Note 1 Comm and New Media: From Broadcast to Narrowcast

Foreword
. The democratisation of information will eventually lead the democracy itself to be the victim.
. The genesis of evolution from broadcast to narrowcast is technological, but its impact is sociological and political.
. The mode and content of the msgs themselves are changing as the platforms that carry them change.
. One-size-fits-all is being replaced by customisation.
Mass media --- micro-targeted media
Traditional broadcast model --- a vastly superior technological delivery system: the Internet ---> slice and dice a mass audience into mini-audiences.
. Schumpter's famous description of capitalims itself: creative destruction

Preface
. Comm: the process of sending and receiving msgs
Media: the means of comm and transmission
. For the media today, 'interactive' means that someone finds a way of tunnelling into your bank account!
. utopian- dystopian digression 题外话

Part 1 Political Economy, Technology, Culture, Media and Capitalism
. Technology: a process of linking useful knowledge and science to the ways in which society organises its productive (and destructive) relationship with nature and the material world.

1. Digital Futures: How the Mobile Phone has Replaced the Television?

Digital Futures
. contradiction in the new media technologies: hold the promise of a bright abundant future vs. the threat of increased surveillance, even greater monopoly over resources and greater control over our citizenship
Keeping up with the Future
. there are several possible futures associated with digital technologies
. process of convergence: the melding of one technology with another ---> produces a range of new hybrid technologies
. technologically pessimistic: more effective social manipulation and control / human society 'groaning in chains of its own construction' (Amis, 1960) / moves us inexorably towards a totalitarian world state, widens the rich-poor gap, enslaves us to the machine/ comm-oriented---> surveillance-oriented
technologically optimistic : technology somehow equals 'progress'
===> utopian vs. dystopian dialectic
. tech itself has no inherent social values---> social process of convergence will shape the converging tech
. first clue of digital future: broadcast ---> narrowcast: highly targeted narrowcasting: the mass audience is split into its individual particles, the single receiver-consumer ---> Internet / mobile phone/ digital set-top box
. eclectic approach: political economy+ cultural studies
. second concern: technological convergence : emphasise the social relations of convergence
. dialectical method and a philosophical outlook
Structure of the Book
. audience's make-up: two distinct but integrated aspects: consumers+ citizens ---> narrowcasting is all about finding and exploiting the niche market
Part 1: Political Economy, Technology, Culture and the Myths of Cyberia
Part 2: Hot Metal to Hotmail: the (Recent) History of Mass Comm
Part 3: The Emergence of Convergence: New Century, New Media
Part 4: From Broadcasting to Narrocasting: The Emergence of a Surveillance Economy
Young Voices, New Perspectives

2. Digital Dilemmas: Contradictions and Conflict in Thinking about Communication

What is the Dialectic?
. Dialectic: The idea that history is shaped by opposing force. The dialectic is the process of creation, and resolution of contradictions. is a way of understanding the relationship between things through the ways they are connected and the ways that they also simultaneouly contradicts each other.
. Hegelian dialectic: 3 elements: a. the proposition (thesis); b. an opposite or competing proposition (antithesis); c. the logical resolution of the tension between them (synthesis)
. In the book: The organising principle on which the forward momentum of society is based.
. Principle of the dialectic and dialectical thinking: recognizes that the real world is made up of both 'parts and a whole', organised in a 'concrete totality' that contains both 'integration and contradiction' ( Mosco, 1996)
. The operation of the dialectic in human society: a process of historical change over time, a 'spiral movement' in which each advance contains within itself an element of regression ( Alex Callinicos, 1995) ---> two steps forward, one step back
The Dialectic of Nature
. Basic molecular level: double helix of DNA
. Social level: human vs. nature
Living and Working in a 'Material' World
. Materialsim: The philosophical mode of thought that suggests that events, situations, and relationships in the real, physical world determine, to the largest degree, human consciousness and thinking.
. Historical materialism ( Marx and Engels): human beings' interaction with nature creates the material conditions for the development of social structures and argues that the social force that drives historical change is the struggle between classes for control of the material world, in particular control over the means of production. ---> It is the distribution of power within the production process that ultimately determines questions of ownership, access, and wealth. (Callinicos, 1987)
---> dialectic in human society takes the form of a constant struggle between the exploiters and exploited and violent overthrow
. Idealism: the worldview in which all manifestations of reality actually stem from the thought process of human beings, rather than from their material circumstances.
. In modern capitalist economy: the separation of ownership and control from those who are the direct producers and consumers is the key to all social relations ---> exploitation and inequality in the distribution of resources and wealth were not inevitable and certainly not immutable
. 'revolution': some form of social disruption and period of uncertainty, change, and instability in the economy, politics and cultural life.
Memes: The Dialectic of Information and Comm
. Meme: a small but powerful chunk of ideological DNA that carries ideas, meanings, trends, and fashions through both time and space via the process of mimetic (imitative) transfer. (Richard Dawkins, 1976)
. Memes are the medium of cultural transmission, often at a much faster rate than that of genetic mutation and evolution in nature.
. Mass media play a key role in the process of mimetic reproduction and mutation.
. The speed and the anarchic architecture of the Internet can lead to the rapid circulation of a new meme, create a paperless trail that legitimises information that is functionally unreliable and 'unchecked by reality'. ---> counter-cultural anarchists of Cyberia
. Ideology: a worldview based on principles or intuitions that may or may not be logical or internally consistent. ---> 'false' consciousness tied to the 'social relations of domination'.
The Information Revolution: Digital Dialectic
. industrial-technical relation ---> techno-liberation meme (Mondoids) ---> anarcho-technical meme (R.U.Sirius/ cyberian) ===> much more controlled and commercial/ the meme of the 'knowledge society'/ heavily supported by gov and companies (begin in the late 1970s, circulate during the second wave of digital development )
. various media coexist with the Internet and the wireless comm ---> not 'replace' or 'kill'
. Technology meme: Bronze Age-> Iron Age-> the age of steam-> the epoch of the railway->Fordism-> Post-Fordism
Vectors: A Circuit for the Viral Transmission of Mimetic Code
. Vector: the pathway or pathways open to pathogens 病原体to infect a population / In comm study, vector is a pathway or pathways open for comm, in particular the transmission of ideology via mimetic transfer and mutation.
. vector produces a new kind of experience: telesthesia 精神感应，心心相印: percepition at a distance (Wark, 1994) ---> we are disconnected by this experience in a sense
. The most important of the mimetic vectors in the past hundred years have been the parliamentary/presidential style of civil society and the development of a highly commercial and now globally dominant, media-dependent popular culture.
. vector itself is not necessarily neutral or value-free, it may be hegemonic or subversive
.' We no longer have roots, we have aerials' (Wark, 1994)
. Tension: physical experience vs. what they tell us vs. the mediated view presented via the externally controlled vectors of mass comm
. technologies themselves are often the vectors
. 'digital inclusion' (Microsoft Corp. ) : empower people around the world through digital prosperity
Convergence as a Dialectic
. 'Dialectic of convergence' : technical process ----- result of social process of invention and application / socicial process ----- construced by every tools' ideological bias and predispostion, amplify one sense or skill or attitude more loudly than another
Key Points
. principle of dialectic
. 'the material': who owns the technologies of production
. memes and vectors/ narrowcast---> individually targeted, consumers rather than citizens