MAR203: 'Net Structure/Culture

Defining "New Media" and "Information Technology"

• For the purposes of this class, new media . . .
  1. Are created by and/or communicated through a computer and related information technologies
     • I.e., a digital  medium as opposed to older media which are analog
       • Or, as IT&S says, "technologies that use electronics to transform information into digital, binary--0s and 1s--format" (5)
       • But what does this mean? What is the difference between digital and analog?
       • In what sense is a computer digital? How does it use 0s and 1s?
       • Inside a computer's brain, its CPU, everything is binary
     • Difference between "technology" and "media"
       • Technology is the machinery, the equipment, the wiring (the hardware) and the programs necessary to run it (the software)
         • Information technology is everywhere today.  Supermarket cash registers have computers in them; are they "new media"?
           • No, but they do use new information technologies--when a bar code is scanned, information (the name of the item, its price) enters into an electronic, computer technology
       • Media are phenomena that use hardware/software to present information, narrative, propaganda, etc. to a user
         • E.g., the cinema is a medium that uses the technology of cameras/projectors to communicate stories
         • E.g., the World Wide Web is a medium that uses the technology of computers, telecommunication equipment and wires to communicate stories, information, pictures, music, etc. etc. etc.
  2. Have the potential to alter the position of the spectator (i.e., the reader/viewer/listener or the "subject"). Obviously, not all new media do this.
     • Some new media require subjects who pull information toward them rather than have it pushed toward them.
       • You enter cyberspace, jack into the matrix, instead of having it come to you. You seek/hunt information/entertainment rather than having it delivered to you.
       • "Push" media, like broadcast TV, contains texts (broad, semiotic use of this term) which are aimed at an ideal spectator, pointed at one position
       • "Pull" media display textual fragments, calling to (hailing) the spectator, but permitting him/her to collect bits and pieces of a fragmented media space.
         • E.g., a hypertext link on a page is such a fragment
         • A process that anthropologists term bricolage
         • Viewing/reading becomes assemblage
       • In a sense, TV become "new media" with the widespread use of the remote control--allowing the TV viewer to assemble his/her own media text out of a televisual textuality
       • A push medium has become a limited pull medium--though Hollywood still determines what is available to be pulled.
         • On the Internet, however, the texts to be pulled from are much more varied than broadcast TV
           • Positive: alternative viewpoints are difficult to suppress
           • Negative: alternative viewpoints are difficult to suppress
     • Interactivity: the subject interacts with the medium and alters it according to his/her needs, desires, whims
     • Gives subject control--but always within limits
       • E.g., a computer game such as Doom only has a certain number of landscapes
       • E.g., the number of Web pages you may browse to is huge, but not infinite
     • Viewing experience is often fragmentary, disjointed (or jointed in usual ways), instead of unified.
  3. Have erased the difference between the original and the copy
     • Because, in the digital world, the copy is just as good as the original.
     • Calls into question the notion of authenticity
       • Permits identical copies of something to exist in more than one place at a time.
     • Threatens the laws of intellectual property (i.e., copyright)
     • How does it change our notion of the text, of, say, an artwork?
       • More disposable, less valuable?
       • Destroy what Benjamin calls "aura"?
  4. Have--through computer networking--revolutionized the distribution of texts.
     • Older media (specifically, book/magazine/newspaper publishing, the cinema, television) required a mammoth, expensive system for the distribution of information and entertainment.
     • New media texts may be distributed for a $20-per-month AOL account.

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Although new media take many forms, we'll use the World Wide Web and computer-mediate communication (CMC) as our test cases.

Contextualizing These New Media

What do they share (in, perhaps, modified form) with older media?

• Print Media: Books, Periodicals (magazines and newspapers) and Still Photography
  • The use of words to entertain, provide information, convince/propagandize
    • Regardless of the hyperbole surrounding the graphical (i.e., image-oriented) nature of the Web, its content is still predominantly communicated through text (narrow meaning: not broad meaning like above).
    • The Web is much less graphical/visual than, say, a John Woo film or commercial for Diet Coke
  • Periodicals
    • The combination of text and static (not moving) images
    • Page design and layout of new media are heavily indebted to principles of composition from print publications
      • E.g., photographs used to direct reader's eye inward, not out beyond frame
        • Photograph of someone looking right would be placed on left of page
  • Photography
    • Digital photography incorporates many of the technologies of analog photography (e.g., lenses), but revolutionizes the darkroom process
      • The manipulation of the image after its original capture has reached new levels
      • But it's really just an extension of and not a break from darkroom principles of increasing/decreasing contrast and other characteristics
    • Still, photographic aesthetic principles remain largely the same
      • E.g., "rule of thirds"
  • Books
    • 19th century novel provides one basic structure for narrative
      • Roland Barthes's Hermeneutic code
        • Enigma used to draw the reader in, but stalling devices prevent immediate gratification
      • Narrative structure can be traced even further back through long tradition of story-telling
• The Cinema
  • Moving image
    • Based on succession of still frames and persistence of motion
  • Editing
    • The displacement or juxtaposition of one image by another
    • Achieved, e.g., through hypertext linking--one Web screen replacing another
• Broadcast Television and Video
  • Computer monitor uses same technology as TV/video monitor
    • Bits of light (pixels) are illuminated by an electron gun
    • Illusion of movement comes from refreshing of still images

Computer Networking:
What Is the Internet and Where Did It Come From?
Where the Heck Is Cyberspace?

A network of networks

• Little electronic packets of information or data are thrown around from one computer to another, around the world.
  • These packets can contain words or images or sounds--electronic mail or computer files
  • Routed from one location to another according to a protocol (a set of rules and guidelines) known as TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol)
  • How do they know where to go?
    • Each machine has a unique IP address
    • Explain IP numeric addresses and domain names

How "new" are new media?

• See Hobbes' Internet Timeline for historical perspective.
• Most of MAR203 students born in 1977-78
  • Old-timers compared to the Internet
• "Cyberspace" coined in 1984, in William Gibson's Neuromancer

A Demographic Internet Snapshot--circa July 1997

• Gender
• Race
• Class (income)
• Computer platform

How Big Is the Internet & How Fast Did It Grow?

See Hobbes' charts.