Charlie Gere: Digital Culture. 2nd ed. (2009)
Filed under book | Tags: · arpanet, counterculture, cybernetics, cyberpunk, digital culture, facebook, fluxus, neoliberalism, technology
From our bank accounts to supermarket checkouts to the movies we watch, strings of ones and zeroes suffuse our world. Digital technology has defined modern society in numerous ways, and the vibrant digital culture that has now resulted is the subject of Charlie Gere’s engaging volume.
In this revised and expanded second edition, taking account of new developments such as Facebook and the iPhone, Charlie Gere charts in detail the history of digital culture, as marked by responses to digital technology in art, music, design, film, literature and other areas. After tracing the historical development of digital culture, Gere argues that it is actually neither radically new nor technologically driven: digital culture has its roots in the eighteenth century and the digital mediascape we swim in today was originally inspired by informational needs arising from industrial capitalism, contemporary warfare and counter-cultural experimentation, among other social changes.
A timely and cutting-edge investigation of our contemporary social infrastructures, Digital Culture is essential reading for all those concerned about the ever-changing future of our Digital Age.
Edition 2
Publisher Reaktion Books, 2009
ISBN 1861893884, 9781861893888
240 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-7-24)
Comment (0)Todd Winkler: Composing Interactive Music: Techniques and Ideas Using Max (2001)
Filed under book | Tags: · composing, interactive music, max, visual programming
Interactive music refers to a composition or improvisation in which software interprets live performances to produce music generated or modified by computers. In Composing Interactive Music, Todd Winkler presents both the technical and aesthetic possibilities of this increasingly popular area of computer music. His own numerous compositions have been the laboratory for the research and development that resulted in this book.
The author’s examples use a graphical programming language called Max. Each example in the text is accompanied by a picture of how it appears on the computer screen. The same examples are included as software on the accompanying CD-ROM, playable on a Macintosh computer with a MIDI keyboard.
Although the book is aimed at those interested in writing music and software using Max, the casual reader can learn the basic concepts of interactive composition by just reading the text, without running any software. The book concludes with a discussion of recent multimedia work incorporating projected images and video playback with sound for concert performances and art installations.
Publisher MIT Press, 2001
ISBN 0262731398, 9780262731393
Length 364 pages
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Naomi S. Baron: Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World (2008)
Filed under book | Tags: · blogging, electronic communication, facebook, instant messaging, internet, language, listening, mobile technology, multitasking, reading, writing
In Always On , Naomi S. Baron reveals that online and mobile technologies–including instant messaging, cell phones, multitasking, Facebook, blogs, and wikis–are profoundly influencing how we read and write, speak and listen, but not in the ways we might suppose. Baron draws on a decade of research to provide an eye-opening look at language in an online and mobile world. She reveals for instance that email, IM, and text messaging have had surprisingly little impact on student writing. Electronic media has magnified the laid-back “whatever” attitude toward formal writing that young people everywhere have embraced, but it is not a cause of it. A more troubling trend, according to Baron, is the myriad ways in which we block incoming IMs, camouflage ourselves on Facebook, and use ring tones or caller ID to screen incoming calls on our mobile phones. Our ability to decide who to talk to, she argues, is likely to be among the most lasting influences that information technology has upon the ways we communicate with one another. Moreover, as more and more people are “always on” one technology or another–whether communicating, working, or just surfing the web or playing games–we have to ask what kind of people we are becoming, as individuals and as family members or friends, if the relationships we form must increasingly compete for our attention with digital media.
* The first book to survey the field of electronically-mediated communication, position these technologies with respect to earlier language practices, and then evaluate the personal, cognitive, social, and linguistic consequences of contemporary language technologies.
* Analyzes of instant messaging conversations, multitasking, away messages, Facebook, and mobile phone usage by American college students draw upon original research by the author and her colleagues.
Publisher Oxford University Press US, 2008
ISBN 0195313054, 9780195313055
289 pages
PDF (updated on 2013-2-6)
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