In the Foreword to Lev Manovich’s The Language of New Media, Mark Tribe cautions the (Western) reader not to assume that our 90’s “zeal” for computers and networks was the universal reaction (x). Manovich, a self-described “postcommunist subject,” initially had a different read than his Hollywood neighbors did on the Internet et al (xi). With his anecdote about Manovich, Tribe set the tone for my reading; I attempted to keep a completely open mind and not make any assumptions based on prior understanding (this proved a good strategy, for example, in the Database chapter, where I kept my previous work experience with Microsoft Excel and Access from confusing my understanding of Manovich’s pronouncements).

One line of thought that grabbed my attention relatively early on in the reading begins when Manovich says, “If the logic of old media corresponded to the logic of industrial mass society, the logic of new media fits the logic of the postindustrial society, which values individuality over conformity” (41). Here, he is discussing automation and variability as principles of new media. Manovich goes on to state that because of the extent to which new media privileges individualized outputs, “new media technology acts as the most perfect realization of the utopia of an ideal society composed of unique individuals” (42). This feels important. What makes this new type of technology such an achievement, Manovich stresses, are the individualized products made possible by new media, not the instant gratification the quicker turnaround of a computer provides as compared to a piece of old media.

However, I became wary before the end of this section when Manovich asked, “do we want, or need, such freedom?” (44). He quotes Grahame Weinbren as warning that the freedom of new media’s possible variability leads to greater consumer responsibility in addition to individualized products. Manovich also notes that “one of the effects of this type of automation is that labor is passed from the company’s employees to the customer” (44). At this point I thought of new media’s contribution to or at least coexistence with the rise of neoliberalism. Diana and Aden, who read Wendy Brown’s Undoing the Demos and David Harvey’s Spaces of Global Capitalism along with me in recent courses may agree that the increased responsibility of the individual consumer, coupled with the “moral anxiety” Manovich calls attention to (44), can be understood as a result of the ‘economization of everything’ (Brown’s term). Where else does the development of new media technologies merge with global economic developments indicative of neoliberalism?