ISSN: 1329-878X

Technoculture No 98 February 2001 Order form Abstracts

Contents

Abstracts

Matthew Allen: Desiring the Interface: Introducing technoculture
In introducing the eight papers that constitute the theme of technoculture for this issue, I suggest that the diversity in responses to and understandings of the term 'technoculture' is not a weakness but a strength. The diffuse results of technocultural studies reflect the desires for relevance, generality and creation with intellectual discourse which, in technocultural times, enable or require diverse subject matter to be labelled 'technoculture'.

Lelia Green: Technoculture: another term that means nothing and gets us nowhere?
This article argues that the term 'technoculture' is frequently used in a woolly manner to refer in a general way to technologies implicated in Western cultures, and to constructions of culture that incorporate technological aspects. The opportunity for the term to convey a specific meaning is lost in the generality of this everyday usage. Arguing from first principles about the nature of technology and culture, the paper suggests that technoculture as a term should be applied to communications technologies that are used in the mediated construction of culture. To be technocultural, the technology concerned must facilitate cultural communication across space and/or time and should, in some way, raise issues of place. Since culture is a construction involving communication and more than one person, technoculture involves the communication of cultural material in technological contexts - which is to say, other than the face-to-face. If this definition were to be adopted, future discussions of technoculture would indicate reference to a technology that allows the construction of culture across space and time.

Matthew Rimmer: Napster: Infinite digital jukebox or pirate bazaar?
This paper considers the copyright litigation over the file-sharing program, Napster. The first section examines the culture of collecting at work in Napster. The next part examines the litigation by the major record companies and Metallica against Napster. The final section considers the future of file-sharing, looking at alternatives to Napster, such as Filetopia, Freenet, Gnutella, MP3board.com and streaming media.

Vanessa Pappas: Conceptualising the virtual and the posthuman
This article aims to explore the relations between technology and the subject. With new media intensifying the provisionality of discursive structures and in turn embodied experiences, questions pertaining to virtuality have become vital, particularly since Western society's increasing reliance on technologies now permeates our everyday practices. While many theorists often resort to a reification of the subject when conceptualising the posthuman condition, this analysis will recover the notion of embodiment in order to avoid such technological determinism. Tracing this complexity in contemporary texts can be achieved through various means. Here, the focus will remain on how narrative frameworks can create new possibilities for understanding and interpreting shifting subjectivities in the digital age. To explore this, I shall provide an analysis of a contemporary film, Being John Malkovich, which has been chosen due to its unexpected success at the box office, indicating how finely attuned the film is to contemporary concerns.

Scott Smith: Surfing the Green Web: Communication and 'the environment' in online Australia
Environmental organisations have often adapted quickly to the workings of existing media institutions. Prominent organisations like Greenpeace feature regularly in mainstream news, demonstrating their deep understanding of mainstream media processes. Now the emerging sphere of the new media has opened up further space for environmental organisations to utilise. The Web promises new and more effective ways of communicating with Australians interested in, and concerned with, 'the environment'. This paper explores the emerging sphere of communication via textual analysis of a number of Websites that contribute significantly to the environmental debate. Here we find a playing field which is only just beginning to take shape: where audiences are only just beginning to understand the game. And although many of the players are familiar, when this combines with complex environmental issues, we find a playing field characterised by heterogeneity and diversity. What follows is a survey of this entangled technocultural phenomenon.

David Cox: Notes on culture jamming
Arguably, the media today represent the central means by which global power is mediated. The rise of global networks has consolidated the reach of corporate power such that it now rivals - and probably surpasses - that of government. People are finding innovative and alternative ways to communicate using the very means the corporate sector itself uses, to different ends. This is the world of the culture jammer, who turns the message back on the sender, the better to expose the unequal power relations at work in what Guy Debord called 'The Society of the Spectacle'.

Philip Graham and Greg Hearn: The coming of post-reflexive society: Commodification and language in digital capitalism
Language is a unique aspect of human communication because it can be used to discuss itself in its own terms. For this reason, human societies potentially have superior capacities of coordination, reflexive self-correction and innovation than other animal, physical or cybernetic systems. However, this analysis also reveals that language is interconnected with the economically and technologically mediated social sphere. Hence it is vulnerable to abstraction, objectification, reification and therefore ideology - all of which are antithetical to its reflexive function (whilst paradoxically being a fundamental part of it). In particular, in capitalism, language is increasingly commodified within the social domains created and affected by ubiquitous communication technologies. The advent of the so-called 'knowledge economy' implicates exchangeable forms of thought (language) as the fundamental commodities of this emerging system. The historical point at which a 'knowledge economy' emerges, then, is the critical point at which thought itself becomes a commodified 'thing', and language becomes its 'objective' means of exchange. However, the processes by which such commodification and objectification occur obscure the unique social relations within which these language commodities are produced. We argue that the latest economic phase of capitalism - the knowledge economy - and the obfuscating trajectory which accompanies it, are destroying the reflexive capacity of language, particularly through the process of commodification. This can be seen in the fact that the language practices which have emerged in conjunction with digital technologies are increasingly non-reflexive and therefore less capable of self-critical, conscious change.

Caspar Baumgartner: Packing an unfair advantage? Internet culture and commercial television
An examination of the strategies of Packer's PBL, owner of Channel Nine and the Internet portal ninemsn, suggests that the commercial agenda of the mass media - and the quest for audiences - has translated into an attempt to control access gateways to the Internet. Strategic alliances with MSN and partners who can provide transaction-driven services, such as Ticketek and Schwab, are core elements to 'channel' users through the ninemsn portal. Its exemplary use of interactive capabilities to establish lasting links to Web users reflects a changing notion of audiences as active, globally connected consumers. The dialogue which unfolds between the technological environment of the Internet and the existing culture of the television industry will impact on future digital cultures and upon regulatory responses.

General Articles

Abigail Thomas: Free-to-air futures in the United Kingdom and Australia: A personal view
This industry paper looks at the broadcasting industry, how its revenue streams are changing and how this will affect the future of free-to-air services. Its premise is that, increasingly, consumers will purchase services rather than goods, and that their attention will become more and more valuable. If existing broadcasters want to remain relevant, they need to make sure that their content is accessible to consumers in the new world

Supriya Singh: Studying the user: A matter of perspective
Providers and policy-makers are interested in understanding consumers' use of new media and technologies. The challenge, however, is to work out ways in which qualitative research on the social construction and uses of the new communications technologies can connect with and reformulate issues central to industry and policy. In this paper, I present a way of exploring the perspectives of the user, and connecting them to the language and perspectives of providers and policy-makers. The user and their activities are placed at the centre of the questions. The questions and concepts then focus on the activity and nature of communication rather than the goods and services sold or the technologies being used. Information and communication technologies are studied within their social context. This research is most often qualitative because, for the most part, we are discovering new questions and exploring ambiguity. Once the user's perspectives have been discovered, it is easier to engage in dialogue with providers and policy-makers by focusing on concepts central to both sides, such as 'design' and 'trust'. These concepts link issues important to the user to issues of production, diffusion and consumer confidence.

Terrie Waddell: Playing with the big kids: The implications of imported advertising on Australian television
This article critically examines the Australian Broadcasting Authority's Television Program Standard 23 (TPS 23) - a set of regulations governing the importation of offshore television advertisements. Point five of the Australian Content in Advertising section of TPS 23 (effective from 23 January 1992) stipulates that: 'A licensee must ensure that at least 80 per cent of the total advertising time (other than the time occupied by exempt advertisements) broadcast in a year by the licensee between the hours of 6.00 a.m. and midnight, is occupied by Australian produced advertisements.' Although the 20 per cent guideline has not yet been breached, the number of imported commercials has increased since the introduction of the standard. This research paper concentrates on the implications of TPS 23 for those working in the media industry.

Denise Woods: Good guys, bad guys: Images of the Australian soldier in East Timor
It is said that pictures tell a thousand words, but to Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir, the images of Australian soldiers pointing guns at suspected militiamen in East Timor made one word stand out: 'belligerent'. Images that meant one thing in Australia represented quite different and often opposite meanings in Southeast Asia. In the Australian press, the Australian soldiers were constructed as 'the good guys' helping out a neighbouring country in trouble. The press in some Southeast Asian countries told quite a different story - that of the Australian soldiers as intimidating and therefore the 'bad guys' of the region. Through a textual analysis of these images, this paper examines the ways in which the Australian soldiers have been represented in the press in Southeast Asia. This paper also discusses the role the reading of these images played in negotiating Australia's role in East Timor and the region.

Christopher Madden: Using 'economic' impact studies in arts and cultural advocacy: A cautionary note
'Economic' impact studies have been popular in arts and cultural advocacy. Yet the application is inappropriate. 'Economic' impact studies are not designed for the purposes of advocacy. In the case of art and culture, they are more likely to be self-defeating. They also distract attention and resources away from the articulation of better advocacy arguments. Economists have warned against the use of 'economic' impact studies for advocacy, but their efforts have been only partly successful. This paper summarises the case against using 'economic' impacts for advocacy, concentrating on commonsense issues for easy digestion by non-economists.