Media & Society Lecture 9 PDF

Media &Society Media and new technology Lecture 9  When is technology new? New technologies are not always that new, but depend on developments of earlier technologies and their applications. Truly new technologies are usually not the creation of the media themselves...

Media &Society Media and new technology Lecture 9  When is technology new? New technologies are not always that new, but depend on developments of earlier technologies and their applications. Truly new technologies are usually not the creation of the media themselves. It is often the technological pressure-cooker of military innovation which provides the opportunity for later civil applications, and for the media. Satellites were at first developed and launched (1960s) for their military applications – surveillance and communications. The Internet was originally created for its military convenience – to find a form of communication that could not be knocked out by a couple of Russian inter-continental ballistic missiles  Cornford and Robins (1999) talk about ‘an accommodation between old and new’and point out that ‘new media are often heavily reliant on repackaged older media content’. Even interactivity is not new in itself (radio phone-ins): rather it may be the speed of interactivity on the back of technology. ‘New technologies... Enable producers of new media products and services to monitor, segment and target audiences in new ways’ (Cornford and Robbins, 1999).  six characteristics of what is happening with new media. the creation of new textual experiences; the arrival of new ways of representing the world; the development of new relationships between subject (both users and consumers) and media technologies; the creation of new experiences of the relationship between embodiment, identity and community; new conceptions of the biological body’s relationship to technology and media; the development of new patterns of organization and production.  Andrew Brown (Independent on Sunday, 19 September 1999) makes the interesting point that new technology will only really have arrived in the domestic sphere when one no longer recognizes its presence, nor where information comes from. Technology becomes invisible and unremarkable – like the television set.  Media Technology: Terms and debates The co-relationship between technology, media and society is most obviously then raised concerning that relationship. What is ambiguous is how far technologies and media drive changes, and how far society and audiences induce them. (Graeme Burton, 2004)  (1974). McLuhan advanced ideas about the power of technology within a new electric culture – powers to create a new age of complex relationships. He had a facility for the arresting phrase – ‘global village’ is one of his. He spoke up for television at a time when it received a lot of bad press, critically speaking. He saw television as a medium which engages the senses, and opposed it to the sensory alienation of what he describes as the Gutenberg culture of print media. He was interested in effects as much as in causes. He saw the media as extensions of the senses. He was interested in characteristics of media, and saw media as being more than mere carriers of content – the medium itself was the message, for McCluhan. For him, technology was a determining factor in media development and use, though he would also have seen new developments like the World Wide Web as providing opportunities for users  At one level, the technology is the embodiment of certain interests and possibilities, but at another it is the bearer of effects: it changes what we can imagine and what we can want, it alters our politics. Though we can identify the interests and choices around a technology, they do not automatically become the authors of that technology. The technology is not something [that] exists as a simple object for our use. It acts to structure our choices and preferences, but not in a wholly determinist way. The relationship is in constant flux: political processes shape technology; and then it shapes politics  media cannot control audience use of technologies. And once technologies are in the public domain then they, and the ways that they are used, shape the media, just as the media once shaped the technologies. For example, concern has been expressed over the relationship between children and their mobile phones.  the reworking of material through different media and the appropriation and manipulation of texts in digital form, raises interesting questions who is the author of which text. Ownership (copyright This is exemplified by a public row over the validity of information released by the British government in relation to the run-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq. Much had been made of the fact that one foundation for this information was an old PhD thesis which was not credited to its author (found by trawling the Internet):the issue was about plagiarism as much as about accuracy  Technologies are developed which it is believed the media will want to take up. So one can just as well argue that it is the media that drive technologies. In any case, the applications of and success of technologically based change in the media is something which cannot be predicted with certainty. investment costs and costs to the consumer, which actually works against the introduction of new technologies. The impact of technology on the media: production, distribution, exhibition/retailing, consumption the applications and implications of technology for the media needs to be understood within the functional areas of media business. Media technology is not just about the drama. Technology is embedded in every area of a business. So I make but passing reference to digitized research material, computer graphics in publicity divisions, spreadsheet predictions ,in accounts, email communication,  Outside the media, one may look at our everyday experiences of department stores and supermarkets. Technology enables these businesses to monitor stock purchase, sales and reordering very tightly. But what is going on here is not just about the purchasing experience for the customer – choice and availability New technologies affect the work of all these specialists. Indeed, often the basis of their specialist value is a particular expertise and investment in technology – such as the small digital editing businesses that use Avid Pro programs.  Reduction of cost: as in electronic animation used by Pixar and others, which is far cheaper than manually drawn cell-type animation production, used for classic Disney films; as in digicam production of TV material for Reality TV shows in particular. However, this is partially offset by factors such as the cost of investment or buying in of technology. Also by factors such as, in the case of movies, the ever-increasing above the line costs of key personnel such as stars and directors.  Reduction of labour is a major component of any organization’s bill All media industries have seen a reduction in the numbers of people it takes to make their product (except possibly film), not only because of general ‘efficiency’ pressures, but also because, for example, promotional material can be made, edited and printed by one person. The move from mechanical to electronic technologies has greatly reduced the numbers of people needed to put together a newspaper  Ease of use: without denying a continued need for creative expertise in the use of technologies, it is the case that many examples have made the practicalities of production easier. Time-based editing machines transformed television/video in the 1970s and 1980s, meaning that one no longer needed costly, technically expert operatives. In music production, multi-channel mixing, electronic sampling and sound production, digital editing, have made production in one sense less technically skilled though in other senses more creatively complex. But again, ‘domestic’ versions of industrial technologies have also brought easy-to-use music production literally into the home and sometimes out into the marketplace (for example, some DJ mixes of dance music).  Access to information: as in the use of the Internet as a research source for the press. A scandal involving a New York Times reporter (2003) who wrote pieces on people and places that he had never met or been to, is a nice example of how access to data (and indeed to images) has been hugely enhanced by technologies.  Speed of production: it is faster as well as easier to compose magazine copy electronically.It is possible to acquire news material for TV via satellite from the other side of theworld and edit it, all within minutes.  Enhancement of production values: most obviously to audiences, the material that they read, see and hear has qualities dependent on various applications of technology. One example is the arrival of colour images in newspapers since the 1980s, now sourced from digital cameras and printed on digital presses. Movie theatres have digital surround sound. Film action sequences may incorporate electronic effects to make the impossible appear plausible, using electronic matting and inserts. CD music is ‘clean’ and has a tonal range not generally heard in the home even fifteen years ago  In general, both new forms of media and new developments in old media have created, so far as the audience is concerned, a much more ‘image-rich’ media landscape, as well as a more completely ‘real’ set of media representations. In other words, we have more pictures in more places, from more sources, than our grandparents did. And within the bounds of representational conventions, technology has made film and television in particular seem more real.