"Neo” in the unifying title of these texts refers
to a future system of information exchange that might contain vestiges
of older systems of communication and culture. Thinking back
to the introduction of MTV and the music video, one remembers Marshall
McLuhan's theory that older forms of media are absorbed by newer ones.
MTV's first broadcast was "Video Killed the Radio Star", but the title
of the song couldn't have been more wrong. As music video technology
included radio technology but added pictures, video has helped make the
radio star, and vice versa. Currently, we have the ra-deo star.
Perhaps a similar fear exists in the case of programs like Napster, a fear
that it will "steal" users from the other formats as much as it "steals"
content from copyright holders. In an article appearing on online
news and technology site wired.com, Senator
Orrin
Hatch offers "The labels have been very reluctant to accept new technology.
It comes as no surprise that the recording industry fears the Internet."
Though we seem to be quickly leaving print culture
behind, dismantling its ideas in the process, some vestiges remain firmly
in place. Steven Johnson writes of the personal computer "most modern
graphic interfaces draw so heavily on the imagery of desktops and closed
door offices....and that inwardness can make it harder to think in more
social, more communal terms" (222). We must remember that even the
technology that seems at odds with it's past was a product of that past.
Realizing this gives some hope for a reconciliation of print culture and
post-print communication. Likewise, for the recorded music industry it
seems possible for some form of copyright or author acknowledgment to exist
in the networked future.