Manovich for Now...

Something I noticed that Manovich does is look at some of the implications of using the web. Talking about variability and choices, Manovich asks the question “Do we want, or need, such freedom?” then explains what he means by saying that “making a choice involves a moral responsibility. By passing on these choices to the user, the author also passes on the responsibility to represent the world and the human condition” (44). He then gives the example of a phone tree, where the caller must go through an automated web. The moral anxiety, Manovich says, resulting the shifts from constants to variables is then coupled with Rick Moody’s writing where we see the mental questioning that goes into each choice.

The fear that Manovich alludes to is that we (the author) are going to misrepresent something, or not do it justice, seems as if Manovich is saying that the author (of new media) must be willing to let his idea/ concept be open to change and variability. Therefore, once an idea is out in the open, it is subject to scrutiny and editing, even if it only in the mind of the reader. However, now with new media variability and the option to make changes or edit pages, etc opens the author's words up to far more change than before. But, is this really something that has not already been happening in the mind of the reader anyway?

So, what Manovich says later may be where all of this supposed variability ends up-- goes back to Louis Althusser’s concept of “interpellation”-- where we are “asked to make the mistake the structure of someone else’s mind for our own” (61). Whereas in the past, as readers, we made our own private connections and decisions in our heads, now with the invention of the hyperlink, we may think we have arrived at our own organic conclusions, when really it is a series of connections that have been anticipated and made for us.

I think this is an interesting idea and I still wonder if our interaction with new media is a passive or an active learning experience. While it is no doubt easier to find what we are looking for and research our own ideas online-- is the idea at the end of the branch really our own anymore? I am not implying that this is necessarily negative, but Manovich uses this concept to forward the idea that all of our choices are matched with a moral responsibility. So, I am still wondering what that looks like practically and if anyone else has thought through this idea, and perhaps, what the process looks like for you? What does Manovich mean as "moral responsibility"? What might Weinburger say to this assertion?