TIMES OF TECHNOCULTURE

1
TIMES OF TECHNOCULTURE

• The Discourse of Convergence
• A political perspective of the new media
  revolution

2
The Discourse of Convergence A political
perspective of the new media revolution
3
lecture and seminar

• THE PROCESS OF DIGITISATION
• POLITICAL IDEOLOGY OF CONVERGENCE
• Californian ideology
• THE POLITICAL DISCOURSE OF CONVERGENCE
• Impact on our media experience

• SEMINAR QUESTIONS
• WHAT IS CONVERGENCE?
• WHAT ARE THE DISCOURSES BEHIND CONVERGENCE?
• WHAT ARE THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN IDEAS AND THE
  PARTICULAR CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH THEY ARISE?
• IS CONVERGENCE A RETHINKING OF THE HISTORY OF
  MEDIA?
• WHAT HAPPENS TO THE MEDIA AS WE KNOW IT?

4
THE PROCESS OF DIGITISATION
5
THE PROCESS OF DIGITISATION

• Physical process of digitisation
• Shift from analogue to digital technology

• Media undergoes a physical change defined by the
  computer logic of 1s 0s
• Binary logic

6
98 expressed in binary
7
definition

• The conversion of images and sounds to numbers,
  making them amenable to manipulation by a
  computer (Wise, 2000 p. 2)

8
numerical representation (see Manovich, 2000)

• Media as mathematically described
• Media elements discrete and quantified
• digital value of media
• 8-bit 256
• 16-bit 65,536
• discrete levels of sound or colour

9
numerical representation

• Media elements become programmable
• As a whole
• Converged

• Separately
• Pixel position
• Dimension
• 3D space
• Customisation
• Distribution
• Networked media
• Compression
• Psychoacoustics

10
8bit image 256 colours
An 8-bit sound file can have one of 256
values Clearly more bits give more accuracy, and
inherently a greater dynamic range
11
Popular assumption about new media

• analogue technologies successful at separating
  media
• Radio
• TV
• Print

• computer has enabled a convergence of the media
  form
• Multimedia
• New media

12
How does all this effect our everyday lives?
13
The big switch over

• The government intends to convert the country
  region by region between 2006 and 2010 but would
  only switch off the analogue signal when more
  than 95 of the population in a given area has
  access to digital TV.
• Matt WellsGuardian Unlimited Tuesday June 17,
  2003

14
CONVERGENCE
15

• Convergence occurs at many levels
• At the technological level
• capacity of digital production to draw together
  previously disparate analogue forms

16
Industrial level (added value)

• telecommunications
• computer
• broadcast

• motion picture
• print
• publishing industries

17
Industrial level (added value)

• market value of digital innovation
• reconstruction of commercial activities in the
  production and marketing of cool technologies

• offer the consumer a variety of interactive
  experiences.
• The big switch over

18
convergence

• The convergence of media forms is simply a

• constituent part of a larger scale technological
  development referred to as the information
  revolution (Dewdney and Boyd, 1995).

19
Convergence buzzword of information age
20
the ideology behind convergence

• THE CALIFORNIAN IDEOLOGY Barbrook and Campbell
  (1995)
• Published in Ludlow (ed), 2001 Crypto Anarchy,
  Cyberstates and Pirate Utopias MIT Press

• A convergence of
• counter-culture radicalism
• neo-liberalism
• technological determinism

21
THE CALIFORNIAN IDEOLOGY http//www.alamut.com/sub
j/ideologies/pessimism/califIdeo_I.html

• At the end of the twentieth century, the long
  predicted convergence of the media, computing and
  telecommunications into hypermedia is finally
  happening

22
THE CALIFORNIAN IDEOLOGY

• Once again, capitalism's relentless drive to
  diversify and intensify the creative powers of
  human labour is on the verge of transforming the
  way in which we work, play and live together.

23
Barbrook and Campbells argument

• Californian Ideology promiscuously combines
• the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies (social
  liberals)
• the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies (economic
  neo-liberals)

24
Barbrook and Campbells argument

• Bizarre fusion of
• the cultural bohemianism of San Francisco
• Hi-tech industries of Silicon Valley

25
Counter-culture radicalismof hippies

• liberals in the social sense of the word

• They championed rational and progressive
  ideals, such as democracy, tolerance,
  self-fulfilment and social justice.
  (Campbell and Barbrook, 1995)

26
Information wants to be free

• Information wants to be free
• Hacker ethic
• Networks as utopia (digitopia)

• Emboldened by over twenty years of economic
  growth, they believed that history was on their
  side.

27
Convergence with neo-liberalism (see Gidens,
1998 pp. 11-14)

• Thatcher in UK
• Civil society self-generating mechanism
• Free market rules Hostility to big centralised
  government
• American neo-conservatism (Reagan/Bush)

28
Neo-liberal civil society (see Gidens, 1998 pp.
11-14)

• Welfare state as destructive
• Markets are perpetual motion machines

• Markets linked to family and nation
• Social inequality naïve and implausible

29
Technological determinism and liberalism

• The convergence of media, computing and
  telecommunications would inevitably create
  the electronic agora

• a virtual place where everyone would be able to
  express their opinions without fear of censorship

30
Technological empowerment

• In the 1960s McLuhan preached the radical
  message that the power of big business and big
  government would be imminently overthrown by the
  intrinsically empowering effects of new
  technology on individuals

31
A contradictory mix of

• technological determinism
• hybrid libertarian individualism
• become the orthodoxy of the information age?

• the social liberalism of New Left and the
  economic liberalism of New Right have converged
  into an ambiguous dream of a hi-tech
  'Jeffersonian democracy'.

32
THE DISCOURSE OF CONVERGENCE

• The end of public service television?

33
The end of public service television?

• The Discourse of Convergence
• A Neo-Liberal Trojan Horse
  by Sampson Lugo
•  

• An article published in Broadcasting
  Convergence New Articulations of the Public
  Remit 2003 (Eds) Lowe and Hujanen Nordicom

34
New media regulation

• Does the big switch over mean the end of public
  service broadcasting
• BBC
• Free-to-air viewing
• Does the big switch over mean that corporations
  will control our television
• Sky
• Pay-per-view

35
What is public service?

• Regulated Media
• BBC and ITV companies are regulated

• The European tradition media regulation limits
• media concentration
• guarantees partial and political pluralism
• content diversity

36
What is the discourse?

• The discourse of convergence argues that
  regulation obstructs effective commercial
  decision-making

• New Labour and the end of public service
  television?
• Convergence
• slippery term used to deploy a political
  adjunct to neo-liberal economic policy

37
The discourse

• removes the term convergence from its technical
  context
• use it to present an ideological assumption
• to politically facilitate and justify

• Media de-regulation
• Reduce laws on ownership concentration
• Increase corporate participation in the sector

38
Technological determinism

• Technologies have emerged in a culture of
  marketization.

• Technological determinism frees the media
  corporation from the history of policy
• Justifies corporate demands for more freedom of
  action

39

• But it has also allowed the State to retreat from
  the defence of the public interest
• (cited in Murdock, Wieten and Dahlgren (eds),
  2000 pp. 35-58)

• The discourse assumes a technological determinant
  
• open up the media to
• market forces
• promotes
• free market values

40
Technology as driving force of policy change

• The Labour government under the premises of New
  Labour has intended to link the concepts of
  convergence and market together in a single
  discourse

41
SEMINAR QUESTIONS

• WHAT IS CONVERGENCE?
• WHAT ARE THE DISCOURSES BEHIND CONVERGENCE?
• WHAT ARE THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN IDEAS AND THE
  PARTICULAR CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH THEY ARISE?
• IS CONVERGENCE A RETHINKING OF THE HISTORY OF
  MEDIA?
• WHAT HAPPENS TO THE MEDIA AS WE KNOW IT?