What Would They Have Thought?

The articles looked at for last week in The New Media Reader, all dealt, more or less, with the concept of how society is effected by technology.  The readings, all dated to some extent, offer up theories of how technology has effected society, and how it will effect our future.  I wonder what Williams or Enzensberger would have thought of technology today -- whether or not they would have seen their theorize legitimized or not.

An episode of Oprah last week focused on The Kindle, amazon.com's Wireless Reading Device.  This is not the first of its kind to come out, but seems to be the most technologically advanced, and of course, the fact that Oprah endorsed it as her "favorite new gadget," has gained a lot of attention.

Enzensberger believed that it would be unlikely for a world to exist without the printed book.  In a society where magazine sales are increasingly declining, and where newspapers are having to cut down on staff size because of poor sales -- in a world where a Kindle can be purchased instead of a book -- where bookstores and libraries are becoming more and more obsolete -- where does Enzensberger's claims lie?

20. The Technology and Society, Raymond Williams, 1972

• Williams introduced "the flow" - a way to organize t.v. analysis - "the fluid combination of program segments, commercials, and other material that makes up the experience of watching television." 
• Williams looks at how technology is affecting culture - a "technological determinist" view
• Has television altered our world?
• Is a "new" world being created as a result of all the new technology?
• It is important to look at both the causes and the effects of new technology, not just the effects
• Williams will "analyze television as a particular cultural technology, and to look at its development, its institutions, its forms and its effects..."
• T.V. was created through science
• T.V. altered preceding forms of media
• T.V. altered communications, and thus relationships
• T.V. changed the way we look at/what we view as "reality"
• T.V. has consequences on culture/the family/society
• T.V. is profitable - an investment - a money maker
• T.V.'s invention resulted from major developments in "electricity, telegraphy, photograph and motion pictures, and radio'

19. Requiem for the Media, Baudrillard, 1972

• Media is inherently structured
• Media serves a social function
• Author does a re-analysis of McLuhan's "Medium is the Message"
• Everyone should not be able to create/produce, as they are able to do so in the electronic new media age
• The above will NEGATIVELY affect our communications structure

18. Constituents of a Theory of Media, Enzensberger, 1974

• New media makes encourages us to act, not to think, or even to think about acting
• There is no sense of a stop - time.  Time = "eternity'
• Enzensberger employed Marxist theories of "base" and "superstructure"
• Base = "forces and relations of production"
• Superstructure = All the things that are created by the base relationships (i.e. media, social conventions, governments, etc)
• Enz.  looks at media business - he believes it supports an unjust system and convinces us to accept unjust society
• His essay is, in part, a proposal of a new way of thinking about the organization media
• Media is "the pacemaker for the social and economic developments of societies..."
• New types of technology are always interacting with one and other as well as with past technologies
• Media has a "mobilizing power" - the ability to get people to act
• Media like T.V. and film, during the time of the article, limit feedback - there is no way for the creator and the viewer to interact with one another - "no action between the transmitter and receiver."  This is not because it is technologically unable to occur, but because it is purposely not being done for political reasons 
• Social divisions - ruling class vs. the subordinate class, consumer vs. manufacturer
• George Orwell - media is "undialectical" and "obsolete"
• electronic media has allowed for a larger spread of information
  
• issues of censorship become very different in this new electronically oriented media world.
• Leftist Theory of "Manipulation"
• The New Left views new media as a manipulation device -- a defensive view
  
• Electronic media is seen as "dirty"
  
• Who is doing the manipulating?  
• Anyone can be part of new media -- anyone can create/edit/alter/add
• New Media does away with the concept of "intellectual property"
• "None of the characteristics that distinguish written and printed literature apply to the electronic media"
• It is not likely, according to the author, that writing or the printed book, will disappear 
  

17. From Software-Information Technology: It's New Meaning for Art, 1970

• 1970 - exhibition "Software" organized by Jack Burnham
• Viewers were asked to interact with computers
• In many ways the exhibit failed - many of the works did not work correctly, it was financially unsuccessful, director of exhibit (Karl Katz) was fired because of it.
• Regardless of these issues, it still was extremely influential for artists, technologies, theories, and viewers of the exhibit
• Catalog for the exhibit was created by Ted Nelson:  "Labyrinth," which was the first accessibly hypertext
• Examples of works:  constant poetry playing on AM radio, glass windows being made into low-power speakers, data stream access, computer programs, as well as conceptual art
• "Software's" goal was not to the same "The Pavilions"...it wasn't to get tech. and art to collaborate, but rather to use technology to create art, for artistic purpose.

16. A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect, by Engelbart and English, 1968

• Piece documents the "mother of all demos" 
• 1968 - Fall joint Computer Conference in S.F.
• Englebart and English, with a projection screen behind them gave a live and public demo of interactive computing that had been done by the Augmentation Research Center from the start of its creation
• Highly risky because it had never been done before, but they felt as though it would prove the importance in continuing similar research
• Introduced new interfaces, many of which still exist, many of which (the mouse) have the same name.

15. Cybernated Art, Nam June Paik, 1966

• Video art has always attempted to be cybernetic, to be interactive and to be part of the new media world
• Nam June Paik - one of the first video artists
• He used one of the first Sony portable video cams - recorded Fluxus performances and the Pope's first visit to N.Y.  He combined video and live performance 
• Coined the term"information superhighway"
• Created "novel satellite broadcast artworks"