Media Mutations - Assignment Example

Table of Contents 1.0.TASK 2 1 1.1.Our Global Village 1 1.2.References 3 2.0.TASK 3 4 2.1.Media Mutations 4 2.1. References 5 3.0.TASK 4 6 3.1.Glocality 6 3.2.References 7 4.0. TASK 5 8 4.1.Global Content 8 4.2.References 9 5.0.TASK 6 10 5.1.Global Networks 10 5.2.References 11 6.0.TASK 7 12 6.1.Vectors vs. Borders 12 6.2.References 13 7.0.TASK 8 14 7.1.Media Ecologies 14 7.2.References 15 1.0. TASK 2 1.1. Our Global Village McLuhan was instrumental in coining the global village and the expressions that the medium is the message. Additionally, he was able to predict the World Wide Web, earlier than it was invented. According to Barry (1987), the global world of 2014 is more electrical compared to the McLuhan’s concept; it is fast growing where information is faster replaced with the newer information. The emergence of newer information has been instantaneous to the extent of relying on facts of an older invention of real intercepts the evolution that comes with the continuous newer breed of information. The disappearance of space and time in the McLuhan concept gives an indication how the global village in 2014 resembles the concept. Information creation, delivery and modification have gone beyond the time and space bounds. Overreliance on data to access information has been replaced by the World Wide Web where the searches on particular information are retrievable without translation of space and rolling of time. The aggressiveness of information goes beyond the source and space bound; with the interplay between environment and time actively dictates the different aspects of retrieval and usage across the world (Barry, 1987). Visual homogenizing of experience among parties is the centre of the global village in 2014. The social interactions have rapidly been the manner in which information transferred to different parties to varied distant environments of the world. The social sites in 2014 has transcended and changed the manner in which the print technology has been fostering the propagation of a global village. Electronic independence in 2014 is apically being at the epitome of influencing the reduction of the world to a global village in the context of information sharing. The world web medium of technology in 2014 overrides all other media-it is an extension of consciousness with the inclusion of all the technology content (McLuhan, 1964). The World Wide Web as an instrument of communication has widely been utilised to enhance retrieval of mass library. Hot and cool media in 2014 has been in the rise with the stimulus of majority in the technology world driven to the interactions in the social sites of the World Wide Web. 1.2. References Barry, W (1987) .The Network Community: An Introduction to the Networks and Global Village. Harcourt Brace McLuhan, M (1964). Understanding Media. Gingko Press. Village. Harcourt Brace 2.0. TASK 3 2.1. Media Mutations Computers, computer networks, consumer electronics and digital media software’s ubiquity are the key factors behind the exponential rise in the cultural producers in terms of the media they develop worldwide. As a result it has been very difficult to comprehend the dynamics in the development of the global cultural media in substantial details by making use of the traditional methods and tools. It is for this reason that it is of importance that relevant methods are devised to help in tracking and visualize global digital cultures-computer software and the existence of massive amounts of the born digital cultural content. In the modern world, governments, businesses and other multi-national agencies have substantially made the best out of the interactive visualization of data flows and the collection of the large data sets and the computer-based quantitative analysis (Richard, 2010). With the use of the tools – they have helped to ease the process of data mining, visual analytics, information visualization which has been realized in the analysis of the contemporary cultural data. The information visualization process can be iterative in contexts of digitizing the large data sets in the forms than can allow the verification of the source and categorization in titles and genres. A proposition to using a standard and systematic method of interactive visualization and large scale computational analysis would be of importance in an effort to help track the global digital cultures. Human High Performance Computing (HHPC) initiative can be vital in tracking global digital cultures just as have been done in the other sectors like in the sciences. According to McLuhan and Lewis (1994), computers have been used to analyze cultural activities that had been recorded earlier since they are able to leave traces in computer-media based devices. For instance, in humanities research, scholars often in many occasions deal with large sets of data that are in unstructured form. With the use of HHPC, it offers a humanist opportunity to sort through the large sets for better understanding. HHPC involves the use of high performance computers which has the capability to dig into data for the articulation of the sets into more details. The wide culture content which forms the basis of cultural data can be visualized in the digital form. 2.1. References McLuhan, M and Lewis, H (1994). Understanding media: The extension of Man. Massachusetts: The MIT Press. Richard, W (2010). Introducing Communication Theory: Analysis and Application (4th Ed.).New York: McGraw Hill. 3.0. TASK 4 3.1. Glocality Glocality refers to the interactions of the local and small urban environments with the field where various processes of the developments are interconnected. It considers the real issues by integrating the local markets into the globalization components embedded in the world capitalism (Jones, 1998). The concept of glocality has interfaced in my individual life through the interplay of the local and global in maintaining the interpersonal social networks for the sustenance of long and distant interactions with business friends. As a matter of involving both the global and the local, the concept presents a blurring contradiction of tension and fusion; with each presenting different ideas. It is the interactions of the local and the global which in a process to constitute glocality has leveled the ground for the users in the contest of the on-going realities of the lives that are lived at the two comparable distant cities. With the internet age the concept of glocality has been a culmination of the possibility to access the wide array of information from varied environments and contexts without regarding the real time factor. It shapes the cultural and social identity in dependence to the ease with which information may be acquired from the world web sites. In this context, for instance living in a local environment where the access of information may be real time may be comparable to those in the urban set-ups with the capability to accessing the same information. The impacts of digitalizing such components of information sharing may shape an individual’s social life through his interactions with both the local and urban at the same time. The informatics of a community is a main culture and social influencer. It characterizes the capability of sharing the norms, cultures and continuity of connections of the common goals. As such the transformations of the closed off social contexts amid the discontinuities of the interactions of the local and urban interactions would be opened (De cindio and schulle, 2008). In addition, community informatics represents the continuity of community interconnections with the connections of the local and urban environments through space and over time. 3.2. References DeCcindio and Schulle (2008). Beyond community Networks;From Local to global. New York Jones (1998). Exploring several Dimensions of local, global and glocalization. Eaglads Publishers 4.0. TASK 5 4.1. Global Content Personally, I have been able to download songs and movies from the internet. It has been an easy process made possible by the possession of some little computer skills and a computer machine. As a result, internet has been instrumental in allowing people to sell information in the information economy. The real information economy curtails virtually all the economic activities that the internet can do without regarding all the content that it prevents from taking off (Ernest, 2007). One of the notable shortcomings of the present global copyright laws have been bare in its effort not making it harder for people to access machines that can facilitate their infringement of the copyright laws. As a result it therefore becomes practically impossible to make it harder for them to get access to information and access other files that otherwise would be almost impossible to obtain without the machines. Majority of economic activities have been successful and faster with the involvement of the internet. A business conducted at different fields in the internet has been possible due to the drumming of trade with Google ads. As the world is in the increase in making use of the digital and online technologies to create and distribute culture and knowledge, issues dealing with digital copyright become increasingly vital (Gencarelli, 2006). However, knowledge and new ideas, with limited transmittal will not immensely benefit the society. The tension realized between social pressure for freedom of expression and commercial interests behind the copyrights legislation; on one hand the rights owner posses the control of the dissemination of the works while on the hand the rapid dissemination need also to be encouraged (Gencarelli, 2006). The implementation of the numerous exceptions and limitations to the rights of copyrights owners, which becomes a subject to the tension experienced. In addition the limits imposed on the control over knowledge are being weakened in the digital environment. However, the duration of copyrights also limits the degree with which knowledge is transmitted in different global networks. This factor guarantees an enormous to resource materials that are available permanently to education. As a result extending the copyright’s duration prejudices the information users. 4.2. References Gencarelli, T (2006). Perspectives on Culture, Technology and Communications. NJ: Hampton Ernest, E (2007).Media effects Discourse and the Changing Self; Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield 5.0. TASK 6 5.1. Global Networks Global network is any communication network which traverses the entire world. It offers access of different types of information to the majority of the interested users worldwide with the sole view of exchanging vital information for economic, political and social purposes (Harrasim, 1993). Depending on the benefits that accrue from either the directional or the unidirectional global network, users may a hold an optimistic or pessimistic view. Global networks in the computer networks are created and shared through the technical standards controlled by protocols. The protocols operate under very crucial characteristics of openness, voluntary adoption, flexibility and robustness. However, a host of the vulnerabilities suffered by the global network today present a considerable reason to the pessimistic view held by Geert Lovink. The detriments offered by the global networks to the different users across the world qualifies it pessimistic (Rossiter, 2006). In my view of the global networks, it has been optimistic to the extent to which its positive impacts have been felt by the users. Global networks have made it possible for human beings to increase their social interactions. On the other hand, Kazys Varnelis view global network not merely as a technology but with social ramification but rather a social construction that serves to naturalize and exaceberate uneven growth and the distribution of power. For Varnelis, the emerging importance of the models such as the cloud computing and the managed device platform, represented the vital optimistic shifts from the static infrastructure to the reconfigurable and dynamic services. Most of the network has shifted from economic model based to the service provision with its expansion inclined towards the software as Service and the Platform as Service. As a result the operator revenue has been expanded to marginally to the provision of dynamic services. Geert Lovink views global network in terms of its unique identity and self management combined with the fragmentation and information overload endemic to contemporary online culture. He offers a path breaking critical analysis with case studies on search engines, media activism and blogging digital radio. According to Yochai (2006), Lovink offers a critique to the political structures and conceptual powers embedded in the technologies. 5.2. References Harrasim, L (1993).Global Networks: Computers and International Networks. Rossiter, N (2006). Organized Networks (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, NAI Publishers. Yochai, B (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedoms.New Haven: Yale University Press. 6.0. TASK 7 6.1. Vectors vs. Borders Hacking involves turning information of any kind into intellectual property so that one may feel ownership of its content. A group of programmers, artists, scientists, designers, writers can all be hackers. The main focus is how they disparate forms of concrete activity end up in the same intellectual property. Hacking therefore can be on one side be just a few kind of property –copyrights, trademarks, trade dress and patents while on the other side hacking is all these collaborative, qualitative and differential kinds of activity on information (Rossiter, 2006). The vectoral class is the class that controls and owns the mode of information that is regrouped around a more abstracted kind of control. Human beings may be able to access the data but this group controls the metadata. Unfortunately, the vectoral classes are very keen on a model where people work for them for free for their own benefit. They are keen on in harvesting the attention and data from our machines. A hacker’s manifesto precisely defines the territory between the continually more strident demand by drugs and media companies for protection of their patents and copyrights and the pervasive popular culture of both sharing and pirating (Yochai, 2006). Intellectual property gives rise to a new kind of class conflict, one that pits the creators of information-the hacker’s class of researches and authors, artist and biologists, chemists and musicians, philosophers and programmers-against a possessing class who would monopolize what the hackers produce. A Hacker Manifesto offers a systematic restatement similar to the Marxist thought of globalization and the cyberspace age. A Hackers manifesto stood apart from its contemporaries because of its focus on the materiality of information McKenzie Wark sees a promise that transcends beyond the property form and a new hacker class, progressive class who voice a shared interest in a new information commons. ‘We do not own what own what we produce-it owns us’. In this, McKenzie reminds us of the manner in which the information people produce ends up being somebody else’s private property. People and their data are owned for the purpose of selling them to the advertisers or other clients who might make use of that aggregate data. 6.2. References Yochai, B (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedoms.New Haven: Yale University Press Rossiter, N (2006). Organized Networks (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, NAI Publishers. 7.0. TASK 8 7.1. Media Ecologies Media ecology is concerned with the study of the media environments and the way they affect the human society in regards to the changes in their understanding, perceptions, values and feelings. The media environments play a crucial role in the emotions of human in the contexts of how they feel and act. Media ecology as the study of the media environments is a changing tool to the society. It mirrors the changes and provides an in depth understanding of such changes as the world is represented through the ever new symbols and media. It reflects the influence of media on human beings and the changes in the media itself with time (Levinson, 2000). In contrast to the traditional world, where man used to exist in the homogeneity in the balance of the senses and giving the world an equal perception, the media ecology with the compelling influence they have on the lives of human beings and the society. As such it concerns itself with the informational configurations and the manner in which they affect the values, perceptions and attitudes (Postman, 2000). The information therefore in themselves forms the environment both for the language and symbols in which we are capable of discovering and expressing humanity in certain ways. Media ecology is the ways in which human beings and media help maintain symbolic balance. In the media environment, the detailed interaction between people within the networking sites develops rules and conventions that are stereotypical of that resource. Media ecology as the study of media environments, play a pivotal role in the human affairs. In such contexts therefore, it proposes that technology may be instrumental not only in controlling the society but also the numerous activities in the walks of life. As a cause of social change, the media environments therefore have been proposed by scholars to extend the human senses in the various eras by influencing the changes in the human outlook (Levinson, 2000). People have derived a lot of their social status from the media environments as their ideas get correlated in the mainstream within the ecologies. 7.2. References Levinson, P (2000). McLuhan and Media ecology. Media ecology Association. Postman, N (2000). The Humanism of Media Ecology Association.New York, NY: Basic Books. Read More