I have only just started to read Gil Bailie’s Violence Unveiled and have been challenged already to rethink the role of technology in relation to moral imperatives. Having read Jacques Ellul, I have largely accepted the thesis that technology imposes on us a drive towards a particular kind of “progress” beyond human control. In many…
Back in the mid-90’s Larry Tooke mentioned to me — in fact he was thinking about doing his Master on the topic — that you could run a LAN via the electricity cabling that was already in place in your house/office/school. That’s now been commercialised (HomePlug for example) and I guess largely redundant now that…
A news report highlights the slow speed of broadband in South Africa. The data transfer from PMB to Durban took 2 hours 6 min via pigeon, during which time only 4% of the file had been transferred over the Internet. Impressive as a publicity stunt, but … There is always some point at which sending…
In the ABC Fora podcast Serious Gaming , Ian Bogost commented about the role of video games. He claims that video games are the one form of modern media that embraces complexity rather than shying away from it. The key characteristics of video games are modelling, role playing and world building. I found his comments…
In a podcast from TED, Clay Shirky makes some interesting points about the distinguishing characteristics of modern media… “The moment we are living through … is the largest increase in expressive capability in human history” Four media revolutions in the past 500 years: Printing press Telegraph and telephone Recorded media other than print: photos, sound,…
