New Media Cultures - P. David Marshall
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Interesting links, questions and discussions

Chapter Three develops ideas that move from technological determinism to understanding the contemporary moment as supported by an elaborate technological apparatus that functions like an ideology

The Technological Apparatus of New Media

Further research on technological determinism may generate some interesting insights: Monmouth University’s library has built a website where you can find out more about Lewis Mumford and his thinking about technology and society.

CMC or Computer Mediated Communication had a special issue devoted to Technological Determinism that is worth exploring.
The official site of Marshall McLuhan is still regularly updated and visited. The 1969 Playboy interview of McLuhan is also online.

Jean Baudrillard, who has written in convoluted aphorisms about the simulacrum and the hyperreal has also a number of sites devoted to his work, these have been collated in a site provided by Alan Taylor called Baudrillard connections. The journal C-Theory can also be explored for his connections to post-modern culture.

The shifted public and counter-public sphere can be investigated from a number of angles. One interesting site is called Alternet and a 2002 article deals with the shifts in the anti-globalization movement. Usegroups, such as misc.activism.progressive, are a good way to work through the way that groups are coalescing around specific interests. From a more apologist position about globalization, it may be worthwhile reading Financial Times reporter James Harding’s series on the anti-globalization movement.


Work and Play…

The second generation of the new media economy with its movement of intellectual labour is in full force. Tracing its developments and resistances is a research area that needs a great deal of attention and can be investigated further through interviews and searching. Recently newspapers, magazines and Internet news have had regular features on outsourcing and by March 2004 it had become a US presidential election issue because of the perceived threat that outsourcing has presented to domestic employment. Because these are corporate strategies, there is of course online business assistance for outsourcing. The conservative journal Foreign Affairs published an article by Daniel Drezner entitled The outsourcing bogeyman in April–May 2004.

Andrew Ross has written the insightful and informative No-Collar: The Humane Workplace and its Hidden Costs (Temple University Press, 2004) that provides some of the contradictions of the new media style of work and office.



Discussions/Questions

As discussed in the chapter each newspaper generally has a technology or gadgets section once a week. Do a discourse analysis that identifies the kinds of tropes and patterns that play across the articles that are part of these kinds of sections of newspapers. A similar study of programs such as TechTV would also be valuable.

Do some field work investigating the precise ways in which new media products are made, where they are made, and what kind of work environments are part of the production process in these different locales.

Mobile phones are a convergent technology. Develop a study that differentiates heavy users, users and non-users. How has the mobile phone transformed work and play? How determining and freeing is a particular technology?

Do a personal history of how the computer has moved into your home environment. Develop it into a wider study of the integration of the microchip/digitalization into the home environment.