CRDM 701

Week 11 - Kelly

A few concepts in the readings this week I think are interesting to discuss in regard to our class and the CRDM program.  Privatization of education through writing and buying into security are both ideas that are thoroughly interwoven in the process of our education, in the intellectual history of communication and what we aspire to research and even teach. Just like it is problematic that when discussing visual communication (other than written text) we use written text, it seems problematic that Innis and Carey spend so much effort articulating their arguments for print and then write, ?speech is the agency of creative thought; printing of dissemination?. And though this quote is referring specifically to ?printing? and not only writing, the issue was that knowledge grows out of speech and dialogue and is active instead of possessed. I agree that during some moments writing is private but I?m not sure if it prevents active information or the formation of democratic groups. We spend a lot of time on the 701 blog trying to come up with creative thoughts and then reading our classmates? ideas. This writing seems active, it supports the discussions later in class but even if we did not meet we could respond to one another?s posts or enter a chat room.

Also, Carey (1989) points out that ?once advanced forms of communication are created ? writing, mathematics, printing, photography ? a more complicated division of labor is created and it becomes appropriate to speak of producers and consumers of knowledge? (p. 168). This issue seems so complicated to me because I feel that the roles of producers and consumers change for each individual depending on the context of a situation. Eventually I think we all hope to be producers of information about communication, rhetoric and digital media but we will still be consumers of information/entertainment about black holes or why honeybees are vanishing. Carey says ?people become consumers of communication as they become consumers of everything else? (p. 169) and that ?the very existence of a commodity such as ?information? and an institution called ?media? make each other necessary? (p. 168). I definitely agree. But I am confused about his reference of ?people? being dependent on the ?journalist, the publisher, and the program director?.  What does he mean by ?people?? Anyone who is not in those positions he listed at the time? It?s possible those consumers could be the program director some day. And just because people are consumers of the information provided by a program director I?m not sure if that automatically makes them dependent. Again, I?m thinking about this in regards to our program and how I?m not so sure by attending a class and waiting to be informed/educated we ?lose the capacity to produce knowledge for ourselves in decentralized communities of understanding? (p. 169). Maybe we feel like we are producing knowledge since our classes do take place in an oral setting (but then again more time is spent with writing outside of the classroom).

So my understanding of the ?public? is that the Chicago School saw the mass media as bringing the public into existence and then later threatening the possibility of rational discourse and enlightened public opinion (p. 145); and Innis saw the existence of the public sphere (dependent on an oral tradition of public discourse) as a necessary counterweight to printing (Carey, p. 165). I thought the mention of Nerone?s concept of moving the debate of the public sphere away from access to representation provided another interesting viewpoint when trying to understand a media that creates and both inhibits a public sphere. Packer & Robertson (2006) explain that Nerone ?argues that ?sad histories? about the decline of participation and the rise of spectacle need to be rethought ?merely? as changes in an ongoing system of representation (p. 8) since the ?public? has always been mediated the people and the public is always represented. I hope we can discuss this idea more in class.

And again, I thought the idea of a resistant strategy against surveillance was another relevant topic in regards to our 701 class. Dawn mentioned in 702 something about the CRD 701 blog popping up with Google searches (I can?t remember exactly what she said but the word ?beware? was involved). The idea of surveillance has come up quite often in our class discussion but it never really seems to concern any of us. We continue to post publicly to the class blog and many in the class not only participate in Facebook, personal blogs, but promote /sell the importance of them. I?ve had students say to me, how can you be a serious communication student and not be very active (not only a member) on Facebook? If we feel like our discipline consistently supports networked systems how can we ?have the capacities to become non-active members? (p.396)? These might not be the technologies Packer was specifically referring to but I think there is a strong connection. Critiquing a network power may not only be seen as threatening from a terror perspective but also as an attack against our own discipline (even though our discipline also spends much time illustrating how these technologies do control us).

Posted at 01:29PM Nov 07, 2007 by klnorris in General  |  Comments[0]