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.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Thursday, March 1, 2007
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
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)