midterm Flashcards
culture
a process or experience, which isn’t fixed, culture is a collection of interactive cultures, each of which is growing and changing, by the intersection of gender, race, sexuality, socioeconomics, class, etc.
digital culture
contemporary phase of communication technologies, on that follows 19th century print culture and 20th century electronic broadcast culture, and that is deeply amplified and accelerated by the popularity of networked computers, personalized technologies and digital images. This rise of a context in which digital creative processes of different media could converge
high culture
culture of elite, in the arts
low culture
popular, mass distributed culture
discourse, ideology
a social language created by particular cultural conditions at a particular time and place and expresses a particular way of understanding human experience
alan turing
conceptual machine
A pioneering English computer scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and theoretical biologist.
Published a paper ‘On Computable Numbers with Application to the Entscheidungsproblem’ as a response to mathematician David Hilbert
Hilbert wanted to put all mathematics into a structure/set theory/algorithm/program. Kurt Godel, in 1931, found that there was no such system of the type that Hilbert proposed (“Godel’s incompleteness theorem.”
Turing approached the problem by imagining a conceptual machine that could be configured to be in a number of different states, like that of a typewriter.
The difference was that Turing’s machine could be configured into an infinite number of states. With the right configuration, any mathematical question could be solved. This could be likened to conceptualizing a modern computer, as he proposed a binary machine that could be configured in any number of different states. Others had previously thought of this conceptual machine, but Turing’s idea had more conceptual coherence.
Cracked the Nazi code: German coding Machine aka the enigma machine, which was used by the German forces.
Charles Babbage
- A mathematician/theoretician
- Concerned with the management of labour, e.g.: autonomizing it
- Following the work of Smith he promulgated the economic advantages of the division of labour, as well as the increased use of machinery in manufacturing.
- Babbage was engaged in building, or trying to build, machines, the ‘Difference’ and ‘Analytical’ engines (illus. 4), that are recognizably prototypical computers
- His initial reasons for building the ‘Difference Engine’ concerned the efficient production of mathematical tables, used both at sea and in industrial production
- Both his calculating machines and his management theories were responses to burgeoning capitalism,
- ‘Analytical Engine’, had it been completed, would have been programmable, and able to calculate any formula, and to compare numbers and decide how to proceed with the operation it was performing
•George Boole
Self taught mathematician
Used algebraic methods to logic, thus allowing logical relations to be calculated in a mathematical manner.
He thought that this algebraic logic worked used only two numerical values, 1 and 0.
•Ada Lovelace
First Computer programmer
Worked on Analytical Engine with Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage’ Protogé
First computer programmer
Norbert Wiener
The developer of the concept of Cybernetics.
cybernetics
Developed by Norbert Wiener. The science of communications and automatic control systems in both machines and living things
Steam Engine
Invented in the 19th century. Allowed for trains, faster transportation, mass production, and rural industries transforming to urban, which lead to the industrial revolution
1450 – printing press invented by Hans Gutenberg (block print)
Dr. Lev Manovich
One the leading theorists of digital culture worldwide, and a pioneer in application of data science for analysis of contemporary culture
THE CYBERNETIC ERA (aka post war era)
WWII was the catalyst for not just the invention of the modern binary computer, but also for the development of a number of remarkable things, such as cybernetics, information theory, general systems theory, molecular biology, AI, and structuralism.
•Information theory:
Proposed by Claude E. Shannon in 1948 to find fundamental limits on signal processing and communication operations
The mathematical study of the coding of information in the form of sequences of symbols, impulses, etc., and how rapidly such information can be transmitted through ICT. Developed by Claude Shannon, an electrical engineer trained at the University of Michigan.
the linear schema of communication outlined in Claude E. Shannon’s work
The device that encodes the message / The source of the message
The device that decodes the message
The message’s destination
general systems theory
Proposed by Bertalanffy
Based upon an open-system model that allowed for the flow of inputs and outputs with the environment.
Systems theory thus serves as a bridge for interdisciplinary dialogue between autonomous areas of study as well as within the area of systems science itself.
Turing test
Someone communicating with a machine to an invisible correspondent. The person in the Turing test was tasked with determining whether the person they were ‘talking to’ through the machine was a real human being or a computer. If the computer could fool its correspondent into believing it was human, then it might be considered intelligent. Artificial Intelligence (AI): Turing’s idea constitutes the conceptual basis of what later became known as Artificial Intelligence or AI. The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.
structuralism
Emerged in France in the 1940s and 1950s, presented a powerful framework developed by Ferdinand de Saussure, where different things could be formalized and presented in abstract terms.
importance of cybernetics
- Allowed for the removing of the understanding of mental processes from the brain to the disembodied logical processes of the mind, leading to the invention of Artificial Intelligence.
- Cybernetics was of great interest to the American military. Became the model for military command in the cold war
jay Forrester
was the person who created the Whirlwind computer system. Whirlwind, the computer that ran the SAGE Early Warning System was one of the main proponents of cybernetic thinking
cybernetics
Theory of control and communication in the animal and machine, with particular concern for issues of feedback and self-regulation.
-The science of communications and automatic control systems in both machines and living things
The work of art in the age of technical reproduction - Walter Benjamin
key points:
• the emergence of cinema was a game-changer, it moved us from
the ‘individual contemplation’ of artwork to mass-appreciation,
Benjamin believed this had political implications
• just like the factory was changing labour, mass-produced images
were changing how we see and how we appreciate aesthetics
• Benjamin believed ‘the aura’ and ‘ritual quality’ of hand-crafted art
of the past was lost when there was no longer an original and just
copies (and copies of copies)
• Benjamin believed the viewer of the mass image was perpetually
distracted
benjamin on structuralism
AI and semiotics
In addition to enabling advances in computing, AI was beginning to influence our own understanding of mental processes (Gere, p.60)
Ferdinand de Saussure: “For Saussure the sign itself is arbitrary, and meaning is found in language in the differences between signs, not in any positive terms.
how does benjamin locate authenticity in art
in the uniqueness of an artistic object, and its inability to be in more than one place at one time.
Benjamin
Benjamin locates authenticity in the uniqueness of an artistic object, and its inability to be in more than one place at one time.
But when cinema comes along and movies can be showcased at many different places, the idea of art is challenged into becoming something else.
Benjamin writes that photography is the first medium that devolves art into using a camera.
At the end of section IV on his essay, he writes, “the moment the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applied to artistic production, the whole social function of art is turned about. Instead of having its foundation in ritual, its foundation steps into different practice: namely, its foundation in politics.”
Benjamin says that movies in cinema are experienced for the amount of time they are up. Paintings are not. Benjamin is a very insightful man
Benjamin says that material changes in the media of art are not reflections of political or social changes but rather perform the “directing, instructing stance” that defines the political tendency of art in “The Author as Producer.” Benjamin’s theory of art is an account of such a tendency as it manifests itself in the contemporary direction of art.
He is spooked by the idea of new mediums of art. He concludes that art can manifest in many different forms and that he’s cool with it.
Aura
‘Aura’ is the concept of the strange interplay of space and time in early photography. A strange weave of space and time: the unique appearance of a distance, no matter how close it may be. Spatial existence is defined according to a particular moment in time, thereby making what is seen as unique. In the case of photography, the opposite is true because the experience of the image is no longer restricted to a specific place and time but can exist in different places at different times yet remain unchanged. This is a change in perception. And made possible by means of its reproduction. Photography then emphasizes an experience based on transience and reproducibility. (eg., A print made 10 years ago and one made today are essentially the same; the question of the original disappears.)
technological determinism
In the initial stages of the adoption of a particular technology, that the technology will generate social change based upon the implicit values, virtues, or vices possessed by that technology. This line of thinking is often referred to as technological determinism.
•The Social Determination of Technology aka Symptomatic Technology:
This refers to a form of determinism whereby social conditions create environments in which technologies are seen as either necessary by-products of social processes or, as early sociologist of technology William Ogburn argued, were inevitable, given the correct set of social conditions.
technological enablement
New technologies are looked for and developed with purposes and practices in mind. These purposes are intended to change things and influence society: that is their point
technological enablement
- In general, one can suggest new technologies are developed to:
- Fulfil a need or solve a problem.
- Bring about a certain condition in the future.
- Create a profit or some sort of personal gain.
Technologies can be seen as setting up a system of enablers with two potential outcomes:
- ‘Preferred’ -> conventional or intended uses.
- ’Unexpected’ applications and novel cultural form.