Communication Theory Media, Technology and Society

So, once again, we find a central characteristic of the second media

age being introduced here as an agent of the return of flânerie. Electronic

flânerieis also an improvement, in speed, mobility and reach, on the urban

flâneur.

The urban flâneurtypically sauntered around, letting the impressions of

the city soak into his subconscious. The electronic flâneuris capable of

great mobility; his pace is not limited to the human body’s capacity for

locomotion – rather, with the electronic media of a networked world, instan-

taneous connections are possible which render physical spatial differences

irrelevant. (921)^19

Featherstone does, however, tend to reduce such non-linearity to ‘the

Internet’ as an exclusive environment for such mobilities. For example, he

argues that ‘with the Internet there has been a massive speed up of the

rate at which new perceptions are brought in front of the eye’ (921–2),

whereas, as we know from Simmel (1971), the ‘mental life’ of the metro-

politan person is before all else distinguished by ‘information overload’.

The second media age thesis dilutes also when we compare the largely

textual experience of the ‘World Wide Wait’ with the frenetic culture of

music television, which institutionalizes channel surfing, or image surf-

ing, into a genre, as Featherstone himself observes: ‘we can recall the

much-vaunted postmodern channel hopper, MTV, or music video viewer,

who is bombarded with fragments of images and information removed

from their context so that he is incapable of chaining together the signi-

fiers into a meaningful message’ (922). This quote would insinuate that

the mass media do not generate such passive participants as Featherstone

earlier suggests.

An added counterpoint of Featherstone’s second media age argument

is his assertion that virtual forms of association preceded the Internet by

many years. The difference between today’s ‘city of bits’ and the industrial

city is one of degree only. The industrial city was always ‘an information

city in the sense that the urban landscape was continually inscribed and

reinscribed with information, with cultural meanings in the aestheticised

façades of buildings, advertisements, neon signs, billboards’ (922). And

we could add to this observation the fact that nineteenth-century tech-

nologies of simulation were already providing alternatives to the mutual

agora. The panorama, the diorama and cinema prefigure television and

the Internet by providing virtual spaces to ‘travel’ which give the illusion

of being part of worlds that do not require physical involvement.

Problems with dominant definitions of virtual community

The fact that cyberspace may provide a milieu for electronic flâneriecon-

flicts with two very prevalent views of virtual Internet community. The

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