Slashdot, open news and informated media: exploring the intersection of imagined futures and web publishing technology

"In this essay, my interest is in how imagined media futures are implicated in the work of producing novel web publishing technology. I explore the issue through an account of the emergence of Slashdot, the tech news and discussion site that by 1999 had implemented a number of recommendation features now associated with social media and web 2.0 platforms. Specifically, I aim to understand the connection between the development of Slashdot’s influential content-management system (CMS) - an elaborate publishing infrastructure called “Slash” that allowed editors to choose reader submissions for publication and automatically distributed the work of moderating the comments sections among trusted users - and two distinct visions of a web-enabled transformation of media production.

AN ADMINISTRATIVE PERSPECTIVE ON MICROCOMPUTERS FOR AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH AND EDUCATION

Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Hardwiring consumer desire: Publishing and promoting the online technocultural experience : a critical textual analysis of Wired magazine and its advertising, 1993-1996

This thesis examines the evolution of magazine publishing in the face of significant technological change in print-based industries. It takes as its focus the techno-lifestyle magazine Wired, and to a lesser degree its online derivative, Hot Wired because both these media magazines exemplify the changes in publishing examined. In the magazine\u27s initial editorial statement Louis Rossetto, the publisher and editor of Wired, claimed to \u27\u27reinvent the magazine .. ,going beyond paper by making our hard copy edition a gateway to our interactive services {Rossetto, 1993, p. 12). This claim demands an explanation as it suggests that changes in media are revolutionary rather than evolutionary. Specifically, it suggests a reinvention (rather than evolution) of magazine publishing, magazine form, the media environment and rending and consumption practices. The thesis takes this claim as a basis for exploring the evolution of the magazine as a cultural and material form in the context of late 20th century, hypermediated capitalism. In order to achieve a detailed yet nuanced analysis of Wired\u27s claim of reinvention, the thesis has been organised into areas which analyse Wired\u27s material and textual characteristics, the construction and promotion of techno-lifestyle in relation to Wired\u27s readership, and an examination of Wired\u27s online derivative - Hot Wired. To achieve this level of analysis the thesis draws upon three theoretical approaches. It analyses the history and characteristics of the magazine form by drawing upon medium theory as articulated by Harold Innis and his successors Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, and Ronald Deibert. This approach is combined, secondly, with a historical comparative analysis of the American specialist lifestyle magazine as refracted through the work of Harold Abrahamson. Finally, to analyse the relationship between magazines, technological convergence and the construction and promotion of techno-lifestyle, the thesis uses contemporary, critical textual analysis as articulated by theorists such as Ellen McCracken and Andrew Wernick. Medium theory suggests that there is, increasingly, convergence at the level of production. Here media, telecommunications and computers/IT intersect to create a new kind of publishing environment. Such changes in textual production reflect an emerging techno-lifestyle that promotes interconnectivity between consumers and producers and an intensification of hybridity and intertextuality in material forms such as Wired. This thesis will demonstrate that some material characteristics of the print magazine have evolved more gradually in the past century than other aspects connected with the magazine form and magazine publishing. These other aspects include, digital and online technologies, which are currently informing change in modes of production, distribution, content, design, authorship, readership and consumption. Relationships between media form and media environment, reading practices, reader and text, however need to be examined further before the claim that magazines have been \u27reinvented\u27 can be critically assessed. This research is part of that project. It contributes to the nascent body of new media research by providing an innovative theoretical framework that challenges and dispels the claim of media reinvention by interrogating the technological and commercial processes of media evolution in relation to the mid-l990s print magazine and emergent new media technologies