Newmedia

Lee Hwei Mei(Sherene)SCM-014981

Pang Kar Yan(Chloe)SCM-011789

UNDERSTANDING NEW MEDIA

INTRODUCTION :

Electronic media world: through the media, humanity, fully connected, will collaboratively build and share a global world (McLuhan,1964).

Understanding media brings not only a insight into the technologies or devices themselves, but also into societal changes.

Media are bound to society: the study of one requires the study of others.

Understanding new media means understanding how they interact with a series of social, economical, political, cultural and psychological processes, giving rise to a new kind of world.

DIGITAL MEDIA

Characteristic: They are all digitalNumerical system( binary code of 0 and 1)Eg: media texts become de-linked from particular

media, like now we can read book on the internet, watch television of films online or on our mobile phone, and also upload photographs on blogs or social medias.

Information can be compressed and fit in very small spaces

The outcomes of digitalization is that access to data can be very fast

ONLINE MEDIA

Directly refer to the internetThe term “internet "prioritizes the element of

connectivityConnected with other media, mainly computers but

more recently mobile phonesFor once it introduces a shift with modernity, which

is typically associated with isolation and individuation( Goddens,1991)

Now it shifts in the relatively separate and distinct social-cultural and politico-economic organizations of the nations states which associated with globalizations

NEW MEDIA

Digital, online and without limiting or prioritizing any single one

Includes all kind of media that keep evolving Results of convergence between computation logic

characteristic of the computers and the communicative logic characteristic of the media.

It is innovative and dynamic

TECHNOLOGIES, MEDIA AND SOCIETY

New media and technology concerns the nature of the relationship with people and society

Do new media determine, shape or otherwise influence them?

Do individuals and societal structural produce, set and give meaning to media and technologies?

This will be discuss further base on the studies of McLuhan, Kittler, Stigler and Castells.

MCLUHAN

First theorist to argue that the importance of the media is not located in the contents they circulate but in the form of the media themselves

From position on technology he argue that :Media and technology assume priority“the media is the message”(McLuhan,2011)New media use old media as their content

Base on position on humanity he argue that:Media are extension of human senses and at the same time media can extent and limit our senses

“all media, from the phonetic alphabet to the computer, are the extension of man that cause deep and lasting changes in him and transform his environment” (McLuhan, 1969)

Base on the position on society he then argue that:Media and technology connect everyone and come together as a community in the global village and linked by a series of interdependencies

CON’T MCLUHAN

KITTLER

He argue that “the media determines our situations”Base on the position on technology Kittler argue that:

Technological evolution as the motor of history Different technologies lead to the constitution of

different discourses and power configurations He vies languages and discourses more broadly as

information as and argue that to study our present condition we need study ways in which the information is process and stored

Hardware crucial – “there is no software” Emphasis on the knowledge of technical innovation to

produce hardware

Base on the position of humanity Kittler argue that different media will lead to different subjects

Discourse network 1800:readers, Discourse network 1900:audience,Discourse network 2000:end-user

Base on position of society and politics aspectHe argue that we should focus on the genealogy of discourses to show how we are constituted, but no possibility of mastery over technology

Should engage with hardware, underline user-friendly aspect

CON’T KITTLER

He argues that technology and humanity are coeval or co-originary. (Stiegler, p.11)

He shows that human and technology are entangled bound, without necessarily prioritizing one over the other.

It eschews anthropocentric views of technology and media as a tool and the media-centric views of human as determined by technology.

Technicity and technics (refers to techno-logy) are part of humans, a process that Derrida calls hominization, result of human dialectic with technology.

In new technologies, all our knowledge and memories are ‘exteriorized’ and stored in devices (epiphylogenesis) controlling by others which affect the future involving a kind of ‘human obsolescence’ and ‘proletarianize’ of more humans.

STIEGLER

However, there are supposition of getting more power by the cognitive and cultural industries that run today’s societies of control.

Leads to a politics of memory, where the technological mnemonic devices are then in conjunctionally difficult to be controlled.

Therefore, must take a look on the processes of grammatization and understand how they limit life with a view to found ‘a new political economy of memory and desire’, that able to address and expand the limits set by the various ‘grammatizations’.

CONT. STIEGLER

He argued that technology does not determine society, nor does society says to the technological change.

Our societies are understood to be as network societies, no longer on the individual or not the traditional community.

A network consisted of distinct, but interconnected points – it replaced both the individual and the nation-state as the primary form of social organization, is the new morphology.

He argues that we have entered a new era, enabled by new technologies, saying space is a space of flows and time is timeless.

Space is defined by the exchanges between the different places in which actors are found while time can no longer be ordered sequentially, leading to undifferentiated time.

CASTELLS

In conjunction with that, economy becomes increasingly organized while politics becomes increasingly mediated politics through networks, gives way to communicative abilities for seeking and legitimating power.

Similarly, changing in economy, culture and so on bring about changes in technologies as well.

CONT. CASTELLS