A New Media Critical Introduction

Contents
List of illustrations vii
List of case studies x
Authors’ biographies xi
Preface to the second edition xiii
Introduction 1
The book’s purpose 1
Our approach to the subject 1
The book’s historical dimension 4
The book’s emphasis on wider questions of culture and technology 4
The book’s organisation 4
How to use the book 5
The book’s parts 5
1 New Media and New Technologies 9
1.1 New media: do we know what they are? 9
1.2 The characteristics of new media: some defining concepts 13
1.3 Change and continuity 44
1.4 What kind of history? 51
1.5 Who was dissatisfied with old media? 66
1.6 New media: determining or determined? 77
Bibliography 99
2 New Media and Visual Culture 105
2.1 What happened to Virtual Reality (VR)? 105
2.2 The virtual and visual culture 109
2.3 The digital virtual 112
2.4 Immersion: a history 114
2.5 Perspective, camera, software 124
2.6 Virtual images/Images of the virtual 124
2.7 Digital cinema 132
Bibliography 158
3 Networks, Users and Economics 163
3.1 Introduction 163
3.2 What is the Internet? 164
3.3 Historicising net studies 165
3.4 Economics and networked media culture 169
3.5 Political economy 173
3.6 The social form of new media 176
3.7 Limits on commercial influence 178
3.8 Globalisation, neo-liberalism and the Internet 179
3.9 The digital divide 181
3.10 Boom and bust in the information economy 187
3.11 Intellectual property rights, determined and determining 189
3.12 Music as new media 191
3.13 The Long Tail 197
3.14 Going viral 200
3.15 Fragmentation and convergence 202
3.16 Wiki worlds and Web 2.0 204
3.17 Identities and communities online 209
3.18 Being anonymous 209
3.19 Belonging 213
3.20 Living in the interface 216
3.21 The Internet and the public sphere 218
3.22 User-generated content: we are all fans now 221
3.23 YouTube and post television 225
3.24 Conclusion 231
Bibliography 232
4 New Media in Everyday Life 237
4.1 Everyday life in cyberspace 237
4.2 Everyday life in a media home 243
4.3 The technological shaping of everyday life 254
4.4 The everyday posthuman: new media and identity 266
4.5 Gameplay 286
4.6 Conclusion: everyday cyberculture 307
Bibliography 307
5 Cyberculture: Technology, Nature and Culture 317
5.1 Cyberculture and cybernetics 319
5.2 Revisiting determinism: physicalism, humanism and technology 328
5.3 Biological technologies: the history of automata 343
5.4 Theories of cyberculture 381
Bibliography 413
Glossary 418
Index 431
vi Contents
Illustrations
The following were reproduced with kind permission. While every effort has been made to
trace copyright holders and obtain permission, this has not been possible in all cases. Any
omissions brought to our attention will be remedied in future editions.
1.1 Human-headed lions from the entrance to the throneroom of
Ashurnasirpal II now in the British Museum, by Factum Arte 14
1.2 The feet of one of the human-headed lions from the entrance to the
throneroom of Ashurnasirpal II now in the British Museum, by Factum Arte 15
1.3 1980s ghetto-blaster 15
1.4 1940s radiogram 15
1.5 Diagram of hypertextual architecture – Storyspace Map: earth orbit 27
1.6 A simple model of the complex of histories ‘through’ and ‘against’ which
new media emerge 59
2.1 The Daily Telegraph front page: ‘Dawn of Another World’ 105
2.2 Nintendo Wii 105
2.3 Sony Playstation 3: ‘Virtual Tennis’ video game 110
2.4 ITV virtual news studio, 2006 110
2.5 ITV virtual set for election coverage, 2005 110
2.6 Chris Kitze, New York City, from ‘The Electric Image’ 2008. powerHouse
Cultural Entertainment, Inc. 111
2.7 Sutherland’s Head Mounted Display 112
2.8 A Link Jnr Combination Training device 112
2.9 St. James the Great on his Way to Execution by Andrea Mantegna
(1431–1506) 116
2.10 An orchestra pit 116
2.11 Diagram of Alberti’s system 117
2.12 Mantegna’s ‘window’ 117
2.13 Fresco section: ‘St Peter raises the cripples with his own shadow’ 118
2.14 Fresco section: ‘The Baptism of the Neophytes’ 118
2.15 Diagram of fresco sections 119
2.16 Diagram of perspective construction of Brancacci Chapel frescoes –
vanishing points 119
2.17 The ‘Sala delle Prospettive’ (Hall of Perspective) designed by Baldassarre
Peruzzi (1481–1536) 120
2.18 Fresco in a Baroque cathedral 121
2.19 Jeff Wall, ‘Restoration’, 1993 122
2.20 Barker’s Panorama, London (opened 1793) 122
2.21 Illustration of a Stereoscope 123
2.22 ‘Macbeth’, John Martin (1789–1854) 130
2.23 ‘Quod Libet’, Edward Collier (1701) 131
2.24 Luxor Junior 137
2.25 (a–c) The Skeleton Dance; Flowers and Trees; and Snow White and the
Seven Dwarfs 139
2.26 IMAX 141
2.27 The Mask, 1994 143
2.28 The Praxinoscope: pre-cinematic apparatus 146
2.29 Ladislav Starewicz, ‘The Cameraman’s Revenge’, 1911 148
2.30 Antz, 1998 148
2.31 Cyberworld 3D 150
2.32 Phantasmagoria 154
2.33 Resident Evil 154
2.34 Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, 2001 155
2.35 Monsters Inc, 2001 155
2.36 Waking Life, 2001 157
2.37 Sin City, 2005 157
3.1 The history of the web browser in an earlier version of Internet Explorer
Browser 178
3.2 Internet users by continent, 2006 183
3.3 Internet users per 100 inhabitants 183
3.4 Earlier forms of media distribution: the vinyl disc and the compact
cassette 193
3.5 Napster seeks a legal way to make money offering licensed music 196
3.6 The shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 204
4.1 Handheld virtual worlds 237
4.2 The Sims: everyday life as cyberspace 238
4.3 Telewest brochure 240
4.4 Argos computer cabinet 244
4.5 One child, one PC, and the domestic ergonomics of new media 245
4.6 Hello Kitty mobile phone charm 252
4.7 XBox 255
4.8 Crystal Rainforest 2000 259
4.9 Pokémon toys 263
4.10 Powering up 264
4.11 The Gillespies’ living room 265
4.12 Identity play in The Sims 273
4.13 (a–b) Monstrous feminine bodies 276
4.14 ‘Leonardo Two’, Charles Csuri, 1966 278
4.15 Virtual car drivers and the Nintendo Wii 284
4.16 Pikachu, I choose you! 292
4.17 Game code: Evil Alien 301
5.1 (a–b) Terminator hand from T2(1992); Jaquet-Droz,
Androïde hand (1769) 322
5.2 Hero of Alexandria’s Automata: the mobile theatre, first century AD 346
5.3 The first moving images: an eighteenth-century mechanical picture 347
5.4 Lungs and bellows 347
5.5 Vaucanson’s mechanical duck (1738) 351
5.6 (a–f) Writer, draughtsman and musician 352
5.7 I am not thinking . . . do I not therefore exist? 354
viii Illustrations
5.8 Atomic Robot Man 355
5.9 A steam cyborg? Steampunkissue 1 358
5.10 Sunflower clock: ‘art and nature conjoined’ 360
5.11 The ‘Pascaline’ (1642), a semi-automatic calculator 364
5.12 Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine No. 1, built by Joseph Clement
in 1832 367
5.13 Torrès y Quevedo’s 1920s chess-playing machine 371
5.14 The structure of DNA 376
5.15 CA from Virtual Organisms 379
5.16 A Virtual Reality machine and user, as seen from real life 389
5.17 Stelarc’s STIMBOD – a touch-screen interface for the remote manipulation
of the body 401