Levy, Pierre. Cyberculture. Electronic Mediations, V. 4. Minneapolis, Minn.; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001,
“Technology is responsible for neither our salvation nor our destruction. Always ambivalent, technologies project our emotions, intentions, and projects in to the material world. The instruments we have built provide us with power, but since we are collectively responsible, the decision on how to use them is in our hands“ (xv).
Cyberspace: The new medium of communications that arose through the global interconnection of computers.
Cyberculture: That set of technologies (material and intellectual), practices, attitudes, modes of thought, and values that developed along with the growth of cyberspace.”
While this US edition was published in 2001, this work was originally published in 1997 (in French). However, many of Levy’s theories seem to have substantial staying power in our current age. Read the rest of this entry »
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. 1st MIT Press ed. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994.
“Language does for intelligence what the wheel does for the feet and the body. It enables them to move from thing to thing with greater ease and speed and ever less involvement” (113).
McLuhan begins this essay with an example of a rather animated radio DJ that reacts with sounds, comments, groans, etc. to his own comments, noting that it is in this way that the audience participation is created. This is a condition of the one-to-many broadcast. Of course it is arguable that by merely passively listening, the audience is participating. However, the DJ’s reactions perhaps make it seem more active, since operating solely in the spoken and not written realm of experience, he may feel the need to put forth those emotions and reactions, which one might normally draw out more in a written work, since the author tends to add richer detail to prose. Read the rest of this entry »
Asynchronous Online Classroom
The AOC refers to a course delivered solely online without any synchronous component. In this setting, the level of social presence is presumably lower than that experienced in the face-to-face (FtF) classroom, where one can see, hear, and interact with the speaker in real time.
Following my October 24th post of a proposal to present at the ATTW conference, I recently got word that it was accepted. I am certainly going to accept the offer, and I’m thoroughly excited for the opportunity to put out to the academic community this concept (Simulating Synchronicity in the Online Classroom Through Embedded Audio-Visual Discussions), which is a foundational portion of my dissertation research.
While the elation of ATTW acceptance has not yet cleared, I am now diving into creating a proposal to present in June at the Media Ecology Association conference. This year it is being held at St Louis University (yes, I will be in awe, basking and wallowing in the Ong archives, at every open moment). I think this is a wise venue in which to discuss my ideas on digital orality with the academe community.
