This page contains materials intended
to facilitate class discussion (excerpts from readings,
outlines of issues, links to resources, etc.). The
materials are not necessarily the same as the instructor's
teaching notes and are not designed to represent
a full exposition or argument. This page is subject
to revision as the instructor finalizes preparation.
(Last revised
1/25/02
)
Preliminary Class Business
Purchase David Trend, Reading Digital Culture
at Bookstore
Peak Epoch
(Period of Monopolistic or
Cartel Dominance)
Information as Mass Media
Radio, Photography,
Film, TV, Magazines
Broadcast
Model
1920s-1970s
Information
as Communication
Telecom,
Radio, Cryptography
Transmission
Model
1940s-70s
(ATT breakup in 1984)
Information
as Mainframe Computing
Mainframes
and Minicomputers, Databases
Centralized
information services
1950s-1970s
Information as Personal Computing/ Networking
PC's, Networks
(LAN's, WAN's), Graphical User Interface (GUI),
the Software Revolution, Hypertext
Client/Server
Architecture
1980s-2000s
Paradigm of Personal Computing/Networking
Conceptual (Logical
and Engineering) Paradigm:
The "Client/Server"
principle (personal computer or
workstation networked to a microprocessor-based
server). Applications and processing distributed
between client and server machines. Example:
accessing
and rendering a Web page
decentralized or multi-centralized
/ non-hierarchical or multi-hierarchical
fractal
"emergent" complexity
/ "hive" behavior
Implementation:
Theater of Operation (Typical Social
Organization): (a) "flat organizations"
staffed by "work teams," (b) "community"
networking
Typical Applications: (a) networked
document, spreadsheet, or database work,
increasingly tied together by TCP/IP
and the Internet, (b) e-mail, Usenet,
chat
Social and Cultural
Paradigm: (to be continued in future lectures):
(allegory of the social and cultural impact
of networking: the imaginary
geography of games and virtual worlds,
e.g., Riven)
Next Computing Paradigms?:
"Ubiquitous" Computing; Peer-to-Peer
Computing
Computers as Media/Communications
Other parts of the course will deal with impact
of computing and networking on society (business,
politics) and human identity (personal, community).
Our question in this first part of the course
is more limited: What happens to "media"
and "communications" when the computer
revolution occurs? What is "computer-mediated
communications" or "new media"?
Primacy of the problem of computerized media/
communications.
From the original scientific-engineering viewpoint,
computing was first of all about calculating,
only secondly about media/communications. (E.g.,
early display technologies, the "surprise"
of e-mail)
But from another viewpoint, the computer was
from the first what Lev Manovitch calls a "Universal
Media Machine."
Example: the historical link between
the computer and the Jacquard
loom. Lady Ada: "[Babbage's] Analytical
Engine weaves algegraical patterns just
as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and
leaves."
"EAMs provided a primitive
word processing system. Operating
Manuals and Wiring Procedures were
keypunched into cards decks from which
one original and up to six carbons
could be printed. Creative operators
discovered that patterns of holes
in card decks could print Santa Claus
and his reindeer, Christmas candles,
wreaths, and other simple items. Some
"artists" created pin-up
girl silhouettes emphasizing their
pronounced attributes. In the 1960s
card decks of Playboy centerfold models
were popular. At least one resourceful
operator hit on a unique "publishing"
method to enhance his meager pay.
French "Green Books" were
punched into card decks, printed,
and sold for profit. Green Books were
sexually explicit paperbacks with
green covers."
Example: the runaway success of
the IBM 1401 (first produced in 1959) due
to a new "chain" printer capable
of 600 lines per minute (Campbell-Kelly
and Aspray, Computer: A History of the
Information Machine, p. 134)
Most Important Example: invention
of the graphical user inferface (GUI)
Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad
Douglas
Engelbart's invention of the mouse
and GUI in 1968 (mouse-driven cursor
and windows interface)
Alan
Kay and Xerox PARC in 1972 (the
Alto computer with a WYSIWYG word processor
named Gypsy; the Xerox Star computer)
Russian-born computer programmer and artist,
worked in Manhattan firm Digital Effects
(3-D computer animation for film and TV),
became critic/theorist/artist on the "new
media" and "net art" scene
(e.g., Ars Electronica, SIGGRAPH,
Nettime-L)
Remediation (cf., other
theorists on "remediation)
"The new avant-garde is no longer concerned
with seeing or representing the world in
new ways but rather with accessing and using
in new ways previously accumulated media.
In this respect new media is post-media
or meta-media, as it uses old media
as its primary material."
("Avant-garde
as Software," 1999 [Word doc])
Formal Analysis of (as opposed to classification)
of New Media
"Principles" of New Media
Micro- or Machine-level:
"numerical representation"
(sampling/quantization)
Mid-level:
"Modularity" [also:
extractability]
"Automation"
"Variability"
Macro-level: "Transcoding"
(cf., McLuhan on media as an "extension
of man")
Remediation
" . . . the 'content'
of any medium is always another medium.
The content of writing is speech, just as
the written word is the content of print,
and print is the content of the telegraph."
("The Medium is the Message,"
p. 8)
Hot vs. Cold Media
"There is a basic principle that distinguishes
a hot medium like radio from a cool one
like the telephone, or a hot medium like
the movie from a cool one like TV. A hot
medium is one that extends one single sense
in 'high definition.' High definition is
the state of being well filled with data. . . .
[H]ot media do not leave so much to be filled
in or completed by the audience. Hot media
are, therefore, low in participation, and
cool media are high in participation or
completion by the audience." ("Media
Hot and Cold," pp. 22-23)
Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin,
Remediation: Understanding New Media
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999)
Definition of TCP/IP (the
Internet protocol for "packet-switched" information
transmission)
from Microsoft
Press Computer Dictionary, 3rd. ed.
(Redmond, Wash.: Microsoft Press, 1997):
TCP: "The protocol within TCP/IP
that governs the breakup of data messages
into packets to be sent via IP, and the
reassembly and verification of the complete
messages from packets received by IP"
IP: "The protocol within TCP/IP
that governs the breakup of data messages
into packets, the routing of the packets
from sender to destination network and
station, and the reassembly of the packets
into the original data messages at the
destination."
Packet-Switching: "A message-delivery
technique in which small units of information
(packets) are relayed through stations
in a computer network along the best route
available between the source and the destination.
A packet-switching network handles information
in small units, breaking long messages
into multiple packets before routing.
Although each packet may travel along
a different path, and the packets composing
a message may arrive at different times
or out of sequence, the receiving computer
reassembles the original message correctly
[ . . . ]. The Internet
is an example of a packet-switching network."
Packet: "In packet-switching
networks, a transmission unit of fixed
maximum size that consists of binary digits
representing both data and a header containing
an identification number, source and destination
addresses, and sometimes error-control
data."
References
Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation:
Understanding New Media (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 1999)
Steven G. Jones, ed.,Cybersociety: Computer-Mediated Communication
and Community (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage,
1995)
Information as Mass Media
