Haunted Media Intro & Ch. 1 Summary

     In Haunted Media, the author discusses the history of technology and our culture's tendency to see new technology as means to connect with the dead.  There is; however, another element to the way our culture sees new technologies that is odd to me.  Our culture tends to see technology as a living thin itself rather than an object through which people communicate.  The author tells three stories of people treating television as living.  A man shoots his tv set, another man stabs actors for being affiliated with tv, and a tv had a picture of a woman stuck on the screen whether the tv was plugged in or not.  The author describes these events as being connected in these words: "Each of these stories draws on a larger cultural mythology about the 'living' quality of such technologies, suggesting, in this case, that television is 'alive . . . living, real, not dead' (even if it sometimes serves as a medium of the dead)."  It is odd to me that people see the tv as a sentient intruder rather than an entertainment tool or their computer as a friend rather than a multi-tool.

     People are also fascinated with using new technology to commune with the deceased.  The significant movement started with the telegraph as it was the first technology of it's kind to disembody the medium of communication, which caused some to believe that a body wasn't necessary at all to communicate and thus, the dead could communicate as well.  This continued with haunting stories popping up all over the place documenting "ghosts" using telegraphs, computers, tvs, etc. to communicate with people.  There are a vast amount of shows that use this lore including Supernatural, Scooby Doo, etc.

Protocol Ch. 1+2 Summary

     In the technology of the internet, there must be language used.  There are actually many different languages when it comes to the internet to facilitate all the different pathways needed to transmit the interconnections between the billions of computers being used across the world.  At first there was an attempt to keep the languages and translations of the languages at a central hub for all computers connected to read in order to work correctly, but as the web grew larger and larger as well as moved further away from the central hub, it took longer and longer for the information to be processed and carried.  For this reason, the languages were switched from being in a centralized hub to being a part of the internet where everything is neither reducible nor irreducible.  The internet's language and the internet itself is everywhere and nowhere at the same time.  It can be monitored, but cannot be seen, found, or caught.  It changed from being like the human circulatory system where the heart is the central hub and could be destroyed and destroy the entire system, to the neural system where the brain functions regardless of damaged parts, though damaged parts will cause hindrances to certain functions.

     Another aspect of the internet is the seeming egality of it for the population.  Enzensberger thought that a form of media like the internet could change society in such a way that it would give everyone an equal voice; however, the internet is still moderately censored, but not in ways that are easily discernible.  The internet still is controlled by "reputable" or "reliable" sources, which may or may not be reputable or reliable.  The elite classes of society may still control what is found true and what is not by discrediting sources that threaten them and commend sources that benefit them.  This doesn't mean the internet necessarily operates in this way, but that it has the ability and possibility of doing so.  This is far more troubling because it becomes excessively difficult to prove or even bring public suspicion of this being the case; especially when you have such seeming polar opposites as Fox News and "liberal" media outlets who speak in vastly different ways, but can be simplified to vastly similar positions.  The media is a talking game and finding truth in any media is always muddled with opinions.

protocol: Introduction Summary

     There is history being made today with the new technology and the new culture it is creating.  The new technology is the digital computer, created by the blueprint of the distributed network, which caused the management system of protocol.  Many people believe that this new culture created by the network, computer, and protocol is creating something entirely new that we have never seen before.  What this introduction is show that in a way this is new with the way that it is changing language.  Galloway shows a genealogy of sorts for the word "protocol".  What is also interesting is the way things stay the same.  Though words are changing as they always do and cultures as well, it is no different than any other technological advance and cultural shift throughout history.  Throughout every change, people do the same things as they always have.  The most obvious of these things is the mob mentality as well as the crowd mentality.  What these changes have done just make the mob collect on the internet rather than a protest or a riot.  The internet hasn't eliminated the protest or the riot, but has added new avenues.  There is also the aspect of the crowd where people can flock to support something or someone as well as be marketed to.  The internet has only changed people insofar as it made the world smaller and made it easier for people to connect and participate in mobs or crowds.  There are, of course, many more aspects to such a large cultural shift.

     The way this new technology works is through distribution, which is completely new as there is no central power.  In the past societies and their technologies had worked through centralization and decentralization; both of these have one or more central powers.  Distribution works like roadways, which are not new and have been the main routes for trade for millennia.  The places that traded were not distribution, but were decentralized in most places and sometimes centralized.  You could even see hints of distribution in ancient Roman cities, which were set up in grids and allowed for easy access.

The Medium is the MASSAGE Summary

     In "The Medium is the MASSAGE" by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, they discuss how the media defines the society.  The media is just the medium of communication in any given society.  For the Romans, the media was the Colosseum.  For Industrial America, it was the prisons or hospitals.  For the modern world, it is the internet.  The world is no longer a unimaginably large place, but is connected by the media and is continually getting smaller.  The most notable theme the authors point to is societies tendency to navigate through new situations in old ways rather than developing new ways.  In the words of the authors, many are attempting to "do a job demanded by the new environment with the tools of the old" (The Medium is the MASSAGE, p.95).

     Our education system is the most poorly adapted to the societal changes of the 21st century as it is still based on 19th century society.  Teachers are more concerned with indoctrinating, than leading an expedition into unfamiliar territory.  It is frowned upon to admit a lack of knowledge and discover together.  Teachers must be headstrong and speak with certainty about the uncertain in order to raise children in a specific way.  This is the blunder of "rear-view mirror people".