This document summarizes different perspectives on the relationship between new media technologies and society. It discusses theorists like McLuhan who argued that media determine society, Kittler who believed technology shapes situations, and Stiegler who viewed humanity and technology as co-originary. It also outlines Castells' perspective that technology and society influence each other, with networks replacing individuals and communities in modern times.

1. UNDERSTANDING NEW
MEDIA
Lee Hwei Mei
(Sherene)
SCM-014981
Pang Kar Yan
(Chloe)
SCM-011789

2. INTRODUCTION :
Electronic media world: through the media, humanity, fully
connected, will collaboratively build and share a global world
(McLuhan,1964).
Understanding media brings not only a insight into the
technologies or devices themselves, but also into societal
changes.
Media are bound to society: the study of one requires the
study of others.
Understanding new media means understanding how they
interact with a series of social, economical, political, cultural
and psychological processes, giving rise to a new kind of
world.

3. DIGITAL MEDIA
Characteristic:
They are all digital
Numerical system( binary code of 0 and 1)
Eg: media texts become de-linked from particular media, like
now we can read book on the internet, watch television of
films online or on our mobile phone, and also upload
photographs on blogs or social medias.
Information can be compressed and fit in very small spaces
The outcomes of digitalization is that access to data can be
very fast

4. ONLINE MEDIA
Directly refer to the internet
The term “internet "prioritizes the element of connectivity
Connected with other media, mainly computers but more
recently mobile phones
For once it introduces a shift with modernity, which is typically
associated with isolation and individuation( Goddens,1991)
Now it shifts in the relatively separate and distinct social-
cultural and politico-economic organizations of the nations
states which associated with globalizations

5. NEW MEDIA
Digital, online and without limiting or prioritizing any single
one
Includes all kind of media that keep evolving
Results of convergence between computation logic
characteristic of the computers and the communicative logic
characteristic of the media.
It is innovative and dynamic

6. TECHNOLOGIES, MEDIA AND SOCIETY
New media and technology concerns the nature of the
relationship with people and society
Do new media determine, shape or otherwise influence
them?
Do individuals and societal structural produce, set and give
meaning to media and technologies?
This will be discuss further base on the studies of McLuhan,
Kittler, Stigler and Castells.

7. MCLUHAN
First theorist to argue that the importance of the media is not
located in the contents they circulate but in the form of the
media themselves
From position on technology he argue that :
 Media and technology assume priority
 “the media is the message”(McLuhan,2011)
 New media use old media as their content

8. CON’T MCLUHAN
Base on position on humanity he argue that:
 Media are extension of human senses and at the same
time media can extent and limit our senses
 “all media, from the phonetic alphabet to the computer,
are the extension of man that cause deep and lasting
changes in him and transform his environment” (McLuhan,
1969)
Base on the position on society he then argue that:
 Media and technology connect everyone and come
together as a community in the global village and linked by
a series of interdependencies

9. KITTLER
He argue that “the media determines our situations”
Base on the position on technology Kittler argue that:
 Technological evolution as the motor of history
 Different technologies lead to the constitution of different
discourses and power configurations
 He vies languages and discourses more broadly as information
as and argue that to study our present condition we need study
ways in which the information is process and stored
 Hardware crucial – “there is no software”
 Emphasis on the knowledge of technical innovation to produce
hardware

10. CON’T KITTLER
Base on the position of humanity
 Kittler argue that different media will lead to different subjects
 Discourse network 1800:readers, Discourse network
1900:audience,Discourse network 2000:end-user
Base on position of society and politics aspect
 He argue that we should focus on the genealogy of discourses
to show how we are constituted, but no possibility of mastery
over technology
 Should engage with hardware, underline user-friendly aspect

11. STIEGLER
He argues that technology and humanity are coeval or co-originary.
(Stiegler, p.11)
He shows that human and technology are entangled bound, without
necessarily prioritizing one over the other.
It eschews anthropocentric views of technology and media as a tool
and the media-centric views of human as determined by technology.
Technicity and technics (refers to techno-logy) are part of humans, a
process that Derrida calls hominization, result of human dialectic
with technology.
In new technologies, all our knowledge and memories are
‘exteriorized’ and stored in devices (epiphylogenesis)
controlling by others which affect the future involving a kind of
‘human obsolescence’ and ‘proletarianize’ of more
humans.

12. CONT. STIEGLER
However, there are supposition of getting more power by the
cognitive and cultural industries that run today’s societies of
control.
Leads to a politics of memory, where the technological mnemonic
devices are then in conjunctionally difficult to be controlled.
Therefore, must take a look on the processes of
grammatization and understand how they limit life with a view
to found ‘a new political economy of memory and desire’, that able
to address and expand the limits set by the various
‘grammatizations ’.

13. CASTELLS
He argued that technology does not determine society, nor does society
says to the technological change.
Our societies are understood to be as network societies, no longer on
the individual or not the traditional community.
A network consisted of distinct, but interconnected points – it replaced
both the individual and the nation-state as the primary form of social
organization, is the new morphology.
He argues that we have entered a new era, enabled by new
technologies, saying space is a space of flows and time is timeless.
Space is defined by the exchanges between the different places in
which actors are found while time can no longer be ordered
sequentially, leading to undifferentiated time.

14. CONT. CASTELLS
In conjunction with that, economy becomes increasingly organized
while politics becomes increasingly mediated politics through
networks, gives way to communicative abilities for seeking and
legitimating power.
Similarly, changing in economy, culture and so on bring about
changes in technologies as well.