New Media: A Critical Introduction, 2nd ed. (2003/2008)

“New Media: A Critical Introduction is a comprehensive introduction to the culture, history, technologies and theories of new media. Written especially for students, the book considers the ways in which ‘new media’ really are new, assesses the claims that a media and technological revolution has taken place and formulates new ways for media studies to respond to new technologies.

The authors introduce a wide variety of topics including: how to define the characteristics of new media; social and political uses of new media and new communications; new media technologies, politics and globalization; everyday life and new media; theories of interactivity, simulation, the new media economy; cybernetics, cyberculture, the history of automata and artificial life.

Substantially updated from the first edition to cover recent theoretical developments, approaches and significant technological developments, this is the best and by far the most comprehensive textbook available on this exciting and expanding subject.

At www.newmediaintro.com you will find:
* additional international case studies with online references
* specially created You Tube videos on machines and digital photography
* a new ‘Virtual Camera’ case study, with links to short film examples
* useful links to related websites, resources and research sites
* further online reading links to specific arguments or discussion topics in the book
* links to key scholars in the field of new media”

By Martin Lister, Jon Dovey, Seth Giddings, Iain Grant, Kieran Kelly
Publisher Routledge
ISBN 0415431611, 9780415431613
464 pages

Authors
Publisher

PDF (updated on 2012-12-14)

Armin Medosch: Technological Determinism in Media Art (2005)

“Technological determinism is the belief that science and technology are autonomous and the main force for change in society. It is neither new nor particularly original but has become an immensely powerful and largely orthodox view of the nature of social change in highly industrialised societies. In this paper I analyse the presence of technological determinism in general discourses about the relationship between social change and science and technology.

I show that techno-determinist assumptions underlie developments in what is called technoscience, a term describing new practices in science and technology with particular relevancy for the related fields of genetic engineering and computer science. Those areas create a specific set of narratives, images and myths, which is called the techno-imaginary. The thesis of my paper is that the discourse on media art uncritically relies on many elements of the techno-imaginary. A specific type of media art, which is identifiable with people, institutions and a period in time, is particularly engaged with the tropes of the techno-imaginary. This strand, which I call high media art, successfully engaged in institution building by using techno-determinist language. It achieved its goals but was short lived, because it was built on false theoretical premises. It made wrong predictions about the future of a ‘telematic society’ and a ‘telematic consciousness’; and it missed the chance to build the foundations of a theory of media art because it was and is contaminated by the false assumptions behind technological determinism.”

Keywords: technological determinism; media art; techno-utopianism; artificial intelligence; artificial life; cybernetics; art; progress; critical theory

Master’s thesis
Ravensbourne College / Sussex University
57 pages

Author

PDF, PDF (updated on 2015-7-23)