“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
―
Oscar Wilde
This is Bibliophile.
Welcome to my weekly segment where I take a Canadian university, and search its library catalogue for interesting new books to comment on. As always, a bold H following an entry denotes that the book is held in my local university library.
I've had a bit of an odd hurdle today; I'm having trouble finding an appropriate university library to plumb. Normally, I just take whatever comes next from Wikipedia's list of Canadian Universities. But with under 500 students, University Canada West doesn't so much have a library as it has a few shelves that happen to contain books on them. And the next up, University of Fraser Valley, might have a very fine collection, but its library website has currently disappeared, so it's off the list too. So that brings us to door number 3, the University of Northern British Columbia. It doesn't have a new book page, and you can search by year, but only if you specify a subject,title, author, or keyword. Ah, so it's going to be one of THOSE. The first twelve books that have been published in 2013, fit the keywords I randomly choose, and strike my eye as interesting, after the break.
Showing posts with label media studies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media studies. Show all posts
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Bibliophile: Doing Something About the Weather at Trinity Western
“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
― Groucho Marx
After a brief hiatus, Bibliophile is back. After the break, we have discussion of some new books available at Trinity Western University.
― Groucho Marx
After a brief hiatus, Bibliophile is back. After the break, we have discussion of some new books available at Trinity Western University.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Bibliophile: New Media, Stalkers, Girl Power, and Games at SFU
I've been playing Don't Starve. Still trying to figure out the ideal Pig King gold/red meat exchange ratio.
This is Bibliophile.
After the break, we'll checking up on what's new at Simon Fraser University. We've been there before, but that was about half a year ago, so I think it's due a repeat performance.
This is Bibliophile.
After the break, we'll checking up on what's new at Simon Fraser University. We've been there before, but that was about half a year ago, so I think it's due a repeat performance.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
And the band played on. Actually, no, they stopped once the talk started.
I went to a public talk today on Marconi, the Titanic, and early 20th century media, given by Professor Paul Heyer. My thoughts on that, emergency communications, and media history, after the break.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
One Hundred Pages of Solicitude #4: Understanding Media
“The price of eternal vigilance is indifference.”
This Wednesday's hecto-reading is Marshall McLuhan's seminal work, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. It is, to your average media scholar, either the single most important book in the entire corpus, or a book you you occasionally pull random quotations from and mean to read someday, honest. I'm rather in the latter camp, and it's been admittedly one of the more glaring omissions in my scholarly readings. Until today, that is.
The first hundred pages of McLuhan's book gets you through section 1, wherein he outlines his basic ideas, and a good ways into section II, wherein he outlines a few comments on every single form of media he can think of. My Section II reading covered the spoken word, the written word, and half a discussion on roads. Section I can be very roughly summed up in his three main ideas: the difference between hot and cold media, the oft-quoted sentiment that "the medium is the message" and the idea that our media--and our technologies--are ourselves. And if that last bit sounds a little Stieglerian to the audience, then I'd have to agree. That's what struck me first about the book: just how much modern media scholars are in debt to him, particularly Stiegler (for the technics = human equivalence), Kittler (for the emphasis on literacy), and Virillio (for connections between speed, technology, and power). And even if it's not a debt, the sheer frequency of parallel discussions means that anyone who studies these scholars really needs to consider McLuhan as well.
The other thing I noticed about McLuhan is how quotable he is, and how compact each of his paragraphs are. I found something on just about every page worth quoting. And even if it didn't make any sense, especially out of context, it still seemed worth noting: "The Roman solider was a man with a spade" (72). "Much of it was by pack animal--woman being the first pack animal" (93). “Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plan world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new forms.” (46) And each paragraph is, generally speaking, an example of good writing. I forcibly try to drill into the heads of my first years that they should adopt the model of the quotation sandwich in essay writing:make a claim, introduce a quotation to justify the claim, then follow up with the explanation of how the quotation justified the claim. McLuhan follows the same pattern, if you replace "quotation" with "idea," and it works very well.
Sadly, it's not all great news. McLuhan has a tendency to jump around a lot, and leave ideas rather undeveloped. Essentially, to borrow his own terminology, his writing is a cool medium. (McLuhan crash course: a "hot" medium is one that focuses on limiting experience to a single sense and allows little in the way of participation; a "cool" medium is one that focuses on a more disperse experience, and leaves lots of room for interpretation and participation. For the longest time, I couldn't remember that distinction, largely because it's based on meanings of "hot" and "cool" in regards to culture that were a lot more precisely defined than what we now use them for; ironically, the terms "hot" has become cool.) That means there's a lot of work for a dedicated scholar to do, but it's a double-edged sword, which I think may be one of the reasons why he gets short shrift. Essentially, you can either draw out the full meaning of one of hist statements, which involve patching together a fairly disparate argument with strange parallels and connections sprinkled throughout his books at large, or you can reduce the statement into a semi-useful aphorism and move on--most people seem to prefer the latter.
Further, he does have a tendency to indulge in generalization, generalization that occasionally tends towards hyperbole. Personally, I'm a little suspicious of his term "artist." For McLuhan, the artist is anyone who draws attention to the way people engage with their media. And he seems to acknowledge, at times, that anyone can be an artist: “If men were able to be convinced that art is precise advanced knowledge of how to cope with the psychic and social consequences of the next technology, would they all become artists?” (66). At the same time, though, I can't shake the feeling that there's something elitist in the notion that society, the dormant masses, are complacently waiting for these artists to come save them. But I'm willing to recognize that's my own (mis)interpretation. The larger charge of hyperbole still stands: “The computer, in short, promises by technology a Pentecostal condition of universal understanding and unity.”
Does it, Mr. McLuhan? Is that what it promises? Thank goodness; I can't understand why universal understanding has taken so long.
Verdict: His hyperbole aside, this is the most important book in history of media since Gutenberg invented the printing press. (Hey, I said *his* hyperbole aside. Mine's still allowed.)
Would Read the Rest?: Absolutely. In fact, I probably should have read it long before now.
Addendum: I wanted to be sure to include this quotation:“Lack of homogeneity in speed of information movement creates diversity of patterns in organization" (91). I mention it because, in one of life's odd serendipitous sync-ups, it rather exactly describes the dispersal of information and the resulting disruptions of plans that characterize much of the first 400 pages of A Dance with Dragons, the latest book in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, which I have been reading ferociously since... um, yesterday. 'S good.
Later Days.
This Wednesday's hecto-reading is Marshall McLuhan's seminal work, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. It is, to your average media scholar, either the single most important book in the entire corpus, or a book you you occasionally pull random quotations from and mean to read someday, honest. I'm rather in the latter camp, and it's been admittedly one of the more glaring omissions in my scholarly readings. Until today, that is.
The first hundred pages of McLuhan's book gets you through section 1, wherein he outlines his basic ideas, and a good ways into section II, wherein he outlines a few comments on every single form of media he can think of. My Section II reading covered the spoken word, the written word, and half a discussion on roads. Section I can be very roughly summed up in his three main ideas: the difference between hot and cold media, the oft-quoted sentiment that "the medium is the message" and the idea that our media--and our technologies--are ourselves. And if that last bit sounds a little Stieglerian to the audience, then I'd have to agree. That's what struck me first about the book: just how much modern media scholars are in debt to him, particularly Stiegler (for the technics = human equivalence), Kittler (for the emphasis on literacy), and Virillio (for connections between speed, technology, and power). And even if it's not a debt, the sheer frequency of parallel discussions means that anyone who studies these scholars really needs to consider McLuhan as well.
The other thing I noticed about McLuhan is how quotable he is, and how compact each of his paragraphs are. I found something on just about every page worth quoting. And even if it didn't make any sense, especially out of context, it still seemed worth noting: "The Roman solider was a man with a spade" (72). "Much of it was by pack animal--woman being the first pack animal" (93). “Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plan world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new forms.” (46) And each paragraph is, generally speaking, an example of good writing. I forcibly try to drill into the heads of my first years that they should adopt the model of the quotation sandwich in essay writing:make a claim, introduce a quotation to justify the claim, then follow up with the explanation of how the quotation justified the claim. McLuhan follows the same pattern, if you replace "quotation" with "idea," and it works very well.
Sadly, it's not all great news. McLuhan has a tendency to jump around a lot, and leave ideas rather undeveloped. Essentially, to borrow his own terminology, his writing is a cool medium. (McLuhan crash course: a "hot" medium is one that focuses on limiting experience to a single sense and allows little in the way of participation; a "cool" medium is one that focuses on a more disperse experience, and leaves lots of room for interpretation and participation. For the longest time, I couldn't remember that distinction, largely because it's based on meanings of "hot" and "cool" in regards to culture that were a lot more precisely defined than what we now use them for; ironically, the terms "hot" has become cool.) That means there's a lot of work for a dedicated scholar to do, but it's a double-edged sword, which I think may be one of the reasons why he gets short shrift. Essentially, you can either draw out the full meaning of one of hist statements, which involve patching together a fairly disparate argument with strange parallels and connections sprinkled throughout his books at large, or you can reduce the statement into a semi-useful aphorism and move on--most people seem to prefer the latter.
Further, he does have a tendency to indulge in generalization, generalization that occasionally tends towards hyperbole. Personally, I'm a little suspicious of his term "artist." For McLuhan, the artist is anyone who draws attention to the way people engage with their media. And he seems to acknowledge, at times, that anyone can be an artist: “If men were able to be convinced that art is precise advanced knowledge of how to cope with the psychic and social consequences of the next technology, would they all become artists?” (66). At the same time, though, I can't shake the feeling that there's something elitist in the notion that society, the dormant masses, are complacently waiting for these artists to come save them. But I'm willing to recognize that's my own (mis)interpretation. The larger charge of hyperbole still stands: “The computer, in short, promises by technology a Pentecostal condition of universal understanding and unity.”
Does it, Mr. McLuhan? Is that what it promises? Thank goodness; I can't understand why universal understanding has taken so long.
Verdict: His hyperbole aside, this is the most important book in history of media since Gutenberg invented the printing press. (Hey, I said *his* hyperbole aside. Mine's still allowed.)
Would Read the Rest?: Absolutely. In fact, I probably should have read it long before now.
Addendum: I wanted to be sure to include this quotation:“Lack of homogeneity in speed of information movement creates diversity of patterns in organization" (91). I mention it because, in one of life's odd serendipitous sync-ups, it rather exactly describes the dispersal of information and the resulting disruptions of plans that characterize much of the first 400 pages of A Dance with Dragons, the latest book in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, which I have been reading ferociously since... um, yesterday. 'S good.
Later Days.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Welcome toThe Daily---: A Story of Delayed Gratification
Well, that was weird.
I was embarking on my usual daily anaerobic exercises--200 push-ups, 200 sit-ups, and some light weightlifting (yes, I'm trying to brag in an overly affected modest manner, just ignore politely and move on)--and, also as usual, my background noise per choice was an episode of the Daily Show, as streamed through the Comedy Network's website. (Look at that! A legal use of the Internet to watch television. How quaint.) But due to a crossed wire of some sort, the show kept stopping every fifteen seconds or so in order to load. So I'd get a few seconds of some joke, then a weird pause. I endured this process for approximately 20 minutes of work-out time, during which I received about 9 minutes of actual show. (BTW, the original title of this post was "Welcome to the Daily Sh---," which was more faithful to the actual pause in my viewing, but provided a sort of mixed message in terms of signaling today's content.) This stilted method of viewing drew a number of things to mind:
1) It was the first time I finished the my exercises before the interview segment, making it my fastest workout ever. (I know this isn't actually the case, but please, be quiet; I really need a win right now.)
2) I'm reminded of how big a role immediacy plays in the modern media culture. I want what I want, and I want it now. Internet lags, television commercials, video game loading time, waiting for book releases, listening to an entire song (I've got a friend with a record player) --they're all anathema to culture of NOW, dammit. I had to actively resist an urge to turn off the stream, because a large part of me would rather listen to nothing than be forced to wait.
3) The pauses really drew attention to the structure of the show. The Daily Show is very formulaic in this regard; there's the opening run-through of the news, a consultation with one of the reporters/comedy people, and a commercial. Followed by a a more in-depth look at some more news items (or a feature on-location piece by one of the reporters), another commercial, and then a closing interview. The formulaic approach comes in part from the news format the show is satirizing, and in part from the late night talk show format that it actually is. But another big reason for the formula is that, once people are used to it, they ignore it, and that's what the show wants you to do--to focus on the content rather than their format.
The constant breaks drew attention to the format. Not at the broad level I've been describing, but at the micro-level of the individual joke. There's the framing, from Jon Stewart, the set-up (some kind of news clip, usually), the punchline, and the laughter. With the show slowed down to a crawl, I found myself looking for each element more and more. And because the cut-off happened at various places, I got to see how each element blended into and anticipated the next, particularly the set-up and laughter. You could often predict exactly what Stewart was going to do for the punchline, just from the news clip used. And despite what you might think, the joke doesn't end with the punchline, but with the laughter, the reaction to the punchline. I think both of these elements draw attention to how much of comedy and humor is in its communal component; to follow Kenneth Burke a bit, you identify with the group by anticipating Jon's joke and reacting with them. Of course, that's the main function of a studio audience to begin with.
(There's been a lot of noise in the press this year comparing Jon Stewart to Glenn Beck. It would be interesting to see if his show, while not a comedy, follows the same pattern of formula and community creation/enforcement. If only I could figure out a way of doing it without actually watching the show...)
4) It reminded me a lot of my own research habits. Particularly, it mirrored the painstaking efforts I once went through to map out the conversation tree of a scene in the video game Mass Effect (in case aficionados are wondering, it was the scene with Wrex on Virmire. Flowchart of the conversation is available upon request). There would be a few seconds of speech, then I'd push pause, and frantically rush over to my computer to type out what had just been said. It was significantly worse than transcribing an actual video, because there's no rewind button; if I missed something, I had to reload the entire scene and try again.
More generally, it reminded me of my close-reading method, which is basically to read a passage, stop reading, spend a few seconds jotting notes and reflecting, then return to the text. Watching the Daily Show in this broken manner reminded me of the pros and cons of this approach--you get a very good reading on the micro-level, but at the cost of missing the bigger picture. I might have to rethink my approach a little in the future.
To recap: muscle building, entertainment, and scholarly reflection, all in one 20 minute work-out. Truly, I am the modern Renaissance man. Ladies, get in line.
Later Days.
I was embarking on my usual daily anaerobic exercises--200 push-ups, 200 sit-ups, and some light weightlifting (yes, I'm trying to brag in an overly affected modest manner, just ignore politely and move on)--and, also as usual, my background noise per choice was an episode of the Daily Show, as streamed through the Comedy Network's website. (Look at that! A legal use of the Internet to watch television. How quaint.) But due to a crossed wire of some sort, the show kept stopping every fifteen seconds or so in order to load. So I'd get a few seconds of some joke, then a weird pause. I endured this process for approximately 20 minutes of work-out time, during which I received about 9 minutes of actual show. (BTW, the original title of this post was "Welcome to the Daily Sh---," which was more faithful to the actual pause in my viewing, but provided a sort of mixed message in terms of signaling today's content.) This stilted method of viewing drew a number of things to mind:
1) It was the first time I finished the my exercises before the interview segment, making it my fastest workout ever. (I know this isn't actually the case, but please, be quiet; I really need a win right now.)
2) I'm reminded of how big a role immediacy plays in the modern media culture. I want what I want, and I want it now. Internet lags, television commercials, video game loading time, waiting for book releases, listening to an entire song (I've got a friend with a record player) --they're all anathema to culture of NOW, dammit. I had to actively resist an urge to turn off the stream, because a large part of me would rather listen to nothing than be forced to wait.
3) The pauses really drew attention to the structure of the show. The Daily Show is very formulaic in this regard; there's the opening run-through of the news, a consultation with one of the reporters/comedy people, and a commercial. Followed by a a more in-depth look at some more news items (or a feature on-location piece by one of the reporters), another commercial, and then a closing interview. The formulaic approach comes in part from the news format the show is satirizing, and in part from the late night talk show format that it actually is. But another big reason for the formula is that, once people are used to it, they ignore it, and that's what the show wants you to do--to focus on the content rather than their format.
The constant breaks drew attention to the format. Not at the broad level I've been describing, but at the micro-level of the individual joke. There's the framing, from Jon Stewart, the set-up (some kind of news clip, usually), the punchline, and the laughter. With the show slowed down to a crawl, I found myself looking for each element more and more. And because the cut-off happened at various places, I got to see how each element blended into and anticipated the next, particularly the set-up and laughter. You could often predict exactly what Stewart was going to do for the punchline, just from the news clip used. And despite what you might think, the joke doesn't end with the punchline, but with the laughter, the reaction to the punchline. I think both of these elements draw attention to how much of comedy and humor is in its communal component; to follow Kenneth Burke a bit, you identify with the group by anticipating Jon's joke and reacting with them. Of course, that's the main function of a studio audience to begin with.
(There's been a lot of noise in the press this year comparing Jon Stewart to Glenn Beck. It would be interesting to see if his show, while not a comedy, follows the same pattern of formula and community creation/enforcement. If only I could figure out a way of doing it without actually watching the show...)
4) It reminded me a lot of my own research habits. Particularly, it mirrored the painstaking efforts I once went through to map out the conversation tree of a scene in the video game Mass Effect (in case aficionados are wondering, it was the scene with Wrex on Virmire. Flowchart of the conversation is available upon request). There would be a few seconds of speech, then I'd push pause, and frantically rush over to my computer to type out what had just been said. It was significantly worse than transcribing an actual video, because there's no rewind button; if I missed something, I had to reload the entire scene and try again.
More generally, it reminded me of my close-reading method, which is basically to read a passage, stop reading, spend a few seconds jotting notes and reflecting, then return to the text. Watching the Daily Show in this broken manner reminded me of the pros and cons of this approach--you get a very good reading on the micro-level, but at the cost of missing the bigger picture. I might have to rethink my approach a little in the future.
To recap: muscle building, entertainment, and scholarly reflection, all in one 20 minute work-out. Truly, I am the modern Renaissance man. Ladies, get in line.
Later Days.
Friday, September 3, 2010
To Purgatory, or not To Purgatory
"Purgatory is where the imaginary orgies of martyrdom take place, souls purged step by step of their sins through suffering and penance, or--if they are not steadfast enough and fail these trials--they are sent to eternal damnation. Purgatory is an experience of the utmost limits, as purifying as numbers that are the gateway either to order or chaos. A highly dramatic place located between Earth, heaven, and hell, it is the most important and controversial locality in the Catholic faith." Siegfried Zielinski, Deep Time of the Media.
As a Protestant, I don't really have a dog in the Purgatory fight. But I do find the concept interesting. If nothing else, it lends authority--not that he'd accept it--to Protestant preacher John Donne's declaration "This life is but the highway," by which he meant that our real existence continues on after death. (The saying which was later echoed by Tom Cochrane, and put to much different meaning.)
Later Days.
As a Protestant, I don't really have a dog in the Purgatory fight. But I do find the concept interesting. If nothing else, it lends authority--not that he'd accept it--to Protestant preacher John Donne's declaration "This life is but the highway," by which he meant that our real existence continues on after death. (The saying which was later echoed by Tom Cochrane, and put to much different meaning.)
Later Days.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Friday Quotations: It's Weird to Think of New Media as Dirty Tech
"Admittedly, when an office-equipment firm can attempt to recruit sales staff with the picture of Che Guevara and the text We would have hired him, the temptation to withdraw is great. But fear of handling shit is a luxury a sewerman cannot necessarily afford."
--Hans Magnus Enzensberger, on why the Left needs to utilize New Media.
--Hans Magnus Enzensberger, on why the Left needs to utilize New Media.
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