CRDM 701

Week 8 - Kelly

Except for the brief references to Carey?s discussion of the ritual view of communication and William?s writings on culture in communication, most of the ideas in the readings on space this week were pretty new to me. And I?m still trying to wrap my head around some of the assertions and vocabulary. Therefore my thoughts and blog post this week are short questions and observations.

Like many others who have posted in regards to the Myers article, I felt like I could relate to these concepts most easily. His personal explanation using the plumber and the conversations with the support group all seemed familiar?sometimes so familiar I would think, well of course we base our answers on place according to who we are talking to (and the various other factors he discusses). As stated in the relevance section, ?participants choose place formulations that seem to be relevant to what has been said?. I thought a really amusing part of the article was the one person in the 40 groups who gave an address in addition to a name and place. I read that and thought, who does that? ?even one person. If we had mentioned our specific addresses on the day we introduced each other at orientation that would have been bizarre?because it?s probably not relevant. What would we expect someone to do with that information unless they lived really close by or it was a well-known famous address? And then I started to wonder why should more attention be paid to place then any other introductory question that can have a variety of answers (the questions ?we want to get past? so we can discuss topics that interest us)? Meyers closing and then Falkheimer & Jansson?s article began to help me understand that the way I was looking at place was similar to the Geographic formulation discussion (building, pre-existing map) and not the relational, dwelling, paths presented by participants? (p. 340).

A concept I think I would like to discuss further (need more clarity here) is Jansson?s concept of texture. I think I understand the idea of space as ?communicative fullness? rather than a container or mere sign but I?m still having a hard time understanding the ?eroding boundaries between material and symbolic structures of space? or ?intersection of communicative/spatial praxis and the structural characteristics of space and place?. I want to talk about this more because the idea of describing an abstract spatial praxis as having ?texture? sounds incongruent. And can we talk more about ?informationalisation?? From what I gathered in the article this is a well-known word that I am unfamiliar.

Since the other posts have discussed Lefebvre?s concept space as ?organic and fluid and alive? I thought I would focus on the discussion of the festivals. I loved these ideas, what an exciting concept to think of cities as places to release repression and a means for ?free associative expression?.  I like this idea of rethinking a space and how a social space can completely transform a physical space. Maybe I was touched by his idea of ?human joyfulness? because I hear all the noises from the State fair outside my window (if any of you are going and need a place to park feel free to come to my house ? I won?t charge you $5-10 like my neighbors? maybe I would charge Nick).  ?Yikes?, was my first reaction to ?but then is there not always something cruel, wild and violent in festivals?? Maybe Lefebvre was talking about a different kind of festival (it wouldn?t be too far-fetched that he wasn?t referring to the NC State fair?) But most of the noises I hear from the fair are people insanely screaming from the rides, the booms of fireworks, gun-fire, sirens and the barking of neighborhood dogs from all the commotion.

Finally, I hope we can also talk Merrifield?s discussion about academic space. I feel like us first-year PhD candidates are all still kind of observers in this space but I think it?s interesting he says ?in our own daily practice, we deal more and more with abstract representations and codifications of society which are wrenched out of the lived experience of both ourselves and others outside the academy?. I?m curious how we should go about analyzing our own daily lives and spaces.

Posted at 09:34PM Oct 17, 2007 by klnorris in General  |  Comments[0]

Week 8--Jayna

10/17/07

The spatial turn in media studies? this is a very interesting concept presented by Jansson & Falkheimer, and I think I?d like to find the book just to peruse through some of the chapters they highlight. Once again, readings from the mass comm. theories master?s class I took 10 years ago pop into my head.  Lasswell and Schramm are as familiar as the old uses and gratifications theories surrounding early media, but it makes sense?families or neighbors would gather around the radio or television to take in the news or the stories & performances, and it has been quite some time since media was used exclusively in this way.  Jansson/Falkheimer say, ?Work and leisure, productions and consumption, are saturated with the ideology of mobility and connectedness, which is essentially a matter of transcending and/or erasing spatial boundaries by means of communication? (p.11).  So, the consumption has been there, albeit at smaller volume, and certainly the connectedness has been an important aspect of media studies all along.  In my view, it is the mobility and the ?dilemma of interactivity? that are the new spokes in the communications wheel.

Another spoke would be the ?time-space compression,? or the fact that the world is perceived as smaller now because communication across invisible boundaries is so automatic.  The mobility of communication is tied to this, and helps us feel in close proximity & more available to one another.  As Merryfield shares insight into Henri Lefebvre?s The Production of Space, I gather that Lefebvre was quite the visionary ahead of his own time.  He readily identified that the ?physical space?mental space? and social space? should not be examined separately?what a great idea! Seems he was interdisciplinary before his time, and even had a name for it-the ?spatial triad? consisting of representations of space, representational space, and spatial practices! Reading about Lefebvre made me think of Frank Lloyd Wright, the master of physical space who focused on the social and mental spaces needed in homes and public spaces.  I can imagine the conversations these two could have shared and wonder if they ever crossed paths.  Wright was also a visionary before his time.  His designs were what he called organic, and meant to blend in with the geographical space around them.  Entries were small or hidden and opened into larger, vaulted spaces. Function and flow were the utmost of importance, but the priority was on the life of the structure, that each had obvious purpose & personality that would age and weather with time as the surroundings where it was placed. Wright would fit right in with Lefebvre and Harvey: ?To change life it so change space; to change space is to change life. Architecture or revolution? Neither can be avoided? (Merryfield, p. 173).

As for the Myers article, again?very interesting; actually, I thoroughly enjoyed this one.  I?ve often felt that ?where are you from? is personally one of the most complicated questions to answer, and I love that he looks at such a common icebreaker in a new way.  In this article we see again the idea of community, or shared experience through communication?the mere mention of a particular neighborhood provides shared connotation for participants. I think we can also all say we?ve experienced the delta in ?local sense of scale? at one time or another.  The most recent incident where I reached out to those I know who were geographically close to a disaster was when the bridge fell in Minneapolis/St. Paul.  My mother will often call from Maryland because she heard some weather report and she?ll call saying only something like, ?are you drowning down there?? and I have no idea what she?s talking about because it hasn?t rained in days.  I also appreciated Myers?s deduction of the word ?just? (p. 326).  I find that I use it fairly frequently in written conversation, and with the exact purpose he describes.  I look forward to seeing where our class-discussion takes us on all of these articles, and hope to finish up the Wiley & Kitchin articles shortly.

As far as my paper?s topic and these readings, a correlation I see is that of shared meaning? one of the items I hope to discover is the shared meaning of fonts/typography across cultures, again I may be able to draw more connections after our discussion, but right now, that is the main one I see.

Posted at 03:13PM Oct 17, 2007 by jrjackso in General  |  Comments[0]

Week 8 - Jon

This week's readings, particularly the Myers and Merrifield texts, helped me to think about connections between space and the individual.  Specifically, I've always been interested in the variety of answers to the question that Myers explores: "Where are you from?".  For example, I come from a mid-sized town (Concord) outside of a large city (Charlotte), and I have noticed in the past that people from Concord are more likely to answer the above question with "Charlotte" than with the the town that is listed as their street address, Concord.  Why do they "defer" to the larger city?  Are they simply trying to avoid having to explain the location of the smaller town, thus naming a space that is more likely to be known by the audience?  Or is there something more hip, powerful, cool, or even acceptable about attaching one's self to an urban environment?  Or is such a decision less about the larger city as it is about severing all ties from the smaller location?  Importantly, substituting "Charlotte" for "Concord" has become much less prevalent after the city's growth in population and tourism in the past ten years.  Is the city now "important" enough to be declared a space that one calls home?   

Myers cites Schlegoff's discussion of flexibility within the "scale of the formulation"; "Any place can be described in broader or narrower terms, as a child writes his or her address in a book, from street address up through town and nation to the universe" (p. 322).  The substitution of one town for another is slightly different from Schlegoff's formulation of scale -- Yes, Charlotte is larger than Concord, but, at the same time, the cities have separate boundaries.  One could suggest a regional scale, something like indicating one's home is the "Charlotte area"; however, this does not seem the same as saying one is simply and plainly from "Charlotte." Charlotte has such a strong influence on the area that, indeed, the regional scale may be implied, but, still, substituting a regional scale the majority of the time for the local is interesting. 

Myers introduces Proshensky's notion of "place identity" to explore how individuals interpret their surroundings.  He goes on to suggest that place "is productive in conversation because it can lead on to more talk, further meanings, and practices" (p. 324).  Thus, another explanation for the substitution of a larger city for one smaller is not to limit conversation, as I discussed above, but to spur it on.  Just the mention of a large city, even one's that the audience for the conversation may not have visited, create rich meanings fostered from media outlets.  Even looking at a map, one can observe the placement of significance on large cities over small ones -- big, exclamatory dots in a sea of small, quiet ones. 

But why might one provide an "alternative geographical identity"?  Within Myers's study, there are two such instances and are explained as follows: "Both revisions are occasioned by something in the ongoing talk; the identity as Brummie is relevant to the focus group introduction, and the identity as Jamaican/American is relevant to an argument about where one could live" (p. 332).  Thus, context and audience are vital.

Lefebvre's spatial triad of representations of space, representational space, and spatial practices is useful for exploring some of the questions I posed at the beginning of this entry.  Representations of space refers to "conceptualized space, to the space constructed by assorted professionals and technocrats. . . invariably, ideology, power, and knowledge are embedded in this representation" (p. 174).  The degree to which skyscrapers like, say, the Bank of America building, a company which many claim to "own" Charlotte, embodies ideology, power, and knowledge is unquestionable.  Moreover, the lived space, that of "everyday experience," and spatial practices seem to channel into Charlotte, a hub of shopping, sports, food, highways, and social networks.  And, that which is missed while being physically present in the larger, dominant space is pumped into regional and local televisions through news broadcasts.  Therefore, an individual can sleep in one town but metaphorically "live" and work in another.  I believe that Lefebvre's triad provides some insight into why one would defer to the larger, dominant space.  

Lastly, I am interested in seeing how "hyper-space biased communication" impacts the way that individuals view themselves in the world.  The three spatial ambiguities cited by Jansson, Andre, and Falkheimer, mobility, cultural convergence, and interactivity, provide some interesting questions regarding individuals and their space.  Will the first response to a question like "Where are you from?" ever be in a digital context rather than the physical?  Will we ever be "from" a message board or online world that we frequent or will the digital always be supplementary to the physical?  What about the opposite scenario -- what happens when someone asks you where you are from on a message board or online environment?  Will your response be geographic or digital?  What about in an online world like WoW?  Is your "home" in the game primary or secondary to your physical home outside of cyberspace?

Posted at 02:04PM Oct 17, 2007 by jtburr in Week 8  |  Comments[0]

Week 8 - Nick

This weeks readings on space were very interesting from a theoretical standpoint.  Merrifield's review of the work of Lefebvre sets up perhaps the best theoretical framework for conceptualizing space.  Of course, I have read part of the book Merrifield cites quite frequently, the Production of Space (POS is a rather unfortunate abbreviation to have chosen to use, so I will not run with it).  Lefebvre's work is instrumental in understanding how we work with space.  I especially take to the notion that space is concieved, percieved, and lived.  Lefebvre took the view that capitalist societies get stuck in the concieved part, but the other two are vitally more important even though all three are necessary for the understanding of space as a whole.  The fact that his work was by and large put off to the side for so long seems a bit tragic, considering that the production of space is the construction of our lives.

Myer's study on the simple act of identifying oneself by where one is from perhaps segues with Lefebvre, although not in a major way.  Stretching it a little, we see that people tend to have many ways of dealing with the question depending on who they are speaking to.  The construction of identity that goes on here would be impossible without the produced spatial meaning inherrant in cities.  This can be seen in how meaningless identification through place becomes when the conversant has no familiarity with the place.  The space is produced, and in turn produces the people, and thus when you say you are from somewhere to someone who recognizes the place, they have some understanding of how you were produced and what you may be like.  This falls within Lefebvre's framework of how space is perceived.  Jansson and Falkheimer's work further corrobrates this framework of space by discussing what many others have said on the subject.  They really bring in the communicative element in the production of space, however, by discussing how others say space is mediated, communicated, and produced through such communication. 

Although it seems at first that space may not be such a huge part of search engine use, it is to a certain extent.  What are search engines if not a different form of mapping the internet?  They are crossroads at which people come to find their direction.  Yet this space is concieved every bit as much as other spaces.  Indeed, considering how commercial such spaces have become, we might presume that Lefebve would have the same criticisms of the space concieved by search engines as he did other forms of urban space.  The lived space of the internet is not necessarily the first twenty entries that come up when you do a search on Google or Yahoo or Excite.  Yet those twenty might affect our perception of the space.  Perhaps we should guard against the concieved part of the triad dominating on the internet as much as it does in a capatilistic society.  Of course, it may already dominate, in which case it would behoove us to understand how that is working in the digital environment.

Posted at 01:43PM Oct 17, 2007 by nmtemple in Week 8  |  Comments[0]

Week 8 - Christin

The readings this week all have to do with the concept of space, which especially given the growing trend toward ubiquitous computing (I?ll point you again to the Popular Mechanics video of the coffee table computer from Microsoft, http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4217348.html).  The readings tended to concentrate more on geographical space, but I wonder how our conceptions of space will change when we?re surrounded by computers that are connecting us to all of these other physical locations throughout the world.  Will we still treat Raleigh, North Carolina as the same place when anywhere we go we?re surrounded by images of, say for example, European castles?  Or will everywhere suddenly become, to borrow a term from our own Adriana de Souza e Silva, a hybrid space?

Myers discusses the different responses to the question ?where are you from?? and what those responses mean in terms of identity.  He says that, ?References to place project further possibilities for talk, evaluating and defending, telling stories, and arguing.  So references to place are important, not just for finding out about places, but also for finding identities in talk.? (321)  What?s interesting to me and that I didn?t see him drawing connections with is not just the discussion of where you as an individual comes from but also where you family ? parents and grandparents ? come from.  I can say that I was born and raise in New York, but if I say that I was born and raised in New York by Italian immigrants suddenly that takes on an entirely different meaning.  My identity becomes tied not only to where I was born or lived but as well to where my parents and, in some cases, grandparents lived.

Merrifield describes how, ??in Lefebvre?s hands, space becomes redescribed not as a dead, inert thing or object, but as organic and fluid and alive; it has a pulse, it palpitates, it flows and collides with other spaces.? (171)  I love this description not just because of what it says but because of how it?s said.  Later, Merrifield describes how space must be built; I would argue it must be born and grow much like a child would.  It must have parents who conceive of it, it must grow, be nurtured, and be shaped by those around it, and finally it will reach adulthood able to reproduce itself.

This child analogy can then connect to the Falkheimer and Jansson article.  Here, the authors describe the concepts of space in connection to media.  Specifically, I was interested in their discussion of mobile media.  On page 12 they state, ?and as technologies become more portable, they also become more closely attached to the moving body ? through headsets, earphones, palm pilots, laptops, etc.?  If space can move like a child can move, then this would allow us to attach technology to a space so that it becomes part of both the definition of and embodiment of that space.

So I may have just gone on about a metaphor some of you disagree with, so I?ll be interested to hear in class what you all think about it.

Posted at 11:10AM Oct 17, 2007 by caphelps in Week 8  |  Comments[0]

Week 8 - Karla

In his article "'Where are you from?':  Identifying place," Myers writes, "The processes of asking about places, choosing from various ways of referring to them, making them relevant to other participants, and relating them to the ongoing talk are often taken for granted" (320).  Drawing upon the results of his study, Myers indicates how this is the case, and I imagine anyone who seriously considers how he/she has responded to the question, "Where are you from?," understands the seeming fluidity of place.  Similar to the experiences Kathy shared in her blog, I have also often changed my response about place depending upon the conversation I was in and with whom I was speaking.  For example, although I graduated from a high school in a small town named Johnsonville, when I started attending Clemson University for my undergraduate degree I said I was from Florence.  Admittedly this is in part because I really did not (still do not) care for J-ville, but it was also largely due to the fact that I realized Florence would be more recognizable to others than a small town of which no one really knows (unless someone has lived there, knows people who have lived there, or else randomly passed through on the way to the beach or somewhere else).  My family moved to Florence during my freshman year, seeming to validate for me my claim to be from Florence.  However, realistically I only spent time in Florence when I was home visiting for a weekend/holiday or during the summer, so when asked where I was from, perhaps the more accurate answer in terms of time spent somewhere was Clemson.  In terms of where my family was, though, Florence was more "appropriate."  I generally located place as where my family was, and I still claim Florence as "where I am from." 

When I moved to TX to work on my M.A., how I responded to the question concerning my place became more complicated.  When I had to introduce myself in classes I said I was from Florence, SC.  When I traveled around TX, I told people I was from College Station.  Sometimes I would add that I was from Florence and had recently moved to College Station, but that was often only the case if someone inquired about my accent.  When I was at "home" in Florence, I found myself switching between claiming "home" as Florence and as College Station.  Around my family I tried to make sure I claimed Florence as my home, the reason for which I suppose was that I thought my parents considered Florence to be my home as well and that claiming College Station would somehow seem "inaccurate."  Even now that I live in Raleigh and am officially a NC resident (and have been since last August), I still struggle some with responding to the place question.  I generally will say I live in Raleigh, but am from Florence.  Then again, if where I am "from" is really my birthplace, then for years I should have responded to the question with "Savannah, GA."  Anyways, the point of my sharing all of this is to indicate how I personally have changed and continue to change my responses to the place question.  I find it interesting that how we choose to answer the question about where we are from often depends upon how we feel others will be able to respond to what we say.  So, when others introduce themselves to us, are we ever really learning where they are from, or are we just generally hearing about places as far as perhaps an hour away from others' "hometowns" because the respondents' believe those to be the best answers?  Why do we ask where someone is from if we realize that we change our own responses to the same question? 

Myers mentions that where someone is from can suggest "entitlement to an opinion" (327-328).  Given that when we first introduce ourselves we typically say our names and where we are from, often devoting a couple of sentences to indicating place by suggesting where towns/cities are in relation to other places or what the areas are known for (in contrast to just the few words to say "My name is . . ."), do we suggest that where we are from gives us more authority in the conversation than necessarily who we are according to our names?  How do we interpret the ability of place to function as a stronger indicator of identity than name?  What does it mean that people sometimes say that they know the "Smiths from Hemingway," for example, in terms of how names and places become interconnected?  Is someone whose last name is Smith, but who does not belong to the group of Smiths from Hemingway, an outsider in a way even if he/she is living in that area?  Who creates the claim that certain individuals have to place according to their names?   

Although I really enjoyed Myers' article and believe there is much more to say about it, I will move on to Merrifield's writing to try to keep this entry relatively short.  I will be honest and say that before this article I had no real clue who Lefebrve was, and after reading the article the first time I still was unclear about some of what I had read (and I am sure that even after reading the article again I have more to learn).  Similar to Kathy, again, I found the claim about space being "actively produced" (171) really interesting.  Conceiving of space as "organic and fluid and alive" (171) enables us to understand the reproduction of space and how space changes in various ways, whether according to the claims we make about space in relation to ourselves or what space means for others.  The affect of space on relationships, particularly in terms of capital and government, is particularly provocative, especially if one agrees that "[s]eparation ensures consent, perpetuates misunderstanding, and worse:  it reproduces the status quo" (171).  In citing Lefebvre, Myers writes that "invariably ideology, power and knowledge are embedded" in the representation of space (174).  Furthermore, as Myers indicates, conceptions appear to "rule our lives, sometimes for the good, but more often -- given the structure of society -- to our detriment" (175).  Must we privilege these conceptions, particularly if they are "to our detriment"?  I am reminded of a previous discussion in which the topic of dependence upon professionals/engineers/etc. who have the knowledge of systems the general public does not understand arose, and I wonder if we relate the idea of embracing the representations of space "professionals and technocrats" establish to that dependence?  Do we accept the representations because of the perceived authority behind them?

In "Towards a Geography of Communication," Jansson and Falkheimer raise the question of "how communication produces space and how space produces communication" (9).  Their discussion of mobility is particularly relevant to today's society, in which "the saturation of media texts in everyday life implies that a large share of them are consumed on the move" (11-12).  I was reminded of the trucks that now have the scrolling ads, which presents mobility in terms of both the trucks moving and the ads moving, but also in terms of the audience when that audience is driving past the trucks.  How does that mobility compounded influence the way we accept the "text"?  As Jansson and Falkheimer later note in their discussion of Richard Elk, the "re-theorising of space, epistemology and ontology, has resulted in two major propositions.  The first is that space is produced or constituted through action, performance and interaction.  The second is that space cannot be held in fixed sections or regular geometries, since it is transformed by a multitude of productions, practices and performances and therefore necessarily entails plurality and multiplicity" (20).   The idea of space as a result of "action, performance and interaction" reminds me of Lefebvre's view of space as "heard" and "enacted" (Myers 177).  I am interested in the idea of space as "heard."  Why does space "not arise from the visible readable realm" (Myers 177) but from being "heard" (and "enacted")?   Also, does the "plurality and multiplicity" of space in conjunction with the fluidity of place help to account for why "space" and "place" are sometimes used interchangeably (even though they are distinct)?

Posted at 10:42AM Oct 17, 2007 by kmlyles in General  |  Comments[0]

Week 8 - Kathy

Myers (2006) suggests that ?researchers should look at how people talk about place before they try to categorise what participants say about it? (p. 121), saying that references to place are important to finding ?identities in talk?. His discussion of the question ?where are you from? was particularly interesting to me, having just relocated from a place I had lived all my life. It was interesting to reflect on the flexibility of formulation, which for me starts at ?around Philly? (sometimes I have even had to explain that ?Philly? means Philadelphia) and gets as specific as ?West Chester?.  When I find myself in conversations with others from the area I am from, I have realized that my ?place? has grown to include places which I would before consider to be ?far away? (more than 30 minutes). 

Merrifield?s (2000) discussion of Lefebvre?s Spatiology and the Production of Space (POS) looks at the ways that space is actively produced, not as objective but ?organic and fluid and alive; it has a pulse, it palpitates, it flows and collides with other spaces? (p. 171). The idea of space as fluid accounts for how my concept of a place called ?home? has grown to include an area much larger than the street I grew up on, the apartment I lived in before I moved here, and the places that I used to go.  That space has changed now that I have a new perspective from being in a new place ? as Merrifield summarizes Lefebvre - ?To change life is to change space; to change space is to change life? (p.173).

Jansson and Falkheimer (2006) argue that Lefebvre?s model, which looks at the relationships between the production of space and the production of communication, ?must be regarded as a cornerstone for future investigations of the geographies of communication? (p.?). Moving forward, Lefebvre?s triad in POS - representations of space, representational space, and spatial practices ? seem to have a lot of promise for looking at virtual space. Representation of space as ?space constructed by assorted professionals and technocrats? (p. 174) can be understood in terms of the Internet as everything from the technologies (PCs , infrastructure backbones) to the policies and regulations (tiered net, CFAA) that initially inform the use and limits of that space. Representational space (lived space) is experiential, and Merrifield notes that ordered space attempts to ?intervene in, rationalize, and ultimately usurp? this lived space. An example of this is the free P2P MP3 distribution model being usurped by Apple?s iTunes, which legitimized the form by bringing it back into ordered space. Lastly, spatial practices which shape reality and include the interactions that link places can be seen in personalized ?web portals? where individuals can manage virtual spaces from the stock market to the daily horoscope. Maybe these spatial practices can also be seen in portable technologies designed to receive email and manage schedules as well as store personal photos and music, such as the iPhone.

The implications that place and space have on our identities and the ways we communicate are clearly complicated by technology and globalization. In his discussion of social space in the modern episteme, Wise (1997) discusses the collapsing of time and space. Following Lefebvre?s idea that changing space changes life, and changing life changes space, I wonder how changes in the ways that time and space are collapsed in representations of space and representational space ? such as tiered Internet - affect communication in virtual space?

Before closing, I wanted to mention that I was also very intrigued by the readings on cartography, and feel like this blog post could have gone in a completely different direction.  I am looking forward to our discussion and reading this week?s posts!

Also - for updates on my project check out my project blog - http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/broadbandcasting

Posted at 10:42PM Oct 15, 2007 by kfoswald in Week 8  |  Comments[0]

Week 7 - Kelly

When reading Douglas? epilogue I couldn?t help but think how her points were so similar to Adorno & Horkheimer?s chapter on the ?culture industry: enlightenment as mass deception?.(I know I keep bringing in other readings during the blogs?even though there is plenty of material to discuss without these tangents ? but I?m using them for the paper and they are on my mind). She discusses the ?myth of consumer choice? as ?evidence that Americans possessed unprecedented political and economic freedom?. She then points out ?we are told how much control we have over media content, that what we get is what we demand and want, and the media are our servants? (p. 322). In actuality, Douglas, like Adorno & Horkheimer, argue that society loses its ability to ?nourish true freedom and individuality?. Like other theorists of the Frankfurt school, they refer to a state of false consciousness and this false consciousness is perpetuated by ?less appealing realities of industrial capitalism? (Douglas, p. 321) or ?the culture industry? (A & H). Society does not realize the deceptive qualities of the culture industry because it claims only to give people what they want.

I thought this idea was interesting in relation to the McChesney reference that ?Congress had received more letters in favor of the chains than opposed to them? (p. 21).  This seems interesting because in this sense the FRC eventually did give people what they wanted or this at least alluded that was the case. McChesney even quotes Hoover as saying, ?one of the few instances that I know of when the whole industry and country is praying for more regulation? (p. 13). It?s almost like Hoover was preparing statements so he could later remind the country ? this is what you wanted.

Douglas points out that we think because we have many television stations that we have diversity of information and perspectives (p. 322). However, more choices in popular culture do not necessarily indicate freedom or individuality. Instead, Douglas would probably argue the culture industry is only doing a better job at masking deceptive qualities.

Another argument I would like to make about Douglas? critique about news stories and emerging technologies is that it neglects to acknowledge the possibility that the audience realizes the reports are not objective. So, the media may limit the public discourse surrounding how technology is, and should be, embedded in our very thoughts but does it define it like she says? I think the public often decides the uses and importance of a technology regardless of media reports. Sticking with radio I kept thinking about satellite radio and whether or not its development was in response to the change in traditional radio or whether it was developed by the whim of corporate powers. Either way it is not being adopted publicly as much as the corporate investors had hoped.

Douglas? discussion of the amateur radio I thought related well to the discussion of collaborative websites. The groups and publications formed because of their desire to share information and not in a top-down fashion. I think the collaborative websites have the same appeal. I?m starting to wonder if the sites that live successfully do a better job of providing more people a say in how information should be presented. In other words, maybe the sites that fail appear more totalitarian in their leadership or creation of the site.

Posted at 12:48AM Oct 03, 2007 by klnorris in General  |  Comments[0]

Week 7 - Nick

A prevailing tension in readings about technology seems to be between technological determinism and a more symptomatic way of looking at technology.  And yet invariably, in the readings we have read at least, the authors argue that this isn't the way to look at it at all. It's a false dichotomy, and we need to transcend it to look at, for lack of a better word that encompasses all the views, the larger picture.  Such is the case with Williams who argues that technologies like Television aren't accidental and don't occur in a vacuum, but rather are shaped by what people want.  He presents the historical case of television as his case in point, but I do think he is right.  We want things before we have them. I've heard it said that science fiction gives us many of our great ideas for how the future should look and we sort of craft it in that way.  Case in point, cell phones and the communicators on Star Trek.  Do cell phones have to look the way they do?  Is this really the most pragmatic look?  Or do we have certain expectations based on desires that are based on fiction which is in turn based on what we know of reality?  (Communicators worked very much like phones work.  They were cordless phones, but they just looked different.  Our modern cell phones actually do more than Captain Kirk's communicator did.)

Okay, so that got slightly convoluted.  Moving on.

Douglas sort of feeds into McChesney chronologically by taking us from the early 1900s and the amateurs to the struggle for broadcast democracy and/or supremacy in the 1920s across the course of these readings.  Douglas pointed out something that I found interesting, though.  In his discussion of amateurs, he naturally discussed how the government tried to regulate the amateurs to some extent.  They were annoying.  BUT!  By producing things like a call book of those who had passed the test to get a broadcasting licence, they actually, "...inadvertantly encouraged amateurs to try to achieve greater distances so they could communicate with their compatriots across the country."  (Douglas, 293)  What does this say?  Well, to me this says that the negotiation between the government and the public (and, as we see with McChesney, the coorporate interests...they don't count as the public.  They count as evil.) is ongoing and sometimes advances new mediums in unexpected ways. 

And then, in the 20s, it advanced in all too predictable ways.  Or, as McChesney would say, not predictable as it didn't have to happen that way.  Actually, it's probably fairly sad that I consider it predictable as it shows how mired I am in the current times where such behavior on the part of corporate interests IS predictable.  Was this takeover of the airwaves technologically determined?  No.  Was it symptomatic?  No.  It was coorporately determined, which plays back to what Douglas was saying all along, but in a sinister way.  As McChesney pointed out, the public didn't want the radio to go the way it did.  It was not a 'natural' progression of capitalism.  It was the path desired by the commercial interests, and they had the power and the money to make it happen.  They wanted the 50,000 watt transmitters and they got them, even if they had to steal the proverbial candy from the proverbial nonprofit baby's mouth.  Which they did.  A lot.

Returning to a less cynical topic, the negotiation I mentioned above is in full force today over the internet.  Google is a company in the center of this maelstrom, and the public and governmental eye is ever upon them.  Do they violate privacy by scanning your email for key words for advertisers?  Are they too big?  Do they sample AP news for free (the AP is a project for another class that I'm working on)?  Or are they fighting for our rights as they claim they are doing when they refuse to allow the government access to their data on searches?  How should this technology, this doorway to the internet, be used?  How do we WANT it to be used?  And so the negotiation goes on...

Posted at 12:33AM Oct 03, 2007 by nmtemple in Week 7  |  Comments[0]

Week 7--Jayna

He with the most technology wins (or holds the power). This has been the common theme throughout each week?s readings, and this week was no different. A prime example comes from McChesney, "?FRC acknowledge that congress had given it no indication as how to determine the meaning of public interest, convenience, or necessity?the FRC had interpreted the phrase as meaning?thus favor those broadcasters with the best technical equipment" (McChesney, p.25). Williams also speaks to power when exploring the idea of driving forces behind technological developments. He uses the Press (or, journalists-as opposed to the printing press) as an example saying that the press is evidence that need pushed technological development, and the need was a result of political power and the need to disseminate the information (Williams, p. 21).

Posted at 11:41PM Oct 02, 2007 by jrjackso in General  |  Comments[0]

Week 7 - Kathy

Douglas? discussion of amateur radio use in the early 1900s in many ways seems to parallel the early use of the internet by hackers and tinkerers ? let me summarize a few points briefly and then make a few comparisons.

 Early radio pioneer Lee De Forrest negotiated with AT&T, agreeing that he would stay out of the point-to-point transmission in favor of using it for broadcasting news and music, which the company saw as ?frivolous, a hobby, and certainly not a pastime that related in any way to its corporate goals? (Douglas, 1987, p. 293). The American Radio Relay League?s successful cross-country radio relays and the government recruitment of enthusiasts as ready-trained radio operators for WWI resulted in radio operators returning from the war eager to get hold of more advanced equipment. After Frank Conrad incorporated speech and music that could further the reach of radio beyond the level of enthusiast, broadcasting was seen as a way to extend radio use to that of the entire family and sell receivers. Next came commercial broadcasting, a push from the government for enthusiasts to ?back off? (more or less), and the depiction of radio as some unwieldy force best handled by corporations.

I say that this is analogous to the Internet since like radio, the Internet was originally a military technology. Hobbyists and tinkerers then took it up to see what it could do ? and after demonstrating the capabilities of the system, it was wrestled back to be used for corporate and capitalist ends.  With the radio and Internet, no one minded people exploring the possibilities until it was realized that there was something interesting (profitable) there. Concerning radio, Douglass says that: ?Technological progress and systems building came at a cost? Control over radio technology put these corporations in an extremely powerful position, not just economically, but culturally as well?? (p. 319-320).

In discussing the beginnings of broadcasting, Williams (1974) points out that though it seems that though broadcasting as a social institution seems predestined by technology, it is ?no more than a set of particular social decisions, in particular circumstances, which were then so widely if imperfectly ratified that it is now difficult to see them as decisions rather than as (retrospectively) inevitable results? (p. 23). Likewise, McChesney (1993) points to the formation of commercial broadcasting as a set of decisions in his chapter on early radio regulation (General Order 40), pointing out that though many scholars gloss over the resistance to the current corporate structure of radio broadcasting, there was, indeed, resistance. The defeat of the reform movement was both a victory for commercial broadcasting and ?a defeat for the very notion that the public had the right to determine how best to structure broadcasting services? (p. 255?). He later warns that ?If no other lesson emerges from the early 1930s, then let it be that any viable campaign to reconstruct the media system must be part of a broad-based mass movement that is attempting to reform the basic institutions of U.S. society. (p. ?)

Applying this forward, I want to think about his warning seriously in relation to the pending re-structuring of the Internet (this time, on the part of corporations we know we can trust with the unwieldy series of tubes!). In order to ensure that the Internet remains open and democratic, people need to be educated and involved in policy. Net Neutrality campaigns are doing this, one of which McChesney is involved in. This goes back to his closing quote that borrows from Marx, talking about the responsibility of intellectuals to make a ?ruthless criticism of everything existing? and change things for the better, even in ?the darkest moment? (p. 270?). I like that he ?practices what he preaches? so to speak, and has made a career out of being a ruthless critic as well as by engaging non-academic communities toward social action (see http://www.savetheinternet.com/). I?m looking forward to more conversation about this idea of the intellectual being responsible for change in class on Thursday!

Posted at 11:28PM Oct 02, 2007 by kfoswald in Week 7  |  Comments[0]

Week 7 - Karla

Apologies now for the length of this post . . .

The readings for this week provide an informative historical tracing of developments in radio (as well as television, courtesy of Williams) and broadcasting, spanning decades (early 1900s through the 1940s), major figures and groups (Herbert Hoover, AT&T, RCA, etc.), and orders (Radio Act of 1912 and General Order 40).  Topics such as democracy, politics, consumer relations, and the ever-popular subject of power, arise throughout the writings and offer several points of entry for discussion.

Starting with the Douglas reading, I found it interesting that the first radio message relayed across the country concerned democracy, in light of the issues surrounding control over the ether (How democratic can a medium really be if it is controlled by select private individuals/groups/organizations?).  Douglas writes, "At 11:00 P.M., a message from Colonel Nicholson of the Rock Island, Illinois, Arsenal was broadcast from station 9XB in Davenport, Iowa.  The message read, 'A democracy requires that a people who govern and educate themselves should be so armed and disciplined that they can protect themselves'" (296).  Although Nicholson was not referring to democracy in terms of radio, his statement has implications for the later discussions that occurred surrounding whether broadcasters should be self-regulating without government interference and what kinds of information they should broadcast (educational/cultural programs and/or other material). 

Douglas describes the role of amateurs in developing radio and broadcasting, noting how they "and their converts had constructed the beginnings of a broadcasting network and audience" and "embedded radio in a set of practices and meanings vastly different from those dominating the offices at RCA" (302).  Despite the contributions of amateurs to shaping radio as well as to assisting the government during war, amateurs still found themselves subject to the domineering pressures of larger groups such as RCA and AT&T and the politicians who supported those larger power players.  The fact that the amateurs "were ordered to close down and dismantle their stations" (Douglas 297) after the U.S. declared war on Germany, only to be recruited for service later because of "the military's need for skilled operators" (298), suggests how susceptible the amateurs were to forces larger than themselves.  As Douglas writes, "[T]he subculture of American men and boys who had previously fought with the navy over who owned the ether now supplied the armed services with thousands of willing, cooperative recruits.  They were no longer outside the system, they were part of it" (298).  Do we recognize a trend toward incorporating those who are on the "outside [of] the system" in other areas of communication?  Do those who attempt to maintain control over their own communication media and/or to subvert the system often eventually end up becoming "part" of the system?

As Douglas explains, radio could empower and equalize, granting listeners choices about their entertainment and greater access to cultural programs while maintaining balanced opportunity for all audience members by assuring that they could hear music and do so as though they all had "the best seats in the house" (308).  Of course, the ability to afford a radio factors in to the issue of equalization since not everyone had access to radios, but those who did were able to theoretically enjoy the same broadcasting.  The idea that radio could instill in listeners the "right values" (309) and do so in part by providing educational (as well as some religious) programming becomes an interesting subject to consider in relation to the equalizing quality of radio.  If radio were able to provide all its listeners with equal opportunities for cultural enhancement, did it offer a way to blur the lines somewhat among social classes?  Given that radio provided private entertainment people could enjoy in their homes, did that sense of equalization only really exist within the private home sphere or did/could it carry outward to the larger public?  Essentially, how much of an equalizer was radio really? 

The politics surrounding radio were particularly evident through the establishment of the three classes, high/medium/low, and the types of groups that fell into each category (high including AT&T, GE, and Westinghouse, whereas universities, churches, and labor unions were positioned in the lower class) (Douglas 316).  The development of these classes seemed to give radio a sense of having its own caste system, with the lower class becoming increasingly forced out and marginalized.  Radio acting as an "agent of American democracy and altruism" (320) seemed threatened by the power struggles taking place over which groups were "worthiest" of air time and stronger frequencies, and as conflicts over who should control the ether played out, the myth of control that the media were in servitude to the public (322) appeared to clearly emerge as myth.  Is there a myth of control about any communication media today, or does the public appear to acknowledge that the media is not in its service?

McChesney explains how "toll" broadcasting helped usher in advertising-based radio broadcasting (12) and "chain dominance" (21) began to take over the ether, with the support of various officials.  He uses the example of one Department of Commerce representative, who said, "'[T]he success of radio broadcasting lay in doing away with small and unimportant stations'" (19), to exemplify the belittling attitudes toward smaller radio outlets.  Radio became a "football for politicians" (24) and amateur/low class stations found themselves subject to policies (such as renewing licenses, which consumed money and time, and sharing usage with other stations as the FRC made decisions about which stations were worthiest of the majority of hours on air) that continually threatened their existence.  As McChesney articulates, the attitude "it would be best for educators and other nonprofit broadcasters to learn to work through the facilities of the general public service stations, rather than to attempt to develop and maintain their own facilities" (28) started taking hold. 

With the developments in management of ether came increases in commercial broadcasting, as a study conducted in 1931 found "that, on average, fifteen minutes of every hour were turned over to explicit sales messages" (30).  In his "Conclusion" McChesney writes, "The defeat of the broadcast reform movement was much more than a victory for oligopolistic, commercial broadcasting; in fact, it was a defeat for the very notion that the public had the right to determine how best to structure its broadcasting services."  Questions about not only who should control the ether, but also what programs were most beneficial for listeners and how commercial broadcasting should factor into radio play speak to the subject of how a communication form that initially begins with a sense of democracy can become subsumed by a more capitalist bent.  Do we interpret the changes in radio as necessary/inherent to a capitalist system or the product of something else?

The material from the reading that is probably most relevant to my research topic is the idea of not knowing who the audience is (since broadcasters could/can not be completely certain who was/is listening/watching).  Since my research topic concerns presence and its role in e-therapy, the complication of knowing/establishing identity is a major area of study for me.

*I realize that I did not really discuss Williams above, but that is basically because I was uncertain how to weave in what interested me most from his writing.  So, I will just insert here a quote that stuck with me:  "Until we have begun to answer them [questions about cause and effect], we really do not know, in any particular case, whether, for example, we are talking about a technology or about the uses of a technology; about necessary institutions or particular and changeable institutions; about a content or a form" (10).  I think Williams raises an interesting point about understanding cause versus effect, and maybe the topic will come up in discussion.

Posted at 10:50PM Oct 02, 2007 by kmlyles in General  |  Comments[0]

dawn--week 7 blog

I really liked this week's readings.  I know that's not the point, and I would say just that to one of my 101 students if she were to respond to a reading assignment by expressing simply that she liked it, but I wanted to get that out of the way.  I liked the readings.  They historicized the developments of technologies with which I am comfortable, but that have not reached the same level of transparency for me as writing technology, in ways that I found informative and compelling.

As I think about these readings in the context of the work I hope to engage for my final project, and in a way that could inform work that I could do, generally, it is meaningful to talk about them in terms of Williams's (1974) binary of "technological determinism" and "symptomatic technology" (p. 13).  To back up for a moment, even addressing the statement "television has altered our world" (p. 12) is, for me, striking.  To borrow from the Toulmin model of argument, that claim has become so pervasive that it frequently functions as a warrant.  Williams foregrounds this underlying assumption, recasting it as a claim and offers nine examples of potential meanings of that claim.  He then breaks these examples into two groups.  The first (technological determinism) emphases the seemingly organic development and consequences of the technology.  Since the consequences naturally follow from the technology, they would not have happened without its development.  The second (symptomatic technology) casts the technological development as natural, but its "significance lies in its uses" (p. 11), and those uses are indicative of something larger.

It seems that, as far as mainstream accounts are concerned, the technological determinist model is used most frequently to construct narratives of technological "advancement."  Development of technology is naturalized and set out on a (to return to a theme we've seen throughout this semester) seemingly magical trajectory that cannot be slowed, much less avoided.  Of course, narratives are constructed retroactively and, as both Douglas (1987) and McChesney (1993) demonstrate, frame issues in the way that best suits the system in which they're situated.  In fact, I would wager that these two accounts were probably fortune to almost everyone in the class.  Both authors address one factor that I found especially interesting: the commodification of the airwaves.  Douglas points out, "the ether was now considered a common property resource in which all Americans had an interest" (p. 317).  This resource had to be protected, conversed, and in order for it to remain unspoiled, communications corporations, not the government or the public (in the form of the amateur radio operators) were set up as the best option.  McChesney builds on this, offering examples of exploitation of power by members of the FRC.  For me, the most valuable reminder in both Douglas and McChesney is that none of it was inevitable.  Though it may not be possible to identify a moment, a point of no return, there was a complex of human actions, and all that comes along with being human, at work.  



To return to Williams, neither technological determinism nor symptomatic technology can adequately account for the relationship between humans and technological development.  Williams calls for an interpretation that acknowledges "intention," that technology is "developed with certain purposes and practices already in mind" (p. 14).  Those purposes and practices are, in turn, "direct," as "known social needs, purposes and practices to which the technology is not marginal but central" (p. 14).  Now, how does this all relate to my interest in individual identity and being apart from?  I am not sure, except that it serves as a reminder that we are both acting on technology and acted on by it.

Posted at 10:44PM Oct 02, 2007 by drshephe in General  |  Comments[0]

Week 7 - Jon

The Douglas, Williams, and McChesney articles helped me to consider some ideas for my revised research topic. Rather than focusing on Google Earth (GE) as a new type of simulation, I plan to analyze the historically changing nature of the map. Drawing on evidence from the 15^th through 17^th centuries when maps represented, literally, the discovery of the world as we know it, I hope to analyze how the shift away from maps for the purpose of exploration to direction / transportation is returning to a sense of exploration brought on by digital, interactive maps. GIS applications such as GE are central to this shift (or at least I hope to indicate them as such).

This sense of exploration is present in other communication technologies. For example, Douglas describes radio as a communication technology that allowed users to "skip across the country, to go to never seen and exotic places, all by turning a dial" (p. 307). The radio makes traveling vast spaces sound (pun intended) easy. With the "turn of a dial,"? one can experience something new, even "exotic."  I would argue that GE accomplishes a similar task. Spinning the globe is "simple." Like turning the dial, one must only left-click and drag. The digitally represented map of the world moves. One has the power to explore places near (such as one's house) and far. Douglas also discusses the importance of "control" held by radio users, the ease by which one can turn the dial or turn the radio off. A similar sense of control rests in the hands of the GE user, who manipulates the interface to show what he/she does and does not want to see (by limiting viewed layers, map information, etc.).  How important is outright control to a technology's popularity?

Raymond Williams's discussion of the privatized home reveals a similarly outward focus: "[The relationship between privatization and external sources] created both the need and the form of a new kind of communication: news from outside, from otherwise inaccessible sources" (p. 27). This "news from the outside" becomes accessible through the outreach aspects of GE, which are, ultimately, "windows" into the outside world, such as the United Nations Environmental Program and the Crisis in Darfur.   

While critiquing the deregulationist argument, McChesney suggests how telecommunications technologies are often available to only the few: "the ability of consumers to benefit by the new communications marketplace is strictly determined by how much money they have. Hence, the market will be skewed toward providing numerous choices to those with larger incomes and tend to neglect those who are poor." The history of mapping, in general, and GE are no different. During the Age of Exploration, maps were created, owned, and used by and for the upper and, sometimes, middle class. Moreover, Google Earth is only available to those who have a computer with a fast Internet connection. The speed of one's connection is important because GE is a sizeable application that is, at best, a choppy experience on a slow connection. Those who are privileged with the best technology experience the highest quality GE. Also, some areas in GE are privileged over others.  Instead of being represented by grainy, low quality images, they are depicted in photo quality realism. 

Posted at 10:21PM Oct 02, 2007 by jtburr in Week 7  |  Comments[1]

Week 7 - Christin

OK, to be honest, the Douglas article scared me a little.  Not because of its content, per say, but because of my reaction to said content and its uncanny resemblance to the current status, development of, and perceptions towards the Internet.  All throughout reading the article, I kept on responding to the quotes and anecdotes of what was occurring at that time in American history with ?that?s so naïve to think that way? or ?I can?t believe we didn?t foresee what thinking that way would turn into.?  Then, about half way through the article, I began to really connect the statements made and Douglas? summary of the social construction of broadcasting to the social construction of the Internet and, well, those same thoughts came back and in kind of a terrifying way ? what aren?t we able to see about the Internet?  What do we already see but are just accepting, without being able to foresee the consequences of our actions?  I guess this is a prime example of why programs like ours exist ? to make sure we do se the consequences.

Let me provide you with a couple of examples.  On page 301, Douglas states, ?The amount of listening in to far-off messages that took place, and the delight the amateurs took in this eavesdropping suggests that these Americans had a feeling that there was more information available to them than they routinely received.?  Is this not the same overwhelming ideal of the Internet ? a wealth of information previously unattainable now not only accessible but searchable?  Although not phrased the same way, the quote from Kaempffert on page 306 does speak eerily to the though of a global community that many praise the Internet as bringing about: ?It is achieving the task of making us feel together, think together, live together.? Later, she points out that many believed, ?Those isolated from the mainstream of American culture would now be brought into the fold.? (306)  Anyone read Ayn Rand?s Anthem? 

Another eerie similarity comes in the form of language.  She quotes Kaempffert again: ?It so happens that the United States and Great Britain have taken the lead in broadcasting.  If that lead is maintained it follows that English must become the dominant tongue.? (307)  On the same page, she compares radio to fishing ? it?s interesting that that nautical motif continues with the sailing metaphors we use for the Internet (surfing, anchors on pages, etc.).  Later, on page 309, she references the great possibility of expanding education to individuals unable to access physically quality educational facilities ? distance education seems to ring a bell here!

She then moves onto discussing broadcasting?s affect on politics, which connects very definitively to my paper for this class.  ?Crowds listening to a politician?s speech in a large public setting were subject to ?the mob spirit with its factitious enthusiasm?? But with radio, argued Bliven, people would listen to the speech not as members of a crowd, but as individuals.?  (311)  Politicians, she claims, would have to acknowledge the concept of speaking directly to citizens, much like in the manner of the YouTube debates.  The closest thing to resemble what occurred online with these debates were town hall meetings, but there too the mob mentality could take effect, unlike with the YouTube debates. 

Part of my reaction to this article was sustained by two very similar modern events to historical events as described in the McChesney reading.  He discusses the Radio Act?s legislation and the conflict between government control over airwaves and the interests of ?clear channel? companies (ironic that one of the major broadcasters in the Triangle is Clear Channel Communications).  For those of you that listen to Internet Radio, you may have heard very similar arguments and discussions about the Internet Radio Equality Act ? which would effectively shut down smaller Internet radio broadcasters for essentially the same reasons as discussed in this article.  You can read more at http://www.savenetradio.org/

The second ?event,? so to speak, is that of simple names.  ?WCFL?s Nockels termed General Order 40 ?infamous? and noted that with its implementation, ?the radio air has been monopolized so that the Big Power interests, Big Business, and the Big Newspaper interests have gotten all the cleared radio channels and nobody else has a ?peep-in.?? ? (33)  If you think about this in another sense, they got the best domain names.  There has been some speculation (none of it proven) that search engines actually rank pages with domain names with the keywords you?re searching for in them higher.  So, in essence on the web, those with the biggest and most widely-used keywords (the largest frequencies) can get more traffic and thereby more power online.  Right now, if you go to http://www.nissan.com, you do not reach the website of the Nissan car company, but of the Nissan Computer Corporation, a much smaller firm named for its owner.  Nissan, the car company, is suing Nissan, the computer company, for trademark infringement.  You can read more at http://www.nissan.com/Digest/The_Story.php

It?s really fascinating how similar these two technologies are, from their histories to their acceptance and treatment by the mass culture.

Posted at 10:09PM Oct 02, 2007 by caphelps in General  |  Comments[0]

Week 6 - Nick

"A photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that a given thing happened." (Sontag, p.?)

Interesting.  This thought really seems to coincide with the mystical aura conferred upon many technologies througout the ages.  Something is always incontrovertible.  Originally, it was eyewitnesses, then it was writing (how could you prove the guy reading the writing wrong if you didn't even know how to read, let alone have any experience with what he was talking about?), and print certainly had that aura of truth about it until people wised up to 'yellow journalism'.  Photography moved back towards the eyewitness style, for as Sontag pointed out, you can't argue with the picture!  You (or the camera) was there, you saw it happen, and this is a slice of that recorded for all time.  Pictures have been used to redeem and damn people.  Pictures are also ownership of small snippets of space and time that will never happen again. 

Benjamen seems to agree, even though speaking of art in general: "The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authority." (p.220)

Yet later Benjamen goes on to say that film and photography liberated art from ritual, and through their ability to be destroyed the importance of the authenticity.  Yet!  An original photogaph may have once again achieved some semblance of importance, as digital copies can be altered so easily.  Proving that a photograph is unaltered becomes vitally important in restoring authenticity and the appearance of truth.

We have discussed the truth value of the most recent major technology, the internet, in class.  On the surface, I am tempted to say that we have finally broken from the technology-truth paradigm, as the internet isn't so trustworthy at all, and yet as many of you have pointed out in class our students turn to it first as the pimary authority on information.  Is this due to the trust of print or the trust of new technology?   Hmm.

To conclude this blog, which has primarily focused on the two articles that interested me the most, I would like to toss up a series of questions that Carey posed.  These seem particularly relevant to our projects, and I just wish to make sure they come up here in case they do not in Thursday's discussion:

"...how do changes in forms of communications technology affect the constructions placed on experience? How does such technology change the forms of community in which experience is apprehended and expressed? What, under the force of history, technology, and society, is thought
about, thought with, and to whom is it expressed?"(p.64)

These questions are some that I may be struggling with as I seek to frame my study on internet search engines and place them within an overall cultural context.  Perhaps they will even direct my study enough that I can firm up my paper ideas.  We shall certainly see!

Posted at 01:11AM Sep 26, 2007 by nmtemple in Week 6  |  Comments[0]

dawn--week 6 blog

At first blush, I didn't think I would have an easy time of writing about this week's readings in the context of my (emerging) topic for this semester's project.  I was, however, able to make some pretty interesting and meaningful (for me) connections.

I found especially applicable the discussions of photography and film by Sontag (1977) and Benjamin, respectively.  Now, I am not sure exactly how to make explicit the connections, but I know they are there, and I am going to work through them here, starting with a quotation from Sontag, "By furnishing this already crowded world with a duplicate one of images photography makes us feel that the world is more available than it really is" (p. 24).  In terms of individual identity, populating the world with multiple versions of our selves, and I am thinking here specifically of the many (and varied) identities available on the Web, this proliferation of selves can create an appearance of availability, of (to use a word from Peters) "accessibility" that may be inauthentic.  And, I would imagine, less real.  Sontag goes on to describe the need "to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs" as "aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted" (24).  This reminds of Turkle's work, which draws heavily on Baudrillard, on "life" online and the increasing need to mediate experience for it to be real.  I am sure that there are further, and probably simpler, connections, but I am having a hard time articulating them at the moment.

Pirandello's discussion, quoted in Benjamin, of the film actor, "With a vague sense of discomfort he feels inexplicable emptiness: his body loses its corporeality, it evaporates, it is deprived of reality, life, voice, and the noises caused by his moving about, in order to be changed into a mute image, flickering an instant on the screen, then vanishing into silence .  The projector will play with his shadow before the camera" (p. 229).

Pirandello writes of silent film in particular, and Benjamin points out that this does not hinder the applicability of Pirandello's ideas to sound film.  I would go so far to say that they are nearly directly analogous to managing identity on the Web, especially when that identity is managed through forms that use primarily still images and text to communicate information, like blogs or social-networking sites.  Benjamin also reminds us that movies are not filmed according to the linear unfolding of a story.  Unlike the stage actor, the film actor does not have the benefit of the narrative trajectory and that the latter is "very often denied this opportunity [to identify with the character].  His creation is by no means all of a piece; it is composed of many separate performances" (p. 230).  If we think of identity as performative, the contemporary identity functions in much the same way.

Posted at 12:28AM Sep 26, 2007 by drshephe in General  |  Comments[0]

Week 6 - Kelly

Two themes that I kept noticing, probably because I was trying to focus on the relationship to collaborative websites, was on the idea of ?experience? and collective thinking. Carey says that ?popular art is, first, an experience? (p. 66) and has little to do with effects or functions. Of course Carey is not speaking specifically about the Internet but in another article I read on artistic websites a similar statement appeared, ?the Web is said to offer experience, not object, and the viewer is the participant in that experience? (Weintraub, 1997, p. 102). I thought that was interesting that in discussions of popular art and the Internet the worlds of experience and function are separated. Carey continues by saying that no matter how long or intensively one lives in the world of popular art that there is still little or no relation among this world and the various cultural worlds people live.

I was having a hard time understanding how he so definitely came to this conclusion that various moods and motives do not extend beyond the domain in which they exist. He first introduces this idea with the ?scientific conceit? that ?living in scientific frames of reference is unequivocally superior to aesthetic, commonsensical, or religious ones? (p. 66). So, I understand that people may perceive these as separate but I think the motives and moods do intertwine the various worlds. I read another article recently by Judith Williamson (and I know this is kind of a tangent) that said, in order for Western society to offer an image of freedom and fulfillment, it claims a different set of values in its private and family life (caring, sharing, freedom, choice, personal development), values regarded as ?entirely inappropriate for the sphere of political, social and economic life? (p. 106). I think her point might be similar to Carey?s. She says that popular culture is more closely connected to the private and family sphere. And if the Internet is also described as an experience, not function, it seems it would more be in the sphere of this private and family life that is connected to sharing, freedom, choice, etc. I think this is relevant to the investigation of a successful wiki or collaborative site. Is the attraction to participation a desire to participate in a sphere that has been deemed inappropriate for economic and political life? But perhaps a collaborative site really is more important functionally than for its experience.

The simultaneous contemplation of media, where the mass can organize and control themselves in their reception (Benjamin, p. 235) appears relevant to the discussion of collaborative websites as well. A website does not seem to offer the same type of simultaneous contemplation as film but I wonder if the ability to control and organize a website creates a more progressive reception to material than a website that just presents information to the viewer without any insinuation that the viewer may contribute or alter the information he/she is receiving? People may not experience the websites as the same time like with film but there is more opportunity for public participation (as opposed to painting).

Posted at 11:54PM Sep 25, 2007 by klnorris in General  |  Comments[0]

Week 6 - Karla

Hi all.  Obviously the readings for this week cover a lot of material, so in my post I would like to offer just some "brief" comments on the subjects of representation and reality. 

In "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Benjamin addresses reproduction of art, arguing, "Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element:  its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be" (220).  He raises a valid point that even if an individual were able to exactly copy the original, he/she still would not have produced a "perfect reproduction" in terms of being able to situate that copy in the same time and space.  Although the reproduction cannot exist in the identical time and space as the original, however, it nevertheless does exist in its own time and space, which provide the reproduction with its particular circumstances for interpretation.  Does the ability to view and interpret the original and reproduction in variant times and spaces alter our interpretations of the original, or do we simply focus on the original in its context and develop meaning around that, recognizing the reproduction purely as such and thereby not attempting to interpret it within its own situation?  Furthermore, do we conceive of the reproduction as art or only the original as the art?  Is a postcard featuring a painting art or can only the original painting claim that status?  These questions lead me somewhat to a point Sontag raises when she claims that time tends to "eventually [position] most photographs, even the most amateurish, at the level of art" (21).  As she indicates, "A photograph of 1900 that was affecting then because of its subject would, today, be more likely to move us because it is a photograph taken in 1900" (21).  In terms of a photograph, although it is still the original photograph from 1900 that we look at in 2007, it is removed from its original time and space because it is now an artifact of a particular historical moment.  We recognize that photograph as art in part because of the time that has passed between when it was taken and now, rather than because of its "subject."  How does such an understanding of the means by which we identify/label art affect our understanding of what art is?

Continuing with Sontag, she asserts "photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe.  They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing" (13).  I find her identification of photographs as a "grammar" and "ethics" particularly interesting in light of her discussion of taking pictures as predatory.  According to Sontag, "To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed" (14).  Taking photographs enables us to "violate" the subjects, but the photographs themselves are indications of "what we have a right to observe."  If photographing someone turns that person into an object, does the willing participation of that person mean he/she is complicit to his/her violation?  For example, when the photographer tells the subject to "say cheese" and that person does so, is that vocalization confirmation that the individual consents to the objectification? 

Changing topics to advertising, Leiss, Kline, and Jhally discuss the criticisms against advertising and note in a troubling statement that as "human personalities are correlated with specific qualities ascribed to products, people become more like goods" (26).  When I read that comment and the example of the car commercial, I was reminded of a print ad for Advil that a former student of mine at A & M analyzed for a visual rhetoric project.  The ad essentially recreated the female subject as the medicinal product, offering examples of how the woman was the pain reliever.  The idea of turning the human subject into a product seems especially disturbing in light of possible gender and racial issues, depending upon whether there is a tendency to place certain groups into the roles of people-turned-into-products more so than others.  I have certainly not researched this area to any extent, but I do wonder if there is a greater inclination to use specific groups more so than others in advertising that transforms the human into the product.  Why is it that advertisers can even use such a strategy and do so effectively?  Do consumers tend not to recognize what is happening in such advertisements?  If so, is this because they are bombarded with so many ads that they simply cannot bother thoroughly "reading" the ads and/or that they perhaps subconsciously accept themselves as "products"?  The last part of the question relates to the following point Leiss, Kline, and Jhally raise in their fifth chapter.  In "Advertisement and the Development of Communications Media," they mention that despite the initial resistance to including advertisements in their publications, newspapers and magazines later "began to regard their publications not so much as products to be sold to readers, but more as vehicles that organized audiences into clearly identifiable target groups that could be sold to advertisers; the audiences themselves became the 'products' generated by the media industry" (102). 

Finally, in his discussion of reality, Carey refers to reality as conveying "at any historical moment the purposes and objectives, intentions and desires of humans . . . Reality is expressive not because it reveals any nature, human or divine, or any eternal essence of any kind but rather because it is a product of human action in and upon the world" (73).  He later notes, "Reality is not, as Americans are so quick to make it, a form of private property or a matter of taste.  It is not the eternal given either, merely awaiting accurate representation in the individual mind once that mind is emptied of history and tradition, or the veil of false consciousness is lifted, or a better technology of communication perfected.  Reality is a product of work and action, collective and associated work and action.  It is formed and sustained, repaired and transformed, worshiped and celebrated in the ordinary business of living" (86-87).  I think Carey raises interesting points about how we tend to interpret reality, particularly in terms of reality as something set, rather than evolving, as well as being "a form of private property or a matter of taste" instead of established by a collective.  Although we may claim to recognize reality as what the majority claims to be real, when questions about a reality arise and disagreements occur, there is often a tendency to claim that one version of the reality is more real than another, to privilege one at the expense of another.  This prioritizing of reality leads me to Carey's commentary on Lippman's views, particularly his statement, "We can know the world if we can represent accurately what is outside our mind.  The possibility and nature of knowledge is determined by the way in which the mind is able to construct representations" (76).  Of course, how can we "represent accurately what is outside our mind" given that we only understand "what is outside" through our own screening devices?  We must rely upon the "representations" that we create and accept that our representations are simply that, not necessarily the truth of the things we interpret.

In terms of my research project, the writings dealing with reproduction and reality are most relevant to the topic with which I am working.  Since I am considering virtual reality, the ability to recreate a real situation and use that simulation in therapeutic ways is a central concern.  Obviously patients recognize that the virtual is a reproduction of the actual, a realization that assists in the effectiveness of the therapy.  Nevertheless, the virtual must be real enough so that patients recognize the simulational environments into which they are entering and can use their experiences to help them with real-world problems. 

Posted at 11:08PM Sep 25, 2007 by kmlyles in General  |  Comments[0]

Week 6 - Christin

?I reject your reality and substitute my own!?

Those of you who watch Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel might recognize that quote from one of the show?s main personalities, Adam Savage.  I couldn?t help but think of it with regards to one of the themes from this week?s readings that caught my attention ? the way in which we construct reality and how this construction somehow is connected to power.  

What interested me was specifically this idea that an individual can interact with multiple realities and that those realities are created.  Carey states that when creating reality, ?what persons create is not merely one reality but multiple realities.? (63)  In light of the discussion Carey also brings up about truth, I can?t help but connect the two.  If truth is forms reality (scientists seek truth and thereby create reality), then does that mean that truth is created and changed by an individuals? perception and approach to the world?

Sontag talks about how photographs are ??miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire.? (4)  They can fade over time, be grouped together to form another reality, or torn, burned or otherwise destroyed.  It?s interesting to me how both truth and reality can parallel the different states of the photograph.  We believe a certain reality because we see it in pictures; we believe a certain reality because we believe in certain truths.  

The Leiss, Kline, and Jhally article discusses how advertising creates a reality and attempts to convince consumers that their reality is the one they should seek.  They attempt, in a sense, to give consumers a truth to base their reality on ? pictures convey truth, so if that woman is shown getting so excited over Herbal Essences shampoo in an image, it must be a truth that this particular shampoo makes individuals that excited.  Consumers can then alter and form a new reality for themselves based upon these new truths they ?learn.?

Interestingly, there?s much debate over whether virtual reality is really a reality ? in light of the readings this week I would argue it very much is.  What does everyone else think?

Posted at 10:43PM Sep 25, 2007 by caphelps in Week 6  |  Comments[1]

Week 6 - Jon

The Sontag and Benjamin articles helped me to think about Google Earth (GE) for what it is -- a collection of photographs. In this blog, I would like to apply some of their ideas about photography to my research project.

In the GE interface, a patchwork of satellite images is applied to a globular shape. The idea of a three-dimensional globe being presented as a photo gallery provides an interesting spin on Sontag's discussion of scale: "Photographs, which fiddle with the scale of the world, themselves get reduced, blown up, cropped, retouched, doctored, tricked out" (4). Yes, photographs can be resized and edited, but what of scale when the photographs themselves represent "the scale of the world"? In the context of GE, it seems that scale is more a function of the collection of images as a whole than it is each individual image. For example, from the GE interface I can zoom out until the Earth is about the size of a quarter, or, at the same time, I can flip the simulation on its head to reveal a whole new scale: the universe (through Google Sky). So, instead of each photograph "fiddling with the scale of the world," they each are part of a cohesive, manipulatable whole that itself is an examination of the global scale.

I am also hoping to bridge the simulated world of Google Earth with that of reality. Sontag makes clear that images can function in this way: "Photography has become one of the principal devices for experiencing something, for giving an appearance of participation" (10). Therefore, despite an individual's absence from the physical content of an image, him / her can still feel a sense of presence. The obstacles preventing GE from encouraging participation seem great; specifically, the abstractions at work seem greater than that of an individual photograph. First, for example, an individual views GE through a computer screen, which presents compilations of images that are abstractions of the content they represent. Moreover, the GE globe itself is an abstraction of the Earth proper, and the digital globe is covered with photographs that are an abstracted patchwork. Thus, there are at least three levels of abstractions at play, yet GE still manages to maintain a sense of place and reality.

Amidst all of these abstractions, how does GE serve as a humanitarian tool? Sontag indicates that "a photograph that brings news of some unsuspected zone of misery cannot make a dent in public opinion unless there is an appropriate context of feeling and attitude" (17). The Crisis in Darfur project is comprised primarily of images that fall absolutely within what most would consider a "zone of misery." While viewing the project, users of GE will find burning villages, crowded medical clinics, and starving villagers. The images are powerful, and the context in which they appear, the digital globe, is highly successful, as it allows users to spin the globe at will. In this fashion, the situation in Darfur can be juxtaposed with skyscrapers in New York City, the Eiffel Tower, or even "home." Thus, the context is global and local -- virtual and real.

The context of each powerful image is joined by what Sontag terms "familiarity": "The quality of feeling, including moral outrage, that people can muster in response to photographs of the oppressed, the exploited, the starving, and the massacred also depends on the degree of their familiarity with these images" (19). On the surface, the novelty of the Darfur images lies in the fact that, until recently, the situation was largely sidestepped by major news and broadcasting outlets within the US (perhaps due to a focus on the War in Iraq). However, a second level of novelty surrounding the photographs is the environment in which they appear, the digital globe, a completely different interface from the photograph album or magazine spread. Fortunately, the function of the photographs and their context makes the "How can I help?" link hard to resist.

Finally, Benjamin discusses the replacement of cult value with the exhibition. Eugene Atget's images of deserted streets, photographed in a way that Benjamin describes as a "crime scene," is comparable to GE: "With Atget, photographs become standard evidence for historical occurrences, and acquire a hidden political significance . They demand a specific kind of approach. . .They stir the viewer; he feels challenged by them in a new way" (226). Amidst the many wonders of the world viewable in GE, the Darfur Project represents one such "crime scene" that certainly challenges audiences. Therefore, the Darfur project is successful because it is indeed a "stirring" exhibition on a global scale.

Posted at 10:16PM Sep 25, 2007 by jtburr in Week 6  |  Comments[0]

Week 6 -Jayna Prelim

Hi, Everyone--

I'm going to do my best to post by midnight.  Unfortunately, that's not looking too promising at the moment, some personal issues have taken presidence.  Just wanted to let you know I'll "blog" as soon as I can. --Jayna

Posted at 05:54PM Sep 25, 2007 by jrjackso in General  |  Comments[0]

Week 6 - Kathy

If mechanical reproduction made the photograph possible, and the photograph turned the natural world into an object, advertising made a business out of selling these images and controlling our view of the world.

Benjamin (1936) acknowledges a major shift in art in saying that "for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility" (p. 224). This seems to tie directly to Sontag's (1977) discussion on photography, noting a change in human perception where people began to see photos as ways to collect pieces of the world and to think photographically. This way of framing the world could also serve interests of "institutions of control, notably the family and the police, as symbolic objects and as pieces of information" (Sontag, 1977, p. 21).

In their discussion about the Neoliberal position on advertising, Leiss, Kline, Jhally (1988) explain Galbraith's "revised sequence" (as opposed to the ?accepted sequence? of consumer sovereignty), in which producers control demand. In this view, "wants are created by producers through advertising" (p. 20), and, I would add, strategic information delivery. This got me to thinking about broadband providers, who seem to want to control the demand for information by controlling access to information. Internet users should look toward a tiered Internet system with a critical eye, being aware that a "revised sequence" will affect demand for information.

In the area of technological manipulation, Packard attempted to show that "consumers were becoming creatures of conditioned reflex rather than rational thought" through the use of devious advertising taking place at a subconscious level (Leiss, Kline, Jhally, 1988, p.22). Could tiered internet work on this unconscious level?  Preferring some information over others, particularly when users are unaware, could have serious implications - think about political elections for instance - that could be devious indeed.  Would Key's concept of "subliminal stimuli" (p.23) be manifest in deliberately longer or shorter loading times for websites?

Leiss, Kline and Jhally (1988) note that as advertising became lucrative for the press, "the audiences themselves become the 'products' generated by the media industry" (p.102). I feel that we need to question, in an age where so much of our media and information consumption (and our purchasing, too) can be tracked, analyzed and suggested, that we need to ask what kind of consumers various industries are fashioning us to be.  They also discuss the relationship between advertising and programming, which is a discussion which clearly needs to be had when thinking about tiered Internet, or letting the bringers of the Internet into our lives also influence the speed, accessibility, availability, and therefore the importance of information in our lives. How might this enhance the capacity to commodify users?

An (almost) Complete Aside/Intermission: The discussion on false needs, pseudo ideals, and reification in Leiss, Kline and Jhally had me thinking about the Matrix - more specifically, how the machines control the humans in the Matrix through an image-rich world that tapped both real and artificial human desires to truly incorporate them into the productive system. The concept of reification enters when I thought about the character Cipher, who decides to ?re-enter? the Matrix after he realizes his desire to be with Trinity is not going to be satisfied. Clearly, the machines running the construct of the Matrix wanted Cipher to see a return to the Matrix as a better choice of reality, and in exchange for that better realty, he sold out (and attempted to kill) his former crew. Back to the main point?

Also relating to the commodification of the audience/users, Carey discusses reality as a scarce resource to be "struggled over, allocated to various purposes and projects, endowed with given meanings and potentials, spent and conserved, rationalized and distributed" and argues that "the fundamental form of power is the power to define, allocate, and display this resource" (p.87).  Following this, I would argue that with tiered Internet (and in the Matrix), those who create and maintain the way in which we see the world have that power to define, to construct audiences as products, and commodify the human experience.

Carey's (1989) arguments about approaches to studying mass media are somewhat confusing to me, I will have to admit. He argues in Ch. 3, Reconceiving "Mass" and "Media", that "questions of political power and institutional change are inescapable and usually render hopelessly ineffective the standard cookbook recipes retailed by the graduate schools" (p. 69). He offers his approach in Ch. 8 (on the telegraph, which we read last week) as an example of a way to "elucidate a theoretical structure" that supports and gives generality to "detailed historical-empirical investigation" (p. 70). He argues that a critical theory of communication must "affirm what is before our eyes and transcend it by imagining, at the very least, a world more desirable" (p.88).

In Mass Communication and Cultural Studies, Carey discusses Geertz's progress toward a "workable concept of culture" which creates a way to understand specific cultures by "elaborating a theory of symbols and symbolic processes in their relation to social order" (p. 40). Cultural studies "does not seek to explain human behavior in terms of laws that govern it or to dissolve it into the structures that underlie it; rather, it seeks to understand it" (p.56). As I am still trying to figure out the best approach for my research this semester, I spent a lot of time trying to understand the cultural studies approach, and am looking forward to more clarification. I want to know what specific advantages there might be to looking at tiered Internet in the "cultural studies" way rather than by "dissolving the structures that underlie" a two tiered system.

See you Thursday!

Posted at 07:17PM Sep 23, 2007 by kfoswald in Week 6  |  Comments[0]

Week 5 - Nick

"...a material object itself, lying bare on the ground, is of no interest."  (Fischer, p 7)

This random, obscure quote (because those are the best kind, naturally) by Fischer seems to sum up not just this week's readings, but the entire thrust of this course.  A technology, as Fischer works to define it, is not even a technology proper unless it is put to use...let alone is it a communication technology.  However, it seems to apply to this week in a special way considering the odd and interesting approaches to technology that people apparently took when the 'old technologies were new'. 

If you go with Peters, then captured images rendered immortality to their subjects.  Hell, we don't even have to mourn them any more because they are still there, albeit fleshless beings flickering on a screen in front of us.  (This is the one part of Peters train of thought that I happen to take issue with, but more on that in the discussion on Thursday.  Because I can do that since I'm one of the presenters.  See, lurker to this blog?  A lot of important work still goes on through orality.)  Still, it is an interesting thought process and he does some really intriguing work with the death metaphor.  You know, as I read this I happened to think of something I heard about Native American cultures.  I believe that some Native American cultures believed that the camera stole your soul, which was why it was able to produce such a nice replication of you.  (My source here is not the greatest in the world.  You don't want to know it.  ...Okay okay.  It was a Goosebumps book from when I was a kid.  But I'm pretty sure I validated it later, and also...what does it say that some of our scary stories still center around such conceptions of technology?  Or did as of a decade ago?)  Interesting how different peoples reacted to new technologies that were more mindblowing than ours are today, no?

Carey's discussion of the telegraph was also illuminating.  The most important tidbit I gleaned from there was this: "[The Telegraph] permitted for the first time the effective seperation of communication and transportation" (Carey, 203)  That really struck me as interesting when I first heart it in Com 250, and it is no less interesting now.  Think of it.  Until that point, it was always some guy on foot, or on pony.  Now some bum in a chair could send messages at his or her leisure, assuming the line was clear.  They played chess, for crying out loud!  And according to Marvin, the telegraph and the telephone contributed to a class crisis as people had amorous proceedings with those that society said they ought not to.  It wasn't all fun and games, apparently.  Also, relating back to my opening quote, it had everything to do with how people approached it.  A telegraph and a telephone were meaningless outside of the culturally ascribed meaning.  People had to learn how to embrace the technology, and this meant learning an altogether different feel for communicating.  New rules, new norms, and new ways of judging a person's character without their face had to be come up with.

So really, I find that I agree with Fischer.  What is a technology, really?  And what makes a technology a communication technology?  In every case, the human element is essential.

Posted at 12:46AM Sep 19, 2007 by nmtemple in Week 5  |  Comments[0]

popular press article on dying languages

Here's an article ("Researchers say many languages are dying") I saw while checking my Yahoo! e-mail that I thought might be of interest.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070919/ap_on_re_us/endangered_languages

Posted at 12:35AM Sep 19, 2007 by drshephe in General  |  Comments[0]

Week 5 - Kathy

"What is the meaning of the letter burned in the Dead Letter Office whose writer does not know it is lost and whose recipient does not know it was ever sent?" (Peters, 1999, p.171)

Imagine AOL certified mail (to you) being sent to the Virtual Dead Letter Office (of your ISP). What is the meaning of that? In this case, the meaning is that your ISP wants to maintain power over the distribution of messages (by sabotaging another ISP?s paid email service). This level of control over mail distribution sounds like something Comstock would have been into. A system such as this might have us begin to think about email in the context of hermeneutics, or ?the art of literary correspondence where no reply is possible? (Peters, 1999, p.150).

I find the relationship between this week?s readings very interesting in the context of my research topic. I intend to focus on the emerging conversation surrounding "tiered Internet service" and "net neutrality", and discussions of ideology will play a major role. This leads me into Carey?s (1989) argument that with the telegraph and afterward, technological developments originated from "professional engineering societies, universities, and research laboratories" (p. 209), and that these same groups developed the justifying ideologies for the technologies.  This is similar to the debate surrounding tiered Internet service, where broadband providers (including AT&T) are trying to establish ideologies that support their interest in a tiered model.

Carey's discussion on the effect of the telegraph on ordinary ideas also resonates with the level and extent of changes brought on by Internet, though where I truly see the connection is in "the domain of empire" (p.212). Carey briefly discusses how the telegraph enabled empires to control far flung colonies and secure financial investments, demonstrating enhancements in the ability to wield disciplinary power. How does the Internet extend power? Is it disciplinary power, or something different?

Marvin (1988) explains that in the Bell Telephone monopoly days, the company preferred to keep prices high and have a small number of users rather than serve everyone (p. 107). The desire to keep subscribers limited and prices high demonstrates the desire to maintain use of the system to ?the elite,? which can also be seen in the company?s anger at public use of subscribers phones (such as in the drug store).  In such a monopoly, Fischer notes, users must ?choose within the constraints imposed by the distribution system of a technology? distributors can force people to use a new technology by eliminating other options? (p. 18).

Again, this argument, though in regard to the telephone, can be seen in terms of broadband Internet. While AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner provide Internet access, they can force new levels of service (aka tiered service) by eliminating traditional options. Fischer later asserts that technologies, once aggregated, can ?become a structure that constrains the individual? (p.19), and I would argue that the Internet has become a constraining structure.  Further, the need for access taken together with issues of monopoly and control of information that would accompany a tiered service model (with justifying ideologies provided by said service providers) imply an even more constraining system.

I?m interested to hear thoughts on this, as I?m still working through exactly how I am going to approach this topic for my final paper. See you all Thursday!

Posted at 11:56PM Sep 18, 2007 by kfoswald in Week 5  |  Comments[0]

Week 5 - Karla

The sexualization of communication is a fascinating topic Peters addresses, as he comments, "Writing, by making possible remote control over other bodies and voices (of readers) and the preservation of thoughts (of the writer), made possible a new order of polygamous coupling among souls" (138).  Although we may not directly think of communication in such erotic terms, we do often consider it as being intimate somehow, whether because it may occur face-to-face (bringing two bodies physically together within close proximity) or connect minds (if you conceive of communication as linking two people by consciousness or their souls).  Marvin's chapter also touches on the intimacy/sexual factor (though not placed in specifically erotic terms) when she shares stories about the Chicago woman afraid of becoming infected with scarlet fever by talking over the telephone with a servant in a household in which the children were sick and the editor of a Philadelphia newspaper advising readers "not to converse by phone with ill persons for fear of contracting contagious diseases" (81).  The notion of what is interior to the body being transmitted across some media to penetrate another's body is really interesting, and although Marvin refers to the examples in relation to contagion/infection, obviously the examples at their most basic levels pertain to exchange of bodily fluids/substances of some sort.  On another note, in light of Peters' discussion of communication as enabling the dead and the living to transmit messages, the sexual factor seems disturbing (I doubt any of us really want to think of communication between dead and living in such a framework).  Similar to Kelly, though, I did enjoy Peters' commentary on the Victorian age and its attitudes toward death in comparison to our modern day feelings toward the subject.

Peters takes up the topic of distance between sender and receiver by explaining how technologies can transmit the essences, so to speak, of individuals to transcend any physical barriers, claiming such inventions as the phonograph and cinema "seemed to vaporize personages into sounds and images.  To interact with another person could now mean to read media traces" (142).  Martin provides examples of how the essence of an individual can stand in his/her place when she mentions the directors' meeting between the Chair in New York and the Chairman in Boston (88), the Toronto citizen telephoning a court to confess his guilt and receiving fines (88), and the marriages conducted by telegraph and telephone (93-94).  Although I imagine most/all of us cannot fathom marrying someone over the phone, we can find examples of how our images and/or voices "substitute" for us in exchanges.   One example that comes to mind is the potential for our voices to be recorded when we make phone calls to company lines, such as customer service centers.  In a way, our persons (some form of them, at least) are documented and can be played again and to another/others so that we may be held accountable for those voice abstractions.  In a sense then, does communication make use of disembodiment to try to compensate for disembodiment?

Fischer discusses the breakdown of physical barriers and disruptions to privacy that media may cause, stating, "'When we communicate through telephone, radio, television, or computer, where we are physically no longer determines where and who we are socially.'  All places become like all others; cultural distinctions among places are erased, privacy is reduced, and areas of life previously sheltered from public view--the 'backstage'--are revealed" (11).  Peters also comments on how privacy is influenced, referring to Socrates' views toward writing and claiming that the recording of messages enables "anything . . . [to] be transmitted to new eyes and ears" (143), so that communication may occur between/among parties other than those originally intended to engage in the exchange.  Marvin examines privacy issues throughout her chapter as well, particularly in relation to others' listening in on phone conversations.  I agree with Fischer and Peters about reductions in privacy as a result of modern communication technologies (after all, it is not unheard of to catch pieces of someone else's conversation when speaking on a cell phone).  I am not so sure, however, that I agree with (perhaps I simply do not understand him fully) Fischer's claim about "cultural distinctions among places [being] erased" in consideration of the fact that conversations that occur over the phone will still reflect accents, dialetical features, etc., just as those online will indicate regional elements through features such as word choice, slang, terms specific to a locale, etc.  Can "[a]ll places become like all others" just because communication can transcend geographical separations?

Posted at 11:43PM Sep 18, 2007 by kmlyles in General  |  Comments[0]

Week 5 - Jon

I could not help but think of Thomas L. Friedman's The World is Flat as I explored the impact of early electronic communications. Although Friedman's focus is on trends that are flattening global economies, I think his metaphor is useful.

Carey recalls the world prior to early electronic communication, a time when geography was a major obstacle to long distance messaging. In order to communicate over a geographic distance or barrier, the obstacle had to be overcome and signaled from, a "beacon hill." Messages were passed from line of sight to line of sight. Barriers were climbed and dealt with, not squashed or flattened. Carey sums up the geographic impact of electronic communication poignantly: "The simplest and most important point about the telegraph is that is marked the decisive separation of "transportation" and "communication" (213). Communication had been, literally, redefined.

Mountains flattened. Distances shrank.

However, the separation of message from sender removed another type of physical space or "geography," if you will: the human body. Peters illuminates this transition with particular creativity: "The capturing and dispersion of signals meant that the visual and auditory signs of human personality were no longer tightly tied to the presence of a person's body" (140). Removal of the body, the flattening of an individual's voice and physical self over a wire into a "phantasm," was surely a shock to early users of electronic communication. Peters describes how telephone companies "sought to reassure their customers by reconnecting the mechanically reproduced representations to an originating body" (142). We may marvel at this need to situate the auditory back with the person. But, do we not strive to accomplish the same task in online communications environments. Individuals adorn their online self with images, colors, typographies, quotes, etc. that attempt to recreate their physical self and move toward some reflection of face to face contact. We strive to detach online identities from the computer screen and make them "real." 

The separation of the voice from the body allowed social barriers to be attacked: "New forms of communication created unprecedented opportunities not only for courting and infidelity, but for romancing unacceptable persons outside one's own class, and even one's own race, in circumstances that went unobserved by the regular community" (Marvin 70). Removal of the body facilitated such exchanges by making them "secret"; in addition, ideologies and systems, such a person's class, were not transmitted over electronic communication lines. Interestingly, the flattening of these barriers, "did not radically alter American ways of life; rather, Americans used [the telephone] to more vigorously pursue their characteristic ways of life" (Fischer 5). Thus, through electronic communication, suppressed ideas and desires could be acted upon.

But, what of the ultimate barrier, namely, the barrier bridging the living and the dead? Peters examines this issue: "As communicators the dead are a particularly enigmatic bunch. They tend not to respond to our entreaties. . . Certainly we can read the traces of the dead, but we cannot interact directly with them" (149). In the "Facts of the Case of M. Valdemar," Edgar Allan Poe describes an experiment in which a man who is dying of tuberculosis is hypnotized. As the man goes under, he proclaims that he is, in fact, dead. However, even after the passage of seven months, the body remains undecayed, seemingly trapped in a hypnotic state between life and death. What happens when the man's physical self is finally communicated with and awoken from the trance? To be sure, his condition is no better. In fact, his body immediately liquifies. Further proof that communication with the past, even when the physical body is present, is restricted to "traces." Even within the wonders of the electronic world, some barriers remain.

Posted at 11:25PM Sep 18, 2007 by jtburr in Week 5  |  Comments[0]

Hmmm...JRae

Sorry my text on the post is so big, guys--I have no idea how it got that way--or how it got to be red--since I didn't change anything. Must go to bed now.  See ya in a couple of days! --JRae

Posted at 11:22PM Sep 18, 2007 by jrjackso in General  |  Comments[0]

Week 5 - Jayna

A little last week, we explored the idea that communication technology is making us more and more solitary as individuals. In both Fischer and Carey this week, the authors argue that the technologies of communication enhance our connections with one another.  Fischer says, ?Telephone and radio permitted ordinary people to talk and hear over vast distances.  ? (p. 2).  Carey sees advances as a link among individuals, perhaps even an equalizer: ?People were people?everywhere the same.  Communication was the engine that powered this ideal.  Each improvement in communication, by ending isolation, by linking people everywhere, was heralded as realizing the Universal Brotherhood of Universal Man? (p. 208).  It is interesting to me that we see the communication as connector view this week, because I feel that like many things, the way we use communication technologies is best in moderation. 

 

If we become so wrapped up in a ?community? on a discussion board or absorbed in a virtual-world video game, there may be a link to the ?invisible? others, but there may also be a disconnect, an isolation of those physically around us.  When the telephone made its way into many American homes, we were able to talk to geographically distanced family and friends.  Thus, like the telegraph of the 1840?s (as Peters points out, p. 138), the telephone helped relationships overcome the obstacle of space, or geographical distance.  Again, families may have become more connected over distances, but it is mentioned that the face-to-face time spent with neighbors became less at the same time, as calling became more convenient than visiting.

 

Peters talks a great deal about letters and how there was not much privacy in the early days of the American postal system. (Does lack of privacy mean that we are connected and not isolated?)  I think that the phone must have been the same way, merely because of the fact that there were operators connecting calls. I speculate that they didn?t always disconnect themselves from calls, but stayed on to listen in for juicy community information. I could be wrong, but I think about Andy Griffith?s Aunt Bea, and how she would have been as a telephone operator.  I guess my early thoughts were on the mark, as Marvin even makes mention of the fear of lost family privacy with the onset of each new technology?and specifically speaks to the telephone (p. 67).

 

I have notes about all sorts of topics?how the telegraph influenced journalistic writing (Carey), Peters?s somewhat off-beat points likening technologies to the disembodiement of communication, more on the connections made between these technologies and magic (I think I said this last week, but anything new is always immediately seen as suspiciously evil or unnatural), and the connections between empire-building and the evolution of communication technologies, all of the time and space connections? There is so much to explore with these readings that I look forward to Thursday?s class. 

 

I?ll close with a quote from the Peters chapter: ?Phonography and film attack the monopoly on the storage of intelligence once held by writing? (p. 162)? I?m not so sure that phonography and film made an ATTACK on the storage, I think they just became additional containers?additional ways to store the byproducts of thought.

Posted at 11:14PM Sep 18, 2007 by jrjackso in General  |  Comments[0]