Ronald E. Day: The Modern Invention of Information: Discourse, History, and Power (2001)
Filed under book | Tags: · capitalism, critical theory, cybernetics, cyberspace, cyborg, deterritorialization, information society, information technology, information theory, mass media, technological determinism, utopia
“Ronald E. Day provides a historically informed critical analysis of the concept and politics of information in the twentieth century. Analyzing texts in Europe and the United States, his critical reading method goes beyond traditional historiographical readings of communication and information by engaging specific historical texts in terms of their attempts to construct and reshape history.
After laying the groundwork and justifying his method of close reading for this study, Day examines the texts of two pre-World War II documentalists, Paul Otlet and Suzanne Briet. Through the work of Otlet and Briet, Day shows how documentation and information were associated with concepts of cultural progress. Day also discusses the social expansion of the conduit metaphor in the works of Warren Weaver and Norbert Wiener. He then shows how the work of contemporary French multimedia theorist Pierre Lévy refracts the earlier philosophical writings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari through the prism of the capitalist understanding of the “virtual society.”
Turning back to the pre-World War II period, Day examines two critics of the information society: Martin Heidegger and Walter Benjamin. He explains Heidegger’s philosophical critique of the information culture’s model of language and truth as well as Benjamin’s aesthetic and historical critique of mass information and communication. Day concludes by contemplating the relation of critical theory and information, particularly in regard to the information culture’s transformation of history, historiography, and historicity into positive categories of assumed and represented knowledge.”
Publisher SIU Press, 2001
ISBN 0809323907, 9780809323906
152 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-8-1)
Comment (0)Martin Beťko: Hysteria.sk a Kyberia.sk – sonda do virtuálnej komunity (2008) [Slovak]
Filed under thesis | Tags: · community, hacker culture, hacking, information society, slovakia, virtual communities
Táto práca sa zaoberá problematikou nových médií a ich potenciálom k spoločenskej zmene. Práca pozostáva z troch častí. V prvej z nich sa autor snaží problematiku vymedziť v rámci kontextu technooptimistickej a technopesimistickej debaty a zaujať v nej svoje stanovisko, v zvyšných dvoch sa potom svoje argumenty snaží doložiť na príkladoch dvoch prípadových štúdií. V prípade oboch štúdií ide o mikrospoločenstvá – komunity, pri ktorých zrode a vývoji zohrala kľúčovú úlohu informačná technológia, ktorá je v centre súčasného záujmu mediálnych teoretikov – Internet. Hystéria.sk bola diskusným serverom, ktorý v období rokov 1998 – 2006 združovala početnú hackerskú komunitu. Jej fungovanie bolo úzko naviazané na využívanie sledovaného média a viedlo u členov k vytvoreniu špecifických návykov a subkultúrnych prvkov. Kybéria.sk je komunitným diskusným webom bez užšieho zamerania združujúcim v súčasnosti asi 7 500 užívateľov. Jej komunitný charakter vyplýva zo zdieľania spoločného virtuálneho prostredia tvoreného fórami, článkami a osobnými denníkmi. Hoci oba fenomény fungovali istú dobu viac menej oddelene, existovali medzi nimi silné podobnosti ktoré nakoniec viedli k zblíženiu oboch komunít a ich následnému prepojeniu. Tieto podobnosti zahrňovali: decentralizovaný charakter vyplývajúci z nedôvery k autoritám, komunitný charakter charakterizovaný pocitom blízkosti a samotné zameranie oboch serverov, ktoré zahrňovalo voľnú distribúciu informácií medzi užívateľmi. O pozitívnom charaktere týchto atribútov a ich možnom prínose pri ďalšom vývoji spoločnosti sa autor snaží čitateľa presvedčiť v závere práce.
Kľúčové slová
hysteria.sk, kyberia.sk, virtualni komunita, informacni spolecnost, technologie, internet, kyberkultura, hacker
Diplomová práce
Masarykova Univerzita v Brně, Fakulta sociálních studií, Katedra mediálních studií a žurnalistiky
Vedoucí práce: Mgr. David Kořínek
Brno: FSS MU, 2008
Hysteria.sk and Kyberia.sk – a historical and ideological probe into the virtual community
This work is dealing with the issue of new media and their capability to push ahead changes in society. It consists of three basic parts. The main effort of the first part is to situate the issue within the context of the technooptimistic and the technopessimistic debate, the other two parts are basically case studies, which are supposed to support the arguments of the author. The subject of both of these studies are communities, which came to existence in close connection with the proliferation of the new information technology called the Internet. Hysteria.sk has been a discussion server, which became a home for a numerous hacker community during the period of 1998 – 2006. The everyday life of the community was strongly influenced by the usage of Internet and computers and led to the prominence of specific behavior patterns and subcultural elements. Kyberia.sk is a community website with a current population of 7 500 users. Its community character is gained by a shared experience in a common virtual environment. Even though both of these servers are basically alone standing phenomena, they have some strong similarities: stress on decentralization, their community character (cohesiveness) and free flow of information between users. At the very end of the work the author claims these characteristics to have the capability to change (in a good way) the evolution of the society.
Christopher May (ed.): Key Thinkers for the Information Society (2003)
Filed under book | Tags: · globalisation, history of technology, information society, internet, technological determinism
With the aim of widening current perspectives on the information society, each contributor introduces a particular social theorist and discusses the way in which their insights can be reintroduced into debates regarding the social, political and cultural impact of information and communication technologies. Theorists include: Walter Benjamin; Murray Edeleman; Jacques Ellul; Harold Innes; Lewis Mumford; Karl Polanyi; Eric Elmer Scattachneider and Raymond Williams.
Published by Routledge, 2003
ISBN 0415296722, 9780415296724
194 pages
Key terms:
information society, Lewis Mumford, Walter Benjamin, Harold Innis, megalopolis, Karl Polanyi, technological determinism, information age, digital divide, Wolin, Jacques Ellul, Elmer Eric Schattschneider, industrial revolution, information revolution, Frankfurt School, globalisation, Marxist, Internet, postmodern, history of technology
PDF (updated on 2012-8-11)
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