Week 12: Course Reflection

By undertaking this course, a greater understanding of the correlation and dynamics of media and technology, and social and cultural practices, was ultimately realised. Whilst a great deal of the course content was very contextually rich and often difficult to unpack and digest, engaging with the various topics definitely stimulated some great contemplation and realisations of the nature of our increasingly complex and dynamic media world. Here, an up close inspection of how new media technologies challenge existing cultural and social practices, and in turn, how new cultural and social practices surrounding media challenges traditional approaches to media was addressed. From my position, it was not until I undertook the research proposal and subsequent self directed research essay that I really understand the power of the media within our society, and its ability to completely transform societal norms and practices. This realisation was solidified as I undertook research surrounding virtual reality within our 2014 context, and its potential effect on communicative practices in the years to come.

As stated before, the aim of this course is to take a look at the way which “New media technologies challenge many of the givens of cultural and social practices. At the same time, new cultural and social uses of media challenge much traditional thinking about media. You will explore the nature of increasingly dynamic media technologies, and the new cultural and social practices alongside which media technologies evolve. You will consider key contemporary ideas about media, cultural and social change” (The University of New South Wales, 2013).  This approach to media studies was definitely realised throughout my research process as I examined the way in which the advent of more immersive virtual reality may result in a substantial, or even complete, demise of face-to-face interaction in the years to come.

Whilst virtual reality is not necessarily a new concept, progressive technologies have created a growth in interest surrounding the potential social impacts. The significance of Facebook’s purchase of Oculus Rift, whether or not face-to-face communication still demonstrates “better” communicative potential, and how a move towards virtual reality may resolve various real-world problems, and at the same time create all new problems, is explored. These areas of focus demonstrate the idea that progressive technologies effectively re shape society, and society also re-shapes our approach to technology.

 

Reference:

UNSW Handbook, 2013, ‘Advanced Media Issues – ARTS3091’, http://www.handbook.unsw.edu.au/undergraduate/courses/2013/ARTS3091.html

 

Week 11: Apps

This weeks lecture content used the concept of multiplicity to begin to understand and unpack the more complex concepts of fragmentation, flexibility, and ubiquity: apps, modules and the Internet of things. As highlighted by Andrew Murphie in this weeks lecture, the concept of multiplicity refers to getting away from the essence or permanency of something, projecting the belief that things are never one, permanent thing, but rather both one and many things. Building on this is the idea that ‘things’ exist in time, coming together then falling apart. The example of the YouTube video, ‘Scottie Pinwheel’, featured in the lecture is a great visual example. Here we see six independent Scotties coming together (in time) to make a pinwheel (forming new relations) and then breaking away. Building on this, the independent Scotties themselves are a multiplicity (made up of fur, a tail, eyes, nose, and so forth, existing for duration of time (life to death). It is here we see multiplicity in two senses: first being the multiple number of entities, and the second being multiplicity virtually – when ‘things’ come together not just as a collection of ‘things’ but a collection of potential for affecting and being affected. It is examples such as this YouTube video that can assist the explanation of more complex concepts. In principle, the ‘Scottie Pinwheel’ is not so different to what happens with apps in regards to gathering of energies.

As highlighted by Bratton (2011) apps are applications operating “within something like an application layer of a Cloud-to-device software/hardware “stack” but really more of “an interface to the real application which sits in a datacenter” as the majority of real information processing occurs in the Cloud, rather than in the box you hold in your hands. Bratton (2011) highlights 5 specific notions surrounding what apps are and what they do: An app is tiny, an app is a layer within a larger Stack, an app turns a habit into Cloud hardware, the app turns the device into the modulation of the hand, the future of the app dissipates the hand.

One particular notion that I found of particular interest was an app turns a habit into Cloud hardware’. This idea encompasses the belief that cloud-based services are provided to device-users in motion “constantly moving through the landscape and encountering different contexts on the go” (Bratton, 2011). It is here we see a connection between the physical context and the Cloud service, demonstrating a “blend” of the physical, architectural circumstance in which the user moves, as well as the interactions the user is having with an app-mediated Cloud platform within this space. At any moment, day or night, various users are interacting with apps in the same location may be enrolling their common location into varied Cloud economies “making the solidarity of the crowd that much more fragmented and its swarming that much more mediated”. Building on this, on could interpret as app as a co-program of “space and software, habitat and habitus” (Bratton, 2011).

Reference:

Bratton, Benjamin (2014) ‘On Apps and Elementary Forms of Interfacial Life: Object, Image, Superimposition’, Bratton.info, December, <http://www.bratton.info/projects/texts/on-apps-and-elementary-forms-of-interfacial-life/&gt;

WEEK 10: AFFECT

This weeks topic covered the complex concept of affect in regards to media and communication. The complexity of this concept lies in the idea that affect covers things we can quite readily name, such as emotions and feelings, but also things we can not name, which we know are important in media communication events. The term affect encompasses the complexity of the world in all its many differences, movements and relations. Affect refers to our personal relations to what Andrew Murphie refers to as “little to large worlds that we are constantly creating, and constantly being created by”.

Whilst I have struggled to really pin point what affect really is within a media communication mind frame, there a three things I specifically took from Andrew Murphie’s lecture regarding the concept of affect:

1. Affect is incredibly important within our everyday life

2. Modern thinkers have realised affect is far greater in importance and power than initially understood

3. There is no concrete definition of affect even today

It is number three that really makes this weeks topic a struggle to conclusively understand and appreciate (at least from my point of view).

Whilst affect has been deemed both personal and non personal, important thinker Brian Massumi moves away from the personal and rather emphasises the importance of movements in culture, and our interactions with the world. Here, Massumi emphasises ‘intensity’ rather than ’emotion’.  For Massumi, affect is essentially the interaction of intensities and their translations and transformations beyond a fixed system.

“Reserve the term ‘emotion’ for the personalized content, and affect for the continuation. Emotion is contextual. Affect is situational: eventfully ingressive to context” – Brian Massumi (Murphie, 2010)

This ‘intensity’ can be seen in two stages, the first is this ‘doubling effect, the “experience of a change, an affecting-being affected, is redoubled by an experience of an experience”, and the second, “the virtual co presence of potentials” (Massumi and  Zournazi, 2002, p.213). Massumi, as well as other significant thinkers, believed that affect must be contemplated within a broader context, with forces of various kinds affecting and being affected. Here, ‘we’ are taken out of the centre and highlighted as one small force within a larger scale and various forces (Massumi, 2002). Massumi emphasises the idea that affect comes from a force exterior to the personal, and within this larger situation is where important thinkers must contemplate and consider, beyond emotions and feelings. This is just one approach to understanding the complex concept of affect.

Reference:

Massumi, Brian with Zournazi, Mary (2002) ‘Navigating Moments: A Conversation with Brian Massumi’, in Mary Zournazi (ed.) Hope: New Philosophies for Change Sydney: Pluto Press: 210-24

Massumi, Brian (2002). Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham and London: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-2897-1. Retrieved 27 November 2011.

Murphie, A. 2010. ‘Affect – A Basic Summary of Approaches’,  http://www.andrewmurphie.org/blog/?p=93

 

 

 

 

WEEK 9: MICROPOLITICS – NEW COMMUNITIES

This week a focus was placed on the way in which new media has allowed everyday people to form new kinds of communities and take things into their own hands. It is here we see a sense of disintermediation, where the normal, traditional mediation through external bodies has been taken out of the equation, and we now simply contact one and other. It is through this disintermediation that we see a drastic change to our traditional value system, as people who once placed trust into higher institutions, now declare they rather trust “people like themselves” (Bauwens, 2014). What we are now experiencing is new aspects of ‘openness’ (participation, transparency, shareability and access) from all areas, including software, to design, education, science, food, currency and so forth.  In fact it was just this morning that I stopped at my local coffee shop on my way to university that I noticed a flyer on the counter which read:

“Need a car? Borrow your neighbours’ from $5 an hour or $25 a day?”

“Got a car? Share your car at times you don’t need it and earn $2-10K a year”

It is this service idea, ‘Car Next Door – Neighbour-to- Neighbour Car Sharing’, that exemplifies this disintermediation and transfer of trust from higher institutions to fellow members of society. It is this idea of peer to peer (P2P) sharing, that sees everyday people using media and communications to take things into their own hands. It is P2P sharing that has completely rewritten the traditional and basic models of how society works, emphasising cooperation rather than (or with) competition. It is this traditional approach of “defeating, destroying and denominating competition” (Rheingold, 2008) that has been replaced with a “step back” from competition, and and step towards inclusion and cooperation.

So what does this mean for our modern society?

As highlighted by Bauwens (2014), our current political economy “is based on a false notion of material abundance; on the other hand, it believes that intellectual, scientific and technical exchange should be subject to strong proprietary constraints, and subjects innovation to internet restrictions”. What we are experiencing is peer based communities sharing varied information and knowledge for the common good of our society, “as communities do not have vested interests in artificial scarcity”, therefore reorganising and establishing a smarter world, and hopefully a smarter future (Bauwens, 2014).

 

References:

Bauwens, Michel (2014) ’Openness, a necessary revolution into a smarter world’, P2P Foundation, February 4, <http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/what-is-p2p-an-introduction/2014/02/04&gt;

 

Rheingold, Howard (2008) ’Way-new collaboration’, YouTube.com (TED), http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=d5s3Z0iesRM

Week 8: The Fate of the State (and older institutions and practices)

The concept of privacy within our 2014 context took centre stage this week.  The now effective ability for governments and powerful bodies to surveillance our individual, daily activities and consequently predict and ‘control’ our actions was explored. The concept of ‘souveillance’, a term coined by Steve Mann, ” to describe the present state of modern technological societies where anybody may take photos or videos of any person or event, and then diffuse the information freely all over the world” (Ganascia, 2010), was introduced.

Whilst it was not a huge surprise that networked computing has enabled us to engage in tasks already familiar to us, such as shopping, research and entertainment, what was not predicted was its potential to ” upend the foundations of capitalism and bureaucratic administration that had been in place for centuries” (Morozov, 2013). What we are now experiencing is concern surrounding the ability of the government to monitor our every move, and consequently, our growing ability to monitor theres. 

Whilst many government programs introduced over recent years have demonstrated the intent to deal with issues of national security, often the data collected has been used to impede our right to privacy. An example of this can be seen through a tool introduced by the Italian government called ‘redditometro’, possessing the ability to access receipts and spending patterns of individual consumers  to catch out those suspected of cheating tax. On a global scale, smart phone users can now be ‘pinged’ when they are about to “do something stupid, unhealthy or sound” (Morozov, 2013). But what exactly counts as “stupid, unhealthy or sound”? It would now appear that we as a society do not make this call, but rather the “system’s algormithms”  that create a “moral calculous of their own”. Building on this is the belief that such compilations of individuals habits, intents and practices are not undertaken to improve our decisions and actions, but rather to “nudge” the individual to fit the mould of the ideal consumer, taxpayer, citizen and so forth (Morozov, 2013). Consequently, it is not only an absence of privacy that should be of societal concern, but also this attempt to mould or ‘nudge’ the individual into the ‘ideal’ citizen. 

Whilst it would appear society is powerless to the watch full eye and growing control of the government, the actions of certain individuals such as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, demonstrate the individuals ability to ‘impede’ on the privacy of the government. Snowden, who leaked information revealing the existence of various global surveillance programs, remains a figure of controversy, being labeled a hero and patriot, as well as a whistleblower and traitor (Wikipedia, n.d). It is controversy surrounding whether his actions are illegal or admirable that truly highlight this growing and increasingly complex issue of privacy within our 2014 context.

 

References:

1. Morozov, Evgeny (2013) ‘The Real Privacy Problem’, MIT Technology Review, October 22, <http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520426/the-real-privacy-problem/&gt;

2. Wikipedia (n.d.) ‘Edward Snowden’, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden> 

3. Ganascia,Jean-Gabriel. ‘The generalized sousveillance society’, Pierre et Marie Curie University (Paris VI), computer science laboratory of the Paris VI university (LIP6), Social Science Information September 2010 vol. 49 no. 3 489-50

 

 

 

Week 5: Dourish and Interaction

This weeks content drew focus on the notion of ‘interaction’. Due to the density and complexity of this weeks content, I decided to primarily focus on the Paul Dourish reader, ‘A History of Interaction’, to try and unpack some of the basic ideas and concepts presented to us in the lecture. By trying to understand the basic concepts I hope to gain additional clarity and and insight into the greater complexities of this topic with the aid of my tutor and classmates.

Within the reading, Dourish highlights the idea that in a world of ever changing and “improving” technology, people tend not to note the many ways in which computers have actually remained stagnant. He notes that our experience, interactions and struggles with computers reflect the same, outdated mind frame present over fifty years ago. Contemporary computers are now far greater in speed and power, offering access to a great deal of information we are simply unable to adequately manage and utilise to the fullest potential. At the same time, however, we can also see existence and increase in ‘embedded’ computing in devices (e.g. cellular phones) demonstrating that computation can be employed in more than just “traditional desktop computing”.

Expanding on this, Dourish notes the ability computation has in moving beyond the traditional, stagnant desktop computer, and enabling us to “get up and move about in the world”. It is here that we locate two trends; the huge increase in computational power, as well as the growing context in which we can put that power to use. It is only over the last couple of years that the research into Human Computer Interaction (HCI) has explored means for controlling and interacting with a new ‘type’ of computer system. This is what Dourish refers to as “Embodied Interaction”; “interaction with computer systems that occupy our world, a world of physical and social reality, and that exploit this fact in how they interact with us”

 

Reference:

Dourish, Paul (2004) ‘ A History of Interaction’, in Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 1-23

Week 4: Modeling

This week’s content focused on the importance of modeling by looking at the way in which models of media and models of mind come together in communication. The main purpose of this was to consider the common model of the mind and its often contrasting alternatives, and the varying ways they lead us to produce certain media and understand our individual engagement with media, as well as others. This week’s content was very conceptually rich, and I found it quite exhausting to interact with in its entirety. However as highlighted by Andrew, we are not particularly required to memories the specifics of each model, but rather seek an understanding of their general principles, and the importance of modeling for media and communication.

What I found most intriguing was the concept of going beyond the common model – the most common assumption – that “inside each of us there is a thing that thinks and feels and wants and decides” – that has dominated the mind frame of cognitive research for the last 500 years. The more contemporary concept of an “extended mind” was introduced, suggesting “the reach of the mind need not end at the boundaries of skin and skull” as “Tools, instrument and other environmental props can under certain conditions also count as proper parts of our minds”.  As featured in last weeks blog, we once again see the importance of external influences as a major factor in influencing the individuals experience .

This belief is effectively highlighted by Alva Noe, who argued that to insist feeling/thinking happens purely in the brain is just as incorrect as suggesting talking occurs in the brain. “We could not speak without the brain, to be sure. But speech also depends on many other physical processes — such as articulatory movements in the mouth and throat, and also respiratory activity. And of course it depends on social circumstances, and needs. People speak, and they do so thanks to their brains, and mouths, and throats, and much else besides”.

Building on this, the belief that there is no such thing as a “simple experience” was particularly interesting to me.  In the lecture, Andrew introduced the term ‘umwelts’, which projects the idea that each person’s world is different, that we share the same world in general, but have our individual and very different “umwelts”. Here we can see the importance of modeling in generalizing experiences across individuals to understand, explain and control people and events.  Building on these models of mind is this assumption about how the mind works e.g. “the mind is like a computer”. This assumed knowledge heavily influences the way in which we interact with, understand and shape media and communication.

 

References:

‘The Extended Mind’, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Mind>

Noë, Alva (2010) ‘Does thinking happen in the brain?’, 13:7 Cosmos and Culture <http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2010/12/10/131945848/does-thinking-happen-in-the-brain>

Week 3: Bateson’s Ecology of the Mind/Media Ecologies

This week a focus was placed on the radical, but useful, ideas expressed by great thinker Gregory Bateson to broaden our understanding and perception surrounding what it means to communicate.  The ideas expressed by Bateson are certainly complex and multifaceted.  As pointed out by his daughter, Mary Bateson, in the lecture video ‘An Ecology of the Mind’, Bateson was often accused of talking in riddles. His work, however, is very useful in broadening perceptions regarding what communication truly is, and the way in which we as individuals, and as a civilisation, work with it.

Bateson spotlights the idea that face-to-face communication has always been perceived as less ambiguous and more authentic than other ‘secondary’ forms of communication, such as emails and texts messaging. Bateson stated there was more redundancy in face-to-face communication, meaning more “extra stuff”- such as tone of voice, proximity, gesture, posture, and even the building in which the communication takes place – that enables the most effective form of communication. He believed that these redundancies added to a richer pattern, and that real communication had very little to do with the actual message, and a lot more to do with a rich pattern. The way in which we seek this sincere form of communication can be seen through adaptations of ‘secondary’ forms of communication such as text messaging, through aids such as emoticons and smilies. The integral role of the human body and external forces and surroundings in achieving true communication is stressed.

Bateson’s concept of play additionally highlights the importance of redundancies and cues that serves as almost a back up to ensure effective and accurate communication. Bateson uses the example of chimps playing to ask the question – if both play and combat demonstrate the same physical actions and cues, how do they know the difference between play and combat? how is this ultimately communicated? This question definitely challenged my understanding and perception of communication, and stressed the importance of redundancies in enabling effective and accurate communication.

Whilst some may argue Bateson takes somewhat of an extremist’s stance, some could also argue that our ever-changing media and communication landscape requires us to constantly be questioning, challenging, and dissecting, the ways in which we truly communicate and understand not only each other but also the world around us. As highlighted by Kate Milbery, “as our symbols and media have evolved significantly – so have our thinking processes, social and political structures, and conceptions of reality”. Whist critiques argue Bateson spoke in riddles, his daughter points out that his questioning did not always require an answer, but rather it was the act of questioning that was truly significant. It was Bateson’s belief that questioning and coming to terms with communicative challenges was integral in understanding the world around us, and modelling it accordingly.

 

References:

An Ecology of Mind A Daughter’s Portrait of Gregory Bateson, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-FC-ZzJTcA

 

Milberry, Kate (n.d.) ‘Media Ecology’, Oxford Bibliographies, <http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756841/obo-9780199756841-0054.xml#> (you only have to read the opening paragraph of this article)