Reading my classmates posts I gained knowledge and good links to help me better understand what is digital writing and its concepts. I also learned other ways maybe to do my post and make it better in terms of organization and summarizing the readings more concisely.
http://jcher021.students.digitalodu.com/?p=47#comment-12
http://jcher021.students.digitalodu.com/?p=14#comment-13
http://mblac018.students.digitalodu.com/?p=36#comment-8
Key Terms
AUTOMATION– MODIFICATION/CREATION OF A MEDIA OBJECT USING TEMPLATES OR SIMPLE ALGORITHMS.
VARIABILITY– A NEW MEDIA OBJECT THAT CAN EXIST IN DIFFERENT AND INFINITE VERSIONS.
TRANSCODING-COMPUTERIZATION TURNING MEDIA INTO COMPUTER DATA.
NUMERICAL REPRESENTATION– ALL NEW MEDIA IS COMPOSED OF DIGITAL CODE, DESCRIBED MATHEMATICALLY, AND SUBJECT TO ALGORITHMIC MANIPULATION (“IN SHORT MEDIA BECOMES PROGRAMMABLE”)
DIGITIZATION -CONVERTING CONTINUOUS DATA INTO A NUMERICAL REPRESENTATION
MODULARITY– “FRACTAL STRUCTURE OF NEW MEDIA”, MEDIA ELEMENTS REPRESENTED AS COLLECTIONS OF DISCRETE SAMPLES THAT MAINTAIN THEIR SEPERATE IDENTITIES.
BRIEF SUMMARY
Manovich attempts to define what news media is. Internet, Websites, computer multimedia, computer games, CD-ROM’s and DVD, virtual reality, are all new media according to Manovich. According to Manovich, new media is identified with the “use of a computer for distribution and exhibition rather than production.”
Manovich believed that we are in the middle of a new media revolution with are culture shifting to computer-mediated forms of production, distribution, and communication. Unlike its predecessors, the new media revolution effects all stages of communication ( acquisition,manipulation, storage, and distribution) and types of media ( texts, still images, moving images, sound, and spatial constructions). Manovich reviews the historical trajectories of computing and media technologies, both of which new media
represents.” The synthesis of these two histories? The translation of all existing media into numerical data accessible through computers.” There are 5 principles of new media; Numerical Representation, Modularity, Automation, Variability, and cultural transcoding. In going into the history of how media became new, Manovich determined that the key year for the history of media and computing was in 1936, when important parts of the prehistory for cinema and computer were developed. While discussing the principles of new media he discusses the differences between old and new media. “The worldwide web as a whole is also completely modular.”
OLD/NEW MEDIA
In previous attempts to define what new media I attempted to identify the differences between old and new media. After reading Manovich I have discovered that was the wrong approach. This is because old media is a part of new media so attempting to just talk about the differences was the incorrect way to define new media. I think Manovich’s following quote does great job of giving one definition of new media.”On one level new media is old media that has been digitized,new media is simply a particular type of computer data, something stored in files and databases, retrieved and sorted run through algorithms and written to the output device.”
Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, @2001.
With group worked on Mcluhan page in wiki during class 9/11/12
Worked on Digital Writing and New Media page in wiki 9/18/12
Worked on Distributed Cognition in wiki 9/18/12
Worked on Judgement in wiki 9/22/12
Worked on Mcluhan in wiki 9/22/12
Worked on Collective Intelligence 9/22/12
worked on Copyright 9/30/12
In viewing these sources I gained a better concept of what copyright laws are. I was very surprised at the length of copyrights, as well as the fact that they are automatically granted. I had assumed that copyrights were like invention patents and had to be paid for. The rules or lack of set rules associated with fair use laws frustrated me. These laws are up to interpretation and because of that one can easily violate a copyright law unknowingly. Creative commons helps with this issue as it shows what you are allowed to do with selected works.
In terms of copyright infringement, I’ve always known that downloading music/movies and selling them to others was illegal. Anybody who watches the opening credits to a movie knows that much. But I’ve always wondered how a movie, like Scary Movie, was able to pretty much steal the storyline from Scream, while adding a more comedic angle, and not get sued for copyright infringement. Now I know that the reason this was allowed was because it was a parody of Scream and therefore allowed under fair sse.
With music, I have friends that remix existing songs, and prior to gaining this information ,about copyright/fair use , I thought it was legal. I figured that as long as they changed the lyrics to make the music sound different they were good. I was wrong, as I learned that the music as a whole is protected. To use a beat and completely change the lyrics or to just sample a beat from another song is all illegal.So the music my friends created is infringing on copyright even though the work differs from the original work.
Key
Terms
Hypermediated– arranging text, graphics and video in multiple panes and windows and joining them with numerous hyperlinks
Remediation– to multiply media and to erase all traces of mediation
Immediacy– To want immediately, leads to hypermediacy
Digital Media
The following quotes give insight into what digital media is:
“websites are riots of diverse media forms-graphics, digitized photographs, animation, and video.”
To sum these up I would say that immediacy has caused to digital media to use any and all available avenues to improve itself and function.
Immediacy/Hypermediacy
The example of a CNN newscast was a good example of how these two coexist. CNN site is hypermediaeted- arranging text, graphics and video in multiple panes and windows and joining them with numerous hyperlinks, yet the web site borrows its sense of immediacy from the televised CNN newscasts, being that nothing screams immediate like a live feed. Also you have newscasts looking like webpages with the same multiple screens, graphics, etc. A weather forecast is a good example of all these with the graphs and the immediate weather update.
This CNN weather forecast signifies the relationship between immediacy and hypermediacy, with multiple screen shots and graphics.
Works Cited
Key
Terms
Media– extensions of human senses
Fragmentation– the restructuring of human work and association
Mechanization– fragmentation of any process in a series.
Etherialization -the principle of progressive simplification and efficiency in any organization or technology.
Brief Summary
Medium is the message. Personal and social consequences result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves or by any technology. Through automation , the new patterns of human association tend to eliminate jobs. Positively automation creates roles for people. Fragmentation is the essence of machine technology, it restructures human work and association. The essence of automation technology is the opposite, as it is integral and decentralist. Electric light is viewed as pure information. McLuhan used the the following example to show this;”whether or not light is being used for brain surgery or a baseball game is indifferent, as these activities are the content of the light, as they couldn’t occur without it.” According to McLuhan, the message of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs. Sarnoff believed that the way media is used determines whether it is good or bad.“We are to prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for the sins of those who wield them,” Sarnoff said.
“We are to prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for the sins of those who wield them” David Sarnoff.
McLuhan believed that any medium has the power of imposing its own assumption on the unwary. Ultimately, McLuhan viewed technological media as a natural resource, just like coal and cotton, as they are “fixed charges on the physic life of a community.” ” Every new technology creates a new environment in which men can work” The Medium is the Massage Part 1 – Marshall McLuhan
Digital Writing
If a paperback book’s creating process was all done digitally is it considered digital writing? According to McLuhan that answer is yes. Applying his analogy of electric light;”whether or not light is being used for brain surgery or a baseball game is indifferent, as these activities are the content of the light, as they couldn’t occur without it,” this book can be considered digital writing. This is because the book wouldn’t exist without it.
Citation
Understanding Media: The Extension of Man New York: McGraw Hill, 1964.
Key Terms
Adhocracy-people with diverse skills and knowledge brought together to confront a specific challenge
Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand your mental capacities.
Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information
Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.
Brief Summary
Rise of digital media is perceived to have contributed to the decline in young people’s attention span. This is due to the fact that digital media encourages readers/watchers to scan the info environment rather than fix their attention on a single element. The response of young people to this digital media environment is multitasking. The difference between the adult and youth view of multitasking is shown in the farmer vs. hunter example. Farmers must localize their attention, while the hunter scans, looking for any sign of its prey.
Challenging the traditional view of intelligence is distributed cognition. According to Clark, “intelligence is distributed across brain, body, and world.” Meaning that intelligence is accomplished rather than possessed. Through the use of “information appliances that augment human’s cognitive capacities” distributed cognition focuses on reasoning. “Students need to know how to think with and through their tools as much as they need to record information in their heads.”(Clark)Playing in games such as Call of Duty helps one form mental maps of what player and non-players (CPU) are doing. To plan, players don’t need to know what others know but what they are likely to do.
Today users have begun exploiting the potential of networked communication through a process called collective intelligence. The world of collective intelligence is where, “everyone knows something, nobody knows everything, and what any one person knows can be tapped by the group as a whole.” (Levy). Collective Intelligence is an alternative source of power that allows communities to respond to govt. institutions. Focus on teamwork is how today’s workforce is structured. People with diverse skills and knowledge are brought together to confront a specific challenge. Students aren’t prepared for this adhocracy, as schools are encouraged to create, “autonomous problem solvers”; while with collective intelligence ownership of work is attributed to the group.
Knowledge is always a process with collective intelligence as you must show proper judgment when trying to distinguish fact from fiction, argument from documentation, real from fake, and marketing from enlightenment. Using proper judgment requires not simply logic, but also an understanding of how different media institutions and cultural communities operate when attempting to authenticate new information.
New& Old Media
Old media to me is the type of media my parents had when they were my age. During that time period the ways of communicating information were through print media and through radio. I remember seeing my dad in the morning, walking around on eggshells, waiting on his aunt to tell him if he won the bet on the Laker game the previous night. He went through all of this because the newspaper wouldn’t have the game results until two days after the game. So in describing old media I would say that in terms of getting information it was very slow but with getting information more slowly chances are the information is probably more accurate. I think new media is essentialy digital media. You have audio, video, images all a click away with new media. It really is the opposite from old media, in that you get it extremely fast but the information is less accurate since the appropriate amount of time to check your information is not properly utilized. This along with the fact that with old media the amount of people who could supply you with information was very limited, whereas with new media the number is infinite leading you to have to sort out what information is true and what is fabricated.
Work Cited
Jenkins, Henry. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009. Print.
This Free Write was a part of my in class introduction to ENGL 307
What is digital writing? Blogs, social networks, photos, videos, text messaging and emails.
What forms of digital writing do you do?
text messaging, social networks and emails
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