Abstract
There are few corners of the social world that are untouched by the rise in digital technologies. Interpersonal connections, from finding a date to finding a job, are now mediated through online networks. Social networking sites make it possible, even imperative, to stay in touch with family and friends across geographic and temporal distance. From Tahrir Square to Harvard Square, people are seizing the power of digital technologies to connect dissenting voices in order to overthrow dictators and resist racial oppression in higher education. The patterns of human social behavior and, in particular, what it means to be a citizen are being transformed by these technologies that connect us.
In Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection, Ethan Zuckerman offers an expansive analysis of what citizenship might look like in a globally and digitally connected era. The book is organized into eight chapters that are grouped in three broader sections: “Disconnect,” “Rewire,” and “The Wider World.” Zuckerman’s central argument in the book is inherently an optimistic view that we, collectively, have a “future of connection across lines of language, culture, and nation” that has been “made more possible by the rise of the Internet” (p. 36). More to the point, he argues, “Our economic and creative success depends on our becoming digital cosmopolitans, on embracing inspirations and opportunities from all parts of the world. To build the tools we need to thrive in this emerging world, we must understand how we’re connected and disconnected” (pp. 36–7). With this groundwork set forth in the introduction, Zuckerman then goes on for the next several hundred pages to offer a series of anecdotes about how we are “connected and disconnected.”
Zuckerman defines “cosmopolitanism” as a feature of those who “take seriously the notion that they have obligations to people who are not their kin” and who aim to “witness and document harm, and to lend what assistance we are able, and to treat people we encounter, no matter how different they are, as part of an extended family” (p. 24). He elaborates on this definition in Chapter Two, “Imaginary Cosmopolitanism,” with a review of some of the classic sociological literature on homophily, from Merton to Putnam. Drawing on more recent research on homophily in social networking sites, Zuckerman notes that the likelihood of “friending” someone on Facebook is largely shaped by where one has lived or gone to school. In other words, Zuckerman writes, “if you discover that your social circle is highly homogen[e]ous in terms of ethnicity, gender or national origin, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re racist, sexist, or nationalist” (p. 72). These deep structural factors that create homophily can also be undone. Again, Zuckerman is ultimately hopeful here that there are structural solutions that can foster cosmopolitanism and counter homophily. He gives this example: “When universities decide their students would benefit from building friendships across racial lines, they’ve found a structural solution that works: forcing very different people to share the same [dorm] room” (p. 74). Zuckerman’s evidence seems selectively positive, when there are notable counters available. For example, in 2010 Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi used a surreptitious webcam to record his dorm-mate Tyler Clementi kissing another young man. In the days following this incident, Clementi killed himself by leaping from the George Washington Bridge. Part of what seems missing in Zuckerman’s analysis about the structural solutions to the problem of homophily is the very high cost of such structural solutions to those who are the “Other” in such situations.
For the most part, Zuckerman focuses on the individual rather than on the structural. In a passage on “Facebook cosmopolitanism,” he observes that if people have friends in other countries then they are likely to be exposed to other viewpoints. He writes that “With a Swedish citizen in my network of friends, I’m likely to be exposed to news and perspectives I otherwise would have missed” (p. 116). This is important for Zuckerman because, he says, “I’m interested in finding ways to broaden my picture of the world and helping people who want to do the same. To encounter that wider world, we need to think about changing our media and broadening our circle of friends” (p. 117). It is in passages such as this one that the reader sees that the central construct of the book, “cosmopolitanism,” is an individual trait, as he acknowledges: “Nations aren’t cosmopolitan; people are” (p. 116).
Yet, there is an easy slippage throughout the book between the individual and the structural. Immediately following the sentence above (about “broadening our circle of friends”), Zuckerman writes, “We need to look at the media systems we’ve built, over hundreds of years in the case of newspapers and a dozen or so years in the case of social media, and ask whether they’re working the way we need them to in a connected age. If they’re not, we need to rewire” (p. 117). Here, the “media systems” built “over hundreds of years” suggests a structure, i.e., the media. Zuckerman’s call that “we need to rewire” suggests another slippage back to the individual response to these structural problems. The reader is left to wonder who is the intended “we” in this call to rewire.
Zuckerman is on surest footing when discussing Global Voices (http://globalvoicesonline.org/), a project that he helped build, and that is intended to “correct shortcomings in the professional media’s coverage of the developing world” (p. 127). Global Voices, Zuckerman notes, has been a huge success and, as with many things, a failure in some ways. The success is that Global Voices has become a go-to source for information on countries that are not widely reported on but suddenly burst into the headlines because of a coup d’état or a natural disaster. Global Voices is also a platform for citizen journalists, who, Zuckerman had hoped, would emerge as guides to their own cultures; but there have been few of these. Of his own assumptions in founding Global Voices, Zuckerman writes, “Like many well-intentioned reformers, I had assumed that the world wasn’t paying enough attention to international news because there simply wasn’t enough being reported” (p. 130). What he comes to understand is that there is a “demand” problem—that is, people (in the United States and global North) are simply not interested in reading international news. To address this, Zuckerman argues that Global Voices has to figure out how to “build demand” by helping people find “what they’re surprised and delighted to discover they’re interested in” (p. 130). I found myself wanting to know more about the nuts-and-bolts of what this might look like in the current attention-economy when people have so many competing demands for a limited amount of attention.
In the last section of the book, Zuckerman offers three paths forward toward his view of cosmopolitanism in the digital age, when he writes in the last section about transparent translation (overcoming language barriers), “bridge figures” (those building connections between cultures), and what he calls “engineered serendipity” (finding systematic ways to encounter the atypical). These last chapters are interesting for those wanting a guided tour through some of the latest, most innovative technologies.
Rewire is an ambitious book that attempts to offer both a philosophical, often sociological, consideration of the importance of human connection while also providing a practical guide to twenty-first century affordances and challenges to being connected. It succeeds much more in the latter than in the former. Still, this will be a valuable text for sociology, critical psychology, public health, and communication courses.