ARTS3091 - Wk 2 - Media Change and Retrospectives

MACHINIC

The first week didn't quite cover as much as I'd expected so I'll just fuse the first two weeks together.

I can understand why media critics are so pessimistic and critical about the effects of technology on the society. Some argue that technology has no meaning, they are neutral, but it depends on the person using it to see whether it's beneficial or harmful. 

Think for example of a knife. Knives are ancient tools used by people to cut their prey as well as to fend off enemies. It's also one of the top most lethal things ever to have graced humankind. It's all perspectives, it really depends on the person. You could say it's technological determinism that brought this item into the world yet it's also materialism. Maybe the concept was natural but the creation and the label placed on the item is all human. You could say that most items of the ancient past were similar in this respect, civilizations were more work-driven than about entertainment.

Using this, we could see that the media has been known to have some impact on our lives. People use to gather around the television when it was first invented, it drew people into viewing the world through the broadcast's lens when the real is just outside their house. We used to glue our eyes on to the television back when computers weren't as prominent, but now? Look around. Smartphones is the new television in the long line of media technology. I've never been as frustrated taking the train as I have in the past, the level of fascination with handheld computers seems to go beyond a normal distraction but an intense obsession to be updated every second. 

I agree that technological change is an integral part of media, this idea that the media change happens after a long period of stability doesn't seem that plausible. It seems that the world has always been exposed to new technology every few decades, it seems like media change has always been a continuous process while a stable world, are short resting points for the new. 

The second reading with Parikka discusses this 'media archaelogy' heavily which I think is just a longer and less direct way to understand retrospectives. It's almost completely brought on by nostalgia, some would argue that retrospectives bring about nothing new into our world, but actually most ideas are always a synthesis of multiple interesting views. Perhaps people enjoy a simpler way of doing things to remind people that there is nothing to fear about the future. Understanding the old is a good way to understand the impact on the new, it's close to media historianism. 

Here's a link of an iphone with an NES controller case I came across a few months ago, I feel that this captures the idea of retro quite well in the age of smart phones (SvenS 2013)

References

SvenS 2012, Redbubble, accessed 13 April 2013,
<http://www.redbubble.com/people/svens/works/7891044-nes-controller?p=iphone-case&type=iphone5_deflector>