At the end of chapter five, Fortun relates a joke told by Kári: "Keiko is my offensive linesman [...] running interference for me. He's keeping me out of the papers for a while." (64) It's not until chapter eight that Keiko is examined in depth, but thoughout the chapter Fortun makes an increasingly strong case concerning the "KeikoXK.Co." chiasmus. The two are folded into each other.
What strikes me about the story of Keiko -- and by extension, the story of K.Co. -- is the technological state of the media during this particular period. I remember watching Free Willy and Free Willy 2 as a child, and I remember being vaguely aware of Keiko's trip "home". I do not, however, have a meaningful grasp of how the media that covered these events must have functioned -- i.e. without widespread camera phones, without blogs, and so on. It seems strange to me to think of turning to only a few sources for my daily news.
But the story of Keiko and K.Co. is placed before the widespread use of these news technologies, and this is evidenced with particular strength in Kári's joke about Keiko's "interference". The implication is, of course, that the media as a whole cannot focus on more than a single subject at a time; the news is (at least topically) hegemonic. This is a story from a time when the media was a whole -- not fractured.
I wonder, then, if the same kinds of promises and the same kinds of promissory rhetoric could be employed in the age of the blog. Now certainly, the media -- even grassroots media -- is fairly single minded, but it is hard to imagine a complete lack of critical Icelandic bloggers. It is hard to imagine no one sitting in front of a screen in a dark room, blogging away about the evils of deCode. If the media is fractured, surely some would keep their focus on Kári rather than Keiko?
This is, of course, all speculation; there is no way to know if a change in media configuration would have drastically altered the events documented in Promising Genomics. Still, I think it important to note that it is not only the rapidity of change in genomics that is relevant to its practice, but also the rapidity of change in the wider technological world that is relevant. New technologies, or the new use of technologies, may substantially change one of the "rings" of Model 2, which in turn may substantially change genomics.
I guess this means that to truly grasp genomics, our view must be very broad.
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An intriguing post. You're the first to situate the Fortun/genomic events in the context of media representation. And that simple move moves you to an intriguing speculation. The dispute would likely have played out differently had the web been solidly in place at the time...and had nearly all of us been carrying iPhones. I wonder what Fortun would have to say if I pointed him to this current reflection of yours? (I may just ask him.) Of course part of what I have in mind with the final project and its use of the web, is to see what sorts of stories of promise are told with the current "investigative" tools in hand (the web as a detective's best friend). And indeed I am hoping your point about a "very broad" view comes home to most of the folks in the class.
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