ARTS1090 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Manuel Castells, Network Society, Understanding Media
15 May 2018
School
Course
Professor
Approaches to understanding media technology
'Media Ecology' - The scholars that Ridgeway groups under this approach
tend to emphasize the transformative power of technologies and the media.
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"Top down" vs. "Bottom up" approach
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"It is the study of media environments, the idea that technology and
techniques, modes of information and codes of communication play a leading
role in human affairs."
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Technological determinism
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Network Society - Manuel Castells
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Vs - 'Domestication' - tends to emphasize the social shaping of technology -
the way make use of technology and incorporate it into our lives.
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Marshall McLuhan
Canadian scholar who wrote extensively about the impact of the media in the
1960s, 1970s
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Famous for developing aphorisms to communicate his ideas: "The medium is
the message", "The world is a global village", Media as "extensions of man"
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Network Society
"A network society is a society whose social structure is made of networks powered
by microelectronics-based information and communication technologies." (Castells,
pg.3)
Network Distribution
Hub-Spoke Architecture (mass broadcast media) vs Network Architecture (Network
media)
Characteristics of Networks
- Flexbility
Scalability
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Survivability
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Network Society
From broadcasting to networking: rise of the information technology
paradigm - Logic of networking applies to all social processes and
organisational forms.
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New economies based on information, globalisation and networks - Space of
flows displaces the spaces of places
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New media driven by shifts from content to distribution (E.g. protocols over
content)
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The culture of the Network Society based on the hacker.
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Technology -the stuff of media
On technological determinism - "it is never simply a matter of a new kind of
media phenomenon causing changes in the way people think and act"
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"You have a memory"
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The experience of everyday life
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Collective intelligence - "The Hive mind'
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Data and privacy
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Week 6 -Networks
Saturday, 14 April 2018
10:39 am
