We live in a media saturated world. Portability is everything; information has gone beyond power and plunged into the lower echelons of Maslow's hierarchy, ranking now somewhere just above food and shelter. The words "out of touch" have become a dangerous condemnation carrying with them the connotation of ignorance and irrelevance. And in this vast flow of information, entertainment, and all the shades between, many of the traditional constraints on media have become obsolete. The standards of value and the concept of the "original" have lost their clarity of outline. The notion of quality determined by an experienced and knowledgeable system of filtered authority has been replaced by a system of values funded by populist approval that is both ultimately liberating and sadly too often tied to the lowest common denominator.
In this torrent of information, there is a real truth to the concept of freedom of speech, so clearly delineated by the founders of America and so long supported by the institutions of the country. In the age of the internet, self publishing, and self promotion, there is a new, emerging definition of that phrase, a sense that every voice has not only the abstract right to speak, but the practical means to broadcast that speech. Yet, as always, a cadre of dangerous codicils follows in the train of that new freedom. Without limitation or filter, each voice has the potential to find an audience and be discovered; there is new opportunity for all the remarkably talented voices who were always unable to find a venue to showcase their ability. But that potential must still fight against the volume of information surrounding it. Discovering wonders in the flow of information is like seizing seashells that roll in the tide; the seeker finds wonderful things, but many of them slip through his fingers and wash away, barely glimpsed. Those talents must also struggle against the vagaries of public opinion; popular opinion rarely favors the highest quality or the greatest talent; it frequently uses other criteria with far lower common denominators to pick its great heroes and its favorite voices.
Yet with this newly emerging definition of the right to the freedom of speech comes a subtle, yet insidious assumption. There is, with the idea of the right to speak, in this media saturated medium, an assumption of the right to be heard, a right that is not enshrined in any seminal document or American heritage. If I speak, this new wisdom seems to say, I must be heard. The value of speech in this new marketplace is its power to attract popularity and attention – witness the recent studies placing a monetary value on followers on Facebook. The notion of speech as a means of record keeping and self discovery is fast fading into incomprehensibility. Speech is a brutally public event, an intrinsic part of the rising evaporation of privacy which is so passionately embraced in modern society's desperate need to connect and find companionship and meaning in the impersonal flow of data. We are all free to speak, and there is a sense that we have a right to be heard. If no one hears us, we are invalidated; our personhood is somehow violated, and our existence loses meaning.
All of that is metaphysical to say the least. The changing role of speech and the mutating perception of privacy is intangible. And although the implications of those essential changes in ideology and society may be fascinating or terrifying, they are hard to quantify in terms of their effects on the marketplace. Yet there are visible impacts, both in the perception of the corporate world and in the perception of the individual roles of consumer and creator. Last semester, one of my students wrote a persuasive essay on freedom of speech, focusing particularly on an artist who chose to use profanity and abusive sexual references in his work. What interested me in the essay, however, was that the paper was not a defense of the artist's right to express feelings in any way he wanted to under the right of freedom of speech. The essay was instead an assault on a corporate entity that had refused to act as vendor for the artist's work because of its content. That corporation, the student alleged, was violating the artist's freedom of speech by not selling the artwork.
Of course, this was a single basic composition essay. It was one voice, one opinion. But it was not the essay itself that was interesting; it was the premises hiding beneath it. The essay assumed that the question was not about the artist's freedom of speech; certainly, the artist had the right to create and to publicize the creation in a variety of ways. But the question was of a corporate entity's right to choose whether or not to act as a distributor for a work of art. According to the student's point of view, the answer was an unqualified "no." Corporations have no right to make such choices. Their role, like any other venue, is to act as an unfiltered amplifier of voices, and refusing to do so is not merely a choice based on image, profitability, and corporate values; it is a direct violation of the artist's right to speak because it potentially denies that artist listeners.
I passionately believe in the principles of supply and demand and the capitalist component of corporate decision making. I tend to think that principles of competition and quality usually re-balance the marketplace. I frequently disagree with the decisions companies make, yet I defend their right to make those choices. Take, for example, Apple computers.
In terms of corporate policy and decision making, I am aggressively opposed to Apple's policies. I refuse to purchase their products because I find their strategies offensive. Take, for example, their recent decision to ban applications for the iphone and ipad which have been encoded on software that allows conversion for multiple platforms in favor of limiting all programming to only their proprietary language. Or consider their decision to ban cartoons by a renowned cartoonist on the basis of possible defamatory content. I find those decisions draconian and offensive. But are they a violation of freedom of speech? I feel that they are corporate decisions of policy, not preventions of personal expression, and I defend the company's right to make those choices. There are competitors in the marketplace who, if public desire demands, will provide alternative venues for speech. If something is worthwhile; it if strikes a chord with the human spirit, there are a thousand and one places in modern society for it to be heard, and if it is meaningful, someone will listen.
But perhaps I have too much faith in humanity's appreciation of quality, beauty, and value. Perhaps the notion of value and quality ruling the marketplace has become too overwhelmed in the rising tide of ease and convenience to have the weight to right the market. Perhaps we are too busy being consumers and connectors to attempt to be creators and to stop to consider the value of freedom of speech beyond the 140 character limit of a Twitter post about momentary desire or the most recent accomplishment in Farmville. Perhaps the promise of convenience at the cost of choice is too tempting, and our sense of personal responsibility has become so atrophied that it is willing to submit to corporate venues rather than seeking out new voices and judging them for ourselves.
The amendment preventing the government from abridging freedom of speech has become part of a glib framework of assumptions that needs to be reconsidered at its most basic level. In a world where words, bytes, and personal information are all mixed together into an incomprehensible flow of information in which all speech is a public cry for attention, perhaps we need to consider speech in the context of silence and try to recapture the value it has only in the presence of its opposite. Perhaps we need to consider the value of speaking for ourselves, putting thoughts into words, not in an attempt to connect with others, but in the attempt to connect first with ourselves before we assume the right to freedom of speech, and more seriously, the attached modern assumption of the right to be heard. Perhaps that reconsideration of speech, the recapturing of the value and merit of words beyond the call for connection and the wall of white noise, will rekindle a new sense of responsibility and call out the creator within us to stand beside the consumer that is threatening to dominate our world.
