CDAE2240 Unit 1: Digital Media & Public Culture

Who said “The Medium is the Message?”

Marshall McLuhan

Media

• Outlets to store and/or deliver content

• Means of communication

• The material or form used by an artist

What does “The Medium is the Message” mean?

The consequences of any medium result from the new scale that is introduced into human affairs

What is the example for “The Medium is the Message?”

The railway

• The railway accelerated and enlarged the scale of human relations (e.g. created cities and new consumer products)

• However, it is independent of the freight or content it carries (as a medium)

Where does “participatory culture” come from?

The book “Technology & Participation” (2016) by Jenkins et. al, where authors respond to the “rhetoric of participation” surrounding digital technologies

What is “participatory culture?”

• Contrasting participation with spectatorship

• Fans not simply as consumers of mass-produced content, but also as a creative community

• Appropriating and remixing “raw materials” from commercial entertainment texts

• Not a form of “networked individualism,” more than a collection of individuals

• Collective ownership and sharing economies

• Community

What are the characteristics of “participatory culture?’

• Embraces the values of diversity and democracy

• Assumes that we are capable of making decisions

• Relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement

• Strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations

• Members believe their contributions matter

• Members feel a social connection and care what other people think

• Informal mentorship of novices by those with more experience

• Shared social practices and spaces

What is the example for “participatory culture?”

Quilting circle

• Participatory culture is not based on a specific technology or new media

• Quilters create within the context of a community

• A quilter “remixes” remaindered cloth to make something new

Are technologies participatory?

No, they are interactive

What are subcultures & resistance?

• Cultures in opposition to their parent cultures

• Challenge the control of powerful institutions

• Pose critiques of ideologies being circulated within commercial culture

What negative things can be spread through participatory cultures?

• Disinformation

• Misinformation

• Hate speech

• Fear

Social capital

• Networks of relationships outside of work and family

• Community

• Shared sense of identity, understanding, etc.

What is the example for social capital?

Bowling leagues

• In the last 20 years, the number of people who bowled in leagues had decreased

• People bowling alone does not contribute to social capital

Relativity

A culture can be more or less participatory; the more hierarchical, the less participatory

What is Postman’s main argument?

• Television’s way of knowing is not “right”

• The phrase “serious television” is contradictory

• TV is turning our brains into mush and as a result our culture is going to hell

Pre-telegraph media culture that Postman analyzes

• Book culture

• Age of exposition

• Oral cultures

• Typography

Post-telegraph media culture that Postman analyzes

• Telegraph

• Television

• Internet

• Newspaper

• Age of show business

• Peek-a-boo world

What characterizes book culture?

• Books take time to read and produce

• Require contemplation and focus

• They are organized, linear and coherent

What does Postman think of book culture?

It is the right way to communicate and the proper way of knowing

How did telegraphy change the society?

Allowed information to move and spread faster

How does Postman define telegraphy?

“The new way of knowing.”

Gutenberg Press

• 15th century

• Movable type

• 120-200 newspapers per hour

Steam press

• 19th century

• Cylinder

• 10,000 newspapers per hour

• Cheaper and widely available

Penny Press

A steam press; responsible for sports, gossip, politics, entertainment

What is the steam press responsible for?

The birth of mass culture

• Unified consumption

• Reached large numbers of people

What are examples of mass culture?

• Birth of celebrities

• State of the Union – speaking to congress vs. speaking to the nation

What does Postman think of the newspaper?

• He says it is an abundant flow of information that has very little use

• It is removed from those who it addresses

What is television culture?

• Begins with telegraph and photograph

• Includes internet

What does Postman say about television culture?

“Television is the command center of the new epistemology.”

What characterized the new way of knowing, according to Postman?

• Irrelevance

• Incoherence

• Impotence

What is the information-action ratio?

Too much information and too little action that comes from generating an abundance of irrelevant information

What is the thesis for “Literature and Literacy?”

We need a new conception of literacy that accounts for new media

What does “situated learning” mean?

That context and environment is important for how students learn; not just what they learn, but how they learn it

What does “participatory learning” mean?

Learning that is collective rather than individualized, personalized or privatized and that respects and values the contribution of all participants (teachers, students, etc.)

What is the example used for “Anxiety About Information Abundance?”

Calorie abundance - information abundance works similarly to calorie abundance, which became a problem in its first stages because humans had to get used to diets containing more calories

What is “New Literacy?”

Not just production and consumption, but participation in networked publics

Why is Wikipedia seen as good?

• Amateurs are on the same level as experts

• It shares the way knowledge is generated

• Knowledge is under dispute

• It’s community-based knowledge with clearly articulated values, ethics and norms

What is feudalism (history)?

• The dominant social system in which the nobility held lands from the crown in exchange for military service

• Vassals were tenants of the nobles, and peasants / serfs had to live on their lord’s land and give him homage, labor, and a share of the produce

What is feudalism (definition)?

A combination of land and weaponry determined who had “power”

What contributed to the birth of capitalism?

• Enclosures

• Loss of common land in favor of private ownership

• Restricting access to the land helped capital’s capacity to command

• Capitalists overtake the aristocracy

Capital

Material goods that are specifically used to produce other goods

History of advertising and marketing

• Born out of the capacity for mass production and mass communication

• Development of brands connecting with consumers

• Selling consumers to producers

What has “the power to command?”

• Capital

• Advertising and marketing

• Cloud capital

What is cloud capital?

A new form of capital that has an unprecedented capacity to command and that allows algorithms to guide our behavior

What does cloud capital do?

It modifies, manufactures, curates, and therefore commands our desires through algorithms

History of the early internet

• Developed by US military and used by universities

• In the 90s, internet entered US homes

• A network that relied on horizontal decision making and mutual gift exchange instead of market exchanges

What is a protocol?

A language by which computers can communicate that is available to everyone for free

What are examples of protocols?

• TCP/IP

• POP

• IMAP

• HTTP

Web 2.0

Enclosures

Early Internet

The Commons

What does “Technofeudalism” mean?

Comes from Varoufakis, means corporations own our identity

Cloud

Comprised of vast data warehouses, with servers connected to a global web of sensors and cables

What does technofeudalism do?

• Harvests our data

• Tracks our activity

• Invisible curating of our content

• Sells our attention to others

What is the consumer called in technofeudalism?

Serf

Cloud proles

Workers driven to their physical limits by cloud-based algorithms

Cloud serfs

Consumers producing cloud capital for free

Cloud fiefs

Algorithms have replaced the “invisible hand” of the market

What is McLuhan’s view on technology?

Technocentric; he believes technology drives human relations

What is the view of participatory culture on technology?

Decenters technology; what people do with technology

What is Postman’s view on technology?

Technocentric, but hostile to new media

What is technofeudalism’s view on technology?

Technocentric from a Marxist perspective

What is the relationship between “enclosures” and capitalism in Great Britain (according to Varoufakis)?

Enclosures restricted access to land and were a precondition for capitalism’s development

What was the impact of the telegraph on the newspaper?

It increased the amount of information that the newspaper could provide to readers

What are internet “protocols” understood as, according to Varoufakis?

Digital “commons”

What does the concept of technofeudalism suggest?

• Capitalism is ending

• Consumers are creating cloud capital without being compensated

• Platforms like Amazon are not true markets

What did the industrial revolution do?

Dramatically shift (increase) the speed of communication

Technology “affordances”

The possible actions it enables and constrains