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.