Media Ecology

Through this week’s reading on Media Ecology:

Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars? Digital Cinema, Media Convergence, and Participatory Culture. Henry Jenkins’ article regards the idea of intellectual property by describing the symbiotic relation netween popular culture and the products of media companies. Popular culture takes inspiration from the products of media companies, filmmakers in the case of Star Wars. Easy access to technologies has encouraged fans all around the world to “remix” their favorite film. Digital media and portable technologies changed the direction of popular culture giving birth to participatory culture. Participatory in the sense that both media consumers and media producers participate into it. The web, especially considering web 2.0, is nowadays the site of experimentation and innovation. The web is the most important showcase for cultural production, giving visibility to alternate media productions, DIY (Do-It-Yourself) productions.

McKenzie Wark’s essay “A hacker manifesto” describes the hacker class’ interest of freeing production from the ruling class. There is a conflit between hacker class and vectoralist class. Hackers are producers while the vectoralist class own the vectors, which are the means by which information moves. The vectoralist class owns copyrights and trademarks. Knowledge is the goal of the hacker class, not education, even if our society gives more importance to education than to general knowledge.

Randall Smith’s article “Alternate Reality Kit” describes the possibilities of new media technologies. It emphasizes two aspects: the literal use of new media technologies and the magical one. Nowadays the designer has the power of choosing between reality and magic. The designer has also the freedom/power to modify reality. His ability lies in knowing how to change reality depending on the purposes of the digital of the digital product (education, entertainment, art…). How does the designer decide when to implement a capability magically instead of literally?