New Media Reader 247-338

The 1970 Software exhibition was on the whole, a big failure, but it did have an influence on artists, technologists, theorists, and the public. They tried to have an exhibit where people used the computers, but they crashed, and gerbils attacked each other. Ted Nelson created a new media installation that created ‘gerbil art’ where they would push blocks around, then a machine would arrange them into a grid-like pattern. Another instillation new media art was turning a glass window into a speaker playing poetry.

Burnham stated that, “the goal of Software is to focus our sensibilities on the fastest growing area in this culture: information processing systems and their devices.”


Constituents of a Theory of the Media

Media is a big business, and it hopes to make lots of money. Enzensberger states that in order to effect change, we must not turn away from media, but instead work at the media to where unjust culture is vulnerable. He proposes a new organization of media should take place, where tools of media are not only open to those who can afford it, but to everyone, so that they may be wherever there is social conflict. He wants a ‘mass newspaper’ where it is written and distributed by its readers (Wikipedia, Blogs). Although he doesn’t just want open forums for media distribution, he would rather instead of Rodney King being discussed on the web, that there was a massive rally of video tapes and a built network for a social movement opposed to police violence.

Enzensberger relates Benjamin to his necessity for a structure of society that is free from “the forces which destroy culture”, which is made closer by the mechanical reproduction of art, where there is no historical labor or shroud of aura surrounding a piece of art. He also addresses McLuhan because of his importance in stating and articulating the quote “the medium is the message”. This is important to Enzenberger’s statement becaue he declares that “the burgeoisie does indeed have all possible means at its disposal to communicate something to us, but that it has nothing more to say.


Requiem for the Media

Jean Baudrillard argues against Enzensberger and McLuhan, stating that media serves a social function. He also states that (just like Enzensberger) simply making everyone a producer will not will not improve the situation, but that unlike Enzensberger, the effect of making media reversible does not make it reciprocal. Instead he proposes that the problem lies within the very underlying model of communication. What we have now is the ‘simulation’ model of communication. His solution lies within joint production and genuine interaction.


The Technology and the Society

Raymond Williams introduces the concept of ‘flow’ with regards to television. Flow is characterized as the primary organizing principle of television. It is the combination of programs, commercials, and other material that makes up our experience of watching television. He states that new media is not created out of ‘thin air’, but that it is an ongoing process, and that the internet did not spring from J.C.R. Licklider’s head. It was created by ongoing social processes interacting with technical processes.


Computer Lib / Dream Machines

This is the most important book in new media history, according to NWF. This book Computer Lib predicted the oncoming of the personal computer. It also challenged the idea what the computer will be used for. The Dream Machines side of the book perhaps has even greater significance for new medias development. The message of this book is about media and design. The fundamental essence and importance of computers lies in its ability to enable new generations of media.

He proposed that coputer experiences should be designed for creative purposes and with the user in mind. He also proposes that new designed media should be placed in open publishing networks.