Lectures 7 and 8

Digital Culture and Distribution

-       1436 – Intro to mechanical reproduction

-       1990 – Mac classic

Efficiency:

-       Digital linear clock vs. cyclical

-       Mechanical aesthetic (beige clunky computer) vs. technological (Apple, clean and efficient)

-       Nostalgia (safe, human) vs. innovation (fear)

-       Mars McLuhan - took at human aspects of technological advancements took social theory and applied it to digital (imagined the www)

-       Everything is evolutionary

-       Transmedia

-       Aesthetically, culturally, socially embedded technology helps us push forward

-       Film focus shifted from digital paranoia to observing how technology can benefit us

-       Virtual reality

-       Technology and digital culture is blended into our living

-       Tim Berners-Lee: Created the www

-       Bill Gates – Internet explorer 1995

-       Short documents - We’re unlearning our own literacy

-       Emoticons are taking us back to the beginnings of communication

Consumerism:

1920s – Keep people docile and controlled

Adam Curtis – Century of Self

Naomi Klein – No Logo (Brands, Globalization, Resistance)

Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939)

-       Psychoanalysis

-       Hidden primitive sexual forces and animal instincts

-       Civilization and its discontent (1930)

-       Fulfilling these instincts makes us docile and controlled if only for a brief moment in time

Edward Bernays (1891 – 1995)

-       Nephew of Sigmund Freud

-       Press Agent/Propagandist

-       Founder of Public relations

-       Based on Freud’s principals

-       Propaganda (1928)

-       Had Debutants smoke for feminism at parade to rebrand the idea of smoking into something powerful and feminine

-       Product placement – celebrity

Fordism:

-       Henry Ford (1863 – 1947)

-       Crisis of overproduction (consumers will stop needing things)

-       Brand: give identity to an object

-       Selling of human needs

Walter Cuppman

-       Politicians are incapable of managing society

-       Pay public relation guys to advise

October 24^th, 1929

-       System implodes

-       The great depression

Roosevelt

-       The New Deal

-       Tax people to build society back up

The World’s Fair

-       Democracy

-       Celebration of consumerism

-       What does the future look like?