Posts Tagged media

No future for print media?

June 6, 2008 at 11:50 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , ,

In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Microsoft chief exec. Steve Ballmer claimed, among other things, that within the next 10 years there will be “no media consumption left… that is not delivered over an IP network.  There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form.”  When I saw this I cringed a little bit.  If the history of media has taught us anything it is that new media never replace old media entirely.  I know there has been some hype over the development of e-books and e-paper (Amazon Kindle, Readius, etc.), but will this really replace paper-based print media?  I don’t know about you all, but there’s something about the texture of a paperback book that I love.  Being able to take it anywhere, cram it in a backpack, or the sense of accomplishment I get after flipping that last page.  Maybe I’m old fashioned, but there’s also something about being able to quickly scan the headlines of a newspaper to find the information I want, rather than scanning tediously through column after column on a digital device.  This may be my reluctance to change showing through – indeed, digital devices will come with their own advantages and disadvantages just like old media (I hate refolding a newspaper because I can never seem to get it right… it usually ends up all distraight and out of order).

What do you all think?  Will information delivered over “IP networks” come to entirely displace paper-based print media?

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Bob Stein visits K-State, talks about Sophie

April 23, 2008 at 10:01 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , ,

Yesterday, Bob Stein visited us here in Manhattan to talk about, among other things, the future of the book in the digital age. Bob is the director for the Institute for the Future of the Book which he dubbed a “think and do-tank” that is interested in exploring the emerging forms of and potential changes to intellectual discourse. They are working on an interesting piece of software called Sophie, which Bob demonstrated for us. From what I saw, Sophie is like PowerPoint on steroids but, given my disdain for PowerPoint, making such a comparison may be inappropriate. To give a cursory overview from my own perspective, Sophie allows you tremendous freedom in making, well, anything you want. It is deliberately open source so users can tweak it however they choose. Additionally, on the front-end it is easily customizable and malleable. I just downloaded it last night so I haven’t been able to thoroughly check it out yet, but it seems like a very valuable tool for the classroom. It allows you to aggregate all kinds of media formats making for a truly rich presentation. Also, it has wonderful commenting functionality that could be used to encourage participation and interaction between students. Indeed, Bob himself said he valued “writing in the margins” and Sophie really allows this to happen. Anyhow, I won’t say too much more because it’s probably best if you just check it out for yourself and play around with it. Bob said they are working on creating a browser plugin for Sophie, but that it won’t be out for a little while. It will be great to see Sophie move onto the Internet, I’m excited to have Sophie’s user-friendly interface and functionality on, say, a blogging platform.

Check it out, lemme know what you think. I’m gonna play around with it some more and I’ll do the same. Oh, and I don’t know if anyone is familiar with This Spartan Life (I just learned about it yesterday), but Bob was interviewed on it and his introduction is hilarious (the interview is good too).

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Counting down: anxiety and excitement prior to graduation

April 17, 2008 at 3:47 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , ,

Graduation is coming up mid-May and I couldn’t be more excited – and anxious.  I am more than ready to take a hiatus from late night studying and test-taking, but the decisions that are going to be popping up soon after I graduate are going to be equally as stressful.  My original plan was to take a year off from school, get some experience, relax a little, and center myself.  Then, I’d take the GRE, apply to grad schools and (hopefully) start school again in August of 2009.  I’ve been planning for 4 years to apply to Ph.D. track graduate programs in anthropology; however, this decision is slowly changing.  It seems my primary interests lay with media and communications, which means it may be a better fit to apply to these programs rather than anthropology programs.

I’ve got some definite tension from this potential decision.  Personally, I think they both go together beautifully – I mean, I learned about media ecology from my adviser here at K-State while studying anthropology.  I even wrote my senior thesis with these two disciplines in mind and it proved to be a valuable combination for analysis.  But, what bothers me is the exclusive tendencies of “separate” disciplines.  I really value anthropological theory and the emphasis on ethnography and participant observation, and I was looking forward to honing in on this during grad school.  I’m afraid I will lose this opportunity if I choose to study media and communications.  I *love*  anthropology; I think it’s valuable.  Not to say studies of media and communication aren’t valuable.  Indeed, I also think they are extremely important.  But can’t I have the best of both worlds?  So much potential for overlap exists between the two.

My adviser recommended I take a look at the graduate program at the Annenberg School of Communication at USC.  As one option, they have a Ph.D. focus of media, culture, and communication.  As a description:

The courses in this track provide an overview to theories of media studies, media effects and cultural studies, including both social science methodologies of media analysis and humanities theories of cultural analysis.

The area introduces students to a broad array of theories of media and culture that provide the basis for analyzing television, the Internet, new media forms, advertising and other cultural artifacts and events. We explore the production, reception and critique of visual culture in commercial, technological and popular forms. Analysis focuses on the production practices and consumption patterns of media within and across communities.

This sounds like a nice blend of anthropology and media studies.  I plan to inquire some more…  There’s also the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, but I haven’t looked much into it.  I’m not so sure about New York, but I don’t think I have any right to be picky.  All I know is I want to incorporate anthropology with media studies… any recommendations?

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Crisis of significance and the future of education

April 8, 2008 at 4:58 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , ,

My adviser, Michael Wesch, just published an insightful article about the state of education. I won’t go into terrible detail about it here. I’ll let you all read it for yourselves – it’s definitely worth it. He makes a poignant critique about the lack of vision and the overwhelming myopia that characterizes education today. Of course, I agree with him.

He introduced the provocative book Teaching as a Subversive Activity to me a couple of years ago and from there I’ve jumped head first into the world of media ecology. It couples very nicely with anthropology. Not to shamelessly inflate Wesch (he is deserving of it though), but the environment he creates in his classes is so effective in helping educe the potential in his students that I measure every class I take against his.

It amazes me when I enter a classroom environment that gives no indication of having changed in the past, hmm, decade? The addition of PowerPoint is hardly an exception when the professor reads from the slides; it’s just a visual representation of the notes she/he would use anyways. It in no way adds positively to the learning environment other than reducing spelling errors in the students’ notes. The emphasis here is heavily on content rather than form. Multimedia learning environments, in my experience and when used appropriately and effectively, are much better.

However, there is a continuum. Just using videos to use them doesn’t fly. Teachers should ask themselves “Can I express what I want to express better with video than by just saying it?” Each medium used in the classroom is better at conveying certain messages than others. For example, visual media are better at conveying emotions. They are more expressive. Text media are better at conveying information, facts, the raw material most teachers focus the most on. They are more informative (but this doesn’t mean they are the most important). This isn’t to mention the medium of the spoken word between not only the students and teacher but between the students themselves. I am a strong advocate of Wesch’s definition of teachers as co-learners. Teachers should be moderators, leaders, students; not lecturers. I think when teachers see themselves this way and begin practicing this behavior we will see a gradual flattening of the master/slave relationship that is implicit in many learning environments.

There is some great conversation going on about this topic over at mediatedcultures.net. Come share your thoughts!

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