week two lecture and readings notes

Is e-mail dead?
History of new media studies:
-Popular cyberculture:
Apparition of the internet in the early 90's:
Feedbacks about the net and its interest were pretty negative when it was first introduced. It was seen as a 'new communication frontier' rather than as a 'toy'.
-Cyberculture studies:
By the end of the 90's, people were treating and seeing the internet differently taking this new communication technology more seriously
Different area were looked at with varying successes; for example-- technological determinists; meta-physicians; gender theorists, racial interests; post-humanists; AI experts; VR researchers
-Critical cybercultural studies:
Explore:
"-the social, cultural and economic interactions that take place online;
-the stories we tell about such interactions;
-analyses a range of social, political and economic considerations that encourage, make possible and/or thwart individual and group access to such interactions;
-assesses the deliberate, accidental and alternative technological decision- and design-processes which, when implemented, form the interface between the network and its users."

The rising of 'new media':
-It is distinguished by its heterogeneity, characterised by its diversity
-It is driven by an imperative to trace productive critical trajectories into the most compelling and specific spaces of contemporary techno-cultural change.' (Chris Chesher)
but new media is a distinct entity separate from media studies.