Lecture Notes Week 2

COMMUNICATION: Any process that transfers, transmits or makes information known to other people.




· Basic model of communication explained by Aristotle in ‘Rhetoric’ about 2500 yrs ago:

1. speaker produces message that is heard by listener

The communication is face to face and communicators have common background.





· New complex model by Shannon & Weaver in book ‘The Mathematical Theory of Communication’:

1. speaker produces effect on transmitter that sends message (which is degraded by the noise of transmission process) that is intercepted by receiver which converts it into an effect heard by listener.




INTERSUBJECTIVITY:

· listener interprets the message and changes it as they send it along
· C between ppl and they always want to argue about things, interpreting them in light of own experience.
· active audience produces feedback



INTERTEXTUALITY:

· No msg is ever complete
· Any msg gains its meaning (for a particular person) from all the other messages that person has previously received and sent



Just as genes carry biological info required for survival, memes carry the social ideas that are also required for survival.




TECHNOLOGY:

Scientific study of mechanical arts and their application to the world. Technology arises form and carries ideas. T is apart of the material world. The constantly developing relationship between material world and the ideas humans have is at core of dialectic that acts as dynamo in development of human society and that produces the small-r reason, or logic, that we use to make the decisions required to get through day.


· Marshall McLuhan says technologies are extensions of human body. Book extension of eye, wheel extension of leg etc. Also C is extension of mind, and the medium in which that C occurs is the message.



ANALOG- technology functions by representing cariable forces that are continuous in both time and space through dials that allow the relatively imprecise modulation of those forces.


DIGITAL- technology relies on storing bits of binary info about forces by turning on and off currents of electricity or light in ways that allow for the precise modification of those forces.


Shift from analog to digital can be good or bad (tuning digital car radio while driving). While dig T is ascending, some find analog offers something more appealing than certainty & flat structures of dig domain.


McLuhan: in shift from A to D perhaps we moving from old C technology that allows many shades of grey to much more black n white that encourages us to C exactly what we mean.




OLD TECHNOLGY



Printing- 1452 when Gutenberg printed version of bible in Germany. Printing press 1st C technology to make info available to mass audience: books, pamphlets & papers were a necessary precondition to development of mass society.


Telegraph- 1837 Samuel Morse sent electrical impulses down wire in patterns that could be reinterpreted as msg at other end. First public telegraph in 1844. Morse’s code of dots & dashes was early binary system & prompted cable tween continents that allowed immediate C around globe.


Telephone- 1876 Alexandra Grahem Bell, allowed sounds transmitted over long-distances.


Phonograph- Thomas Edison in 1876 recorded & played back sound on wax cylinders. This led to development of cassettes, records, CD’s etc.


Radio- In 1930s radio was modified to transmit & receive all manner of sounds & thus radio industry established allowing immediate & simultaneous broadcast of info to mass audience.


Cinema- By using mechanical device to shine light through number of photographic images in quick succession the Lumiere Brothers created early forms of cinema which relied on the ‘persistence of vision’ to retain image for 1/16th of sec at a time. IN 1929 reliable system was developed that allowed simultaneous & synchronised transmission of sound.


Television- 1926 John Baird developed. By late 1930s Tv ready to be marketed to mass audience.