greg otoole.info

Freidrich Kittler's exploration of media discourse analysis is greatly motivated with the theory that there needs to be a necessary pursuit toward the development of the science of media (Medienwissenschaft), pressing at the intrinsic obligations of a hard science, to arrive at the potential of investigative efforts into its own inherent natures and behaviors. Kittler holds that if this call-to-duty is not attained by contemporary scholars of media in a way more directly involved than cultural practitioners who "know higher mathematics only from hearsay," what will be carried out, essentially, is nothing more than an exaggeration continuum of the mere history of media.

In my agreement with Kittler, my response to this is to evolve a project and work as the principal researcher and test coordinator with a small group of academic, technical, and research professionals in the U.S. and Canada on studying the neurophysiological effects of media use and human cognition. To date, the research is being done using Electroencephalography (EEG) to examin brain wave activity in subjects during their use of various digital screen and analog codex media. Preliminary testing has been done across a multitude of media technologies. Currently the project is in search of long-term funding opportunities.

This research project is aimed at scientifically determining the differences in human brain experience when reading "traditional," (paper) codex book vs the same content on screen, on both mobile, native format devices, and larger screen Web-based media. The tests will look for and document any change (or lack thereof) in the brain wave  activity of the occipital and parietal lobes specifically.

Recruitment for participants will begin in the near future. Please contact Greg O'Toole if you are interested in this project from either a participatory or research perspective. The study has been made possible by an inkind grant from the HEF Human Electrophysiology Facility at Penn State. 

The HEF is part of the Social, Life, Engineering Sciences Imaging Center at The Pennsylvania State University, funded by the Social Science Research Institute and the Huck Institute for the Life Sciences. imaging.psu.edu.

The Penn State University Institutional Review Board (IRB) has approved the above referenced study #38659 Title: "Neuro Response to Comparative Media Reading" Principal Investigator: Gregory T O'Toole.

This series of lecture-seminars concerns itself with the relationships between the self, medium, and the environment. It uses as a platform Jean-Francois Lyotard's assessment that a direct and shared component of these social bonds is narrative knowledge. This observation from Lyotard establishes narrative knowledge, as opposed to scientific knowledge, as a major part of our understanding of the world around us. Following such an assessment the question of legitimation naturally arises. This series, based on ongoing empirical, original research looks at the ubiquitous use of contemporary communication media technology and its invention of the "active audience". The series talks about our cultural condition and discusses that under such a condition the need arises for a critical filter in media and information consumption.

The graphic for the series is based on a source image and additional text added by Greg to illustrate further the idea of observation, recording, and understanding. Source image: History of the Seismograph, http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/seismology/ history/part08.php. A record, obtained with Ewing's horizontal-pendulum seismograph, of a strong local earthquake on March 8, 1881 (reproduced from Nature, 30, 1884, p. 174). Two of the pendulums write on the same surface. The recording plate revolves continuously with one revolution every fifty seconds. The "beginning" of the earthquake is marked as a, a' respectively on the EW and NS traces. In order that the indicator pens not interfere with each other, the EW trace is put on the record at a point approximately ninety degrees clockwise from where the NS trace is put on the plate. In the center, the traces have been aligned on a common time scale.

Video Vidi Visum, Latin translation: "To see, observe, understand"

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SEMINAR ONE
Title: Media Ecology 101: It's Alive!
Sub-Title: What is the media ecology and why does it matter?
Description: TBD
Length: Approx 60 minutes, discussion
Date: TBD

SEMINAR TWO
Title: Good Art Causes World Wars
Sub-Title: A brief history of media studies, theory and philosophy
Description: TBD
Length: Approx 60 minutes, discussion
Date: TBD

SEMINAR THREE
Title: Why Your Brain Hurts
Sub-Title: A review of media effects research
Description: TBD
Length: Approx 60 minutes, discussion
Date: TBD

SEMINAR FOUR
Title: To Legit To Quit
Sub-Title: Some thoughts and research on post-legitimation
Description: TBD
Length: Approx 60 minutes, discussion
Date: TBD

SEMINAR FIVE
Title: Yes, You are a Cyborg
Sub-Title: Human Computer Interaction
Description: TBD
Length: Approx 60 minutes, discussion
Date: TBD

SEMINAR SIX
Title: The Bionic (Hu)Man
Sub-Title: Brain Computer Interaction
Description: TBD
Length: Approx 60 minutes, discussion
Date: TBD

SEMINAR SEVEN
Title: Augmenting Plato
Sub-Title: The state of the book and classroom
Description: TBD
Length: Approx 60 minutes, discussion
Date: TBD

SEMINAR EIGHT
Title: What's Free is Free
Sub-Title: A look at the open-source movement
Description: TBD
Length: Approx 60 minutes, discussion
Date: TBD

This is an ongoing collection of top educational resources available for free online. I have no official or legal connection with any of them, other than having taken several classes to date. There are far more available, and iTunes, among other places, has a vast selection of free, open courseware as well. This is a sort of "starter list" that I like to share with my students. Each of these is a world of knowledge in itself. If you'd like assistance with other resources or tips on navigating the iTunes data sets, let me know.

Academic Earth

DIY Learner

MIT OpenCourseware

Open Learning Initiative

Harvard Open Learning

Connexions

Oracle Open Learning Center

Yale Open Courses

With Labor Day behind us, it’s officially time to head back to school. That applies not just to kids, but to you. No matter what your age, no matter where you live, no matter what your prior level of education, you can continue deepening your knowledge in areas old and new. And it has never been easier. All you need is a computer or smart phone, an internet connection, some free time, and our free educational media collections. They’re available 24/7 and constantly updated:

Free Online Courses: Right now, you can download free courses (some in video, some in audio) created by some of the world’s leading universities — Stanford, Oxford, Yale, Harvard, UC Berkeley, MIT and others. The courses cover pretty much every subject — from philosophy, literature and history, to physics, computer science, engineering and psychology. The collection features about 400 courses in total. And while you can’t take these courses for credit, the amount of personal enrichment offered by these lectures is endless.

Free Textbooks: Another tool for the lifelong learner. This collection brings together roughly 150 free textbooks authored by professors (and some high school teachers) across the globe. The collection will particularly benefit those interested in deepening their knowledge in economics, computer science, mathematics, physics and biology.

Free Language Lessons: Ours is an increasingly globalized world, and it certainly pays to know more than one language. With the free audio lessons listed here, you can learn the basics of Spanish, French and Italian (the languages traditionally taught in American schools). Or you can start boning up on Mandarin, Brazilian Portuguese and other languages spoken by the new world powers. Taken together, you can Learn 40 Languages for Free.

Free Audio Books: This free collection gives you the ability to download audio versions of important literary works. During your downtime, you can listen to short stories by Isaac Asimov, Raymond Carver, Jorge Luis Borges, and Philip K. Dick. Or you can settle into longer works by Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Friedrich Nietzsche and James Joyce.

Free eBooks: Once again, it’s free literary works. But this time you can download e-texts to your computer or digital reader. Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Gertrude Stein, Edgar Allan Poe, Marcel Proust and Kurt Vonnegut. They’re all on the list. And so too are The Harvard Classics, a 51 volume series of enduring works.

Great Science Videos: This list pulls together some of our favorite science videos on the web. It features about 125 videos, covering astronomy & space travel, physics, psychology and neuroscience, religion, technology and beyond.

Intelligent YouTube Sites: Have you ever wanted to separate the wheat from the chaff on YouTube? This list will give you a start. It features over 100 YouTube channels that deliver high quality educational content. Along similar lines, you may want to visit our collection of Intelligent Video Sites. Same concept but applied to sites on the web.

Cultural Icons: If you’ve ever wanted to see great thinkers, artists and writers speaking on video in their own words, this list is for you. It has Borges and Bowie, Coltrane and Coppola, Ayn Rand and Noam Chomsky, Tolstoy and Thomas Edison, among others. 275 cultural icons in total.

Free Movies Online: What better way to get a cultural education than to watch some free cinematic masterpieces, including 15 films with Charlie Chaplin, 22 early films by Alfred Hitchcock, 25 Westerns with John Wayne, and a number of Soviet classics by Andrei Tarkovsky. The list of 400+ films goes on. And so does your cultural education….