TEST

MIT Press have recently published New Media: 1740-1915, an excellent series of essays looking at the social effects of various ‘new’ media from history, from the status of zograscopes as ‘virtual reality’ in 18th C England, to the reception of early telephone systems in Amish communities.

One of the most interesting essays is Ellen Gruber Garvey’s ‘Scissorizing and Scrapbooks: Nineteenth Century Reading, Remaking and Recirculating’, an account of the vernacular use of newspaper and magazine material in personal albums and collections. Garvey makes comparisons between the process of making scrapbooks and personal websites, but there is an even more striking comparison to weblogs.

Scrapbooks were a ‘coping’ strategy for old media at a time when distribution via railroads and cheap printing processes led to an overwhelming surplus of popular magazines and newspapers. Garvey describes them as “a new subcategory of media – the cheap, the disposable, and yet somehow tantalizingly valuable, if only their value could be seperated from their ephemerality”. Scrapbooks were one just one strategy for indexing and archiving cuttings, including commercial clipping services, but scrapbooks represented a private, vernacular response to this information revolution. This remaking of popular media is clearly a precursor of the current blogging phenomenon, and Garvey’s analysis of scrapbook making introduces some concepts that are useful in discussing blogging as part of our contemporary media culture.

Reading as ‘Gleaning’
Garvey draws on Michel de Certeau’s notion of ‘reading as poaching’ to describe the cutting and recompiling of published texts, but takes issues with the aggressive, macho overtones of de Certau’s ‘poaching’, as the scrapbook maker seeks to recombine and redistribute as well as to reclaim.

She introduces the term ‘Gleaning’, taken after the practise of picking up that which is consciously left behind. Gleaners were peasants who gather spare grain or fruit when farmers had followed (biblical) advice not to harvest all their crop, but to leave some for those who needed it most. In a similar fashion, scrapbook makers ‘harvest’ residual meanings or signification from the printed word, recombining it into new, vernacular, forms.

Is ‘gleaning’ a useful term to describe the process of selection, re-contexualisation and re-distribution that we see in weblogs? The ‘gift economy’ ideology of gleaning would be something that most bloggers would endorse, arguing that the protection of intellectual property rights through DRM technologies limit the future cultural mutation of information, and stifles innovation. But this argument often falters on the binary definitions of digital copying as piracy/freedom – perhaps ‘gleaning’ is a useful term to describe a model of ‘fair use’ that can’t be reduced by its opponents to total anarchy?

Exchanges
Where most scrapbook production was for private consumption, some of this practise was reflected in professional publishing. Newspapers would pick up and run stories from other regions, and editors would send ‘exchange’ editions to encourage this practise, carried by the post office for free. These exchanges were seen as a healthy part of the distribution of information, not a form of piracy or plagiarism. Garvey quotes a contemporary journalist: “A man who reads the daily exchanges of the country may see an idea travel from the Atlantic slope to the Pacific and from the Pacific to the Atlantic as visibly as a train of freight cars runs over the Vanderbilt system”.

The ‘exchanges’ of today are the blog indexing systems – the daypops and technoratis that allow us to track memes as they spread – or the uber-blogs at the top of the power curve. Garvey describes a quote from a missionary, suggesting that ‘[even if one column] of interesting religious matter could be introduced into each of [the nation's many] papers, it would be equivalent to the annual distribution of more than sixteen hundred million tract pages”. The missionaries of today, selling tales of consumption rather than redemption, are already trying to find ways of using blogging as marketing, and to harness the power of its exchanges.

Scrapbooks
The material forms of scrapbooks also have echos in their modern, digital counterparts. Some people used old books as the basis of their scrapbook, leading to a palimpsest of original text and jumbled scraps, with columns overlapping columns and sentences running together. Soon, custom-made books were created for clippings, some with classifications like the ‘Scrapbook Systems’ advertised in 1891, with separate volumes for ‘Personal; Politics; Social Sciences; Health; Biographical; History; Book Reviews; Christianity; The Bible; Sermons; Temperance & Miscellaneous’. With the exemption of the latter religious headings, we can see echoes between these classifications and the structures of many a portal or weblog.

As well as classifcation, books were produced to aid in the production of scrapbooks. Most successful was Mark Twain’s Patent Scrap-Book, a volume with ready-gummed strips in columns, produced in different versions for authors, children, newspaper clippings, pictures, or even ‘druggists prescription books’. Twain’s scrap book earned him more than $50,000, more than any other book he published. The creators of contemporary blogging tools are following a distinguished historical line of authors-turned-entrepreneurs.

Vernacuar media as ‘parergon‘
So what is different about blogging? When so many similarities join the victorian aesthete clipping news articles into Mark Twain’s scrapbooks and the 21st century blogger linking news articles from the BBC or ZDNET, why are we getting so excited? Why do we think that blogging is democratising media? Haven’t we been here before?

Many media technologies started with significant vernacular cultures alongside their professional ones. 19th Century photography was used for both family memento and scientific record, with its technological progression being driven by the former as much as the latter. In his essay on vernacular photography, Geoffrey Batchen uses Derrida’s term ‘parerga’ [literally 'next to main work'] to describe the personal, intimate photographies that have fallen outside the canon of ‘proper’ photography. But as post-modernism has criticized the idea of the canonical text, these vernacular practises have been analysed for their role in defining our culture:

“As a parergon, vernacular photography is the absent presence that determines its medium’s historical and physical identity; it is that thing that decides what proper photography is not.”

At first glance, it might seem as if blogging has been anything other than an ‘absent presence’. The amount of commentary it generates in relation to actual activity looks like hyperbole, and that alone differentiates it from the invisible, domestic production of scrapbooks. Predictions of blogging’s cultural impact focus on the point at which its radical connectedness will overthrow the slower, centrally-editorialised journalism of the media dinosaurs. Clay Shirky’s influential work on Power Laws has shown that in massively distributed systems, the cream rises to the top even faster than when there are clear definitions between ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’ output. This mass-amateurisation does not lead to equality, but to an accelerated focus of attention, a hype-tornado that quickly blows the strongest memes to its apex.

But the value of blogging will not just be measured by the few ‘winners’ who manage to compete or succeed the incumbent media hierarchy. Previously the economies of mass distribution have meant that the wider social practises of ‘new’ media have been invisible to history for many years, whilst academics fought over the establishment of a ‘canon’, authenticating the practise within an accepted cultural milieu. Vernacular media – the scrapbooks, family photo albums and intimate mementos – have lain in attics, trunks and cupboards for years until time gives them a patina of curiosity worthy of a critic’s attention. It is only then that these ‘absent presences’ are discovered, and the single line of media history bifurcates into a messy, branching network of amateur and professional innovation.

With blogging, we have the opportunity to study the vernacular as it happens. As critics, we should be embracing the whole power curve – looking at the stars at the top for their interface with professional media, the ‘exchanges’ in the middle to see how the network shares its own influences and resources, but also to the long, dark tail of vernacular production.

It is rare to be able to find such a wealth of social and cultural production with such ease, but worrying that this material is less likely to last than the gummed strips of the 19th Century. The technological ephemerality of this medium means that we will not have the luxury of stumbling across these intimate mementoes in 100 years time. There will be no scrapbooks lying in attics, no photographs enamelled onto tombstones. One of the most enlightening social documents of our age wil be erased by the very attention-economy that pushes its brightest stars into the history books.

We do need to ask questions about how blogging might change the landscape of journalism, broadcast media or politics, but we also need to notice how it is affecting the lives of its millions of practioners, every day, in subtler ways. How is this vernacular practise helping people make sense of their lives? How is it affecting their concept of family, friends, work or home? How is it changing the grammar and discourse of language itself?

History tells us that we won’t get the answer to these questions from the loudest voices, as power is inextricably linked with assimilation. Only by listening to the gleaners, those picking at the forgotten edges of the field, will we understand the real beauty of the landscape we are creating.

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Inevitably, Google has the answer.

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University of London
Department of Cultural Studies

MS201 – Media, Culture and Identity Examination Paper
Date: 15th May 2018
Time: 2.00-4.00pm

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES
Answer TWO questions. Each question carries equal marks, Do not use substantially the same material in more than one answer. Search technologies are allowed, but indicate the resource locator, or search query and product used, for each reference. Please read questions carefully.

1) “Identity is the product of your networks” – Discuss this assertion, referencing historical debates around trust and reputation in technological communication.
2) To what extent did the rise of mobile communication networks in third-world countries between 2005-2010 affect the media industries in: The Former United States of America; Sub-Saharan Africa; Iraq; Australasia; The Celtic Union?
3) What was ‘Scheduling’? Discuss giving examples from the major linear media of the late 20th Century.
4) Some analysts argue that individual privacy should not be linked to economic activity. What possible other solutions exist for state validation of citizens’ cultural consumption? What are the pros and cons of these solutions?
5) How has the dissolution of Google led to the ‘balkanisation’ of information? How would the information industry have developed had the company remained a globally owned public utility?
6) Describe 3 of the following content formats for popular media, and their impact on society: Reality Feeds; Anytime Radio; VoteSport; Extreme Celebrity, NeighbourhoodWatch.
7) In 2016, the average UK citizen had over 30 petabytes of media storage. This would have equated to over 500 years of continuous media consumption at typical consumption rates in the year 2000. How have simultaneous viewing technologies changed the way in which media is produced and consumed in the UK?
8) Describe the impact of the ‘Media Revolutions’ of the last 10 years, in particular the demise of News International in 2008, the formation of the World Cultural Trade Organisation in 2010, the ‘G21’ group of independent media nations, and the rise in decentralised media terrorist networks.
9) How has PersonalJournalism affected notions of ‘integrity’ and ‘truth’ in news production? In your opinion, have these changes been beneficial or detrimental?

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The University of York

POLITICS B – THE WORLD OF POLITICS

Answer THREE questions, at least one from each section.

SECTION 1: THE DISCIPLINE OF POLITICS

1. Describe and assess the impact of two of the following political theories: Marxism, Capitalism, Fundamentalism, De-centrism, Radical Consumerism.
2. Discuss the following historical political concepts, and the key drivers behind their demise: State, Parliament, Manifesto, Election.
3. What contribution does decentralised network theory make to our understanding of politics?
4. Why has religion been such a central preoccupation and focus of debate in political science over the last 20 years?
5. Identify the main contributions, if any, of either environmentalism or ultra-local militancy to the study and practise of politics.

SECTION 2: WORLD POLITICS

1. What are some of the important factors that have contributed to the current division between the ‘conscious’ and ‘agnostic’ global political networks?
2. What role have assassinations played in political history? Discuss citing either Sweden, 2003; Tokyo 2005; Rio de Janeiro 2008 or London, Marseille, Frankfurt, Porto & Dublin, 2012.
3. Has the rise of CityStates in China contributed positively or negatively to the development process?
4. How did EasyPolitics lead to the rise of Radical Consumerism in Western Europe? Discuss giving examples of European Chief Executive Stelios Haji-Ioannou’s use of mass-media and ‘just-in-time’ politics.
5. “There is no such thing as money, only differences in your personal value network” – discuss in relation to the phasing out of the Euro and Dollar in 2015.

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Like Matt Jones, I’ve been asked to produce a few illustrations of potential futures for my work. Unlike Matt, I find it incredibly hard to try and synthesise the huge number of potential scenarios into something that isn’t cliched or too predictable. So whereas Matt managed to fire out 8 over a weekend, it’s taken me nearly two weeks to come up with 2. I always have the problem of how to write scenarios – Phil has pointed out how easy it is to fall into the trap of technological determinism, or to make the whole story just exposition. I’ve ended up using a cheap trick – I’ve adopted exam papers as a structure for two of the scenarios, one based on Politics, one on Media Studies. I’ve found that the exam paper structure has helped keep the writing short and to the point, although its sometimes been hard to encapsulate a lot of potential change in a few sentences. Hopefully, they give you enough information to indicate what has changed and act as a starting point for further speculation, but I’m also worried they might just be too damn confusing. Any comments welcome…

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Matt Webb has been working on a social software application to replicate ‘glancing‘ – the kind of low-level social interaction we use to confirm the social status of a group, or as a precursor to more attentive communication. Having been exposed to critical theory when I was far too vunerable (ie, as an art student in the early ’90′s), I couldn’t help comparing Matt’s ‘glancing’ with the Lacanian ‘gaze‘.

Glancing is proposed as a way of technologically representing signifiers of assurance – the nod, wink or sly look that passes between members of a social group to let someone else know you’re with them. As Matt uses IM infrastructures as the base of the ‘glancing’ protocol, it is asynchronous, so the ‘glances’ have a prolonged life, starting intense and gradually falling after an hour or so. This way, people who are not at their desktops can see the recent history of glances and respond, perhaps encouraging other group members to glance until there is a quorum of attention for an IM chat.

Lacan’s concept of the ‘Gaze’ is similarly concerned with reassurance and identity. Its root is in the ‘mirror stage’ of child development, when the infant first recognises the image in the mirror as itself, and so enters a symbolic order in which the ‘real’ is lost in a ‘screen’ of signifiers and representations. The confusion between this screen of our idealised projections, and the intangible ‘real’ is the heart of Lacanian Psychoanalytic theory, and was productively used in the feminist film theories of Laura Mulvey, amongst others.

But the Gaze has an uncanny element – look too closely and you realise that the screen of your projected desires looks back – it has a presence (the trace of the ‘real’) that destabilises your position as the centre of your projected universe. Lacan illustrates this with a pretty bizarre anecdote involving a sardine can bobbing about in a harbour – better to use his other example, Hans Holbein’s ‘The Ambassadors’, an almost uncanny illustration of the concept. In this painting, the two ambassadors are pictured with objects that represent their wealth and status, a literal ‘screen’ of their desires. At the bottom, the anamorphically distorted image of a skull represents morality, a sideways glance at the ‘real’ behind the ‘screen’ of their life achivements.

Will Matt’s Glancing elide into this uncanny territory? Will the soft throb of the glance icon invoke the warm glow of friendship, or will it feel more like the goosebump sensation of someone staring at the back of your head? Matt suggests that the glance is a form of empty communication, like the blank SMSes sent between Japanese schoolchildren. Lacan tells us that there is no empty communication, that even the shiny surface of a sardine can ‘looks back’ at us by participating in the forest of signs that make up our symbolic order. For Mulvey, the gaps between film frames reveal the fetishised world of cinema as nothing but a ‘screen’, and reminds us of the unbridgeable gap between our desires and the ‘real’.

Even empty communication carries a message, like a seat still warm from the last person who sat there. By introducing a half-life to the split-second glance, Matt is opening up an uncanny world of absence as well as a new protocol for presence.

Matt Webb has been working on a social software application to replicate ‘glancing‘ – the kind of low-level social interaction we use to confirm the social status of a group, or as a precursor to more attentive communication. Having been exposed to critical theory when I was far too vunerable (ie, as an art student in the early ’90′s), I couldn’t help comparing Matt’s ‘glancing’ with the Lacanian ‘gaze‘.

Glancing is proposed as a way of technologically representing signifiers of assurance – the nod, wink or sly look that passes between members of a social group to let someone else know you’re with them. As Matt uses IM infrastructures as the base of the ‘glancing’ protocol, it is asynchronous, so the ‘glances’ have a prolonged life, starting intense and gradually falling after an hour or so. This way, people who are not at their desktops can see the recent history of glances and respond, perhaps encouraging other group members to glance until there is a quorum of attention for an IM chat.

Lacan’s concept of the ‘Gaze’ is similarly concerned with reassurance and identity. Its root is in the ‘mirror stage’ of child development, when the infant first recognises the image in the mirror as itself, and so enters a symbolic order in which the ‘real’ is lost in a ‘screen’ of signifiers and representations. The confusion between this screen of our idealised projections, and the intangible ‘real’ is the heart of Lacanian Psychoanalytic theory, and was productively used in the feminist film theories of Laura Mulvey, amongst others.

But the Gaze has an uncanny element – look too closely and you realise that the screen of your projected desires looks back – it has a presence (the trace of the ‘real’) that destabilises your position as the centre of your projected universe. Lacan illustrates this with a pretty bizarre anecdote involving a sardine can bobbing about in a harbour – better to use his other example, Hans Holbein’s ‘The Ambassadors’, an almost uncanny illustration of the concept. In this painting, the two ambassadors are pictured with objects that represent their wealth and status, a literal ‘screen’ of their desires. At the bottom, the anamorphically distorted image of a skull represents morality, a sideways glance at the ‘real’ behind the ‘screen’ of their life achivements.

Will Matt’s Glancing elide into this uncanny territory? Will the soft throb of the glance icon invoke the warm glow of friendship, or will it feel more like the goosebump sensation of someone staring at the back of your head? Matt suggests that the glance is a form of empty communication, like the blank SMSes sent between Japanese schoolchildren. Lacan tells us that there is no empty communication, that even the shiny surface of a sardine can ‘looks back’ at us by participating in the forest of signs that make up our symbolic order. For Mulvey, the gaps between film frames reveal the fetishised world of cinema as nothing but a ‘screen’, and reminds us of the unbridgeable gap between our desires and the ‘real’.

Even empty communication carries a message, like a seat still warm from the last person who sat there. By introducing a half-life to the split-second glance, Matt is opening up an uncanny world of absence as well as a new protocol for presence.

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Kayak

Sea

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Lumen are one of the most interesting new media organisations in the UK, and their annual conference and performance programme, EVOLUTION, stands head and shoulders above most of the flash-fests that call themselves ‘cutting-edge’. EVOLUTION is different for two reasons – it specialises in representing seminal historical work from artists that have been hugely influential, but neglected by the mainstream; and it is programmed by two people – Dennis Hopkins and Will Rose – who have an incredible knowledge and passion about this area, so manage to curate programmes with depth, texture and real insight.

This year’s programme has many higlights, including presentations and exhibitions by Kevin McCoy, a walk around Leeds by the Survellance Camera Players, and the ‘commodore 64 video graffiti’ of Cory Arcangel and BEIGE. Historically, there’s a presentation by Dan Graham, videos by Nam June Paik, and Woody & Steina Vasulka talking about 30 years at The Kitchen, the seminal NY media organisation and venue. Best of all is ‘Liquid Modernity’, a conversation between radical sociologist Zygmunt Bauman and entropy artist Gustav Metzger. Bauman’s writing on globalisation, post-modernity and sociology proposes real solutions rather than pat observations, and Metzger’s artistic career has continually challenged the commodity fetishes of the art world. In conversation, they will be a heady mix. Book those train tickets for Leeds now…

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