Cultural Technologies

With the continual introduction of new media technologies into society every day, culture intersects and impact’s on these technologies as they continue to develop. The concept of cultural technologies can be explained as understanding technologies as cultural forms and not just as material forms that impact on culture. Flew (2005, 21), describes cultural technologies in three levels of understanding, “understanding technologies not simply as physical objects, tools, and artifacts, but also in terms of the content they produce and distribute, and the systems of knowledge and social meaning that accompany their use and development.” The interaction of technologies between Flew’s three levels of understanding means that technologies intersect with cultures.

To simplify the three levels of understanding cultural technologies, the first level of technologies is identified as tools and artifacts as the level of aesthetics, for example the physical network of the Internet. The second level is technologies as contexts of use like browsing, bookmarking or blogging, sites such as del.icio.us or blogger. The third level is technologies as systems of knowledge, the process of creating meaning from content found.

Within this process the term technocultures is developed to describe these understandings. There are technocultural choices of the different forms of new media. Whether there is a passive audience or participating users; if it is one-to-one communication or many-to-many; if the media form is controlled by business interests or user interests; and if it is a unified culture or diverse communities. Examples of these choices are with television, which is a form of one-way communication to a one-to-many large passive audience, with only a small number of active producers. This is different to user-driven websites like YouTube, which is a form of two-way communication on a many-to-many scale for small niche audiences with a large number of contributors.

Although all new media forms are technoculturally different, they lead to “increased person freedom, reduced social hierarchy, enhanced possibilities for leisure, and a greater quality of social interaction and communication resulting from new media technologies” (Flew, 2005, 21). These new media technologies of technocultures can only develop in the networked environment. Within the networked environment is the network model whereby users must seek information in an information pull rather than knowledge push. Within this environment anyone can publish causing a large coverage of topics. However there is also some risks involved in new forms of user-driven media like a lack of authority, reliability, security or trust.

The networked environment is the present and future of new media technologies. With an abundance of information with universal media access, technocultures are only going to continue to develop. As everything is subject to reinterpretation, the quantity and quality of information available to users will continue to develop and change systems of knowledge understood by audiences.

References:

Flew, T. 2005. New Media as Cultural Technologies. in Flew, T. New Media: An Introduction. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. pp. 20-38

Online Communities

Online communities allow users on the Internet to participate to the endless source of information available to other users. Online communities help people make sense of all the information available, through the process of finding, evaluating, understanding and sharing. Communities are developed by users that have similar interests sharing information with one another, to help inform and make sense of information that by themselves could not be manageable. Rheingold in Flew’s New Media (2004), describes these online communities as “social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form Webs of personal relationships in cyberspace” (62). Developing cooperative networks with others, users are a part of participatory culture and collective intelligence. Online communities range from forums, discussion boards, and blogs such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and ever Blogger.

The benefits of online communities are that users are able to create new identities both personal and in a community atmosphere not reliant on physical characteristics or geographical locations. With these new identities, users can become part of different communities of interest that might not be possible in the real world due to issues such as location. Within these communities users collaborate with each other, collecting information, sharing it and making understandings of issues relevant to their topics of interest. Users become active members of a community, creating content in today’s participatory culture. Social organisations form on an array of topics that sometimes get neglected by mainstream discussion, allowing for niche communities to develop. The development of online communities allows users to move from participatory culture to collective intelligence, networking with other communities all around the world.

However, problems do arise from the development on online communities; Dr Axel Brunes describes these problems in his podcast and slideshow Online Communities. There is a development of new barriers around online communities as they become independent and don’t always interact with other communities. Some online communities are used for worrying purposes for example supporting terrorist groups. And it also creates online and offline identities to disconnect with each other sometimes causing conflict.

When a user develops a new online identity, most of the time it does not reflect the users offline identity. This is because often online identities can be kept anonymous and therefore users can contribute without the fear of being publically humiliated. Also by becoming part of an online community which shares similar interests, it is likely other users will share the same views and beliefs. An online community can only exist if users create the content shared, however there is no requirement to contribute a certain amount of content or contribute by a certain deadline. Therefore online communities require less commitment as users can contribute whatever and whenever they feel the need. Because of the process of evaluating and sharing information, online communities are always evolving, as new information becomes available, it is understood and passed on by users.

Technologies Becoming Cultural Technologies

Firstly technologies need to be thought of as not just physical tools and objects but as means of producing content and contexts of use.
Technologies become cultural technologies when users use technologies for a personal purpose extending the function of the technology for their own use.
It becomes cultural technologies by the way users use the technology and for what purpose, using technologies for a purpose that is relevant to their lives.
Most people use technology to interact with other users creating a cultural community allowing technology to become cultural technologies.
Terry Flew talks about this in more detail in his book New Media an introduction, particulary in chapter two New Media as Cultural Technologies.