MEDIA - POWER - SOCIETY

A timeline that highlights important instances of the effects of media (communication technology) across the history of human progression. As a structure to this study, I am using four "pillars" of research: 1.) Karl Marx; 2.) The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory; 3.) The Noam Chomsky "School" of critial critique on American foreign policy¹; 4.) The media ecology writers, largely Neil Postman, Marshall McLuhan; and others, such as Vilem Flusser.

Online Learning: Gramophone, Film, Typewriter

Pedagogy is changing as a result of the arrival of a new type of student. Higher education today sees a demand and response for augmentation methods of learning alternative to the traditional classroom lecture, lab, seminar, and colloquium. The change is relatively abrupt, globally significant, and almost completely determined by the expanding applications of human communication technology which, in many cases the nondescript, quotidian citizen has at their immediate disposal. It is the intention of this essay to explore the potential -- via Freidrich Kittler's three-part model of media in perception, including "Gramophone, Film, and Typewriter" -- for online education to be at least adequately comparable to face to face, on ground, traditional college or university level learning. This essay uses as its context the world of the student born in or after 1982. These are students who have been immersed in the popular use of the Internet, mobile telephones, iPods, and real time video games from the simplest hand held Tetris to mass-multi-player, cross media platforms, interacting through sight, sound, and even touch with other players around the world.

Hypertext Logotherapy: Thoughts on Mass Media Providing Direction & Content for Meaning

The objective of this paper is to offer thoughts on a current, observed condition pertaining to the use of new media on society. It is a socio-psychological process concerning the potential for a wide acceptance of the messages of mass media texts today, and the influence of marketing on the internet. The paper attempts to describe how as a culture we have not only deprived ourselves of true meaning in our daily lives, which psychologist Dr. Victor Frankl says is essential for personal contentment and happiness, but how we have allowed these media and their messages to actually become at least part of the significance of our daily existence. The term "happiness," is observed across media contexts to reveal interesting results.

Today we see wide use of personal media development and the roll of "active viewer" as an alternative to this process. This paper is fundamentally a recording of original, observed research, and theory based on a common thread of thinkers, sociologists, and cultural theorists in support of this particular process of societal change. Supporting evidence in the form of internet news sites and their use of key words has been gathered and compiled through a methodology of ethnographic content analysis.

American Propaganda: The Influence of the Creel Commission 1917 - 1919

In April 1917, the United States entered World War I, also known as The Great War. It is known that U.S. citizens largely held a stance of neutrality and saw no reason to become involved in a European conflict². President Woodrow Wilson came up with a plan to change public sentiments. With Executive Order 2594 the President established the Committee on Public Information, otherwise known as the Creel Commission. The function of the committee was to change the public's opinion about the conflict: from pacifist to pro-war. The committee used newsprint, radio, telegraph, cable and movies to broadcast its message. For the portion of the public who could not read, or did not listen to the radio, the Division of Pictorial Publicity (DPP) was created to generate visual artwork - posters - that would transmit the same pro-war messages to what Alexander Hamilton earlier referred to as "the great beast." On 6 April 1917, with the German Zimmerman telegram in hand, US Congress accepted Wilson's call for war. In the eighteen months it was active, the DPP produced "more than 1,400 poster images that were seen by millions throughout the country"³. With the signing of Executive Order 3154 on August 21, 1919, the Committee was abolished.

The Vision Factory: Image as God & the Apostilization of the Self

The hand manipulates the image and then the image manipulates the mind.

It has been known for hundreds of years that the mass media is a required tool for sustaining power and control in a Democratic system. If you cannot rule by the sword, you must rule by influencing opinion¹. The ideas of information flow and influence, and the relationship between power and mass media play a key role in this political structure. (I would say 'media' here, to imply the importance of personal media as differentiated from mass media, but in current culture, personal has become mass.)

The Vision Factory goes on to illustrate the unparalleled historic levels of consumption prevalent in today's society: buy, buy, buy and you can be happy, too, we're told through an onslaught of images, commercials and ads, again and again. But, with some help from Vilem Flusser I came to the realization that the commodity is not the end in this process, but the means to an end. The end goal of this largely philosophical movement toward outer "happiness" is the right image -- the image, an image, your image, their image -- as long as things appear to be shiny, new, hip and cool, that is all that matters: you've made it. If you appear as if the only thing differentiating you and your favorite TV star is the TV, then, you've made it -- Or have you?.. Theodore Adorno called it The Culture Industry. Jean Baudrillard gave us the term hyper real. Flusser clarifies the role of imagery in popular culture today with his revolutionary method of aligning the ancient image, linear text, and technological image as an uncoded, post-historic media text, not as a window to what is happening in the world around us.

This project attempts to show the pervasive power of image and how, in today's culture, it has become the thing we go to for answers, how it is omnipresent by our own accord, and, how, for some, it has become like God. The Vision Factory explores and records some of the dynamism of essential cultural contexts and attempts to illustrate the ways in which the media contrive and control information in order to influence public opinion in the areas of art, literature, education, politics, journalism, entertainment, and labor. These instances are not often obvious amidst the prevailing condition, but they indeed impact us all as citizens of our global planet.

These comparisons and conclusions are drawn from a process of investigating the relationships between power and the use of image as part of the current cultural phenomenon we are witnessing of not only a decrease in the emphasis on civics, but, to the contrary, and indeed -- through the use of digital media -- a clear focus, if not emphasis, on the self. With this in mind, the question arises "Can community exist in the midst of mass individualization?" As the foundation of its argument and investigation, the research project references popular culture from the early 20th century to the present. [Main research site].

Media & Cultural Preservation

I agree with Plato in that the unexamined life is not worth living. I have examined quite a bit, and plan to continue with these explorations. But I am also of the mind that, as a result of all of this work -- all these hours of reading, pondering, wandering, writing, shooting, and writing some more -- I'd like to actively, if not tangibly, contribute to the greater wonder and beauty of human culture. As a technologist then, it seems to make perfect sense to continue this work and explore, observe, record and create ways in which this technology of ours can be used to preserve human culture, specifically those fading cultures that are in danger due largely to the forces at work explained in earlier works: mainly, those of a political and economic nature. For more, please visit The Center for Technomadology and Cultural Preservation.

Seismograph: Observations & Recordings of Global Motion

Seismograph is talk show, discussion format that examines the flow of information, influence, and power in our everyday global culture. This electronic notebook is a collection of instances of media effecting culture after the realization that I am not alone in the potentially damaging and otherwise negative effects of blindly following a crowd, trend, and influence of pop culture. It is being used as both a standalone book as well as a set of notes for a larger body of research described on this page. Seismograph will be a spoken word, audio-based, interview and talk radio type production which will focus its conversations and topics on philosophy, media studies, politics, art, and other issues of civic concern in today's media saturated society. Guest artist, educators, industry professionals, and philosophers from around the world will join the show when available.

NOTES
1. There is no formal Noam Chomsky School, this is just a phrase I use to group a list of important writers together for sake of organization. Other writers in this group are: Howard Zinn, Edward Herman, David Barsamian, Amy Goodman, Robert McChesney.
2. Noam Chomsky, "Media Control" Seven Stories Press, 2002.
3. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, "The Art of War: Posters in World Conflict" http://www.alplm.org/events/art_of_war.html.

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Media Effects

Research Tags & Keywords

Comparative Neuroactivity: Codex vs. E-ink Reading