Rethink Time and Space…(repeat)

For as long as I’ve been teaching media, I’ve come to a greater understanding of the necessity of understanding space and time. There are many many ways of approaching an understanding of both of these dimensions. And I don’t mean to reassert something that’s (only) a simple dualism. But coming to some understanding of how space and time work together in your thinking about media is essential.

Every incidence of an experience with media has what Harold Innis would have called a time biased dimension and a space biased dimension. Put simply, The time bias allows a particular idea to continue through time unchanged. The space bias, on the other hand, allows an idea to extend over space. Think carving in stone versus notes on paper.

The way Innis ((1951) The Bias of Communication. Toronto: University of Toronto Press) understood it, The more emphasis you put out a message lasting through time, the harder it is to extend it over space. Correspondingly, The more emphasis you put on extending a message over space subjects it to more potential change.

The digital environment makes this messy, of course. More on that later. But, any chance that we have to consider and discuss how we come to understand the relationship between time and space becomes valuable to the way we experience all media.

Time and space. Permanence and change. Ritual and transmission. Oral and literate.

Notes on Lessig’s “RW Revisited” chapter, on Writing

2/19/15 – Digital and Transmedia Theories
Ralph Beliveau

Guide to Larry Lessig (2008), Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. Penguin Press.

What does he mean by hybrid?*

Lessig – ch. 4 part 1 – RW, Revived (on writing)

Three layers:
1st. Writing itself
critical invention 1- of the writable web – blogging
critical invention 2 – ability of readers(audience) to write (talk) back

how to find and order things?

2nd layer:
The folksonomy (vs. taxonomy) of tags and rankings (Reddit, Digg, del.icio.us)

Tagging – makes it locatable; and enable collaboration

3rd layer:
– measures the significance of the communication by counting links

so…
content
content about content
influence measurement

Quality?
– if you take the average – be skeptical
– but measurements and quality assessments work to secure quality and truth

So…blogging without filters
– what about trolls?
– Posner’s practice: never allow or encourage sycophants; reward the critics

To write in the medium of RW is to know that anything one writes is open to debate

(note about the importance of anonymity)

*Social production that features a mix of commercial and sharing economies.

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