ENGL 668k: Digital Studies (Spring 2004)

My head is still swimming from last night's class (and from the week in general). I am not sure that I can digest everything that Melissa, Andrew, and Manovich put on the table. I simply don't have access to and the fledged understanding of things like semiotics that I think I need. So, this huge lack-of-theory modesty claim granted, I want to pose a few ideas and questions.

I am very much interested in the tension Manovich sets up between screen culture and information culture, picture culture and "text/word/number" culture. Are we going to move away from a visual culture completely (back to a purely e-print culture)? I, myself, am dubious. In the lecture clip, Manovich held up his Ericcson mobile phone and said that it was a sign of the move toward a purely information culture. I don't know when the vid was made, but I wonder how he'd respond now to the preponderance of "camera phones" on the market. The screen on the cell phone is getting larger, not smaller.

I do agree with Matt that we will are moving to a "freer" (loaded, loaded, loaded...sung to the tune of badger, badger, badger) culture where we will not be constrained to stooping over a keyboard and staring at a box of a monitor. Wireless technology, flat screens, voice recognition, heads-up displays, and other accomodating technologies are paving the way. It is interesting that Personal Digital Assistant (didn't they use to be called Personal Data Assistant?) rely on a stylus/writing for input. I wonder if we'll reach a point where "typing" will consist of simply entering hexadecimal strings or typing like playing an instrument where where characters are "chords" on a simplified input device. Of course, that would require a significant re-training of the culture.

Such a retraining (as well as the development of picture phones) points up again that materiality and economics significantly affect the development of, relationship to, acceptance of, and naturalization of, or rejection of new media. If the culture at large is resistant to retraining, learning how to use a data-entry device, then wouldn't slow if not derail the technology and overall attitude toward said technology. If we don't have picture phones, it's not necessarily because we no longer value the visual.

More later...

Here's the URL for the manovich film. If you would like to see the other films that were taken of speakers at the conference, go to second link.

http://www.brown.edu/Departments/MCM/amm/Videos/ManovichMov.html

http://www.brown.edu/Departments/MCM/amm/Videos/