Week 5 Reading

Lecture Week 5

The History of Cyberpunk Timeline

New Media: a critical introduction

New media has always been integrated into our everyday life and particularly in the last 20 years has changed dramatically. From computers to video games, mobiles, iPods, MP3s, Gameboys to email, SMS, social networking to virtual online worlds.

Lister, Martin et al 2009, New Media: a critical introduction,  London: Routledge, 237-42, 281-3.

Lecture Week 4

In today’s lecture we explored the meaning of Cyberspace a bit more and the meaning of Cyberpunk. William Burroughs was the forerunner, “grandfather” of Cyberpunk and wrote in a “beat” style. Punk music started in the late 70s with bands like the Sex Pistols, The Ramones and The Clash, it then morphed into the science fiction genre. Elements of Cyberpunk include a gritty aesthetic, high technology and a questionable morality. Examples of Cyberpunk fiction include William Gibson’s books such as Neuromancer and Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner. We watched a couple of scenes from the film Blade Runner in the lecture. One scene was the beginning of the film were they are testing a robot to see if he is a robot. The test is on emotion and that’s how they work out who is a robot and who isn’t because robots don’t have emotions. Professor Stockwell said that the machines were built to mimic humans, but how long until the technology improves beyond us? Will we all be robots one day?

Week 3 Tute tasks

Which of Stephen Stockwell's books are in the Griffith library? Give full citations.

I found only two of Professor Stockwell’s “books in the library” on the library catalogue:

·         Stockwell, Stephen 2005, Political campaign strategy: doing democracy in the 21st century, ISBN 9781740971065, x, 280 IN LIBRARY, JF2112.C3 S86 2005, Gold Coast

·         Stockwell, Stephen and Scott, Paul 2000, All-media guide to fair and cross-cultural reporting: for journalists, program makers and media students, ISBN 0868579882, iv, 41, IN LIBRARY, PN5517.E8 S86 2000, College of Art (South Bank)

There were two other “books” of Professor Stockwell’s but they can only be accessed online.

Cite three academic books that might provide useful material for an essay about Jean Luc Godard's Alphaville. On which campuses do they reside?

·         Lesage, Julia 1979, Jean-Luc Godard: a guide to references and resources, ISBN 9780816179251, xiv, 438 IN LIBRARY, PN1998.A3 G6237, Nathan

·         Sanders, Steven 2008, The philosophy of science fiction film ISBN 9780813124728, viii, 232 IN LIBRARY, PN1995.9.S26 P49 2008, College of Art (South Bank)

What is a book that will assist you to find out about possible research methods to explore social media? Full citation.

·         Wimmer, Roger D and Dominick, Joseph R 2011, Mass media research: an introduction, 9th ed., ISBN 9781439082744, xii, 464 IN LIBRARY, P91.3 .W47 2011, Nathan

·         Poynter, Ray 2010, The handbook of online and social media research: tools and techniques for market researchers, ISBN 0470710403, p. 463 Book: Full Text Online

Stephen Stockwell writes about politics and the media, particularly in Australia. What database would you use to find his first academic article about Brisbane in a national journal? What year? Provide a full citation.

Stockwell, Stephen 2007, Alternative Media in Brisbane: 1965-1985, Queensland Review Volume 14, Issue 1, pp. 75 - 87 ISSN 1321-8166, Journal Article from Informit

Mind Control & the Internet

Technology these days is scary. Especially how rapidly it’s changed in the last 20 odd years. Sue Halpern in her article Mind control and the internet talks about how earlier this year universities implanted people with chips and attached electrodes to their brain allowing them to control items just by thinking about it. Michael Chorost had a brain-computer interface implanted in his head after he went deaf. In his book, according to Halpern, he is now a cheerleader for the rest of us getting kitted out with our own, truly personal, in-brain computers. In her article, Halpern also talks about how when you search online the results are targeted for you and your specific likes and based on your previous searches. Halpern said the search process is “personalised.”

“It’s not difficult to see where this could lead—how easily anything with an agenda (a lobbying group, a political party, a corporation, a government) could flood the echo chamber with information central to its cause. (This, in fact, is what has happened… with climate change.) Who would know?”

You are not a gadget—yet.

Halpern, Sue (2011) "Mind Control & the Internet", New York Review of Books June 23.