chapter 1 & 2 revision!!!

Chapter 1 Themes: Political Economy, Technology, Culture, Media & Capitalism
(*=Key people; -= key words/meanings)

*Douglas Rushkoff: one of the 1st journalists to explore cyberspace. 1994 published 'Cyberia: Life in the trenches of hyperspace'.
*Aldous Huxley: 1965 'Brave New World' - utopian view of the future world initially, future revealed as dystopian with reference to people as 'drones'
*George Orwell: 1988 'Nineteen Eighty four' - dystopian view of the future.
Both Huxley and Orwell introduce the idea of 'constant surveillance' of people
*William Gibson: 1995 'The Gernsback continuum' - utopian/dystopian tension in dreams of the future
*Kingsley Aims: 1960 'New Maps of Hell' discussed the tension of utopia versus dystopia
*Alex Callinicos: 1995 British philosopher - human nature to attempt to control nature through implements of technology
- technology: series of intersecting scientific methods, discoveries and practices, often embodied in 'things'
-mass broadcasting vs narrowcasting - mass audience split into individual particles
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Chapter 2 Theme: Communication

- dialectic: a concept of thinking systematically using a process of logic; the idea that history is shaped by opposing forces); methods of discussion and debate - determining the interrelation of ideas in light of a single principle
- Hegelian dialectic: the proposition (thesis); an opposite/competing proposition (antithesis); & the logical resolution of the tension between them (synthesis).
*Georg Hegel: 1770 - 1831 'process of resolving a contradiction between competing ideas'
*Karl Marx(1818 - 1883)
*Friedrick Engels (1820 - 1895)
*Marx & Engels 1973 'Manifesto of the Communist Party'
(both Marx & Engels took Hegel's understanding of dialectic being about ideas and formed the belief that dialectic reasoning had an application to the study of human history)
*Charles Darwin - theory of natural selection
- ideology: a world view based on principles or intuitions that may or may not be internally consistent
- idealism: worldview in which all manifestations of reality actually stem from the thought process of human beings
- materialism: philosophical mode of thought - events, situations & relationships in the physical world determine to the largest degree human consciousness & thinking
- meme: small, transmittable lump of ideology - ideas that carry a particular set of social attitudes & directions, meanings/trends that pass through time & space by mimetic transfer
*Richard Dawkins 1989 'The Selfish Gene' - first use of 'meme'
-vector: a parthway/pathways open for communication e.g. transmissions of ideology via mimetic transfer
- analogue: mechanical technology used to transmit sound, light, temparature, position, or pressure (wave measured by variations in time & amptitude during transmission) - basis of digital
- digital: digital electronic technology works using a binary code to store & transmit data using 'positive' & 'non-positive' ; either 'on' or 'off'; two digits 'one' and 'zero' - used in new com. media
*Neil Postman 1993 - technological pessimist - neither good nor bad
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