An excellent account of media studies, and an argument for media studies 2.o. can be read here.
[...]MEDIA STUDIES 2.0Responding to his critics in his 1968 Playboy interview, McLuhan acerbically commented, ‘for all their lamentations, the revolution has already taken place’. Whether his critics ever later grasped that is a moot point but everyone in media studies today faces an equivalent challenge: something is happening and the only important question is do you know what it is?I began to notice it when I thought about my son’s media world compared to my own at his age. The only difference between the world I grew up in and my parents was that I had two more TV channels and my better-off friends had colour TV. Within the decade the same friends would have a VCR too, though we had to wait till the late 1980s until prices fell for it to be anything other than a luxury. This was a world of separate and more limited forms: the telephone (that you didn’t own) was screwed to the wall and couldn’t take photographs; you couldn’t get the radio on your television; films didn’t have special features, games or Easter eggs and no-one tried to hack into your television to steal your money or identity. Between my childhood media world and my son’s there is a chasm[...]
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2 comments:
The rapid changes of media and the resulting effect on society is worth studying. It's amazing how quickly new technology is being adopted, and it appears that the rate of changes and developments is increasing exponentially.
Thanks for the comment. yeah the transformation in technology is an important aspect, which a lot of subjects are slowly coming around to. In terms of media technology, I would argue we have emerged into a second media age. Something Mark Poster argued in 1995! This means the broadcast model of understanding media is too simplistic and 'untrue' for understanding todays world.
I do not argue for a position of technological determinism, but do acknowledge transformations in technology is an important aspect.
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