Notes on Novelty of New Media: On the Enthusiastic Discourse Surrounding Digital Technologies
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2010 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The talk based on part of authors’ doctoral thesis focuses on the problem of novelty of new media. In its early phase, the meta-field of new media studies was significantly influenced by rhetoric of “digital sublime” – by highly speculative, future oriented utopian and dystopian assumptions about general implications of new information and communication technologies. Residues of this inappropriate excitement implicitly still inform theoretical assumptions about new media, as so-called web 2.0 debate has shown. The paper reviews several critical analytical explanations of the “novelty discourses” as mythological and ideological strategies and applies their conclusions on the phenomenon of (mentioned) web 2.0 debate. The point here is to draw probably still blurred, but readable line between “sober” theoretical statements about new media and rather vernacular theories rooted outside of the scientific field of reflection. |