Notes

Classroom discussion notes:



What are new media?

 

Social?

Accessible? Less subject to unified control?

Transitional?

 

 

Anything up to date

Relative to individual age/awareness

Anything based in binary (understood as a two-factor code)

·         Malleable (ease, speed, no change in quality)

·         Automatic vs. manual

·         Stores vs represents directly

·          Permanence

·         Transferability (speed, replication)

Social media (used to communicate to other people directly, can be organized by interest/topic

·         Snapchat

·         Twitter

·         Instagram

·         Facebook

·         Lulu

 

Not games?

Advertisements

 

 

 

 

What the book says:

·         Binary data

·         Networked

·         Information dense

·         Impartial (the computer is the means of access for all data, but maybe not production)

 

Flavr Savr tomato

·         GMOs

o   Information as the knowledge to do something

o   Information instantiated in material

o   Do they cause cancer?

o   They’re controversial

 

Genes

·         A subset of DNA (GATC)

·         Combination of proteins

 

·         Code

o   Some kind of formula

o   Some blend of biology and culture

o   A set of components/an alphabet

o   A simplification

 

Facebook

·         Personal information hub

o   Connect people through similarity

o   Suggests potential interests

o   Utilize data for commercial purposes

 

Our behaviors are being codified for data mining

 

 

Shannon & Weaver

·         Three levels

o   Technical issues

o   Semantics

o   Sociology

·         Five components

o   Info source

o   Transmitter

o   Channel (noise)

o   Receiver

o   Destination

 

Haraway & Hayles

·         The implications of reducing difference through coding

 

Knowledge vs. information

·         Knowledge has a position of privilege, understanding, possession 

·         Information is neutral, external, transmissible, mobile, in action 

 

 

·         Interface dictates information parameters

o   This shapes cultural understanding of what information is

o   We can see this in texting, tweets

·         Interfaces are not invisible

o   They often try to make themselves so

o   But they can become normative

·         Interfaces create certain emotional attachments

 

 

 

 

Maps we found:

·         Beer

·         Trains +

·         Ghosts

·         Nirvana concerts

·         Hotels

·         London murders

·         Radius of nuclear blasts

·         UNCW’s built environment

·         US population by ethnicity

·         Recent London history

 

 


Interactivity

·         Manovich

o   “Interactivity” gets used loosely

o   Within history of media

§  Specifically cinema

o   Modern digital media are less interactive

§  Older stuff requires more engagement

·         McLuhan

o   Hot and cool media

§  Hot requires low interaction, cool invites you to work for it

o   Opposite of Manovich

·         Kiousis

o   Psycho-sociological approach

§  Is interactivity a feature of technical systems, users, or relationships?

o   Different kinds of interactivity (Manovich)

·         Schultz

o   New media is instantaneous

§  This connects with power and democracy (ideas absent from the previous)

·         Barry

o   Active citizenship

§  Expectations of being an informed citizen

§  Not necessarily to freedom

o   Shift from coercion to seduction

·         Reading

o   Interactivity and creation of memory and history

 

 

Archive

·         Newspaper archive (in library)

o   Past record

o   Categorized

o   Range of topics

o   Has a physical location/takes up space

o   Someone’s responsible for maintain it

·         Internet archive

o   Partially chronological

o   Stores lots of different types of media

o   Access

o   Comprehensiveness

o   Who’s responsible for this?

·         Location-driven services

o   Foresquare

o   Geo-aware images and check-ins

§  How do they know where I am?

§  Is this a privacy issue?

§  Is this ethical?

o   A personal archive of places I’ve been/things I’ve done

·         Social media

o   Chronological timeline of information I’ve contributed

o   May reveal things about me I didn’t intend

o   Joined with other people big cultural trends

o   Are there privacy issues here?

 

What is an archive?

·         A collection of information

o   For new media that would be digital (physical media, online data, etc.)

·         Something formerly tangible

o   Took up space

o   Were collections of objects

·         Something now more individualized

o    

·         Something more collaborative

o   Wikipedia

§  Don’t use it because anyone can change it

§  Although it has citations, can lead you to other sources

§  It’s more rapidly updated

 

·         Science

o   Gravity

·         Facts

o   The sky is naturally blue

 

 

Derrida

·         Psychoanalytic (Freudian)

o   Connection with memory

§  Memory is an individual archive

§  Memory deals with lots of sense data

§  Memory is partially chronological, may also connect to current situation

§  Memory privileges access over storage

§  Memory is event-driven

§  Memory may be fluid/subject to change

o   Magic pad?

Keen

·         Doesn’t like democratizing archives

·         Believes we have a shared culture that’s being threatened

o   UNCW

o   America

 

Simulation

Orders of simulacra

·         Baudrillard

o   Simulacra

§  Reproduction

o   Historical shift

§  Counterfeit of nature (renaissance)(automaton)

§  Mass production of things not rooted in nature (Industrial age)(robot)

§  Reproduction and consumption of images/representations (digital age)

·         Kittler

o   The limited ability to interact with hardware

§  Interfaces preventing you from doing things to protect you from yourself

o   The seeming potential of new media  masks control

 

·         The Posthuman

o   Being affected by technology?

o   What does it mean to be human?

§  Knowing right from wrong (a moral sense)

§  We’re in our body (Hayles)

o   Hayles believes “informational posthumanism” (severing the connection between content and form or information and matter) is fallacious

§  It favors “informational pattern over material instantiation” without sufficient cause

§  It neglects the role of consciousness in human identity formation

§  It misinterprets the body as just another prosthesis to pilot (which makes other prostheses just more of the same)

§  It wrongly holds that humans can be seamlessly interfaced (to use one of our terms) with intelligent machines

o   After human?

§  Being able to use technology to move beyond ourselves

o   Awareness of our status as recyclers

o   Awareness of information on demand

 

Are humans the only originators (the only creative things)?

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