Week 1: NEW VS OLD MEDIA: WHAT ARE THEY* & HOW DO THEY COMPARE?
Kernbegrippen: Teleological Accounts of Media, Genealogical Theory of History,
Technological Imaginary, Digital, Interactivity, Hypertext, Networked, Virtual, Simulation,
Affordance
Lees:
- Lister et al. pagina 9 t/m 44 (tot kopje 1.3)
- Lister et al. pagina 51 t/m 68 (kopje 1.4 tot 1.5.3)
Hoorcollege
What are new media?
- an ideological and historical perspective
- an affordances perspective
“new” versus “old”
We often try to understand “new” media in relationship to “old” media
- to define their newness
- to acknowledge their similarity
“new” is more than a neutral descriptive term. New is better…
- because new is social progress in the sense of more effective production capabilities,
better education capabilities, better and more communication capabilities and new
opportunities to be creative
- because new brings us ever closer to the perfect medium
Teleology = a concept that frames new media in a historical relationship to the old
Technological imaginary = a concept that frames new media in an ideological relationship to
the old and the status quo
“Old as more primitive indicator of the “new”
“The question of the new requires a historical problem, a temporal and spatial framework in
which there are risks of setting up the new as culmination, telos of fulfillment of the old, as
the onset of utopia or dystopia. The conceptual problem is to enable a historical
differentiation of old and new without a totalising narrative” (Mark Poster in Lister et al.,
2009, p. 58).
Teleology
- assumes phenomena have certain predestined purposes that they develop towards
- “old media” thereby become “primitive versions” of the more “perfect” new media
- and the past merely becomes a lesser developed stage in the linear and logical
development process towards the future
The problem with teleology?
- it cannot account for contrasting or coincidental developments
- deciding on the purpose (telos) is highly selective (and contentious)
- individuals/groups/societies use (and develop) technology in different ways, making it
impossible to pin technology down into a single history
- it relies on an infallible believe in progress (making “old media” a mere benchmark for
the next version)
Genealogy as alternative history
, - Is not looking for a point of origin but instead presents history as a web of
connections between different phenomena, institutions and practices
- this perspective offers us new ways of establishing histories of new media that do not
rely on teleological relationships to old media.
Remediation = the ‘new’ in new media is the manner in which the digital technologies that
they employ ‘refashion older media’, and then these older media ‘refashion themselves to
answer to the challenges of new media’” (Lister et al., 2009, p. 47).
Moral media panic
The social and psychological fears (panics) accompanying/projected onto the establishment
of a new media phenomenon.
- addicition
- identification with aggressor
- lacks aesthetic quality and emotional depth of a book
- escapism
Technological Imaginary
The social and psychological desires (for a better society - wholeness, completeness)
accompanying/projected onto the establishment of a new media phenomenon.
- the ‘couch potato’ vs the active gamer
- passive indoctrination vs interactive construction
- solitary reading vs social gaming
Both technological imaginary and moral media panic (as concepts) help us see what we
(dis)value in our social reality (the status quo) and other (older) media.
What are new media?
,“Those methods and social practices of communication, representation, and expression that
have developed using the digital, multimedia, networked computer and the ways that this
machine is held to have transformed work in other media: from books to movies, from
telephones to television” (Lister et al., 2009, p. 2).
1. technological characteristics
2. what we do with these
- including changes in production, distribution and use (impact at a local level:
identity, social relationships, physicality - and at a global level: economically,
politically etc.)
3. and the way these characteristics are changing “older media”
- this raises the question: are new media really that new? (e.g. digital tv)
Affordances
To Lister et al. the question “what are new media?” is inherently tied up with another
question: “what do we do with new media?” (see Williams next week).
However, Lister et al. do acknowledge that we still need to pay attention to the materiality of
the technology (see McLuhan next week).
Therefore, the focus lies on the ways in which characteristics afford a certain type of use,
rather than characteristics as essential qualities of the object.
1. Digital
- Data storage (electronic en compressed)
- Data access (high speed and non-linear)
- Data manipulation (remix culture)
- “The established differences between author and reader, performer and
spectator, creator and interpreter become blurred and give way to a reading
writing continuum that extends from the designers of the technology and
networks to the final recipient, each one contributing to the activity of the
other” (Lévy in Lister et al. 2009, p. 19)
2. Interactive
Ideological connotations (technological imaginary)
- Passive versus active (user as opposed to viewer/reader)
- More power on the side of the user
- More independence in terms of information access
- More consumer(!) choice
Types of / approaches to interactivity
- Hypertext navigation (database: links on a website)
- Immersive navigation (spatial: most games)
- Registrational interactivity (adding: wikipedia, comments, forum)
- Interactive communication (dialogue: chat, video conference)
Questions raised by interactivity
- How do we study interactive texts? Or even… what is the text?
- How do we create an interactive narrative?
3. Hypertext
- Now-linear connections between different units of material/files (text, image,
sound)
- It allows users to navigate between a wide range of different materials and
thereby construct a non-linear text
4. Networked
, Media as nodes in a larger (almost) global network, (relatively freely) accessible to
everyone, all the time
Consumption
- from mass media to more specialized supply
- the media audience has fragmented into smaller groups with differentiated
and more specific interests
Distribution
- From centralised (one-many) transmission to decentralised (many-many)
network
Production
- From specialized and skilled professional to ‘usergenerated-content’
- The ‘prosumer’
5. Virtual
- Virtual reality: The Matrix, eXistenZ, Tron
- The (in-between) space we feel ourselves to be (on the phone, when chatting,
online…)
- As descriptor for a cyber-society (a society increasingly ingrained with
technology)
> From incomplete reality to another reality
- New experiences of embodiment
- Experimenting with identity
- Social relationships online
(also fears such as losing sense of reality)
6. (Simulation)
E.g. weather simulator: rainviewer.com
Simulation versus Representation? (week 3)
- It’s something real before it represents (imitates)
- It replaces or obfuscates a reality
Postmodernist simulation:
- Baudrillard’s ‘hyperreality’ -> The Matrix (obfuscation/replacement of the real)
Computer simulation:
- see Prensky -> e.g. weather simulation software (prediction/visualization/modelling of
processes)
Simulation games:
- e.g. Frasca (modelling complex rule systems)
It focuses our attention on how the thing models/functions (the underlying system) rather
than on what it represents/means
It raises questions about the relationship between the virtual and reality and between the
representation and the original
Leesvragen
1. Waar verwijzen we naar met de term ‘media’? (9)
- ‘communicatiemedia’ en de gespecialiseerde en afzonderlijke instellingen en
organisaties waarin mensen werkten: gedrukte media en de pers, fotografie,
reclame, film, omroep (radio en televisie), uitgeverijen, enzovoort.
- De term verwees ook naar de culturele en materiële producten van die instellingen
(de verschillende vormen en genres van nieuws, roadmovies, soapseries die de
