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Textbook Responses-Urania

Page history last edited by PBworks 15 years, 4 months ago
 
  

 

 
Understanding Media: the extensions of man by Marshall McLuhan.
 
Introduction and Chapter 1- This is my favorite of the three textbooks. I guess I’m old-school also.I don't think he is old school.  He seems timeless in his philosophy.
As a newspaper junkie and an internet cynic I find I admire McLuhan’s philosophies about the media. I like that the fact he uses authorities from philosophy, literature, and other icons. McLuhan states that we live “mythically and integrally” and that the speed of technology and its implosion “has heightened human awareness of responsibility to an intense degree” and that media is an extension of who we are (6). He uses the terms “psychic and social complex” and quotes one of my favorites- Carl Jung whose studies brought us mythological archetypes. He comments that most of us have a “subliminal and docile acceptance of media” (34) and if “the medium is the message” then isn’t the media that is in power and actually molds society? Personally I’m a big fan of public networks such as PBS, WEDU, and if it wasn’t for sports I could live without cable and network TV. Watching BBC brings an outsiders view of American news. I truly do not trust the media. There isn’t a week that goes by where I can’t spot a planted news story or fake letter to the editor. To me the internet can be dangerously desensitizing and dehumanizing. I’ve personally learned the hard way the internet is not for the naïve.
 
 
Chap 2-6
After reading chapters 2-6, I thought the internet was going to be the downfall of society, as the editor states, “meet the challenge or face collapse” (84). It seems idealistic not to think there will be a great implosion before any sort of “global village” is manifested “into a spiritual form of information…a single consciousness” (90). A great idea, just like integration, but how often do we see well indoctrinated prejudices still at work? Obama’s run for presidency shows a great leap, but when it comes down to it, how many cannot find that they can vote for a black man?  When I think of computers as being an extension of ourselves it brings to mind loss of privacy and loss of an individual’s autonomy. Please see the Streisand effect at [wikileaks], or look [Malwebolence] about what the internet as an extension of the users has produced. There are no ethical guidelines or laws in place to ensure fair play in an arena where anything goes. We can already see that some of society produces offspring that are essentially raised by the public school system, television, internet, and video games. They don’t sit at the dinner table and carry on any depth of discussion. And then we are surprised when Johnny Q posts a video on U-Tube and then goes out and shoots ten people. The “numbing effect” is very real. There are a number of instances in literature when the protagonist or antagonist is totally numb because of his environment as an extension. Joseph Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness (the book Apocalypse Now is based on) shows the numbness of Captain Kurtz because of an environment(whether it was the empire or the natives) that shocked his system.
 
The other point McLuhan makes about owners of media not going “beyond what the public wants” for the sake of the dollar-is why we get stupid reality shows. The other intriguing point is McLuhan quoting Donald McWhinnie,
 
 “For most of our lifetime civil war has been raging in the world of art and entertainment” and […] “affects us in the depths of our psychic lives, as well, since the war is conducted by forces that are extensions and amplification of our own beings” (73).
 
TV has a numbing effect. Take my Mom for example (please take my momJ), who only watches Fox network, Bill O’Reilly, and gets her husbands NRA magazine. Is it any wonder I got thrown out of Christmas dinner for bringing up gay marriage? Johnny Q public is perfectly happy being in a coma. The most positive thing I can ascertain so far is when McLuhan states how “artists …are always the first to discover how to enable one medium to use or to release the power of another” (79). Chapter 7’s story of the Chinese sage is exactly what I think so far of today’s technology. I’m looking forward to the rest of the chapters. 
Textbook Responses
 
 
 
Appendix- The case study "The Ryerson Media Experiment" is a great example of how the "media facilitate or impede learning" (484). The article "Thinking through Language" is a great study of how culture, language, and time intersect. I think the Trobrianders simplicity or concept of "being or essence" is the source of their happiness. Their concept or lack of concept of time is so different from the man-made concept of time our culture is accustomed to.
An interesting note is what McLuhan had to go through to get his book published! What tenacity! His list of published writings is also really impressive. I'm only slightly surprised by the amount of literature criticism he has written and have an interest in reading many of his publications. He must have took to heart "publish or perish". I think I'll have to put him up there with Joseph Campbell as one of my favorite thinkers.
 
 
Technology: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life edited by Nelson, Tu with Hines.
 
This group project book brings a number of viewpoints from different projects that each member is involved with. The introduction tells us of the importance of bridging the digital gap because “race and technology are always at odds with each other” (3) and how “race and class cannot be removed from the access equation” (19). The E-Rate plan by Gore that was condemned as a “Gore-Tax” where the program was halved yet still brought eighty-thousand computers to the un-wired and Steve Jobs quote that he “came to the inevitable conclusion that the problem” with the digital gap is “not one that technology can hope to solve” is disheartening (18). In the St. Petersburg Times an article called Project Etiquette (May, 25th 2008) about an underprivileged black girl elicited a number of racist letters to the editor complaining about the papers focus on African Americans. This country has a long way to go. I say good luck with the digital gap when a lot of minorities don’t have a roof over their head or a meal on their table.
 
 
The Future of Ideas: The fate of the commons in a connected world
    • by Lawrence Lessig.
 
 Free Culture: how big media uses technology and the law to lock
            down culture and control creativity. New York: Penguin Press, 2004. Lessig, Lawrence.
Written by a law professor the introduction and first chapter covers what is “free” on the internet and defines “commons and layers”. He brings a number of cyberspace issues to the forefront and “its effect on innovation” and creativity.
            A funny thing happened on my way to the library. I needed to check out Lessig’s, The Future of Ideas (mine had developed legs). The Tampa library had a copy when I checked this morning, but when I got there it was no where to be found. Sooooo….I checked out his latest book, Free Culture: how big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity.   My intent was to read his comments on privacy, hacking, and ethics.
            What happened was I finally grasped his argument on free culture in relation to the law. Lessig describes his book as a derivative of Richard Stallman’s Free Software/Free Society. The book is comprised of stories “that set the context” (13). The story about RCA and Armstrong shows the result of Armstrong jumping out of a thirteen story window and RCA showing “its’ power to crush technology” (6). Lessig equates this power, corporations, and the Internet; “Corporations threatened by the potential of the Internet to change the way both commercial and non-commercial culture are made and shared have united to induce lawmakers to use the law to protect them” (9). The story of the lawsuit brought by a farmer because his chickens died by flying into the walls as a result of airplanes flying overhead shows how “private interest would not be allowed to defeat an obvious public gain” because obviously “common sense revolts at the idea” (xvi). The Disney/Brothers Grimm analogy about how the “key to success was the brilliance of the differences” because Disney carried Grimm “into a new age” shows how art can be developed from a morbid fairy tales into palatable stories for children (30).
            The book is based on two elements, piracy and property. Lessig's other stories include: the hacking story about how AIBO the robot dog developed talent and became the jazz dancing dog (his only comment on hacking); how millions of people – including his Stanford students -- are being made into criminals by DMCA act – he equates this with alcohol prohibition (his only commentary on ethics); and the his big story about Eric Eldred, the Sono Bono Act, and his disappointment in losing before the Supreme Court.
            Lessig in his preface assures us he believes in the concept of property with a William Safire quote, “A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don’t get paid, A culture without property, or in which creator can’t get paid, is anarchy, not freedom” (xvi). He wants to avoid extremism and to create a balance between anarchy and control, and to protect free culture from being “captured by a few powerful special interests” (12). 
            Lessig’s comments on privacy are about the public sphere and the architecture of the Net. Prior to the net we assumed a certain amount of privacy because of “friction,” not by law, (there is no law protecting “privacy” in public spaces). Lessig is speaking of the Net as a public sphere and does not address hacking into word documents, making  chat room conversations public which might do damage to an individual, or any other privacy concerns such as identity theft. 
 
 
 
  
Race, Rhetoric, and Technology: Searching for Higher Ground** by Adam J. Banks.
 

I got a kick out of Keith Gilyard’s foreword where he quotes The New York Post, a premier right-wing rag, because the book addresses “capital’s relationship to technological developments” (x) J. I like the author’s voice. It reminded me of the song, I’ve Got the Music in Me. The first chapter contends “the Digital Divide is a rhetorical problem” and covers the cultural effect of technology and rhetoric (7). 

Chapter 6:  Bank brings up an important point when poking holes in Mitchells' idealic "City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn".  Mitchell is arguing for a more humane law enforcement in his utopian internet society and Banks comments about how our current legal system "targets people with color" and how Mitchell has no clue how "technologies might exacerbate that racism" (114).  Banks brings up the current drug war and police brutality.  Currently 53% of the prison population are black men on drug charges.  The ratio of the population of black drug users compared to the ratio of population of white drug users shows that the percentage of black drug users in jail are four times greater.  Here in Manatee County a person can be arrested for walking on the wrong side of the street, but there is absolutely no "racism" in this ordinance (wink wink). 

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