Transcript New media - Personal Home Pages (at UEL)

Introduction to New Media
What is “New” Media?
intro to new media
New Spaces of Interaction and Encounter
Lecture notes posted to
MS1304 module blog
• http://ms1304.blogspot.com/
Aim of the lectures
To provide context to new spaces of interaction
YOU
To introduce students to models,
theories and concepts relating to
new media
To apply these models, theories and
concepts to the subject of new
media
To build an intellectual platform from
which students can contemplate,
contextualize and discuss new
media
Aims of Today’s Lecture
• New Media not just
about unquestionable
technological
invention and
progress
• Helps determine,
to some extent,
what people can
and can’t do
• New Media about
people, culture,
societies, economics
• Plays a role in the
distribution of
social and personal
power
What is “New” Media?
Where do we start?
Where do we start?
Structure
1. Definitions & claims
2. Historical perspectives & narratives
3. Analysis – The essay
Definitions & claims
What is this thing we have
encountered?
Old definitions of new media
(technical descriptions of multimedia date back to
1960s, but proliferate after digitisation in the 1990s)
• The ‘sum of its parts’
• "Any combination of text,
graphic art, sound,
animation, and video that
is delivered by computer"
Vaughan, T, (1993), Multimedia:
Making It Work (first edition)
Berkeley: Osborne/McGraw-Hill.
• “Multimedia is the seamless
integration of data, text,
images of all kinds and
sound within a single,
digital information
environment"
Feldman, T (1997) An
Introduction to Digital Media,
London: Routledge
From multimedia to the “new”
• … “New media” came into
prominence in the mid-1990s,
usurping the place of
“multimedia”… it portrayed
other media as dead or old… it
was not mass media,
specifically television. It was
fluid, individualized
connectivity, a medium to
distribute and control
freedom… an interactive
medium’
•
Wendy Chun (2006) New Media/Old Media
London & New York: Routledge, p. 1
Ways of thinking about the term
“NEW”
•
• “New” impossible to
describe – moment it
comes into being it
isn’t new anymore.
• The “new” categorizes
and prescribes the
encounter.
• Yet “new” is used to
describe an
encounter…
• Something that should
be treated differently
from the old
Wendy Chun (2006) New Media/Old Media London &
New York: Routledge, p. 3
– The wonderful new
– New media, the New
World, New Labour
– Forget the past, this is
different
Definitions & Claims
online and offline
Definitions & Claims
online and offline
• ‘The new media are a
combination of offline and
online media, such as
computer networks and
personal computers… a
combination of transmission
links and artificial memories
(filled with text, data, images
and/or sounds) that can also be
installed in separate devices.’
• Jan van Dijk (2006) The
Network Society. London: Sage,
pp. 4-5
•
Being Online
Alex Galloway and
Eugene Thacker (2007)
The Exploit,
Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press p.
126.
•
We have traditionally thought of
ourselves as either online or offline
– Dial-up culture
•
This is a changing circumstance
•
In work we are online
(accountable) offline
(unaccountable)
•
Broadband, wireless, mobile
connectivity make us increasingly
online – in the bathroom,
unconscious
•
Bots run all day and night – text
messages, online gaming – 24
hours online culture
New Experiences
• ‘The body becomes a medium of perpetual
locatability, a roving panoply of tissues,
organs, cells orbited by personal network
devices.’
•
Alex Galloway and Eugene Thacker (2007) The Exploit,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press p. 126.
Social Media
Facebook nearly as large as U.S. population
What happens to a population
when it goes online?
A new form of collective intelligence
and sensation
• ‘Digital media
technologies… are
revolutionising our
sensory perceptions
and cognitive
experiences of being
in the world’
•
Everett and Caldwell (2003) , New Media, London & New York:
Routledge, p. xi
Too Much Connectivity
Information Commodity Overload,
Spam and Social Contagion
Ubicomp
• The Internet of
Things
• Makes the point that
whereas once the user
interacted with a
system, it is now the
user that becomes the
subject of interaction
New Creative Tools
(Create Mediascapes)
New Area of Creative Pursuit
A Work of Art
•
‘Computer programming, graphical
human-computer interface,
hypertext, computer multimedia,
networking… have actualized the
ideas behind the projects by
artists.’
•
Painters, composers, sculptors
have been usurped by the new
media artist.
•
The web itself is a vast work of art.
Lev Manovich, 2000 The Language of New Media
New Spaces of Interaction
•
•
•
•
•
Websites
CD-ROM
DVD
Audio visual
Games
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Installations
Interactive television
Interactive toys
Mobile phones (GPS)
PDAs
Simulations
Ubi-Comp
A Brief History of the
“New” Media
When did the “new” begin…
New media the result of
the convergence
between
• modern media
• the computer
• Computing
•
•
•
Analogue media
– Photographic camera (France
1839)
– Cinema (France 1895)
– Radio (1901 - UK)
– Television (1920s)
•
Mass dissemination of information
(output)
–
–
–
Texts
Images
Sounds
•
•
Charles Babbage (London 1833)
– The Analytical Engine
George Boole (Oxford 1854)
– Boolean logic
Turing machine theory
(Cambridge 1936)
– Theory of computable numbers
Von Neumann (1940s in the US)
– Processor/memory
The processing of mass information
(input)
–
–
Votes
Records
New Media Politics
The Cold War
And Counter Culture
Modern Computing
and its Cold War (1945-1989) Origins
1930s –
Turing
the theory of computable
numbers
1940s -
von Neumann
the architecture of the
machine
Shannon
the bits and bytes of
information
Bush - 1945
As We May Think - 1950-60s
Licklider - 1960
Human Computer Symbiosis
Baran – 1961
Packet switching
Engelbart - 1962
Interactive tools
State funded/commercial development of
The Microchip
The Internet
Packet switching
(a network able to withstand nuclear attack?)
•
The rapid transmission of small blocks of data over a channel dedicated to the connection only for the duration of one packet's transmission. Each packet can take a different path from
sender to receiver. By contrast, most telephone systems still use a circuit switching model, in which all data travels along a continuous dedicated path between the sender and receiver.
D is for Defence
(Defence) Advanced Research Projects Agency
“When in the late
1970s, ARPA (Advanced
Research Projects
Agency) changed to
DARPA, the D standing
for defence; it meant
finally that only
projects with a direct
military value would be
funded from then on”
(Manuel DeLanda, 1991 p.169).
Counterculture
Counterculture
1. High tech military
spending
concentrated in the
Bay area in San
Francisco
2. Centre of counter
culture movement in
the 60s…
3. Now the site of
Silicon Valley
Wise, R 2000. Multimedia: A Critical Introduction,
London: Routledge.. pp 25-41
Counterculture
• Stresses the
democratic potential
of the computer
and…
Counter culture relation
with technology
• 60s-70s
– electric guitar
• Computer as ‘spiritual
and intellectual
evolution’
• 80s-90s
– the computer
Wise, R 2000. Multimedia: A Critical Introduction.
Routledge. London. Pp 25-41
counterculture
• 60s-70s
– LSD
• 80-90s
– Cyberspace
• Link with psychedelic and
computer counter
culture…
Tim Leary (turn on, tune in & drop
out) on W Gibson (Science
fiction writer)
– High Frontiers
– Reality Hackers
– Mondo 2000
‘provider of the underlying myth
of the next stage of human
evolution’
– Grateful Dead
– Electronic Freedom
Foundation
Wise, R 2000. Multimedia: A Critical Introduction.
Routledge. London. Pp 25-41
1965
Ted Nelson
Counterculture_a DIY media
• Old media tools and
content were tied
together
• There is thus a
mystical authority
established
• The models ‘worked’
on the audience
• Audience
• Broadcaster
Rushkoff, D (1994) Cyberia: life in the trenches of
hyperspace, London: Harper Collins.
http://www.rushkoff.com/cyberiabook.html
counter culture = A DIY media
• New media gave
the tools to the
audience
• Thus the mystical
authority is broken
by interactivity
• the remote
• the joystick
• the application
• We have control
over the pixel…
• the network
• The DNA of new
media...
Control over the Pixel?
What do you notice about Dave?
Control over the pixel
Photoshop as a political tool?
New Media Paradigm
• ‘A new media that is not necessarily
constrained by the dominant
characteristics of mass media’
(Jankowski and Hanssen, Contours of Multimedia 1996)
The actor Alec Baldwin has boycotted
the Emmy awards after the event's
broadcaster, Fox News, refused to air a
joke he made about the phone-hacking
scandal at News International.
The End of Authority?
• Hypertext blurs the roles
of author & reader (Landow)
• Internet threatens
established power
structures
New Media Goes Corporate
New Media Contagions
Blackberry, Twitter and Facebook questioned over
the English Summer Riots
New communication paradigm?
Old paradigm (mass
communication) = one to
many - sender to receivers
New paradigm (networked
media) = many to many sender to receivers???
mass media?
mass
passive
linear
user-inaccessible
new media?
interactive
(demassified)
non-linear
user-responsive
networked
New Media Field of Study
DIGITALISATION
VIRTUALITY
USE
COVERGENCE
NETWORKS
THE USER EXPERIENCE
INTERACTIVITY
SIMULATIONS
SOCIAL MEDIA
MODELS OF INTERACTIVITY
ONLINE COMMUNITY
NEW MEDIA POLITICS
NON-LINEAR COMMUNICATION
CYBERCULTURE
NETWORK ECONOMY
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
HACKING
SOCIAL POWER
INFORMATION SPACE
SPAM
CONTAGIONS
INFORMATION AGE
OPEN SOURCE
AFFECT
HYPERSPACE
TACTILE MEDIA
COGNITION
HYPERTEXT
CODE/SCRIPTS
HYPERMEDIA
MOBILE
HYPERFICTION
UBICOMP
NAVIGATION DESIGN
INTERFACE DESIGN
Analysis of New Media
(unpicking/breaking down problems)
theories/concepts/models/methods
• 1. Is the new media really ‘new’?
• 2. ‘Is the experience of a virtual community any
different from the experience of a real
community?’
• 3. ‘How does interactivity change the way in
which we communicate with authority?’
• IS THE NEW MEDIA REALLY ‘NEW’?
• Things to consider in your answer… What does
‘new’ mean in this context? What are the
arguments put forward concerning a paradigm
shift in media history? What examples help to
either support or undermine these claims? Is new
media over hyped or is there really something
‘revolutionary’ about it?
• IS THE EXPERIENCE OF A VIRTUAL COMMUNITY
ANY DIFFERENT FROM THE EXPERIENCE OF A
REAL COMMUNITY?
• Things to consider in your answer… Ideas
concerning what community means. How can we
define ‘virtual’? What are the differences between
belonging to a community based on physical
proximity and those that are linked ‘virtually’ like
Facebook? Use examples of both virtual and real
and compare and contrast.
• HOW DOES INTERACTIVITY CHANGE THE WAY IN WHICH
WE COMMUNICATE WITH AUTHORITY?
• Things to consider in your answer… models of
communication, models of interactivity, examples of
interactive experiences in which individuals communicate
with authorities, for example, local government, the police
or any institution that has an element of control over an
individual’s life. Does interactivity change these relations,
and if so how are they transformed? Give consideration to
communication through social media, email and mobile.
Prep reading for next week
• Reading and viewing the Global Village
• Marshall McLuhan's Global Village‘ By Benjamin Symes
• Danah Boyd, (2007) Viewing American class divisions through
Facebook and MySpace
• Mark Wigley “Network Fever” in Wendy Chun (ed.) (2006) New
Media/Old Media (London & New York: Routledge, pp. 375-397