Week 2
Lecture 1
01 Media Life
Let go of defining media. Everyone has a different perspective to what media is.
- If you stretch the definition far enough, language was our first medium. Now, technology,
media, and our digital environment is now necessary for survival.
- Illusion of control
- We live in it, not with it.
- There is no outside media or a sacred space where you can log off.
- Elevator close door button example as an illusion of control.
- The delete key is the same. Deleting something is an illusion of control, but it
never really goes away. It is always stored somewhere.
- Three reasons why you could be studying this course:
- Wanting a career in media
- The erotics of media
- The notion of pleasure; the fact that we derive pleasure from media
- Fearing the effects of media
- It has not been proven that the media has effects on the general public.
- We assume that the media has profound effects because we live in the
media, but living in the media makes it difficult to differentiate between
the consequences of reality and consequences of the media.
- Media is our straightjacket. You can’t wrestle yourself free and
can’t “disconnect” by just turning it off. It is everywhere and there
is no outside to media.
- The goal of this 6-week course is to see this straightjacket.
- Sometimes, you can see it.
- Power outages
- When you see someone using their media
- When the media tries to simultaneously remind you
that you are in a media yet still in the real world
(VR example).
- Life in A Day
- Put together by Youtube using submissions from thousands of people from
different places, different classes, and different backgrounds in the world.
- TV remotes
- Initially came with no off buttons.
- Meant to control the viewer rather than for the viewer to have control
, - TV shows were initially called programs- programming us into sitting and
watching tv all day.
- It is important to STAY aware of media
- Once you take it for granted, that is when you stop seeing the power it has over
you.
- 8 fundamentals of media
- Media and pervasive (cannot be switched off) and ubiquitous (is everywhere).
- No matter how hard you try to switch off, data is always still being
collected to some extent.
- Everyone’s media is a surveillance device, whether you allow it to
yourself and enforce it even or do the opposite.
- Media have long (complex) histories.
- There is no such thing as new media and old media, as they are always
intertwined, interacting, and interconnected.
- “New” media, or new technologies are just updated versions of our
“old” media, or old technologies.
- We do things with media that we have always done, just in
different ways (methods).
- Writing on cloth vs typing on touch screen.
- Using books to find phone numbers vs googling them.
- When people are confronted with “new media”, they use them for
“old things”.
- All the technologies we’re introduced to nowadays have been known for
10 years, they just never introduced it right away because we wouldn’t
know what to do with it. They do it step by step.
- Streaming video websites have been around since the 1990s.
- Youtube “won” because it was the only platform that
allowed clickable thumbnails.
- User innovation.
- Most ideas for technology don’t come from technology companies,
but from users.
- We use technologies in ways that weren’t necessarily
intended by engineers, and that gives ideas to create more
things.
- Media raises ethical issues.
- When we use a device, we use it to make something better
- A relationship
- Your experience (music for example)
- To take action about the things we care about (#metoo)
, - Use the media to take responsibility and get what you want from the
world.
- Media are a source of pleasure and fun
- Don’t let the study of media kill your joy in media.
- People are comfortable with media
- The fact that people engaged in “Life in the Day” so comfortably
- People normally share bits of their life, whether in video, picture, or text,
in their day-to-day life.
- Every single website that has an ad for a platform gives data and
tracking information to that platform. Even if you don’t have an
account on said platform.
- Anywhere that has a link to facebook, or a link to
instagram.
- Regardless, the comfort is still there, knowing that this and
more is possible.
- People are confident with media
- The way things are filmed, the way the media allows you to post what you
want and whenever you want allows confidence with comfort.
- We don’t know what’s exactly inside of these softwares, these algorithms,
these systems. But we are confident within it.
- Every platform nowadays is curated to be yours and only yours. Your
tinder algorithm, the ads that come up, the songs that come up in your
“random” spotify playlists. Your experience online is one in the whole
world’s population.
- People accept surveillance
- We’re fine with it.
- We’re all consistently doing free labor, giving our data.
- Even those who go online to rant about surveillance and privacy
rights, they are still massively engaging in it just by being online.
- Google doesn’t know YOU. Google knows a statistical aggregate of you.
- It is not you, personally, that is being surveilled. You are a number made
up of numbers and statistics.
- People work for media
- People see no problem in doing said free labor for the media.
- No one in life in a day got paid. Everyone signed to that.
- The value of media is determined by the work that we do for it.
- The value of a movie, per say, is not the budget of the film. It is
how many of us walk in to see that movie. How many of us chat
about the movie and how many of us do free advertising for these
movies just by online discussions.
Lecture 1
01 Media Life
Let go of defining media. Everyone has a different perspective to what media is.
- If you stretch the definition far enough, language was our first medium. Now, technology,
media, and our digital environment is now necessary for survival.
- Illusion of control
- We live in it, not with it.
- There is no outside media or a sacred space where you can log off.
- Elevator close door button example as an illusion of control.
- The delete key is the same. Deleting something is an illusion of control, but it
never really goes away. It is always stored somewhere.
- Three reasons why you could be studying this course:
- Wanting a career in media
- The erotics of media
- The notion of pleasure; the fact that we derive pleasure from media
- Fearing the effects of media
- It has not been proven that the media has effects on the general public.
- We assume that the media has profound effects because we live in the
media, but living in the media makes it difficult to differentiate between
the consequences of reality and consequences of the media.
- Media is our straightjacket. You can’t wrestle yourself free and
can’t “disconnect” by just turning it off. It is everywhere and there
is no outside to media.
- The goal of this 6-week course is to see this straightjacket.
- Sometimes, you can see it.
- Power outages
- When you see someone using their media
- When the media tries to simultaneously remind you
that you are in a media yet still in the real world
(VR example).
- Life in A Day
- Put together by Youtube using submissions from thousands of people from
different places, different classes, and different backgrounds in the world.
- TV remotes
- Initially came with no off buttons.
- Meant to control the viewer rather than for the viewer to have control
, - TV shows were initially called programs- programming us into sitting and
watching tv all day.
- It is important to STAY aware of media
- Once you take it for granted, that is when you stop seeing the power it has over
you.
- 8 fundamentals of media
- Media and pervasive (cannot be switched off) and ubiquitous (is everywhere).
- No matter how hard you try to switch off, data is always still being
collected to some extent.
- Everyone’s media is a surveillance device, whether you allow it to
yourself and enforce it even or do the opposite.
- Media have long (complex) histories.
- There is no such thing as new media and old media, as they are always
intertwined, interacting, and interconnected.
- “New” media, or new technologies are just updated versions of our
“old” media, or old technologies.
- We do things with media that we have always done, just in
different ways (methods).
- Writing on cloth vs typing on touch screen.
- Using books to find phone numbers vs googling them.
- When people are confronted with “new media”, they use them for
“old things”.
- All the technologies we’re introduced to nowadays have been known for
10 years, they just never introduced it right away because we wouldn’t
know what to do with it. They do it step by step.
- Streaming video websites have been around since the 1990s.
- Youtube “won” because it was the only platform that
allowed clickable thumbnails.
- User innovation.
- Most ideas for technology don’t come from technology companies,
but from users.
- We use technologies in ways that weren’t necessarily
intended by engineers, and that gives ideas to create more
things.
- Media raises ethical issues.
- When we use a device, we use it to make something better
- A relationship
- Your experience (music for example)
- To take action about the things we care about (#metoo)
, - Use the media to take responsibility and get what you want from the
world.
- Media are a source of pleasure and fun
- Don’t let the study of media kill your joy in media.
- People are comfortable with media
- The fact that people engaged in “Life in the Day” so comfortably
- People normally share bits of their life, whether in video, picture, or text,
in their day-to-day life.
- Every single website that has an ad for a platform gives data and
tracking information to that platform. Even if you don’t have an
account on said platform.
- Anywhere that has a link to facebook, or a link to
instagram.
- Regardless, the comfort is still there, knowing that this and
more is possible.
- People are confident with media
- The way things are filmed, the way the media allows you to post what you
want and whenever you want allows confidence with comfort.
- We don’t know what’s exactly inside of these softwares, these algorithms,
these systems. But we are confident within it.
- Every platform nowadays is curated to be yours and only yours. Your
tinder algorithm, the ads that come up, the songs that come up in your
“random” spotify playlists. Your experience online is one in the whole
world’s population.
- People accept surveillance
- We’re fine with it.
- We’re all consistently doing free labor, giving our data.
- Even those who go online to rant about surveillance and privacy
rights, they are still massively engaging in it just by being online.
- Google doesn’t know YOU. Google knows a statistical aggregate of you.
- It is not you, personally, that is being surveilled. You are a number made
up of numbers and statistics.
- People work for media
- People see no problem in doing said free labor for the media.
- No one in life in a day got paid. Everyone signed to that.
- The value of media is determined by the work that we do for it.
- The value of a movie, per say, is not the budget of the film. It is
how many of us walk in to see that movie. How many of us chat
about the movie and how many of us do free advertising for these
movies just by online discussions.
