Lecture Slides Flashcards
(33 cards)
Communication
Creation and use of symbol systems that convey information and meaning (traffic signs, restroom signs, clothes)
Technology
Tools and related forms of knowledge created by humans and applied to the practical aims of life
Information and Communication Technologies
(ICTs) are the tools that humans create to make communication easier and more efficient (pencils, writing, smartphones, typewriter)
ICTs shape how humans communicate, think, and understand the world
Continuity & Change
Popular discourse simplifies ICTs as “new” or “old”
Old technology is ingrained in new technology (phone, typewriter, etc. all in one phone) –> but new does not displace the old
Culture contains both emerging and enduring technologies and practices
Co-development
New technology often REMEDIATES older technology
New tech often imitates or pays homage to older tech
Emails as an example of change and continuity
Change: speed, storage, replication, relies on diff institutions (privately owned companies vs post office)
Continuity: same textual comm as letters, formal aspects (greeting, signature, CC: carbon copy, etc.), remediated conventions of printed correspondence
Affordances
The capabilities a technology enables that influence (but do not entirely determine) how we use it
Affordances create favored uses, but people still have agency (free will)
Affordances recognize the complex feedback loop between tech and society (e.g., hammer vs hair brush –> you can use a hair brush to hammer and vise vera, but that’s not what it is intended for)
Affordances and ICTs (questions)
ICTs have affordances:
What kind of info can be communicated? How quickly? To whom? In what form?
How is info stored or manipulated?
Is communication one way or two way?
Affordances work with a range of social factors to shape how humans use ICTs
5 eras of communication: Oral
Oral era (~100,000 BCE):
Information stored and shared through real customs (storytelling, poetry, song)
Communication linked to memorization (repetition, patterns)
Power to elders, storytellers, oldest of society
Information is limited by geography and community
Co-development ex: Beach Bard’s Bonfire & The Moth Radio Hour
Written Era
Written Era (~3000 BCE): Homer bridged oral and written eras –> tensions between old and new
Alphabets emerge unevenly
- Logographic: represent words
- Phonetic: represent sounds
Writing affordances
- Storage
- Mobility
Clay tablet, papyrus scroll: writing was expensive and time consuming
Objective external world organized by records (written) vs subjective, internal experiences organized by stories (oral)
Power to the literate and elite (rome and catholic church)
Print Era
(~1000BCE)
China/Europe: wood block printing
(~1450) –> glutenburg printing press, moveable type
Social impacts: mass literacy, resistance to established authority & (some) hierarchies, fosters individualism
Gutenburg Bible example of print era
Affordances: fast, cheap to make –> much more accessible, durable lightweight, easy to navigate pages
Continuity and change: remediates earlier manuscripts
Electronic Era / Mass Communication age
(~1850) Telegraph:
instantaneous communications over wires
transformed news production/consumption
coordinated industrial and colonial expansion
-rapid innovation of ICTs
-rise of corporate control through public policy decisions
-mass media and mass culture
Digital Era
(~1950s/80s)
-mass to niche culture
-changes in ICT engagement
- appointment viewing to on-demand
- push to pull media
-convergence
-participatory culture
-audience fragmentation
Techno-evolutionism
The power of “new” reveals a theory of tech change as social progress
Innovation is linear, inevitable, and primarily positive
Linear history of tech development
Focuses on successes; One tech leads to the next
Clear path of development; History proceeds by steps
Tech evolve into better forms like “survival of the
fittest”
Berkun Beliefs
Linear History is a ladder
Crude analogy: single solution maze
Debunking technoevoltionism:
- gutenburg’s place in history, like rosetta stone, comes from circumstances and storytellings
-social context matters
What is history?
The study of the past (not the past itself)
Historiography
how the studied past is interpreted and represented
“facts speak for themselves” –> this is untrue
Facts only speak when the historian calls on them: its they who decided which facts are heard and give context to them
“A fact is like a sack, it won’t stand up until you’ve put something in it.” Edward Carr
Genealogy of tech development
Berkun: innovation is a tree, not a ladder
- history is linear; it’s just usually written that way
- “Failures” are important
- dominant ideas are not necessarily “best” –> cost/benefits
- context and human agency matter
Genealogical history
○ Corrects survivorship bias
○ Examines failures in social context
Survivorship Bias
Linear history displays survivorship bias: focuses on history’s winer as inventor genius or great men; ignores the less visable
Douglas: eureka theory or whig theory
Telephone: example of survivorship bias
Florentine invented the telephone, not alexander bell
- failures reveal faults in techno-evolutionism
- innovation is complex and situated in social context
Theory
a system of ideas intended to explain something
- think broadly about how and why specific things happen
Strong technological determinism
A simplistic theory that sees technology as the driver of social change and organization
○ Tech ‘determines’ society
● Some truth, but TD underestimates human
agency
Utopian/Dystopian
Techno-evolutionism
Linear tech history
Eureka/whig history
