Lecture Themes
Week 1
intro to 1501ART -
What is communication? How can we explain it with different models?
Communication is any process that transfers, transmits or makes information known to other people.
The basic model of communication was explained by Aristotle in his book Rhetoric about 2, 500 years ago:
The speaker produces a message that is heard by the listener.
Shannon & Weaver in their book The Mathematical Theory of Communication suggests a better model is:
The speaker produces an effect on the transmitter which sends a message (which is degraded by the noise of the transmission process) that is intercepted by the receiver which converts it into an effect that is heard by the listener.
Shannon & Weaver model discounts a couple of other factors that further complicates the communication process:
Intersubjectivity: - the listener interprets the message and changes it as they send it along
- communication is between people and they always want to argue about things, interpreting them in light of their own experience.
-the active audience produces feedback.
Intertextuality: -no message is ever complete
- any message gains its meaning from all other messages that the person has previously received and sent.
Thinking about the concept of language and 'meaning'.
what is technology? What is analogue; what is digital?
Technology is the scientific study of mechanical arts and their application to the world.
Analogue functions by representing variable forces that are continuous in both time and space through dials that allow the relatively imprecise modulation of these forces.
Digital technology relies on strong bits of binary information about forces by turning on and off currents of electricity or light in ways that allow for precise modification of those forces.
Readings
Chapter 1 & 2
What is meant by the following terms:
Dialectic is the idea that history is shaped by opposing forses. The predominant force, idea, movement or paradigm is challenged by an opposing force, idea, movement or paradigm, which results in a third new force, idea, movement, or paradigm (synthesis). The synthesis, in turn, becomes the new predominant force, idea,, movement or paradigm (the new thesis), and the process begins all over again. The dialectic is the process of creation, and resolution of contradictions.
ideology is a worldview based on principles or intuitions that may or may not be logical or internally consistent.
materialism is the philosophical mode of though that suggests that events, situations, and relationships in the real, physical world determine, to the largest degree, human thinking. Marx argues that the social force that drives historical change is the struggle between classes for control of the material world, in particular control over the means of production.
meme is a small but powerful chunk of ideological DNA that carries ideas, meanings, trends and fashions through both time and space via the process of mimetic transfer. Memes can be generated by hegemonic or subversive social forces and are usually transported via the various communication vectors of the mass media, narrowcasting and popular culture.
vector is the pathway or pathways open for communication, in particular the transmission of ideology via mimetic transfer and mutation.
Can you think of an example of how those terms appear in everyday life? Well materialism is dominanting popular culture at the moment.
Week 2
Media Theory -
What do we mean when we say 'media'?
media has a variety of meanings, all changing in time.
considers the development of various 'Schools' or media, each one with a different focus and method for studying what is essentially communication and how we make meaning.
Communication Studies (USA)
1920's
Bullet Theory- The mass media is a vechile through which selected content could shape opinion and belief, change habits of life, etc.
1930's
Application of statistical method- random samples= large social effects. Kolmogorov.
1940's
Minimum Effects- Lazarsfeld's studies of nazi propaganda through the media only had minimal effects on citizens.
1950's
Connections to psychology
1960's
MARSHALL MCLUHAN- radio and cinema are "hot" because their dense information consumes the audience. TV and telephones are cool with less intense information so the audience has more sensory participation.
1970's
Mixed Effects- Gerbner and Gross "Cultivation Hypothesis"- public's perception of a crime problem were shaped and cultivated by the ways in which media portrayed violence.
McComb's and Shaw's rank order of issues voters nominated as important in an election closely correlated with the rank number of issues raised in the press.
Noelle- Neumann's "Spiral of silence" supression or amplification of viewpoints in the media produce an decrease or increase in the willingness of citizens to express viewpoints.
1980's
Return of Maximum Effects- Herman and Chomsky
Tracks the development of different 'Schools of thought' over time, and looks at the different approaches that each school used.
Media Studies (UK)
Raymond Williams- Culture is wrested from that priviledged space of artistic production and specialist knowledge and into the lived experience of everyday. Williams argued for the importance of television and understood it as "flow"
Stanley Cohen; Moral Panics- The media cast the young fashion victims as "folk devils" who were subjected to media outrage for just being there.
Glasgow School- Analysised news programs, revealed their ideological content.
Stuart Hall, Bermingham School- different processes for encoding and decoding media texts and argued the message intended from the producers may be read by a variety of ways by the audience: they might accept the preferred reading, negotiate their own reading by contesting the preferred message, or; produce an oppositional reading by rejecting the preferred strategy.
Active Audience- "Desperately seeking the audience" Ien Ang. Knowledge of audiences had been formed by the "institutional point of view"
Cultural Studies (Europe)
1930's Walter Benjamin- techniques of reproduction in photography and film have a liberating potential due to their "destructive, cathartic, liquidation of the traditional value of cultural heritage"
1940's Frankfurt School- Real life is becoming indistinguishable from the movies.
1950's Situationalists- Society of the Spectacle- "Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation"- Guy Debord
1960's Habermas- Second generation Frankfurt school. Public sphere was the domain of social life in which "Public opinion" forms. Habermas argues that the commercialisation of the media saw a transformation of the public sphere. "The consumer services of the mass media". Potential for the recreation of the public sphere as "a public of organised private persons" engaged in the rationalisation of social and political power through mutual control of rival organisations.
1970's Althusser- Media as Ideological State Apparatuses which reproduce the "imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence"
1980's Baudrillard- Simulacra- Real was represented, hyperreal is simulated.
1990's Fraser- Subaltern counterpublics- Parralel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses, which in turn permit them to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests and needs.
As students and thinkers and consumers of 'media' and communication technologies, it is important to understand these approaches and figure out how they might be useful for our own thinking..... do we need to adapt them or change them to fit our technology, or our culture and society?
No, there are so many!
What is the difference between 'media' and 'technology'?
Media are Messages that are distributed through the technologies, principally text in books, study guides and computer networks; sound in audio-tapes and broadcast: pictures in video-tapes and broadcast; text, sound and/or pictures in a teleconference. Whereas technology is the scientific study of mechanical arts and their application to the world.
Ch 3 & 4
Do you know what the following terms mean:
technology - 1) An object, or system of connected objects, that can be used in a productive process to provide a practical solution to a problem. 2) A process of incorporating knowledge into the production process; in capitalist systems this takes a distinct commodity form.
capital- For Marx and political economy, capital refers to the acuumulation of labour during the production of commodities in a particular set of production relations. In neo-classical economics the term is stripped of any notions of exploitation and refers to the exclusive right of the monied class to own and control the means of production.
means of production- An ensemble of the available technologies and natural resources that combine with human labour and within specific forms of social relations to form what political economy calls the mode of production.
commodity- The process of turning non-commercial material-goods, services, ideas- into saleable products or commodities.
labour- "Labour" and "labour power" are terms from political economy that refer to the actual process of work that humans undertake in their interactions with technology and nature to produce the means of substistence and the necessities of life. Within any given social formation or economic system, the forms that this labour takes are determined by the relations of production. Within the capitalist economy of the 20th century (and today), labour takes a commodity form in which its price is determined not on the principle of a fair day's pay for a fair day's work, but by the power of capital to impose conditions of exploitation on the labouring classes.
hegemony- A term popularised by Antonio Gramsci to describe the domination of one social class by another.
political economy- A theory of social economics which argues that knowledge and analysis of ownership and control of economic entities is a useful, indeed, essential means of understanding. Political economy can be based on a class analysis or some other taxonomy.
political economy is a bit difficult to grasp from the textbook... the idea is that starting from the idea of an 'economy', which talks about the means of production - how societies make stuff that we consume and trade and so on - and applying ideas from sociology and politics. We can take the word politics on face value meaning the relationships of people to structures of 'power' and control.
So a political economy approach asks us to look at who is 'producing' and who controls the 'means' of that production; what are the relationships and who decides what is made and how it is made. The other side of this is how we then 'consume' those products.
A political economy of communication would describe the forces that influence how we can communicate through different media and so on. If we looked at the internet as an example, an issue arising from a political economic approach would be the digital divide where not everyone in the world has equal access to the internet.
Another new technology we could consider would be the well-known ipod. As far as portable music players go, the ipod is a mediocre product at best. There are much better and cheaper products out there. Yet, nearly everyone who has a music player has an ipod! Why?
The answer might be more complex than I can cover here, but consider the idea that Apple (as a brand) developed the iPod as a fashion accessory, in a sense, and it spread through the media, and by word of mouth that it was a cool product... and so it gained a certain amount of 'value' (cultural capital) in our culture. This puts Apple in a unique position to control the portable music player market, and because they dominate the market, people automatically buy ipods because it's a brand they might grow to trust in some ways. This has many other 'political' implications, such as the fact that ipods use the mp3 format (a proprietary format).... and so it goes on, untangling the web of a political economic approach.
These examples illustrate that many of the concepts from our theory from different weeks are inter-related when we use them in practise.
Week 3
Lecture
Birth of the Computer -
Where did computers come from? What a stupid question. The sky? Computers actually evolved over thousands of years.
Who were the major players in the evolution of computers?
Charles Babbage- 19th Century Difference engine
Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace- Babbage was aided in his wonderings about the analytical engine. She annotated "sketch of the analytical engine"
Alan Turing- On computable numbers. The Bombe, to break secret German "Enigma" codes. Computing Machinery and Intelligence suggested the Turing Test. Gordom Moore. Xerox PARC in the early 70s GUI, pull down menus. 1975=0. Bill Gates. BASIC For Altair. Apple. Steve Jobs and Wozniak. Visicalc (Lotus 1-2-3), Apple 2. IBM.
What is moore's law? The capacity of a microchip doubles every two years.
Readings
Ch 9
What is the difference engine?The Difference Engine was designed as a massive steam-powered mechanical calculator to print astronomical tables and thus save time and money and to be more accurate.
What is a Mainframe, and what is it's place in the history of computing? Mainframe is a term used to describe the large refringerator- size computers that preceded the personal computer. The first commercial mainframe was the Univac: Manufactured in 1951. The mainframe made a comeback in the 1990s as electronic commerce took off, and as networks based systems become subject to hacking and virus attackes, as an efficient and secure means of performing high-volume transactions. IBM dominates the market for mainframe computers.
Explain the idea of convergence? To converge means to come together. In the context of communications technologies this means the comin together of telecommunications, computing and broadcasting. The key to this modern form of convergence is the microprocessor- the computer chip. Convergence is both a technological and an economic-social process that proceeds dialectially and via a series of contradictions.
Week 4
Short history of the Internet -
What is The Internet? how does it work?
The internet is a network of networks. These networks include servers, mainframes, and personal computers and other devices that use CMC (commuter-mediated-communications) technology, loosely interconnected by the telephone system and, more recently, broadband cable and satellite services, to link people around the world into an information-sharing system. Packet switching, which is breaking down messages into small chunks and transmitting them from one computer to another.
What is the World Wide Web? (it is important to realise that the Web is not the same thing as the internet!)
The WWW is a particular use of the internet that emerged in the 1990s as people were generally beginning to see the potential for computers to communicate with each other as a matter of course. The Web merges the techniques of i) internetworking and ii) hypertext to make an easy-to-use, but powerful global system that shares all information accessible as a part of a seamless hypertext space. The web is part of the internet, not the internet. Firefox= web.
What is CyberSpace?
A conceptual space where words, relationships, data, wealth and power are manifested by using Computer Mediated Communication Technologies.
A brief outline of some of the major uses of the internet, including both applications and protocols ...
Applications- Email, File Transfer Protocol, p2p file sharing, etc.
Some ideas about 'netiquette' and emoticons...
Netiquette is etiquette on the Internet. Spam, flaming (abusive communications). Cracking is computer crime. Kevin Mitnick, got into the US Air Defence System reading a company email. He was jailed. Clint Haines.
What is 'Epic 2012' (see lecture notes under the heading applications, there's a small link to a video to watch)?
Evolving personalised media construct. It pays users to contribute any information they know into a grid, allowing the system to create new tailored to individuals.
Ch 10
What is cyber mythology or digital mythology? The power of myth is that it contains elements of truth and seems to hold a timeless manifestation of an eternal and powerful entity. Digital mythology is based on the seemingly unstoppable power of technology to "do good".
When was the golden age of the internet?
The golden age of the internet is when there was a halcyon period in history in which everything was bright and beautiful. A utopian idea that grew out of the cyberian dissociation from, and dissatisfaction with, what was happening in the "safe", unconnected world.
Can you describe the events of the dot.com crash, often referred to as the Dot.Bomb, of the year 2000?
In the second half of the 1990s a significant number of computer companies 'went public'; that is, they listed on the stock exchange through an IPO (Initial public offering). In doing so, they created fabulous paper profits for those who owned the shares prior to the IPO. Those who cashed in their shares made huge profits. This was known as the dot.com boom. In late 1999 and and early 2000, these stocks lost their allure and the market crashed. American stock markets lost $US2 trillion dollars and Bill Gates' personal fortune fell by $30 billion in just a few hours. The NASDAC fell a record 78 per cent.
What is 'new media' as opposed to 'old media'?
New media is a catchall phrase used to distinguish digital media forms from "old media" forms such as newspapers, magazines, radio and television.
Week 5
Virtual Reality – Virtual Philosophy and the Internet
The lecture this week takes the ideas about the internet as a medium, and applies a bunch of concepts from philosophy and media studies that we touched on earlier in the semester.
What are some of the 'communications media' that came before 'the internet'? what can they add to our understanding of the 'net?
Telegraph- Invented in 1837 by Samuel Morse. Electrical impulses sent down a wire inpatterns that could be reinterpreted as a message at the other end. Binary system.
Telephone- Invented in 1876 by Alexander Bell. Point-to-point transmission.
Phonograph- Thomas Edison invented in 1876 as he recorded and played back sound on wax cylinders.
Radio- 1895 Marconi invented wireless telegraphy that allowed messages to be sent over long distances by modulating electro-magnetic radiation.
Cinema- Lumiere brothers film at 1/24th second. 1929
Television- John Logie Baird 1926. Light is filtered by lenses onto a photoelectric surface, which is read by an electron scanning beam which turns the info into an electrical current. This encoded info is ready to be picked up by the aerial.
What ideas do traditional philosophers have that are useful for us, such as the ancient Greeks?
The lines between reality and representation has been fixed in the pure rationality that emerged from reading the socratic method. Socrates claim of ignorance was the pure rationality he espoused that was used to limit and control reality. Plato developed a rational argument that reality was expressed in hidden forms that could only be appreciated by an elite who thus had the duty to use the arbitrary powers of the police state to enforce a harsh idealism. Aristotle bent pure rationality into the arbitrary categories of scientific enterprise.
The lecture concludes with a discussion of 'virtual reality'..... virtual reality as in the 'Goggles and Gloves' VR of the '80s and early '90s, and also other more contemporary ideas about what might be 'virtual'...
What was Plato's cave, and why would we talk about it in the week about virtual reality?
Plato's cave could be best described as a prisoner inside a cave since childhood, their legs and heads are chained. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and behind the fire there is a walkway, along which statues of plants, animals and other things carried by people. The statues cast shadows on these walls. And the prisoners watch these shadows. When the statue carrier speaks, an echo against the wall causes prisoners to believe that the sound come from the shadows. They engage in a game. The prisoners would not want to be free now. The forms flicker for all to see on the walls of our caves- the cinema, tv and computer screens.
What are some of the issues that come about from the use of VR technologies?
Production issues- Cartoon- like graphics limit the involvement of the user. The number of senses is limited to vision and sound.
Physiological issues- simulation sickness, motion sickness, eyestrains, headaches/ dizzyness.
Psychological issues- Addiction, brainwashing, intense violence/ pornography, desensitisation of the real world.
Ch 5-7
What do the following terms mean:
Killer application- A computer application that revolutionises the use of the computer system and renders redundant (kills off) previous applications. Spreadsheets and word processing were the original killer applications; Internet browsers and search engines are another example. The search is always on for the next 'killer app'.
broadsheet- A newspaper format in which each page is approximately A2 size. Traditionally regarded as an upmarket form to distinguish it from tabloid, which is A3 and downmarket.
tabloid- A newspaper format based on a page size approximately A3. Also pejorative term used to describe poor-quality journalism in any medium.
pixel- A dot that is the smallest single identifiable element of an image or picture. The greater number of pixels per square inch (PSI) the clearer the image will reproduce.
broadcast- To broadcast means to scatter widely. In this sense broadcasting is clearly linked to the concept of publishing in the print media. The message is published to a wide audience via electronic signals originating from a single source. Radio stations and free-to-air television services are the most common forms of broadcasting today.
podcast- A digital audio technology that enables listeners to download material from the internet for time-shift listening using a digital media player.
Week 11
CyberDemocracy and the Digital Divide -The lecture considers different models of democracy and the role the media plays in mediating the citizens' experience of democracy and government.
The major issue that all discussions of cyberpolitics is the digital divide: only some people have access to computers, even less the internet.
While cyberdemocracy is not particularly evident in the way cyberspace 1) is organised on hierarchial lines and 2) its uses for commercial purposes, the internet has become a valuable addition in the ways that debate occurs in our society such as blog campaigning.
The end of history and the last man, Francis F... argues that the 1980s saw the near-universal triumph of liberal democracy and its representative institutions. Over the last 200 years, representative democracy has both broadened and at the same time narrowed.
The most obvious alternative to representative democracy is participatory or direct democracy, based on the ancient Greek model where all citizens have a right and a duty to be involved in all decisions made.
Chantal Mouffe argues in her preface to Dimensions of radical democracy about democracy.
Gaps in the mass media
The increasing concentration, centralisation and commercialisation of the mass media appear to have foreclosed avenues for democratic participation in currently existing representative democracy. However, a number of theoretical counterparts and interventions suggest that there may be ways in which the arena of deliberation, or the public sphere, may be extended via the application of nct and a better appreciation for the power of the audience.
Habermas "Public Sphere" where public opinions form. Habermas argues that political debate flourished to produce an independent sphere of influence from which the emerging be... could criticise the state and civil society. "consumer services of the mass media" Marshall McLuhan suggests the media might extend involvement in a space similar to the public sphere.
Taylor and Saarinen argue that with the emerging information economy will so blur the flow of power, that technical adaptation will allow the same diffuse audience to communicate with government.
Hans Magnus Enzenberger rejects what he calls the "liberal superstition that in political and social questions there is such a thing as pure, manipulated truth"
Steve Stockwell argues that the ancient greek citizens engaged with their ideals of democracy in a similar way that 'hackers' engage with technology.
One space for recreation has been cleared by the hacker, originally computer programmers with a desire to so understand the intricies of computing systems that they could move freely through machines and their networks to find obscure and hidden information. Hackers regard computer systems not as corporate property but as part of the common wealth and do not believe it is wrong that they thought through them to reveal their secret substance.
1986 Hacker manifesto- "This is our world now"
1985 Hacker handbook- Hugo cornwall notes two other uses of hacker "those involved in the recreational and educational sport of unauthorised entry of computers and, more generally, the enthusiasts who love working with the beasties for their own sake, as opposed to operating them in order to enrich a company."
What happens to our contemporary version of democracy and the citizen if every citizen could 'hack' their own understanding of democracy?
this does NOT mean we are all 'computer hackers'. it takes a more broad definition of a hacker as someone who seeks to push the boundaries of a situation or knowledge.
as Richard Stallman would say 'hackers are people who enjoy playful cleverness'.
As a result, we (the citizens in a democracy) could all become more informed about the rules of democracy and how we can push those limits in order to get the best possible result for everyone.
Want to actually make a change for the better in our society? Want to have a better government in power? Then we need to learn about the rules and how we can maximise the chance to make a real change. Who will you vote for, and why? Make an informed choice.
Time Travel
Newtonian view- the whole universe was set in motion and has continued to run ever since. The future of any part of the system can be predicted with absolute certainty, if its state at any one time is known in complete and perfect detail.
Uncertainty principle- there is a point when we come up with a barrier which is impossible to make accurate measurements, and therefore impossible to accurate measurements, and therefore impossible to ever know how matter is behaving.
Theoretically, an objects "wordline" may loop back on itself. Wormholes.
If you could travel back in time it might lead the traveller back to a time before he set out and gives rise to the "Grandfather paradox", meeting your grandfather and even conceiving one of your parents.
Week 12
Free software, open source and the creative commons
This lecture is about challenging the limiting power of certain monopoly forces in society, in particular the ways that the software we use on our computing devices are locked into a vicious cycle.
What can we do to stop these proprietary models of software production?
Proprietary software is software that is owned by the company that sells it. The collections of instructions for programmers that write is called a source code. The source code for commercial companies is usually locked. It is illegial to reverse engineer a code.
How can we take back the rights to the programs we use, and the stuff we create and distribute online?
We examine the Free Software movement, and also such groups as the Creative Commons and the Electronic frontier foundation.
Richard M Stallman. Copyleft is the core concept behind putting stuff out there on the internet for free. The legally-binding contract that controls the use of free and open source software is the GPL.
GNU/ Linux operating system is a completely free alternative to Windows.
The next part was about free and open source software, which is basically software that is available to everyone to use and modify which contrasts with software owned by a big corporation that you have to pay for the right to use.
Creative commons gives us freedom to use iunformation responsibly, morally and legally without being sued.
EFF deals with the law and digital media across the whole spectrum. They are concerned with keeping the internet open for people to have access to, without being restricted by government and corporate interests.
The final part is about taking the idea of open source software and applying it to creative products; the idea of the “Creative Commons”. What is the role of creative commons? Can you see it applying to something that you create or write?
