Lecture One Summary

I realise a lot of this lecture summery looks copy and pasted rather than my own words. I have gone over the lecture and thought about it myself but I thought there were some facts and points I really need to remember. Writting them out like this really helps it to sink in. This lecture was a great introduction and helped me understand not just the class but also my Communications degree a little better.

New Media:
CD-ROM
multimedia
Internet
telepresencing
interactive TV
virtual reality
videoconferencing
wireless
SMS - text messaging
broadband
wikis
weblogs
social networks
YouTube
Twitter

Communication: any process that transfers, transmits or makes information known to other people.

Basic Model: Speaker -> Message -> Listener

Modern Model: Speaker -> Transmitter -> Message -> (Message degraded by the process) -> Receiver -> Listener

Factors which complicate the process: Intersubjectivity and intertextuality - Listener interprets and changes message;
- people interpret based on experiences, arguments, and all the other messages they have previously received and sent;
- active audiences produce feedback;
- no message is ever complete.
New communication technologies are more interactive and thus accentuate the problem of interpretation.

Technology: the scientific study of mechanical arts and their application to the world.
Analog - a stream of continuously changing electrical waves that carry information.
Didgital - uses binary information.
In the lecture I was interested by the argument that the shift to didgital can be good or bad. It was something I had not really thought about and I guess I readily believed that didgital technology would be better. The camera example really helped me understand the two types of technology and how they differ as I have studied photograhpy.