Break of Jazz
Every
time great changes or peculiar innovations related to communication
media involving speedily (historically speaking) a vast part of
population, the probability to assist to a debate on their dangerous
effects and consequent pros and cons discussion rises. As Umberto Eco
admirably indicated in an essay dedicated to pop culture (1964), the
phenomenon relays on a consolidated logics in which apocalyptic and
integrated face each others. On a side there is people look at new uses
and practices as the advent of “Barbarian”, on the other side people
read them as signs and proofs of a more viable ways to tackle otherwise
untreatable issues or flourish suppressed sensibility with more
effective and expressive savoir. Sometimes clashes can even occupy newspaper front pages involving different personalities that have to face complex processes shrinking them in little lines. It happened lastly in Italian newspaper «Il Sole 24 ore», but even in USA and England with «New York Times», «Wall Street Journal», and «Guardian». Guided from the typical pragmatism characterized Anglo-American culture, the terms of debate can be also reduced to stupidity and smartness. So, Nicholas Carr, journalist and technologist, underlines the decadence of our mind used to delegate its faculties to new media, while Clay Shirky, brilliant scholar of new communication, speaks of huge opportunities for our individual and collective creativity and smartness. Of course, two contenders are particularly prepared on theme having just now published two books with indicative titles. In Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age Shirky shows how we can now really release the vast accumulation of intellectual and creative skills switching from passivity that old media dictated. Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains recalls expressively “shallows”, namely the regime of marginality in which our mind, going away from the “deepness” of water, is bogging with the risk of deforming behind the sparkling applications of Net.
Thesis, antithesis, synthesis
Yet, any attempt to reduce complexity through dualistic set-up can be easily dismount by a third discussant. In the article «Mind Over Mass Media» popular neuroscientist Steven Pinker plays easy to place in a “right angle” his arguments, without citing the famous (and much sophisticated argued) claims of Fedro by Plato about the menace of writing for human mind (400 b. C.). Pinker says that «new forms of media have always caused moral panics: the printing press, newspapers, paperbacks and television were all once denounced as threats to their consumers’ brainpower and moral fiber. So too with electronic technologies. PowerPoint, we’re told, is reducing discourse to bullet points. Search engines lower our intelligence, encouraging us to skim on the surface of knowledge rather than dive to its depths. Twitter is shrinking our attention spans.
But such panics often fail basic reality checks. When comic books were accused of turning juveniles into delinquents in the 1950s, crime was falling to record lows, just as the denunciations of video games in the 1990s coincided with the great American crime decline. The decades of television, transistor radios and rock videos were also decades in which I.Q. scores rose continuously». In fact, hypothesizing a such linear and arbitrary effects, besides, without a serious check, is not only superficial but even primitive despite of evident intention to address scientific results. « The effects of consuming electronic media are also likely to be far more limited than the panic implies. Media critics write as if the brain takes on the qualities of whatever it consumes, the informational equivalent of “you are what you eat.” As with primitive peoples who believe that eating fierce animals will make them fierce, they assume that watching quick cuts in rock videos turns your mental life into quick cuts or that reading bullet points and Twitter postings turns your thoughts into bullet points and Twitter postings». The fact that chances of distraction increase is indubitable. But temptations have always accompanied human life requiring strong strategies to defend our integrity. On the other side, every serious skill deserves commitment and continuous efforts. We dedicate specific educational structures to support them adsorbing continuous attention to keep them well-aligned with world evolutions. «The new media have caught on for a reason. Knowledge is increasing exponentially; human brainpower and waking hours are not. Fortunately, the Internet and information technologies are helping us manage, search and retrieve our collective intellectual output at different scales, from Twitter and previews to e-books and online encyclopedias. Far from making us stupid, these technologies are the only things that will keep us smart».
Going beyond
Despite thematic compression, this kind of debates is positive. The tacit fears come out but, also with the help of the online/offline intersections, discussions bring up them, sometimes dismounting false beliefs. Nevertheless, if somebody tries to better deep the topic, discussions expand creating some problems for blog and newspaper formats. At the end of a recent article on «Guardian», journalist and media expert John Naughton seems to excuse himself for the length of writing, an inevitable result if we face issues «in the round». Unfortunately, we have many limits to understand a such important and pervasive phenomenon needing long-term reflections and researches. Naughton remembers that «almost every big question about the network's long-term implications the only rational answer is the one famously given by Mao Zedong's foreign minister, Zhou Enlai, when asked [1950] about the significance of the French Revolution [1798]: "It's too early to say"».
Moreover, Naughton invites us to doubt of traditional media narratives because being interested to depict a bad representation of digital revolution. They admit some functional utilities but, at the same time, launch arrows about every kinds of danger: plagiarizing, stupidity, abusing, industry destructions, stalking, and so on. But «if the internet is such a disaster, how come 27% of the world's population (or about 1.8 billion people) use it happily every day, while billions more are desperate to get access to it?». Despite his briefness, Naughton has to dwell advising how to maintain a critical spirit and more equilibrate ideas about new media. That is: have an historical view; see the web as a part of a much greater phenomenon (internet); see destructive effects as opportunities not a bug; thinking in terms of ecosystem more than economy; became convinced that complexity is new reality; see network as the new computer; appreciate the participatory philosophy of new media; get used to manage the pleasures and dangerous technologies consent; register that intellectual property regime is no longer fit new systems and, overall, our age.
Mass communication and modernity
Although we remained on the more utilitarian side, and even maintaining a low profile, matter is quite complicate and counter-intuitive. In fact, a complete view would involve other decisive dimensions. We should heavily enter into dynamics and products generated by “mass communication” (that, as these debates show, we still hardly consider as “cultural” matter), then into its relationships with new ways of producing, working, dwelling, associating, consuming, travelling, expressing, etc. In short, we should return on characteristics we assumed and developed as modern citizens. Here it is possible to find the origin of question about what is culture and how it is created, a doubt arose from “worrisome” successes of a series of “minor” arts started to defy - fed from interests/passions/miseries implicit in the real and industrious lives of millions people - hierarchies, works, and aesthetics legitimated by holders of so-called “high” cultures.
At the beginning of Sixty, another famous sociologist, Edgar Morin, wrote an important essay, L'esprit du temps (1962). Morin inquired the role of industrialization of «images and dreams» that runs on press, telex, movies, tapes, radio and tv broadcasting, shaping, conquering and feeding, by «loved goods», our surrendering «souls», so rising a huge amount of meanings, myths, stories made available for our common life.
People read Alberto Abruzzese’s studies, an other anticipatory sociologist particular sensitive to phenomenon of communication named as “marginal”, and its underlined individual and collective imaginaries and mass consumptions - see Forme estetiche e società di massa (1973), La grande scimmia. Mostri, vampiri, automi, mutanti. L'immaginario collettivo dalla letteratura al cinema e all'informazione (1979) - know his caustic and articulated comments related to intellectual barriers such researches face. Yet, he thinks that such kind of disdain hides quite badly the very reason of adversity. That is, the huge difficulty of analysing such expressive forms, above all when people lack specific passions, another obstacle, along with efforts and multidisciplinary skills that this kind of study requires, to check (using not randomly the words of philosopher Georg Simmel -1858-1918) the «deepness of surface».
Now, it’s time to link us to the title of my article. Jazz music will help us (differently) on the matter. To be clear, jazz music as cultural artefact as intended (in 1948!) by American John A. Kouwenhoven, author of a passionate and mythic book aimed to demonstrate how American pop cultures and applicative arts are not inferior but sophisticated cultural objects. The excerpt from Made in America: The Arts in Modern Civilization still shows superbly what we have said above and, although the specific genre, his analysis remains a great gift for all music fans (in the same period, Adorno, a philosopher with a specific “classic” music skill, dedicates to jazz some problematic and very indecipherable works ...).
You can directly read "Stone, Steel, and Jazz" online here.
References
Abruzzese, A., 1973, Forme estetiche e società di massa, Venezia, Marsilio, 2001.
Abruzzese, A., 1979, La grande scimmia. Mostri, vampiri, automi, mutanti. L'immaginario collettivo dalla letteratura al cinema e all'informazione, Roma, Sossella, 2008.
Carr, N., 2010, Does the Internet Make You Dumber?, in «Wall Street Journal», 5/6.
Carr, N., 2010, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, New York, Norton & Company.
Eco, U., 1964, Apocalittici e integrati, Milano, Bompiani.
Kouwenhoven, J. A., 1948, Made in America: The Arts in Modern Civilization, Morgantown, PA, Sullivan Press, 2007.
Morin, E., 1962, L'esprit du temps, Paris, Grasset.
Naughton, J., 2010, The internet: Everything you ever need to know, in «Guardian», 20/6.
Pinker, S., 2010, Mind Over Mass Media, in «New York Times», 10/6.
Shirky, C., 2010, Does the Internet Make You Smarter?, «Wall Street Journal», 4/6.
Shirky, C., 2010, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, New York, Penguin.
July 2010
Luciano Petullà
__________________________________________________
How internet "core" is changing
As
the place of premise, first lines can contain some
acknowledgements about the extraordinary meaning that the Net has for a
relevant part of worldwide people, namely a treasure of great cultural
and intellectual vivacity, of incommensurable usefulness,
expressivities and intelligence. But, after this admission, we have to
do some reflections on how this whole of contents is physically
supported and how network structures are shaping to respond in a
sustainable way with respect to its evolutions.
Given the
numerous factors involving into the process and their “environmental”
dynamics (in internet actions acquire exponential speed), it
is
never easy to underline the right trends, above all from a quantitative
point of view. We can individuate many signals about certain
processes of consolidation and a passage to a “2.0” phase
more
focused on Services as a Software, with utilities covering an
extended range including entertainment for leisure time and
business tools for labour market, products landing immediately (from a
cloud computing) on a mobile/fixed hyper-connected
user. But which kind of reshaping are physical infrastructures and their managing business companies involving in? What is the new state of art of “core” internet? [...]
Full article
______________________________________________________________
Learning at the age of digital remix
If
we should indicate an electronic device that, other than cellular
phone, has a great chance to be carried inside westernised people’s
pockets, we would not be wrong answering a small
usb-device. Diffusion and adoption of pen-drivers and
sophisticated audio/video players to maintain and transport
programs/files or the loved personal playlists due to the amazing
developments of microelectronic and the success of usb standard
interface. The plug-socket system named Universal Serial Bus
seems to be maintain the promise hailed by its name becouse,
in its normal or mini version, it is present upon almost all electronic
devices wanting to ease digital interconnection in a prompt “plug ‘n
play” logic. In this way, data and programs utilised in diverse
activities and circles - products and sources of personal projects -
glue themselves with the other our whole of intelligence and
sensibility tying us with hardware and software of computerized
machines distributed in our vital environments. [...]Full article
______________________________________________________________
The experimental man
The nature of each form of delegation involves the creation of a
distance between
expectation of originating will and the outcomes achieved by delegate
that, people or systems, can otherwise mark characteristically the
effective phase through their own skills or lacks. Generally, delegating to someone or something the control or fulfilment of will, actions or plans is a way of thinking and doing typical of people live in complex and large societies. As described by many sociologists (for example Anthony Giddens) people need to establish trusted links with a large number of “expert systems” to be able to live and make their activities. On the other side, that is part of a precise strategy defined “reduction of complexity” characterizing environment of biological and social life (Nicklas Luhmann).
Yet, in our time there is a matter that seems completely irreducible to a more simplistic affair, up to refuse a normative way to fix a delegation if it doesn’t contain a mechanism that can anticipate the ungovernable impasses, finally resolving them respecting the originating will. [...]
Full article
_______________________________________________________________
When phone meets the edges of world
Icts adoption in emerging societies and its social, cultural and economical impacts
Years passed since we reasoned about possibilities to arrange a peculiar field of study for the telephone. Meantime, it has been written very much on topic, and many scholars added the group, focusing both general aspects and specific ones with essays that did not quite neglect anything, and the “quite” saves us from any next surprise.
In effect, if we would find an analogy to describe some phenomenon related to new media, and we want to be understood, we do never remain delude focusing on telephonic area. Surprisingly, the practice doesn’t work only in a way - recovering and evidencing through telephone what has just happened or experienced - but also in a projectile phase, namely following this medium as propellant for the development and re-configuration of basic social processes, whose complex societies of various Western cultures tend to lose cognitive sensibilities.
As usual, we speak of digital divide and social mobility through some recent readings. In this particular case we’ll use a dense handbook containing many essays on mobile communication by worldwide researchers. [...]
Full article
________________________________________________
The grasp on means and contents
Full article
______________________________________________________________
The gramophone, the world wide web and the recording systems
The history of media and the listening of time
First
audio recording (1860)
Although the discovery seems to start a dispute like that on telephone between Meucci and Bell – in effect, Scott died convinced that Edison has rubbed his idea and, as sometime Frenchmen used to do against Anglo-American people, claimed with nationalistic accents his reasons – in this case there is a wide agreement about the strong differences of the singular projects. [...]
Full article
______________________________________________________________
Our obsession for music
Daniel J. Levitin explains
what sound tells of usMusic has indubitably a special place among arts being a loyal companion of human beings: in the history we know there is not culture that was able to renounce it. As American science cognitive researcher Daniel J. Levitin says, where human beings stay together there is music: weddings, funerals, degree party, war marches, sport events, urban nights, prayers, romantic dinners, baby cradle, study, etc. Above all, music is part of ordinary life in the city and in the country, and diffusion and modalities of its consumption have reached incredible levels through the musical players of electronic era, eventually dissolved into the software and hardware of digital devices.
This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession is a book explaining the appeal of music just starting from the Levitin’s peculiar love for all its forms, a passion that addressed him among diverse but original and convergent interests, all merged into an experience and career in which circularity among entertainment, knowledge, work, study, research, innovation and desire of communication comes in evidence. [...]
Full article
________________________________________________________The voice as transit in a post-human very, but very human
Reflections
on the deep "high-tech" connaturality of our vocal medium in the age of
speaking
avatarsThe end of a translation work inevitably leaves echo of faced topic, especially if we have dealt with our ancestral medium. Indeed, publishing of Italian version of Steven Connor’s Dumbstruck operates as an irresistible invite to begin some reflections stimulated by an opera that is unique to understand human voice as process and product of a body living in close interaction with its cultural and social environments, sprouting a sonorous phenomenon at same time physical and immaterial, capable to mediate our own internal and external realm, allowing, because of its transitive nature, to communicate other life dimensions.
Summing up, it is ventriloquism the red thread with which Connor faces a so peculiar feature of human being. Contemplating of voice both naturalness and disembodied aspects – story starts from Greek oracles up to our actual condition of human beings living between, and in, mechanical and electronic systems full of disembodied voices – the book can unfold us some mediation dynamics that, fed and filtered through different socio-cultural environments, make voice such expressive tool to which we have always reserved both a careful attention and obliged and absent-minded reception.
Recalling implicitly some aspects of this seminal work, and strong of its innumerable and sophisticated observations, we’ll try to develop further reflections. The topic we would face is the challenge that new media bring in terms of permeability among different realms, putting in relation vocal dimension – our early powerful prosthetics of intermediation – with its actual applications for some new kinds of transit. In the essay we’ll help us with some actual works that, although coming from different fields, seem significantly converging in the analysis. The first part is more functionalistic while second one has a more structurally symbolic approach. [...]
Full article
______________________________________________________________iPhone: logic and aesthetics of a multimedia telephone
by Luciano Petullà
Index:
Introduction
The logic of iPhone
Convergence
Telephonic multimediality
Personal media and telephone
Convergence and business model
Convergence and its actors
The iPhone device
Aesthetics
of iPhone
Telephonic multimediality
Personal media and telephone
Convergence and business model
Convergence and its actors
The iPhone device
Aesthetics
as experience
iPhone and the aesthetisation of information tool
iPhone and the aesthetics of network society
iPhone and the aesthetisation of information tool
iPhone and the aesthetics of network society
Bibliographical references
Introduction
American company Apple, producer of computers and personal devices – among others, the famous mp3-player iPod – has entered into mobile business with a video cell phone that has been presented and hailed worldwide with a great emphasis.In this paper we’ll take iPhone as a fresh case study to update some paths used to study video cell phone (Borrelli, Petullà 2007). It is a phenomenon particularly suited because of its success, that can be understood only at the light of a context including the logic of its technical development and aesthetical aspects, and so inevitably experiential ones, justifying a fully sociological and cultural approach to media study. [...]
Full article