Hi all,
Another day has passed and another lecture topic covered. Today we were covering the history of how the study of the media has evolved over time.
It started with a quick review of the various definitions of Media. The various meanings ascribed to the word media are surprisingly quite varied. To begin with Raymond Williams alerted us to the fact that media can also refer to a '...sense of an intervening or intermediating agency or substance...', in a way this statement refers to the fact that the way in which we communicate is dictated by the medium that we choose.
We then looked at media in reference to the entity known as The Media, in the sense of the reporters and camera people that gather and report the news, also known as the Mass Media or The Press.
Then we looked at the term media in the physical sense of the way in which information is transmitted, such as cassettes, CD's, DVD's and the telecommunication infrastructure that transmits the information.
All of the various definitions all point back to the single combining element of being 'the 'conduit' that allows some other process to happen.'
Therefore we can now define technology as being the scientific study of mechanical arts and their application to the world, and a medium is the specific cultural use of technology, to communicate information...that is interpreted as meanings thanks to specific cultural and social contexts that we encounter in our daily lives.
The next part of the lecture was dedicated to the history of the study of the media in it's various forms. Beginning in the USA in the 1920s with Bullet Theory (Maximum Effects) which basically stated that the media was capable of influencing our decision making processes. The field then progressed through the 1930s towards the statistical study of the effects of media, over in Europe at the same time a man called Walter Benjamin theorised that that the advent of techniques of reproduction have a liberating effect on the populous, and then in the 1940s researchers hypothesised that the media actually has very little effect on the decision making processes of people through their research into the effects of propaganda on the wider population.
In the 1960s Marshall McLuhan published a book called Understanding Media, which focused on the the media effects that permeate society. He theorised that 'the invention of the alphabet and the resulting intensification of the visual sense in the communication process gave sight priority over hearing. but the effect was so powerful that is went beyond communications through language to reshave literate society's conception and use of space.'
We covered other academic writters that have had various theories over time through to Baudrillard who's ideas were a driving force behind the movie 'The Matrix'. He stated that 'The real was represented, now the hyperreal was simulated... this is the world we live in.
The study of New Media has been broken down over time into three phases, with studies beginning with at focus on the Popular Cyberculture, as time when on the studies became more focused into Cyberculture Studies and now more recently academics have become subdividing or twigging the field of study down into individual areas of study using the term Critical Cyberculture Studies.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
Blogger's Review
I've had a look at the other peoples blogs today, as with all templates, they all looked similar to the one I've setup.
It's good to see people thinking in a global perspective, have to say that i don't think getting broad band in the major cities over in the Middle East is going to be an issue, as I had a friend over there recently who had a direct fiberoptic link to the node from where he was staying. They do have problems as you move out of the cities in to the more rural areas, but that is a problem for most countries. I wish Bob all the best in his travels and success in his chosen field of work.
I then mozied on over to Lee's page, I was happy to see that by using email she was able to catch up with friends living overseas, this is an excellent example of how this technology has really shrunk the world as we know it, long gone are the days of snail mail that could take up to a week to deliver to the other side of the globe.
For Kristie's blog, I was interested to see that I'm not the only one who is finding it difficult to find time to spend on socializing on the web and i have to agree with her wholeheartedly on the whole, "I'm also not particularly keen on putting any personal stuff out there, who knows what psychos are lurking. I like privacy and I can't see how you're going to get it having conversations on the internet!". While there is a modicum of privacy available now through the use of TOR's Onion Routing and proxy servers for your browsing needs these are not 100% fool proof. The real problem is that most people don't have the amount of time needed to become not only literate in the various programming languages but also savvy to the ins and outs of the system and it's users.
I personally use the blogs of other people as a research tool when I'm looking at purchasing something in an attempt to gain as broad a perspective as possible, on both the advantages and the disadvantages of the particular products and their competitors.
It's good to see people thinking in a global perspective, have to say that i don't think getting broad band in the major cities over in the Middle East is going to be an issue, as I had a friend over there recently who had a direct fiberoptic link to the node from where he was staying. They do have problems as you move out of the cities in to the more rural areas, but that is a problem for most countries. I wish Bob all the best in his travels and success in his chosen field of work.
I then mozied on over to Lee's page, I was happy to see that by using email she was able to catch up with friends living overseas, this is an excellent example of how this technology has really shrunk the world as we know it, long gone are the days of snail mail that could take up to a week to deliver to the other side of the globe.
For Kristie's blog, I was interested to see that I'm not the only one who is finding it difficult to find time to spend on socializing on the web and i have to agree with her wholeheartedly on the whole, "I'm also not particularly keen on putting any personal stuff out there, who knows what psychos are lurking. I like privacy and I can't see how you're going to get it having conversations on the internet!". While there is a modicum of privacy available now through the use of TOR's Onion Routing and proxy servers for your browsing needs these are not 100% fool proof. The real problem is that most people don't have the amount of time needed to become not only literate in the various programming languages but also savvy to the ins and outs of the system and it's users.
I personally use the blogs of other people as a research tool when I'm looking at purchasing something in an attempt to gain as broad a perspective as possible, on both the advantages and the disadvantages of the particular products and their competitors.
How I Use Technology to Communicate
hello again out there,
Yet another day of blogging has past, so today we're discussing how modern technology is being used on a daily basis to enable our social interactions.
For myself, I'd have to say that technology forms a significant part of my daily routine. As an example, i start the day with my mobile phone's alarm clock going off. I recently had the rather unpleasant experience where my mobile phone was left at a friends place. It brought into stark contrast how much I've come to rely on it as an appliance and as external memory storage for all of the phone numbers I can't remember.
Social wise, i have a subscription to an online MMO called EVE Online. In this game i am a member of a player corporation with members who span the breadth of the planet, most of which I have and probably will never meet in person, we have members in the USA, Japan, England, Australia, New Zealand and 2 from Germany. The fact that we are spread over the world has lead to the problems of people living in various time zones and people's first language not being English. EVE Online has been setup to run in real time, meaning that 1 minute in the real world is equal to 1 minute in the game. This has lead us to seeking people from around the world so that there is always someone online to look after the corporation's management and the security of it's assets.
If you are interested in having a look at eve you can check it out using a free trial available from their website at www.eve-online.com
In the lecture today we went into the history of computing and the internet. It was rather interesting looking at the beginnings of the humble home PC. The video describing how the TCP/IP works was an excellent description on how packets are transmitted and received. I've personally done some work on networking so it's not a new concept for me.
The process of how the computer company Apple came about was interesting and was a rather amusing reminder of how the product cycles have developed over time, with the Apple I quickly being replaced with the more main stream version the Apple II and so forth to the modern personal computers we use in our daily lives.
Thinking back now on how Microsoft has developed into such a widely use product from such humble beginnings was interesting, as it's not something i ponder in my day to day life. The fact that Bill Gates was so protective of the software back then is quite an interesting in site into today's copy protection wars that rage between the software providers and the public.
When talking to other none technical people about the internet as a whole it's worth pointing out that as in the lecture notes the various parts have all been lumped into a single category called the internet, there is no distinction made between the various elements, such as the web pages, IRC, news groups, IM and gaming servers. This comes back to the fact that most people will only ever use the web pages element of the internet and never venturing out side this domain.
With the advent of P2P programs the ease of which people can share proprietary information has become a major concern for the mega corporations as this is a medium that is very difficult to control. The main problem they face is that people will share the information if they want to, if they use the law to shut down a particular service or software, people will just find another one to share through. This is something that is causing the traditional business people headaches as they try to adapt the law to the new and expanding technologies.
The rise of the IM service or Instant Message service has seen computers become more and more integrated into our lives as people are using the internet as a more of a socializing tool rather than the traditional view of it being an anti-social one. The rise of socializing sites such as Facebook.com has brought another problem to today's society with workers spending more time chatting to friends while they should be working.
Well all and all it was an interesting session today, with more to come tomorrow.
TTFN ^_^
Yet another day of blogging has past, so today we're discussing how modern technology is being used on a daily basis to enable our social interactions.
For myself, I'd have to say that technology forms a significant part of my daily routine. As an example, i start the day with my mobile phone's alarm clock going off. I recently had the rather unpleasant experience where my mobile phone was left at a friends place. It brought into stark contrast how much I've come to rely on it as an appliance and as external memory storage for all of the phone numbers I can't remember.
Social wise, i have a subscription to an online MMO called EVE Online. In this game i am a member of a player corporation with members who span the breadth of the planet, most of which I have and probably will never meet in person, we have members in the USA, Japan, England, Australia, New Zealand and 2 from Germany. The fact that we are spread over the world has lead to the problems of people living in various time zones and people's first language not being English. EVE Online has been setup to run in real time, meaning that 1 minute in the real world is equal to 1 minute in the game. This has lead us to seeking people from around the world so that there is always someone online to look after the corporation's management and the security of it's assets.
If you are interested in having a look at eve you can check it out using a free trial available from their website at www.eve-online.com
In the lecture today we went into the history of computing and the internet. It was rather interesting looking at the beginnings of the humble home PC. The video describing how the TCP/IP works was an excellent description on how packets are transmitted and received. I've personally done some work on networking so it's not a new concept for me.
The process of how the computer company Apple came about was interesting and was a rather amusing reminder of how the product cycles have developed over time, with the Apple I quickly being replaced with the more main stream version the Apple II and so forth to the modern personal computers we use in our daily lives.
Thinking back now on how Microsoft has developed into such a widely use product from such humble beginnings was interesting, as it's not something i ponder in my day to day life. The fact that Bill Gates was so protective of the software back then is quite an interesting in site into today's copy protection wars that rage between the software providers and the public.
When talking to other none technical people about the internet as a whole it's worth pointing out that as in the lecture notes the various parts have all been lumped into a single category called the internet, there is no distinction made between the various elements, such as the web pages, IRC, news groups, IM and gaming servers. This comes back to the fact that most people will only ever use the web pages element of the internet and never venturing out side this domain.
With the advent of P2P programs the ease of which people can share proprietary information has become a major concern for the mega corporations as this is a medium that is very difficult to control. The main problem they face is that people will share the information if they want to, if they use the law to shut down a particular service or software, people will just find another one to share through. This is something that is causing the traditional business people headaches as they try to adapt the law to the new and expanding technologies.
The rise of the IM service or Instant Message service has seen computers become more and more integrated into our lives as people are using the internet as a more of a socializing tool rather than the traditional view of it being an anti-social one. The rise of socializing sites such as Facebook.com has brought another problem to today's society with workers spending more time chatting to friends while they should be working.
Well all and all it was an interesting session today, with more to come tomorrow.
TTFN ^_^
Communication and You.
As per the wonderful people in the IT department at Griffith Uni, we couldn't actually get any of the information needed before coming to the lecture, thanks to a problem they had with the learning@griffith.com 'chucking a hissy fit' and not wanting to talk to anyone anymore. But now the issue has been resolved, half an hour before the lecture was meant to start, but it's there now and that's the important bit.
The lecture made a rather interesting statement regarding the communication process with the more modern approach being a little more accurate, as the model stated the communicator decides on what they want to transfer, they arrange the information in a logical order to themselves and then decide on a transfer medium, be it verbal, visual, physical or electronic. Te sender then transmits their message across the chosen medium. In the process of transferring the information there will always be an element of external noise that will cause a distortion of the original message, and then the listener perceives the message and then converts the data from the message into information. This is not something you really think about in a regular basis but I guess that it is a fairly accurate representation of how information is transfered .
The lecture then went on to show a couple of videos, one of an old video about the downfall of the mass news media due to the use of combined
Well, time for me to go and read the recommended readings for today.
Till tomorrow
^_^
First Ever Post
First Ever Post
Hello world,
Here we are in summer semester at Griffith Uni 2007. As with all university programs, we are required to demonstrate that we are capable of setting up and maintaining a blog.
So here is where we find ourselves, one of us writing a piece of information that no one but yourself is going to read, and yourself reading content from for no other reason than because you have to as a part of your employment. Ain't life grand. ^_^
Anyway......So a little bit about myself, hmmm, well some of the things i obtain enjoyment from include my car, which is a Nissan 180SX with a mildly worked SR20DET, I really enjoy taking my car up to Queensland Raceway because lets face it with the draconian rules put in place driving fast on the road is an express ticket to having to walk everywhere. : P
I also really enjoy playing around with my home computer, I'm currently in the process of purchasing a new computer and am having the chip set decision problems. The newer x38 Intel chip set appears on paper to be a far superior to the p35 chip set, however the question then becomes does the other current hardware in my price range support the additional features. I mean the fact that the x38 supports the 1333MHz speed cpu's and the newer 1600MHz fsb's. However the rest of the mobo's ancillaries such as the DIMM's. The real problem is that DDR3 ram is now available, but extremely expensive (roughly double the price), i.e. wait 6 months and it's going to be the same price.
But I think I’ve decided on a base that will future proof me to a point, allowing me to upgrade individual modules as the new tech becomes affordable.
New rig:
Intel E6850, 3GHz, 4Mb L2 http://www.intel.com
Zalman 9700 CPU cooler http://www.zalman.co.kr
Corsair Twin2x4068-6400c4 DDR2 800mhz http://www.corsair.com
MSI 8800GTX OC 768Mb http://www.msi.com.tw
Silverstone PSU http://www.silverstonetek.com
Silverstone Case http://www.silverstonetek.com
Well, that's it for me today, till next time.
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