IDT-518-GM

Lister, et.al. begins with a quote by Rheingold (1991:387) with reference to two very popular, yet “old” television shows – I love Lucy and Dallas. This was done dramatically to introduce readers to the discussion of the history of new media. They go on to state the importance of history as a factor in the exploration of new media. Yet, it seems that no sooner had they made this connection, that readers were cautioned that, “this book is not the place to study theories of history” (Lister, et.al. p.45). I do agree with these authors initial assessment regarding the importance of the role of history.
However, in the Leiner et.al. article, while there is not specific mention of new media, they do address the emergence of the internet which constitutes as one element of new media. There is a rich discussion of the history of the internet. The history goes back to 1962 when J.C.R. Licklider of MIT spoke of the “Galactic Network.”
It seemed that Lister et.al. underwent a comparative analysis of accounts of new media, looking at the works of authors such as Rheingold, Peter Weibel, Paul Mayer and other notable characters. The voices of Lister, et.al. was mostly missing. This was disturbing to me as upon reviewing the Professor’s comments to our work on assignment two, I could not help but notice that he would question every time someone mentioned “according to Lister, et.al.” As I read through the history as presented in this text, I realized that the authors juxtaposed other authors. While this is certainly a style of writing in academia, yet in this case, the authors voices seemed to be missing in significant areas. On the contrary, the Leiner, et.al. article did present a history of new media, specifically the internet, yet throughout the paper while they made references to the works of others such as the open-architecture network as introduced by Kahn, they maintained their voice throughout the paper.
At the same time, one has to be aware that even though the topics, “new media” and the “internet” seem to be closely related, yet they are different and this may explain the different approaches to writing about each topic.
Lister et. al. reflects that one of the reason they stay away from traditional history is that oftentimes, it points to a misleading concept that new media is, “the end of a long process of historical development” (Lister, et.al. p.48). However as one reads the history of the internet as portrayed by Leiner et. al. there is a clear progression of enhancement to the internet. As Leiner, et.al. reflect on the history of the internet going back to the early 1960’s, they note that after the early 1970’s, a “ major shift occurred as a result of the increase in scale of the Internet…” noting that by 1985 there was such a broad infrastructure in place. This led to the pursuing of advanced technologies including commercialization of the internet. Leiner, et.al. ends on projection that the internet will continue to evolve.

References:
• Leiner, B. M. et al. (2003). A Brief History of the Internet. version 3.32
Last revised 10 Dec 2003.
• Lister, M., Dovey, J., Giddings, S., Grant, I., & Kelly, K. (2005). New Media: A Critical Introduction. Second edition. New York: Routledge.

David Silver began his article by questioning the tenets of Internet Studies in light of the myriad of potential topics on the issue. He noted that each subject area is defined by a set of stages. These stages includes the getting together of like minds to discuss the issue, exploring how the subject matter extends to academia, the dramatic growth of the subject area in terms of the interest it garners, and finally an establishment phase. Silver notes that Internet Studies is rapidly gaining status using these basic stages as a measurement parameter. The outgrowth of the Association of Internet Researchers (http://www.aoit.org ) is one such organization which reflects the pervasiveness of Internet Studies. Academic journals such as Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies (http://www.ctheory.net) is also another depiction of how popular the subject matter has become.
One of the issues with Internet Studies is the ability with which such new media can infiltrate traditional disciplines. From the way I see it, not only is Internet Studies infiltrating traditional disciplines but it seems that now some of these disciplines cannot do without the new media, specifically internet studies. Globally, the concept of Internet Studies seemed to have gained global status.
Generally, in studying Internet Studies, one has to pay critical attention to cyber-culture. In examining cyber-culture, Silver notes that one need to pay attention to the historical aspects, social context and cultural differences. It would seem to anyone that examining the historical would almost be commonsensical in that in order for one to study anything, one need to look at the history of it. Furthermore, in order to make projections one still would need to rely on history.
In terms of social aspects, it seems clear that new media especially the internet has taken off at the speed of light and as stated earlier the pervasiveness of its use is astronomical. As I shared in my introduction required for this class, when I was growing up, I knew nothing of the existence of the internet. As a matter for fact, it was the privileged household which had access to a television – at that time, it was a black and white television set. Today, I live in a house with 8 television sets, 6 desktop computers and 2 laptops.
The thing that stomped me was when the author spoke about the perception of cultural difference. I always thought like Rheingold, p.26 (1993) that once on the internet, demographics such as gender, ethnicity, and even physical appearance goes through the window. However, after reading Silver’s argument against this I was not necessarily convince, but I felt it would make for a healthy debate. One could argue that the person using the internet does not know the other person with whom they are in contact. However another person could argue that there is a likelihood that the other person may very well know things such as the gender of the person with whom they are dealing. For example in one of my earlier classes, I learned that some websites are geared toward a certain population by virtue of their appearance such as the use of color and spatial relationships. Hence one can, while not as a perfect science, determine if one is dealing with a male or a female on line. I do not know if this makes sense to anyone.
All in all, the Silver article makes for good reading, as it was thought provoking and made one re-think issues that may have historically been taken for granted.

Reference:

Silver, D. (2006). Introduction, where is Internet Studies? Critical Cyberculture Studies, 1-14. New York: New York University Press.