New Media and the Cyborg

"The concept of human is unthinkable without technology, but we act as if it is." 

(Shaw: 81, 2008) 

This debate is central to theorists Stelarc and Steiglers' idea of the human body as a vessel for technology. They argue that it is absurd to consider the concept of a natural body, and that we are as much a product of technology as technology is a product of us. Shaw uses 16th century physician William Harvey as a relevant illustration. He argues that Harveys' discovery of the circulatory system would not have been possible without the use of technology, and furthermore, that advancements from this discovery could equally not progress without development of said technology, thus making our understanding of the human body possible only through the tools we had available to analyse it. 

"Nothing is more material, physical, corporal than the exercise of power." (Foucault, 1980:57) In essence, it could be argued that this statement suggests that power of any kind reduces the body of the worker to a mere machine. Foucault uses the example of a well disciplined army to convey this. Each solider is like a cog and without all of the soldiers functioning properly, the military 'machine' would 'break down.' He also states how soldiers are literally governed by the "Technologies of war," wherein guns and vehicles control their success.  Marxist theory argues that capitalist industrialism similarly turns the worker into a passive, mechanical 'drone.'

In conclusion, there is a clear consensus that technology is what distinguishes us as being 'human.' In modern society it is hard to imagine life without our technology, for example, computers and mobile phones, let alone basic tools that we don't even view as technological any more, such as, a knife. Bringing us back to the opening statement, it would be a fair argument to suggest that without our ability to use tools and tech that we could simply have remained as a primitive species. It could be said that the more progress we make as a species, the more distant we will stray from our 'natural' roots, until we are one with the technology we have used to get there. 

Bibliography: 

Foucault, M (1980) Power/Knowledge | First American Edition  

Shaw, D (2008) Technoculture: The Key Concepts | Oxford Berg Press 

Creeber on Digital Culture

The rise of New Media can first be traced back to a number of movements beginning in the late nineteenth century. Modernism was one of these movements, and it was optimistically promoted by its followers as a way to change human society for the better. Creeber specifies modernism as being an umbrella term for how society responded to change during the industrial revolution. Developments in science and technology during this era were equally reflected by developments of artists and intellectuals. This period is arguably where the origins for new media lay. 

The Frankfurt school was a by-product of the modernist movement. They compared the rise of mass culture to the mass industry that dominated working society. Parallels were especially drawn with Fords production lines. Whilst he was issuing cars that were "exactly the same," and accessible to anybody, so to, argued the Frankfurt school was the "identical" mass media, irrelevant as to whether it was a novel or a television show. The growing homogeny was seen as an attack on "high culture," BBC Director General, John Reith argued.  Although the Frankfurt school's views were mainly negative, they were still willing to recognise the significance of new media forms. After WWII, analysist Barthes' used a system of semiotics and structuralism to study mass culture and media forms. He concluded that audiences were powerless, merely consuming  the output. 

Post-modernism is connected to the changes that have taken place in society post-industrialisation. Innovations towards the latter half of the twentieth century sped up the processes that would lead to mass media as we recognise it. McLuhan was one theorist who understood the potential for mass media. 

"Much of his work anticipated the power of New Media to enhance and audience's interactivity with electronic information as a whole"  

(Creeber, 2009: 15) 

Postmodernism celebrates popular culture for its lack of depth or value, instead embracing its "shallow" content, which places aesthetic and image above all else. This can be compared to the modern internet culture, where cult-like status is applied to generally meaningless memes. Increased interactivity allows anyone to become a producer, shunning the constraints of past decades where the majority of the population were voyeurs. 

Bibliography:

Creeber G & Martin R | Digital Cultures, 2009 | Open University Press 

Manovich on New Media

"The computerization of culture not only leads to the emergence of new cultural forms such as computer games and virtual worlds; it redefines existing ones such as photography and cinema. " (Manovich, 2002: 35) 

Manovich argues that the rise of new Media not only introduced new media platforms, but also reinvented those that already existed. It has even changed the somewhat previously untouchable nature of the  static and moving image. In particular, he focuses on the shift that cinema has experienced. The validity of revolutionary nature of these changes however, can be questioned. Is new media really the instigator towards the first major reformation of this industry? 

In actuality, many of new media's revolutionary principles can be traced back to far earlier methods, nullifying its apparent uniqueness. For one, it is easy to argue against its claims that digital media have allowed a multitude of platforms, such as text, moving images and sounds to be be shared and viewed through one device for the first time. As far back as the 1920s, predating the modern PC by nearly a century, Manovich points out that filmmakers were combining sound, text and moving images together. This would make cinema the original platform for multimedia. 

Furthermore, is the debate that whilst  digital media is discrete, analogue media can only be continuous. Manovich contrasts the 2D sampling of space with the cinemas sampling of time in order to debate this issue. The sampling of 24 frames a second created whilst filming can be used to prove that cinema had already prepared us for new media. "All that remained was to take this already discrete representation and to quantify it," (Manovich, 2002: 66)  a simple mechanical step. 

In summary, it cannot be ignored how new media has changed the way we look at existing media platforms such as cinema. It is important to remember, however, that new media is not the only precursor for change in the industry. A brief look will reveal that a gradual change has been happening since the conception of cinema. It could be suggested that its the speed of change that new media brings that is more vital, compared to the fact that it brings change at all. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Manovich L | 2002 | The Language of New Media (MIT Press)