Msp Week1

Editor's Notes

• #9: Examples?
• #10: If you did arts1090 Last session you spoke quite a lot about what media is... 1) moving away from thinking media as simply that thing , that technology or form, by which we transmit a message form one place to another. Thinking communication as simply the transmission from source to receiver is called.....
• #11: the transmission model of communication - it looked a little like this... It came from Shannon and Weaver - in this paper - and it was formulated in an engineering context in which very practical questions about the correct transmission of a message (perhaps during the noise of battle) needed to be asked and answered. Lives depended on getting a clear message for point A to point B. So under this model communication is treated as a process whereby a message from an information source is transmitted via a media form or technology to a receiver. Anything that interfered with the clear transmission of that message is considered noise - noise is to be routed out at all costs - it impedes the clear transmission of the signal. ______________Cut The idea of a model is really important here. Its important because because a model is constructed to communicate or depict a particular phenomena. Here we are depicting communication itself. The idea of a model is really important here. It’s important because a model is constructed to communicate or depict a particular phenomena. Here we are depicting communication itself.
• #12: As sophisticated media types we of course understand that this is not how communication works. The in-between stuff matters. It matters because information isn't so much transmitted or moved from one place to another as its realised in the material itself. If we have two cups joined by a piece of string the message doesn’t actually travel down the string - the vibration of the voice in the can makes the string oscillate and that oscillation see a like vibration in the other can. There is no message - there is a just a bunch of of sympathetic vibrations in each of the materials - that finds it potential in the specific qualities of those material. If we extend this a little we realize that the receiver matters more than the transmission model allows as well the material media. Just as the can at one end of the string requires the potential to move the other - the information source and its receiver need to be to evoke a like set of prexisting realtionships - we have to speak the same language order for the message to be realized.
• #13: under the transmission model its as if some abstrct message thing actually moves from me to you as I am speaking. Of course thats not the way it works. Physically speaking some sense perception- something I see, hear, smell prompts some brain activity. The brain uses the potential of the body to make the air between us vibrate. That vibration realises a sympathetic movement, a shared potential between my body and yours. This resonance betweeb bodies allows us to use a recalled system, a code, based on the difference between sounds, to evoke sequences of activities in your brain. Nothing moves from my brain to yours ever...if it does we need to cal ifectious diseases.
• #14: so I find a tune by playing notes - by trial and error -..and this increasingly allows me to discover sequences..and songs...but these didn’t preexist that playing - there was no message before the medium......the guitar is not conduit for expression - its a way of realising communicative form.
• #15: so I find a tune by playing notes - by trial and error -..and this increasingly allows me to discover sequences..and songs...but these didn’t preexist that playing - there was no message before the medium......the guitar is not conduit for expression - its a way of realising communicative form.
• #16: so I find a tune by playing notes - by trial and error -..and this increasingly allows me to discover sequences..and songs...but these didn’t preexist that playing - there was no message before the medium......the guitar is not conduit for expression - its a way of realising communicative form.
• #17: The inadequacies of the transmission model of communicaiton led the most famous of media theorists Marshall McLuhan to proclaim that the medium is the message- latter on he'd ammend this in a play on words that saw that initial proclamation become 'the medium is the massage' ....... this latter variation is pretty important - the message has actually disappeared and in its place we find only the medium's potential to manipulate a continuity - to realise a difference in the material strata of another body - thats how the message ‘moves’ Story about publishing the book...the noise of the system realizes new meaning...extends meaning via its own affordances- like the guitar the indeterminacy of a noisy system adds rather than subtracts form meaning.
• #18: The inadequacies of the transmission model of communicaiton led the most famous of media theorists Marshall McLuhan to proclaim that the medium is the message- latter on he'd ammend this in a play on words that saw that initial proclamation become 'the medium is the massage' ....... this latter variation is pretty important - the message has actually disappeared and in its place we find only the medium's potential to manipulate a continuity - to realise a difference in the material strata of another body - thats how the message ‘moves’ Story about publishing the book...the noise of the system realizes new meaning...extends meaning via its own affordances- like the guitar the indeterminacy of a noisy system adds rather than subtracts form meaning.
• #19: Of course this also means that communication is a 'negotiation' - Communication depends on a shared potential between bodies to carry a difference. Language is the obvious example here - A language is an agreed upon system of representation - for it to work both the sender/transmitter and receiver have to have the key to that system in order to communicate. The word 'dog' has no intrinsic connection to the actual animal it represents it only has a meaning because it A) sounds different to the word 'Cat' and B) because we've learnt to associate that difference with a general class of object. ( this is the contribution of Ferdinand Saussure - and is widely recognised as the formative structuralist theory - Saussures’ Course in General Linguistics started to think ‘how’ the structure of language worked to make meaning.
• #20: Screen First. When we remove interpretation from the equation which also indicate that there is a certain amount of valuable or genratove 'play' in the quality of the communication .
• #21: Screen First. When we remove interpretation from the equation which also indicate that there is a certain amount of valuable or genratove 'play' in the quality of the communication .
• #22: Screen First. When we remove interpretation from the equation which also indicate that there is a certain amount of valuable or genratove 'play' in the quality of the communication .
• #23: What we miss in such a model is the effect that the communication system has as a whole has in relation to the wider world - the specific ways a medium makes the world 'thinkable' and in making the world thinkable alters the ways which we we are likely to interact with it. These specific ways might refer to the structure of language, or the way continuity editing in cinema reconfigures time, or the way television brings an image of the world into our living rooms, or the way twitter affords a realtime backchannel for political feedback, or the way the domain name system alters the development of network culture... How we are able to represent things through media and communications technologies affects the way we see them, and the way we act in relation to them. Lets remember a really clear an very important example; If our science finds our ecosystem is under threat due to human action those scientists need to communicate that message so that its implications alter the way we live and act. Getting the message across is no guarantee of realizing a difference in terms of the way we act. The way we figure that change fundamentally alters our willingness to act. A simple shift in representation- perhaps a shift from using the term 'global warming' to the term 'climate change' is enough to alter the public discourse - by which I mean the way things are represented in the newspaper, in blogs, around the dinner table, and the way the next lot of information we receive is interpreted and acted upon. Change is inevitable, the weather changes from day to day - the shift to climate change has a normalising function in comparison to global warming - which is active rather than passive. That function is potentially enough to alter the consensus view and therefore our governments determination to act.
• #24: What we miss in such a model is the effect that the communication system has as a whole has in relation to the wider world - the specific ways a medium makes the world 'thinkable' and in making the world thinkable alters the ways which we we are likely to interact with it. These specific ways might refer to the structure of language, or the way continuity editing in cinema reconfigures time, or the way television brings an image of the world into our living rooms, or the way twitter affords a realtime backchannel for political feedback, or the way the domain name system alters the development of network culture... How we are able to represent things through media and communications technologies affects the way we see them, and the way we act in relation to them. Lets remember a really clear an very important example; If our science finds our ecosystem is under threat due to human action those scientists need to communicate that message so that its implications alter the way we live and act. Getting the message across is no guarantee of realizing a difference in terms of the way we act. The way we figure that change fundamentally alters our willingness to act. A simple shift in representation- perhaps a shift from using the term 'global warming' to the term 'climate change' is enough to alter the public discourse - by which I mean the way things are represented in the newspaper, in blogs, around the dinner table, and the way the next lot of information we receive is interpreted and acted upon. Change is inevitable, the weather changes from day to day - the shift to climate change has a normalising function in comparison to global warming - which is active rather than passive. That function is potentially enough to alter the consensus view and therefore our governments determination to act.
• #25: What we miss in such a model is the effect that the communication system has as a whole has in relation to the wider world - the specific ways a medium makes the world 'thinkable' and in making the world thinkable alters the ways which we we are likely to interact with it. These specific ways might refer to the structure of language, or the way continuity editing in cinema reconfigures time, or the way television brings an image of the world into our living rooms, or the way twitter affords a realtime backchannel for political feedback, or the way the domain name system alters the development of network culture... How we are able to represent things through media and communications technologies affects the way we see them, and the way we act in relation to them. Lets remember a really clear an very important example; If our science finds our ecosystem is under threat due to human action those scientists need to communicate that message so that its implications alter the way we live and act. Getting the message across is no guarantee of realizing a difference in terms of the way we act. The way we figure that change fundamentally alters our willingness to act. A simple shift in representation- perhaps a shift from using the term 'global warming' to the term 'climate change' is enough to alter the public discourse - by which I mean the way things are represented in the newspaper, in blogs, around the dinner table, and the way the next lot of information we receive is interpreted and acted upon. Change is inevitable, the weather changes from day to day - the shift to climate change has a normalising function in comparison to global warming - which is active rather than passive. That function is potentially enough to alter the consensus view and therefore our governments determination to act.
• #26: So getting back to poor old Shannon and Weaver's transmission model. We can see that this very 'model' of communications will change the way we treat media and communications itself. If we understand the message as 'given' - then technology and receiver are passive...the specific qualities and the potential different media forms and technologies tend to be reduced to a 'correct' transmission of a static signal. We also tend to reduce the act of communication to being simply about information transmission. This has led, to use one very relevant example, to thinking about education as being just about the transmission of information from one place to another - this course uses a number of technologies to help us try and move away from that idea...here the emphasis is on an active learning think about the design of the lecture theatre...how you can see how its architecture was shaped by a particular modelling of education as the transmission of knowledge from the professor to the student....and how the architecture makes the model and its assumptions conctre - how it sees them play out in terms of the style of education that can occur here... you’re figured as a sponge rather than as an active participant - actively responsible for your own learning - or actively engaged in the process of that learning...this space encourages you to remain a passive receiver..and in the process we lose the intepretive value you all bring to the space. Lets think a little about power in this model - the power is kept firmly in the hand of the transmitter or author - moreover the message itself is ascribed an authorship - and an authority- based on this notion that it is the seamless transmission form the voice of the author - not simply a structural intermediary. :Like the message - the voice of the author is gone...the authority attributed to the message is a function of linguistic structure - the words speak us - as much as we speck the words...
• #27: So getting back to poor old Shannon and Weaver's transmission model. We can see that this very 'model' of communications will change the way we treat media and communications itself. If we understand the message as 'given' - then technology and receiver are passive...the specific qualities and the potential different media forms and technologies tend to be reduced to a 'correct' transmission of a static signal. We also tend to reduce the act of communication to being simply about information transmission. This has led, to use one very relevant example, to thinking about education as being just about the transmission of information from one place to another - this course uses a number of technologies to help us try and move away from that idea...here the emphasis is on an active learning think about the design of the lecture theatre...how you can see how its architecture was shaped by a particular modelling of education as the transmission of knowledge from the professor to the student....and how the architecture makes the model and its assumptions conctre - how it sees them play out in terms of the style of education that can occur here... you’re figured as a sponge rather than as an active participant - actively responsible for your own learning - or actively engaged in the process of that learning...this space encourages you to remain a passive receiver..and in the process we lose the intepretive value you all bring to the space. Lets think a little about power in this model - the power is kept firmly in the hand of the transmitter or author - moreover the message itself is ascribed an authorship - and an authority- based on this notion that it is the seamless transmission form the voice of the author - not simply a structural intermediary. :Like the message - the voice of the author is gone...the authority attributed to the message is a function of linguistic structure - the words speak us - as much as we speck the words...
• #28: The receiver doesn't just sit there absorbing information either- they actively interpret the information - just as you are doing now. They bring a whole lot of cultural baggage, tools and experiences to that interpretation - or to be more precise a whole bunch of tools and experiences are evoked in order to make-sense of the information recieved. This is not just a figuring out of something that existed prior to perception - its actually about an active 'making' - a sense-making. If the process of active sense-making changes the relationship between body and world then we might call that 'learning' and the next time we experience a particular act of, for example, 'communication' then we will bring that to bear on the processes of both expression and interpretation.
• #29: The receiver doesn't just sit there absorbing information either- they actively interpret the information - just as you are doing now. They bring a whole lot of cultural baggage, tools and experiences to that interpretation - or to be more precise a whole bunch of tools and experiences are evoked in order to make-sense of the information recieved. This is not just a figuring out of something that existed prior to perception - its actually about an active 'making' - a sense-making. If the process of active sense-making changes the relationship between body and world then we might call that 'learning' and the next time we experience a particular act of, for example, 'communication' then we will bring that to bear on the processes of both expression and interpretation.
• #30: In this sense the process of communication might be conceived as dynamic networking of bodies and things. This is a network in a process of continual negotiation in which all those bodies and things play an active role. We can understand this as a network of developing relations of power. And we can think of networks of media and communications as one means of extending and manipulating the relations of power more generally. ‘relations of power’ are those negotiated relationships that affect the way we interact with the world - that ‘network’ of which media forms and technologies are one part.
• #31: In this sense the process of communication might be conceived as dynamic networking of bodies and things. This is a network in a process of continual negotiation in which all those bodies and things play an active role. We can understand this as a network of developing relations of power. And we can think of networks of media and communications as one means of extending and manipulating the relations of power more generally. ‘relations of power’ are those negotiated relationships that affect the way we interact with the world - that ‘network’ of which media forms and technologies are one part.
• #32: We'll be talking about power a lot in this course- in fact I could have called course Media Power because the focus of the course is how media affords connections, networks, potential for movement - how it establishes and redrafts relations of power and how those changes/movements become subject to what Michel Foucault calls governmentality. This is a concept you'll read about in the Miller and Rose article - but perhaps we can think of it simply as referring to the complex of interrelated mechanisms by which we govern and are governed....
• #33: But lets return to theto that word power for now. Like the transmission model of communications there is a commonly held assumption that power is something we can own - that we wield like a big sword. A little like the model of media we discussed where the transmitter appearance to hold the authority Conversations about power tend to resort to questions of who - who has the power and what are they doing with it? This is a rather simple way of thinking about power.
• #34: I will contend (following Focuault amongst others - see the linked paper), just as we discussed with regard to media, power is negotiated. Even when a baton, or a tank, is wielded there is blunt negotiation of power that has effects well beyond the fall of baton itself. If we want to marshal power a baton is actually not a very effective means of achieving anything enduring. Much better to provide an incentive to work, or to avoid dissent in the first place. Even better to enlist the population in their own governance and you can do that far more effectively by way of a negotiation of interests.
• #36: A simple (perhaps simplistic) example; property rights. In a society that ascribes an individual a right of ownership property takes a particular value. The ascription of value produces an economy of supply and demand. The economy motivates labor - to produces stuff and to buy stuff - all of which depends on not having the bloke next door come and forcefully take the fruits of that labor or the labor itself - so we submit to a negotiated rule of law - you'll pay me fairly my labor - and I won't take your stuff and vice versa.
• #37: If at some point the value of submitting to the rule of law is outweighed by the value of transgression then the system tends to break down. We'll add some some weight to the cost of transgressing the terms of our agreement via a disciplinary system that is empowered to remove the privileges and rights (to property, to freedom) afforded by the negotiated terms.
• #38: We'll need people to manage that system and we'll need a way of ensuring those people are accountable to the all parties. Such a system gives me the potential to invest time and labor in production of value - as a worker, as an organisation (including government itself) with the assurance that my investment is protected. The formation of Government is part of the negotiation not simply its agent. That negotiation is always ongoing. Foucault calls government a congenitally failing activity. Its in governments interest to actively seek out the next problem or potential - to continually and actively negotiate those relations of power.
• #39: We'll need people to manage that system and we'll need a way of ensuring those people are accountable to the all parties. Such a system gives me the potential to invest time and labor in production of value - as a worker, as an organisation (including government itself) with the assurance that my investment is protected. The formation of Government is part of the negotiation not simply its agent. That negotiation is always ongoing. Foucault calls government a congenitally failing activity. Its in governments interest to actively seek out the next problem or potential - to continually and actively negotiate those relations of power.
• #40: A more complex and media relevant version of a negotiation of power is the value of authorship. With the rise of the printing press we saw the birth of mass communications. This provided the author with significant power but in order to capitalize on that authorship we have to put our name on the document we distribute. This is in part because the value, that is the authority, of the work is due to its representation of an authorial voice.
• #41: As spiderman said ' With great power comes great responsibilty' but of course here we are not talking about spiderman's ethical reponsibility but rather the fact that in order to ensure they alone can capitalize - politically, socially, or economically - on that document the author must take responsibility for its contents. To afford the value of authorship some stability we develop a bunch of policies- 'copyright' for example - to ensure that others can't profit (socially, politically, economically) from that production. But these laws don't just add value to the value of authorship they also add weight to the its responsibility. If my names on a document I become responsible for it - or to put it another I can be held (in a bodily sense) responsible for it. This is to say there is what Foucault would call a 'displinary' element to the attribution of authorship. Policy shores this up and increases the stakes - both the rewards and the reponsibilties - in the process in justifies its own conitual development and reaffirmation.
• #42: As spiderman said ' With great power comes great responsibilty' but of course here we are not talking about spiderman's ethical reponsibility but rather the fact that in order to ensure they alone can capitalize - politically, socially, or economically - on that document the author must take responsibility for its contents. To afford the value of authorship some stability we develop a bunch of policies- 'copyright' for example - to ensure that others can't profit (socially, politically, economically) from that production. But these laws don't just add value to the value of authorship they also add weight to the its responsibility. If my names on a document I become responsible for it - or to put it another I can be held (in a bodily sense) responsible for it. This is to say there is what Foucault would call a 'displinary' element to the attribution of authorship. Policy shores this up and increases the stakes - both the rewards and the reponsibilties - in the process in justifies its own conitual development and reaffirmation.
• #43: As spiderman said ' With great power comes great responsibilty' but of course here we are not talking about spiderman's ethical reponsibility but rather the fact that in order to ensure they alone can capitalize - politically, socially, or economically - on that document the author must take responsibility for its contents. To afford the value of authorship some stability we develop a bunch of policies- 'copyright' for example - to ensure that others can't profit (socially, politically, economically) from that production. But these laws don't just add value to the value of authorship they also add weight to the its responsibility. If my names on a document I become responsible for it - or to put it another I can be held (in a bodily sense) responsible for it. This is to say there is what Foucault would call a 'displinary' element to the attribution of authorship. Policy shores this up and increases the stakes - both the rewards and the reponsibilties - in the process in justifies its own conitual development and reaffirmation.
• #44: As spiderman said ' With great power comes great responsibilty' but of course here we are not talking about spiderman's ethical reponsibility but rather the fact that in order to ensure they alone can capitalize - politically, socially, or economically - on that document the author must take responsibility for its contents. To afford the value of authorship some stability we develop a bunch of policies- 'copyright' for example - to ensure that others can't profit (socially, politically, economically) from that production. But these laws don't just add value to the value of authorship they also add weight to the its responsibility. If my names on a document I become responsible for it - or to put it another I can be held (in a bodily sense) responsible for it. This is to say there is what Foucault would call a 'displinary' element to the attribution of authorship. Policy shores this up and increases the stakes - both the rewards and the reponsibilties - in the process in justifies its own conitual development and reaffirmation.
• #45: As spiderman said ' With great power comes great responsibilty' but of course here we are not talking about spiderman's ethical reponsibility but rather the fact that in order to ensure they alone can capitalize - politically, socially, or economically - on that document the author must take responsibility for its contents. To afford the value of authorship some stability we develop a bunch of policies- 'copyright' for example - to ensure that others can't profit (socially, politically, economically) from that production. But these laws don't just add value to the value of authorship they also add weight to the its responsibility. If my names on a document I become responsible for it - or to put it another I can be held (in a bodily sense) responsible for it. This is to say there is what Foucault would call a 'displinary' element to the attribution of authorship. Policy shores this up and increases the stakes - both the rewards and the reponsibilties - in the process in justifies its own conitual development and reaffirmation.
• #46: This is an issue of as much political relevance today as it was during the rise of the printing press. We are seeing massive shifts as new media alters the economics of media production, distribution and discovery. What are the political and economic implications of the massive peer-to-peer distribution of media how does this alter the political landscape? This isn't just a question of the ethics of sharing but rather the economies that this sharing disrupts or develops- its a big question for journalists as much as for record labels. These are all issue will deal with through out the course. How we represent these shifts, how their potential, and potential problems are realized and represented will shape their governance, uptake and development. if sharing is figured as piracy - its outlawed - but if we demonstrate the value of sharing via the production of new architectures that realise new productive centres - then we arepaving the way for a shift in consensus form all exchange is piracy to a recogntiion of potential...
• #47: This is an issue of as much political relevance today as it was during the rise of the printing press. We are seeing massive shifts as new media alters the economics of media production, distribution and discovery. What are the political and economic implications of the massive peer-to-peer distribution of media how does this alter the political landscape? This isn't just a question of the ethics of sharing but rather the economies that this sharing disrupts or develops- its a big question for journalists as much as for record labels. These are all issue will deal with through out the course. How we represent these shifts, how their potential, and potential problems are realized and represented will shape their governance, uptake and development. if sharing is figured as piracy - its outlawed - but if we demonstrate the value of sharing via the production of new architectures that realise new productive centres - then we arepaving the way for a shift in consensus form all exchange is piracy to a recogntiion of potential...
• #48: This is an issue of as much political relevance today as it was during the rise of the printing press. We are seeing massive shifts as new media alters the economics of media production, distribution and discovery. What are the political and economic implications of the massive peer-to-peer distribution of media how does this alter the political landscape? This isn't just a question of the ethics of sharing but rather the economies that this sharing disrupts or develops- its a big question for journalists as much as for record labels. These are all issue will deal with through out the course. How we represent these shifts, how their potential, and potential problems are realized and represented will shape their governance, uptake and development. if sharing is figured as piracy - its outlawed - but if we demonstrate the value of sharing via the production of new architectures that realise new productive centres - then we arepaving the way for a shift in consensus form all exchange is piracy to a recogntiion of potential...