Communication Theory Media, Technology and Society

that bunkering in is about something really simple: being sick of others and

tr ying to shelter the beleaguered self in a techno-bubble. (75)

According to the Krokers, such an electronic self becomes incapable of

negotiating a pre-virtual public world and becomes politically tuned out

and socially awkward:

Suffering electronic amnesia on the public and its multiple viewpoints,

going private means that the electronic self will not be in a position to max-

imize its interests by struggling in an increasingly competitive economic

field. (74)

Denied a political conduit, the electronic self is reactive only – often sway-

ing between fear and anger:

Frightened by the accelerating speed of technological change, distressed by

the loss of disposable income, worried about a future without jobs, and

angr y at the government, the electronic self oscillates between fear and

rage. Rather than objectify its anger in a critical analysis of the public situ-

ation, diagnosing, for example, the deep relationship between the rise of

the technological class and the loss of jobs, the electronic self is taught by

the media elite to turn the ‘self’ into a form of self-contempt. (76)

Bunkering in, which becomes a kind of survival strategy, tends to narrow

the electronic self’s world of control to ‘whining about the petty inconve-

niences’ rather than broad scales of social and political issues. ‘Bunkering

in knows no ethics other than immediate self-gratification’ because its

outerworldly contact has been de-realized. This disengagement created by

the architecture of the processed digital world makes it ‘hip to be dumb,

and smart to be turned off and tuned out’ (76).

The psychological war zone of bunkering in and dumbing down is the actual

cultural context out of which emerges technological euphoria. Digital reality

is per fect. It provides the bunker self with immediate, universal access to

a global community without people: electronic communication without

social contact, being digital without being human, going on-line without leav-

ing the safety of the electronic bunker. The bunker self takes to the Internet

like a pixel to a screen because the information superhighway is the biggest

theme park in the world: more than 170 countries. And it’s per fect too for

dumbing down. Privileging information while exterminating meaning, sur fing

without engagement, digital reality provides a new virtual playing-field for

tuning out and turning off. (77)

In the Krokers’ depiction, those features that are attributed to the TV age –

cocooning, the bunker ego, the passive couch potato, etc. – find them-

selves multiplied in the context of the greater array of electronic bunkers

which provide a new platform of engagement/disengagement in social

life.

The Interrelation between Broadcast and Network Communication 93

Holmes-04.qxd 2/15/2005 1:00 PM Page 93