13 ‘Interactivity has almost turned into a dull buzzword. The term is so inflated now that
one begins to suspect that there is much less to it than some people want to make it
appear’ (Schultz, 2000: 205; see also Silverstone, 1999: 95).
14 The bourgeois flâneuris also a mythic hero of cultural studies (see Wark, 1999). The hero
stays up late, lives in the inner city, can identify with those in poverty, but never has to
suffer it. As we shall see soon, the electronic flâneursof the Internet display the same
characteristics: they aestheticize their sessions of surfing, they want to save everyone
else, and substitute the Internet for the world, oblivious to the fact that 90% of the world
does not use the Internet, and for most of them, it would not be of any assistance if they
did. There is even a dandy form of such electronic flâneurs, who put up their own
web-page with elaborate image, music and text.
15 It is worth noting Nikolai Gogol’s introduction to his love story ‘Nevsky Prospect’, set
in St Petersburg circa 1835. Here the street itself becomes the hero (cited in Berman,
1992: 195–6).
16 As with virtual flânerie, embodied flâneriewas an interaction based on a contained infor-
mation set. Whereas, on the Internet, what you know about others might be confined to
images or texts, with the traditional flâneurit was the image.
17 Recall here numerous appraisals of the Internet as home to the avatar.
18 ‘The hero of modern life is he who lives in the public spaces of the city’ (Tester, 1996: 5).
19 According to Paul Virilio (2001), the ‘immediacy and instantaneity’ of modern informa-
tion present ‘serious problems for contemporary society’ (23–4).
20 This view is very common among Internet utopians. See, especially, Gauntlett (2000: 13),
Rheingold (1994), Whittle (1996: 241ff).
21 Exemplary is Negroponte (1995), who argues that the real benefits of Internet sub-media
are that they routinize asynchronous communication, making it possible to communi-
cate with whom you want to when you want to, and you do not have to respond spon-
taneously to other human beings. The more one spends one’s life on-line, the more this
becomes a way of life (see 167ff).
22 A definition which echoes many of the terms found in microeconomic theory.
23 This binary they describe as Manichaean, ‘duelling dualists who feed off each other,
using the unequivocal assertions of the other side as foils for their arguments’ (167).
24 One way of overcoming this ontological binary is to suggest, as Roger Silverstone (1999)
does, that ‘all communities are virtual communities’. He explains: ‘The symbolic expression
and definition of community, both with or without electronic media, has been estab-
lished as a sine qua nonof our sociability. Communities are imagined and we participate
in them both with and without the face-to-face, both with and without touch’ (104).
25 But for an empirical study that does, see the Stanford ‘Internet and Society Study’ (Nie
and Erdring, 2000), discussed in Chapter 4.
26 For Stoll, network interactions are ‘superficial’ (23).
27 The punitive function of visibility is not as common today, with the exception of ‘pub-
lic humiliation’ TV shows. See below the discussion of talk shows.
28 ‘Television significantly constitutes a domain in which people ordinarily share experi-
ences of the same complex social messages’ (Livingstone, 1990: 1).
29 Here note the case of ‘Northern Exposure’ in Canada and ‘Seachange’ in Australia.
‘Seachange’ was an extremely popular public broadcast series about a small seaside
community known as ‘Pearl Bay’, which was filmed at the town of Barwin Heads in
southern Victoria. After the series had attracted a cult following in 1999, the residents of
the town met at the town hall to discuss whether they should change the town’s name
to ‘Pearl Bay’. An analysis was made of how beneficial such a change would be for
tourism, which was already picking up. However, the series came to an end, and
Barwin Heads has retained its name. Nevertheless, some of the sets in the film have
been repurposed for media pilgrimages, such as ‘Diver Dan’s Shed’, now a restaurant.
30 This genre is the obverse of a format in which the ‘ordinary’ person masquerades as
part of an elite (Sunset Boulevard, Dave and Desperately Seeking Susan).224 COMMUNICATION THEORYHolmes-06.qxd 2/15/2005 1:03 PM Page 224