Thursday, March 19, 2009

Old Media and New Media

ie VCR, stone tablets, newspapers etc

What makes old media "old"
- something newer has replaced it
- obsolete?  Not necessarily...
- different layers of participation / dimensions
- analogue vs digital

How many don't use analogue media?  None.

What differentiates?
- difference in participation
- difference in quality
- temporal
- degrees of control (on demand PVR)
- distribution
- production and receiving content
- knowledge difference (technology skills)
- ie required to know how to read off a screen, typing, internet, --> different level of entry
- Certain degree of literacy (not just read and write, but understand the medium, and difference in ways we understand things)

The ability to choose is a fundamental difference.

How do we understand old to new if our concepts of understanding is from a historical perspective?
- potentially the technology shift (ie tuning via dial vs typing in the number)
- ie URL can be wrong, and you can still guess it, but it is still wrong
- same concept as wrong phone number by one digit
- how do we go forward and develop the tools to makes sense of it
- think about it in a new way?  Not just a continuum?
- New media emerges as its own niches.  But are they really that different?

Is it fundamentally different in the study of new vs old media?
- if you can't get a book, you put it on reserve and you wait, or you try new sources
- value availability more?
- it does affect and impact many things: time, control, sense of participation, sense of value
- organisation and planning

What would you lose if you went offline for a day/a week/
- time?
- email
- how do you organise / communicate with people
- give up degree of external scrutiny

What would gain for a day/ a week
- more creative

Are you not creating if you're just surfing?
- could be learning
- page hits and traffic

Is it creative to be passive going site to site?
- Could be, if you get inspiration
- everything becomes part of your memory for future use
- you do create a value for it
- a level of importance
- the possibility that others will find it as well
- a record, a trail, data, used for different reasons
Just a matter of how purposeful it is

Old and new monikers are unhelpful, maybe just think about media and where it comes from and where it's going. 

Rather than thinking a shift in mindset to a change in form.
Realising that different models don't work off and on line.  How things work differently.  Material properties that surround this transition.

Major networks tried to retain viewers, now trying to squish the form into something new without rethinking.  
ie webisodes
- contributes to the narratives
- most doesn't make it to television

Is tv the box or the content?
you're watching content, but not television.  TV is content attached to a medium.

What is important, the physical interaction or the content.
If I'm interested in the content, does it matter what the platform is?  Does the hardware matter?  What difference does it make? If the hardware doesn't matter, why would people continue to make it.

Now tv is less about the hardware but of the content.

Consider if it's not about the hardware and more about the content it can produce how do we need to hardware to change to reflect this?

Analogue to digital only one small part.  Interface between hardware and people.

Transition from old to new?  How do we interface?  How do we make it meaningful?

We participated with television and it was profoundly changing of the world.
ie Vietnam war
produced a different set of consciousness that couldn't be provided by radio or papers.

In the age of the internet, you get another avenue.  Also provides opportunity for divisiveness vs the collective and lots of small groupings.  A lot more dispersed.

Dominating modes of communication impacts how society acts, thinks etc.
If it impacts sub-collective, but if about interacting you separate those groups

Global Society
- western concept not everyone has access to internet
- shift is not imagining access of things but being everywhere
- can't remove the local

Do we live locally?
- how much value is in the local?
- school, classes
- do you know your neighbours

What is the benefit to have those extra friends ie Facebook?
- depth and breadth of friends
- reorganisation of society that predicates itself on you being in charge of your own choices?
- are you wise enough?
- If we are moving from a society where the local checks on you then how do you make choices with those not around you?

Transformation of where knowledge comes from and how work gets done.
- makes sense that a degree can be bought if you know how to manipulate the system to acquire something.  The question is what do you want to acquire?  A degree or knowledge?
- it is being resourceful.

Why is there a difference between a degree in medicine and diploma in auto mechanics?
- what is the fundamental difference?

Practical knowledge vs having credentials.
- value judgements doctors vs labourers

If it is just a volume of knowledge to digest in a certain amount of time, why not divide the labour?
New practice on old standard?  Old standards with new phenomena?  What should we do?
Value in status?
What is the value you get back from doing something?

Solitude and Privacy what are the differences?
- solitude -
- isolation
- are are smart enough/ strong enough to know when we're alone?

the ability to be unplugged.
Solitude needs to be accounted for in this transition.  Omnipresence, we always feel the need to be connected.  Should have the ability to connect.  Even though I'm away, I should still be there.  We want to be somewhere physically and connected elsewhere.  Subject to always being connect.

Causes us to value solitude as a consequence.  Negative condition vs positive necessity.
It's hard to be alone.  Even if your mind wanders to having to be available somewhere.

What is privacy?
- something that access is restricted
- something that belongs to you
- don't want others to know / have
- the ability to control how others access what you have / what you know

- when we surrender our private lives that were previously private and put them out there ie talking via cellphone on the bus
- are there things we lose?  or is it this just a shift in personal space?  The idea of privacy is just out personal bubble?
- range of implications and consequences
- perhaps we have erased the markers differences and increased mark of sameness
- if you don't have the same sense of same shame /guilt, how does that change society.  Keeping it private, does it do more benefit.  Larger scale?
- being physically removed alters the consequences to being private
- sometimes if others know they may be able to make more informed choices or could have more prejudice
- could increase / perpetuate stereotypes

What is my personal space and how do I define?
Global?
Physical?
Privacy?

As things change, there are always trade offs.



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