CCT109 midterm Flashcards
(30 cards)
Granularity/Modularity
Two features of projects that harness human resources for effective social production
Modularity: The properties of a digital object that determine
“The extent to which it can be broken down into smaller components or modules that can be independently produced before they are assembled into a whole”
- Ex. a post on a platform
Granularity: The size of the modules, in terms of time and effort that someone must invest in producing them, “the smallest possible individual investment necessary to participate in a project’
- Ex. liking a post vs producing it
Connections:
- Social production is driven by modularity and granularity as they are concepts to explain the smallest amount of effort contributors can give to be meaningful.
- An example could be Wikipedia, where even though the rate posts have been declining, edits to existing posts are still a large part of it, adding to the web of knowledge. Wikipedia is entirely socially produced, created by the people for the people.
- This is important to CCT109 as when studying the contributions people make to the culture of a medium, we must have a metric to mark the components that make up the whole.
Social Network
Array of social networks: kinship, friendship, neighborhood, community, nationality
- Face-to-face or mediated by tech, between people for formal or informal reasons
- The telegraph and telephone sped up and extended the reach of our connections to one another
- A key feature of networked electronic communication is the ability to connect, instantly, with almost any other person in your various social networks
- You don’t necessarily know everyone in your network personally like you would in a group, but you have the ability to reach them and harness your connection to them to achieve something, most relevantly in a business sense/gaining social capital from your network
- Computers are considered part of your social network - Wellman
Connections:
- Networks can be used for both moral and immoral reasons: Such as activism, but also hate groups and terrorist groups
→ A big role of social media in social movements is raising awareness to involve those who have political power or a large audience - Radio and the telegraph enhanced the rate in which we could communicate with each other, “As a result, communications networks are a central factor in social theories, and particularly social theories about new media.” → Speed and reach of our networks increased since the advent of radio and telegraph, then exponentially with the internet
- Social networks are an important concept for CCT109, because it provides a framework for who we communicate with and how the technologies we use affect the speed and reach our our communications
Network Effects
“‘Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them . . . [or] harness collective intelligence.’””
“First, [Web 2.0] embedded within it a range of features that have long been seen as central to the web as a communications infrastructure, such as the scope for participation, interactivity, collaborative learning, and social networking (social networking media, social media, or social software are commonly used alternative terms), as well as positive networking effects from harnessing collective intelligence. In other words, the quality of participation increases as the number of participating users increases, and this in turn attracts more new users to the sites.
Connections:
- Connections to Web 2.0, which is built on network effects
→ “Software programs and internet sites that conform to Web 2.0 principles have similar core principles:
- Many-to-many in their connectivity
- Decentralized in terms of control
- User focused and easy for new users to use
- Open in terms of their technology standards and their applications programming interface (API)
- Relatively simple and lightweight in their design, their administrative requirements, and their start-up and ongoing development costs
- Expected to evolve and change over time as users make new modifications to the sites
Important to CCT109 as it demonstrates what is successful in technologies, which is key to analyzing them.
App
- Apps are downloadable software that provides specific functions. There are many kinds of apps, such as communications, searching, navigation, entertainment, cameras, catalogues like contacts, and the list goes on. The most popular apps are developed based on what would be the most convenient users, providing further ease of life through their mobile devices.
Connections:
Links to network neutrality, with the overuse of data with apps
- “It affected mobile telephone companies that struggled to keep up with the data usage of all the new iPhone users back in 2009. Smartphone users loved their apps so much that they drove mobile data use up by as much as 4,000 per cent.”
- SMS enabled various developments such as a larger displays, which led to the possibility of apps being installed on phones (originally through SMS as well)
- An example of apps could be social media apps like instagram, tiktok, etc
- Apps are also useful to connect to your social network from your mobile device
- enable technological convergence
Network Neutrality
“Network neutrality has emerged as a key issue in the debates about control of and payment for internet services. In principle it means that the network is unbiased in relation to the content that is transmitted, but this has been under stress in recent years by both user behaviour and competition between telecommunications carriers.”
- This has been an issue because of content being shared/downloaded that requires more data - downloading a movie vs sending an email
Originated from common carriage law –> “These regulations were originally put in place to keep railroads from charging different rates to different companies (e.g., subsidiaries) and giving unfair advantage to some at the expense of others. In telephone terms, the common carriage laws meant that everyone paid according to a common fee/charge structure and—more importantly—telephone companies could not discriminate on the basis of what callers were saying.”
Connections:
- This can be applied to any texting/communication service, where the carrier is not responsible for the actions of the user. If two people used SMS to plan a crime for example, the carriers wouldn’t be held legally liable.
- This can also be linked with the problems with overuse of data to telegraph companies being overloaded with messages they were being asked to send, thus leading to the monopolization on the communication network
This is important to CCT109 as it explores the systems of power embedded in the business of communications. This analysis would be considered a political economist approach in the context of this course. Furthermore, this is important for personal use of these networks to be fully aware of what companies are and are not legally liable for. Knowing your rights as a consumer is very important.
Participatory Culture
Participatory culture → citizens are both media consumers and producers (often through social media)
Participatory culture emerges with the ascent of the internet and networked info tech in the 90’s, break from the mass communication models
Two components:
- New media enables participation in politics and political communication
- DIY media production
Connections
- A good example is fan culture, with fans creating scenarios (headcannons), artworks and alternate designs that create commonly held beliefs among fandom members. This may also influence the official (canon) source material. For example, the lego animation in the second spider verse movie was added due to a fan animating the first movie in lego and getting noticed by the studio.
- This can be linked to content convergence, as participatory culture tends to be holistic, spanning across platforms. The original source material could be a movie for example, while there are snippets of it on tiktok and fan edits. Or even posts of fan art on instagram, fanfiction on wattpad, etc.
- It could also be linked to social shaping of technology, in the way that participatory culture can shape the source material by showing the creators what is most successful and loved by the audience
- Participatory culture is important to CCT109 because it is a key factor in analysing current audience member’s relationship with new media. In this course, we examine how ICTs change overtime and with various social and societal influences, so understanding how the audience adds to the culture of a medium is essential for understanding the medium itself.
Networked Information Economy
- Benkler (2006)
- Popularization of the internet and networked personal computing
Core characteristic: Decentralized individual action, carried out through radically distributed non market mechanisms that do not depend upon proprietary strategies
Three subsidiary conditions:
1. Transition from industrial economy to information, knowledge and creative economies
2. The internet coordinates the millions of individual actions that greatly enrich the networked information environments
3. Increase “peer production” of info, knowledge and culture through large-scale cooperative efforts, ex. Web 2.0
- User generated content
Connections:
Social production - all peer production is social production (?), directed by a mutual agreement that knowledge is valuable and worth pursuing. It does not rely on proprietary leadership, but is a loosely collaborative pursuit of knowledge
- Important to CCT109 as we live in a networked information economy, which is important to identify while analyzing both new media and how old media has changed since breaking away from an industrial/manufacturing economy
Electromagnetic Spectrum
The radio waves that are used for communication over radios and telephones. It presents one of the largest issues when it comes to communication technologies, which is limited resources for a mass public to share.
- From the radio to a walkie talkie (emerged during WW2, only so many frequencies within the electromagnetic spectrum presents a challenge, initially only one broadcast tower receiving signals)
- Cellular radio system is designed as a solution in the 1940s (grid of towers that receive signals) but cellular phones only arrived in the 80s
- “Capacity problems had plagued radio systems since the earliest days, as the electromagnetic spectrum is very much a shared resource”
Connections
- Similarity to the telegraph in the way that communications were limited. With the telegraph it was that the lines were overcrowded with messages, which led to a system where you had to pay to have your message prioritized. With the radio, broadcasting was capitalised by corporations, pushing hobbyists to higher and higher frequencies despite their contributions to the medium.
- Understanding how the electromagnetic spectrum was used is important to CCT109, as it reveals power dynamics in who gets prioritized. → political economy approach
Convergence (convergence culture and technological/industrial/content convergence)
Convergence culture is when media forms and consumption cross many different sites and formats and incorporate both professional and amateur creators. This is usually a top-down process where professionals create, then amateurs add to the surrounding culture.
- Grassroots convergence → “Jenkins refers to struggles, both visible and invisible, between consumers and companies as corporate and grassroots convergence. The struggle over media content is visible when community members take videos from popular films and mash it up with their own content”
Industry convergence: merging of industry organizations into one organization (ex. meta)
Can create monopolies
Device convergence: transformation of technologies from single purpose to multipurpose (ex. Cell phones)
Content convergence: combine and integrate data, text, sound and images
→ On the internet: the bringing together of computing, communication networks, and media content, as well as the development if convergent products, services and processes of industry convergence
Connections:
Convergence culture is similar to participatory culture, with amateurs creating their own content, but in the case of convergence culture it is based on a source material.
Convergence as a whole is essential in CCT109 as it is one of the main characteristics of new media. To fully understand the implications of new media and society’s relationship with it, one must first grasp the concept of convergence.
Industry convergence examples can be service providers, who buy out smaller ones to have a monopoly on data. This can be related to the political economy model as it seeks to identify who holds power in the media industry and how that affects consumers.
Device convergence example is cell phones. They combine so many different technologies that they have taken over entire markets. For example, no one prints out maps anymore. If they need directions, they use their phone. No one has a contact book. If they need to call someone, they use their contacts app. This is relevant to mobile devices as well as the mobility of these devices make them even more convenient, reducing the need for aforementioned communication technologies.
Content convergence examples could be video games that integrate graphics, sounds and text to enhance gameplay.
Digital Divide
“Races, genders, and ethnic groups all have different levels of and means to access wealth and education, and therefore also to access technology and the ability to use it.” In Canada, this is especially true for Indigenous peoples, as they have been forced into rural areas with poor connectivity and resources.
“There are numerous examples of technology being used to actively perpetuate power differentials, most notably those that involve race. Critical studies of technology, including analysis from almost every theoretical perspective (e.g., Marxists, social constructivists, cultural theorists, and liberals) have shown that those who have power use all of the tools at their disposal to perpetuate and extend that power. This can, and does, include access to the means of production or the ideological structure and messages of domination—including new media.”
Connections:
This is a large part of analysis in the political economy model, as analyzing who has access to resources is revealing about societal injustices that shape technology and its use.
An example would be indigenous reserves, which tend to be in more rural areas that do not have great connectivity, as service companies do not see these spaces as valuable as urban areas. There are also systemic causes that disproportionately push indigenous peoples into poverty, which may result in even less access to technology.
This is important to CCT109 as it demonstrates that technological innovation is not automatically equal. It breaks away from the utopian view of the internet as a uniting and unbiased force that is equal to all. It is important to have a holistic understanding of how every demographic experiences new media.
Algorithm
A good example would be algorithms, how they are designed to keep you on the app with inconsistent bursts of dopamine followed by unsettling imagery that keeps you on the app until you find the dopamine again.
“[Dr Franklin] also called attention to the extent to which electronic media create pseudorealities for those who tune in or participate in media channels, sometimes disconnecting them from their family and community. Importantly, in her view these pseudorealities often lack the reciprocity of face-to-face conversation”
- People can create their own echo chambers using algorithms or by filtering what content they consume consciously, which can impact the way they see the world and believe others see the world
Connections:
- Dark patterns → harmful designs that developers include intentionally to benefit the corporations that run these platforms/websites even at the harm of the user.
Surveillance capitalism
The value placed on user’s data which is collected, then sold to a third party
Examples include instagram, tiktok, youtube, etc.
In CCT109, it is important to understand how platforms function to properly analyze them.
SMS
SMS made an enormous contribution to the bottom line for telecom business and had tremendous social implications
- The initial idea for text was to give the service provider a way to send a message to users (originally a one way broadcast model)
- The decision to allow users to initiate and send messages to any other subscriber was an afterthought, but became popular
Sms enabled many changes
- Larger displays and better keyboards/navigation functions
- Larger graphical display came with non-ASCII text and that opened global markets
- Larger displays enabled games on the phone
- In the early days, software was downloaded via SMS
Connections:
Social shaping of technology
→ texting was not intended initially to be a service mainly used by consumers, but due to the love for it, updates began to shape around SMS. Ringtones and apps were available through SMS in the early days of the cell phone, and texting remains a large part of every social media app today
- The importance of SMS to CCT109 as it is a large example of how consumers shape the product that they desire. Consumers have power in the development of new technology and the widespread adoption of said technology.
Technological determinism
The view that technology shapes society. This is more of a worldview than a proper theory. It is also quite restrictive as it does not account for the social and historical factors that shape technology, only choosing to look at the after effects. That is not to say that technological determinism is not useful.
- Can be hard to go back to the “before times” → technologies contain implicit forms of social organization that are difficult to reverse
- Technologies tend to amplify existing systemic injustices rather than creating them - understanding who developed tech and how it’s used (always with a bias since its used by people who are always biased)
- Once technologies are widely adopted and used, they become “locked in” in a way that shapes society and culture in a wider sense
→ Changes how tasks are performed, doesn’t necessarily create new tasks
→ However, if we feel a technology is ineffective, it’s not impossible to change
Connections:
- The antithesis to technological determinism would be the social shaping of technology that analyzes technology in the context of its origins, giving a more holistic view of technology.
- An example of technological determinism would be saying that neighborhoods are shaped by the advent of cars. They are no longer as walkable as everyone is expected to have access to this technology.
- This is important to CCT109 as it is a worldview that can add depth to other theories, even while it may be a bit reductionist. It is also important to understand where others are coming from even if they are not seeing the entire picture, then you can have a proper discussion.
Social Production
All peer production is social production, but not all social production is peer production
- Creation of goods and services in a collaborative or social way
- Loosely collaborative not driven by market criteria or directly proprietary in terms of who owns and controls the use of the final product
Gained prominence through two factors:
- Knowledge has value for individuals
- Individuals have the “threshold level of material capacity required to explore the info environment and take and contribute to it” - using computers
Connections:
Social production is fueled by modularity and granularity
- Knowledge economy promotes social production, the promotion of creative services rather than manufacturing goods, and when consumers work for free (free advertising, hobbyists, etc), corporations gain from it
Platform
Platforms are hosts (infrastructure) for a multitude of content sharing purposes. They can be used to share photos, websites, markets, videos, etc.
Connections:
- SMS enabled the phone to be a platform for communication, entertainment, wayfinding, etc
- Google or web 2.0 in general is a platform for various creators to engage and build their own services/goods without needing to create their own infrastructure. This makes starting a new business much easier.
- Links to participatory culture, as the platform exists as the basis for the consumers to then add to the content and surrounding general culture (also linked to interactivity)
This is important to CCT109 as platforms enable a lot of new media and the interactivity that characterized them.
Social Shaping of Technology
- Argues that social , institutional, economic and cultural factors shape the choices we make → what is created, how it’s used, how it’s developed, the context surrounding it. Also the outcomes of different groups of society as they’re influenced
Social shaping of tech has three strands:
1. Diffusion of innovations model
- Rogers -2003- sought to model the rate of adoption and spread of technologies through communication and how things change over time → who is using tech and how
- Norman (1998) argues that there is a shift in the market from the attributes of technology to the ease of use of tech
- Important to be able to identify the cycle helps us cut through the marketing hype that surrounds new tech
- Look at the diagram of types of people buying technology over time → goes from customers who want tech and performance to those who want ease
The chasm → point where a technology is popularized or fades from public view. This is determined by its uses and functionality
The extent to which the new innovation relies of the development of new tech
The uses of the technology beyond its initial interest (left of the chasm)
- Political economy
- Focuses on politics and power relations embedded in tech development and use
- Understanding of historical and current economic, social relations of production, military priorities, the role of state, gender and maintenance of racist hierarchy of power
- New media is a business
- Access to resources at various levels influence the directions that new media developments take: includes investment capital, political influence and to the technology themselves on the part of potential users
- Inequalities of access
- Political economy does not buy into new media hype and optimism. - Political economists are skeptical about the claims that new media leads to fundamental social change
- Evidence of old media monopolies which are deeply connected to new media forms
Kumar (2005) “the imperatives of profit, power and control seem as predominant now as they have ever been”
Ex. telecom industry - Theories of culture and technology
- Culture and technology are interdependent
→ Assemblages - interwoven connections of tech, content, context, power and social knowledge
- The concept of technocultures signifies “tools of mediated communication through which cultural material is created and circulated”
- Media have both explicit and implicit messages
- Marshall McLuhan “the medium is the message”–> the key to understanding electronic culture is how tech alters the environment of which humans act and interact
Technology reflects our biases, preferences and view of the world - impossible to separate from gender, race, sexuality, class, etc
The dangers of AI
Exemplified by the beauty contest judged by AI, reflects racial biases, reveals existing biases in the datasets which is reflective of society
Connections:
Unlike technological determinism, the social shaping of technology seeks to provide a more holistic understanding of technology. However, they are both used best in combination, as they provide different and valuable perspectives to the forming and effects of technology.
This could also be linked to the digital divide, as the whole understanding of the social shaping of te technology is that programmers imbue societal views, including bias, into media which perpetuates injustices.
This theory is central to CCT109 as it is a key theory to analyzing society’s relationship with new media.
Political Economy Approach
Political economy
- Focuses on politics and power relations embedded in tech development and use
- Understanding of historical and current economic, social relations of production, military priorities, the role of state, gender and maintenance of racist hierarchy of power
- New media is a business
- Access to resources at various levels influence the directions that new media developments take: includes investment capital, political influence and to the technology themselves on the part of potential users
- Inequalities of access
- Political economy does not buy into new media hype and optimism. - Political economists are skeptical about the claims that new media leads to fundamental social change
- Evidence of old media monopolies which are deeply connected to new media forms
Kumar (2005) “the imperatives of profit, power and control seem as predominant now as they have ever been”
Ex. telecom industry
Connections:
- Relations to the digital divide, studying who holds the power, and who’s access is limited.
- Essentially an inverse of technological determinism which would say that technology creates the injustices, while the political economic approach demonstrates that technology only perpetuates and amplifies what already existed.
- Old media monopolies can be seen in radio, where it pushed hobbyists to higher and higher frequencies so they could capitalize on the broadcast’s reach by including advertisements and sponsorships into the programs
- This is relevant to CCT109 as it highlights how new media is not just entertainment, but a business that is profitable and has the power to oppress its consumers.
Mobile New Media
Mobility
- Tech including phones, ebook readers, tablets, cars, public hotspots, wearables, etc
- Mobility offers a geographic dimension to how digital media operate
- Mobile tech is very new
There used to be a large distinction between portable and mobile, but now with 5G data connectivity, that is not as relevant. Anything portable now becomes mobile.
The dawn of mobile phones:
- From the radio to a walkie talkie (emerged during WW2, only so many frequencies within the electromagnetic spectrum presents a challenge, initially only one broadcast tower receiving signals)
- How to manage the increased demand on radio with the fluidity of the electromagnetic spectrum
- Cellular radio system is designed as a solution in the 1940s (grid of towers that receive signals) but cellular phones only arrived in the 80s
Mobile phone booms - peak in interest and purchase of the new technology
1. First boom → car phones, as a result of the gradual miniaturization of computers
2. Second boom in the 80’s and 90’s→ handheld cellular telephones (called bricks), based on an analog transmission technology and were expensive, heavy, with a short battery life
3. Third boom → digital cell phones, which accomplished the same thing as earlier phones but with far less power and as a result a smaller size and lower cost
Connections:
Mobility of technology means that you are always reachable and always trackable.
Phones are the most common example, which have become very ingrained in society. A few decades ago, it would have been a crazy idea that everyone carries small computers in their pockets, but it has now become the norm.
This is important to CCT109 as a lot of new media is mobile, and it is the mobility itself that is one of the factors leading to the mass adoption of the product. Mobility provides ease of life, which is one of the biggest factors to mass producing new technology.
Web 2.0
The term web 2.0 originated in 2003 with O’Reilly Media, “Tim O’Reilly (2006), who has been a key thinker and promoter of Web 2.0, defines it as “the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: ‘Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them . . . [or] harness collective intelligence.’””
- Another way of looking at it would be the shift from the web as a catalog and search engine to a more interactive and creative space that merges both communication and creation from all participants
- There were skeptics and enthusiasts alike, which is when the term “cyberbole” was coined by Steve Woolgar - the overhyping of a media technology
- It says in the textbook that because of the mobile form of social media of apps on a cell phone, web 2.0/social media is likely to be an ephemeral point in the history of media
Following Web 2.0 principles (“communications infrastructure, such as the scope for participation, interactivity, collaborative learning, and social networking, as well as positive networking effects from harnessing collective intelligence”) various sites rose in popularity
- The photography service Flickr
- The encyclopedia Wikipedia
- The user-generated-content video site YouTube
- Aggregated weblog (blog) sites such as Blogger, LiveJournal, and
- Technorati
- Various personalized web space sites such as Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest
Connections:
The internet enabled web 2.0, providing the infrastructure to support various websites that make up the larger culture of Web 2.0.
Participatory culture → Web 2.0 becoming a place where the consumers create and add to existing culture.
Web 2.0 is very fundamental to the study of new media as many websites and services are hosted online, on platforms such as google, etsy, instagram, etc. This is important in the study of new media as web 2.0 is where a lot of new media originated.
Hypertext
“Hypertext allows for the linking of information, where links from one information source provide simple point-and-click access to related information available from other sources.”
- “The value of hypertext became even more apparent with the development not only of web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Explorer, but also of directories and search engines such as Yahoo!, Alta Vista, and Google.”
- “the web was associated with the development of both the common hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), which provided a platform-independent means of interconnection between websites, and hypertext markup language (HTML) as a relatively straightforward means of writing source code for the web. As a result, a much wider range of people could become producers, as well as consumers, of content on the web”
Hypertext creates a wider web of content, linking sources together and helping in establishing catalogues and search engines such as google.
Connections:
- Vital in Web2.0, everyone is accustomed to clicking a link and finding the information you were searching for
→ A large example would be google, which compiles lists of various websites and resources combined with a search engine which gives you access to a wide variety of sources.
This is important to CCT109 as hypertext is a supporting infrastructure that contributes to many of web 2.0’s new media. It also makes researching media convenient as everything is just a google search and a click away.
Long tail economy
Long tail → “The large number of items that make up a small sales volume individually but together may account for a non-trivial opportunity for retailers—such as Amazon.com—who can deliver these goods to people who want them. The term was coined by Chris Anderson of Wired magazine to illustrate the power of online access to the enormous number of books (and other items) that wouldn’t merit stocking in a bricks-and-mortar store.”
Large monopolies that are made possible through the internet, as the sheer mass of the products available are too large. They are inexpensive on their own, but add up to an empire collectively.
“Leveraging the long tail—recognizing that there is a move from mass markets to niche markets, but that niche markets can be sustainable over a long period of time”
Connections:
This is important to CCT109 as it is a business model that is prevalent in new media.
An example of this could be amazon as mentioned in the textbook with their wide range of products for affordable prices and convenient methods of delivery.
Another newer example could be thrift stores, in how they have a wide variety of clothes at discounted prices, which makes you spend more money than you would in a retail store because of your perceived worth of the items.
- This can be linked to web 2.0, as it enables many long tail markets, in a shift from mass markets to niche and sustainable markets created on the internet
Social capital
“Putnam (1995:665) defines social capital as “features of social life—networks, norms, and trust—that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared interests. . . . Social capital, in short, refers to social connections and the attendant norms and trust.”
Woolcock (2001:13) defines the term as “the norms and networks that facilitate collective action,” and Davies (2003:11) defines it as the “value of social networks”; this is “a resource which we can invest time and money in, and which pays returns.””
Three main types of social capital:
1. Bonding social capital, characterized by strong social bonds between individuals—for example, members of a family, a local community, or an ethnic community
- Bridging social capital, characterized by weaker, less dense but more cross-cutting ties—for example, with business associates, links across ethnic groups, links between families and communities
- Linking social capital, characterized by connections between those with differing levels of power or social status—for example, between political elites and the general public, policymakers and local communities, and individuals from different social classes
Connections:
This concept is heavily tied with social networks. Through a larger and stronger network, you garner more social capital. The more people you know, the more you increase your ability to derive value from your connections.
An example could be a party planning organization, who has ties to various florists, caterers and decorators. These connections directly improve the operations of their business, which is tangible through the money they make and intangible through the reputation they would gain for living up to expectations.
This is important in CCT109 especially using the political economic approach as it reveals the social power an individual or corporation holds. When analyzing systems or organizations, it’s important to keep in mind who is in charge.
Telegraph
- Developed in Late 1830’s, surged in popularity in 1840’s and 20th century
- Developed alongside the rise of the use of electricity
Telegraphs communicate information with a binary code of dots and dashes - morse code, send telegrams to other telegraphs
- Morse code became a national standard in 1865 when the telegraph started going international
- Morse code was used in the transportation industry for trains to not run into each other
Victorian internet → first time that people were able to connect almost immediately all around the world
- It enabled businesses that would be built to run communication networks and for government regulation of them
- Collaboration among global institutions for technical standards (morse code) and payment transfers
- Advanced new medias technological development (eg. input devices, storage devices and “multiplexing”)
- Submarine cables in the ocean for international communication in the mid 19th century
Commercialization of the telegraph - tiffany and co selling scrap telegraph cables
- The rise of communication monopolies
- In the 1870’s, control of the telegraph system in the US was almost entirely owned by western union, it brought up rival companies to manage growth and innovation on its own terms.
- As the telegraph is more integrated into businesses pressure is put on the government to regulate the operations of these telegraph companies
- Despite repeated calls for regulation, the western union lobbyists were able to stop almost any serious control of their industry
Changing commercialization - Pay per use model letters sent “penny post”
- Telegrams were not only pay per use, but also had different pricing rates depending on the urgency of the message, because of limited wires/space whatever some telegrams took priority over others and that depended on the price the sender was willing to pay
- Storing messages: saving messages by punching the messages into paper tape
- Forwarding messages: sending them when there was less demand
Emerging text cultures:
- The way telegrams were written alert changed with the demands if the technology and its providers
- The phillips code was a shared directory of abbreviations used in telegraphy. It was developed by Walter Phillips of the associated press in 1879
- Global adoption of this code made it standard
Connections:
- Comparison to SMS with its abbreviations in Phillips code to save time decoding/transcribing, could be seen as early texting.
- “Victorian internet” → global connectivity which increased trade opportunities
- practical applications in both global trade and also in the transportation industry. Trains would communicate via telegraph as to not occupy the same tracks
- Links to electromagnetic spectrum, similar issues of overpiling of messages on limited service lines. Telegraph companies created a monopoly on this kind of communication, capitalizing on the people’s need to communicate instantly, much like service providers today.
- Important to CCT109 as this is one of the foundational technologies that shape the way we communicate. As mentioned with texting, also with our expectation of instantaneous messaging, even some aspects of the telegraph influence new technologies. As an example, the morse code of dots and dashes is very similar to binary code of 1s and 0s in coding.
Medium/media
Media includes technology, hardware, software, platforms, content, the audience and its use of the content.
- The audience participates in the function/understanding of media
What makes media “new”?
- Expressive technologies of any period that outpace their culture’s ability to control them
→ Expressive: An expression of artistic/technological content
- What’s new for society about the new media?
→ How tech and society shapes one another
Habitual media
- How media becomes commonplace and ingrained in our habits
- Media are most powerful when we no longer see them as new
Connections:
Important to CCT109 as Media is the point blank period that we study. They are the communication methods in which we receive our information and innovation.
The internet provides many media, both the infrastructure and the software it contains, also the culture that surrounds it.
