The Age of Egocasting

The Rise of the Egocast
The Reading: NYTimes February 20, 2005

The latest issue of New Atlantis magazine contains an article, The Age of Egocasting by Christine Rosen, a senior editor, that explores the growing trend - through digital devices like TiVo and the iPod - toward customized entertainment.

In a February 2004 interview with Wired News, Michael Bull, who teaches at the University of Sussex and writes extensively about portable music devices, argued, "People like to be in control. They are controlling their space, their time and their interaction.... That can't be understated - it gives them a lot of pleasure." Those people with white wires dangling from their ears might be enjoying their unique life soundtrack, but they are also practicing "absent presence" in public spaces, paying little or no attention to the world immediately around them.

When cable television channels began to proliferate in the 1980's, a new type of broadcasting, called "narrowcasting," emerged - with networks like MTV, CNN and Court TV catering to specific interests. With the advent of TiVo and iPod, however, we have moved beyond narrowcasting into "egocasting" - a world where we exercise an unparalleled degree of control over what we watch and what we hear. We can consciously avoid ideas, sounds and images that we don't agree with or don't enjoy. As sociologists Walker and Bellamy have noted, "media audiences are seen as frequently selecting material that confirms their beliefs, values and attitudes, while rejecting media content that conflicts with these cognitions."

University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein engaged this dilemma in his book, Republic.com. Sunstein argues that our technologies - especially the Internet - are encouraging group polarization... Borrowing the idea of The Daily Me from M.I.T. technologist Nicholas Negroponte, Sunstein describes a world where "you need not come across topics and views that you have not sought out. Without any difficulty, you are able to see exactly what you want to see, no more and no less."

The Age of Egocasting - Christine Rosen The New Atlantis, Number 7, Fall 2004/Winter 2005, pp. 51-72. PDF version