Research 4

Digital Eastern Thought Subverting Western Culture

Jaron Lanier is a digital media critic, computer scientist, author, and musician who currently holds several adjunct faculty positions at various Ivy League schools around the country. In 2006 he wrote an essay titled Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism. The essay maps out Lanier’s views toward the subversive effect that many information aggregate websites such as digg.com and wikipedia (specifically) are beginning to have on our culture. Users of such sites receive their news, weather reports and whatever other information they spend countless hours hunting for through postings from unknown sources as if they magically appear out of the ether of the internet. These “one stop shopping” locations are not in and of themselves negative, but Lanier feels that “there's a frantic race taking place online to become the most "Meta" site, to be the highest level aggregator, subsuming the identity of all other sites”, and it is this race that may have the potential to dumb down our society and only increase the confusion related to many of the emerging digital mediums.

Why is this important to new media and the humanities? Lanier reminds us that “the beauty of the Internet is that it connects people. The value is in the other people. If we start to believe that the Internet itself is an entity that has something to say, we're devaluing those people and making ourselves into idiots.” Sites like wikipedia, informational as they are, are not in themselves purveyors of information and truth; they simply present facsimiles of what has come before and only regurgitate information into the “hive mind.” Humans do not think in terms of hive mentality, or at least not currently. For most people, the process of gaining knowledge from one singular source is a matter of convenience rather than participation in a collective conscious. But what these aggregate sites provide in addition to convenience is information provided in hive mind mentality, stripped away of all authorship, accountability and responsibility.

Lanier feels that one of the primary ways in which some of these “meta” sites are lacking is their lack of “checks and balances.” One of the primary tenets of wikipedia is the notion of “more eyes, less lies.” This mantra is helpful in most instances were grievous errors are made on a specific site or a person with nefarious means intentionally interjects incorrect information. But how does the collective handle information that is without an answer, information that is without an absolute “truth”? What if the collective, the hive mind, the masses of people are simply incorrect? Without accountability the collective is free to determine whatever “truth” they deem as correct.

Most of our culture would most likely include sites such as wikipedia within a definition of what is new media. They identify a specific technology or trend as fundamental to their definition, oblivious to the effect that that technology has on them. But most people involved in the study these technologies and trends would define new media it as its affect on humanity, with participation and interaction being fundamental to understanding the technology. If our culture continues to erase the humanity from their technology and information where does that leave us? How will we continue to cognitively grow? Or will we begin to have our technology thinking for us? Lanier brings his opinions to the fore front not to shut down information aggregates but (like a good student of new media) to add some humanity to the ether. Because ultimately that is what this discussion is all about.





Lanier, Jaron. Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism. Edge. May 30, 2006.

Porn Stars, New Media and the Cyborg

The other day I was thinking about porn. Now these weren't the typical thoughts I usually have about porn but surprisingly were more geared toward our new media class. I began to think about how porn stars, male and female, alter their bodies. Similarly to the way in which Harraway talks about how the cyborg remakes themselves, porn stars remake themselves into the way that they wish to be.

Harraway states that cyborgs are "an ironic, political myth" rebuilding themselves in a way that is separate from the conventions (culturally, physically and ideologically) that make up current and existing culture. They live in a world that is not entrenched in the "myths" of a culture but are able to rise above those conventions and remake those ideologies and themselves in a way that best serves the current technological world.

In a sense, porn stars do the same thing. First, they are not encumbered by notions of gender and the ideologies that accompany them. The instances in which gender does necessitate a form, they fashion those roles into new experiences. Next, porn stars remake their own bodies. Of course many people have cosmetic surgery that are not in the porn industry, but what separates porn stars from other people is the length to which they sometimes take their alterations. They have taken the norm of what is considered to beautiful and sexual and created a hyper-real version of it. They are not striving to be the most beautiful, they are striving to reconstruct themselves and their image into a idealized version of themselves, one based upon their own ideals.

I do not know how much of the porn industry is based strictly upon the emergence of digital technology (or any specific technology for that matter, after all it is the oldest profession), but digital technology is going to continue to increase exponentially and so to, most likely will the porn industry. It will be interesting to see how the proliferation of porn via the internet will shape our culture. It will also be interesting to watch if the "freedom to come into your own" attitude, exemplified by many in the porn industry, will bleed into culture on broader scale.

Research 3

“Interactivity is the property of the technology, while participation is the property of culture” –Henry Jenkins (8)

Henry Jenkins wrote an article in 2006 for the Macarthur Foundation. The paper, entitled Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (referred to as The White Paper by the author), shifts the focus of media education within our society from that of a technological stand point to that of a cultural standpoint. I found the above quote to encompass not only the overarching theme of the paper but it also serves as a reflection of our societies views of digital technology and why many controversies surrounding implementation of digital technology are confusing to the public.

The article states that much of the youth of today are involved in many forms of what Jenkins calls participatory culture. Examples of participatory culture come in four forms: affiliations, expressions, collaborative problem-solving, and circulations. Affiliations include any activities including metagaming, game clans, MySpace and Facebook. Expressions are “producing new creative forms, such as digital sampling, skinning and modding, fan videomaking, fan fiction writing, zines, mash-ups” (Jenkins 3). Collaborative problem solving involves individuals working as teams to complete tasks and “develop new knowledge” (3) such as wikipedia. Participants in circulations are involved in “shaping the flow of media, such as podcasting and blogging” (3). Jenkins goes on to acknowledge that much of our society feels “that children and youth acquire these skills and competencies on their own by interacting with popular culture” (3). This assumption is obviously false based upon many controversies surrounding cyber culture, controversies which are beyond the assumed technological growing pains.

Jenkins views three primary concerns in terms of media education, The Participation Gap, The Transparency Problem and The Ethics Challenge. First, Many people in the world wish to be involved with the internet revolution but due in part to either inadequate availability to equipment or lack of knowledge to use the equipment some individuals are restricted from participating. The second and third issues are quite possible where much of today’s problems, such as internet piracy and Digital Rights Management (DRM), arise.

Most media education seems to focus on learning the technology and the skills to be able to use the technology. This is a very worthwhile endeavour but seldom are people taught "to see clearly the ways that media shape perceptions of the world" (Jenkins 3). Furthermore, media education, though it does instruct skills for using technology it fails to instruct people to approach their participation in cyber culture with responsibility in regards to society on a whole. These are issues that "might prepare young people for their increasingly public roles as media makers and community participants" (Jenkins 3).

One prominent challenge facing participatory culture right now is internet piracy. Many major media companies have resorted to suing other companies and individuals for copyright infringement and theft via file sharing. The media industry is at fault for wanting to secure what is legally theirs, but the fault lies their inability to see what this participatory culture is creating (and thus proliferating the media companies content). Likewise, the people responsible for copyright infringement are not trying to steal, for example music, for the sake of stealing, but are reaffirming the product media company has released by including it in their new "mash-up." What the individual fails to realize is the larger effect that this behavior has on our society and our economy.

Media education needs to stem from the culture not from the technology; from the participatory not from the interactivity. If our society would stop allowing our media to instruct people on how to act and expecting the "magic black box" (Jenkins 7) to automatically instill education and start becoming invested (participating), we will be in a much better position to address some of the current and future problems.


Jenkins, Henry. MacArthur Foundation. The White Paper

New Media Venacular is Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

Affiliation, affinity, multitasking, participatory, interactivity, semiotic,transparency,...

All of these are words are not new, but the meanings of them are now new. So I suppose that they are in fact "new words." What these words all have in common (besides being reissued words, fresh out of the box of cyberculture and smelling like plastic) is that I have had repeated encounters with them as I have studied the new medium of video games. All of these words are obviously not new and have been around for ... well, a long time I'm sure. But as media evolves so to does our language. The words that we use now to describe current forms of media will most likely be different than the words we will use in the future.

There are many words that are not even currently within our vocabulary or just have not been developed yet. Take for instance the piece "As We May Think" by Vannevar Bush. Throughout that article Bush is describing in depth what sounds like our current computers and more specifically their ability to hyperlink, one of the tenents of the digital age. What Bush did not have was the vocabulary. The words we use today did not exist in 1945 when Bush was writing. In fact, Bush's vision is so far a head of its time that many of the words today didn't even exist fifteen years ago.

It has been difficult to find words that to describe the cognitive and social processes of video games. Much of the venacular surrounding media criticism is still being developed and no doubt there are many words that will develop before our society reaches digital adulthood.

With all that having been said though, it is an exciting time to be in media studies. And who knows, with wikiality poised like a 10 ton load of crap hangning over our societal heads, I might be able change the meanings of a few words. Or, I just might come up with a few words of my own, ... hmmm.

The holodeck and why I wouldn't come back

Though I for would love to have a holodeck, especially after Murrays disection of the holodeck as a model for where electronic narrative could be going, I could certaintainly see myself becoming far too involved in it. Just as we had discussed in class, I feel that the idea of a holodeck would potentially be a very destructive invention within our current culture.

Of course one may say that the Star Trek "continum" or the world of Star Trek is one that is more civilized and altruistic and would be able to handle the holodeck with all of its potential vises and dangers. The people of the Federation would not get become lost in the holodeck because those people have chosen a better life for not only themselves but for humanity. They are (assumably) a more educated humanity. Which is by Murray's own account the only thing that saves Captain Janeway from the allures of the holodeck.

I found the distinction Murray drew out between the holodeck and the feely interesting. The primary seperation between the two devices is that one (the feely)presents a narrative by taping directly into the sensational and 'feeling' part of the brain while the other (the holodeck) allows the allows the user to dertermine their own level of invovlement. Murray terms the holodeck as "The Thinking Womans Feely," a device that allows the user to their own level of physical involvement and while still adhering to a predetermined narrative.

I really enjoy the position that Murray brings to the perverbial table of new media as it concerns the narrative in new media. As she states in so many words that the direction that new media is taking us we do not even have the terminology or technology to understand what is coming. As someone who has been looking at what it means to study a new medium, video games, I have found myself using the much of the same venacular and terminology I use with my friends and other people I game with to describe and discuss video games as I have used in my research.

Research 2

Jacob Welch
HUMN 4460
Prof. Lucas
March 1, 2007


Throughout E-Crit, Macel O’Gorman is attacking what he calls “The Republic of Scholars” which is the educational system or more specifically, the academic institution of higher learning. O’Gorman seems to be criticizing the academy for being short sighted in regards to new media. The stodginess of the “Republic” seems to grate upon O’Gorman enough to drive him to examine what it is within the discourse of new media that may be the potential jumping off point (and up-hill battle) towards critical assimilation of new media into academics. What he found is that most of new media currently falls into what he calls hypericonomy. Hypericonomy is “what Jean-Jacques Lecercle has termed ‘the remainder’ of language. Puns, anagrams, false etymologies macaronics and metaphor of all breeds fall into this repressed category, this ‘other of language’” (O’Gorman 4).

The scholars seem to hold that if it is not written in text then it is not permissible within the academy. Digital technology so far within the academy seems to only be a new way of transmitting old information. Books are permissible in a digital format, so long as it is still a published text. It is ironic that the new and more capable medium is made to backpedal because of the old medium and tradition. It is similar to a person getting into a car to drive to a gym just to do some aerobic walking. Or like a person who works as a video editor to make money that helps pay for college tuition so that he can get a degree in video editing which would help him find a job.

The forth chapter of the book is the digital application of hypericonomy or “what hypericonomy might look like as a digital media practice” (O’Gorman 69). The chapter could be divided into three distinct sections. Within the first O’Gorman is explaining how it is possible the remainder and not the academy that is on the forefront of increasing intelligence. The next section shifts its analysis of the “modes of cognition for pedagogical purposes” (76) from within a psychological context to a more familiar humanities context, the fine arts.

I am constantly reminded of Marshall McLuhan and his work The Medium is the Message throughout this chapter. McLuhans message of understanding a given medium or suffer the potential of having the medium being in control, seems that it should be at the forefront of all critical approaches to new media. It seems that the ‘McLuhan Lens’ should be the first critical diagnostic that should be performed on a new medium, and it should certainly be applied before any Marxist, Feminist or Anarchist critical framework mounted to it. It certainly seems feasible that a initial interpretation of the role of video games, television, cinema and any other highly pictorial based medium might have been misread by the academy and thus relegated to ‘the remainder.’ But the “pedagogic avant-garde, from the U.S. Army to the Baby Einstein Company” (O’Gorman 73) have found promise in many non-scholarly approaches to learning, intelligence and education. And if O’Gorman’s comments and provided commentary from other authors regarding the way imagery and other hypericonomies coincide with the Flynn Effect are indeed true, than the Republic of Scholars may indeed have a “face-to-face encounter with the…monstrous ‘other’ of the conventional academic discourse” (4).


Works Cited

O’Gorman, Marcel. “E-Crit Digital Media, Critical Theory and the Humanities” Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.
http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/impact/myths.html

McLuhan, Marshall. “The Medium is the Message.” Media Studies. Ed. Paul Marris and Sue Thornham. New York: New York University Press, 2000. 38-43

New Media and CIT

A slight diversion from the typical blog entry this week...

Throughout this class (Macon State College, HUMN 4460; for all of you playing from home) I have had the privilege of reading many significant text concerning the field of new media and emerging cyberculture. Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Message and Harraway's The Cyborg Manifesto are two highlights that engage new media as it pertains not only to the future but more importantly how it pertains to the now; where we as a culture, and more broadly as a human race, are physically, intellectually, and spiritually. A lot of deep, head-y, theoretical stuff that gives a media studies student appropriate perspective and comprehension of what it is that they are studying.

As this class continues though, I find myself embarking on a kind of retro-analysis of many of my previous classes. I have been questioning, pondering and re-filtering much of the information, theories and software applications in an attempt to garner more from them by way of what I have been learning about media theory. Because this unintentional reevaluation has been occurring it has led me to wonder why this class is suggested to be taken when it is.

Now I may be wrong in my understanding of whether this class is required to be taken at specific time or only suggested to be taken at a specific time or perhaps it is just the tradition to do this. Maybe it is the specific correlation with the senior project that it is felt that the new media seminar facilitates further cognition towards a seniors capstone project.

But because of the impact that this class has had on me thus far (in regard to the education that I have received for my degree) I think the class might be better positioned elsewhere. I might suggest that this class be offered to students as they enter the CIT Program rather than when they are leaving it. I believe that this class sets up many of the critical frameworks necessary for academic, scholarly work but situates them with in the field of media. It lays a foundation for students to be able to approach their major with perspective on everything 'new' that they might encounter until they graduate. The class also provides students with the proper understanding of critical theories and how they pertain to media enabling them to siphon more from each class they take.

I think that the new media seminar and the senior project would make great bookends to an already great degree program.

What is new media (so far...)

New Media as a class has not been quite what I expected. This has without a doubt been a very elusive topic. Yes the the new Dell PC is "new media" and the Apple iPhone is "new media" as well. And though I expected the class to look at some of these examples of new media more closly and perhaps the social, cultural and technological underpinnings that brought them about, I never expected the class to be about cyborgs. I will now attempt to summerize what new media is.

It does make sense though to have the class about cyborgs (now it does, though I am still a bit confused at times). It makes sense that in order to truly understand these new technologies a person must understand not only themselves but their location within the universe. I use the term 'location' in as much the literal sense as I do the metaphysical sense. I hold that McLuhans message that we must understand media or we will be controlled by it. McLuhan also states that media are political and for something to be political necessitates that it effects the body. These statments help to break us from our traditional line of thinking and allows for the cyborg to enter in.

The cyborg is as Harraway states an "ironic political myth." The cyborg is a hybrid; a combination of the physical and the additional. The cyborg seems to have all the knowledge and associations without the boundaries that typically come with knowledge and society. Due to this, the cyborg moves beyond those myths (the associations and boundaries that confine us)while still retaining them; able to pull them apart and reconstruct them in a way that is suitable for the 'now.' The cyborg moves from the old to the new.In this way, the cyborg is the effect that new media has on the body (physical and spiritual).

So what is new media? New media, in all of it's conventions, allows us to move beyond ourselves and come into our own.

Or something like that...

The Robotic Technophobic Sloth

The Robotic Technophobic Sloth is us. It is you. It is me. It is our culture. Now let me explain.
The title typifies portions of our culture and certain cultural attitudes towards new media. Our society is becoming increasingly dependent upon technology. Similarly to what Marshall McLuhan stated about media being an extension of our selves and part of our bodies, a large part of our cultural identities and our humanity is contained within computers. In fact, I would go as far as to make the analogy that if there were to be a major computer attack within our country (we'll call it "cancer") against the infrastructure that governs our communication systems (we'll call that "the lungs") there would significant maybe even devestating disruption to our lives. We have become, in a sense, robotic, or at the very least cyborgs.

But where all this stems from, as well as the idea of us being technophobe's, is from Nicholas Negroponte's book Being Digital. The book is full of "predictions" about the future of media that, now, 12 years later, we are seeing many coming true. Because of the accuracy of his insight, we must take a look at some of the "predictions" that either did not or are slow to pass. Take for instance what he has to say about education. On page 220 he writes that classrooms and teaching in general are one area that have remained relativly untouched by the advancement of digital technology and that "84 percent of America's teachers consider only one type of information technology absolutely 'essential': a photo copier with an adequate paper supply." Now I understand that there are many different factors that determine why the arena of education has not "kept with the times" and an area such as the medical field has. But it is subtly indicitive of where the mentality towards new media and technology lies. Given that technology is an extension of ourselves and one must use to learn that technology at some point in their life, it could certainly be understood why certain members of our society are afraid of or at the very least resistent to new technology.

Technological advancement is coming whether people want it to or not. Due to cultural resistence to the "next next thing" in technology it is proceding at a pace no faster than that of a sloth. This pattern is cyclical: technology is released, people adjust and adapt and endure the growing pains. Just as soon as they begin reaching their stride with the new technology, something else new is released and the whole process begins again. I do not know whether Steve Jobs made the chicken or Bill Gates laid the egg, but technology developers weigh heavily the proper time and distribution of what they create so as not to have our bodies (society) reject what is being put into it.

Then again maybe this all just circumspection and I'm just getting to be an old robotic technophobic sloth.

Cubism - McLuhan - Grammer of Print

There are several strong and several perplexing points that McLuhan makes in the Medium is the Message. I have chosen to try to clarify the points he made with the art form of cubism and "the grammer of print."

Cubism, as defined by McLuhan himself is,
"In other words, cubism, by giving the inside and outside, top, bottom, back, and front and the rest, in two dimensions, drops the illusion of perspective in favor of instant sensory awareness of the whole."
McLuhan goes on to specify that it as the point at which "sequence yields to simultaneous," the point that the individual parts 'speak' less loudly than the entirety, the the medium has indeed become the message. The individual parts are not distinctive compared to the whole they make up; "Specialized segments of attention have shifted to the total field. "

Similarly, and perhaps slightly easier to grasp is the "grammer of print" statement McLuhan makes. To understand grammer is to understand the communicative machanics involved with a given system. McLuhan precedes the "grammer of print" with Napoleon's understanding of the "grammer of gunpowder." To understand the 'grammer' of these two worlds is, like a cubist, to view the content of the field as a part of the whole, virtually ignoring the specific parts while focusing on the message of the whole. Napoleon understood the language of war and that it did not necessarily matter what or at whom a weapon was being fired but saw the broader implications of what that shot ment. De Tocqueville understood the grammer of print so well that "he was thus able to tread off the message of coming change in France and America as if be were reading aloud from a text that had been handed to him." He knew that what was being printed did not matter as much as print was saturated throughout the culture.

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