Different Views of Digital Media
(From readings for this week in Living in the Information Age)

The readings for this week offer a variety of perspectives of just what today's digital media are all about. Here's a very brief summary of each:

Reading 3-1 (Rushkoff): Digital media represent a RENAISSANCE (renewal, positive change) in the way we create meaning. The networked, grassroots nature of the Internet is at the heart of this renaissance. We are connected to one another, and meaning is therefore constructed by each of us, both individually and collaboratively. Top-down control -- by the media, business, government or any other institution -- no longer work. We each write and publish our own stories about the world. (And check out what he has to say about the Internet and God!)
Reading 2-2 (Weinberger): Digital media also give us the capability to actively construct (and share) our identities, and they affect the way we go about that construction. We are all "small pieces loosely joined" together online, in ways not bound by either geography or traditional social rules. (Again, if you're interested in this topic, I highly recommend the book that this reading comes from; info is under "books" on the online syllabus.)
Reading 2-3 (Bolter and Grusin): This one is somewhat related to the idea of "mediamorphosis," as well as to McLuhan. The authors discuss a process they call REMEDIATION, which involves the way in which new media forms draw on and extend older ones. They highlight the importance of IMMEDIACY (which they define as a sense of "presence" or of immersion in the world that the media are presenting to us) and HYPERMEDIACY (which is their word for multimedia -- text, images, etc., available within a single medium, such as the Internet). Together, these attributes indicate a desire to get past the limits of representation and to achieve (or at least simulate) reality.
Reading 3-1 (Pavlik and McIntosh): The authors discuss media convergence. They cover some of the same ground as the OJR piece, as well as discussing attributes of old and new media forms. They also emphasize changes in relationships between (and among) media producers and media audiences.
Reading 6-1 (Gitlin): The readings in Chapter 6 are significantly less euphoric in tone. This one discusses the effects of media saturation and the fact that we are continually, inescapably immersed in mediated messages.
Reading 6-4 (Shenk): Information is not just a commodity, it is a pollutant. This article is about information overload ("data smog") and its effects.