Techno Culture and Human Bodies

It has been suggested by Debra Shaw that humans have a correlation to machines, rather than two different entities. Using the of the body's circulatory system as an example Shaw compares it to working with medical tools to create our 'natural' understand of the human body. Shaw tells us about William Harvey building upon Galen's findings how the heart served its purpose. Shaw continues to say "produced by technology in the simple sense that Harvey had necessarily to use tools to examine the workings of the heart."(Shaw, 2008, p.82) This suggestion allows us to make correlations between machines and the human bodies being repaired and reassembled using tools. 

There is a fixation among individuals to create ideological embodiments of there perfect self using technologies which have only advanced because of our understand of the human body. The example used within Shaw's Technoculture is that of Bruce Springsteen and the modern geek. Bruce Springsteen used in the consumer society to relate towards those of the working class by doing so creating a body that was enhanced with technologies within a gym.

"He thus signifies the passage from the body of the industrial worker, marked by social class, to the body of the late capitalist consumer" (Shaw, 2008, p.85). 

 

Emphasizing Shaw's notion of Bruce Springsteen, the modern geek, as the machine driven body can be constructed to fit the ideological stance within their cyberspace. With the emergence of Web 2.0, the computer literate can create new identities, to enhance properties of themselves otherwise unknown outside of cyberspace. This allows a "construction of a wide variety of private worlds and, through them, for self-exploration". (Turkle, 1984, p.21). With the technology allowing us to use pseudonyms, and be annoymous within cyberspace, the reality creates convergence between collective intelligence and its participatory culture. Do we live as a machine or in a machine?

Bibliography

Shaw, D. (2008). Technoculture: The Key Concepts. Oxford: Oxford Berg Press.

Turkle, S. (1984) The Second Life: Computers & The Human Spirit 

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture, where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press. 

I Am Transcoding

Is New media really as new as we know it is, or does transcoding change the definition? Manovich identifies the commercial effect on New media stating that "since on one level New media is an Old media which has been digitized" (Manovich, 2002, p65). We can see throughout Manovich's train of thought that digitization controls "mass media and data processing [through] the complimentary technologies of a modern mass society" (Manovich, 2002, p46). We are transcoding and we don't want it to be hidden inside mass data programming, as it helps us work with convergence to create one media object from several formats.

As a new form of digital community, we become the transcoders. In doing so we identify with the convergence of New media data and its advantage over Old media data. "While from one point of view computerized media still displays structural organization which makes sense to its human user" (Manovich, 2002, p63). At this moment we can characterize the human user within the "cultural layer" (ibid) found in the recuse of the users mind. Cultural layers fall inside the mental identity of Old media such as photography and radio, through their use of storytelling in a physical format. At this stage we begin to see a character transformation from the users mental state (the cultural layer) to the "computer layer" (ibid) which performs the mass data programming and processing found in the basics of transcoding.

Transcoding isn't about separation, but about a collective nature in which both states of mind; be that human or computer, they can come together to form and intelligence of New media. Both these layers  combine the Old media such as photography with the New media. In doing so we store and relive that side media. With a culture nature and a computer intellect, the digitization of media is created to the format of how we become the the converged Old media.

Bibliography:
Manovich, L (2002) What is New Media and Principles of New Media from the Language of New Media (Cambridge, Mass :London MIT Press)

Automated media, rise of the machines?

Lev Manovich has identified how factors, such as computerisation, have changed medias function and social significance while new media takes its place as the staple of the digital age. Manovich "reduces all principles of new media to five: numerical  representation, modularity, automation, variability and cultural transcoding", identifying the key factors which differentiate old and new media (Manovich, 2002, pg.44). All new media is now made up of "digital code" and so "becomes programmable", allowing computers to store, produce and distribute our media (Manovich, 2002, pg.49). Before technology was just a tool for media, just a calculator which aided us but with technological advancements it now shares in the creative production process.

Manovich notes how "human intentionally can be removed from the creative process, at least in part", software such as Photoshop, creates, edits and filters our content for us at the click of a button, taking most human interaction out of new media (Manovich, 2002, pg.53). Are we being limited by computers? By relying on automated technology, we take a back seat in creating media compared to the manual processes of old media. We live in a society "now concerned as much with accessing and re-using existing media as with creating new one" (Manovich, 2002, pg.55). If everyone is re-using existing media, this may stunt the creative possibility's of new media, leaving us with ideas that will never be imagined.

Artificial intelligence becomes ever more real, as computerised controls such as "software agents" filters our media for what it deems relevant, using our information and profiles to adapt new media around us (Manovich, 2002, pg.55). Creating a Big Brother mentality, as we are being monitored, controlled and restricted by computer technology. Although as seen in video games, this control is merely an illusion  by "AI engines" which "use a variety of approaches to simulate human intelligence", restricting our own choices to fit within the rules of its own digital world (Manovich, 2002, pg.54). Though digitization has also given the user more control over time and media, such as through "random access"(Manovich, 2002, pg.67). By rejecting the "human-centered" order of old media such as the fixed order of videotapes, it allows time to be "managed, analysed and manipulated more easily"(Manovich, 2002, pg.67).

Bibliography
Manovich, L. (2002) The Language Of New Media, (Cambridge, Mass, :London MIT Press)

Second Gen Convergence

We are no longer living in a world that denies any involvement of convergence, yet we also don't fully intend to use convergence to its full potential. As the human race, we work and develop in new generations (groups of people with new intentions on the world) and in doing so, we look at convergence as an essential part of your lives the same way we need air to breath.

A generation of convergence starts to grow from an "individual consumer and through their social interactions with others" (Jenkins, 2008, p3). This is were we identify the acknowledgement of generation convergence such as, the ideals of a blog. We find a new generation in the forms of blog literacy, in formations that use images to tell and story and add anchorage to involve a community on such blog databases.

"Some functions will take root; others will fail" (Jenkins, 2008, p4). We see how the collective process pulls away and grows towards new media and its many platforms. We can see this in how a tablet can now be used as a mobile phone with instant messaging software. This new identified platform could be seen as a creation of what we understand as convergence. This uses the intelligence of a consumer to make a new market in which they combine with the collective. These ideals are not only found imbedded into the minds of one individual but in the new generation that has no priory engagement with Old and even New Media but are indebted to the ever growing state of the convergence found in mass volume, such as; "TV converged with the nickelodeon, the word-processing program converged with the typewriter" (Jenkins, 2008, p5) and so on.

As we find here convergence will not simply disappear. With every new generation convergence will get stronger and will proceed to overcome all new forms of media with a united front. In doing so we  are in convergence culture.

Bibliography:
Jenkins, H., 2008. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide revised., NYU press.