MS-352 Virtual Life week 9
9. ‘SO LONG, AND THANKS FOR ALL THE CHIPS …’: MACHINIC EVOLUTION, THE RISE OF ROBOTS AND STRONG A.I.So far in the module we have considered the human relationship to technology and machines and the...
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10. Turn on, Log-in and Switch off: Forster, Huxley, Bradbury, Baudrillard, VirilioMost of the authors we have covered in the module have been optimistic about the benefits for human life and relations...
View ArticleMS-352 Virtual Life week 11
11. 1010011010 – The Number of the Beast? Technology, A.I.s and Digital Apocalypticism‘We don’t know who struck first – us, or them. But we know that it was us that scorched the sky… Morpheus (The...
View ArticleMyspace and Legendary Psychasthenia
MYSPACE AND LEGENDARY PSYCHASTHENIAWe have barely begun to consider the importance of Roger Caillois’s 1935 claim that ‘from whichever side one approaches things, the ultimate problem turns out in the...
View ArticleKarma Police: Digital User Management in Online Music Stores
Karma Police: Digital User Management in Online Music Stores‘It’s best not to mess with karma’Steve JobsIn February 2006, 16 year old Alex Ostrovsky from West Bloomfield, Michigan, USA, downloaded...
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Internet:‘Vernacular Web 2.0’, by Olia Lialina – a great, easy-to-read article on the evolution of amateur web design and the value system of online presentation:...
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Internet:Saga launches a social networking site for the over-50s (31st Oct): http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/oct/31/news.socialnetworkingInternet:Virtual world is hit with a real world...
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The Future:A story about an android dental patient called Simroid used to train dentists in Japan (30th Nov): http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/nov/30/robots.japanCinema:An article on the...
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Music:Warner agrees to make its music available for download on Amazon in the mp3 format without copy-protection (27th Dec): http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7162280.stmCinema:Apple and 20th century...
View ArticleMedia Studies 2.0 - my thoughts ...
(For a number of years I've been thinking about the problems of teaching media studies and of the nature of media studies itself in a changing media world. I started this blog in part as a place to...
View ArticleJan-March digital media news
March 2008Video Games:The government backs TV psychologist Dr Tanya Bryon’s suggestions for film-style ratings overseen by the British Board of Film Classification to be introduced for video games…...
View ArticleApril-June Digital Media News
June 2008Music:Record companies find ways to offset CD slump: ‘Record companies made 11.4% of their income outside traditional music sales last year, according to figures released today by the BPI, the...
View ArticleJuly-August Digital Media News
August 2008Music:An article on some of the forgotten pioneers of electronic music (29th Aug): http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/aug/29/electronicmusic See also (20th Sept):...
View ArticleMS2.0 Paper - Lincoln University 22nd Oct
I'm giving the following paper at Lincoln University on 22nd October:'Ask the Audience' and 'Say What You See'? ... Time to Upgrade Media StudiesAbstract:Media studies was a product of the broadcast...
View ArticleNew Book: Copy, Rip, Burn
My colleague at Swansea, David Berry has just published Copy, Rip, Burn: The Politics of Copyleft and Open Source, with Pluto Press.From the Amazon blurb:Open source technology, like OpenOffice, has...
View ArticleTara Brabazon on Textbooks
Prof. Tara Brabazon of the media studies department at the University of Brighton recently published this discussion of textbooks as a response to my own critique:...
View ArticleNew Book: Jean Baudrillard: Fatal Theories
Coming out any day now in hardback, a new book co-edited by myself, David Clarke, Marcus Doel and Richard Smith (Swansea University) - Jean Baudrillard: Fatal Theories. Email the publisher Routledge...
View ArticleThe Challenge of New Media - One day forum, UWE, Bristol
Jon Dovey and Martin Lister of the Department of Culture, Media and Drama and the Faculty of Creative Arts at UWE, Bristol, are organising a one-day forum on issues around media studies and Media...
View ArticleSeptember-October Digital Media News Stories
October 2008Privacy/Social Networking:Cory Doctorow on privacy in the digital age (31st Oct): http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/31/civil-liberty-information-database-jacquiPrint:A...
View ArticleNovember Digital Media News Stories
Computing:The mouse turns 40 (30th Nov): http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/nov/30/computer-science-it-mouseSearching:The leading Chinese search engine has been accused of allowing unlicensed...
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