The Digital Plenitude: The Decline of Elite Culture and the Rise of New Media

by Jay David Bolter

How the creative abundance of today's media culture was made possible by the decline of elitism in the arts and the rise of digital media. Media culture today encompasses a universe of forms—websites, video games, blogs, books, films, television and radio programs, magazines, and more—and a multitude of practices that include making, remixing, sharing, and critiquing. This multiplicity is so vast that it cannot be comprehended as a whole. In this book, Jay David Bolter traces the roots of our media multiverse to two developments in the second half of the twentieth the decline of elite art and the rise of digital media. Bolter explains that we no longer have a collective belief in “Culture with a capital C.” The hierarchies that ranked, for example, classical music as more important than pop, literary novels as more worthy than comic books, and television and movies as unserious have broken down. The art formerly known as high takes its place in the media plenitude. The elite culture of the twentieth century has left its mark on our current media landscape in the form of what Bolter calls “popular modernism.” Meanwhile, new forms of digital media have emerged and magnified these changes, offering new platforms for communication and expression. Bolter outlines a series of dichotomies that characterize our current media catharsis and flow, the continuous rhythm of digital experience; remix (fueled by the internet's vast resources for sampling and mixing) and originality; history (not replayable) and simulation (endlessly replayable); and social media and coherent politics.

Genres: Nonfiction

232 pages, Hardcover

Published May 7, 2019

About the author

Jay David Bolter is Wesley Chair of New Media and Codirector of the Augmented Media Lab at Georgia Institute of Technology. He is the author of Remediation: Understanding New Media (with Richard Grusin), Windows and Mirrors: Interaction Design, Digital Art and the Myth of Transparency (with Diane Gromala), both published by the MIT Press, and other books.

Reviews

[Maia Mindel · Rating 4 out of 5]

i find the book equal parts fascinating and frustrating. bolter puts together a genuinely innovative theory of how modern culture works that's grounded in psychology and technology, with a proper historical context and proper in-depth characterization. the frustrating part is that, for all the who, what, how, and when he masterfully answers, he studiously omits "why". that's the hardest, but also the most important, question: why is culture the way it is? what changed in the world to change it?

[Veronika · Rating 4 out of 5]

My main outtake is the difference between flow culture and the culture of sublimation. One is based on small, repetitive, infinite activities (youtube vlogs, twitter, instagram, fb…) and the other is based on catharsis (classic Hollywood). Neither is prevailing but the flow one is relatively new and we are learning how to navigate it. Fascinating lenses to see the world through

[Fred Cheyunski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chasm Consequences and Contributor Characteristics - Knowing of Bolter’s work on “Remediation” and looking into his more recent efforts, I saw this title. After reading the sample, this book seemed as if it would provide some addition depth and updates to what David Brooks talks about in his “Bobos in Paradise” (see my review). Sure enough, the author begins with the gulf between the “American (white) working class” and the “educated . . . [or] anyone who works with words as their profession or vocation,” the consequences, contributors, and characteristics of this chasm particularly related to the application of digital technologies.

More particularly, the content of the book consists of an Introduction, Conclusion and 8 Chapters: (1) The Great Divide, (2) Popular Modernism, (3) Dichotomies, (4) Catharsis, (5) Flow, (6) Remix and Originality, (7) Procedurality, History, and Simulation, and (8) Social Media and the Politics of Flow. There are also extensive References and an Index along with a complementary website.

Parts that stood out for me were Bolter’s helpful characterization of our current media landscape as a “Digital Plenitude” as well as the assets and liabilities of these conditions. For example, (in Kindle Location 334-35), he indicates “The collapse of hierarchy, as much as the advent of digital technology, is the reason why our media universe looks like a map of stars rather than the concentric desks of the Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress.” Later (Location 1594), the author elaborates that “[Now] Networked digital media are part of our heterogeneous media landscape, which still includes most of the older forms (printed books, films, recorded music, radio, television) as well as their digital counterparts” (see my review of such books as Parker et al’s "The Platform Revolution" that give an indication of the breadth and volume of on-line activity and material). From early on (Location 610-17), Bolter explains that “The opportunities for individuals and groups to form their own creative communities in the digital plenitude are literally unprecedented . . . The problem arises when this anarchic media culture collides with social and political institutions that require shared assumptions in order to function.”

Another prominent contribution is the way the author acknowledges, critiques, and uses aspects of McLuhan’s approach to media studies. For instance (in Location 1192) Bolter opines that “. . . McLuhan was . . . a technological modernist who substituted the idea of media for art: it was the evolution of media, not high art, that changed culture and human beings themselves.” Further on (Location 1333), he suggests that “It is not clear whether McLuhan himself fully understood his debt to modernism” although Lamberti’s book “Marshall McLuhan's Mosaic: Probing the Literary Origins of Media Studies” and McLuhan and Watson’s “From Cliché to Archetype” seem to suggest otherwise (see my reviews). In any case, throughout his text come Bolter’s nods such as (in Location 518) that “Following McLuhan, popular modernists have emphasized the interactions and tensions as new media arise . . .”

While Bolter’s tables and diagrams are helpful it is unfortunate that he does not carry them through after introducing them initially in Chapter 3 in visualizing the “Plenitude” dichotomies (Figure 3.1). More particularly, see Figure 5.2 – Flow and catharsis (in Location 2205) and 5.5 – Three aesthetics – Flow, catharsis and reflection (in Location 2287), where he arrays examples of media culture trait differences such as between the films “Titanic,” “Un Chien Andalou” and the “Bejeweled” video games. Such depictions would have been useful later in the book as well. Also, although the author describes the present media scene, he does not get into ways to address its accompanying dilemmas. As he states (in Location 3519 ) The rise of the politics of flow threatens . . . foundational assumption[s], and it is not clear how this new politics could function under constitutional systems that were developed over the past two centuries.” (see also my review of Harari’s ”21 Lessons for the 21st Century”).

Even though Bolter does not get into explicating ways to navigate the Digital Plenitude, the clarity he provides pertaining to these circumstances could offer a start with thinking in this direction.

[Tony Gualtieri · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting thesis that doesn't quite sustain an entire book without repetition.

[Steen Ledet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Contains some good stuff but mostly obscured by relatively banal observations.

[Ryan Diefenbach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting topic but unfortunately a very underwhelming execution that seemed a bit out of touch. Would love to read something more developed built upon this as a base.

[Val Wilkens · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for school, interesting for my major but others probably would not love it