amers' media theory 149 blog

Final Thoughts/Evaluation

2005-12-08T14:19:00.000-08:00

The semester is over and we have now learned about the contemporary topic in media theory of New Media. This class opened me up and exposed me to many areas of study that I never have known about. I understand computers, but I am not very tech-savvy at all, and these new ways of looking and understanding what computers, internet, communication, and cinema can all be was awakening. I really liked the format of the class; small group discussions allowed us to take apart the texts and come up with interesting topics to discuss in the whole class setting. We were able to see some fascinating texts/images/viewing experiences/internet sites that I would have never seen otherwise.

But this final post is also evaluating the experience of blogging. All I can say is that by dint of the fact that I’m not very tech-savvy, having our reading responses due by being posted on the blogs was not enough of a palpable threat of accountability. I always do the reading, and if I’m forced to turn in the paper response, I will do it. But I guess that is all about laziness/personal work habits/allocating priorities. I do realize that the blog allowed us to explore much more than a one-page response solely does, which I am glad for. I loved finding articles in my daily reading of news sites that were relevant to the class, and then posting them on my page. If I ever had a random thought, went to an interesting presentation, or saw a connection to my daily life, blogs are a great way to share that. Yet, I would have felt more “academic” if we had to do a structured response that I would have spent more time on (if only on printing it out and proof-reading it for errors before I turned it in). I think that the blogs were a great way to explore the informality of the internet and the aspect of interaction and adding to the World Wide Web, yet for me, it still is not as much of an academic space in my mentality. I’m sure that my opinions on this will change soon, but even just putting my final paper on the internet was an interesting experience. It allowed me to link to pages and put pictures and graphs in, but I’m not sure if I was able to fully utilize the new media to get across my point. It’s a very self-conscious thought to be blogging about the experience of blogging in the form of a blog, but that one of the new ways this semester that I have realized that you can explore and learn—none of my other classes have anything similar experience like that.

All in all, I’m glad I took this course, it was very interesting, I should have blogged more, but I guess this is all just a learning experience in the end.

My Project

2005-12-08T14:08:00.000-08:00

Here is the site for:

New Media and Technology in West Africa :

The social, linguistic, and political effects of new forms
of technology and communication

http://pages.pomona.edu/~apv02003

enjoy.

Final Presentations

2005-12-08T14:00:00.000-08:00

I really enjoyed being able to see everyone's final presentations in the last three classes. I am amazed at the creativity that people have, the interesting ways in which they approached the concept of new media, and their final feelings of the efficacy of these new methods. If I possessed the creativity or technological skill that many of the students here have, I would have loved to explore something like that. Over break, I will probably spend some time poking around people's projects (that are online), and perhaps trying to learn how to use some of the computer programs that would allow me to do interesting things like that...

I am pleased with the research and work that I did for my term paper, and although it is very traditional, I was able to delve into a topic of interest and relevance to my semester abroad, and my interest in African politics and economic development, but as viewed from a different angle: new media. It will be fascinating when I'm actually in Dakar to see first hand internet usage and people's conceptions and usage of it. I've been reading the information that my program has given me, and I think that I will be bringing my laptop with me (which I never expected to), because then I'll be able to have more freedom to write my papers, start on my (gasp) thesis perhaps, and correspond with my friends and family. I guess I will be able to go to the university library or intstiute or even an internet cafe to hook up, because my homestay will definitely not have the power or internet hookups I'm sure.

I've been thinking about how I am going to keep in touch with my friends and family-- most people send mass e-mails, but I'm actually considering doing a blog (ya, even with my experience with this one...), as a way for me to keep track and remember my experiences more than letting other people know what's going on. A couple of my friends have blogs this semester while they're abroad, and truthfully I don't read them very often, but when I do, I love to poke through them and get a great overview of what they're feeling! So we'll see what I decide when I get there.

Nonetheless, I'm very happy with my project and I'm glad that I was able to learn a lot about a fascinating and ever-changing topic.

CDs and comics offer digital aid

2005-11-21T19:01:00.000-08:00

Interesting article, coming again from the UN net summit in Tunisia-- comics and software for digital aid? Who knows! Perhpas that's the future

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4450060.stm

More news on technology...

2005-11-17T19:09:00.000-08:00

Another article of interst to development of digital technology for the world-- $100 dollar laptops!

UN debut for $100 laptop for poor

Also on the BBC News site, they have an open forum on reader's opnions/reactions about the digital divide. (Yes, I have been working diligently on my term paper, so much fascinating information/distractions available on the internet!)

Can the digital divide be bridged?

Economist Article

2005-11-17T14:16:00.002-08:00

This week's Economist has an interesting article about the World Summit on the Information Society, held in Tunisia this year. This topic (very a-propos to my term paper subject) is essential when looking at the future of the internet in a global information society. They discussed things like taking the sole control of distribution from the US and giving it to other nations as well, and ways to bridge the "digital divide". I look forward to reading more about this conference, but here's the link for the article.

http://www.economist.com/agenda/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5165014

Connected: Politics, Culture, Technology, and Society

2005-11-15T22:14:00.000-08:00

Steven Shaviro’s book Connected is an interesting compilation of his research, readings, musings, and anything he feels is related to living in a networked society. In the second half of the readings, he discusses everything from globalization, to drug usage, to film noir, to Darwin, and philosophers. Although his chain of associative thought may be difficult to follow at times (seeing the chains between the different vignettes), the reader can still glean a sense of correlation and connectivity in its themes. It reminded me almost of an epistolary novel, in the jumping, yet connected fragments that allow for a multiplicity or freedom for many different voices or thoughts. Like in Montesquieu describes in the intro of Lettres persanes, there is a “chaine secret” that underlies and ties together all the letters—the same way in which there is a connection in all the fragments of Shaviro’s book.

I tried to follow and connect the chain of his ideas and themes on how politics, culture, and society are affected by this new technologically and in all ways connected society. Relating to the earlier part of the book, discussing the intersection/taking-over of the physical by the virtual, he writes: “The physical and virtual worlds should not be opposed; rather, they are two coordinated realms, mutually dependent products of a vast web of social, political, economic, and technological changes” (130). This introduces the themes of space and society, and the politics of culture. Human interactions have changed due to the new networking, including the spaces in which this now occurs. We no longer have the same type of contact or physical space that connects us with people. He mentions the downfall of community and change in social space. The flow of information in society is changed by the technology and digitalization of connected communities.

He then moves into discussing the capitalist society that is a product of corporations and labor-related forces. He uses Noir’s idea of vampires and zombies (164) to characterize how “a positive feedback loop is thus set into motion: the accumulation of profit leads to the decline in the rate of profit, which in turn spurs an even greater absolute accumulation, which in turn leads to an even greater relative decline, and so on ad infinitum” (166). This interminable process of capitalism and consumerism in society creates and destroys important links—it creates the links through the consumerist transaction, exchanges of money, and receiving of product; but it also destroys perhaps personal links with the real world and the non-material society, thus turning the individuals in society into zombies. He describes capitalism as a monstrosity and exploitative.

When talking about the connections between the entire world, these new opportunities have allowed the intersection and interaction with Otherness and the Outside (175). Everything is available in excess in this new society, and the dominant hegemonic forces are the abundance of information, suppressing and hiding the elements of society that are undesirable. Those who are “disconnected” no longer exist—like homeless people, or the poor fall into a black hole. “The global flows of capital and information obliterate every obstacle in their path, trapping us in the network’s sticky web” (178), yet there still are buffers that can protect us from complete connections, such as user interfaces. There are economic, social, and political consequences of these connections, and these disconnects. The glut of information includes as well as alienates, and the consumerist society cause culture and economic forces to collide (194).

Community and Cyberculture

2005-11-06T19:11:00.000-08:00

In David Bell’s An Introduction to Cybercultures, he discusses the idea of community and cyberculture brought about by the internet. The internet allows the possibility of groups to gather in an online or virtual community, but this raises questions about “detraditionalization, globalization, and postmodernization.” He begins by discussing what community is, and how it is organized in the traditional sense, using Ferdinand Tonnies (an urban sociologist) and Benedict Anderson (who is often cited by political scientists) to understand the importance of personal flow and integration. Globalization, especially through internet and technology, has created the opportunity to reshape the world and the way in which we associate ourselves. The internet allows us to choose which community to belong to, and “in the face of all this disembedding, detradionalizing, globalizing uncertainty, we need to find new way[s] to belong—and the Internet is on hand to provide exactly that.”

There are arguments about whether an online community is “real,” focusing on whether it grows organically, or if it’s inevitable, or whether “shared interests” constitute enough to create a community that is virtual. The internet is often described as a democratizing force, which allows individuals around the world to connect, access, learn, share, and contribute to the global discourse. The flows of information are often shaped by the groups or associations in which one chooses to access with the internet, thus, allowing one to find like-minded or similar interest people. Is the idea of internet communities itself contribute at all to democratic principle? Is there any effect on having these groups (or, one may say factions) that are all present? Or are these groups not competing or vying for voice, as shared interest groups do in democracy? Is there any need to compete for voice in the vast expanse of unlimited space in the World Wide Web, thus making the limited resources the government, to say, provides? However, these are not the particular questions which Bell raises—he is concerned with the role of sub-cultures and the differing effects that internet communities provide.

Some technologies collectivize while others individualize, and one can look at the ways in which each are used to understand the effect. With computers and the Internet, we have the opportunity to create and join communities online that can give us a sense of belonging. An individual can find a collective sense of being and togetherness with their community, even though physical space separates them. But again, one can view the physical separation as the deal-breaker for the creation of a community. Is a like minded conception or mentality enough to create a community? Does the Internet not fragment individuals and physical society more, by allowing one to regress and find comfort in their computer, an inanimate object, while feeling that they are fulfilling their social interaction with a screen? If the conception of a community involves interaction and reciprocal relations, about belonging and exclusion, then the fluidity of identity on the internet adds another boundary for community. Does it make the community association less “real” if in a group that is created for women, a man who poses as a women (through the anonymity of the internet) participates? What are the bounds for belonging and understanding to have an authentic community, or can one even have an “authentic” community. The abstract nature of belonging on the internet can have different effects on the individuals who participate, and the social, political, and cultural implications of belonging and association are far-reaching, beyond the technology of the internet itself. As Bell struggles himself with finding a proper definition of community, I too see many obstacles in creating a true understanding of how “virtual social relations” can be conceptualized and related to the traditional understanding of physical communities. Nonetheless, internet communities and the globalizalizing, democratizing forces of the internet have all changed the ways in which our society interacts with others and technology.

Virtual Africans and the Technology of Empowerment

2005-11-06T10:18:00.000-08:00

Virtual Africans and the Technology of Empowerment
Prof Chika Anyanwu, University of Adelaide

Last Thursday I went to the I-Place talk, which I found fascinating (and very a-propos to my term paper and what we’re studying). He discussed the Africans of the World, the importance of the Virtual African Diaspora (VAD), the false/colonial diasporic identity, and the role of new technology to empower. He placed his argument in the historical, post-colonial dependency theory understanding of globalization, Western bias, and new age colonization—the imbalance of information in the Western world and the developing world (90% of information data is stored in English).

Digitalization and new media have the opportunity to empower the youth culture, where the change, reception, and adoption of new media technology are going to take place. It is necessary to break the “digital divide” that separates the developed world from Africa. Especially with the African diasporic population, technology (i.e. the internet) has the possibility to unite, as well as alienate the populations. Technology can provide a “connectivity,” but it also can allow for “virtual voyeurism” for these persons who find themselves divided between their original and new identity, but alienated from both.

New Media Technology plays a role in the cultural dislocation of the VAD population. Media can aid the ideological movement of people from one geopolitical cultural space to another. There are also the insiders and outsiders of content and discourse in this new “virtual third space” for Africans. Technology and the internet become an “alternative narrative of discourse,” giving collective power and recognition—if the populations can embrace the technology. If used correctly, new media technology could provide things like digital story telling (like a new version of the traditional Griot of West African society), allowing a repository of memory and knowledge, be a snapshot of history and development, and a way to gather community and nation-build.

He concludes with his objectives of his project of digital African empowerment through the use of new technologies—which involves databases/databodies, after having created a need-analysis of African societies. Providing a navigable space, a repository of data, will allow Africans to connect, in a civil society model of information sharing, rather than the public sphere. It is important for the VAD that they own the information; the empowerment come from knowledge and connection.

This lecture was very interesting, and Prof Anyanwu has a lot of fascinating research and areas of study—but I found the different sections a bit disjointed. Obviously, he was trying to fit huge ideas in a small time space, and he had to abbreviate and move us quickly through the different associational path to his project objectives. However, I was surprised at the end when his project involved database information for empowering Africans and the African diasporic population: I had expected that the solution to this problem would be the implementation of infrastructure and education for creating a digitalized population in this globalized world (but I am most likely biased by my political, policy-based view of this situation). He obviously has felt the effects of being an African diasporic individual, facing double alienation, and he is searching for community and empowerment through the connectivity that database of information, history, culture, tradition, and new media technology can provide.

The Three Films

2005-10-30T21:01:00.000-08:00

Mission to Earth: I watched this film first, and it was probably for the best because this, of his films, is the most like normal narrative film. It follows the story of Inga, an alien from Alpha-1 who is on an extended mission to Earth to study us through observation. Yet, she experiences an isolated and alienated existence, and the music and images portray the sad life of human existence. She is an immigrant to Earth and is trying to fit in but always feels estranged and torn between her two lives. The form of the film is in a multiple-frame screen, with several images, sometimes moving film, sometimes still photos, or sometimes just solid blocks of colors. There are many images that are repeated throughout the film, and the classical music soundtrack is sad and eerie at many times. The motion graphics, live-action film, and still images that are juxtaposed on screen at the same time portray her split identity and feelings of separation from herself, while visually stimulating and almost distracting the viewer of the film.

Absences: This short film was very different than the norms of cinema—although still following a semblance of a narrative, the film uses multiple frames, scrolling text, oral narration, and natural sound to tell the story. There is a rhythm and progression to the story, which is of a woman who is feeling the loss/deciding whether or not to leave after having broken up with/ended some sort of relationship with a man named Kenneth. Each different scene/visual display has a different multiple frame setups, sometimes which several moving different moving-film boxes, sometimes with only one or two. It was an interesting experience to watch, and it left me with a somber, almost peaceful feeling from the combination of images and sound that, combined together, create meaning through “associative chains.” The film’s images and sound were selected with a computer program that has a complex algorithm to determine which visuals and aural elements to pair together.

Texas: In this film, there was narration, text, and multiple squares of moving images, as well as color blocks. Many times there were five or six different images at once, some had no real relation to what was in the text of the narration. The story was about this couple who are at this Chinese restaurant and are having a conversation, talking about their family and historical situations (the Cuban missile crisis), and then “crystals” attack the restaurant windows—a seemingly surreal part of the narrative. There are many repeated images of urban scenes, and anonymous people, giving a feeling of alienation form the urban experience or modern life. The visuals are overwhelming at times, which have many different scenes to look at (while I did not always knowing why I was attracted to the almost inactive image of a woman sitting at a computer). In Manovich’s description of the short in the booklet, he describes this film as being a representation of the “subjective experience” living “between layers” of the past and present, East and West, and new cotemporary society. The Soft Cinema software selects samples from sets and mixes them in real time to create a rhythmic set of images and sound to correspond to the oral narration, creating a compelling and fascination cinematic experience.

Manovich: Soft Cinema

2005-10-30T20:35:00.000-08:00

I was not sure what I was supposed to expect when I went to watch the Soft Cinema DVD for this assignment, but I found it a very interesting experience to watch these three short films. From Manovich’s website (www.softcinema.net), I found this summary of the four principles of what makes the concepts/form of Soft Cinema: Ambient Narrative...

“ 1. "Algorithmic Cinema." Using a script and a system of rules defined by the authors, the software controls the screen layout, the number of windows and their content. The authors can choose to exercise minimal control leaving most choices to the software; alternatively they can specify exactly what the viewer will see in a particular moment in time. Regardless, since the actual editing is performed in real time by the program, the movies can run infinitely without ever exactly repeating the same edits.
2. "Macro-cinema." If a computer user employs windows of different proportions and sizes, why not adopt the similar aesthetics for cinema?
3. "Multimedia cinema." In Soft Cinema, video is used as only one type of representation among others: 2D animation, motion graphics, 3D scenes, diagrams, maps, etc.

4. "Database Cinema." The media elements are selected from a large database to construct a potentially unlimited number of different narrative films, or different versions of the same film. We also approach database as a new representational form in its own right. Accordingly, we investigate different ways to visualize Soft Cinema databases. ”

His Soft Cinema program compiles and creates the images/sound/visual of the narrative through a complex computer program, each different type creating a different final experience for the film. It is an interesting idea to not have the typical concept of the “auteur,” yet to have a computer make the choices of all types of visual representations and sounds, not just the expected conventions and norms of cinema.

Lexia to Perplexia

2005-10-23T23:48:00.000-07:00

Perplexed is an apt way to describe how I felt during the reading of this text. In approaching this text, once I figured out how to open and start it, I tried to read it in the “linear” and “planned” way to be read—and it did seem like there was a pattern and order that it was supposed to be read, as you progressed through the four different phases. However, my reading, after attempting to click from the links on the left side moving to the right side of the page, seemed to devolve into random-clicking, trying to make things happen. Occasionally, I lost the path/seemed to hit a dead end, and I started the section over again and seemed to have a much better time working my way through it.

As for reading the text itself, I tried to read the main sections that came up, and then the smaller text boxes that would appear. However, it seemed to lack a true narrative and the abnormal (computerized) way in which the first section was written was very hard to follow. At times, I felt frustrated by the text in that in didn’t show me what I wanted to, or what I was trying to read/get to disappeared. Especially the fourth and final section, with the overlapping texts and popping words was extremely distracting and off-putting.

For the most part, the interactivity with this text was not as free as with the other narrative texts that we had followed—there was a path and stages that one was supposed to reach, yet it was still frustrating and I felt unfulfilled when I reached the end. But it does demonstrate the capabilities of new media technology for creating an interactive, mediated transmission of information and artistic content.

The Language of New Media

2005-10-23T22:26:00.000-07:00

In Lev Manovich’s text, The Language of New Media, the first chapter covers the characteristics and defining features of what is “new media.” This is helpful in defining the process of new media creation, and its relationship with the “old” media. New media contains a broad range of media, including Internet, computers, DVDs—and much of the computerized/digitalized world of today. The five main principles of new media are: numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, and transcoding.

The topic of variability within new media is the view that something “can exist in different, potentially infinite versions” (36). With the internet and computers, one can create and replicate and image/page/text with slightly different changes—the possibilities for permutation and reproduction are expanded in comparison to the old media reproduction techniques like the printing press. With the computer media, one can have immediacy as well (“such immediacy is reality” [37]). The new media’s ability to create variations allows customizations and an individual interaction with the text. The text raises the question of whether or not this interactivity and ability to choose allows too much freedom, and that we perhaps don’t need that much freedom.

Hypertext and new media texts, through their variability, allow the individuals to create their own path or version of a text/digital experience. Manovich writes, “in this way new media technology acts as the most perfect realization of the utopia of an ideal society composed of unique individuals. New media objects assure users that their choices—and therefore, their underlying thoughts and desires—are unique, rather than preprogrammed and shared with others” (42). Is it the goal of new media to make everyone unique? Does variability actually provide each of us with the opportunity for a personal experience? Although hypertext and new media encourage, or more accurately, force “work” on the users part to access and make a conscious choice about the way you read a “text,” that does not necessarily make the experience better. Perhaps when reading a text, the user’s perceptions or thought process might not be as good at the creator as the text, and it would be better to provide a path to follow—which is why many times “we are asked to follow pre-programmed, objectively existing associations” (61).

Hypertext and new media gives the user the ability to use their free will in making choices. Thus, with all of the information that has become part of the public sphere because of the Internet and the World Wide Web, we are presented with massive amounts of information to be processed. It can be thought of as an ergodic process in order to process and wade one’s way through the glut of knowledge available. Although we are using our own mental processes and associate thought when attempting to interact and extract information through a new media text, we are posed with the conundrum that “interactive media ask us to identify with someone’s mental structure” (61). So, does the Internet and interactive (variable) media increase or decrease our ability to access information, or has everything become mass-produced, shared, and mapped? When looking just at the World Wide Web, it seems that there are so many ways to access information, and part of the associate path will be dictated by constraints of the medium itself, and the individual’s ability to do the mental work required to process this information.

Diversity in comics... coming from campus

2005-10-17T17:53:00.000-07:00

So, I'm reading Reinventing Comics, and in the first half, McCloud discusses how there needs to be more diversity in the genre, gender, sexuality, etc. of comic creaters and readers. A couple weeks ago I was talking to this girl who goes to Pitzer in my french conversation class, Erika Moen, and she was telling me about how she had gone to a comic book convention, and that she actually writes comic books and does illustrations. She said that she had been inteviewed for a radio/podcast because she was fairly unique in the comic book world because she was a lesbian (and thus woman) comic book creator. I thought this was really cool. So now that we're actually studying comic books in media studies, I of course googled her and so I could see her stuff, and it's pretty neat and interesting! For some slightly alternative comics, done by a Claremont Colleges student, you can look here: http://www.projectkooky.com/erika/comics/

This seems to be like the stuff that McCloud would like to see more of in the comic book industry, but it all seems fairly underground and out-of-mainstream right now-- but she has printed, bound, and is selling her own work (without a publisher!) for her smaller works, and hopefully she'll be able to make it into the business and comic book/art world with her work.

NY Times Article

2005-10-17T11:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I saw the article about Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland, which McCloud uses a frame from on pg 15. Interesting article about original publishing, reception, barriers, etc. for early comics and their interest to today.

Restoring Slumberland: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/17/books/17nemo.html?hp

Democratizing effect? Or Dependency?

2005-10-12T11:56:00.000-07:00

In chapter eight of Espen Aarseth’s Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, he addresses the topic of the politics of the reader and the possible democratizing effects of new media and cybertext. With the internet, hypertext, and cybertext, the distinction between who is the author, reader, consumer, and producer becomes less defined. There is always a power struggle within any medium, to create and produce—authorship provides much prestige and power, the ability to create something that will be consumed and to propagate ones own ideas and thoughts. However, with digitial media, like the internet, the writing process becomes decentralized and anyone (with the appropriate means) can become an author.
Aarseth brings forth the idea of whether telephone and e-mail (as primordial examples) were democratic media. His initial answer of no seems logical, because of the infrastructure and capital investment necessary in order to have full access too all—but there are many different ideas and ways of interpreting democracy. “Democracy depends on both hierarchy and rhizome and needs the dynamic interchange between order and chaos to remain healthy” (167), meaning that allowing more people more access to any communicative media will allow them to express themselves and have a larger available discourse for all. Now, looking at the internet and the hypertext/cybertext that is authored/created, we are confronted with the power dynamic of control. “The belief that new (and ever more complex) technologies are in and of themselves democratic is not only false but dangerous” (168). Aarseth explains that increased technology probably does more to separate, than to created equality for all those affected by technology.
There are aspects of the internet and World Wide Web that do provide resources for all—like free dictionaries, encyclopedias, texts, searching services, etc. As brought up earlier in this text, with the internet now, even the uneducated person can search the internet and find quotes, references, and summaries of the greatest works to be able to sound like the educated person in a conversation—and we might never even know. There is so much information available on the internet, which would provide this democratizing effect posited, if people have the access to computers. In America, technology seems very democratizing because one can get free internet access at libraries, or go downtown to the Apple Store where you can get online for free. Although consuming (and authoring) information on computers is a much different academic and political experience than other forms of text, hypertext and technological development “empower” (171).
Lastly, an interesting point Aarseth bring up is “the political connotations of the word user are conveniently ambivalent, suggesting both active participating and dependency, a figure under the influence of some kind of pleasure-giving system” (174). Computers and technology do play a huge role in the contemporary life of the Western world, and it can be seen that we have become slaves to our modern media; we feel naked and alone without our computers or cell phones—a feeling of disconnection from society. So when computers are empowering by giving us these communication and authorship, they also render us impuissant when we loose them.

Bolter: Writing Space

2005-10-02T23:47:00.000-07:00

In the chapters we read from David Bolter’s Writing Space, he covers a variety of topics from the history of the book and print text to the transition to the book and electronic text and writing spaces. Early writing and print space defined and shaped the way things were written, the organization, and the processing of information received. He compares the printed book with the electronic book and its advantages (portability, ability to annotate, light-weight), while recognizing the perhaps imminent transition to the new structure of electronic writing. He writes, “Change is the rule in the computer, stability the exception, and it is the rule of change that makes the word processor so useful” (5). The way in which we understand what we have read, then process our thoughts into a coherent composition is directly related to our computers and processing skills, whose interactivity and impermanence allow us to develop our ideas.

Since “the text is realized by the reader in the act of reading” (6), computerized or print typed texts both operate on the same principle. The innovation of print text has unified and made language more uniform and accurate. Books provided closure for the writing experience (87): once the thought was developed, processed, and written, it was bound in a physical, complete work of knowledge that anyone would have access to read and learn from. As from our earlier readings, we have understood the problems that this closure can provide—in the lack of interaction or ability to dispute the ideas that are put in the print text; a book cannot argue and defend its point. However, a print book can allow more interactivity than say an electronic book. If you are reading a physical text book, you have the ability to write in the margins, make notes supporting/contradicting the arguments, and issues for further study within the text itself. If you are reading a book on a computer screen, you do not have the ability to annotate/physically change the page of writing.

Bolter goes into depth discussing the history of the encyclopedia, by discussing the changes in the philosophy and goals of being the complete synthesis of all knowledge, in a hierarchic fashion, to a processed, alphabetized and indexed reference material. Unfortunately, the original goal of turning the complete human knowledge store into a written text was impossible because of human limitations, the new “electronic library” (99) allows us to find ourselves closer to the original goal of knowledge synthesis. The internet and computers are now allowing us to better process, organize, and index human knowledge, and the vastness of information available on the World Wide Web facilitates one’s search for knowledge. It has been more than a decade since Jay Bolter wrote his text, and there have been massive innovations with computers since this was written. For instance, Wikipedia is a completely interactive encyclopedia, in which the entries are all written and edited by the users and individuals who visit the site. The articles are not as in depth as in an Encyclopedia Britannica or Encarta, and perhaps could be lacking in exact accuracy, but this interaction through hypertext to other Wikipedia articles, editing possibilities, and articles that would not be otherwise available provides a fascinating insight into knowledge synthesis, hypertext, interactivity, and reference texts in the 21st century.

Some thoughts...

2005-10-02T17:20:00.000-07:00

The material that we have read for class have illuminated and sparked new perspectives of the things I see in everyday life, or they at least bring me back to the issues that we have so far discussed with new media, technology, digitization, thought processes, and paths, memory storage and processing, etc.

The Mezzanine: In reading this book for the reading class, it made me think specifically of thought processes and forking paths of knowledge. Baker enjoys writing in a style of digression, using footnotes to delve into the minutiae of daily life and things perhaps otherwise overlooked in daily life (or not felt deserving the attention he gives). The associations and trail of thought that the reader must follow are forking paths—the reader must decide whether to follow the main narrative, or risk losing the path by jumping into the sometimes very long footnotes. The Vannevar Bush essay also brought up his view of associative thought and thought processing. He discusses one “builds a trail of his interest through the maze of materials available to him” (46), which is how one might feel while reading this novel—lost in a maze of side notes and seemingly irrelevant material while trying to cling to the semblance of a plot-driven narrative novel (which this book seems not to be). But nonetheless, even though one may have a different path they take to categorize, process, and present material, you will still reach the final destination of the work of knowledge and conveyance of information.

Me, You, and Everyone We Know: This film was very interesting, following the dysfunctional and bizarre relationships and interactions between an assorted cast of characters. Part of the plot focused on a director of a modern art museum, and they were putting together an exhibition of digitized art in the contemporary era. There was a scene when they were looking through slides of images, trying to figure out how the future will digitalize items—they showed a teddy bear, and concluded that would never be digitalized. Then was a picture of what they concluded was an AIDS patient, and she came to the conclusion that e-mail and technology were created because of AIDS—people are afraid of human contact, disease, everything palpable in the world that can hurt them. This was an interesting presentation of their view and idea of technology—which was indeed contrasted in another scene in the film when a department store saleswoman stated that all things to do with the home/kitchen will be digitalized, and the young girl retorted that of course that wouldn’t happen, because they could never digitalize soup because it was a liquid.

I enjoy now seeing ways to apply our readings and understanding of technology and media to things I read and see in everyday life. It makes media studies seem more useful and practical. : )

Some bullets on McLuhan

2005-09-19T12:05:00.000-07:00

Some brief musings on McLuhan and tie-backs to previous readings...

· For the most part, the first McLuhan readings (Chapter 1-7) were a bit aggravating. Like Prof Fitzpatrick warned us, it was a bit put off by his scattering of ideas, citations, and obsession with electricity. But nonetheless, he brings up very important points that shape our current understanding of media theory.

· The “medium is the message”: brought back thoughts of immediacy—the goal being to eliminate the appearance of the medium in order to fully receive the ‘thing being represented.’ McLuhan’s theory posits that this is never possible, because the “‘content’ of any medium is always another medium” (8). This is more along the lines of hypermediacy and remediation, in Bolter and Gruisin’s theories.

· Mechanization fragments the message—or changes how it is understood. In art, a painting is the most basic form of mediated message, attempting to achieve immediacy by giving the message of the item painted. But when we reach higher forms of art, like cubism, the point of the art is the medium—the form that gives meaning, not the item represented. McLuhan extends this to film, saying that it fragments, and sequences the message into a lineal configuration.

· Hot and cold media: McLuhan says that “hot media are…low in participation, and cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience” (23). Hot media treatment involves us more fully emotionally, and it takes many of our different sense to process the message of the media.

· Electricity: decentralizing, not centralizing. Even though it causes the shrinking of our world (global village). Electricity permits new forms of media that permit more expansive, all-encompassing, and quick communication and transmission of message.

· Narcissistic culture: our new technology and invention allows us to disconnect and to superstimulate ourselves; we are overfragmented by all the forms of media available. “Thus the age of anxiety and of electric media is also the age of the unconscious and of apathy, But it is strikingly the age of consciousness of the unconscious in addition” (47).

· Literacy: McLuhan brings forth a different perspective of literate society than Ong. McLuhan writes, “literacy creates very much simpler kinds of people than those that develop in the complex web of ordinary tribal and oral societies. For the fragmented man creates the homogenized Western world, while oral societies are made up of people differentiated, not by their specialist skills or visible marks, but by their unique emotional mixes” (50). McLuhan continues on with this line of thought, we and in complete contradiction with the reasoning of Ong. He believed that it was only through writing and literate societies that man was able to have the deep introspection and complex line of thought that allowed emotional complexity. Although mechanization of word and text does homogenize the West, oral societies appear to be more uniform because of their shared experience and communal activity. Even though the Western man is interested in efficiency or practicality, this is just because he is a more complex, rational, deeper thinker than the oral man who does not posses the same rational thought processes.

McLuhan Citation

2005-09-19T11:41:00.000-07:00

I like this citation:

"It can be argued, then, that the phonetic alphabet, alone, is the technology that has been the means of creating "civilized man"-- the separate individuals, equal before a written code of law. Separateness of the individual, continuity of space and of time, and uniformity of codes are the prime marks of literate and civilized societies... It is in it's power to extend patterns of visual uniformity and continuity that the "message" of the alphabet is felt by cultures" (84).

One of the characteristics of Ong's ideas of language that stuck out to me was his view of the "democratizing nature" of the phonetic alphabet. Once one learns the basic of words, letters, sounds, and reading, one can fully utilize the alphabet tparticipatete and create a literate society. Ong contrasted the phonetic/Western alphabet with those of Asian languages. In these "elitist" languages, one must take large amounts of time to learn each individual character and how to write, read, and create the figures that are the words. This is thought to be a "leisure" language, not for the masses. McLuhan compliments the Asian languages fotheirri "delicacy and range of perceptions expressed through their written text, but he praises the idea of the phonetic alphabet for creatinseperateeuniformor, continuous societies and expression through time as space as a direct result of the alphabet in literate culture. McLuhan's description of the alphabet loses the "feel-good" and "society-bettering" aspects that Ong posits about language, but instead focuses on how the messagtransmitteded through the medium of phonetic alphabediminisheses the need for the other senses. I think I prefer Ong's characterization of literate society...

Death and Text: Some Shakespeare

2005-09-13T20:59:00.000-07:00

The Ong reading and our brief class discussion on the realtion of time and death through text made me think of one of Shakespeare's most famous sonnets, that I studied in high school, Sonnet 18.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Love is not permament. Life is does not last. Death is inevitable and should be expected. The only thing that will remain is this poem-- the words, the text-- and that is what matters and is what will live on.

Orality, Rhetoric, and Politics

2005-09-12T10:04:00.000-07:00

Walter Ong’s work, Orality and Literacy, takes up the conflict and differences of oral and literate cultures, and how that affects the thought process, products of a society, and the psychodynamics of words and speech. I have always been interested in studying linguistics and semiotics, and this book takes up the issues of cultural studies within language and signs that I find so fascinating. In the introduction, he emphasizes how “speech is inseparable from our consciousness” (9). That basic idea contributes to the ironic feeling that one gets when reading about the orality and the interaction between thought, sounds, words, consciousness, and perception of written text as opposed to sound.

The psychodynamics of orality that Ong discusses delves to the base of the inseparable relationship of written and spoken word. Once one becomes literate, there is no turning back to be able to think or process as a non-literate or oral society perceives and understands words. When we say a word, we can picture or imagine the specific characters (letters) that form and create the word, which is just otherwise a sound, which could be indiscernible auditory perception otherwise.

Ong characterizes the awareness of “the mnemonic base of thought and expression” (36) with nine main ways in which thought and expressions occur in a primarily oral society. I found the ‘redundant’ or ‘copious’ technique very interesting. Under this understanding of speech and thought, there is a pattern of continuity which is achieved by “backlooping” (39). Redundancy and repetition allows the mind to focus and continue its linear path. This way of thinking intrigued me because of what I know about politics. Repetition is the name of the game for politicians—they get the party line, the talking points, and they stay on message. Although this repetition is most likely not because of the need to process their thoughts in a linear, oral mindset, but this form of repetition will be more effectively absorbed by the audience. Oral expression before a large audience precipitates and makes it only normal and understandable to continue using repetition. Also, it is natural way to regroup one’s thoughts while repeating in order to move on to the next point, without hesitation, which portrays weakness. “Oral cultures encourage fluency, fulsomeness, volubility. Rhetoricians were to call this copia” (40). Although we no longer have an oral society, we still value and hold and revere in a leader—good oration. We have all seen politicians who have the gift of oral rhetoric and those who do not, and inevitably never are as successful. Why is orality so important? We need to feel the rapport between ourselves and our lawmakers, and we gain this connection through their orality. Their ideas, transmitted orally, are amplified with their orality. Their physical presence as well adds to the transmission of words and ideas, through physical gestures, which would not be possible through written word. So whether or not the ‘orality’ of modern politics is truly from this form of thought processing and valued attributes from the illiterate societies, it is interesting to see the relationship between oral discourse and societal comprehension.

Video Games: do you want them to be real?

2005-09-07T11:45:00.000-07:00

“The real is defined in terms of the viewer’s experience” (53). Bolter and Grusin posit two paradoxes within media and remediation—that hypermedia attempts to be unmediated, and that digital technology always become remediations. These ideas that they talked about made me think of video games. Even though I was never very good at video games, growing up in a household with an older brother, we got every new game system as they were released. From the original Nintendo system to the most recent Play Station 2, I have (attempted) to challenge my brother and play sports games, adventure games, or war games. From the earliest imagining of Super Mario Brothers to Madden Football 2005, it is amazing the digital imaging that is now used in computer games. If the true goal of a video game is to transmit the player into a different world, and make them feel as though they are actually there and experiencing what is shown on the screen, through this interactive experience, video games today are becoming closer and closer to what “virtual reality” was supposed to be. For example, a war video game remediates and presents the immediacy of a war game through advanced digital imaging and interactive technology. However, is the point of these war games to truly portray the experience of being at war? Or is it to provide escapism through a game?

A couple weeks ago I heard a piece on NPR about the new video game that the U.S. Army designed and will be releasing this fall. The presenting the story was a computer game savant and was able to play and game and see the differences. This video game differs from other combat video games because it seems to attempt to remediate and present the experience of the army/combat/war as realistically as possible. In this game, one must progress through the army, train for missions, use the same types of weapons as soldiers would use in combat. When you actually are in combat, you fire weapons your weapons, and the rumble pack on your controller gives a strong kick-back. If you get shot, you are injured—there are no life re-ups or immunity shields you can find, once you’re dead, you’re dead. This computer game player admired the reality of war-combat being presented in this game, but in the end, he decided that he didn’t actually want a game that was that realistic—he enjoyed the blood and gore of other combat games, the longer life of the characters, and the idealized combat zones.

Now, what does this say about virtual reality in video games? It is not reality that we are actually attempting to achieve, but just full immersion and escapism through the media of the digital world? If a video game were too realistic, then why use the mediated form of reality, why not just experience reality? All mediation remediates the real (59), but just to different extents. The hyperrealism of war and combat and death perhaps is not desired, and becomes so genuine that it becomes unappealing, even though it is just a hypermediated representation. Once again, real is defined in terms of the viewer’s experience, and the authentic emotional response from hypermediated digital technology at least speaks volumes to the technological advances and the video game/virtual reality culture of entertainment/escapism that we have today.

Immediacy and Hypermediation

2005-09-07T11:16:00.000-07:00

Bolter and Grusin, in their book Remediation, attempt to explain, understand, and delve into the complicated and paradox-ridden interactions between media, representation, perception, and reality. Remediation, the re-presenting of media through other forms of media leads us to experiences of multiplicity and transparent/opaque receptions. They discuss the ‘hyperconsciousness’ (38) that the reader experiences when at once the reader acknowledges the medium, yet it also becomes transparent to allow the immediacy of the transmitted object. Digital technology especially, through the interface of the computer, allows items to be transmitted with an immediacy and allows the user to experience the objects/media “uninhibited” by a static medium. Technology today allows for greater interactivity and digital graphic imaging than ever before. This new technology allows for levels of hypermediation never imagined before, or at least imaging/reality-mimicking levels.

I am truly fascinated by the ability of new digital technologies provided by computers, the world-wide-web, and video games to re/present images and media. It is interesting to compare a painting or photograph to the type of representation on a computer or television/cinema. Even though an image may be mediated by the artist of a painting, it still is being presented as a concrete, real object. When a digital image is created, the ephemeral nature of the item gives the viewer a different sensation. When discussing levels of hypermediation, let’s take an example of a photograph. I take a picture of an oak tree with my 35mm camera. I go to the lab and develop the photo. I now can hold in my hand an image, a mediated representation of an oak tree. I decide I want to share this photograph with a friend, so I bring it to him and show him. He views this image and experiences my vision of the oak tree, the photo being a seemingly natural product (27), because of the objectivity of the technology of a camera. However, if I decide to scan the image to the my computer and share my image through an e-mailed digital file to a friend, when she sees it online, through an additionally mediated form of the computer screen, does that detract from the naturalness and objective image of the oak tree? If I had taken the image with a digital camera as opposed to real film, would the image be less real/objective? How much does the human/technological agent take away from the “photorealism” that is being achieved, and does the hypermediation and multiple interfaces change the nature of an oak tree? In the end, isn't an image of a tree still just an image of a tree?

New Media Theory

2005-09-03T10:37:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog devoted to MS149, which will be updated with insightful posts about New Media Theory.