In Week 4’s Networked Media Reading the post-structuralist ideas of theoretical frameworks are introducted:
1)TECHNOLOGICAL DETERMINISM: As Thorstein Veblen (1920’s) suggests the belief that technology is the agent of social change.
- linked to the idea of progress
- a new society can be formed through innovation
- ‘culture shock’ is produced from new technology
- usually the present instilled onto the future
- certain technologies can make cultural effects
- a new technolgoy forms new potentials and possibilities
2) TECHNOLOGIES OF MEDIA:
- every technology is an extension of human capacity
- medium is the message- McLuhan
- media significance is the way media alters our perception of the world
- history can be defined through technological change
- new media introduces an obsession of exposure within our society
3) BAUDRILLARD AND THE TECHNOLOGIES OF SIMULACRA: As Jean Baudrillard suggests a theory of signs which are copies of other signs.
- medium is the model
- precession of simulacra- is when reality is overtly reproduced to result in a ‘hyperreal’ condition (more real than the real)
- reality is controlled by stimulation evoking it obscene
- ecstasy of communication- reactions to stimulations instead of the immediate environment (1988)
- signs are now consumed rather than objects
- the idea that communication is communicated for its own sake, therefore the message is eradicated.
4) CULTURAL MATERIALISM:is the foreground to the complex interplay of factors associated with cultural change.
- Williams believes it is the need to expose ‘political’ and ‘economic’ decisions behind new technologies
- supervening social necessities- Winston argues ranges of social directions that alter an innovative process
- Technology provides opportunities, it doesn’t force its audience to take part
- the way technology is consumed relies on the characteristics of its society
- GOVERNMENT REGULATION: technologies are developed or repressed
- The illness Technophobia
5) NEUTRAL TECHNOLOGY:
- Technology isn’t the result but the process
- Change is technological can either degrade or enhance
- social attitude
6) KNOWING THE WORLD DIFFERENTLY:
- everything is change
- Foucault’s theory suggests culture is the circulation of techniques
7) VIRILIO AND THE TECHNOLOGIES OF SPEED:
- we are disappearing
- taken over by machines
- we see the world as a series of interruptions like a cinema montage
- technology is accident prone and imperfect
Nakita xx