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Issue 03 – General Issue
Andrew Murphie Editor New media/information technologies, practices and processes have undoubtedly made a huge difference to our traditional understanding of media. The crucial question – one that perhaps underlies so many other important questions, from shifting relationships to the new terrors and new wars – is, of course, what kind of difference. Yet the question of what this difference is remains unresolved. After at least a decade of serious debate about the defining qualities of new/digital/networked media, we are left with the perhaps more exciting task of engaging with the specificity of events as they emerge. Indeed, this seems the point. The intensity of differentiation intrinsic to media seems somewhat hostile to stable media/information technologies, practices or thinking. A more pliable thinking about media/information events is now required than one constrained by the traditional divisions often still found in academic, media, information, computer sciences and related industries. At the same…
FCJ-010 Email and Epistolary technologies: Presence, Intimacy, Disembodiment
Esther Milne Media and Communications, Swinburne University of Technology Introduction “Presence” is a major focus for researchers and artists of digital culture, computer networks and new medical, communication and entertainment technologies (Donati and Prado, 2001; Lombard and Ditton, 1997; Mitchell, 1999; Murphy, 2000; Ryan, 1999; Sheridan, 1992). Presence refers to the degree to which geographically dispersed agents experience a sense of physical and/or psychological proximity through the use of particular communication technologies. In areas as diverse as virtual reality, video conferencing, MUDs (multi-user domain), newsgroups, electronic discussion lists, telemedicine, web-based education, flight simulation software and computer gaming, a sense of presence is vital for the success of the particular application. It ought to be noted that the term “telepresence” has been used both interchangeably with and in opposition to the term presence. Jonathan Steuer, for example, adopts the latter use arguing that the point of departure between the two terms…
FCJ-009 That-which-new media studies-will-become
Phillip Roe Central Queensland University The terms new media, new media studies and new media research are being taken up in a number of ways with different traditions, methodologies, and ways of constituting object(s) of study. In an article entitled ‘What is New Media Research?’ (2001), Chris Chesher has considered what distinguishes the research on new media amongst this proliferation of approaches and methodologies. He notes that many in these traditions just get on with producing new media without engaging with the question of how these media are new. Yet his concern is with a more critical and theoretical New Media Studies, and he has continued to articulate and advocate the kind (brand) of new media studies and new media research paradigm that he would identify with. It is also this kind of new media studies that I identify with. Chesher’s intervention opens up the question of the research paradigm…
FCJ-008 WebCT: Will the Future of Online Education be User-friendly?
Tama Leaver English, Communication and Cultural Studies, University of Western Australia The impetus for this paper comes from two related events: the first is my initial contact with the online education ‘courseware’ package or Managed Learning Environment (MLE) called Web Course Tools (commonly abbreviated as WebCT); and the other is the University of Western Australia’s (UWA’s) purchase of a campus-wide site license for WebCT and the resulting expectation that all e-learning at UWA will be standardised via WebCT mediated delivery. There are a number of reasons for the decision to manage all course content using WebCT and the IT policy section of the UWA website illuminates some of these: The future of online learning at UWA is towards [sic] an enterprise-wide approach and away from a “cottage industry” approach, whilst retaining and harnessing the considerable skills and enthusiasm demonstrated in the relatively high level of use of online materials achieved…
FCJ-007 Learning through New Media Objects
Karen Woo University of New South Wales Learning objects sneaked into educational technology vernacular in the latter half of the 1990s. [1] Its origin can be traced back to military training, where the Sharable Content Object Reference Model was invented (ADL 2003). Through workplace training and learning/ content management systems, these obscure objects have recently made their way into higher and K-12 education. At the time of writing, various Australian projects have started involving educational institutions in higher education (COLIS), K-12 (Learning Federation, EduNet) as well as vocational education and training (OTEN-DE). Despite their popularity in e-learning, no one has a definitive answer to the question of what learning objects are, though a range of opinions have been expressed. Some answers are intuitive while others are more technically sophisticated. In the introductory chapter of The Instructional Use of Learning Objects, David Wiley gives an exemplary introduction to these objects: Learning…
FCJ-006 Halflives, A Mystory: Writing Hypertext to Learn
Lisa Gye Media and Communications, Swinburne University of Technology In what ways do electronic media, and, in particular, online media or hypertext, have the potential to change the ways in which we acquire and generate knowledge? How does writing hypertextually transform the learner’s experience of the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge in contrast to the kinds of learning that takes place when students engage with the proprietary systems used for online course delivery in universities. While online learning systems are believed by many in higher education to be a viable alternative to face to face teaching, many proprietary delivery systems neglect the role of the student as learner, emphasising instead the student as a consumer of course materials. Halflives: A Mystory (https://halflives.adc.rmit.edu.au) was and continues to be a research project that has enabled me to consider these questions from the perspective of a learner engaged in constructing knowledge hypertextually. [1]…
Issue 02 – New Media, New Worlds?
The second issue of the Fibreculture Journal reflects on both new media in relation to their past, and some attempts to adapt the past to contemporary technologies in the new circuits of education. Of course, these two concerns are closely related. Education is very much trapped at the moment between present (technologically informed) potential and past institutional formations. Despite all the discussion about new pedagogies and the institutional love for technological “solutions” such as WebCT, there still seems a dire need for subtler theories of technology and education, more informed critiques of current major moves in this direction, and more supple, dynamic tools and concepts providing alternatives to these major moves. Here we provide Lisa Gye‘s discussion of her own experiment in pedagogy, Halflives: A Mystory, which implements some of the valuable ideas of Gregory Ulmer in an Australian context. Tama Leaver gives a critique of WebCT as a seemingly…
FCJ-005 The Erasure of Technology in Cultural Critique
Belinda Barnet University of New South Wales Isaac Asimov once suggested that it would make far more difference in our everyday lives if the automobile had not been invented than if Einstein had failed to formulate the theory of relativity (Hansen, 2003: 1). Theory and technology are very different things. Likewise, language and technology are very different things. According to US critic Mark Hansen, technology should be assessed according to its concrete experiential effects, not just its symbolic or cultural significance; it is more than just an effect of language. This is a tall order, because we have little to draw upon in taking such an approach: contemporary critical theory treats technology as a trope or representation rather than a physical reality in the world. The “machine” is not just a metaphor for a particular technology, but for technology itself. And at a deeper level, this metaphor enframes technology within…
FCJ-004 The Military-Entertainment Complex: A New Facet of Information Warfare
Stephen Stockwell and Adam Muir Griffith University All by itself, a Go piece can destroy an entire constellation synchronically; a chess piece cannot…Chess is indeed a war but an institutionalized, regulated, coded war… Go is war without battle lines, with neither confrontation nor retreat, without battles even: pure strategy, whereas Chess is a semiology. (Deleuze and Guattari, 1989: 353) A revolution in military affairs (RMA) has taken place in the US since the first Gulf War as the data-processing power of the computer has been applied not only to the strategic complexities that had prompted the development of the computer in the first place but, now, to the systematic operations of small units and individuals. The ability to micro-manage the organisation of logistics has raised the possibility of micro-managing the organization of information to target particular audiences among both the enemy and one’s own populations to produce close control of…
FCJ-003 Internet Politics in an Information economy
Jon Marshall University of Technology, Sydney Introduction The Internet, and information technology generally, is not separate from the social world in which it is embedded, neither does it fully determine that world. It may, however, allow modifications, intensifications or even subversions to occur. This paper will discuss some of the problems and paradoxes of the “Information economy” and its regimes of property; issues around the so-called hacker ethic and open source software; and some of the expectations which have been held for the Internet’s role in fostering democratic politics. It is possible the idea of the “information economy” itself has a negative effect by suggesting a whole new range of property to be appropriated and kept from common use. The term “information” is not a concept which links things together because they are similar in the same way. It is an open and magical term, which may hide as much…
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