Week 1: Manovich, Enzensgber, Baudrillard, Urrichio, Bolter
As the old saw goes, ?History is told by the winners.? Urrichio (and Enzensberger and Baudrillard) takes up this point and suggests that the historiography of media needs to be rethought in terms of cultural practices, accounting for the ?particular social orders, mentalities, and the lived experiences of their producers and users? (24). Urrichio and Manovich would agree that new media presents a moment of ?media in transition? (32). And who will write this new media history?
Enzensbeger calls for a reorganization of media and of those who organize that media: media as a mobilizing social power. Traditional forms of media, like film and television, do not allow participation; they are unidirectional. However, the real problem seems to be not the form of media, but who controls that media: ?The question is therefore not whether the media are manipulated, but who manipulates them? (265). For Enzensberger, the mass of people must become productive, for the solitary tinkerer will remain ?apolitical and limited? and ?socially and therefore aesthetically irrelevant? in his or her productive effort (266). Any reorganization of media, therefore, must end the isolation of the individual?becoming, instead, a collective structure and movement, ?the authors of history?(275).
I agree with Enzensberger that to be politically effective and efficacious new media needs social structure and movement. There are plenty of blogs that nobody reads or that have been abandoned?the lone tinkerer long ago realized the futility. But like Baudrillard, I do not think more producers, more bloggers are the answer necessarily.
Like Enzensberger, Baudrillard believes that the ?individual tinkerer? or producer has no social or political relevance. Unlike Enzensberger, Baudrillard does not believe that collective social action of the masses will liberate new media. Instead, he wants to smash the very model of communication: transmitter-message-receiver.
Baudrillard calls for interaction that transgresses the model: ?neither transmitters, nor receivers, but only people responding to each other? (286), citing graffiti as an example that ?responds there, on the spot, and breaches the fundamental role of non-response enunciated by all the media? (287). The message stands alone, interpellating any viewer as immediate participate; the message, therefore, is no longer about production or information, but rather reproduction that inscribes the participant in an already anticipated role. Instead of graffiti, think of hyperlinks: To click on a link requires a response, yes or no; however, the link itself is not meant to be read in depth, but rather to be explored instantaneously. The InterWeb has enabled us to move around at the speed of our thinking. Or perhaps more Baudrillardian, we think at the speed of our linking.
Although I think there is some truth to that conclusion, I agree with Manovich that the inherent interactivity of hyperlinks or other media does not make media new. As others have already noted, Manovich considers the popular definition of new media (the use of a computer for distribution and exhibition) as too limiting. Instead, he describes ?the emergent conventions? or the ?recurrent design patterns? of new media: numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, and cultural transcoding. And he believes that we are in the middle of a new media revolution that will affect all stages of communication, including our own mental structures. If we accept this, then perhaps we can accept the implications of Baudrillard?s graffiti example?at least as I have interpreted it. That is, hyperlinks, or new media, do, or could, interpellate us as immediate participates and alter our mental structures, and we become new media ourselves. Will our mental structures, will we become composite, hybrid beings?an intricately inextricably intertwined quilt of cultural and computer layers?
Am I being too outrageous? Maybe (just for fun). But as the fields of biomedical engineering and nanobiotechnology evolve, we may become less human than we realize and more machine than we know. Or, as games become more immersive, will some people ever not be playing?
Perhaps then, Manovich?s theory of new media smashes the model of communication; however, there remains the code (graffiti in another form?), as Jordan points out, and someone has to write the code: there is still a transmitter. Nevertheless, Manovich, as Baudrillard would agree, suggests that the numerical coding of new media and its modular structure allow it ?to automate many operations involved in media creation, manipulation and access. Thus, human intentionality can be removed from the creative process, at least in part? (53). As Baudrillard argues, the subversive act occurs not at production, but at reproduction (282). What or who should worry us more: the code or the coders? Those programmers and experimenters on the other side of campus seem innocent enough, but perhaps we should be more worried about their output.
Bolter comes to the rescue. He suggests that new media allows for ?a hybrid, a fusion of the critical stance of cultural theory with the constructive attitude of the visual designer? (30). In Manovichian terms, we must merge our theory and practice into a composite of the computer and culture layers. Any theory of new media, then, should become like that which it theorizes (as happened with Derrida?s writing on deconstruction): numerical, modular, variable, automated, and transcoded. What would such a theory look like, and where could we publish it?
Since we work in the humanities and social sciences, this means that we cannot merely watch as the coders write the code, or else they will write the history. Or worse yet?think The Matrix (this is fun)?the code will write the history. We should not only think with the mental structure of a visual designer or coder, but also become designers and coders. We must, Bolter implies, help to write the code, we must help to design new media, if we do not want to be written out of the history of new media. Otherwise, it seems possible, if unlikely, that our departments will become Enzensberger?s lone tinkerer.
This assumes, however, that we still have a choice.
~Jason Kalin