Monthly Archives: September 2010
Understanding New Media – Institutions
“Connectivity brings new sharing of information and knowledge with others. What was once accessible only via a physical school, government building, or other public institution is now potentially accessible to persons all over the world” (113-114). Veltman, Kim H. Understanding New Media: Augmented Knowledge & Culture. University of Calgary Press, 2006. Virtual Communities This term…
Understanding New Media – Space & Time
Veltman, Kim H. Understanding New Media: Augmented Knowledge & Culture. University of Calgary Press, 2006. As I’ve discussed in the past, one of the greatest potential benefits of the online video conversation (OVC) in the asynchronous online classroom (AOC) or anyplace is in regard to space and time; there need be no spatial or temporal…
Understanding New Media – Multimedia
With every tool, man is perfecting his own organs, whether motor or sensory, or removing limits to their functioning. – Sigmund Freud (1929). Veltman, Kim H. Understanding New Media: Augmented Knowledge & Culture. University of Calgary Press, 2006. Veltman lists the major functions of computers as their ability to perform calculations, write, visualize, create multimedia,…
Technopoly – The Academic Course
Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. Vintage, 1993. Another take-away from Technopoly is somewhat oddly-founded, as it is based on a bit of a tangent that Postman pursues as an example of technologies coming in disguise (in Chapter 8: Invisible Technologies). He discusses the idea of academic courses in the educational world….
Technopoly
“Technopoly eliminates alternatives to itself in precisely he way Aldous Huxley outlined in Brave New World. It does not make them immoral. It does not even make them unpopular. It makes them invisible and therefore irrelevant” (48). Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. Vintage, 1993. In Technopoly, Postman discusses the role of…
College Students on Streaming Video: Get Me Outta Class!
Nearly a third of college students reported that their parents or guardians would be “very upset” to know how little they actually attend classes in person. College Students on Streaming Video: Get Me Outta Class! Here is an article posted on the campus technology site last week, which offers a great conversation starter on the…
What is New Media? – 3
A colleague of mine recently suggested that New Media is everything newer than the pencil. However, I cannot accept such a simple definition; all media is new at some point. To the chirographic era, the pencil was new media, as was the Gutenberg press. Being that so many new media forms have arisen over the…
What is New Media? – 2
Using my previous post on Interactivity as a launching point, I decided to revisit the topic of new media, which has much to do with interactivity. In May 2008, I addressed What is New Media and noted that it was a bit difficult to define it… and then defined it. New media can still be…
Cyberculture – Interactivity
Lévy, Pierre. Cyberculture. Electronic Mediations, V. 4. Minneapolis, Minn.; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. ‘In this brief chapter, Lévy address the topic of interactivity, including the problem of defining it, and the various levels of interactivity. For example, even an individual seated on a c ouch, watching television is interacting with that medium to…
Cyberculture – Dimensions of Communication
Lévy, Pierre. Cyberculture. Electronic Mediations, V. 4. Minneapolis, Minn.; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. Having had varying amounts of confusion defining certain elements and categorizations of the online video conversation (OVC), such as whether it is a medium, a method of communication, a genre, etc., I have found in Cyberculture an excellent approach to…