Week 4: Old communication Technologies.

Readings:
Walter Benjamin, the Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction:
Benjamin was attempting to put his finger on the liberating aspect of mass media like posters, magazines with photography, radio and cinema.
History of communication:
Tribal practices
-developments in manual and facial expression Art and religion assist the group in changing conditions
-the tribe created costumes, paintings, dances, stories and songs that represented deeper, mythological meanings
The ancient text and the transmission of knowledge:
first texts were copied, shared and copied again, this is how knowledge was transmited in ancient time, then the print appeared and then the telegraph and the telephone, phonograph, the radio, the cinema, the television and the video.
Semiotic:
Elements of a semiotic approach:
Semantics: the relationship of signs to what they stand for
Syntactics (or syntax): the formal or structural relations between signs
Pragmatics: the relation of signs to interpreters
The 20th century saw a massive increase in communication technologies

Communication studies:
1920: The mass media is a vehicle through which selected content could shape opinion and belief, change habits of life, actively mould behaviour and impose political systems.
1930: statistical method: small but random samples could predict social effects
1940: exposure to propaganda communicated through the mass media had only minimal effects on citizens.
1950: connections to psychology
1960: Marshall McLuhan: technologies are extension of human body. The medium in which the communication occurs is the message.
1970: mixed effects: perceptions of problem were shaped by the media and the way they portray them.
1980: how mass media operates to empty the deliberative domain by the ‘manufacture of consent’
1990: cybernetic influences


Culture studies:

1930: Walter Benjamin: reproductions in film or photography have a liberating potential because of the destruction of the traditional value of the cultural heritage while reproducting the listener in his own situation.
1940: real life is becoming indistinguishable from the movies.
1950: the society of the spectacle
1960: Habermas: that the public sphere was the domain of social life in which 'public opinion'
forms.
1970: Louis Althusser: the media produce and reproduce the”imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence”
1980: Baudrillard: the real was a representation more human than human
1990: Fraser: Subaltern counterpublics

Lecture:
In this week lecture we discussed the evolution of communication technologies. We talked about previous way of communication used by humans and the steps by which communication became more efficient in today’s world.
We also talked about Walter Benjamin and his thoughts; we had an overview of his life and his work on communication technologies. The subject of semiotic was also raised in the lecture and Stephen explained its meaning and gave us some examples.
This lecture gave us the opportunity to see where communication technologies were coming from and that ancient communications are still to consider in modern time as we still use some of them.