Culture and Technology

by Murphie, Andrew; Potts, John

• ISBN13: 9780333929292
• ISBN10: 0333929292
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-05-16
• Publisher: Red Globe Pr

Summary

We are 'going virtual' in more and more areas of our lives - from shopping to education, filing systems to love affairs. How can we assess the relationship between technology and culture when culture is so imbued with technology? This clear, concise and readable text aims to offer the student a one-stop guide through this complex and slippery terrain. Introducing a wealth of theoretical perspectives in a lucid and engaging style and covering a range of topical, challenging and intriguing examples - from cyborgs to digital art - it will be an essential text for everyone wanting to make sense of crucial forces of change on contemporary culture.

Author Biography

Andrew Murphie is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

John Potts is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at Macquarie University.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	viii
Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction: `Culture' and `Technology'	1	(2)
What is Technology?	3	(2)
What is Technique?	5	(1)
What is Culture?	6	(3)
Culture/Technology	9	(2)
Theoretical Frameworks	11	(28)
Technological Determinism	11	(2)
Technologies of Media	13	(2)
Baudrillard and the Technologies of Simulacra	15	(2)
Cultural Materialism	17	(5)
Is Technology Neutral?	22	(6)
Knowing the World Differently: Poststructuralist Thought	28	(2)
Going with the Flow: `Machinic' Thought	30	(6)
Virilio and the Technologies of Speed	36	(3)
Art and Technology	39	(27)
The Modern	40	(1)
Artists Represent Technology	41	(2)
The Futurists	43	(4)
The Constructivists	47	(1)
Machine Modernism	48	(3)
Modern to Postmodern: Pop Art	51	(4)
Postmodern Aesthetics	55	(2)
Critical Approaches to Postmodernism	57	(2)
Postmodern Media Art	59	(2)
Continuity or Discontinuity?	61	(2)
Technology in Music	63	(3)
Digital Aesthetics: Cultural Effects of New Media Technologies	66	(29)
Authorship, Intellectual Property and Technology	67	(6)
Net Culture, Net Art	73	(2)
The Digital Image	75	(9)
Digital Aesthetics: New Labels for the New Aesthetic	84	(3)
New Media and Digital Aesthetics	87	(3)
The Digital, the Future and the Past	90	(5)
Science Fictions	95	(20)
The Beginnings of Science Fiction: Frankenstein	98	(1)
Frankenstein's Legacy	99	(3)
Robots	102	(2)
Utopias and Dystopias	104	(5)
Flesh and Machine	109	(3)
Hyperreal Science Fiction	112	(3)
Cyborgs: the Body, Information and Technology	115	(27)
Donna Haraway's Cyborg	116	(2)
Cyborg Basics	118	(2)
Information as the New `Spirit'?	120	(1)
From Postmodern to Posthuman	121	(5)
Presence and Patterns	126	(3)
The Body as Collective	129	(2)
Stelarc	131	(2)
Material Immortality and `Genethics'	133	(4)
Radical Futures and `Gray Goo'	137	(5)
Technology, Thought and Consciousness	142	(27)
Consciousness	143	(4)
Computers as Universal Machines	147	(4)
How Artificial is Intelligence?	151	(5)
Technology Affects Thought	156	(2)
The Sense of Self	158	(5)
Heidegger and the `Question Concerning Technology'	163	(4)
Outside Thought	167	(2)
Getting Wired: War, Commerce and the Nation-State	169	(27)
Sovereignty	169	(1)
Sovereignty and Technical Control	170	(2)
War, Technology and the Question of Control	172	(2)
Riding Turbulence	174	(2)
Logistics and Networking	176	(1)
Control, Complexity and Computing	177	(2)
Pure War?	179	(2)
The Network and the Fate of the Nation-state	181	(2)
The New Economies	183	(3)
Old Rules, New Rules	186	(2)
Network Society	188	(8)
Living with the Virtual	196	(14)
Machines and the Three Ecologies	196	(4)
Third Nature and the Natural Contract	200	(2)
Shifting Communities and `Cyberdemocracy'	202	(3)
Computers, Knowledge and the Petit Recit	205	(5)
Bibliography	210	(9)
Index	219