are thought-provoking, and they’ve been rattling around my head all semester. He sees the ability for artists to manipulate digital bits (rather than paint or pen or musical instrument) as the ultimate liberation from form – and thus the truest form of expression. All other media does too much to mediate between thought, emotion, and expression. There’s something about digital media that’s entirely pure. As he puts it:

“The human impulse toward mimesis is inspiring artists to employ emerging technology to create hybrid artistic forms that mirror the encounter of consciousness with the world. In the mind, sound is not so neatly sectioned off from space, touch, words, or images. One bleeds into the next, slipping and sliding in a spiral of associations. Digital media has already begun to reflect qualities of consciousness that had been beyond the means of artists to capture” (247).

Digital media, as he defines it, integrates the disparate elements of image, sound, word, smell, touch, etc., into one seamless expression – something much closer to what we actually experience (245). That’s right, digital media is like the stuff in our heads! With this kind of power, we are freed to create like never before, and with the level of access to digital media that we currently enjoy, this means everyone. Yes, even our kids.

But what does this really have to do with them? Lessig reminds us when he discusses the remarkable digital “remixes” that kids create so freely online. Having grown up with the digital world at their finger tips, kids are already the impulsive artists that Jordan describes, and what they’re creating so freely and spontaneously is truly genuine. With something akin to stream of consciousness, they can pluck just the right images, sounds, words, etc., from the Web and weave them into mature personal commentary. (He gives the examples of anime music videos and mash-ups of political speeches). Lessig warns us that this could easily be squelched by copyright law – as well as general fear and misunderstanding – and that this would be a great cultural loss. Amid the other fears that kids are passive consumers of culture and information, it makes little sense to silence some of their most active cultural expression.

(I should add that it isn’t just in “remixes” that kids are taking their own creative initiative. Fan fiction is another promising example of youth commentary on popular culture, whether from literature, film, video games, television, or music, and it is just as easily manipulated across disparate media. FanFiction.Net is worth checking out).

This doesn’t mean there’s nothing to fear. Nor does it mean that kids have nothing to learn about copyright or original expression. Where any kind of media is so powerful, it can easily be manipulated for the worst, and there will always be an important place for conversations about safety, appropriateness, and respect. But the bottom line, as Jordan and Lessig see it, is that digital media can be a beautiful thing, and kids are already curious about it. Any critical approach to the issue of media and youth must include its special potential for learning and growth, and digital media may present something truly unprecedented.

Jordan, Ken. "Stop. Hey. What's that Sound." In Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture. Ed. Paul D. Miller aka JD Spooky that Subliminal Kid. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.