3.09.2004
Reax to readings:
Audiovisual Culture and Postmodernism:
How long can the past be prolonged before it catches up to the contemporary? Why is post-modernism given more value than modernism since the world clearly has room for both? After all, are the Flintstones not infinitely funnier than the Jetsons?
How is the nature of representation changing?
The photo of the New York skyline digitally manipulated to include the Eiffel Tower had quite an impact on me. To hear a man's voice reproduced by a digital .wav file telling me about a cut-and-paste digital photo of the skyline was incredibly synthetic. Nevertheless, my feeling of the photo was still one of simplicity and an "analog" life. Quite amazing.
"the field of the visible, as the silent representation of things, has become increasingly heterogeneous and complex. Formerly, discourse was considered a linguistic activity; now it is a multimedia activity."
What image of collective life is proposed by the new communications technologies?
"Sure you can fax at the beach. But this also demonstrates how the widening of access means not more information, but the transformation of leisure time into labor time. " What are the repercussions? How does (and has) leisure time as we know it changed in the last decade or so?
Is it enough to simply be aware of class divisions caused by tech knowledge?
Surpassing the Real
"new technologies benefit culture and society. It works as a classic ideological paradigm, appearing simply as 'common sense', as any advertisement for anew car or computing system will show. Ironically, it was one of Futurism's most fervent proponents, the Italian Filippo Marinetti, whose oft-cited aphorism illustrates the principle's reductio ad absurdum, 'Progress is always right, even when it's wrong'."
***This is exactly what I've been wanting to hear. The idea of progress always being benevolent is absolutely absurd, and I think anyone who knows the history of the any of the great empires (French, British, American, etc.) of the last 500 years would agree. It's time to start discussing the empire of technology and how this argument of progress for progress' sake is being used.
"We habitually think of the world we see as 'out there', but what we are seeing is really a mental model, a perceptual simulation that exists only in our brain. That simulation capability is where human minds and digital computers share a potential for synergy." Good point.
**The decline of modernity in relation to the deligitimisation of the image in the industrial world is an interesting observation that relates to my questions about empire (because so many colonizing countries justified their murderous exploits with modernity). Is this really the decline of modernity? The rejection of it? A new modernity?
Media, Technology, and the Market: the Interacting Dynamic
As someone who works in (old) media, I completely agree with Schiller's assertion that advertising transforms broadcast media. In many cases programming exists not for information or entertainment, but rather so an advertisement can be tacked on and something sold. The quality of the broadcast is not important (as those of you who watch the FOX network know all too well). It's the ad time that is key. John Larroquette once said television exists only to sell soap. Amen.
How long can the past be prolonged before it catches up to the contemporary? Why is post-modernism given more value than modernism since the world clearly has room for both? After all, are the Flintstones not infinitely funnier than the Jetsons?
How is the nature of representation changing?
The photo of the New York skyline digitally manipulated to include the Eiffel Tower had quite an impact on me. To hear a man's voice reproduced by a digital .wav file telling me about a cut-and-paste digital photo of the skyline was incredibly synthetic. Nevertheless, my feeling of the photo was still one of simplicity and an "analog" life. Quite amazing.
"the field of the visible, as the silent representation of things, has become increasingly heterogeneous and complex. Formerly, discourse was considered a linguistic activity; now it is a multimedia activity."
What image of collective life is proposed by the new communications technologies?
"Sure you can fax at the beach. But this also demonstrates how the widening of access means not more information, but the transformation of leisure time into labor time. " What are the repercussions? How does (and has) leisure time as we know it changed in the last decade or so?
Is it enough to simply be aware of class divisions caused by tech knowledge?
Surpassing the Real
"new technologies benefit culture and society. It works as a classic ideological paradigm, appearing simply as 'common sense', as any advertisement for anew car or computing system will show. Ironically, it was one of Futurism's most fervent proponents, the Italian Filippo Marinetti, whose oft-cited aphorism illustrates the principle's reductio ad absurdum, 'Progress is always right, even when it's wrong'."
***This is exactly what I've been wanting to hear. The idea of progress always being benevolent is absolutely absurd, and I think anyone who knows the history of the any of the great empires (French, British, American, etc.) of the last 500 years would agree. It's time to start discussing the empire of technology and how this argument of progress for progress' sake is being used.
"We habitually think of the world we see as 'out there', but what we are seeing is really a mental model, a perceptual simulation that exists only in our brain. That simulation capability is where human minds and digital computers share a potential for synergy." Good point.
**The decline of modernity in relation to the deligitimisation of the image in the industrial world is an interesting observation that relates to my questions about empire (because so many colonizing countries justified their murderous exploits with modernity). Is this really the decline of modernity? The rejection of it? A new modernity?
Media, Technology, and the Market: the Interacting Dynamic
As someone who works in (old) media, I completely agree with Schiller's assertion that advertising transforms broadcast media. In many cases programming exists not for information or entertainment, but rather so an advertisement can be tacked on and something sold. The quality of the broadcast is not important (as those of you who watch the FOX network know all too well). It's the ad time that is key. John Larroquette once said television exists only to sell soap. Amen.
