Readings – Lecture Notes – Screenings

 

In regards to the 100 multiple Q exam next, I thought it would be a fantastic idea to use this page as a revision section.  All the notes in this page will consist of my text book, lecture and screening notes.  This way, by processing and rewording various details I gain knowledge and can share this knowledge with all my readers. 

What is communication? 

It is the process that transfers, transmits or makes information known to other people. 

Aristotle explained in his book Rhetoric 2500 y ago; Speaker – Message – Listener

Suggested by Shannon and Weaver this way no longer works, in their book Mathematical Theory of Communication, which suggests; Speaker – Transmitter – Message – Noise – Receiver – Listener Shannon and Weaver

Other factors;

Intersubjectivity; Listener interprets message, comm. between people and they want to argue, audience produces feedback.

Intertextuality; no message is complete; each message is different depending on the person. 

Radio was superior (preponderant) comm. in broadcast mode. 

Memes carry social genes.

• (Wikipedia) A meme is a self-propogating unit of cultural evolution, analogous to the gene (the unit of genetics).  Memes can represent parts of ideas, languages, tunes, designs, skills, and aesthetic values and anything else that is commonly learned and passed on to others as a unit.  The study of evelutionary models of information transfere is called mimetics.

Memetic engineers create stories that help us understand.

What is Technology? 

It is the scientific study of mechanical arts. 

Marchall McLuhan extensions of human body. Tool – Hand, Wheel – Leg, Comm. – Mind. (Stelarc) Analog variable forces in time and space, through dials, imprecise modulation.. 

Digital technology is binary information, on and off electricity or light.

• (Marx 1990) Technology reveals the active relation of man to nature, the direct process of the production of his life, and thereby it also lays bare the process of the production of the social relations of his life, and the mental conceptions that flow form those relations.

Genealogy of Old Technology Print:  Gutenburg 1452 

Telegraph:  1837 Samuel Morse.  1^st message 1844 – Morse code 

Telephone:  Alexander Graham Bell 1876 

Phonograph:  Thomas Edison, lead to cassettes, records, cds 

Radio:  1895 Marconi – Wireless telegraphyAM amplitude, FM frequency 

Cinema:  Lumiere Brothers  

Television:  1926 John Logie TV Mass Audience 1939 New York fair. 

TV WORKS – photoelectric – electron scanning beam – electric current – encoded info – broadcasted electro-magnetic or down cables. 

PAL 625 lines@ 50Hz

NTSC 525 lines @ 50Hz

SECAM 625 lines @ 50Hz 

Other comm. Tech 

Virtual reality – multimedia – internet – virtual agents – interactive TV – 3G Phones – video conferencing – ipods – you tube – broadband – wireless – weblogs.

Digital Futures

Dialectic (“Hegelian”, George Hegel) – Thesis – Antithesis – Synthesis – thinking systematically. 

• (Mosco 1996) Communicationand informationare two sides of the same precess, dialetically linkend in mutal constitution.
• (Callinicos 1987) The oak developed out of the acorn. It was once that acorn and oak mark the beginning and end of the same process.

Idealism Opposite of Materialism, The thought process of humans. 

Materialism The things in the real world determine the thoughts of humans. 

• (Englels 1976) Everything that sets in motion must go through their minds; but what form it takes in their minds depends very much on the circumstances.

Meme DNA ideas, generated by hegemonic or subversive social forces. 

Ideology Worldview based on intuitions. 

Vector Pathway opens the pathogens.  Open for communication, transmission of ideology. 

Media Theory 1900 Semiotics – Ferdinand de Saussure – Signs – Signifier and signifiedDenotation (literal Account) – Connotation (Cultural Association)Semantics is the relationship of signs and what they stand for. Syntactics (syntax) relations between signs.Pragmatics is the relation of sign to interpreters.

Comm. Studies USA 1920 Bullet (Inoculation) Theory – mass media is a vehicle to shape opinion.1930 – Application of Statistical Method – Kolmogorov systematised probability theory to predict an outcome.1940 – Minimum Effects – Minimal effects of Propaganda (Lazersfeld’s)1950 – Looking for effects – connections to psychology – advertising to kids.1960 – Marshall McLuhan – understanding media effects -

•  HOT (dense) = radio & cinema
•  COOL (less intense) = telephone & television

1970 – Mixed Effects

• George Gerbner and Larry Gross’s ‘cultivation hypothesis’ perception on ‘crime’ portrayed by media.
• Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw’s order of rank in election close to press.
• Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann’s ’spiral of silence’ more or less viewpoint from media results in more or less in citizens.

1980 – Return of Maximum Effects

Media Studies (UK)

Raymond Williams – “FLOW” ‘culture’ privileged space of artistic production.  (high culture)

Stanley Cohen; Moral Panics – Mods and Rockers (1960) “folk devils” “moral entrepreneur” “ideological exploitation of deviance”

Glasgow School – New Programs – Ideological Content

Stuart Hall, Birmingham School – Code and decode media taxts in a variety of ways, either accept-negotiate-produce.

Active Audiences – Ethnographic approach “the institutional point of view”

Culture Studies (Europe)

1930 Walter Benjamin – liberating potential in photography and film, because ‘destructive, cathartic’

1940 Frankfurt School – Life is indistinguishable to movies – forcing it’s victims to equate directly with reality.

1950 Situationists – Society of the spectacle – Guy Debord – “Life immense accumulation of specticles.”

1960 Habermas – “Public Opinion” “autonomous sphere” “consumer services of the mass media” “publicness”

1970 Louis Althusser – media was ideological state apparatuses that reproduced individuals to their real conditions.

1980 Baudrillard Simulacra – real was represented – hyperreal was simulated.

1990 Nancy Fraser – Subaltern counterpublics – “faction fighting, finacial curruption and ideological management” (critisised Habermas)

La Jetee is a 1962 black and white science fiction film by Chris Marker.  About a post-nuclear-war experiment in time travel, using a series of optically printed photographs.  No dialogue and only narration.  It tells the story of
Paris after world war 3, living underground in the Palais de Challot galleries.  They try to send someone back to the past to gather anything from food to energy.  The traveller keeps on having vague childhood memories of a woman.  He is finally executed, but before so he meets the people of the future.

The Political Economy – this has two parts knowledge and analysis of ownership and control of economic entities. 

OR (information and entertainment) (product)

Important Elements to a Political Economy;

• Inequality will result in a dialect of conflict over resources.
• Focused on concentration of ownership.
• Distinguishing between ideology and opinions, it seeks to answer questions about power.
• It see’s structure important inorganisations, it’s size, scope and geopgraphic of markets.
• It looks at the dialectics in governments and challenges their possition.
• It is interdisiplinary and looks into the structure of micro-relations and social life.
• ‘Marxist Economic Sociology’.

Labour and Labour power

Humans undertake and interact with technology and nature (the means of production).  The form that the labour takes is determined by its means of production.  Also a fair days work is more than a fair days pay in the 20th centry.

Commodification

Is the process of turning materials, goods and services into saleable products or commoditites.   Labour is required for the commodification process.  In every good there is labour.  When labour costs go up, it then leads to an economic crisis.

Capital

Marx; exploitation of labour as it accumulates.  Neo-classical; monied class to own and control production.

Mode of Production

This is the way the human society organises it’s productive relationship with nature in order to provide the means of substance that allow a society the means to function and reproduce. 

Taxonomy – System of classification.

The Mode of Development in the Mode of Production will determine how the economy is shaped.

Relations of Production – These are the social ties that bind together elements (labour, technology, nature) that constitute the mode of production.

Hegemony – Antonio Gramsci discribed the donomination of one social class by another.

Globalisation - A single worldwide market dominated by one market (USA), or a Europe sources materials at lowest cost possible.

Property Software – is the software you can buy.

Source Code – is the programming behind the software.

Free Open Source Software – (Richard Stallman)

• Use for any purpose
• Free to modify
• Transferable
• Edit and distribute

Opposite to copyright – copyleft

GPL (GNU – General Public License)

• Free software helping the internet to excist

Alternative to Microsoft – Mozilla’s Firefox web browser

Open Office

GNU/Linux Operating Systems

Birth of the Computer

Mechanosphere – (Deleuze and Guattar)

• Charles Babbage – Difference Engine
• Inventor of 1st computer
• Wasn’t completed because of no electricity
• Ada Lovelace – aided Babbage with her creative mathematical approach.
• Book; Sketch of the Analytical Engine
• She also concieved the first ever computer program

Alan Turing - On Computable Numbers

• Blechley Park – 1st designed working computer; The Bombe to decifer German Enigma codes
• Wrote Computer Machinary and Intellegence compaing computers to humans

Moore’s Law – Gordan Moore, 1965. Predicted the copacity of a microchip would double every 2 years and was right for 40 years.

Xerox PARC – 1970’s think tank developed; mouse, graphical users interface (GUI) and pulldown menus, making computers easy to use.

1st PC (Personal Computer) – Named 0 was useless without a language; Altair – Bill Gates left Uni to go to Alberquerque in New Mexico for the Altair so it could wordpress, account and play games. (1975)

Apple – Nerds gathered at a ‘Home Brew’ meetings to show their tech achievements, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple I with a single circuit board, no case, no keyboard $666.60 selling only 50 of them

Arthur Rock at Venture Capital – backed them with $100 000 and Mike Markala (INTEL) as supervisor

Apple II – 1978 made their fortunes, 1979 the bought ‘killer applications’ from Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston and Harvard Business School paying $100 for Viscals (Lotus 1-2-3) PC toy to business PC. Steve Jobs $100m @ 25y

IBM & Microsoft – IBM was (Big Blue) slow in developement ony producing mainframes. Chariman Frank Cares  called Bill Lowe to work on ‘Open archetecture’buying various other products to reasemble.

Computers need Language and Operating system – IBM declined digital Researc, INC – Gary Kildall

Microsoft promised to build an (OS) costing $50 for each

IBM & Microsoft then developed a (GUI), Windows.  Tis slided Apple – Convergence of IBM & Microsoft

Seve Jobs (1998) – returned to Reserection of Apple – iMac

The technologies converging rapidly today are, telecommunications, computing and broadcsting (Ostergaard, 1998)

Commercial convergence – television, radio, newspaper, telephone cable networks

Abacus - 1st adding machine for mental calcualtions (Babylonia – Iraq)

John Napier – Algorithms ‘Napier Bones – ruler helped Sir Isaac Newton

Pascaline – 1st mechanical calculator (Paris)

Charles Babbage - the Analytical Engine for astronomy, trigonomitry -

Hulleriths (1911) – Punch Card machine to represent a;phabet and numbers ‘on’ and ‘off’ Merged to IBM

Konrad Zuse (1930’s) 1st programmable computer (Z1) to make complex engineering equations

• (Z22) – Pioneered binary (0-1) then developed Siemens – ‘Plankilkul’ Chess program

Howard Aiken (1944) – Sequence Contro Calculator – Mark 1 – This leading to the Mark 4 and establishing computer science at Uni.

John Von Neumann ‘Von Neumann Architecture’ ability to stor programs

Bit = 0 or 1 unit of data

Byte = 8 bits

Megabyte = 1million bytes

ENIAC  (1945) – (Electronic Numeric Integrator And Computer) 1st digital computer, no moving parts

Radar was developed in England using vacuum tubing during the 2nd World war

(DARPA) US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency – bitrth of internet (APARANET)

Eckert and Mauchly (UNIVAC: Universal Automative Computer)

IBM 7 series (701,701,7090)  for military use on automic, aircraft, defence

Bell Telephone company invented ‘transistor’ for speed and reliability. 1956 – John Bardeen, William Shockley, Walter Brallain – Nobel Prize

UNIVAC was the first mainframe in 1951 – 1990s electric commerce brought back the mainframe – IBM dominate MF

INTERNET

Benedikt – “Cyberspace is a common mental geography, census, and revolution…”

Heim – “Cyberspace runs with intelegence down corridors where electricity runs.”

Novak – “Cyberspace is poetry inhabitied, and to navigate through it is to become on the wind of dreams”.

The Internaet, The Web and Cyberspace

Internet is the sum of interconnected computer hardware and software that runs through it

The Web is a particular application of the internet that is easy to use

Cyberspace is the sume of users ‘imaginations’ as they use the intenet

Internet - network of networks (internetwork) servers, mainframes, PC – devices using (CMC) Computer Mediated Communications

RAND originally experimented transmitting brken down messages ‘Packed Switching’

US Dept of Defence funded APARANET

Then became public BBS – Bulletin Board Servers and Multiple User Domains

WWW – World Wide Web

1. Internetworking
2. Hypertext for ease of use

These are the merges – techniques – the web includes internet sites on servers, worldwide.

The Web is one part of the internet!  When using firefox, you are browsing the web.

Cyberspace is a conceptial space where worlds, relationships, data, wealth, and power are manifested by people using the computer ‘ a conceptial helicination’

Early Internet Applications

• Email
• File Transfere Protocol (FTP)
• Internet Reley Chat (IRC)
• MUD’s, MOO’s,MUSHes etc

More recent Internet applications

• IM – Instant Messaging
• Peer-to-peer P2P file sharing
• Weblogs and various forms of blogging
• Portable Audio (MP3’s, AAC, FLAC, OG, etc) Podcsting
• VoIP and voice chat
• 3G mobile technology-mobile platforms for content
• MMOG online gaming
• ‘Virtual Worlds’, ‘Social Networking’ – YouTube – FlickeR

Netiqutte is ettiquette on the internet

• Bad (spamming) or (flamming)

Cracking is computer crime – Hacking is computer experts and programmers

• Kevin Mitnick – notorious cracker
• takedown – fugitve game

Viruses have massive damage with litle input

People in VR communities are more polite and sociable than in real life.

Net Conduct – eomtions

• smile     
• frown
• #( angry
• lol laugh out loud
• wink
• surprised

Reality and experiences; some possible ways of seeing things by influential people;

Guy Debord = ‘Society of Spectacle’

Unberto Eco = ‘Hyper-reality’

Jean Baudrillard = ‘Simularacum’

William Gibson = ‘Cyberspace as Consensual Hallucination’

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari = ‘Becoming Media’

Economics of Cyberspace – John barlow

Info – actvity experienced not possessed, propogated not distributed

Infor – life form – free – replicating – changing

Info – relationship between senders and receivers – value to both is equal

Info – commodified, but mostly it is it’s own reward

Internet Shares 2000 – not enough substance to justify – ‘Bulito Flip’

Same in Tokyo 1980 – ’south Sea Buble’

Important Commodities are Credibility, point of view, familiarity, exclusivity

Cyberspace is oppossed of becoming econimic activity – ‘Black Economy’

Growth of Cyberspace

• Social Network Capital
• Knowledge Capital
• Cultural Capital

Copyright – exclusive rights on literary, musical, dramatic or artistic

You can link to toher peoles material but not copy

Proudhons – ‘Property is Theft’!

JASON NELSON

Net Art

Unconvensional Art

Prevent Boredom

Based on Algorithms

Commercials stick to your head – powerful – grid of moments of inspiration

Modified code not hand coded

Death Friut Machine

Language is Glogal (Samantics)

Cache is your file recordings

IP is  a unique address that certain electronic devices use in order to identify and communicate with each other on a computer network 

Advertising is #1 – Porn is #2

CYBER PUNK

Science Fiction 20th Century Gendre

Contradition of Words

Cybernetics – study of communication command and control in living organisms

PUNK – fast, load, shortrock music, anarchist political phylosophy DIY, anti expert sieze the day

CYBERNETICS – Greek ‘Kybernetes’ WWII systme managing large numbers

PUNK – Sex Pistols, Clash, Black Assassins

(Space Opera) (Phillip Dick) Do andriods dream of electric sheep – Bladerunner, hackers Vs Corportations – distopias

William Gibson – cyberspace VR close to the truth

Matrx phylosophy suggests the world is electric signals by your brain

Cyber Punk themes Distopia

Promethieus – created humans and punished

Sisphius King – rck roller

Genisis – Adam ate friut

Faint – story teller soul to devil

All metaphors for the scientifi adv and dvelopement

Cyberpunk south to deny the logic tech/created WWW and was used to REMYTHOLOGISE

Utopia and Dystopia

A couple of utopian experients have accured in Queensland Mulga near Chinchilla and New Brittania William Lane

More Distopians in 20th Centry (tech dominate people) Aldas Braie New World – George Orwell

Citites as Machines

Mike Davis – City fo Quartz, are lonely, anonymous in the crowd

• the city is machine for living
• the city is a natural thing
• a living being

Thechnological Change

Frist Media Age (Centralised Dessemination) (Modernism)

Second Media Age (decentralised interaction) (post modernism)

CYBERTHERAPY

Advantages are online freedom of Geographical restrictions

Acessability for housebond tennents

Chanllenges are can’t detect emotions

Use images to tell story outline

Debates online – heavy doubts

Confidence in using this mode

More control, less threat

5 step self help process (CBT) Cognative Behaviour Therapy

DIGITAL MYTHOLOGY

Contains elements of truth – based on unstoppable power to do good (MOSCO 2004) Now is the age of computer

Cyber Mythology – ‘feeling’ ‘reason’ ‘live’ ’spiral of hype’

The Golden Age was when everything was bright and beautiful – utopia

DOT.COM CRASH

Computers went public i the late 90’s (IPO) Stocks lost their attractiveness of ther the crash.  Initial Public Offering (IPO)

New Media – digital Medai Forms

Old Media – Newspaper, mags, TV

ALPHAVILLE

Silence – Logic – Security – Prudence

Alpha 60 – 50 # on her neck!

VR

Killer Application – is an application that kills off others

Broadsheet A2 newspaper

Tabliod is A3 newspaper

Broadcast – to scatter widely, linked to publishing in the media message (program) is published (broadcast)

Podcast is video, Audio downloads also

Platos Cave

representations (shadow) of images, possible ways

Logicalpositivism – Mortz Schlicks and Hansreichenbach – Vienna – 1ST HAND INFO

Relaity and Experince

Cyberspace is Platonism in a working product

Cartesian Dualism – Body and mind separate

Margeret Wertheim – The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace – Non Physical Space

Sophists – reality and representation

eXistenZ – Burr Snider ‘ Jaron Wired 1.2 ‘Silicon Valley’

Precursoers to VR

Screen Age – Cinema – 100y ago

Telegraph – 1837- Morse (M Code)

Telephone 1876 – Bell

Phonograph 1876 Edison

Radio 1895 Marconi

Cinima 1929 Lumiere Brothers

TV 1926 Baird

Elements of VR language

music – mood

sfx – impact

framing – sizes

composition – position (dynamics)

shotsizes – variety

bcu – big close up

cu – close up

ls – long shot

mcu – media close up

mls – media long shot

ms – mid shot

vls – very long shot

xcu – extreme close up

camera movements

pan – l to r

tilt – u to d

dolly – towards and away

track – l or r on tracks

zoom – fixed point zoom

camera height angle – altitude

pov – point of view

VR – artificial reality, virtualality, anthropocykrsynchronicity

VR Works – senses hardware, goggles, gloves

convergence – simulation – animation

TYPES – (WOW) Window of World

3D – mouse, joy, VRML, Doom, Quake, Mariou

Immersion = HMD Head Mounted Display

• aka (boom)
• LCD screens
• dataglove

(CAVE – Computer Assisted Virtual Enviroment)

• Profected into space
• Hi-re stereo images
• Polorised eyewear

Elements of VR – 1 vision

Convergence – lines meet

Depth of field – tone color – 2D

Paralex – two points pointing to one other

Resolution – Clarity – # pixcels

Sound – 3d – stereo – binoclar

touch

• tactile
• force feed back
• motion
• 6D0F             xyz, roll, yaw, pitch

taste smell tech problems

VRML – Virtual Reality Modelling language – Mark Pesce

Problems with VR

Graphics LAG – 160 degree senses – kinaesthetic dissonance (lacking harmony)

Physical

• sick
• notias
• eyes hurt
• heaaches

Phyco

• addictive
• brainwash
• porn/violence
• desensitisation

VR Applications

Military

• Training
• Weather
• Environment
• Model making
• Surgery

Industry

• Entertainment
• Townplanning
• Tourism
• disabled
• phyciatric

GAmes

Marshall Mcluhan – The extensions of man

Pop Art

Extensions of social man – body polotic – organism

Adjust stress

Fatihfull models of culture

Vidoe Games

Arcade GAmes

Consols

Computer Games

MUDs – multi user domians

MMOGs – massive multi user

Narratology - study of stories or words

Ludology – stories of literary works