45 research outputs found
Digitization: New trajectories of mediatization?
The purpose of this chapter is to clarify what the concept of digital media
might add to the understanding of mediatization and what the concept of mediatization
might add to the understanding of digital media.
It is argued that digital media open an array of new trajectories in human communication,
which were not anticipated in previous conceptualizations of media and
mediatization. If digital media are to be included, the concept of mediatization
has to be revised and new parameters must be integrated in the concept of media.
At the same time, it is argued that the concept of mediatization still provides a
variety of perspectives of relevance to the study of digital media.
The claim that the concept of mediatization has to be reinterpreted can only be
legitimized if digital media are considered distinct from the media formerly
referred to in mediatization theory. Such characteristics are presented and digital
media are defined in section 2, while section 1 is devoted to theories of mediatization
and the notion of media. Section 3 analyses the relation between mediatization
and digitization. Finally, in section 4, medium theory is revisited with a view
to harvest some missing fruits in contemporary mediatization theory
Digital Humanities and networked digital media
This article discusses digital humanities and the growing diversity of digital media, digital materials and digital methods. The first section describes the humanities computing tradition formed around the interpretation of computation as a rule-based process connected to a concept of digital materials centred on the digitisation of non-digital, finite works, corpora and oeuvres. The second section discusses “the big tent” of contemporary digital humanities. It is argued that there can be no unifying interpretation of digital humanities above the level of studying digital materials with the help of software-supported methods. This is so, in part, because of the complexity of the world and, in part, because digital media remain open to the projection of new epistemologies onto the functional architecture of these media. The third section discusses the heterogeneous character of digital materials and proposes that the study of digital materials should be established as a field in its own right
Thought, Sign and Machine - the Idea of the Computer Reconsidered
Throughout what is now the more than 50-year history of the computer many theories have been advanced regarding the contribution this machine would make to changes both in the structure of society and in ways of thinking.
Like other theories regarding the future, these should also be taken with a pinch of salt. The history of the development of computer technology contains many predictions which have failed to come true and many
applications that have not been foreseen.
While we must reserve judgment as to the question of the impact on the structure of society and human thought, there is no reason to wait for history when it comes to the question: what are the properties that could give the
computer such far-reaching importance?
The present book is intended as an answer to this question. The fact that this is a theoretical analysis is due to the nature of the subject. No other possibilities are available because such a description of the properties
of the computer must be valid for any kind of application. An additional demand is that the description should be capable of providing an account of the properties which permit and limit these possible applications, just as it must
make it possible to characterize a computer as distinct from a) other machines whether clocks, steam engines, thermostats, or mechanical and automatic calculating machines, b) other symbolic media whether printed, mechanical, or electronic and c) other symbolic languages whether ordinary languages,
spoken or written or formal languages.
This triple limitation, however, (with regard to other machines, symbolic media and symbolic languages) raises a theoretical question as it implies a meeting between concepts of mechanical-deterministic systems, which stem
from mathematical physics, and concepts of symbolic systems which stem from the description of symbolic activities common to the humanities. The relationship between science and the humanities has traditionally been seen
from a dualistic perspective, as a relationship between two clearly separate subject areas, each studied on its own set of premises and using its own methods. In the present case, however, this perspective cannot be maintained
since there is both a common subject area and a new - and specific - kind of interaction between physical and symbolic processes