Archive Fever

Interestingly enough, I recently watched a movie (which for your sake I will not name, in case you haven't watched it) where the main plot had something to do with an archive. Basically, an evil group infiltrated the 'good guys' and planned to use airships that they built to keep the world safe, linked to satellites, to kill off all 'threats' and these 'threats' were identified using an algorithm that looked into their past (test scores, calls, social media, messages, etc.) to predict their future. The plan was to use this 'archive' of information to kill those who were deemed a threat. Scary... seeing as how that actually seems plausible, apart from the airships maybe... For now...Anyway....

Jacques Derrida (1997) suggests that all media construct archives, and also destroy other archives, differently. I agree with this statement to a certain extent, for example, the arrival of new technology tends to displace the old 'archive'. If we take a look at music for instance, in the past it would be archived in cassette tapes, which are now obsolete as they were replaced by CDs. I believe even CDs will be obsolete eventually, I can't remember the last time I bought one. But that is only considering the physical aspect, because the music and its format still remains the same - an album of songs. In that sense, it doesn't really displace or destroy the old archive, it only does in a physical sense. 

However, if we look at it from another angle, perhaps in terms of format (an album), it can be argued that the style of archiving music is changing. People listen to playlists on spotify and don't necessarily buy the whole album anymore, or they just pay to download a single song from an album. In this sense, then Derrida (1997) makes complete sense when he suggests that all media construct archives, and destroy others. I suppose this can be considered a change in the 'archiving' of music - recreating an archive to suit an individuals needs... 

Is this kind of 'archiving' is the result of the individualistic world we are living in, or maybe even the cause?

ANT

I found the theory hard to understand at first but after watching this video -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2YYxS6D-mI it became more apparent. I think the comparison between technological determinist approaches (all outcomes of technological change can be attributed to the technological rather than the social), social determinism (technological changes can only be explained by social categories) and actor network theory when it comes to studying networks, helped me to understand it a lot better.


Basically the theory treats both human and non-human agents, called actors, as equal and neither social nor technological positions are privileged.


A good example of this is this paragraph from David Bank’s article:

“After several hours, the IT working group resolves that 4G hotspots will not cooperate with their encampment. The 4G signal refuses to visit the park with the same regularity as the activists. Without the 4G signal, those in the park are unable to reach their fellow activists, computers, protest signs, and supplies located throughout the Hudson Valley region. The IT working group decides instead, to project a wireless signal from a nearby apartment into the park. They devise an assemblage of signal repeaters and routers that will provide a more reliable stream of data that will show up on time to general assemblies, and in sufficient numbers. The working group believes that the attendance of broadband Internet will allow the geographically and temporally dispersed occupiers to be enrolled within the larger actor-network of Occupy Albany. This increased attendance by activists, broadband connections, and networking hardware, according to the facilitation working group, will lend more authority to the decisions that come out of the GA and keep the occupation going through the winter.”


He uses the same language to describe both human and nonhuman actants, where the event is not just attended by humans but 4G signals. He then says that “the relationships between all of these things, the actor-network, is what’s under investigation”. I feel that this explains ANT very well.


According to Latour, there are both human and non-human “actants” as part of the network, all the elements are brought into relations and all have somewhat equal agency. Therefore we can use this theory to think about publishing, and its relation to broader society, as a series of interwoven “assemblages” – an assembling of elements or relations. I’m looking forward seeing the difference in assemblages from different moments in history, and seeing how the elements or actants change, and how the relations involved change in the upcoming tutorial…

Times are changing...

Times are changing…

At The New York Times Company papers - the Times, International Herald Tribune, and Boston Globe — print and digital ad dollars dipped 6.6 percent to $220 million, while circulation revenue was up 8.3 percent to $233 million in 2012 (NYmag.com 2012). This change is truly interesting, as it is an industry that has always relied on advertising to make money. I wanted to find out how this panned out, since this article was back in 2012, so I did some research…

It seems as if this trend is still continuing, The New York Times Company reported in 2014 that circulation revenues increased 1.4 percent and other revenues increased 7.7 percent, while advertising revenues declined 4.1 percent. The question would be what would change as a result of less advertising. After reading a little more on the topic, the answer is that the public would probably have to pay more for the paper as newspaper focus on circulation revenue. Is this actually bad? Or would the quality of journalism improve? Is circulation revenue just a direct replacement for advertising revenue and have no impact on the quality of journalism? Will this eventually result in an uneven access to news, perhaps based on money? – I guess this is happening with the rise of paywalls.

Alan Rusbridger, The Guardian editor-in-chief, seems to think so too. "If you erect a universal pay wall around your content then it follows you are turning away from a world of openly shared content.” Yet with the decline of advertising dollars, the industry has to reshape its business model, or it will collapse. I feel that paywalls aren't such a bad thing if it provides access to top notch news, it may even improve the quality of journalism – (since subscribers have to get the “better” articles than non-subscribers), but then again news should be available to everyone. It is indeed a tricky question without obvious solutions. However, as long as there is reasonable access to newspapers I would rather pay to keep the industry alive and maintain the quality of journalism as the fourth estate. Unfortunately, money is a necessity as we live in a time where profit is king. 

Past, Present and Future.

I remember watching a documentary many years ago about the printing press, and after going through this weeks material I managed to find the answer to a few lingering questions that had escaped me until now (mostly because I completely forgot about it). 

"The arrival of the mechanical movable type printing introduced the era of mass communication, which altered the structure of society". (Printing Press, Wikipedia!) Finally, someone who agrees that Wikipedia is a reliable source. How can crowd sourced information be unreliable? Don't we ask the locals what to do and where to visit when we travel? Who would bother to update a Wikipedia page if they were not well versed in the subject, ignoring the pranksters of course. Back to the subject. What was perplexing was the fact that, in my mind, the mass production of texts (which I assumed were possessed by political and religious authorities) should have further influenced the population - propaganda comes to mind. Instead, it "altered the structure of society". What I failed to realize was that the wider distribution of reading materials resulted in a higher literacy rate, and this broke the monopoly of the elite. 

Another burning question was how this lead to revolutionary ideas, since people would be reading old texts because they themselves may still have been learning to read. A paragraph from Eisenstein (1979) sums this up. "During the first few centuries of printing, old texts were duplicated more rapidly than new ones. On this basis we were told that 'printing did not speed of the adoption of new theories'". She then answers the burning question that I had by suggesting that an increase in the output of old texts contributed to formulation of new theories. Now it makes sense, I would be more likely to think of something new if I had the material to learn a subject, e.g. a textbook, rather than not have anything at all. Without it I might not even come close or have a tiny inkling of a new idea.

Fast forward to the future, although still in the past, and we have the laser printer. This statement gave me one of those “ahhh” moments, as I've never thought about it in this way before, the laser printer created “the endeavor we call desktop publishing”. It “put the power of easy page makeup and rapid replication into the hands of anyone with a few thousand dollars for hardware and software”. Moving on to the present it no longer costs a few thousand dollars. I guess the concepts of ‘easy page makeup’ and putting it into ‘the hands of anyone’ have given rise to the forms of publishing we know today, blogs, vlogs, personal websites…. which are, I’m glad to say this or else I would be paying to post this blog entry, mostly free (assuming one needs a computer to survive hence already has one). 

Into the future again and having heard about 3D printers and just recently finding out about 4D printers (printception?), I’m excited to see what it holds for the act of publishing…