COMM 12 MIDTERM 1
His definition of Culture How does McLuhan connect technology (our ways and means) with culture (our customs and beliefs)?
"Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which humans communicate than by the content of the communication." According to Harold Innis, human culture needs to be understood in the context of its dominant technologies of communication Following Innis's perspective, history can be divided into epochs based on the communications technologies (speech, writing, printing, electronic) that become dominant in different societies at different times
social shaping
"The middle ground" (between technological determinism and Social Construction of Technology) social circumstances -> technologies -> specific possibilities and constraints -> actual practices domestication of technology the perspective on the relationship between technology and society that considers both the affordances of technology and the unexpected the emergent ways people make use of the affordances The social shaping perspective sees influence as flowing in both directions. Between technology and society the concept that there are choices' (though not necessarily conscious choices) inherent in both the design of individual artifacts and systems, and in the direction or trajectory of innovation programs.
Putting social cues into digital communication
(example of social shaping!) The examples of that we did on the board in groups To varying degrees, digital media provide fewer social cues. In mobile and online interactions, we may have few if any cues to our partner's location. This is no doubt why so many mobile phone calls begin with the question "where are you?" and also helps to explain some people's desire to share GPS positioning via mobile applications. The lack of shared physical context does not mean that interactants have no shared contexts. People communicating in personal relationships share relational contexts, knowledge, and some history. People in online groups often develop rich in-group social environments that those who've participated for any length of time will recognize. _____
Contextual influence on online communication
- gender differences (girls are emotional and boys factual - women are attacked online for being women, men are attacked for their ideas - race often erased in interfaces - "white" not a category on Yahoo's list of categories - Blackness expressed through hashtags _____ Communication is also shaped by larger social forces we have incorporated into our own identities and carry with us into our mediated interactions. A quick look at how gender and culture play out online speaks to how social contexts shape and are shaped by mediated communication.
the process of domestication
1. Commodification 2. Appropriation 3. Objectification 4. Incorporation 5. Conversion 6. Closure 7. Redefinition
the process of domestication- expanded
1. Commodification: pre-adoption research, making plans 2. Appropriation: the process of consumption, and bringing the device home 3. Objectification: how it's used, and placed in the home 4. Incorporation: the process of assimilation into the routines and rituals of the home 5. Conversion: the technology is becoming taken-for-granted, but also new level of status among neighbors, family. and: continuous negotiation 6. Closure: the technology is taken-for- granted, familiar, and integrated into the home 7. possible Redefinition: the new technology taking over or sharing functions with older technology
The three revolutions
Broadband, mobile, social
definition determinism
Determinism views technology as arising independent of social contexts and then affecting them
Stoll Views
Dystopian - No simple technological solutions to social problems. Why do we have to make that point? ________ Discusses the limitations of network dependence and asserts that there are no simple technological solutions to enduring social problems. Rather than bringing us together computer networks may instead isolate us from one another. What is missing from the ersatz neighborhood of online community, Stoll argues, is the very essence of a real neighborhood: a feeling of permanence and belonging, a sense of location, and the warmth that can derived only from an understanding and appreciation of local history.
Gleick Views
Dystopian - The unintended consequences of the the remote control. ______ The remote control exemplifies the principle of unintended consequences, the tendency of new media and communication technologies to have social impacts that weren't anticipated. He traces the acceleration of media, especially television and film, to the influence of the remote control and music television. Ironically, our anti-boredom devices and ever quickening production values often diminish program satisfaction, encouraging channel grazing and further reducing already shortened attention spans.
Schenk Views
Dystopian - the first law of data smog ____________ As we have accrued more and more data and information, they have become a commodity-as well as a pollutant. Until the mid 20th century, more information was generally seen as a good thing; now we produce information much faster than we are able to process it. With information and data production at an all-time high, Shenk argues that information overload has surfaced as a contentious social, political, and even emotional problem.
mobility
Mobility describes the ability for media to be portable. How location-specific is this media? Where can people be when they use it?
replicability
Replicability defines the ability to use stored data to replicate or distribute to other sources. How is this media saved? Through human memory only, online, text on a phone? How easy is it to recall, replicate, and redistribute this media later on?
Broadband
Rise of the internet changed the way people got information and shared it with each other, affecting everything from users' basic social relationships to the way that they work, learn, and take care of themselves. The speed of internet connectivity picked up considerably with the rise of broadband connections. As people adopted those higher-speed, always-on connections, they became different internet users: They spent more time online, performed more activities, watched more video, and themselves become content creators.
Mobile
Second, mobile connectivity through cell phones, and later smartphones and tablet computers, made any time-anywhere access to information a reality for the vast majority of Americans. Mobile devices have changed the way people think about how and when they can communicate and gather information by making just-in-time and real-time encounters possible. They have also affected the way people allocate their time and attention.
Social
Third, the rise of social media and social networking has affected the way that people think about their friends, acquaintances, and even strangers. People have always have social networks of family and friends that helped them. The new reality is that as people create social networks in technology spaces, those networks are often bigger and more diverse than in the past. Social media allow people to plug into those networks more readily and more broadly - making them persistent and pervasive in ways that were unimaginable in the past. One of the major impacts was that the traditional boundaries between private and public, between home and work, between being a consumer of information and producer of it were blurred.
Reductionism
aims to reduce a complex whole to the effects of one part (or parts) upon another part (or parts), opposite to 'holism'. the study of isolated parts widely criticized as a way of approaching social phenomena. It is impossible to isolate a single cause for any social process and to prove that it is the primary determinant (for instance, it is highly problematic to isolate the potential cognitive influences of literacy from those of schooling).
Temporal Structure - Asynchronous Media
email, voicemail, time delays between messages Storage-asynchronous can be easily saved as well as digital media which can be in devices, websites and company backups Replicability-asynchronous can be easily replicated and redistributed to others
Cool Media
encourage an interplay among our senses, inviting us to use combinations of sight, sound, touch, etc. a cartoon - that consists of a simple circle to represent an eye, a few squiggles to represent the hair and the top of the head, and a curved line to convey a smile - is low resolution; the viewer has to understand and interpret the information there to create the whole picture. Media that involve more than one sense tend to be Cool - because the audience has to actively interpret different signals from different senses (for example, matching the voices with the actors, or processing audio information about what is happening off screen.)
Baym - The seven Concepts
interactivity, temporal structure (asynchronous vs synchronous media), social cues, storage, replicability, reach, mobility All of these concepts define the type of media that is being observed, in order to be able to tell the difference between different types of media. All of these concepts alter an audience's expectations of a type of media as well as their use understanding of it.
Temporal Structure - Synchronous Media
real time, face to face communication, phone calls, IM
Figure
refers to something that jumps out at us, something that grabs our attention.
Ground
refers to something that supports or contextualizes a situation, and is usually an area of unattention.
personalization
the modification or acclimation of something to make it particular to or more meaningful or proper for a specific individual, as in modifying the content of material on a website or in printed media to confront a specific person.
utopian vs dystopian
A dystopia and anti-utopia are the same. They are a community or society that is in some way undesirable or frightening. Utopia is a place in which the government, laws, and social conditions are perfect, or highly desirable. Dys-topia "bad" -"place" terms from Ancient Greek.
Techno-evolution as 'progress'
A linear evolutionary view of universal social change through a fixed sequence of different technological stages. It is a kind of developmental or historical determinism. Evolutionary theorists interpret change in terms of 'progress' (an improved state of affairs) and usually regard progress as inevitable. ________ Techno-evolutionary theorists define progress in terms of successive stages of technological development, frequently portrayed as 'revolutions' leading to historical 'eras' defined by this or that technology: 'the age of machinery', 'the age of automation', 'the atomic age', 'the space age', 'the electronic age', and so on - terms which tend to be used with approval by technologists and with disdain by humanists. Such tidy stages misleadingly tend to suggest that new technologies replace old ones. What is more common is an interplay between newer and older media which may involve subtle shifts of function. Television didn't replace radio or the cinema, and computers seem unlikely to replace books. Harvey Graff adds that history cannot be easily reduced to simple linear 'progress': there are 'variable paths to societal change'
The 'technological imperative'
A notion of inevitability. _________ Also related to technological autonomy is the frequent assumption or implication that technological developments, once under way, are unstoppable: their 'progress' is inevitable, unavoidable and irreversible. In favour of the inevitability of technological developments (and against the mysticism of inspired genius) many theorists cite simultaneous invention widely dispersed geographically. Some critics who use the term 'technological determinism' equate it simply with this notion of inevitability, which is also referred to as 'The technological imperative'. The doctrine of the technological imperative is that because a particular technology means that we can do something (it is technically possible) then this action either ought to (as a moral imperative), must (as an operational requirement) or inevitably will (in time) be taken (see Hasan Ozbekhan 1968). Arnold Pacey suggests that the technological imperative is commonly taken to be 'the lure of always pushing toward the greatest feat of technical performance or complexity which is currently available' The technological imperative is a common assumption amongst commentators on 'new technologies'. They tell us, for instance, that the 'information technology revolution' is inevitably on its way and our task as users is to learn to cope with it. Those who pursue certain problems primarily because they are 'technically sweet' are following the technological imperative. It implies a suspension of ethical judgement or social control: individuals and society are seen as serving the requirements of a technological system which shapes their purposes.
Universalism
A particular technology - or its absence - is seen as universally linked to the same basic social pattern. Universalism is 'asocial' and 'ahistorical': presented as outside the framework of any specific socio-cultural and historical context. _________ A particular technology (such as writing, print or electronic media) - or its absence - is seen as universally linked to the same basic social pattern. Universalism is 'asocial' and 'ahistorical': presented as outside the framework of any specific socio-cultural and historical context. But particular technologies are not universally associated with similar social patterns. 'The same technology can have very different "effects" in different situations'. The implications of the use of a particular communication technology vary according to different historical and cultural circumstances. Even within cultures, the use of such technologies varies amongst individuals, groups and sub-cultures.
Q?? Why is the relationship of message and medium like that of figure and ground?
AA??The medium is the message Environment is process, not container. --Our media become 'invisible environments' when they become cultural ground. They shape our actions by creating a context for communication (the figures). Every new medium appears as a new figure in the old ground of a culture. --It stands out from other media because of its novelty, and begins to incorporate the existing ground as its content. In doing this, new media retrieve culture and place it in a new context. After a medium's been around for awhile it becomes embedded into our lives, and part of the ground. --Its status as a new figure changes, and it sinks into the cultural ground.
Mediation as impoverishment
According to one perspective, digital communication is seen as less than in-person communication: it "impedes people's ability to handle interpersonal dimensions of interaction. Digital communication reduces social cues affect social qualities of communication But: Groups develop norms. Also, other factors: Your familiarity with the technology, and whether you know those you communicate with matter. ______ It is also in keeping with early research approaches that conceptualized face to face conversations as the norm against which other kinds of communication could be compared. From this point of view, mediated communication is seen as a diminished form of face to face conversation. Taking embodied co-present communication as the norm, early research saw the telephone and internet as lesser versions of the real thing, inherently less intimate, and, therefore, less suited to personal connections
Dystopian
Fear of losing control, becoming dependent, unable to stop change.
How are the phone and TV, for example, extensions of your senses?
From McLuhan's point of view, the effect of the new media is nothing less than revolutionary. Radio, telephones, televisions, computers, and all other forms of electronic media have begun to replace the book as our dominant technologies of communication. I THINK THE REAL ANSWER IS PERSONAL
Contextual influence on online communication - Gender
Gender Early discourses though gender would be meaningless on the internet- some games involve gender tho. Most studies of gendered communication find men and women are far more similar in their communication than different. Women are socialized to attend more to relational dimensions of conversation while men are reared to specialize in the informative dimensions Girls' text messages were "full of social softening, extra words and emotional sharing of experiences. Boys tend to write only about what has happened, and where and how ... girls contemplate the reasons." women are more likely than men to keep mobile phones on at night, suggesting they see them as relational tools while men tie them to information that ends with the workday. Women are more likely to use a supportive/attenuated style oriented towards affiliation. Messages written by women are more likely to include qualifications, justifications, apologies, and expressions of support. Women's IM closings take twice as many turns and are nearly three times as long as male closings. Women are also nearly three times more likely to begin SMS interactions with openings Sexism Gender differences persist online. So too does sexism. Women with unpopular positions are routinely attacked for being women while men with unpopular ideas are attacked for their ideas. Women are depicted as sexual objects.
What it means for the media to bind time and space
Harold Innis observed that communications media had the capacity to 'bind' space and time. To 'bind' something means to keep something together (like the pages in a book). To 'bind' space simply means that a medium is good at keeping messages together over great distances. To 'bind' time simply means that a medium is good at preserving messages over great periods of history.
McLuhan's Notion of the "global village"
He believed that modern communication technologies were turning the world into a global village In the global village, the word 'neighbour' doesn't just mean the person down the street, but also means the people on the other side of the planet. Modern communications media have turned the world into a global village-they have the powerful capacity to enable people to share ideas in an instant and across incredible distances. Like shouting out the window to your neighbour across the street, modern media give us windows to neighbours around the world. People from across continents can talk to eachother in real-time. News arrives in a continous stream of sounds, images, and information almost at the very second that it happens
domestication
How communication technology will be incorporated into the home _______ The fact that we no longer engage in either utopian or dystopian discourses about the landline telephone or, for that matter, the alphabet is evidence of how successfully earlier technologies have been domesticated. What once seemed marvelous and strange, capable of creating greatness and horror, is now so ordinary as to be invisible. Life without them can become unimaginable This approach concurs with social shaping in seeing both technology and society as influences in the consequences of new media, but it is particularly concerned with the processes at play as new technologies move from being fringe (wild) objects to everyday (tame) objects embedded deeply in the practices of daily life. Early domestication work showed that, by the time most users encounter technologies, they are already laden with the social meanings given them by advertisement, design, and the kinds of rhetorics we have been discussing. Nonetheless, "both households and individuals then invest them with their own personal meanings and significance" (Haddon, 2oo6: 196). The process of domestication plays out at societal levels, but also in daily interactions as people figure out where to place devices, and, more importantly, who gets to use them for what and who doesn't As technologies are integrated into everyday life, they come to be seen as offering a nuanced mix of both positive and negative implications. Syntopian perspectives (Katz & Rice, 2002) view new technologies as simultaneously enabling and disabling
Why is the relationship of message and medium like that of figure and ground?
In other words, McLuhan looked at media through a figure/ground relationship. Some aspects of the media we pay great attention to. ---These are the "figures" Other aspects of the media are areas of unattention. ---These make up the "ground" that supports the figures. According to McLuhan, to focus only on the content of the media is to look at figures without examining their ground. To examine the total effect of any medium, McLuhan pointed out that we need to look at both figure AND ground, and their relationship to one another. If we want to understand the effects of our media, we need to look at both figure and ground together. McLuhan thought that focussing only on the 'content' of the media was like looking at figures without examining their ground.... ... and that an important part of the picture would be missing as a result. McLuhan thought that all media came in pairs, with one medium acting as ground and the other as figure. For instance, the alphabet is the ground for capturing figures of speech in writing. The alphabet retrieves the spoken word, but places it in a new context. Only by looking at both content (figure) and the cultural environment created by media (ground) can we begin to understand the big picture ... the Big N. McLuhan claimed that "the medium of our age" is electricity. Almost every communication technology of the last one hundred years has been based on electricity, and our lives are intimately bound up with electric power through countless other technologies.
interactivity
Interactivity applies to the ability of media to create an interaction between two or more things the ability of a medium to enable social interaction between groups or individuals How does the medium enable social interaction? How much variety is there in its ability to do so? Also, how can people interact with its interface? How do users interpret the created content?
Digital language as a mixed modality
It combines elements from embodied conversation and writing. _____ If comparing mediated communication to face to face communication doesn't work adequately, it might be more fruitful to think of digital communication as a mixed modality that combines elements of communication practices in embodied conversation and in writing. Instead of approaching mediated interaction as face to face communication and finding it wanting, we draw from our existing repertoire of communication skills in other modes to make a medium do what we want it to do as best we can. Online language has been called an "interactive written regIster, a hybrid , a creole, and an "uncooked linguistic stew" that blends elements of written and oral language with features that are distinctive to this medium, or at least more common online than in any other language medium. Mediated interaction in several languages resembles both written language and oral conversation Online interaction is like writing in many ways. In detailed analyses of naturally occurring messages, Baron (2oo8) argues that, on balance, emails, instant messages, and text messages look more like writing than speech, but fall on a spectrum in between. Like writing, textual interaction online often bears an address. Messages can be edited prior to transmission. The author and reader are physically (and often temporally) separated. Messages can be read by anonymous readers who may not respond and it IS not possible for interlocutors to overlap one another or to interrupt. Context must be created through the prose so that messages are often explicit and complete. There is rarely an assumption of shared physical context. Messages are replicable and can be stored. On the other hand, there are many ways in which online language resembles speech. As we saw in the discussion of immediacy above, misspellings and deletions often foreground phonetic qualities of language. Despite the challenges to conversational coordination, messages are generally related to prior ones, often through turn-taking. The audience is usually able to respond and often does so quickly, resulting in reformulations of original messages. Topics change rapidly. The discourse often feels ephemeral, and often is not stored by recipients despite the capacity for storage. The specter of a new language form, neither spoken nor written yet both, raises dual fears about the degeneration of spoken conversation and written language. Newspaper articles have worried, for instance, that the brief exchanges of Instant Messaging (IM) will lead to an inability to conduct face to face conversations, or that non-standard spelling and punctuation will decimate grammar as we know it. Teachers in Finland, where text messages are full of non-standard Finnish, worry about negative consequences for student writing (Kasesniemi & Rautiainen, 2002), echoing concerns heard in seemingly every nation that uses these media
Theoretical stances
Linguistic determinism: According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis our thinking is determined by language and people who speak different languages perceive and think a bout the world differently (linguistic relativity). Edward T. Hall: 'People from different cultures not only speak different languages but, what is possibly more important, inhabit different sensory worlds.' ___________ McLuhan equated communications media and technologies with language, and just as Whorf argued that language shapes our perception and thinking, McLuhan argued that all media do this. A moderate version of media determinism is that our use of particular media may have subtle influences on us, but that it is the social context of use which is crucial.
Mechanistic models
Machines offer models of phenomena. But: the complex fabric of social reality cannot be neatly analysed into component factors. __________ Reductionism, like technological determinism in general, is a mechanistic mode of explanation associated with positivism: a philosophical stance based strictly on the scientific method. Machines offer tidy models of phenomena for mechanistic theorists. It is common among social theorists to refer to 'mechanisms of change'. Machines serve a designated function and operate strictly according to cause and effect. Within the context of their mechanisms, causes are explicit and intentional and consequences are predictable. A machine like a clock, once it is initiated, is autonomous in the sense that it can run independently of human intervention for long periods, but it does not select its own goal. Critics of reductionism are often broadly anti- analytical and anti-mechanistic. Mechanistic models have obvious deficiencies when applied to social phenomena. The use of complex and interacting technologies may have implications which are not always entirely intended or predicted. And the complex fabric of social reality cannot be neatly analysed into component factors. Machines are also under complete control - we can turn them off - which one might expect to appeal to voluntarists of a rationalist bent. However, we may also need to consider to what extent the user may become part of a complex machine when using it.
Why does McLuhan believe that we are "shaped more by the nature of the media by which humans communicate than by the content of the communication"?
McLuhan believed that the true nature of media was to be found in the way that they influenced our five senses. McLuhan thought that communication technologies are extensions or amplifiers of our senses. "the medium is the message" came to embody the historic view that the means by which human beings communicate have always structured their actions. McLuhan thought that the 'nature' of our technologies is more important than the 'content' that those technologies carry.
What does he mean when he says that media are "extensions" of our senses.
McLuhan believed that the true nature of media was to be found in the way that they influenced our five senses. According to McLuhan, technologies act like conductors, and 'orchestrate' our senses in particular combinations. These combinations are a result of the predominant sensory demands that a medium places on its user. In other words, that part or those parts of the user that the technology 'extends' or 'amplifies'. 'the exploitation of a particular communication technology fixes particular sensory ratios in members of society. By fixing such a relation it determines a society's world view; that is, it stipulates a characteristic way of organizing experience. It thus determines the forms of knowledge, the structure of perception, and the sensory equipment attuned to absorb reality.' How they affect us: hot and cool media.
≠≠space biased media≠≠
McLuhan felt that there were a number of consequences resulting from the space bias of modern media: First, our relationship to history changes. Second, our social activities become radically decentralized. Third, we begin to recognize a growing interdependence among people, ideas, and actions. While space-biased media bind great distances together, say through a telephone or computer network, they also appear to fragment our sense of history. That is they create large differences between yesterday and today. They amplify the generation gap. Remember what Innis had observed? Cultures based on space-binding media tended to be growth and change-oriented.
The 'nature of media'
McLuhan's ideas attributed to Harold Innis. Innis believed that communication technologies play a central role in shaping the patterns of human activity and belief. One of Innis's recognition that human societies could be studied by examining their dominant modes of communication. He also recognized that each mode or medium had a unique set of properties. For instance, stone carvings tend to be heavy and permanent while paper documents are light and more easily copied, lost, or destroyed.
Hot v. Cold media
McLuhan's take on types of media
McLuhan on Cultural Change
McLuhan: The great cultural change of our time is being brought about by the widespread influence of electronic technologies, such as radio, television, movies, and the computer. A shift in the sensory bias of the world McLuhan believed that our culture is moving away from customs and beliefs based on books, and adopting approaches more suited to the new media: complex circular (feedback) flows, rather than simple linear designs holistic thinking, rather than fragmented ideas multidimensional perspectives on things an acceptance of discontinuity in experience and ideas communication strategies based on appeal to emotion rather than rationality
Medium
Medium creates the context for communication and we turn that possibility into reality. Each medium creates a ground, a particular context for human communication. The Medium turns out to be a ground for a figure. As an active environment, each medium shapes and directs human action in unique and important ways. Every new medium appears as a new figure in the old ground of a culture. After a medium's been around for awhile it evolves into a unique form of communication, and becomes embedded into our lives, and part of the ground.
PTS The medium is the message Environment is process, not container. Every new medium appears as a new figure in the old ground of a culture. After a medium's been around for awhile it becomes embedded into our lives, and part of the ground.
PTS The medium is the message Environment is process, not container. Every new medium appears as a new figure in the old ground of a culture. After a medium's been around for awhile it becomes embedded into our lives, and part of the ground.
definition social construction
People have the power Theory of knowledge in sociology and communication theory that examines the development of jointly constructed understandings of the world that form the basis for shared assumptions about reality The perspective, the social construction of technology, argues that people are the primary sources of change in both technology and society
≠≠Social Context≠≠
Power differences, symbolic power Gender Roles, Status, ideas about what is "normal", etc. Designers and developers operate within social contexts. Designers have identities, group belongings. Designers and developers create objects and subjects, avatar, images. Within a system of power, dominant culture looks 'natural'
Environment is process, not container
Process can be understood as preparedness. If you carry your iPhone with you, what are you now prepared for? How has your preparedness, and therefore awareness, of your surroundings changed because you are carrying a smart phone instead of an older model mobile phone? One aspect: You will pick a restaurant not for its food, but for how photogenic it is.
reach
Reach applies to medias ability to create an audience, support, and partnership. What is the audience size this media can obtain, support, and continue to support?
Social Construction of Technology: relationship between society and technology in this perspective
Social Processes ==>> Technologies Baym: People have the power -- The perspective, the social construction of technology, argues that people are the primary sources of change in both technology and society _________ focuses on how technologies arise from social processes. SCOT proponents view technologically deterministic perspectives as "inadequate as explanations and dangerously misleading [because] human beings, not machines, are the agents of change, as men and women introduce new systems of machines that alter their life world" One focus of social constructivism is how social forces influence the invention of new technologies. From a SCOT perspective, inventors are embedded in social contexts that make it feasible to use a garage to create a personal computer or a bicycle repair shop to invent an airplane. The choices that designers and developers make as they develop technology are seen as dependent on their social contexts which are, in turn, shaped in part by communication. In the contemporary context, one might look at the female avatars available in online games, characters that are almost uniformly shaped like pornographic fantasy figures, and posit that this is related to their having been designed by people primarily male - who are embedded in a patriarchal culture that views women as sex object
social cues
Social cues apply to the connections that people make through the use of media. ex-body movements, facial expressions What sort of social cues does this media preserve or create?
Space medium biased media
Space-biased media are light and portable; they can be transported over large distances. They are associated with secular and territorial societies; they facilitate the expansion of empire over space. Paper is such a medium; it is readily transported, but has a relatively short lifespan.
Space Binding Media
Space-binding media let people move ideas and messages across great distances. smoke signals, paper, radios, telephones They also make it easy to express new ideas or revise previous messages and ideas. They have a quality of relative transience. For example, If space-binding media dominate a society, then its social organization tends to exhibit different characteristics: Social institutions tend to be concerned with: growth of empire and expansion; the present; secular political authority; growth of state, military, decentralized institutions Culture tend to be: present-minded; technical; growth and change-oriented McLuhan also believed that the space-binding power of modern media would radically decentralize social institutions and human activities. Electricity allows all kinds of activities to happen anywhere we want to make them happen. Electronic media give us remote control over our world, because, as McLuhan observes, electricity 'is instant and omnipresent and creates multiple centres-without-margins'.
storage
Storage is the ability to keep data or means of communication for future use. How is this media saved? Through human memory only, online, text on a phone? How easy is it to recall, replicate, and redistribute this media later on?
Technological Determinism
Technology impacts Society Machines change us Determinism views technology as arising independent of social contexts and then affecting them. technology is seen as 'the prime mover' in history. In economics, this is known as a 'technology-push' theory rather than a 'demand-pull' theory. According to technological determinists, particular technical developments, communications technologies or media, or, most broadly, technology in general are the sole or prime antecedent causes of changes in society, and technology is seen as the fundamental condition underlying the pattern of social organization. Technological determinists interpret technology in general and communications technologies in particular as the basis of society in the past, present and even the future. They say that technologies such as writing or print or television or the computer 'changed society'. In its most extreme form, the entire form of society is seen as being determined by technology: new technologies transform society at every level, including institutions, social interaction and individuals. At the least a wide range of social and cultural phenomena are seen as shaped by technology. 'Human factors' and social arrangements are seen as secondary.
Technological autonomy
Technology is seen as a largely external - 'outside' of society. Technology is presented as an independent, self-controlling, self- determining, self-generating, self-propelling, self- perpetuating and self-expanding force. _____ Closely associated with reification is another feature of technological determinism whereby technology is presented as autonomous (or sometimes 'semi-autonomous'): it is seen as a largely external - 'outside' of society, 'supra-social' or 'exogenous' (as opposed to 'endogenous'). Rather than as a product of society and an integral part of it, technology is presented as an independent, self-controlling, self-determining, self-generating, self- propelling, self-perpetuating and self-expanding force. It is seen as out of human control, changing under its own momentum and 'blindly' shaping society. This perspective may owe something to the apparent autonomy of mechanisms such as clockwork. But even texts are autonomous of their authors once they leave their hands: as published works they are subject to interpretation by readers, and beyond the direct control of their authors.
Technology-led theories
Technology is the 'prime mover' in history.
temporal structure (asynchronous vs synchronous media)
Temporal structure refers to the ability for the synchronization of communication Is communication synchronous (real-time) or asynchronous (delayed, such as emails and texts)? Sometimes, depending on situations, a media can be classified differently. Synchronous is generally considered helpful for small numbers of people, asynchronous is better for large communities.
A medium's "bias"
The 'bias' of any medium refers to the way that its formal properties (weight, permanence, ease of use, etc.) affect the way people communicate. In other words, Innis used the term 'bias' to describe the shaping power of communications technologies on human culture. According to Innis, human culture needs to be understood in the context of its dominant technologies of communication. According to Innis, the bias of a medium toward time or space would eventually have an influence on the beliefs and customs of the people who used it as their primary form of communication. According to its characteristics [a medium of communication] may be better suited to transportation, or to the dissemination of knowledge over time than over space, particularly if the medium is heavy and durable and not suited to transportation, or to the dissemination of knowledge over space than over time, particularly if the medium is light and easily transported. He concludes from this that the "relative emphasis on time or space will imply a bias of significance to the culture in which it is embedded" (33). Empires are, in other words, characterized by the media they use most effectively, partially because that's how others come to know of their achievements. The remainder of the chapter attempts to demonstrate how these biases influenced the rise and fall of empires
Strong (or hard) technological determinism
The extreme stance that a particular communication technology is either a sufficient condition (sole cause) determining social organization and development, or at least a necessary condition (requiring additional preconditions).
FIGURE AND GROUND Examples
The medium turns out to be a ground for a figure. The motorcar is a figure, and has, as its ground, all the services that it engenders, or requires, like highways, factories, oil companies, and many other services. All of these services that go with the motorcar are the message. And they're the medium. The car itself is not the medium. It is rather a figure in a ground, or in the medium, and is a kind of interplay between figure/ground. McLuhan pointed out that the electric light is a medium that 'says' nothing yet creates many possibilities for human activities, including communication. In other words, the electric light is a ground without figures. (Like a frame without a painting). We supply the figures whenever we do something with electric light .... our actions become the 'content' of the light This is the same for all media, whether it's paper, radiowaves, or paint. The medium creates the context for communication and we turn that possibility into reality. Each medium creates a ground .... a particular context for human communication. McLuhan thought that all media came in pairs, with one medium acting as ground and the other as figure. For instance, the alphabet is the ground for capturing figures of speech in writing. The alphabet retrieves the spoken word, but places it in a new context.
Weak (or soft) technological determinism
The presence of a particular communication technology is an enabling or facilitating factor leading to potential opportunities which may or may not be taken up in particular societies or periods.
Contextual influence on online communication - Culture
The topic of cultural identity, including nationality, language, and race and ethnicity, has not received much attention. Lisa Nakamura and David Silver have drawn attention to how race is represented or erased through the interfaces of online spaces. Race is often "routed around" online, rather than brought to the front The Miller/Slater's ethnographic analysis is an exception, showing how Trinidadian identity permeated online interaction. "Trinis" living both at home and abroad communicated in a style that displayed "being Trini and representing Trinidad" for one another and for outsiders. This ranged from engaging in "limin' ," an often risque form of playful banter, to including links to Trinidadian national sites on their personal webpages. Many online sites that make users select gender and even species do not make them select race. This may be celebrated as an erasure of an unnecessary social division, but it can also be read as an assumption that most users are White. Listings of discussion groups on Yahoo! Groups are typical in that they designate many racial and ethnic groups, constructing for their users a range of social identities with which they may or may not identify. "White" does not appear in Yahoo!'s list of racial and ethnic categories. Discussion groups that do label themselves "White" are often supre_mao:t. Like sexism, racism thrives online, and groups that do self-rdentlfy as "White" are often replete with horrifying demonstrations of racial animosity towards others. Even when one can select a nonWhite race, online spaces often offer highly stereotypical portrayals. Asian men, for instance, are frequently sword wielding or nerdy. Asian women, so often the subjects of online pornography, often appear as passive sex toys. Cultural identity also manifests through the language we use. The internet was created in the English speaking world, and the influence and spread of English online remains disproportionate to its speakers. It's only in the last few years that English has come to represent less than half of the internet's language, but it is still (for now) the most common language used online. Until recently, online writing was restricted to the ASCII character set, which is designed exclusively for the Latin alphabet. The overrepresentation of languages used in wealthy countries, especially English, has often given rise to a sentiment that the internet represents a further colonization of poor nations by those with greater wealth, particularly the United States. Many of the world's voices and communicative styles are simply absent from mediated communication.
Time medium Biased media
Time-biased media, such as stone and clay, are durable and heavy. Since they are difficult to move, they do not encourage territorial expansion; however, since they have a long life, they do encourage the extension of empire over time. Innis associated these media with the customary, the sacred, and the moral. Time-biased media facilitate the development of social hierarchies, as archetypally exemplified by ancient Egypt. For Innis, speech is a time-biased medium. Oral communication, speech, was considered by Innis to be time-biased because it requires the relative stability of community for face-to-face contact. Knowledge passed down orally depends on a lineage of transmission, often associated with ancestors, and ratified by human contact.
Time Binding Media
Time-binding media let people preserve ideas and messages over great periods of time, and serve to keep the past alive in memory. cave paintings, obelisks, temples, monuments Messages and ideas expressed in time-binding media have the quality of relative permanence. For example, if time-binding media dominate a society, then its social structures tend to exhibit certain characteristics: Social institutions tend to be concerned with: history and tradition; religious, hierarchical organization; conserving ways of the past Cultures tend to emphasize: the sacred; the ritual; the historical
Reification
To 'thingify': To treat an abstraction as a material thing. ________ Reifying 'Technology' involves treating it as if it were a single material thing with a homogeneous, undifferentiated character. This notion can be seen as a kind of 'essentialism'. In common and academic usage, the word 'technology' is variously used to refer to tools, instruments, machines, organizations, media, methods, techniques and systems. And as Jonathan Benthall notes, 'virtually any one of a wide range of technical innovations can stand symbolically for the whole of technology... The symbolic field of technologies is interconnected' The problem is that it is easy to slip into generalizations about 'Technology'. as a monolithic phenomenon. Or the even broader umbrella of 'technique', by which he referred to 'the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency... in every field of human activity The linking of computers with other technologies is also making it increasingly difficult to make clear distinctions between different media. Technology is often seen as a whole which is more than the sum of its parts, or various manifestations. However, as Seymour Melman observes 'there is no machine in general'. Similarly, the umbrella term 'mass communication' covers a multitude of very different media. And even categories such as 'writing', 'print', 'literacy', 'television' or 'the computer' encompass considerable diversity. Some technologies may also be less determining than others; the flexibility or 'openness' of tools varies. And of course a technology cannot be cut off as a separate thing from specific contexts of use: technology has many manifestations in different social contexts. A single technology can serve many quite different purposes. Reification is a difficult charge to avoid, since any use of linguistic categorization (including words such as 'society' or 'culture') could be said to involve reification
Utopian
Transform society for the better
Hot Media
Use of a single sense (such as sight) at the expense of the other senses The book is a very 'hot' medium because it extends one sense "in high definition": the eye.
Rushkoff Views
Utopian - Networked technology allows users to 'write their own narratives'. You have access to more info at home (or in your pocket) than a network newsroom had in the 1970s. ________ Says new technologies are not creating a revolution so much as creating the conditions for a renaissance, or rebirth of culture and ideas. As society continues to assimilate the results of the shift caused by recent technological progress, the networked lifestyle will assume increasing importance, and fixed narratives, whether religiously grand or culturally mundane, will become more open to revision and redirection. In the process, he argues that networked citizens will become active co-creators of both cultural and political programs, determining their own destiny to a greater extent than ever before.
≠≠A Moral Panic≠≠
When Communication about the technology becomes more important than the technology itself.
Concepts of figure and ground (the big 'N')
Whenever we experience a situation, certain elements of that situation tend to capture our attention while other elements are ignored. For instance, when you looked at The Big N for the first time, you probably paid attention to the black marks and ignored the frame of the painting. Once you were given the name of the painting, however, the frame became linked to the figures, and an 'N' suddenly appeared. The 'invisible' ground of the painting became visible and it entered into an active relationship with the figures, revealing a new overall situation ..... the letter 'N' If either the figures or the ground were to change, or were we to shift our attention, our interpretation of the painting's structure would also change. McLuhan began to use the terms figure and ground in the early 1970's as a way 'to describe the parts of a situation,' and to help explain his ideas about media and human communication.
Time and Space Binding Media
the new media of communication tend to make time and space obsolescent. Today, our social spaces are defined less and less by physical distance. We create 'virtual' communities that stretch across the planet, linked by a modern communication network of telephones, radios, TVs, and computers. Being 'near' something today does not necessarily mean being close to it in space. Harold Innis: communication media can 'bind' space and time. To 'bind' space: keeping messages together over great distances. To 'bind' time: preserving messages over great periods of history. Time-binding media let people preserve ideas and messages over great periods of time, and serve to keep the past alive in memory. cave paintings, obelisks, temples, monuments Messages and ideas expressed in time-binding media have the quality of relative permanence. Space-binding media let people move ideas and messages across great distances. smoke signals, paper, radios, telephones They also make it easy to express new ideas or revise previous messages and ideas. They have a quality of relative transience. the cultural influence of a medium is related to its inherent ability to bind time or space ... in other words, its bias. McLuhan believed that with these cultural and social institution changes because of media, our relationships to ourselves and others are being transformed by the space-bias of modern communications. According to McLuhan, this growing interdependence through the instantaneous binding of time and space turns us all into wandering citizens living in a global village: "Humans are suddenly nomadic gatherers of knowledge; nomadic as never before, informed as never before, free from fragmentary specialism as never before -- but also involved in the total social process as never before; since with electricity we extend our central nervous system globally, instantly interrelating every human experience." Our communications media change our relationship to time and space, and this transforms our ideas about the world
Additional notes on global village and time/space irrelevance
the new media of communication tend to make time and space obsolescent. Location used to be everything. Being 'near' to something referred to physical proximity...inches and kilometres. This was how cities and production centres emerged. People and resources gathered together in space in order to have easy access. Communicative activities were closely related to physical distance. Today, our social spaces are defined less and less by physical distance. We create 'virtual' communities that stretch across the planet, linked by a modern communication network of telephones, radios, TVs, and computers. Being 'near' something today does not necessarily mean being close to it in space. By connecting people in real-time and across vast distances of space, modern media have a powerful influence on culture and society. Everyday through TV, telephone, radio, and computer, we see and hear and read about the whole world. Our sense of responsibility extends across countries and continents, and we become citizens of the planet.
Definition of Technology
the ways and means that human beings have created to help us communicate with one another the various ways and means with which human beings interact with the world of matter, energy, and information.
Culture
the ways people organize their customs, as well as the ways people organize their ideas and their beliefs about the world Therefore, culture includes such things as governments, jobs, families, entertainment, school, religion, science, sports and games, food, fashion, and all forms of self-expression.
Utopian vs dystopian views (Rushkoff, Schenk, Gleick, Stoll) Explain and be able to give examples of the two perspectives (you can use the slides for this)
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