cct 109 notes

Convergence

Convergence is the interlinking of computing and IT, communications networks, and media content that occurred with the development and popularization of the internet. It also refers to the convergent products, services, and activities that have emerged in digital media space.

Interactive

The ability to contribute to as well as consume media

Web 2.0 Principles

Decentralized in terms of control
User-focused and easy for new users to use
Open in terms of their technology standards, and applications programming interface
Relatively simple and lightweight in terms of design, admin requirements, start-up and development costs
Expected to evolve and change over time as users make new modifications to their sites

Web 2.0 Definition

A website in which the contributions to and evolution of the site happens through the web, via the users of the site. Its decentralized in control and has relatively low costs of development and maintenance.

New Media as Digital Media

Manipulability, Networkable, Dense, Compressible and Impartial

The 3 C's of New Media (Flew & Smith)

[Communications Network, Computing (Information Technology), Content (Media)] = Convergence

Digital Media

Forms of media content that combine and integrate data, text, sound and images of all kinds, are stored in digital formats and are distributed through networks.

Internet

A technical infrastructure of computers and other digital devices permanently connected through high speed telecommunication networks & the forms of content, communication, and info sharing that occurs through networks.

User-generated content

Content that is created by home users

Digital Divide

The differential access to and use of internet according to gender, income, race, and location

Globalization

The process by which businesses develop international influence and start to operate on an international scale. Used to describe and make sense of series of interrelated processes, such as the rise of multinational corporations.

Social Networking

Social networking is the use of internet-based social media programs to make connections with friends, family, or other users; for both formal and informal purposes.

Culture

Culture is "ordinary". Culture is not necessarily dictated to us from "elites" and it is not something that is "outside" or separate from society. Culture is what connects us to everyday life. Moreover, Culture expresses dominant, residual and emergent values.

Technology

A reputable social, cultural and material process by which scientific knowledge is applied for practical purposes.

Technological Culture

Technological Culture are the human conventions, norms, rituals, language, symbols and pastimes that evolve alongside technology. It also includes a variety of subcultures related to technology and the effects that technology has on mainstream cultures.

Raymond Williams' Definition of Culture

Culture is "a whole way of life".
Culture is "ordinary".

Explain culture is "a whole way of life".

It means culture is the formation, arrangement, and organization of what we think, believe, value, feel, and do. However, culture is never static; it is a process that entails changing relationships between what is old, what is new, and what is being reconfigured. It is driven by the interrelated work of tradition and selection.
The particular formation manifest by the relationship of dominant, residual, and emergent processes at a particular point in time.

Explain culture is "ordinary".

To claim culture is "ordinary" is to acknowledge that cultural processes occur within the variety of practices that constitute everyday life. These include a whole range of activities in which people engage and within which people make meanings in their lives, from everyday expressions and practices. Hence, culture is the process that connects the elements of everyday life, whether symbolic, structural, material, or affective.

Dominant Values

the commonly accepted values that define culture

Residual Values

often formed in the past and at some distance from mainstream culture and is often discredited or unpopular values.

Emergent Values

new meanings and values, new practices, new relationships and kinds of relationship are continually being created.

In terms of new media: Manipulable

Digital information is easily changeable and adaptable, at all stages of creation, storage, delivery, and use.

In terms of new media: Networkable

Digital information can be shared and exchanged between large numbers of users simultaneously, and across enormous distances.

In terms of new media: Dense

Very large amounts of digital information can be stored in small physical spaces (eg. USB flash drives)

In terms of new media: Compressible

The amount of capacity that digital information takes up on any network can be reduced dramatically through compression and decompressed when needed

In terms of new media: Impartial

Digital information carried across networks is indifferent to how it is represented, who owns or created it, or how it is used.

Libertarianism

A political and economic theory that posits the primacy of freedom and especially economic freedom to allow markets to regulate human affairs.

Give an example of convergence

Media companies that own internet companies or TV shows with complimentary websites all available freely on mobile devices and have a platform of communication.

Social impacts of the internet

Inequality, Community, Politics, Organizations and Culture.

Inequality impacts of the internet

New access to information (digital opportunity), access reflects other social inequalities (digital divide).

Community impacts of the internet

Social interaction and community through virtual communities that aren't space bound, online activities become an obstacle to real life interaction

Political impacts of the internet

Opportunity for online political engagement, information exchange and debates. Isolation from others in politically effective areas. Management of participation by political/economic "elites".

Organizational impacts of the internet

Network interaction with people in and outside of your own organization. Creates more horizontal channels of online communication. Internal surveillance/hierarchical communication

Cultural impacts of the internet

New opportunities for users to become media producers. Hyper-segmentation as barrier to communicate with others.
Dilution of a common culture.

Technological Determinism

A theory claiming that technology drives the development of social structure and cultural values.
That the technical base of a society is the fundamental condition affecting all patterns of social existence. This asserts that technology is central to defining what culture is.
That changes in technology are the single most important source of change in society. This asserts that technologies cause effects and that technological change is the primary cause of cultural change.

Social shaping of technology

An alternative approach to technological determinism that seeks to explain technological change in terms of the influence of key social groups, such that technology is shaped by social institutional, economic, and cultural factors.

3 frameworks of social shaping of technology

1. Diffusion of innovation model - focuses on social uptake of new technologies. Models the rate of adoption and eventual spread of innovation in social systems via particular channels.
2. Political Economy Approach - focus on politics and power relations embedded in technological development, such that technological development is constrained by cultural norms originating in economics, ideology, religion and tradition.
3. Cultural Studies - more optimistic about potential of new media. Can help to balance political economy approach which is skeptical about capacities of new media.

Knowledge economy

the theorized new economy that replaces older models of labor, capital, resources with info, services and innovation.

Progress

More and new technology have widely been used as the yard-sticks for progress.
1. Culture accepts that more things equals progress, more technology is unproblematically equated with progress.
2. Our culture equates technology with values from 18th century European Enlightenment: scientific objectivity, efficiency, and rationality.

What are the 4 major uses the story of progress has been put to in the US?

1. To promote a version of a "better life"
2. To sell us things
3. To judge others
4. To control populations

Cultural Determinism

Culture is understood to be the cause and technology the effect.
1. That the values, feelings, beliefs, and practices of the culture cause particular technologies to be developed and used.
2. That changes in culture result in changes in technology.

Critique of Cultural Determinism: effects

Foreseen effects are called intended/primary effects.
Unforeseen/undesirable effects are called unintended/secondary/side/revenge effects.
Side effects are effects that are unrelated to the intended effects of the technology - trade offs.
Revenge effects are unforeseen consequences that are directly linked to the intended effects.

''The medium is the message''

A medium has more affect on our mind/bodies than the content it carries.
The medium through which a message is experienced shapes the user's perception of the message.
Technologies are first and foremost extensions of human selves and capacities.
The impact of communication media on sensory perception not only influences what people think, but also how they think.
The key to understanding electronic culture is in the way in which they subtly alter the environment in which humans act and interact.

Dominant Media (voice, phonetic
alphabet, printing press, radio)

The dominant media of any given era changes the way we perceive the world. Thus, it dominates the way people (sensory) experience their culture.

Critique of the progress narrative

1. Problem of measuring progress - based on the number things that can be counted - having more. A focus on efficiency.
2. Progress and evolution conflated - as if technological changes follows the model of biological change - assumes that all technological change is "for the better".

Social Network Analysis

Methodology developed in social/behavioral sciences.
Maps interpersonal linkages using states and graphs.

Actor Network Theory

Places people and things in a network.
Ideas and technologies can be seen as actants.

Convergence Culture

Is used to describe a new era of transition where 'new and old media collide'.

Social production

The creation of good and services in a social or collaborative fashion

Participatory Culture

A culture in which citizens are not just media consumers but also media producers, usually through social media

Network Neutrality

A principle whereby the company agreeing to carry goods cannot discriminate between customers who wish to transport similar goods. Such that Internet Service providers cannot discriminate between the speeds at which different packets of data for different customers transmit through their network.

Open Source Movement

Decentralized networked and collaborative initiative to develop new softwares. Users access without cost where the backend system is open and flexible

This is an alternative to “Copy Right”

Raymond (1998): “Theres a cathedral model where the government controls things, and the “Bazaar” model where autonomous communities cooperate.”

Military Industrial Complex