1 ABCT2103 Topic 5 New Media as Cultural Technologies

1 ABCT2103 Topic 5 New Media as Cultural Technologies.

1. Explain the important elements and concepts in new media and

2. Define the relationship between new media and cultural

3. Explain the development and pattern of media, modernity and post

4. Describe the characteristic of media as messengers; and

5. Identify the applications of new media which are always evolving

cultural technologies;

technologies;

modernity;

and changing.

INTRODUCTION

Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian scholar was one of the renowned theorists of media and new media and began to be closely associated with the study of the emergent electronic media culture after the publication of his book entitled Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964). He was able to depict the key insights into the role of media in contemporary society. In Understanding Media, McLuhan stated that:

Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man ă the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society, much as we have already extended our senses and our nerves by the various media (3-4).

McLuhanÊs keen observation of man and his messages through the media turned McLuhan into one of the most acclaimed media theorists and is regarded as an influential writer on the topic of emerging electronic media culture. In the 1960s, he began writing on the subject of television and the electronic media and became a commentator of the media industry nu giving his opinions about the impact of media on society. More significantly, it was McLuhan who began to realise the increasing importance of the computer culture in the history of man and society.

His Understanding Media (1964) is a seminal study that conveyed his understanding of the influence of the media on culture and social life. He tracked the early developments of the oral medium into the print culture of the written word and to the next phase of the electronic culture from the electronic production of communication. It was at this point that McLuhan stated that print technology and the written word were the initial mass technology that generated modern education, modern culture and society and initiated modern thinking in Western society. In this book, McLuhan came out with his most famous aphorism of “the media is the message”, which suggests that it is the media themselves that should be the focus of study, and not the content. Basically, McLuhan is saying that technological extensions of our bodies affect our minds and our societies.

As mentioned before, mass communication institutions produce and disseminate media products to a vast audience. With the advent of the new media, techniques used by specialist media groups garner the use of technological devices especially press, radio, television, and films, to disseminate content to an even larger mass audience. Mass media institutions operate within the formal and informal rules of operations, the regulations and policy requirements that are set in place by society. Convergence of computing and telecommunication technologies, especially the Internet, has contributed to a profound and transformative impact on society and the way we live, the economic activities, the way we go about conducting our businesses as well as the way we work and interact with each other.

 Today, Malaysian homes are very media friendly compared to the situation during our parents’ and grandparents’ times. It is also a period where Malaysians would often talk about information society as the basis of modern societies. The policy makers would be looking into the prospects of providing appropriate employment in a knowledge-based society.

We are witnessing significant mass media development in the Malaysian broadcasting sector, especially in radio and television broadcast. Media activities are also developed around the main activities of proliferating information and dissemination of information and symbolic content of culture to the members of society.

According to Flew (2005), the development of new media technologies and their relationship with social, political, economic and the cultural impacts must be understood in all their connections. Thus, new media need to be studied in an interdisciplinary approach, taking into consideration the corpus of studies from the various fields of media and communication studies, sociology, psychology, cultural studies, economics and political economy, as well as politics, discourse analysis, history and visual arts.

This topic will focus on the various ways in which technology has been understood through its linkages with culture, paying special attention to the concept of cultural technology as a way of understanding the technology not only as an entity that affects the culture, but as a form of culture itself.

5.1       TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE

The history of media may be tracked from the beginning of humankind’s attempt to communicate with their fellow beings. Thus, the timeline of human communication reflects the earliest attempt to establish oral communication and oral culture up till the advent of the digital age. The various cultural development of humankind are indicated by the following eras:

The Tribal Age: Oral Culture

• Dependence on sense of hearing, touch and taste were more developed than the visual.

• Importance of narratives.

• Attention on individual interaction.

The Age of Literacy: Writing

• The visual senses began to develop.

• Process of internalisation and logical and linear thinking of the sciences.

• Philosophical thoughts.

The Print Era: Advent of the Printing Press

• Standardisation of national language.

• Sense of nationality.

• Visual senses develop and spread.

The Electronic Age: Electronic Media and New Media

• Emergence of the Global Village.

• Rise of information society.

• Information-based occupations.

• Rise of knowledge society.

Williams (2003) believes that the shift of activity from food gathering to the agro-based practices and then the industrialised societies are what made civilisation a reality. The early agrarian period is followed by the literacy period which formed a meeting ground of new ideas and inventions. In a sense it is a shift from the agricultural workplace to the office and to the desktop and virtual workplaces. In the present millennium, modern men and women are empowered by the latest technological tools known to mankind, such as e-mail, voice-mail, mobile telephones, video conferencing, desktop computing and digital printing, instant messaging, text messaging, twitter and other appliances and devices.

The relationship between culture and technology has always been reciprocal and cultures respond to human needs and challenges. Societies and their cultures have retained the attention of scholars because this relationship has a long and rich history. For a long time scholars have accepted the fact that technology is not just about technical tools. In the beginning of history, man began using technology in its early forms. In this early period, technology refers to early tools and crafts by the early man. This period is followed by man who were able to invent machines which later progressed to the invention of various forms of mechanical, industrial, electronic and now digital technology. In this context, most thinkers and philosophers claim that man have always maintained their control over the tools and machines due to their superior minds and power of reason. Mankind have often thought about their relationship to technology and at various times had questioned the possibility that man may over-exploit technology and in the process jeopardise the survival rate of mankind. Thus, there is often a connection between human thoughts and philosophy to technology, as shown below in this passage from J. David Bolter’s Turing Âs Man (1984:xii) : ⁄ technology is as much a part of classical and Western culture as philosophy and science and that these „high and lowly‰ expressions of culture are closely related.

 Bolter (1984) also uses the term "defining technologies" to refer to the various devices that have such a major presence and impact on man and society. And in the most current cycle in the history of humankind, the machines have transformed into the computer which is now the most significant and dominant technological paradigm of our culture.

Therefore, the computer is essentially the most defining technology of the twentieth century and remains one of the most influential tool of contemporary life. It is also observed that as machines changed into other newer forms, so has culture, each one influencing the other in a web of influence. For example, television is seen as a cultural technology that acts upon people while the networked personal computer is a technology that people use to interact with other people (Flew, 2005).

Hence, it is logical to track the beginning of the first usage of digital media in the 1990s as the first generation studies of the Internet and the new media. An approach towards the study of social and cultural impact of the new media may be seen in the following three levels of technology. The first level is the simplest technology which is similar in meaning to tools and artefacts used by early humans to act with nature and allow interactions with one another. The second level also looked at the context of use of the technology. The third level brings into focus the systems of knowledge and social meaning that comes with the system as found in the development of education and training to acquire the new competencies of the new technology.

The third level meaning of culture raised attention to the ways that members of society are not free agents but are produced as social beings tied to a system of social, cultural, linguistic and psychological relationships. This refers to the fact that individuals are made to conform within a culture, giving rise to the approach of British cultural studies where the emphasis is on the cultural approach to communication studies where communication is not just seen at a simple level of communicating with one another but it is a much more complex exchange of reality which is constructed, maintained or transformed.

ACTIVITY 1.1

We can define technology and culture according to the three level approach in Table 1.1. Discuss the similarities and differences in the three level approaches.

Table 1.1: Defining technology and culture: A three-level approach

 Definition of

First level 'common-sense' definitions

Second level, 'contextual' or user-based definitions

Third level, 'communicative' or 'structural' definitions technology

Technology as physical object, tools, artefact.

Technology as content or 'software', defined by how it is used.

Technology as systems of knowledge and social meaning.

Definition of culture

Culture as 'the arts'and aesthetic excellence.

Culture as 'ways of life' or lived experience of peoples, communities, or groups.

Culture as underlying 'structural system'. (Flew, 2005:27)

5.2       MEDIA, MODERNITY AND POSTMODERNITY

In this section we are going to look at the development of the media in the modern age, through to the post modern era.

5.2.1 Modernity.

It is often noticed that people have always been influenced by contemporary ideologies, philosophies and technologies that surround them. In the western world, philosophies and technologies have often shown a close connection as mentioned by Bolter (1984, xii):

⁄technology is as much a part of classical and Western culture as philosophy and science⁄ In the same way it makes sense to regard the computer as a technological paradigm for science, philosophy, even the art of the coming generation.

The previous section shows the relationship between technology and culture. The main argument has always revolved around whether or not media technology has the influence to transform culture. McLuhan in Understanding Media (1964) was one of the renowned scholars on emergent electronic media culture. In this book he provided explanations about the role of the media in contemporary society. In the 1960s he wrote about the importance of television and electronic broadcasting and entertainment media on contemporary society. He maintained that the role of television and electronic culture had caused a break from the print era and launched the electronic era. McLuhan had since those times forecasted on the emergence of computer culture which will again create a new contemporary society that will further change the nature of man and society. Mcluhan's opinions have been identified as a major theory of modernity because he was able to look at the changing nature of the origins of the modern world.

Beginning from the 1970s, the subject of Western modernity became one of the main discourses of the western world. The concept of modernism in the infrastructural sense began in the 1890s and 1900s. This period is marked by mass technological innovations. New technology can be seen in the advent of the telephone, typewriter which became the basic office equipment and systems management of the era. In mass media the 1890s saw the beginnings of mass circulation of newspapers and the introduction of the first radio wave transmission by Marconi in 1901. Therefore, the modernist telephone, telegraphy and other technological innovations were the artefacts of everyday life circa 1907.

The modern copper telephone is then transformed into the postmodern fibre-optic cable which increases the information data by leaps and bounds. McLuhan regarded print technology, books, newspapers, modern industry and mechanisations as well as other modern technologies which illustrated the institution of the modern world and therefore showed the conditions of modernity.

5.2.3 Postmodernity.

McLuhan is often seen as the prophet of cyberspace and the new computer culture and the extent of how new media can transform societies as detected in his Understanding Media, (1964,80):

Today computers hold out the promises of a means of instant translation of any code of or language. The computer in short, promises by technology a Pentecostal condition of universal understanding and unity.

The next logical step would seem to be, not to translate, but to by-pass languages in favour of a general cosmic consciousness ⁄ Lister et al (2003, 10) speak of other kinds of social and cultural changes that were identified beginning from the 1960s, such as the shift from modernity to postmodernity “to characterise deep and structural changes in societies from the 1960s onwards, with correlative cultural changes”.

Society has indeed begun to break away from the print era as well as the industrial-mechanical era into a postmodern society with its own forms of culture and way of life as well as a new medium of communication.

According to McLuhan the specific technologies is representative of the modern world and at the same time the emergent electronic technologies began to usher in the new postmodern era.

Beginning from the 1970s, the subject of Western modernity became one of the main discourses of the western world. Media scholars focused on how the postmodern developed into a mode of knowledge that impacted on the understanding of the media and the audience.

Television had by this time became the central technology and television audiences had emerged as a major entity in the relationship between technology and society. Broadcast television has indeed become one of the most powerful media of post-modernity. McLuhan presents media and technology as powerful forces in the history of mankind. He delves into the inner insights of man and the technology of the media and their roles in modern society which progresses into a new postmodern era of new information and communication technology.

Terry Flew (2005, 33) sees the development of the era of modernity in the various transformations of social, political, economic and cultural lives, such as below:

• Development of nation-states as principal forms of political, economic and legal organization.

• Rise of capitalism as dominant economic form.

• Bureaucratic administration of public life by governments.

• Industrialisation and the increasingly important role of science and technology.

• Urbanisation and the growth of cities, promoted by economic and employment shifts from agriculture to industry.

Such forms of activities are made possible through mediated communication, the use of technical media for communication across time and space. Mass media is at the centre of governance in a society which is more modern and members are highly literate and media savvy.

There is a school of thought that suggests that post-modernity refers to cultural changes within capitalism. It is a term that denotes some form of sequentiality ă post-modernism follows after modernism but it is still open to debate and tough questions.

Post-modernity presupposes modernity which is more linked to the Enlightenment period. Society is thus very different from the earlier modernist type. By the 1980s, the term postmodern began to make its way into the media world, being used by amongst others, Baudrillard, another well-known French philosopher who has contributed to the theoretical aspects on this subject. He began to be acknowledged as the successor to McLuhan due to his analysis of a new postmodern society of which he claims that the media would play an important role. He sees the media as the main simulation machines which produce images, signs, and codes making up an autonomous realm of hyper-reality that plays a major role in our day-to-day life. Baudrillard also feels that codes, models, and signs are forming new forms of a new social order where simulation is the main thing. He also sees the postmodern world as one of hyper-reality whereby information and communication technologies, entertainment provide acute and engulfing experiences. The media simulations of reality, such as mega malls, theme parks, Disneyland and TV sports become more real.

Formerly. media were thought of as reflections of reality, whereas the media now is more of a hyper-reality, into something considered as more real than real itself.

It is undeniable that McLuhan and Baudrillard talk about the centrality of the media and technology in the contemporary society. Both theorists recognise the power and importance of new media and its impact on culture and society.

The computer is also regarded by cultural theorists as a postmodern technology and the computer is the most representative ethos of the postmodern world.

Baudrillard’s (1996, 43) explanation is a good summary of the postmodern condition:

Today we live in the imaginary world of the screen, of the interface and reduplication of contiguity and networks. All our machines are screens. We too have become screens and the interactivity of men has become the interactivity of screens. Nothing that appears on the screen is meant to be deciphered in depth, but actually to be explored instantaneously, in an abreaction immediate to meaning ă or an immediate convolution of the poles of representation.

5.3       MEDIA IS THE MESSAGE.

In his attempt to clarify his trademark slogan, McLuhan alludes to the light bulb which by itself has no content but it is important in a sense that it brings light to space and in the process becomes an enabler for people to create and be productive in many ways. He adds that (1968, 17):

The message of the electric light is like the message of electric power in the industry. Totally radical, pervasive, and decentralised. For the electric light and power are separate from their uses, yet they eliminate time and space factors in human association exactly as do radio, telegraph, telephone and television, creating involvement in depth.

In this book too, McLuhan looks at media in terms of its impact on a person. He feels that different media create different levels of interactivity on the viewer. He considers the movies as "hot" media in a sense that movies enhance the sensation of vision. A movie spectator has the pleasure of seeing all kinds of details on screen but the television is considered as a “cool” media because the viewer has to try to determine meaning and demands an effort to create value. He again insists that all media have characteristics that engage the consumer in varying ways. To him, a paragraph in a book could be read again whenever the reader wants to but a film would have to be viewed in full before one could review any particular part of it.

5.4       CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

Raymond Williams, a reputable sociologist who has issues with some of McLuhan’s opinions, reminds us all that the term media, which is the plural of the term medium has been present in the history of man and society since fifty years ago. The thinking of media as extensions of man had been used by Aristotle as far back as the fifth century B.C. The idea that technology somehow induced changes in the human capabilities has been present in the writings of Aristotle, Marx, Bergson (1920) and new media observers such as Gibson (1984).

Bergson and Marx agreed that nature endowed the human body with tool-making capability and McLuhan pointed to the continuity of the new media as part of nature of man and his environment.

New media began to feature as a term by the 1980s and by this time the shape of the world of media and communication began to change, from printing, photography, television to telecommunications. Such media has always been undergoing change in the technological, institutional and cultural sense. Other kinds of change that are linked to the emergence of new media may be traced as part of the media continuity as below:

• A shift from modernity to post-modernity;

• Intensifying processes of globalisation; and

• A replacement of an age of manufacturing by a post-industrial information age.

Giddens, Harvey and Thompson (Lull, 2001) speak about how time and space in modernity and post-modernity have implications for the changing nature of culture. Human communication and relationships have changed in accordance with the technologies that accompany them. Modern economic changes and technological developments have not much regard for geographical boundaries and is losing control over the audiences. Change is the constant denominator in the history of human communication.

ACTIVITY 5.2

New media as cultural technologies talks not only about the social and cultural shifts associated with the distinctive nature of these technologies, but also focuses on the social and cultural continuities that provide the contexts of activities of these new technologies.

Discuss this with your course mates.

• The history of the media may be tracked from the beginning of humankind’s attempt to communicate with fellow beings.

• Technology refers to tools and crafts by early man, followed by machines and later on by all forms of mechanical, industrial, electronic and now digital technology.

• The relationship between culture and technology has always been reciprocal and cultures respond to human needs and challenges.

• Society has begun to break away from the print era as well as the industrial-mechanical era into a postmodern society with its own forms of culture and way of life as well as a new medium of communication.

• Post-modernity presupposes modernity which is more linked to the Enlightenment period.

• The computer is also regarded by cultural theorists as a postmodern technology and the computer is the most representative ethos of the postmodern world.

• Formerly media were thought of as reflections of reality, the media now is more of a hyper-reality, into something considered as more real.

Media is the message

Modernity and Postmodernity

Print and Electronic Media

1. What is new media?

2. Why is the new media regarded as a cultural technology?

3. Explain the differences in the three-level approach of “Cultural” and :technologies:?

4. Why does McLuhan regard media as a message?

5. Explain the connection of cultural technologies with new media.