Anahada Sabda:India: Culture and Communication

Anahada Sabda: Unuttered utternace

India: Culture and Communication

The question:

"Civilization has been dominated at different stages by various media of communication

such as clay, papyrus, parchment, and paper produced first from rags and then from wood.

Each medium has its significance for the type of monopoly of knowledge which will be built

and which will destroy the conditions suited to creative thought and be displaced by a new

medium with its peculiar type of monopoly of knowledge." Innis, Harold

Do you agree with this statement?

Watch YouTube link for answer.

Exploration:

From the unuttered voice to the utterance on machines, from “aum” to “gr8” (texting) there was a journey of thousands of years. 

“Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication.”

Marshall McLuhan

The video is an attempt to decipher the cultural heritage of India from a communication perspective - Medium and Message.

1. Medium: Clay & Metal: Indus Valley Civilization: The civilizations of Indian subcontinent are little known to the west. The great Indus valley civilization of Mohenjo Daro – Harappan point to a highly developed society that settled in the fertile Indus valley about 2500 years ago. The medium of clay and later metal enhanced their lifestyle.  These media defined their lifestyle.

2. Medium:  Panayola/ Tali: Palm leaves Inscriptions: The palm leaves inscriptions found in southern India are great example of a local medium used by the people to preserve their knowledge.

The palm leaves inscriptions were used as a medium for knowledge transference. These fragile leaves often stood the test of time. Literary Epics where written and kept in this fragile medium.

3. Medium: Skin/ Leather: Very rarely used in India; probably because of the influence of

the non-violent ways of Hinduism and Buddhism.

4. Medium: Stone inscriptions: Inscriptions on stone, the rules of the state; the process of election; the guidelines for growth – all were inscribed on stone and placed in public places. These inscriptions defined their society.

5. Medium: Sculpture – the temple art of India is very popular for sculptures. The sculptures told the stories of kings, stories of deities, stories of love, and stories of achievements. Ajanta –Ellora caves, Tanjore temple, Mahabalipuram, Konark ... some specimens of sculptural finesse.

6. Medium: Art & Murals – Exotic murals of Ajanta caves, can be seen an artistic expression of the society. Murals are very much alive in the temple culture of Kerala. This medium though transformed still not extinct. Mural conveyed the stories of the ancient times.

“Past technologies have always involved a change in our phenomenological experience of the world.” Bernard Stiegler

7. Medium: Paper – Probably the first foreign medium to change Indian Society. Introduced by Chinese traders to India, it influenced the history of India. Vedas, Hindu scriptures were transferred to this new medium. Murals and other art forms found a friend in this medium. Medium of paper transformed society, religion, art and life.

“... it was in China that paper was first manufactured, Chinese prisoners introduced the fabrication of paper in Samarkand, and thereupon it was made in various places, so as to meet the existing want"  - Al-Biruni

8. Medium: Telephone –Leapfrog of a nation. People who have never seen a Telegraph, or used a Telephone, now handle mobile phones. Accessible medium enhanced the lives of common people. Technology and life provided an instant connection.  Connectivity gaining new meaning with mobile phones.

 “The medium, or process, of our time – electronic technology- is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence ...” Marshall McLuhan

9. Modern Media: Technology: New world: Virtual World. Technological innovations created new forms society. New monuments are influenced by these media. Changing face of Society influenced by new medium - Technology

10 Medium: Virtual World:  The society is caught up in the virtual world, often hijacked.

Society has evolved with medium. Not all media necessarily replaced the old. Each one built upon the other, leaving behind traces of their glorious past. But the virtual world might be different.... Anahada Sabda – unuttered voice, is it Virtual?

Media Convergence

I found this informative video on media convergence and modern trends. Not quite on stoy telling but tells a story on modern media convergence.

My Transliteracy with winter

My “transliteracy” with winter

Let me share one of my Transliteracy adventures. When I came to Canada, I learned all kinds of winter vocabulary and life skills from people around me. The words we use for different forms of water (snow, freezing rain, hoarfrost, hails etc.) were a real transliteracy experience.

  Hoarfrost was totally a new terminology

The frozen rivers and lakes, frozen waterfalls, all gave a profound transliteracy experience.

 I was fascinated by ice fishing and the ability to drive on frozen waters. So one day as I realised it was safe to drive on the nearby lake, I went out for my adventure all by myself. I drove straight onto the frozen lake following the tracks.

What I didn’t know was that, it’s good to have a four wheel drive to do such adventures. I got struck in the middle of the lake.

 (Back home I told my family - Jesus walked on water, I drove.)

Then I spotted some people ‘icefishing’. They lend me their hands to get out.

My first transliteracy adventure with winter gave me the courage to do many other things in the future including a winter drive to Yellowknife.

Transliteracy - crossing borders?

Thank you for sharing these insightful ideas with us. From the day I joined for this course, the word transliteracy caught my attention. It was interesting to read about transliteracy and its meaning in various milieus. What caught my attention was the statement by Bernard Stiegler that past technologies have always involved a change in our phenomenological experience of the world (as cited in Transliteracy crossing divides). My personal experience as a foreign student, in encountering people, food habits, weather, entertainment etc in a way was an authentic introduction to transliteracy in various areas of “cultural and technological, economic, social or organic, cultural, and global” as pointed out by Jenkins.

The blueberry smoothie recipe sharing experience brings about the gist of transliteracy in an amusing way. Some of the video suggestions given are more on the note of participatory culture. I felt that the example of Asheninka tribe and their learning process was more on the note of hands on learning than transliteracy experience. There is obviously the process of sharing and learning from various environments. Can it be called transliteracy?

I found this interesting comparison of learning process in children at the TED website. Is this just literacy or transliteracy?

Assignment 2: Book of Sand – A Hypertext in Print

Assignment 2: Book of Sand – A Hypertext in Print

Title: Book of Sand   

Author Surname: Borges

Author First Name: Jorge Luis

Translated by:   Andrew Hurley 

Publication Date: 1977 

Website: http://www.annecoale.com/web4pics/bookofsand.pdf      

Publisher: Andrew Hurley      

URL for a Hypertext version: http://artificeeternity.com/bookofsand/   

Tags & Keywords: hypertext; infinite, newmedia      

Summary:

Book of Sand

Hypertext environment on the web gave opportunity of expression to the thought of the infinite for many writers and artists. Before the era of internet and computers, authors like Jorge Borges gave expression to their thought in writing. Now with the possibility of the web, many authors have translated this ètextualè experience into “hypertextual” realm.

This participatory nature of the web with its ability for collective intelligence is very well brought out by David Beer (2009) who, points out that, “ it is perhaps not surprising that Web 2.0 – which has been defined as the shift toward user-generated content and the move from desktop storage to web top access has become associated in popular depictions with empowerment and liberation as ‘the people’ apparently reclaim the internet and exercise their ‘collective intelligence’ ” (Beer, 2009, p. 986).

Borges depicts himself as the one who encounters this special treasure; the Book of all Books. The story is about how he came to know and see this book and how it came into his possession and how he ultimately disposed of it . “When he opens to a page with an illustration, the bookseller advises a close look, since the page will never be found, or seen, again. It proves impossible to find the first or last page. This Book of Sand has no beginning or end: its pages are infinite. Each page is numbered, apparently uniquely but in no discernible pattern” (wikipedia).

We experience the foretaste of infinity, when we enter into the virtual world. There is a mystery and powerlessness in the very milieu of the net. Borges brings these ideological characters of the virtual world into a textual form. As Haynes writes, “vast information sources will be generated, where any item, thing or person can have its own unique identity tags. Relational databases feed on and become informed by the data generated from these tags and are able then to create inferences that will enable ‘new correlations’ to ‘emerge’ and ‘create genuinely new knowledge’” (Haynes, as cited in Beer, 2009, p.989).

Hypertext creators like Maximus Clarke (2001), gave a virtual expression to this textual infinity. As per him, “the Book of Sand site is a hypertext, with a nonlinear structure and dynamic images. This story is well-suited for such a presentation, since it deals with a supernatural book whose many pages are in no discernible order. And the story's spare, haunting atmosphere comes through clearly, if not more strongly, when it is read in short, random fragments” (Maximus Clarke, 2001).

“If space is infinite, we were anywhere, at any point in space.

If time is infinite, we are at any point in time.” (Jorge Borges, 1974)

References

Beer, D (2009). Power through the algorithm? Participatory web cultures and the technological unconscious.  New Media & Society 11(6), 985–1002.

Borges, J.L. (1977). The Book of Sand, (Hurley, A, Trans), Retrieved from:  http://www.annecoale.com/web4pics/bookofsand.pdf

Borges, J.L. (1977). The Book of Sand. (Giovanni, N. T. Di, Trans). New York: Dutton. ISBN:0525069925.

Clarke, M (2001). Book of Sand: A Hypertext Puzzle. Retrieved from: http://artificeeternity.com/bookofsand/

Lash, S. (2007). Power after Hegemony Cultural Studies in Mutation?; Theory, Culture & Society, 24(3), 55–78.

Pavlopoulose, T. (Feb 27, 2010). The Book of Sand in Peacockès Tail, (Weblog comment), Retrieved from: http://pavlopoulos.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/the-book-of-sand/

Wikipedia. (June, 2004). The Book of Sand. Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Sand

Assignment 2: Project hope: A hypertext tribute to Hope

Assignment 2 : Project hope: A hypertext tribute to Hope

Title: Project Hope

Author Surname: Strasser

Author First Name: Reiner

Additional Authors: Annie Abrahams, Alan Sondheim

Publication Date : Web Publication, n.d.     

Website:  http://nonfinito.de/hope/

URL: http://nonfinito.de/hope/project_hope.html

Tags & Keywords: new media; webart, cyberpoetry.      

Summary

Project hope: A Hypertext Tribute to Hope

            The Internet is increasingly being defined by new digital technologies that empower

users to develop, create, rate, and distribute Internet content and applications (O’Reilly

as cited in Hermida & Thurman, 2008). Project Hope is a collaborative attempt by many artists through the expression of hypertext, webart, cyberpoems etc to give voice to their expectation of hope. Authors like Reiner Strasser along with Annie Abrahams, Alan Sondheim others took the initiation for this website.



Image 1: Tree of Hope

            This is a website with thirty five artistic web creations placed under one window. Each point click leads you to an unexpected experience of participatory creation. This is a page for hope, co created by many artists. This is, as the website call page defines, “a step one for: new media, net art, cyber poetry works”.

There are stories, net art, poetry, flash works etc in this collection of hypertext collection.

Image 2: Road Trip - Start the tour

            Road trip by Starla Stensaas will take you through the road from Nebraska to South Dakota. The sights and thoughts of the driver, the story is presented through the clicks of the map. Some other works are just web art. Some are flash messages of hope. Bliss and other stories are also placed within the frame work. This train is a cyber poem set in an interactive media.

I will – I Can’t bring about the struggle of hope within every individual.

Image 3: I will I can't

 The monologue # 16: Shalom Alcheme seems to point out the ongoing struggle of war and peace.

Image 4: Illusion of Hope

            New media theorist Scott Lash (as cited in Beer, 2009) has recently spoken of what he describes as a ‘new new media ontology’. This is a term designed to capture a shift toward forms of living in which information becomes active in shaping lifestyles and environments (Beer, 2009, p.987). This website and various artistic expressions in it can be seen as tangible evidence for media and technology filtering into everyday lives of our lives and becoming part of our ontological expressions.

References

Lash, S. (2007). Power after Hegemony Cultural Studies in Mutation?; Theory, Culture &             Society, 24(3), 55–78.

 Beer, D (2009). Power through the algorithm? Participatory web cultures and the technological unconscious.  New Media & Society 11(6), 985–1002.

Hermida, A., & Thurman, N.  (2008). A Clash of Cultures: The integration of user-generated content within professional journalistic frameworks at British newspaper websites; Journalism Practice, 2(3), 343-356.

Images:

            Image 1: Retrieved from: http://nonfinito.de/hope/works/jorge.html

            Image 2: Retrieved from: http://www.starlastensaas.net/hope/index.html

            Image 3: Retrieved from: http://nonfinito.de/hope/works/yes_beckett.html

            Image 4: retrieved from: http://www.ducthuan.com/Monologue/Mono16/mono1601.htm

Assignment 2: Smart Mobs: The power of the mobile many

Assignment 2: Power of Mobile Many

Title: SMART MOBS: The Next Social Revolution

Author Surname: Rheingold   

Author First Name: Howard   

Publication Date: 2002   

Chapter Title: Smart Mobs: Power of the Mobile Many (chapter 7).   

Publisher: Perseus Publishing   

Page Numbers: pp 157 - 182   

Tags & Keywords: smartmob; network; p2p   

Summary:

Smart Mobs: The power of the mobile many

Rheingold (2002) in his book titled Smart Mobs discusses the empowerment of masses through communication and technology. The people equipped with smart phones are able to achieve far greater things than their predecessors. The question of power is obvious in title.

                        Chapter seven in the book titled, “The power of mobile many” stands out so well as evidence new structures of power in our day and age. With the crisis in Middle East and Africa, there was no time in our history when the role of technology was so influential in empowering the people. How the cell phone users with smart mobile phones could bypass a generation of technological evolution, what we call leapfrog, and enter into this area of empowerment. Rheingold, in this chapter brings about where all this began. Estrada, the former Philippine president was the first in history to be dethroned by the smart mob. The coordinated effort by the mob through e-mails and text messages brought tens of thousands onto the streets of Manila forcing the government to act.

            The author explains further how the smart mobs function to organise themselves in different areas of human life – protest squads in Seattle; instantaneous protests against gasoline etc. (Rheingold, 2002, p.158). All these protests show how easy it was for the people to create a network of like minded people and share information. Here people function as hubs and nodes. (Rheingold, 2002, p.163).

            Besides these violent demonstrations the power of technologies allowed people to create networks of relationships. The story of Imahima (Rheingold, 2002, p, 165) from Japan and Upoc (universal point of contact) from New York, point to the fact of peer to peer collaboration in building up ideas and relationships. These participatory endeavours lead to forming groups and communities.

            The ability to send videos in real time to web sites; which we may not consider a big deal today, might be a huge step almost ten years ago when this book was written (Rheingold, 2002, p. 169). The powerful technological tools enabled individuals to be powerful nodes in the network of creation. As the chapter points out the idea of power is seen with a new meaning.

            Scott Lash (2007) in an article titled, Power after Hegemony: Cultural Studies in Mutation? describes very well the meaning of power in different cultural and technological contexts. “Lash suggests that in place of ‘discourse’ and ‘cognitive judgment’, power ‘has become more sinister in a post-hegemonic age … it penetrates your very being’ (Rheingold, 2002, p.59). Lash describes this as the ‘vitalization of power’ (Rheingold, 2002, p.69) where power is a part of our ‘being’; it lives with us and reacts to us. This is where ‘power, previously extensive and operating from without, becomes intensive and now works from within’. This movement of power to the inside has a knock-on effect on ‘organization’, which is usurped by forms of ‘self-organization’” (as cited in Beer, 2009, p.993). Lash (2007) “does not claim that these new forms of power erase the power structures of the past, but instead that a ‘society of ubiquitous media means a society in which power is increasingly in the algorithm’ ( as cited in Beer, p.71).

            The tasks achieved by ant hives as a group are tremendous. Colonies of ants working together can achieve greater strength than an individual ant. The imagery used by Rheingold summarises the collaborative power of mobile many. The collaborative potential of the new technology allow us to create and share a “social intelligence”.

References

Rheingold, H. (2002). Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution; Cambridge: Perseus Press.

Lash, S. (2007). Power after Hegemony Cultural Studies in Mutation?; Theory, Culture &             Society, 24(3), 55–78.

Beer, D (2009). Power through the algorithm? Participatory web cultures and the technological unconscious. New Media & Society 11(6), 985–1002.

Hermida, A., & Thurman, N.  (2008). A Clash of Cultures: The integration of user-generated content within professional journalistic frameworks at British newspaper websites; Journalism Practice, 2(3), 343-356.

New Media of Education

The following video gives an insight into how new technology is applied in the field of education. The form of new literacy that is evolving with the use of technology is a non-linear and non-traditional - like the medium used. The aspects of gaming and technology, incorporating play and games - implemented at different levels of education, at museums, at libraries - are interesting to watch.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1797357384/

Folksonomy: A must with information overload

It appears that in the modern world of information overload, where selection of valuable data becomes a necessity, folksonomy seems to be the tool for screening. The idea of tags allocated by individuals, shared in a common social medium, in other words economising the links with appropriate titles, seems to benefit everyone engaged in the process.

 Employing of taxonomy for creation and marketing of publication will eventually be a norm in the virtual world. In collection of research articles from the WWW for the purpose a publication can be economised by d.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s or Google reader or any such RSS feed servers. You can categorise and keep all the relevant links through hypertext in one place – gathering into one page from all over the virtual world.

Many websites now provide the tag clouds to filter through their content. The Amazone example shows that sometimes it defeats the purpose of economising as same product is tagged over 395 times; it is more a crowd than taxonomy. But from a business point of view (irrespective personal views), the multi tags will link the product to different genre; thus providing more exposure to the product.

A good tag cloud should be the one leading to easy search and brings out the accent of ideas on the page. It should serve the purpose of easy manoeuvring beyond being an artistic mess. The example of MSNBC brings out the ideological emphasis seen through tags. In the example Edwards and Clinton seem to emphasise more on presidency, whereas Obama brings out woman and families. The creation of tag clouds of the past writings and present day writings can possibly bring out the ideological evolution of human history. Very interesting to see how folksonomy is leading to an unintended consequence of comparative analysis.

Nonlinear – Snippets of Energy Outbursts

I was watching a documentary on the technological revolution on PBS; the issue of hypertext was widely discussed in the program. In this modern age of technology and multitasking, one of the concerns raised was in line with the lack of continuity in thought, reading and attention among the digital natives. The concept of non-linearity is often criticised along with multi tasking, a reason for attention deficiency. The students interviewed in Stanford admitted to writing in ‘paragraphs’ rather than an ‘essays’.

Aarseth (1994) explains text as “ a fixed sequence of constituents...” (p.763). The author also points out the two perspectives of text namely, a technical or historical, social perspective and individual perspective. Looking from such a perspective of text the relevance of  hypertext will be more significant in a culture of ‘cloudsourcing’.

Non-linearity as not being a mathematical or logical consequence can bring in logical interpretation with the application of hypertext. As Aarseth (p.766) points out, nonlinear text can bring in turbulence and unpredictability, as often pointed by critics as ‘scary’ jump into the unknown. It seems sometimes that the nonlinear texts are snippets of energy outbursts.  

Week 2 - Hypertext Possibilities

Evolving Hypertext: Vision and Reality

“As we may Think” – one of those visionary minds foresees the future of technology. Bush presents the need for collaborative between medium and disciplines; and presents the possibilities that can emerge from such collaboration. As Bush writes, “ ... record of ideas .. has enabled man to manipulate ans to make extracts from that records  so  that knowledge evolves and ensures  throughout the life rather that of an individual” (Wardif-Fruin & Monfort (2003), p. 37). There is always the threat that, “ truly significant attainments becomes lost in the mass of the inconsequential”  (p.37).

In the world of WWW – this statement is so true. With the number of websites created every day, it is not that easy to find the pearls lost in ‘virtuality’. Here the possibility of hypertext with its ability to link allows the searcher keep together the knowledge found on the web.

Bush(as cited in Wardif-Fruin & Monfort (2003 ) discusses the evolution of modern technology – the “advanced photography which can record what is seen...” (p.38); facsimile transmission a technology that can be transferred into printing photography; voice translator – Vocodor by Bell; mathematical computing machines and predicts someday we will “click off arguments on a machine” (p.42); and finally his dream machine – memex – “ a device in which an individual stores all his books, records and communication ... may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility” (p.45).

The foresight on the availability of hypertext mechanism on memex – “... with a mesh of associated trails running through them” (p.46) and the ability to “strike the trail established in studying an earlier similar case” (p.46); is very incredible at that time and age. But as Michael Joyce points out what Bush predicted was not exactly the hypertext of the WWW.

As per Joyce (as cited in Wardif-Fruin & Monfort (2003), the use of Hypertext as an exploratory tool, “ ... enables its audience members to view and test alternative organizational structures...” (p.616); and hypertext as a constructive tool can, “... use hypertext as an invention or analytic tool...” (p.616).

Hyper text challenges the traditional structures of knowledge organisation. For instance the use of tagging allows the data to be stored in the cloud without any structure but can be accessed any time. The possibilities of hypertext seem exciting.

Digital Literacy & Me

My experience of podcasting

This journey of creating a podcast was an exciting one. In the past I have tried audio podcasting just out of curiosity. But working with a video format for podcasting was my first attempt.  I learned a lot. I figured out new applications and effects.

I started to record with an external microphone and with audio recording software available with the Microsoft accessories. But the output volume was very low – i couldn’t work with it. So I tried various other programs. Then I went back to my handheld digital recorder. I transferred my file to the computer and added it to the windows movie maker, which I was very comfortable to work with.  

I learned some new tricks of transitions and extending the voice file as music input and played around with captions. I prepared a script on what I wanted to speak; organising my ideas with digital literacy. This in a way made me reflect upon the influence of digital technologies in my life over the years. Thanks for the opportunity.