Week 12 Lectorial Reflection
The following sentence is not against Dan’s lecture as he always presents a very engaging and informative presentation but, I have to admit to getting a bit lost throughout this week’s lectorial. The conceptual ideas that were being discussed are inherently interesting and provoked a dense and keen minded reflection. This all could be on the fact that I am running on very little sleep at the moment but the idea of media materialism will take a while to fully sink into my brain. Dan highlighted the three main areas of the concept: Technology, culture and technique. Technology is said to be the constellation of knowledge and products, not just a tool for human use but an all encompassing ideology coupled with cultural values. Culture is centred around identifying sub groups within a population and the creative expressionism that stems from each group such as art, theatre and cinema. Technique are the traits and skills that are uniquely human such as using our brains to understand the written word, languages and how to use tools.
Another interesting concept Dan introduced was that of technology determinism, that technology as a concept is almost sentient, that it can determine its own path. Murphie & Potts state that it “refers to the belief that technology is the agent of social change” and in the era of Web 2.0 and society’s dependance on social media, technology can certainly be seen as driving social changes. Social media has become ingrained in the lives of a large majority of the millennial generation, the ease at which individuals can achieve a global connectedness in a matter of seconds ensures that the evolution of technology will dictate how society evolves as the further embrace and rely upon the machines.
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