How it Works...The Computer.
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PhD-related links |
Here, Bakardjieva (2009) distinguishes three main approaches to the study of the Internet in everyday life. Quite straight forward but I liked the simplicity...
ETA: I'm currently working on a research project where the client wants to span all three areas - in a very short period of time - I know my stance sits more in the "critical" framework, but it is interesting trying to reign back those who think studying the Internet should be straight forward and easy because there is an assumed wealth of data at their finger tips. I would like to think that it is a lot harder than that. Thanks to the dazzling effects of data overload and lumps of generalisations based on poor quality information (which is mainly generated by those who want to sum up the world in 3 days!) - we've probably made it a lot more complicated to really see what is going on.
Bakardjieva, M. (2009) The Internet in Everyday Life: Exploring the Tenets and Contributions of Diverse Approaches. In Burnett, R, M. Consalvo and C. Ess (eds) The Handbook of Internet Studies. Wiley-Blackwell (via media/anthropology)
I just commented on Hannah's blog about this but felt I could flesh it out into a post (rather than broadcasting a separate set of opinions else where)
"We cannot allow ourselves to become a new tech intelligentsia, we do need to talk about the potential and failings of social media. We also need to do it. If we think social media has potential for change, let’s talk about how we take action, move things on. Grassroots, top down, let’s make things happen." 100percent agree with this sentiment. I personally think the term "social media" has been discussed to death at events such as 1pound40 - it needs to be put through a historical, social, political and economical filter to lessen the chance of inoculation from the previous sets of technophiles - my reasoning? (and possibly my justification for being a reet moany git when I'm faced with formulating an opinion on the spot) Well, as Toby Moores continues to reiterate we are of the 10 percent that "get it" and as much as it is fantastic to be in a room full of like-minded individuals (some I've met, some I would like to meet but don't think official events give me enough time to meet them properly) - we ALL KNOW THAT WE GET IT. I'd say either 1)let those who can, go away and create concrete evidence and methods in which to help educate and influence 2)those that are essentially "media professionals in a box" should continue to do what they do (there is a great talent in being able to talk to everyone and provide multimedia content, but it is not for everyone, even though everyone should try it!) - otherwise we are all going to end up meeting, to talk to each other through digital audio files and poor quality video streaming (thanks to our pitiful attempts at providing broadband access - we can't rely on the fact that connectivity will work at an event) - we don't want to be ending up speaking in public persona buzzwords and essentially isolating ourselves from the rest of the population. This sort of amplification should not be confused with the act of getting things done on a larger scale nor providing enough reasoning to influence those who, unfortunately, play the game and rule the discourse (the majority being powerful, uninterested people) Pick a project that so far removed from the social media bubble and try working with it - it doesn't take long before you encounter bloody Luddites who will go out their way to dampen the conceptual ideas of social media. If we could identify, and attempt to solve the problems or recommend ways in which both can exist in harmony, that balance is what will help such community succeed at their individual and group goals. And the community (something we've probably never experienced before in terms of like-mindedness, accessibility and reflection) is what will be key to keep us motivated when the goings get tough - we need to acknowledge both, not either or...Scolari (2009) tracks the historical path of new media discussions from the "founding fathers" of 1960, through varied degrees of cybercultural studies to the current form of internet studies which exist today ("today" being stemmed from the Web 2.0 discussion etc) Although tipping his hat to the needs of new forms of research within the field, he quite rightly argues that it is all too easy to discuss and speculate about predictions, based on anecdotal experiences. Combined with the surge of journalistic tendencies, mainly focussing on the utopian and dystopian elements of emerging media technologies - the myths of a narrative are exposed. The chat is fashionable and surprisingly comfortable. That'll be because absolutely zero research is required to have an opinion.
Mate, I couldn't have said it better myself. "Digital media research cannot be limited to the old TMC models. The new forms of collaborative communication are challenging traditional broadcasting systems and theories, so new categories and methodologies are needed...Research into digital communication should not, however, be diluted into a discursive melting pot of conjectures, speculations and utopian/dystopian views which may sound fashionable but are difficult to articulate into a coherent theoretical corpus." (Scolari, 2009: 956)
Scolari, C. A. (2009) Mapping the conversations about new media: the theoretical field of digital communications. New Media and Society, Vol. 11. P943-964)
A couple of things:
After the last post, I was recommended to get this book, City of Bits (1995) (William J Mitchell) by my supervisor- so I have ordered in on Amazon and have began reading a small preview on Google books.
Of the short section I've scanned over, already picking out themes of identity which still haven't really changed in the last 15 years since the book's beginnings.
I've maintained the principle that online interaction is becoming less literal (no need for an obvious avatar, ala Second Life - rather a multitude of interactions on different levels and platforms) - so I like the perspective that identity online is heavily manipulative, and reliant on how you think others see you. Michael Wesch suggested in his presentation about politics of authenticity that online communication is truly the first communication mechanism where we have been forced to look at ourselves in the reflections of others. Using youtube as his main example, Wesch shows clips of his students using Youtube for the first time, coming to terms with talking to a webcam, watching back their videos from the perspective of others and contemplating how others might see and understand them as human beings.
What Mitchell is saying here, however, is that persona is created by other people and can lead to a jarring sensation when you actually decide to meet in "meatspace" - Certainly, when you work with online media, maintaining an online identity is a full time occupation, but the notions of private and public start being more about what you prefer or WANT people to see about you, rather than who you actually are (it is said that if you never lie, you never have to remember anything...).
I don't think that feeling will ever go away, at least with online media in its current guise, but the fact that we have managed to change, or at least add to how we understand ourselves as individuals is fascinating.
Posterous keeps getting cooler - being directly able to lift pages from google books can never be a bad thing. All I need now is to be allowed to use a digital highlighter to complete the paperless transition.
The grid and its certainties is what Negri mourns. Geometric and planar, horizontal and rational, from Malevich to Mondrian, the Grid embodied the state of the modernist political-technological art, which was a disciplinary art. But as the societies of discipline morphed into the societies of control, the ‘architecture of borders, walls, doors, and locks give way to that of passwords, fire walls, public key encryption, and security certificates.' Modernist culture, organised by the grid (and its subjective correlate: the enlightened master) succumbs to a thousand niche-market cuts, whipped raw by Chris Anderson's ‘long tail' and decomposed into tribes by Mark J. Penn's ‘microtrends.' The grid mutates into the web, the imperial/utopian into the molecular/heterotopian. The new media-architecture begins to manipulate smaller units. The birth, from the ruins, of the negative center, issues the coup de grâce. The centre is robbed of its sovereignty.
‘The iron-willed dictator is a thing of the past,' notes William Burroughs. ‘We have a new type of rule now. Not one-man rule, or rule of aristocracy or plutocracy, but of small groups elevated to positions of absolute power by random pressures and subject to political and economic factors that leave little room for decision. Hegel writes of the function of kingship as consisting in dotting the i's and crossing the t's. No system can close itself-off using only elements internal to it. The function of the sovereign (what Foucault terms the author-function) was to supply the seal of transcendence. 20th century dictators, captured by cameras and connected with telephones, pumped-up the volume.
‘The age demanded an image,' notes Ezra Pound, ‘of its own accelerated grimace.' Placed in the heavens of a vertical hierarchy, the iron willed dictator conducted and channeled the psychologies of his followers: The Father of the Nation. But the death of God, pronounced by Nietzsche at the end of the 19th century, was the death of transcendence; the death of the possibility of an absolutely transcendent image. The ‘age of extremes' was a reaction-formation, against Gödel's incompleteness theorem, against Nietzsche's nihilism. Modernism was an ideology of reaction, which grafted the forms of the past onto new contents (Stalin the Red Tsar, Hitler the Sorcerer-Emperor...) and then stood back, aghast, as the host rejected the transplant.
The invention of digital technology ended this period of ideological frenzy. ‘As the Enlightenment and "modernity" were increasingly called into question,' writes Peter Wollen, ‘a process accelerated by post-1968 disenchantment, French intellectuals turned away from "knowledge-based" approaches to the humanities and towards the more speculative domains, urging a decentralised vision of "dissemination," "rhizomes" and "molecular" microstructures, Replacing Stalin and Hitler are ‘Enterprise Systems', computerised content management systems which cross organisational boundaries, and actualise the potential which the panopticon once contained.
Disciplinary power was based on anxiety; prisoners could never be certain whether the watchtower was occupied. Citizen-subjects today can be sure; the prisoners are now watching each-other. ‘In sales organisation,' reports Richard Sennett, ‘sales reps' performances can be mapped in real time on home-office computer screens.' Instead of a centralised point of imaginary control; a distributed network of leveraged eyeballs.
Something to chew on.
I'm currently reading through my notes from my MA degree, editing and
updating them and reviewing quotes to see if it is worth re-reading
particular concepts. I'm increasingly aware of the dates in which a
lot of these books were written, well over 10 years ago now - and yet,
I sit through tweetstream after tweetstream of new media related
events, I can't help feeling that I've heard it all somewhere before.
We are truly inoculated from our past experiences. Stop waffling and
taking half-baked opinions for granted, look at the past, we need a
purpose and we need dedicated evidence. Otherwise we're just wasting
time - it's been said before, with definitely more succinctness and far
better examples.
I blog here but use Posterous to share and comment on things I have found on the Internet.
