“If George Orwell were alive today, he would be wearing a vain smirk, waving around a box brimming with free copies of Nineteen Eighty-Four, a tragic twinkle in his eye,” (Russett, 40). It’s true with the way things are headed it would seem that we all should be shaking in our boots. If I wasn’t already freaked…
“Family is just another word for censorship!” (Guins, xii). Technology and the Culture of Control tackles the complicated relationship between users/consumers and the content that they access. In his first chapter, Raiford Guins unpacks the argument that one of the goals of censorship is to maintain “family values” in public spaces. Parents can purchase “clean” versions…
The ability to operate online “anonymously” facilitates a very small range of behaviors in users. An interesting way to look at the different approaches to anonymity online is through an examination of Tumblr and the random page “/b/”, on 4chan.org. I, like many other users I know, use Tumblr as an outlet for self-expression. Whether…
In the past few years it seems that a change in the tides is afoot in the entertainment industry, particularly in regards to the Internet. With attention spans seemingly smaller and smaller, makers of content must tailor their work in a way that keeps the Internet roamer in place; at least long enough to see…
Just before the onslaught of midterms began, I noticed that Netflix added the third season of one of my favorite shows, The Walking Dead to its instant queue. I waited for months and endured plenty of conversations that threatened to spoil the season for me before I could finally watch it. And boy did I watch it,…
What does it mean to own a piece of technology? Nowadays everyone walks with their heads down: staring at their smartphone, replying to an email or text, perhaps even talking on a Bluetooth. We’ve become attached to these devices and evidence of this fact is all around us. Just today on Tumblr a gif of…
There is a certain level of hostility that coincides with video game playing. Listening to someone play Xbox Live in the other room can sometimes leave you feeling like you’ve stumbled into a Tarantino film. Once while playing Xbox Live on my brother’s game system other male players harassed me and accused me of sounding…
What makes new media so “new”? Some scholars define this phrase in terms of what media preceded it. In this way “remediation” or in general terms, the “act or process of correcting a fault or deficiency”(thefreedictionary.com) is essential to understanding new media as it exists today. Lev Manovich’s work, The Language of New Media discusses this word in terms…
In class on Thursday afternoon we discussed the value of booking a trip to Paris to see the original Mona Lisa at her home in the Louvre. Why pay so much money to stand in front of a disappointingly small painting surrounded by heavy duty glass when the image can easily be found online, on an umbrella,…
WIIH Fellows: New Media, New Knowledge 