Cultural Critique, Essay Example

It is difficult to identify any single object that has had a more powerful cultural impact than the personal computer.   Other inventions from past eras have enormously impacted life, and in a variety of ways.   The printing press, for example, revolutionized learning around the world, as access to written material was suddenly available to the masses.   This in turn brought about upheavals in government and religion, and led the way to vast re-shapings of societies.   Then, transportation innovations, ranging from the first railroads to the airplane, brought about global changes in commerce, employment, economies, and geographic development.

These massive breakthroughs notwithstanding, several aspects mark the advent of the personal computer (PC) as truly revolutionary, and in ways no other invention has approached in terms of scale.   For one thing, the PC has enjoyed from the start the advantage of incorporating past inventions and innovations.   Decades of the developing of sophisticated programming, much of it never intended for public use, has permitted individuals to work with highly efficient applications, both for social and for commercial reasons.   The person with no aptitude for finance is, with the proper programs, able to engage in complex accounting procedures, all performed by precise systems in place.   The person who either wishes to write for artistic reasons or who depends on writing as a career has a number of word-processing programs from which to choose, all of which render composition, editing, formatting, and other tasks nearly effortless.   That is to say, the work now depends only on the ambition and skill of the person performing it, as the programs attend to virtually all construction and presentation elements.   Similarly, those involved in the visual arts, either for personal enjoyment or for commercial reasons, can today intricately fine-tune music, videos, and photographs with an expertise only recently restricted to industry professionals.

As influential as these elements are, however, the real, cultural impact of the PC derives from the Internet.   Because of this single, immeasurably revolutionary component, every single aspect of living has been radically changed.   More so than the telephone or the mail, the Internet has changed the inner workings of virtually every global culture because it provides nearly instantaneous communication, and by a variety of means.   Beginning in the 1980s and exponentially gaining ground in the 1990s,  email alone began to replace all previous existing forms of written communication.   There could be no competing with either the speed or the range of it; the letter going around the world, only a few years earlier, was subject to great delay and potential mishap, while the email is transmitted the same distance in a matter of seconds.   These advantages have from the start been completely embraced by individuals and societies to enhance all communication, be it business-related or social.   More recent communication advances enabled by the PC and the Internet go to even more direct contact, as satellites allow for live, visual conversations.   The idea of people from different countries being able to see and converse with one another was unthinkable not long ago, and today video conferencing is a major component in commercial affairs, as social networks increasingly rely upon it.

What the PC and the Internet has done, in terms of actual cultural impact, can best be described as bringing the entire world within an individual’s grasp.   Ironically, this notion was behind the promotion of television in the 1940s, but there can be no real comparison, for the PC is a wholly interactive experience.    For one thing, the merchant today who does not have an online presence is the merchant facing extinction, as every well-known retailer, and in every industrialized nation, must appeal to the home shopper at the PC.   Then, that same home shopper is now enabled to be a merchant as well, and new careers have been successfully and widely created through sales on monolithic sites such as eBay.

As noted, there is no aspect to living which is not in some way reflected by PC usage.   Online education is permitting people who previously had no recourse to furthering their careers to study and gain accredited degrees from their own homes, and from an increasingly prestigious selection of colleges and universities.   Simultaneously, the Internet is a continually growing archive of information of every kind, and the study of literally any field or subject may be pursued in it.   Lastly, social and romantic arenas within the online experience have individuals – again, from around the world – interacting in ways utterly impossible before.

The popularity of the PC was an extraordinarily rapid occurrence, and one actually fueled in a completely exponential way.  That is to say, the more people who turned to the Internet, the more people were compelled to adopt it and purchase a PC.    At the same time, improvements in production began to render the PC more affordable, as competition for Internet access providers similarly worked to the advantage of the consumers.   It is reasonable to estimate that, by the mid-1990s, the real PC revolution began, as lessened expense and heightened capabilities truly began to merge.

It is not easy to assess a certain belief system which the PC reflects or encourages in a cultural way because, as noted, the use of it pertains to virtually every aspect of living, and in every culture.   If one defining element can be isolated, it may be that the sheer facility enabled by the PC has generated widespread concerns about the safety, and even the wisdom, of immersion in the Internet.   Not only are vast amounts of personal information now contained, safely or otherwise, within the Internet, but people are as well questioning just how beneficial to their lives it really is.  It is safe to assert that most people would not consider giving up their PCs and Internet; the attractions are too many to ignore, and the non-social components alone are invaluable, especially to those with difficulty in leaving the home.   Nonetheless, it is interesting that, with the entire world opened up to individuals through this technology, modern concerns increasingly go to “closing doors”.    In cultural terms, the PC has already created something of a full circle, in which access to everything is now seen as not necessarily a good thing.  Moreover, the inescapable fact that such access implies the reverse – the world’s access to the individual – has definitely fueled a widespread cultural awareness to ensure individual privacy.