Week 1 Lecture Thoughts & Tutespark

How do we distinguish between old and new communication technologies? Under what circumstances will new communication technologies become old communication technologies? And my thoughts on the first lecture.
So perhaps one of the best ways to transcribe the way in which my thoughts on New Communications technology has changed, from this very first lecture, is to explain a bit about my previous thoughts on what Communication technology was.
If I had of been asked yesterday what Comm. Tech is, I probably would have said something along the line of ‘Phones and stuff..’, but let me tell you, it’s a much greater part of modern life than my naive definition.
Communication, I discovered, comes in many forms other than verbal and has many outlets. Aristotle defined communication in much the same way as I would have:

‘The speaker produces a message that is heard by the listener.’

As fantastic as Aristotle was, I think it is defiantly saying something that my definition was congruent with one that was already defined 2500 years ago. In Aristotle’s day the world was an entirely different place, technology to communicate was fairly limited to verbal or written. Today I can communicate to 429 of my closest friends in seconds with a quick Status update from my Blackberry, no matter where I am or what I’m doing. I wonder what Aristotle would have to say about that? Something was telling me a modern definition was neccicary; thankfully we were given one from Shannon & Weaver:
‘The speaker produces an effect on the transmitter which sends a message (which is degraded by the noise of the transmission process) that is intercepted by the receiver which converts it into an effect that is heard by the listener.’
Starting to sound like something that has room for my Blackberry in it definition, but still isn’t quite perfect, is it?
Now, I don’t want to be quoting my lecturers the whole way through this post, but those clever lads quickly raised the essential prerequisite for effective communication, missing from this definition: intersubjectivity and intertextuality.
Whatever it is your trying to communicate it will always be interpreted, changed and contextualised. Even though I personally think my opinions are 100% perfectly correct, 100% of the time, unfortunately not everyone will agree.
A priest in Nigeria and a homeless New Yorker will obviously have a different take on the world. To effectively communicate there has to be opportunities for these different views to be taken into consideration.

So already you should be able to tell, the first 10 minutes of my first lecture has changed my definition - From ‘Phones and stuff’, allowing for verbal communication, into a much broader definition. There is now room in this definition for the masses of communication technology (which include opportunities for intertexutality and intersubjectivity) available to us today. And thankfully that was the next thing the lecture hall discussed.

I really like the definition of technology given to us from Marshall McLuhan, which basically said technology is an extension of us. My pen is an extension of my hand, the wheel on my bike is an extension of my legs... and on it goes. So then I started to consider these two definitions and what they mean together as a communication technology. Any tool that aids my ability to communicate a message, which is an extension of my mind, can then be defined as communication technology.

Communication technology has been around a long time in an analog form and more recently digital came into the picture - and isn’t it fantastic. Analog is seldom used at present, some people still prefer analog for certain uses: For reasons unknown to me I always prefer to use my film cameras rather than my soul-less, shinny, 12mp digital camera: other than that one exception I devotedly use digital technology.
And this is where the difference clearly lies between new and old communication Technology. Analog is fading fast from my life, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it hasn’t completely faded from yours. It’s replacement by digital has it heading towards obsolete - which is exactly what defines it as old technology. If you had to define a new Communication Technology, a single word would do: Digital.

Digital technology allows for wide audiences, Mobiles, internet, television, social networking, Flickr, Youtube and of course, the technology I am using this very second, blogs. I can potentially communicate with a large part of technologically prevalent world. On Youtube for example I have the potential to communicate my thoughts or ideas with an online video that millions may watch, comment on, like and share with others. On Flickr, it is much the same. I can communicate my photographs (or as McLuhan may describe it, extensions of my eyes) to the 40-odd million Flickr members, who can save, comment, tag and share my photographs.

I suddenly feel the world getting smaller, and this is where the technology has started to reach a convergence. We are heading to the point where I can access all the communication technology my heart desires with one all encompassing tool. Computers have converged so many aspects of technology, to the point where I no longer use, or even own for that matter, a land line telephone. Instead I click a few buttons on my laptop and Skype who ever I needed to converse with. Or I can click a few different buttons on my laptop and post a tweet to some of the 75 million twitter users. The computer seems to be a pretty usefull convergence tool.
But then we take a few steps further towards total convergence. We have the beautiful, radiant cult item for communication technology, and I bet you can guess which one I mean. The iphone. In fact, there is a myriad of palm-size smart phones on the market trying to do the same thing – converge all your communication technologies into one, fabulous communication technology tool.

Analog defiantly defines the old. Digital defines our New communication technology, but convergence defines the future.

Surprising what you can learn in a 50 minute lecture, isn’t it?





http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/blogspotting/archives/2009/04/flickr_as_a_soc.html

My general feelings towards a blog...

I'm finding it a bit intimidating to writing my own blog, considering my general hatred for blogs... every blog I have trawled through seems to be an avenue for someone to publicize their physical or mental vanity. Now I find myself writing one for a major piece of assessment, making me feel somewhat hypocritical.

However, I am more than happy to write one as part of my course - At this point, I haven't the slightest clue what I will do after my degree. Maybe if I can take full advantage of every learning opportunity that comes my way, I might be prepared for whatever awaits me at the end of my sentence at Griffith.

And maybe I can try and make less grammar & spelling errors while I'm at it