Seminar Change of Media (SoSe 2008), Binary Age, DatabaseGroup

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Contents 1 Alphanumeric Code 2 Bitverse 3 Cultural Changes 4 Datebase as a symbolic form 5 Docuverse 6 Educational System 7 The Four Steps 8 The Fourth Step 9 Information 10 Knowledge Acquisition 11 Metadesign 12 Metamedia 13 Recipient 14 Reception competence 15 References

Alphanumeric Code

The works on the critical theorie try to show that the concept of hypertext and non-linearity, that is treated as a new phenomenon by the so called ‘mainstream’, has always been the ‘natural’ form of telling and the discourse. (cp. Smith, 1980, p. 223). The enforcement of linearity is understood as a certain form of repression. Vilém Flusser describes the disadvantages of the western, alphanumeric-linear code as follows: "To be able to read a text first of all you have to learn the language in which it is written, and what you cannot express that cannot be written. That means that the alphanumeric code represses the writing and linguistic thinking, and if it becomes dominant, all other forms of thinking will become poor as well." (Flusser, 1988, p. 15) ^[1]

Bitverse

Even if it is the duty of our future educational system to encourage the „reception competence“ and to leave behind the „reproduction competence“ more and more, the future recipient will also need and want previous selection, starting aid, commentaries and offers of connectivity. The asked “new qualities” for the suppliers of information (producer, author etc.) will be in the ability of creating sensible connections of information stock (metadesign) and also in the analysis and annotation of the “new, virtual” contexts. You do not evaluate the things that have been reproduced by duplication, but the things that have been created with the electronical connection of primary information to a “virtual sense”. These valuations add up to the „new information“ that again becomes manifest in an additional information device within the electronical “bitverse”. ^[2]

Cultural Changes

Vilém Flusser has formulated the changes, that our culture will experience through the development of the digital code and the area-wide implementation of electronical communication networks, as follows: ‚The occidental culture is a discourse, whose most important informations are ciphered in an alphanumeric code, and this code will be eliminated by codes that are structured in a different way’. If this hypothesis comes true, then our culture has to face drastic changes in the near future. The changes will be drastic, because our thinking, sensing, wishing and acting, even our percipience and imagination, will be transformed on a high level by the structure of this code, in which we experience the world and ourselves”. ^[3]

Datebase as a symbolic form

Examples for databases are multimedia encyclopedias as well as other commercial CD-ROM titles which are collections as well - of recipes, quotations, photographs, and so on. Where the database form really flourished, however, is on the Internet. As defined by original HTML, a web page is a sequential list of seperate elements: text blocks, images, digital video clips, and links to other pages. A site of a web-bases TV or radio station, for example, offers a collection of video or audio programms along with the option to listen to the current broadcast; but this current programm is just one choice among many other programs stored on the site. Thus the traditional broadcasting experience, which consisted solely of a real-time transmission, becomes ust one element in a collection of options. Lev Manovich: Database as a symbolic form.

Please click this link to move to Database as a Symbolic Form (Manovich) wikipage.

Docuverse

Ted Nelson says goodbye to the Gutenberg -world of discreet, private documents and designs a media environment, that makes it possible for the user to establish his own links between the documents of the world, which have been transformed into a compatible format – that is what he calls the docuverse.^[4]

Educational System

Our educational system is too much into the communication of facts and knowledge and mainly fixed educational content and “right” answers. In general here are effective the occidental values of knowledge, knowledge mediation and education. It is basically lacking an acceptance for “hasty”, only electronical existent information as a basis for knowledge acquisition. ^[5]

The Four Steps

The four steps or relevances of hypertextual networks that have to be realised according to Landow to be able to call it networks in terms of the critical theory:

1. step: isolated, single documents that at first are deconstructed into blocks, knots or rather in Barthesian „lexias“ and afterwards are „linked“ again
2. step: any amount of these networks that are connected by links
3. step: an electronical system of single computers as well as their connection by cables or other kind of transmission
4. step: the entirety of all the things we do not have – according to Landow - the right expressions for yet. He notes terms like “literature”, “infoworld” or Nelson’s “docuverse”.^[6]

The Fourth Step

Basically the fourth step of the network (The Four Steps) is meant to be the totality of all written things, in alphanumerical and in Derridaen sense. For Derrida text is not reduced to its physical-manifested, alphanumeric forming, but he also includes what the reader does with the text, the cognitive classification, the differing interpretation and also the contrary opinion. In this critical understanding the totality of hypertextuality would be the manifested knowledge of a society with involvement of the latent or manifest interpretation.

And this totality, this hypertextual network, has always been existed, even before book print and internet. The so called “digital revolution”, the development of electronical communication networks, has lead to an enormous increase of the relevance of hypertextuality. The simultaneity of the availability of this hypertextual network, the freedom of time and space, and the universal coding of all kinds of information, uncover the existence of this hypertextual network for the first time in history in a comprehensible way. ^[7]

Information

Central point of the changes because of the new information- and communication technologies is the fact, that the element of communication or rather for the creation of communication content – the information – can be transformed into the universal code of zeros and ones or rather only exists of zeros and ones. The catholicity of this code can be seen because every form of information, words, images, texts etc. can be transformed into this code and therefore transformation of any kind is possible – from sound to texts etc.. Unlike earlier revolutionary technological invention the digital revolution is not cut down on a certain social area. ^[8]

Knowledge Acquisition

The analysis, annotation and evaluation of hypertextual generated context will contain the “new knowledge”. And this knowledge becomes manifest in the “bitverse” as new documents, that again lead through metadesign to new contexts and their analysis. Thereby these analysis’ and interpretations of contexts will be understood as informationproposition and will not have the significance of finished products. According to the reception competence of the future user (reader, watcher, listener etc.) these propositions can be accepted, changed or refused. ^[9]

Metadesign

The contents of electronical networks do not have to be invented or rather created, but nevertheless they do not have to consist of an identical adoption of existing linear information. Based on the perfection of an ideal crosslinking density, basically any primary data or original document for the creation of a virtual “product” is being provided. The main focus in such a system for an independent generation of sensible information is not – like in traditional linear thinking – in the sensible, cohesive and coherent stringing together of primary data, but in the definition of sensible connection and in the development of rich mapping (metadesign). ^[10]

Metamedia

Simulation machines and conversational networks constitute a new category of media technology - the metamedia. A metamedium is a tool that creates new tools. Therefore metamediums make a new cultural practice possible, the so called metadesign, and also bring up a new kind of practitioner, the metadesigner. Metadesigners develop context, no content. […] The metadesigner only offers the necessary preconditions, he does not determines the results. ^[11]

Recipient

Students are searching for answers of defined questions. The curiosity to achieve new knowledge, to produce own context based on own questions, has not been moderated yet. But that is the center of the new reception competence. The dissatisfaction with the information overload in electronical networks that is detected nowadays, that feeling of beeing left alone in that oversupply, is according to our opinion mainly connected to the fact that most people are searching for answers. They are searching for answers to questions they have not learned to ask. ^[12]

Reception competence

Subject to the existent reception competence the recipient can follow the offered selections, connections or valuations – or not. In this context the future educational system is in demand not to consolidate the negative vision of the people who are rich on information and the ones who are poor on information.Without a doubt it will be the reception competence that will decide how far a recipient is able to leave the beaten tracks. Naturally it is the same right now – in the still linear dominant world of information transmission. But the new information- and communication technologies increase potentially the possibility of acquiring information self-dependently.

But if the reception competence of hypertextual rooms of information is communicated again only to certain groups of our society, then those will be right who see in that so called digital information highway only another facet of the top down controlled communication of existing content, be it on the level of information or entertainment. People who have not learned to handle information interested and self-dependently will still have to rely on the dubious communication competence of information suppliers who refer nowadays as well on only writing and transmitting what the so called reader, listener, viewer wants. ^[13]

References

1. ↑ cp. Maier-Rabler, U., Sutterlütti, E. (1997). Hypertextualität als neues Informationsprinzip. In: Renger/Siegert (Hg.): Kommunikationswelten. S. 243-266. Innsbruck: Studienverlag
2. ↑ cp. Maier-Rabler, U., Sutterlütti, E. (1997). Hypertextualität als neues Informationsprinzip. In: Renger/Siegert (Hg.): Kommunikationswelten. S. 243-266. Innsbruck: Studienverlag
3. ↑ cp. Maier-Rabler, U., Sutterlütti, E. (1997). Hypertextualität als neues Informationsprinzip. In: Renger/Siegert (Hg.): Kommunikationswelten. S. 243-266. Innsbruck: Studienverlag
4. ↑ cp. Bolz, Norbert (1993). Zur Theorie der Hypermedien. In: Huber, Jörg / Müller, Alois (Hg.):Raum und Verfahren: Interventionen. Stroemfeld/Roter Stern Verlag, Basel, Frankfurt/M., S. 23
5. ↑ cp. Maier-Rabler, U., Sutterlütti, E. (1997). Hypertextualität als neues Informationsprinzip. In: Renger/Siegert (Hg.): Kommunikationswelten. S. 243-266. Innsbruck: Studienverlag
6. ↑ cp. Maier-Rabler, U., Sutterlütti, E. (1997). Hypertextualität als neues Informationsprinzip. In: Renger/Siegert (Hg.): Kommunikationswelten. S. 243-266. Innsbruck: Studienverlag
7. ↑ cp. Landow, George P. (1992). Hypertext: The convergence of contemporary critical theory and technology. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore MA, p. 8.
8. ↑ Maier-Rabler, U., Sutterlütti, E. (1997). Hypertextualität als neues Informationsprinzip. In: Renger/Siegert (Hg.): Kommunikationswelten. p. 243-266. Innsbruck: Studienverlag
9. ↑ cp. Maier-Rabler, U., Sutterlütti, E. (1997). Hypertextualität als neues Informationsprinzip. In: Renger/Siegert (Hg.): Kommunikationswelten. S. 243-266. Innsbruck: Studienverlag
10. ↑ cp. Maier-Rabler, U., Sutterlütti, E. (1997). Hypertextualität als neues Informationsprinzip. In: Renger/Siegert (Hg.): Kommunikationswelten. S. 243-266. Innsbruck: Studienverlag
11. ↑ cp. Youngblood, Gene (1991). Metadesign. Die neue Allianz und Avantgarde. In: Rötzer, Florian (Hg): Digitaler Schein. Ästhetik der elektronischen Medien. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M., S. 308
12. ↑ cp. Maier-Rabler, Ursula (1996). Vom Datenhighway zur Wissensinfrastruktur. In: Medienimpulse. Beiträge zur Medienpädagogik, S. 47
13. ↑ cp. Maier-Rabler, U., Sutterlütti, E. (1997). Hypertextualität als neues Informationsprinzip. In: Renger/Siegert (Hg.): Kommunikationswelten. S. 243-266. Innsbruck: Studienverlag