Digital Kultur

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Digital Kultur

• Cyberkultur historie og metoder

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Dagens menu

• Historie digitale medier (Wei)
• Cyberkultur vs digital kultur
• Historie litteratur (Silver)
• Defining the discipline Fornäs
• Case hypertext (the dangers of rhetorics)
• Inspiration walkman

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A brief history of digital media
Hvad siger I...?
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Historie

• Sharing Info (www is born)
• Browsers, links, personal webpages, email, chat
• Nineties business boom
• Hyperdesign, graphics, 3D, multimedia
• 2000 dot-com crash
• Back to low-profile blogs, user generated
  content
• Google ranking
• Today? Wei

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Cyberkultur vs Digital Kultur

• Cyberkultur has a weight
• Postmodern
• Mythical
• A product of late modernity
• Digital Kultur is more inclusive
• Sees computers both as a product and a producer
  of culture/communication media
• Avoid technophilia and technophobia
• Avoids technological determinism, social effects
  are complex
• - A digital culture canon? Silver

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Pause
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Defining the discipline

• Fornäs

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Case 1 hypertext

• The dangers of rhetorics

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hypertext text links
- The Sirens Chapter in Ulysses, by James Joyce
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some properties of hypertext

• Hypertext users have to take action/decisions in
  order to advance through the text.
• Hypertext lets users perceive processes instead
  of only finite results.
• A hypertext's multilinear structure can be used
  to convey meaning.

(Tosca, 2000)
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Ideology

• Embodiment
• Liberation
• Canon
• Education

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the embodiment problem
Hypertext incarnates the notions of
intertextuality of Julia Kristeva, Michael
Bakhtins emphasis on the diversity of voices,
Foucaults idea of power-nets, and the idea of
nomad thinking in a rhizome after Deleuze and
Guattari (Landow, 1994 17) just as Barthes
and Foucaults observations about the death of
the author, Derridas about textuality,
Kristevas about intertextuality and so many
others, the fusion of the creative and discursive
modes simply happens in hypertext (Landow, 1994
59)
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the embodiment problem
What makes them difficult writers, he insists
Bolter, is their self-conscious absorption with
the act of writing itself and the difficult
relationship between narrator, text, and reader,
because their print texts all work strenouslyand
ultimately unsuccessfullyagainst the medium in
which they were conceived. (Douglas, 1992 60)
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liberation
the link simulates the connections in the mind
of the author or reader (Slatin, 1990) We are
faced with a medium that promises to increase the
dynamic nature of reading exponentially with
texts that actually, physically change from
reading to reading, with a range of choices and
reading decisions that seem to offer readers an
autonomy undreamed of in their experiences of
print narratives. (Douglas, 1992)
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meanwhile... in real life...

• Hypertext as marketing buzzword
• Hypertext as structuring principle for web
  architects usability experts
• Hypertext as near-synonym with WWW
• Plenty of educational, journalistic, personal...
  examples of non-linear thinking
• Hyperfiction limited to a few postmodern
  experiments unknown by the general public

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gaps and lost chances

• Stressing metaphors of dispersion, infinity,
  neverending text, disolution of the author,
  reader as author.
• INSTEAD OF...
• Metaphors of organization (encyclopedias,
  newspapers, database), readers as searchers,
  strong author control, collaboration.

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lessons learned

• There is a fine line between inspiration and
  colonization (heavy weight does no favours)
• Old theories help with metaphors and methods
  drop them when they dont help
• Dont be afraid of questioning dogmas dont
  perpetuate mistakes
• Dont reinvent the wheel everytime
• Develop a common understanding and vocabulary
• Integrate theory and practise what is it
  actually out there?
• Do more studies of specific works

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Inspiration Walkman

• Doing Cultural Studies, by Stuart Hall et.al.

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main points
Walkman as object doesnt have meaning per se but
we can find it in the way it is represented -
link to identity - typical (modern) cultural
artifact - studying representation we see all
the other themes in operation
Media are important because through them culture
is produced, circulated, use or appropriated
(23)
Advertisement is not only about reflecting
cultural identities but mostly about constructing
identities through representation. We dont buy
things totally unconsciously, we identify to some
small degree.
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the circuit of culture
Du Gay , Paul, Stuart Hall, Linda James, Hugh
Mackay and Keith Smith. 1997. Doing Cultural
Studies The story of the Sony Walkman. London
Sage.
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Til næste gang

• Læs
• Benedikt, Michael. Cyberspace. First Steps (pdf
  i email)
• Flichy,Patrice. The Internet Imaginaire. (pdf i
  email)
• Skriv 1 side a good story of a personal
  encounter with technology, i.e. The day I hit
  reply all and sent a message to my boss
  critizicing him, my chatroom fake persona
• (inspiration topics Telecommuting, customized
  mobile phones ringtones, internet banking,
  gameboy, ipod, messenger, online dating, email
  etiquette, your first computer, word processing,
  your laptop, your pda, using google, your mouse,
  facebook, your wallpaper, online buying, virus,
  spam, newsgroup flaming)