NETWORKS, USERS AND ECONOMICS

NETWORKS, USERS AND ECONOMICS

Deals with the networked forms of new media afforded by the Internet. It has a particular emphasis on the relationship between economics and the forms of media culture emerging through net based technologies. As such its aim is to demonstrate how we need to understand the relationships between human creativity, technological potential, and the possibilities offered by markets. The structure of the section itself is offered as a model for understanding these mutually determining relationships, moving between a generalised understanding of the macro-economic forces of globalisation and neo-liberalism to the specific instance of how this might affect the user of a social network site or the producer of online TV.

The section looks at how the ‘social shaping of technology’ approach can be successfully applied to networked media through the traditional Media Studies tools of political economy. It critically analyses the identification between the internet and globalisation, emphasising the reality of a ‘digital divide’ as way of challenging the ‘world wide’ appellation of the WWW.

More specifically it examines the way in which networked based businesses have been subject to the boom and bust cycle of the market as a way of understanding Web developments as a direct response to the dot.com crash of 2000 to 2002. We include a new section on the way in which networked practices and technologies have affected the music industries which in many ways exemplifies the conflicts between users and owners of Intellectual Property which all media businesses have found so challenging in the early years of the new century.

People argue that the economic theory of the ‘Long Tail’ has emerged as an important new model for understanding networked media, unlocking new possibilities for users and producers alike, leading to the new business practices of viral marketing, community management and web advertising. Interwoven with this background the reader will find a summary of the main traditions from the study of Computer Mediated Communication that offer paradigms for thinking about the kinds of personal investments afforded by the Internet; investments of time, passion and creativity that are also driving adaptations in media business practices. These investments are now often referred to as ‘user generated content’ and this section looks at some of the forms which this explosion of media production takes, such as YouTube.
 

Cyber culture:

Technology, Nature and Culture Part 5 pursues problems posed elsewhere in the book and argues that the core dilemma facing any study of technology is how to understand the part played by a technology’s sheer physical form in the shaping of history and culture, on the one hand, and although this is principally addressed how that culture is experienced. Here we consider arguments, some very old, that there is a tighter relationship between technology and culture than is often acknowledged.

To demonstrate this, we consider three periods in the history of technology, which can be named after their principal technologies: mechanical, steam, and cybernetic. We discuss the deep and structuring influence of each of these technologies on the cultures formed around them. The scientific, philosophical and historical contexts in which these technocultural relationships occur are also examined. Given the importance of intelligent agents in contemporary digital culture, particular attention will be paid to how the long history of efforts to understand and to build automata, or self-acting machines, exemplifies these relationships.

Finally, drawing on materials and arguments presented throughout the book, this concludes with an argument for the kind of realism necessary to understand technology in culture, centring on the concept of causality.

BY MWORIA ANGEL

BAPRM 42642