Digital Media
Transformations in Human Communication
Summary
In more than thirty essays by a wide range of scholars, this must-have second edition examines the impact of digital media in six areas – information, persuasion, community, gender and sexuality, surveillance and privacy, and cross-cultural communication – and offers an invaluable guide for students and scholars alike. With one exception, all essays are completely new or revised for this volume.
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author(s)/editor(s)
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Contents
- Preface (Paul Levinson)
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction (Paul Messaris)
- Outline of Contents
- References
- Part 1: Information
- Chapter 1: Follow the Beat: The Use of Digital Media for Youth-Oriented News in Uganda (Paul Falzone)
- Introduction: “The Laptop Saved the Day”
- Uganda: “Follow the Beat”
- Digital Curation: “That’s How we Pick the News”
- Digital Audio: “People Started as Small as That”
- Digital Video: “I’ll Find Out How These Guys Made This”
- Digital Editing: “Then It’s a Computer!”
- Digital Divide: “People on the Ground, Like Ghetto People, They Don’t Have Money”
- Parabroadcast: “So I’ve Seen There Is a Way Forward Now”
- Conclusion: “You Really Have Magic”
- Note
- References
- Chapter 2: Eyewitness Images in the News (Mette Mortensen)
- Image Abundance versus Visual Icons
- Media Institutional Ambiguity, Opportunities, and Challenges
- Participation and Documentation
- Counterimages: Alternative or Exclusive
- Conclusion
- Notes
- References
- Chapter 3: Tagging Depression: Social Media and the Segmentation of Mental Health (Anthony McCosker)
- The Postdemographic Self and the Segmentation of Experience
- Segmented Participation: #Tagging Depression on Instagram
- References
- Chapter 4: The Myth of Visual Literacy and Digital Natives (Eva Brumberger)
- Visual Literacy in the Age of Digital Media
- Visual Literacy and the Digital Native
- From Myth to Reality
- References
- Chapter 5: Learning by Design: Good Video Games as Learning Machines (James Paul Gee)
- Introduction
- Learning in Good Games
- I. Empowered Learners
- 1. Codesign
- 2. Customize
- 3. Identity
- Manipulation and Distributed Knowledge
- II. Problem-Solving
- 5. Well-Order Problems
- 6. Pleasantly Frustrating
- 7. Cycles of Expertise
- 8. Information “On Demand” and “Just in Time”
- 9. Fish tanks
- 10. Sandboxes
- 11. Skills as Strategies
- III. Understanding
- 12. System Thinking
- 13. Meaning as Action and Image
- Conclusion
- References
- Chapter 6: Digital Media, Information Technology, and the Electric Circuit (Lance Strate)
- References
- Part 2: Persuasion
- Chapter 7: The Impact of Digital Media on Advertising: Five Cultural Dilemmas (Matthew P. McAllister / Stephanie Orme)
- Dilemma One: Digital Media Winners and Losers
- Dilemma Two: The Big-Data Commodity Audience
- Dilemma Three: The Blurring of Ads and Non-Ads
- Dilemma Four: We Are All Advertisers: Sharing, Liking, and UGC
- Dilemma Five: Contradictions of Digital Advertising Resistance
- Conclusion
- References
- Chapter 8: The Role of Product Placement in the Digital Transformation of Persuasive Communication (Cristel Antonia Russell)
- The Growth of Product Placement: Why?
- The Product Placement Industry: A Brief Historical Overview
- Integration of Product Placement in the Arsenal of Marketing Communications
- How Product Placement Affects Audiences
- Regulatory Issues: The Limits of Voluntary Codes
- Opportunities for Edutainment (Education-entertainment)
- The Public’s Attitudes toward Product Placements in Digital Media
- Conclusion
- References
- Chapter 9: Interactivity and Its Implications for Understanding Children’s Responses to Online Game Advertising (Haiming Hang)
- Children’s Vulnerability to Different Types of Online Game Advertising
- Extant Literature on Children and Online Game Advertising
- Key Variables Focused
- Key Theories Used
- The Construct of Interactivity
- A Mechanical Perspective
- A Communication Process Perspective
- A User Perception Perspective
- The Essence of Interactivity
- Interactivity and Its Implications for Research on Online Game Advertising and Children
- Theoretical Implications
- Conclusion
- References
- Chapter 10: Changing Campaign Tactics in the Age of Digital Media: Reflecting on a Decade of Presidential Campaigning (Jennifer Stromer-Galley)
- Strategic Environment
- Organization
- Polling
- Campaign Financing
- Candidate image
- News Media
- Interactivity
- Conclusion
- Notes
- References
- Chapter 11: How Digital Media Have Influenced the Visual Element in Advertising (Edward F. McQuarrie / Barbara J. Phillips)
- Digital Production and Reception of Imagery
- The Effect of Digital Transmission
- Summary
- Notes
- References
- Chapter 12: The Proteus Effect and Virtual Doppelgängers: Changes in Appearance and Behavior from the Mediated to the Real World (Bireswar Laha / Jeremy N. Bailenson)
- Introduction
- Immersive Virtual Reality as a Tool for Psychology Research
- Avatars and Agents in VR
- The Proteus Effect
- Avatar Attractiveness and Offline Persona
- Effects of Playing with Hypersexualized Avatars
- Implicit Priming of Racial and Gender Stereotypes by Avatars
- Getting Older, and Younger
- Virtual Doppelgängers
- Learning by Watching, and Getting Involved
- Promoting Healthy Lifestyle
- Watching Out, While Watching Doppelgängers!
- Conclusion and Future Directions
- Acknowledgments
- References
- Part 3: Community
- Chapter 13: New Communication Technologies and the Future of Community (Keith N. Hampton)
- Introduction
- Communication Technology and Change to the Structure of Community
- Preindustrial Community
- Urban-Industrial Community
- Postindustrial Community, a Network Society, and Networked Individualism
- Persistent and Pervasive Community
- Persistent Contact
- Pervasive Awareness
- Social Life under the Condition of Persistent-Pervasive Community
- Social Capital
- Linked Lives
- The Cost of Caring
- Collective Action
- The Spiral of Silence
- Conclusion
- Note
- References
- Chapter 14: The Death and Life of Great Online Subcultures: The Evolution of Body Modification Ezine (Jessa Lingel)
- Context: Key Features of BME and IAM
- Early Platform Values for Communities of Alterity
- IAM in Decline: Design Lessons
- Notes
- References
- Chapter 15: The Intimacies of Technologies in Sharing Practices Online (Jenny Kennedy)
- Introduction
- Intimate Interfaces
- Accessibility
- Conclusion
- References
- Chapter 16: Social TV and Depictions of Community on Social Media: Instagram and Eurovision Fandom (Tim Highfield)
- Introduction
- Social Television
- The Eurovision Context
- #sbseurovision: Social Television and Instagram
- Conclusion
- Note
- References
- Chapter 17: Young Citizens and the Social Life of Politics on Facebook (Kjerstin Thorson)
- Young Citizens and Political Participation
- What Is a Good Place for Politics?
- Facebook as a Setting for Political Interaction
- Of Rants, Drama, and Provocateurs
- Social Strategies for Managing Politics on Facebook
- How Much Politics Is on Your Facebook?
- Life in a Time of Social Media Politics
- References
- Chapter 18: Examining the Impact of Flaming, Message Valence, and Strength of Organizational Identity (Troy Elias / Andrew Reid / Mian Asim)
- Word-of-Mouth Communication
- Negative WOM and Negativity Bias
- Accessibility-Diagnosticity Model
- Social Identity Theory
- Strength of Ethnic and Social Identity
- Salience and Accessibility
- Effects of Flaming on eWOM
- Methodology
- Participants
- Design
- Procedure
- Stimuli
- Manipulation Check
- Measurement Instrument
- Results
- Attitude Toward the Web Site
- Attitude Toward the App
- Attitude Toward the Brand
- Likelihood of Purchasing the App
- Discussion
- Implications
- Limitations
- References
- Part 4: Gender and Sexuality
- Chapter 19: Research and Recreation of the Self: Social Media’s Role in Facilitating Gender Transition (Shane Mannis)
- What Is Trans*, and What Does It Mean to Transition (or Not)?
- Using Social Media to Find Information
- Using Social Media to Find Connection and Community
- Using Social Media for Identity Work
- Conclusion
- Notes
- References
- Resources
- Chapter 20: Beyond Sex and Romance: LGBTQ Representation in Games and the Grand Theft Auto Series (Adrienne Shaw)
- Grand Theft Auto
- LGBTQ Characters
- LGBTQ Ambience
- Conclusion
- Gameography
- Notes
- References
- Chapter 21: Mobile Dating and Hookup App Culture (Stefanie Duguay / Jean Burgess / Ben Light)
- Introduction
- Hooking Up Has Long Been Mediated
- Digitally Mediated Dating Today
- Market Position and Vision for Ideal Use
- Business Model
- Governance
- Technological Arrangements
- Other Sources of Data
- Conclusion
- Notes
- References
- Chapter 22: The Impact of Digital Media on Romance and Marriage (Derek R. Blackwell)
- Relationship Initiation
- Online Dating Services
- Mobile Dating Services
- Other Avenues for Online Relationship Initiation
- Relationship Maintenance
- Connected Presence
- Lateral Surveillance
- Changing Boundaries, New Tensions
- Relationship Dissolution
- Digital Infidelity
- Breaking Up
- Note
- References
- Chapter 23: Porn Audiences Online (Clarissa Smith / Feona Attwood / Martin Barker)
- Researching Online Audiences; The Pornresearch Project
- Motivations
- “I First Came to Porn”: Porn Histories and Careers
- Sources and Sites
- How Do You Find Porn?
- References
- Part 5: Communication Across Cultures
- Chapter 24: The Digital Transformation of International Entertainment Flows (Paolo Sigismondi)
- Evolving Technologies of Entertainment in the Global Media Landscape
- The 21st-Century Digital Impact on Entertainment Flows: From Atoms to Bits
- The Possibilities of Streaming Digital Entertainment Content
- The Global Role of Social Media
- Conclusion: A Contested International Media Landscape Shaped by Flows and Contra-flows of New and Legacy media
- References
- Chapter 25: Music Video and Relations Between Nations in the Digital Sphere (Marwan M. Kraidy)
- Key Insights from the Music Video Literature
- Making Love and War: Iraq and “America” in the Wa’d ‘Arqoub Music Video
- Gender and National Identity in Music Video
- Conclusion
- Note
- References
- Chapter 26: Exploring YouTube’s Impact on International Trade and Tourism: A Case of Korean Pop Music on YouTube (Sehwan Oh, Hyunmi Baek / JoongHo Ahn)
- Literature Review
- YouTube and Music Consumption
- Cultural Proximity and International Trade
- Media-Induced Tourism
- Research Methodology
- Data Collection
- Analysis Model and Results
- Discussion and Conclusions
- References
- Chapter 27: Media-Induced Transnational Mobility between Japan and Korea: From Hallyu to Traveling and Studying Abroad (Atsushi Takeda)
- Hallyu-induced Transnational Mobility: Traveling
- Hallyu-Induced Mobility: Studying Abroad
- Conclusion
- Notes
- References
- Chapter 28: What Lies Behind Online Intergroup Contact?: Promoting Positive Emotions (Yair Amichai-Hamburger / Shir Etgar)
- How to Reduce Prejudice?
- Online Intergroup Contact
- Contact and Fear-Based Prejudice
- How Might One Change This Dynamic?
- The Suggested Platform: Decreasing Fear Using Online Contact
- Summary
- References
- Chapter 29: Video Games for the Promotion of Positive Attitudes toward Cultural Diversity and Social Integration (Vivian Hsueh Hua Chen)
- Video Games as Simulated Learning Environments
- Players’ Cognitive Processing
- Video Games for Promoting Social Inclusion
- Empowerment of Underprivileged Groups
- Increase Intergroup Contact
- Empathy Building Through Role-Play
- Conclusion and Future Research
- References
- Chapter 30: Propaganda and Persuasion Tactics Used in Islamic State’s Social Media (Jennarose Placitella)
- Introduction
- Video 1: “Living in the Caliphate”
- Video 2: “Inside Halab”
- Video 3: The Beheading of Alan Henning
- Illustrating Radicalization
- Significance of Disseminating Videos Over Social Media
- Conclusion
- References
- Secondary Sources
- Primary Sources
- Part 6: Surveillance and Privacy
- Chapter 31: The Panoptic Sort: Looking Back; Looking Forward (Oscar H. Gandy, Jr.)
- Big Data
- Machine Learning and Autonomous Agents
- Algorithmic Assessments
- Algorithmic Segmentation
- An Inadequate Regulatory Response
- References
- Chapter 32: Consumer Surveillance and Distributive Privacy Harms in the Age of Big Data (Mihaela Popescu / Lemi Baruh)
- A Taxonomy of Privacy Harms
- Identification Harms: Risks of Identity Theft, Reidentification, and Sensitive Inferences
- Discrimination Harms: Inequities in the Distribution of Benefits and Risks of Exclusion
- Exploitation Harms: Personal Data as Commodity and Risks to the Vulnerable
- Users have Positions Structurally Weaker in the Marketplace
- Particular Circumstances Put Users at Disadvantage
- Users are Unable to Play the Game of Advantage
- Toward a Collective Approach to Privacy Protection
- Notes
- References
- Chapter 33: No Fats, No Femmes, No Privacy? (Yoel Roth)
- “It’s just a preference”
- Contested Ethics
- Enhancing Platform Boundaries
- Conclusions
- Notes
- References
- Chapter 34: Platforms Intervene (Tarleton Gillespie)
- Tumblr and NSFW Porn Blogging
- The Challenges of the Checkpoint Approach
- Accidental Porn
- Conclusion
- Notes
- References
- Chapter 35: Public Privacy on Social Media (Lee Humphreys)
- Literature Review
- Twitter as a Public Space
- Civil Inattention as Privateness
- Collective Privacy
- Receptivity Framework of Privacy
- Methods
- Findings
- Ongoing Collective Management
- Eavesdropping
- The Problem of Civil Inattention Online
- Hearing Public Privacy
- Conclusion
- References
- Contributors
- Index
Digital Media, Information Technology, and the Electric Circuit
For many years, I must admit, I was puzzled by the fact that Marshall McLuhan (1964) characterized number as an extension of our sense of touch. After all, touch is the most concrete and intimate of all of our senses, while numbers are altogether abstract, and governed by cold logic. What could possibly be the connection between the two? My difficulty stemmed from the fact that I was associating the concept of number with higher mathematics of the sort I encountered in writing and print, taking the form of statistical formulae, algebra, and calculus. It was not until I started to think about our most elementary engagement with numbers, namely counting, that I recognized the basic link that McLuhan was pointing to: fingers. We may count on our fingers, touching the fingers of one hand with the index finger of the other. We may count with our fingers, raising one after another in succession. Or we may count by pointing or actually touching a series of objects. And that is why the term digit, from the Latin digitus, originally referring to any finger or toe, later came to refer to the numbers we first learn to count on and with our fingers (and sometimes our toes). That we fall out of touch with the tactile origin of the digital is no surprise, in that McLuhan argued that every extension is also an amputation; it may be a coincidence that the word number begins with the word numb, but it is certainly appropriate to acknowledge the numbing effects of counting and quantification (Perkinson, 1996).
I should note that McLuhan (1964) argued that all media, by which he meant all modes of communication and all forms of technology, function as extensions of the human organism. Moreover, he explained that whenever we use a medium to extend any given part of ourselves, the medium also numbs and in effect amputates that part of ourselves, in order to take its place. In describing media as prosthetic devices, he anticipated how cultural theorists would later describe human beings as cyborgs (aka cybernetic organisms). The point that I would stress, however, is that media, in extending our reach into the world, accomplish this by situating themselves between ourselves and the world, so that they also become a barrier between ourselves and the world. As Max Frisch observed in his cyberneticsinspired novel Homo Faber (1959), “technology is the art of never having to experience the world” (p. 178). But as a barrier that separates us from the world, the medium takes the place of the outside ← 60 | 61 → world, becoming our world. In this sense media constitute our environment, as all that we know about our world is filtered through transmissions, images, written reports, language, speech, etc., as well as in a physical sense, in the gadgets that surround us, the architecture and infrastructure that we occupy, and the ways in which we alter our biological and geological surroundings. As McLuhan explained in his preface to The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962):
Any technology tends to create a new human environment. Script and papyrus created the social environment we think of in connection with the empires of the ancient world. The stirrup and the wheel created unique environments of enormous scope. Technological environments are not merely passive containers of people but are active processes that reshape people and other technologies alike. In our time the sudden shift from the mechanical technology of the wheel to the technology of electric circuitry represents one of the major shifts of all historical time. (p. ii)
Following McLuhan’s lead, Neil Postman (1968, 1970; Postman & Weingartner, 1971) formally introduced media ecology as a field of inquiry defined as the study of media as environments (see also Strate, 2006, 2011, 2014). And what McLuhan (1962, 1964) suggests is that our contemporary media environment represents a radical break with the past, a break that originates with the invention of electric technology. The more recent introduction of digital technology represents a significant development, but one that, I would argue, is the culmination of the electric revolution (Strate, 2012a). For example, electric technology is characterized by the two basic states of on and off, while electromagnetism is associated with the polarities of positive and negative charge, both of which represent the basis of the computer’s binary code, and all subsequent forms of digitization. The introduction of the telegraph during the 1840s was accompanied by the development of the binary system of dots and dashes known as Morse code, which spurred on interest in coding more generally, and especially of coding as it relates to information transmission, including the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, aka ASCII (Gleick, 2011).
The electric circuit also represented a shift from the linearity of writing and print (l-i-n-e-a-r-i-t-y) to a nonlinear mode defined by the circuit, by circularity, and this includes the feedback loop (feedback being another electric metaphor) of cybernetics (Wiener, 1950), the basis of interactivity and a participatory quality as defining characteristics of new media; this also includes the nonlinearity of networked communications (through the decentralized wiring of the telegraph and telephone systems, and electrification itself). The distribution of power and messages away from a centralized source marks electric technology as decentralizing (Mumford, 1934), and therefore democratizing. Electric speed allowed for the instantaneous transmission of information, thereby speeding up all aspects of society, and this was made possible by a kind of dematerialization, a transformation of matter into energy, as for example a written message is transformed into short and long electric beeps transmitted over telegraph wires; this in turn transforms information into a commodity for the first time, in the form of news sold by wire services to newspapers, rather than the papers themselves being the material object being sold (Carey, 1989; Innis, 1951). Even the mistaken notion, prevalent in the 18th century, that electricity is a kind of fluid, remains with us in our references to electric current, flow, electromagnetic waves, and more recently to channel surfing through cable television’s many offerings and surfing the web, to references to remote and online storage as the cloud (derived from cloud computing as a reference to the sharing of processing power among computers), to navigating Web sites and other aspects of interactive computing, and to the programming of software to create immersive environments.
The introduction of electric technology and the electronic communications in the 19th century led in turn to an interest in the concept of information, as well as media, in the 20th century (Strate, 2012b). That we are now living in the age of information is undoubtedly a statement that many would take as a given, would accept without question as the best way in which to characterize contemporary ← 61 | 62 → life. And it no doubt would be easy enough to justify this appellation by pointing to the plethora of digital devices, computer technologies, and forms of wired and wireless connectivity that dominate our activities, and our thoughts. But in contrast to the age of typography, which begins with Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press with movable type in the mid-15th century, or the industrial age, which begins with James Watt’s invention of the steam engine in the late 18th century, identifying the origin of the information age proves to be highly problematic. After all, information is not an invention, nor is it a phenomenon that is anchored to any particular type of technology. Indeed, information can be present in all forms of communication, in animal communication from the songs of whales to the dances of bees, in the transmission of electrochemical impulses within animal nervous systems, and in the self-replicating strands of DNA and RNA that form the basis of all known biology. The concept of information can even be applied to purely physical phenomena such as the energy output of stars. From the point of view of digital physics, the age of information could be said to begin with the Big Bang, the moment when the ultimate computer that we call the universe was turned on. Such speculation aside, it is possible to argue that the information age begins with language, or with writing, or with printing, or with the revolution in communication and control that began in the 19th century (Beniger, 1986; Hobart & Schiffman, 1998). Moreover, it is possible to argue that there has been not just one, but several different information ages.
Matter and information, atoms and bits, are not parallel phenomena that can be compared to one another, and neither are machines (e.g., the printing press, the steam engine) and information. So, when we speak of our time as constituting the information age, it is not the presence of information that we refer to, nor even its abundance. Instead, it might be argued that what is being referred to is the collective phenomenon of information technology, which more and more is part of an integrated network of information systems. But references to the information society and an information economy based on information capitalism and brought on by an information revolution predate the rise of the Internet as a popular phenomenon during the 1990s, and have their origins in discussions of a postindustrial society and economy during the 1950s and 1960s. During the 1960s, computer scientists adopted the phrase information science to refer to a field of study closely related to their own, while simultaneously, social critics first voiced concern over the problem of information overload, a phrase popularized at the end of the decade through the publication of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock (1970).
But we can push the point of origin back, as some would no doubt argue that Claude Shannon’s introduction of information theory in 1948 signals the beginning of the information age (Shannon & Weaver, 1949), and there is certainly rationale for viewing this new era as a postwar development, although the first modern computers were introduced during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Indeed, information can be seen as a phenomenon closely connected to 20th-century modernism, and the anxiety associated with it was famously expressed by T. S. Eliot in 1934, in the opening stanza of “Choruses” from his play entitled, The Rock, where he notes the inadequacies of our “endless invention” and poses the questions, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?” and “Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
The target of Eliot’s faith-based critique is not computation, however, but communication, specifically mass communication. Although the mass production of messages can be traced back to Johann Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press with movable type, and the phenomenon of mass communication is frequently said to originate with the introduction of steam powered printing presses in the early 19th century, actual awareness of mass communication coalesces during the early 20th century. The propaganda (aka mass persuasion) campaigns of the First World War played a role in this development, as well as the beginnings of modern advertising and public relations that followed the end of the Great War. But more importantly was the advent of broadcasting, which served as an alternative to printing. With broadcasting came the realization that there are media of mass communication, a phrase eventually abbreviated as mass media. What is significant is the plural form, media. Earlier use ← 62 | 63 → of the term medium tended to be in reference to the materials of expression, paint or clay as an artist’s medium, language and literature as a writer’s medium. By the time Eliot wrote The Rock, the idea that newspapers, magazines, paperback books, radio, and movies (which were formerly considered a form of exhibition, akin to stage performance) constitute a single category of mass media had become firmly embedded, with television soon to be added to the group. Three decades after The Rock, McLuhan (1964), an admirer of Eliot, would drive home the point that media are not a singular, unified phenomenon, that all media are not mass media, and that significant differences exist between different media, hence his pithy observation that the medium is the message, and his special emphasis on the distinction between electronic media such as radio and television, and the older forms of print media.
The sudden popularity of information and media within public discourse is contemporaneous in its origin, and their relative absence in intellectual discourse prior to the 20th century is conspicuous. Consider, for example, that the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, adopted as part of the Bill of Rights in 1791, reads,
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
There is no mention of freedom of information, a phrase that does not enter popular discussion until after the Second World War, when the United Nations General Assembly declared it a fundamental human right in 1946, and included in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, Article 19 of which states, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” In the United States, the Freedom of Information Act of 1966 established that citizens have a right to access information about their government, and the phrase freedom of information was adopted by other nations as well during the postwar period.
Rather than information or media, the First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and press, which corresponds to the two primary modes of verbal communication highlighted in the title of Walter Ong’s best known work of media ecology scholarship, Orality and Literacy (1982). The right of assembly can be seen as an extension of freedom of speech, as the whole point of assembling a group of people together in one place would be to serve as an audience for public address, or otherwise engage in oral discussion, debate, and deliberation. And the right of petition can be seen as an extension of the freedom to engage in written communication, as petitions are typically written or printed documents delivered, in this case, to government officials. As for the freedom of religion clause, religion as it is understood in western culture, revolves around a sacred text, and therefore requires freedom of the press; it also entails oral expression and ritual performance, thereby relating to freedom of speech and assembly.
What sets the 20th century apart, then, is the growing use of the term information, as opposed to terms such as news and intelligence, as well as the growing use of the terms media and medium, as opposed to press and speech. The same period that has been dubbed the information age has also been referred to, on occasion, as the media age. Of course, media age is just as problematic as information age, in that in all previous ages, human beings relied on types of media as well (speech and language, and even the human body being considered media within the field of media ecology). It is here that a media ecology approach helps to clarify matters by specifying that ours is an age of electronic media, and within that age, we have entered a later stage of development characterized by digital media.
Peter Drucker (1968) characterized the postindustrial period as one in which knowledge workers would operate within a knowledge economy in the context of a knowledge society, but his terminology did not catch on. While increased complexity does require knowledge for effective management, continued progress in the technologies of control require less knowledge on the part of workers—witness, ← 63 | 64 → for example, the automatic scanning of products by cashiers today as opposed to the basic arithmetic skills required in the past. And note as well the implication that information has displaced knowledge in Eliot’s query, Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? In regard to economics, the one rival to information as the appropriate designation for the postindustrial society is the phrase service economy. But service is, arguably, a by-product of information technologies and systems, of the control and coordination of human activity, whether it is in retail sales where traditional interpersonal, oral skills of salesmanship are no longer utilized, or in fast food where cooks and chefs are reduced to the status of servomechanism, or in the high-end financial sector where information technology and the technological imperative of efficiency outstrip all human judgment, resulting in 2008 in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. It is certainly worth noting that the function of information in Shannon’s information theory is to reduce and ultimately eliminate uncertainty, which translates to reducing and eliminating choice, possibilities, and freedom. This may not be problematic when applied to machines and the transmission of electronic signals, but it certainly can be troubling when applied to human affairs.
Information, in its contemporary sense, is a numbers game. Shannon introduced a method of quantifying and measuring information, as the basis of evaluating the efficiency of electronic transmission, following the technological imperative. This led to the introduction of the binary digit, or bit, as the basic unit of measurement for information, which ultimately became the basis of all digital technology, including the binary code of computing. And while less prevalent than the information age, the digital age is also used in reference to our contemporary media environment. But like information, the quality of being digital, of digitality, is not a human invention. Simply put, anything that can be broken down into discrete units can be considered digital, as opposed to any phenomena that is continuous. Consider the basic dichotomy in physics between particles and waves, particles being digital in nature, waves being analogical, or how, through the sense of touch, we may interact with discrete objects or continuous surfaces. The sense of hearing tends to be continuous and therefore analogical, while vision introduces digital elements insofar as we make choices about which direction to look, in distinguishing figure from ground, and in the basic action of closing and opening our eyes. Differences in the general biases of our brain hemispheres also follow this pattern, with the left hemisphere favoring the digital and the right hemisphere being essentially analogical (McGilchrist, 2009).
Counting, as I noted earlier, is a digital operation, one that is fundamentally binary in being either/or (either you have one item or you have two, or three, etc.), in contrast to measurement, which is an analogical operation that always yields an approximation, a more-or-less result (however many inches, pounds, gallons, etc., our measurement yields, there is always a margin of error, not to mention fluctuations from one moment to the next given the dynamic nature of subatomic particles), and counting is just one aspect of the larger digital system of language, based on discrete units of sound (phonemes) and meaning (morphemes); nonverbal communication, by way of contrast, is almost entirely analogical (Bateson, 1972, 1979; Watzlawick, Bavelas, & Jackson, 1967; Wilden, 1980). Systems of notation represent another digital medium, and including identifying marks and numerical notation (e.g., tally marks, which are very much an extension of touch, of counting on fingers). Evolving out of systems of notation, the invention of writing represents a digitization of language itself, first via logographic systems where one character stands for an entire word, which made possible new formats such as the simple list (Goody, 1977); a listing of items isolates words from their larger context in normal speech, breaking apart subject and predicate, and this constitutes the beginnings of the database that provides digital media with their distinctive logic and aesthetic (Manovich, 2001).
The written word was further digitized through the introduction of phonetic systems, that is, syllabaries that break words down into separate syllables, and the alphabet which further isolates consonants from vowels. The alphabet originated among the Semites circa 1850 BCE, and was adopted and adapted within the Greek colonies of Asia Minor circa 700 BCE; within two centuries of its adoption, ← 64 | 65 → the first theory of the atom appeared among the pre-Socratic philosophers known as the Ionian physicists, and with it the notion that all matter is essentially digitized into basic units of one type or another, and adjacent to the Ionian colony, the kingdom of Lydia introduced the first coins, the first digital monetary medium, reducing all goods and labor down to a common set of units. As early as the first century BCE, another version of the Semitic alphabet was adopted in India, leading to the development of positional notation and what we have come to refer to as Arabic numerals by 500 CE, which made possible all higher mathematics, and for that matter, simple arithmetic beyond basic addition and subtraction (Logan, 2004). It is certainly worth noting that during the 13th century in the monasteries of Europe, the first mechanical clocks were developed, dividing time into identical units, digitizing day and night (Mumford, 1934), and representing one of the primary technological ancestors of the modern computer (Bolter, 1984), while the 15th century saw the innovation of Johann Gutenberg’s printing press with movable type, each bit of type digitizing the printed page (in contrast to the holistic woodcut). And as noted, in the 19th century, the telegraph and Morse code signaled the beginning of a new information age and introduced a digital, binary system that would become the basis of 20th-century computer code.
You might say, then, that we have lived through many different digital ages, and that this history reflects a drive on the part of our species to transform the analogical into the digital, making it easier to comprehend, control, and manipulate (Strate, 2008). Certainly, when it comes to technology, the introduction of a digital version inevitably drives out the older analog form. This has been true for computers (analog computers powered by electricity have been in use since the early 20th century but were largely driven out by their digital counterparts after the Second World War), calculators (how many people today have even heard of a slide rule?), sound recording (notwithstanding the return of vinyl as an art form), video recording (DVRs having all but eliminated the VCR), and all forms of electronic transmission, including broadcasting, telephony, and the use of mobile devices. And while the old-fashioned clock face has not completely vanished, digital readouts of the time have become increasingly more prevalent, so arguably it is only a matter of time; significantly, even when traditional clock face displays are used today, they are interfaces to some type of microprocessor (for more on cybertime, see Strate, 2003).
While the drive to digitize has been with us since prehistory, contemporary digital media, with its basis in electric circuitry and information technology, is unprecedented in its ability to generate exact copies without loss of quality, resolution, or fidelity; the result has been a growing concern with plagiarism, piracy, and copyright legislation. The ability to translate any document or material into a series of zeroes and ones not only makes exact copying a reality, but also makes the process of editing easier and more widely accessible, resulting in new media forms related to sampling, mashups, and remix (Lessig, 2008; Strate, 2008). Digitization also makes it possible to break down any message or file into discrete units that can be transmitted separately, and reconstituted after arriving at their destination, which is the basis of packet-switching, the technique that makes the Internet such a robust and resilient decentralized communications network. Moreover, digital coding, based on Shannon’s application of Boolean logic, allows for commands as well as data to be translated into binary sequences, forming the basis of computer programming. While not all digital media are necessarily programmable, programmability is a distinguishing characteristic of new media (Manovich, 2001). Digitization facilitates the cybernetic function of control (Wiener, 1950) to a degree hitherto unknown, representing the culmination of the control revolution that originated in the 19th century as a response to industrialization, based on technologies such as the telegraph (Beniger, 1986). Digitization is what makes the computer a universal machine, as Alan Turing put it, and what Alan Kay calls a metamedium (Kay & Goldberg, 1977), a medium that remediates all other modes of communication (Bolter & Grusin, 1999). Digitization reduces physical objects down to binary code, making 3D printing possible (printing being an interesting metaphor for what would otherwise be referred to as manufacturing or ← 65 | 66 → production). And digitization allows for a kind of technological synesthesia, as it becomes possible to turn images into sound or vice versa, and any format whatsoever into a printout of zeroes and ones or computer code.
As we go about trying to digitize our world, and ourselves, our genetic code and our very consciousness, the question of what it means to be human, and how to retain our humanity in the face of such technological progress, looms large. Eliot’s poetic linking of information to knowledge and wisdom set off a flurry of speculation on the relationships between these three concepts, with technophiles suggesting that sufficient information yields knowledge, and sufficient knowledge in turn can provide us with the wisdom we seek. I would suggest, instead, that the relationships between the three are properly contextualized within the field of media ecology. Wisdom is a characteristic of the human person, whether it is regarded as an innate sensitivity and intelligence, or a product of hard-won experience. Wisdom is an understanding of relationships, of relationships among people, of people’s relationships with their environment, and of one’s relationship to oneself. And I would argue that wisdom is intimately associated with nonliterate, oral culture and the media environment with which it is associated. Speech cannot be separated from the speaker, and memory cannot be separated from the persons who remember and commemorate. As Ong (1982) explains, in an oral culture, you can only know what you can recall, and if you cannot bring it readily to mind, in what sense do you really know it? Words of wisdom, in a traditional sense, later to be collected and referred to as wisdom literature, are proverbs, mnemonically formed sayings and aphorisms.
Writing, on the other hand, separates the knower from the known (Havelock, 1963), turning a process, a verb, knowing, into a thing, a noun, knowledge. Knowledge becomes something that you find in a book, that you look up when you need to know something. And whereas wisdom involves understanding relationships, which is to say that it operates on the medium or relationship level, knowledge is about content, and works on the content level (Strate, 2012b). Wisdom does not disappear when writing appears, and neither does speech after all. But the characteristic of wisdom becomes more distant, more mysterious and elusive, the more fully immersed we are in literate culture. We look for it in books, but there we find only knowledge. And in tying knowledge to writing and literacy, I do not mean to imply that knowledge does not exist in oral cultures, but simply that there is no such thing as a body of knowledge, there is only knowhow, the practical ability to do things, which can be learned as an activity, and that includes the ability to remember and recite. In an oral culture, the only body of knowledge is the human body, symbolized by the fact that we talk about learning things by heart (Carpenter, 1973).
If wisdom resides in the person, and knowledge in a book, where do we find information? In signals transmitted through wires and airwaves, bouncing off of satellites, stored on magnetic and optical media, in computer memory and databanks. Knowledge takes time to acquire, and wisdom is the fruit of a lifetime, but information appears instantaneously, dematerialized and decontextualized, its function to reduce freedom and establish control. While popular discourse treats information as a basic human need and an unmitigated good, media ecology scholars warn that its benefits do not come without costs, and have expressed concerns about the devaluation and loss of human judgment, and liberty (e.g., Ellul, 1964; Postman, 1992). The danger is in an unbalanced media environment where knowledge becomes the property of the privileged few rather than of the population as a whole, and wisdom all but disappears in the noise and clutter of information overload. At the same time, our digital media and information technologies do have the potential for helping us achieve a more complex and ecologically sound social system, one where information serves human needs and purposes, and is used to create a sustainable and humane environment. The potential is there, if information can be harnessed through knowledge, and if it can be applied with wisdom. ← 66 | 67 →
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