Information Marxism

One of my interests is branding. Products are often sold with fine print that threatens to contractually bind us into expressing certain personalities, attitudes, or traits. This is why you can answer the question: what's the difference between someone who owns a Mac and someone who owns a PC?

The truth is, there doesn't have to be any difference. It's like asking what the difference is between someone who owns cows and someone who owns goats. Maybe somewhere there's stereotype, but it hasn't been used to sell anything, at least not successfully, so most of us can't answer this question. But the real answer is the same: there doesn't necessarily have to be a difference.

When materialism was synonymous with shopohilism, caring about brands made you a shallow person. These days, if you don't care about brands, you aren't socially conscious. However, caring is no longer superficial but requires a lot of research. In the information age, a lack of social consciousness makes you information impoverished, lazy, inept, inconsiderate, and/or awkward. Still, honestly, social consciousness is a "brand" itself, and I have mixed feelings about branding.

First, how much of our identity is created through what we purchase? Everything you buy says something about you because everything you buy is a vote and an investment in the retailer, company, and product and how you vote and invest reflects upon you. Beyond bare necessities, your choices reflect your values or the values a brand convinces you you should have. That last part is pivotal. Do your choices reflect your values or the values advertising convinces you to have?

This came into perspective for me as a minority. The values my parents have are not the same as those held by the larger society I live in. Furthermore, my parents are rather religious and have only become more so over the course of my life. Though their cultural values are still pretty deeply held, religion gives them a more canonized and therefore more accessible way to examine their values against a standard they trust. Their cultural values tend to be more arbitrary but because religion plays such a large cultural role in my family, I have overall adapted a stance of re-examination of values.

It's not just the private sector that perpetuates branding. Schools, which are government regulated, perpetuate the American brand. Or what officials have decided is the American brand. It could be said that's politics in general.

When I was writing graduate school applications, one of the best questions I came across about information access is Randy Stoecker's concern over whether internet access gives underprivileged, dispossessed people a superficial or false sense of belonging to larger culture. Implied in this criticism is a distrust for larger culture, which is created through assertive branding and seeks to profit only the business owners.

The best answer to this question, I believe, comes from Hans Enzensberger, on whom I haven't done enough research but first encountered here. I have been interested in "new media" since I encountered Amir Ahmad's Islam in the Age of New Media project. Basically, the idea is the mass, radical manipulation of media. Branding is created through media but everyone has access to the creation of media, it gives everyone access, if they wish, to branding as well. Rather than only consuming pre-packaged brand values, people are given the chance to package and perpetuate the values they choose. This is also, in my opinion, one of the best uses of the internet. Already, the internet is being limited by big brands. That can't be allowed to happen. Branding, especially in the realm of the internet, needs to be put into the hands of socially conscious community leaders. Maybe that sounds like tribalism but if we are to be united, it has to be on fair terms.