Topic:-Techno culture and cultural studies
• Name:-Kailas Gohil
• Roll No:-14
• Paper No:-8(Cultural studies)
• SEM:-2
• Email Id:-kailasgohil1998@gmail.com
• Submitted by:- S.M.T. S. B. Gardi maharaja krishanakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
Topic:- Techno culture and cultural studies
• Introduction:-
Technoculture is a neologism that is not in standard dictionaries but that has some popularity in academia, popularized by editors Constance Penley and Andrew Ross in a book of essays bearing that title.[1][2] It refers to the interactions between, and politics of, technology and culture.
"Technoculture" is used by a number of universities to describe subject areas or courses of study. UC Davis, for instance, has a program of technocultural studies. In 2012, the major merged with Film Studies to form Cinema and Techno-Cultural Studies (CaTS), but in 2013 is being reviewed to become Cinema and Technoculture (see below); the University of Western Ontario offers a degree in Media, Information and Technoculture (which they refer to as MIT, offering an "MIT BA").[3] UC Riverside is in the process of creating a program in technocultural studies beginning with the creation of a graduate certificate program in "Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies."[4]
According to its description, the Georgetown University course English/CCT 691[5] titled Technoculture from Frankenstein to Cyberpunk, covers the "social reception and representation of technology in literature and popular culture from the Romantic era to the present" and includes "all media, including film, TV, and recent video animation and Web 'zines." The course focuses "mainly on American culture and the way in which machines, computers, and the body have been imagined."[6]
The UC Davis Technocultural Studies department focuses on "transdisciplinary approaches to artistic, cultural and scholarly production in contemporary media and digital arts, community media, and mutual concerns of the arts with the scientific and technological disciplines. In contrast to programs which see technology as the primary driving force, we place questions of poetics, aesthetics, history, politics and the environment at the core of our mission. In other words, we emphasize the 'culture' in Technoculture."
The Technocultural Studies major program is an interdisciplinary integration of current research in cultural history and theory with innovative hands-on production in digital media and "low-tech". It focuses on the fine and performing arts, media arts, community media, literature and cultural studies as they relate to technology and science. Backed by critical perspectives and the latest forms of research and production skills, students enjoy the mobility to explore individual research and expression, project-based collaboration and community engagement.[7]
Technocultural Studies is a fairly new major at UC Davis and is considered a division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies.
Film Studies and Technocultural Studies majors at UC Davis have merged into Cinema and Technoculture. The faculty have been hard at work on developing this new major, and it is going through the review process. Declared students will be grandfathered in to the existing programs to complete their major. They will also have the option of switching to the new major if they choose. The faculty of UC Davis believes these new additions will improve the program and hope their students take advantage of them.
Technoculture: The Key Concepts argues forcefully that contemporary culture, self, and identity are profoundly interwoven with technology: we are 'techno-bodies' inhabiting 'techno-spaces'. The book combines rich empirical examples with an exciting range of social theory, encompassing the Frankfurt School, Debord, Baudrillard, and Haraway. Not only is this a crystal clear introduction to the cultural studies and social theory of technology, but researchers in the field will find many new theoretical connections and novel insights.'' Charles Thorpe, University of California at San Diego ''A very well written and engrossing intervention into Science and Technology studies that can also serve as an introduction to the field for higher level undergraduate and graduate students and for anyone truly interested in the role of science and technology in human society today.'' Chris Hables Gray, The Union Institute and University” –
We live in a world where science and technology shape the global economy and everyday culture, where new biotechnologies are changing what we eat and how we can reproduce, and where email, mobiles and the internet have revolutionised the ways we communicate with each other and engage with the world outside us.Technoculture: The Key Concepts explores the power of scientific ideas, their impact on how we understand the natural world and how successive technological developments have influenced our attitudes to work, art, space, language and the human body. Throughout, the lively discussion of ideas is illustrated with provocative case studies - from biotech foods to life-support systems, from the Walkman and iPod to sex and cloning, from video games to military hardware. Designed to be both provocative and instructive, Technoculture: The Key Concepts outlines the place of science and technology in today's culture.
Arts | Culture
Arts and Culture Online Courses provide a deeper understanding of Greek civilization, exploring aspects of the daily life of Ancient Greeks, such as philosophy, theatre and rituals that gave ancient Greek culture its distinctive character. These online courses offer the opportunity to enhance your knowledge of a culture that was the originator of Western civilization. Explore the full range of the courses and invest in your personal development.
Technoculture: The Key Concepts, by Debra Benita Shaw, Berg Publishers, 2008, 224 pp., hardback £50.00, paperback £14.99.
Debra Benita Shaw begins her new book by telling us that ‘to speak of contemporary cultures as technocultures makes obvious sense’ (p. 1). Registering the pervasive influence of technology at an empirical level is one thing, exploring how to think beyond this ‘obviousness’ something else. The challenge is more difficult with books on ‘key concepts’ as they need both to introduce new readers and to engage with those familiar with the area. Shaw's book succeeds in achieving this balance. Defining the study of technoculture as ‘the relationship between technology and culture and the expression of that relationship in patterns of social life, economic structures, politics, art, literature and popular culture’ (p. 4), she traces these relationships in a series of chapters that explore the intersection of technology with social theory, science, nature, art, the body and modes of communication. Much of the discussion in this lively text resembles the best aspects of technoculture itself with its capacity to reveal provocative and insightful connections. If I have any reservations about the book it would be with its overall understanding of technoculture and how one might respond to it. I'll take this up after saying a little more about the book.
Chapter One explores the challenges of technology for modernity, examining ideas from Marx, Heidegger, the Frankfurt school and Castells along the way. Shaw emphasises the transformations wrought by technology, from changes in work and social relations to more fundamental assumptions about what it means to be human. The second chapter focuses on technoscience, critiquing theories of scientific objectivity and neutrality and showing how the fusion of science with technology undermines any universal claims to truth. Foucault's power/knowled sege relation is considered through a discussion of scientific expertise and the place of scientific discourse in consumer culture. After science, the book examines the place of nature in technoculture, often regarded as a constitutive outside to technology. Drawing on Haraway and Latour, Shaw reveals the impossibility of any absolute separation between nature and culture and reveals various ideological investments behind attempts to essentialise nature. Here we see the beginnings of a theme throughout the book, that the capacity for technology to disrupt normative categories reveals an emancipatory potential within technoculture itself.
This idea is extended in the fourth chapter which traces the history of relations between technology and the body. If technology can discipline and commodify bodies, it can also, particularly in the move toward more abstract informational bodies, break down prescriptive categories about corporeal identity. In relation to space, the subject of the next chapter, Shaw traces the connection between spatial production and forms of mastery, from the Wild West to militarised simulations, from dreams of cyberspace to iPods. She gives a nuanced account of the debate over the technological privatisation of space and the cultural politics that result from this condition. The final chapters consider the development of modern and postmodern aesthetics and forms of expression and reveal the degree to which artistic and communicative endeavours are underwritten by co-existing technologies, and, equally importantly, how the deconstructive capacities of technology unravel received understandings of art and culture
One unwelcome by-product of technoculture is information overload and in an era where academic publishing has expanded any book exploring ‘key concepts’ needs to distinguish itself. Technoculture succeeds for a number of reasons. Firstly, key concepts are linked together and contextualised in illuminating ways, rather than simply passively listed. So while major social and cultural theories might follow a broadly historical trajectory, Shaw gathers them up into a series of engaging narratives. Secondly, the book uses case studies at
• Conclusion:-
the end of each substantive chapter. The chapter on ‘technoscience’ ends with a study of GM foods, ‘technonature/cultures’ with cloning, ‘technospaces’ with a study of videogames and so on. These case studies draw together the chapter's concepts and also reveal the complex way in which power and politics have to be thought as technology unsettles taken for granted understandings of the world we inhabit. Thirdly, Shaw relies throughout the book upon science fiction to illustrate the ambivalent potential of technoculture. She is clearly a fan of SF and the power of this genre to extrapolate existing trends and manifest deeply-held fantasies and fears about technology serves the book well. The discussion of Lang's Metropolis and Chaplin's Modern Times allow Shaw to highlight modern attempts to critique the cult of the machine, while The Matrix and Neuromancerserve as useful evocati
ons of the more complex notions of hyperreality and the technological sublime.
Thank you…………
• Name:-Kailas Gohil
• Roll No:-14
• Paper No:-8(Cultural studies)
• SEM:-2
• Email Id:-kailasgohil1998@gmail.com
• Submitted by:- S.M.T. S. B. Gardi maharaja krishanakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
Topic:- Techno culture and cultural studies
• Introduction:-
Technoculture is a neologism that is not in standard dictionaries but that has some popularity in academia, popularized by editors Constance Penley and Andrew Ross in a book of essays bearing that title.[1][2] It refers to the interactions between, and politics of, technology and culture.
"Technoculture" is used by a number of universities to describe subject areas or courses of study. UC Davis, for instance, has a program of technocultural studies. In 2012, the major merged with Film Studies to form Cinema and Techno-Cultural Studies (CaTS), but in 2013 is being reviewed to become Cinema and Technoculture (see below); the University of Western Ontario offers a degree in Media, Information and Technoculture (which they refer to as MIT, offering an "MIT BA").[3] UC Riverside is in the process of creating a program in technocultural studies beginning with the creation of a graduate certificate program in "Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies."[4]
According to its description, the Georgetown University course English/CCT 691[5] titled Technoculture from Frankenstein to Cyberpunk, covers the "social reception and representation of technology in literature and popular culture from the Romantic era to the present" and includes "all media, including film, TV, and recent video animation and Web 'zines." The course focuses "mainly on American culture and the way in which machines, computers, and the body have been imagined."[6]
The UC Davis Technocultural Studies department focuses on "transdisciplinary approaches to artistic, cultural and scholarly production in contemporary media and digital arts, community media, and mutual concerns of the arts with the scientific and technological disciplines. In contrast to programs which see technology as the primary driving force, we place questions of poetics, aesthetics, history, politics and the environment at the core of our mission. In other words, we emphasize the 'culture' in Technoculture."
The Technocultural Studies major program is an interdisciplinary integration of current research in cultural history and theory with innovative hands-on production in digital media and "low-tech". It focuses on the fine and performing arts, media arts, community media, literature and cultural studies as they relate to technology and science. Backed by critical perspectives and the latest forms of research and production skills, students enjoy the mobility to explore individual research and expression, project-based collaboration and community engagement.[7]
Technocultural Studies is a fairly new major at UC Davis and is considered a division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies.
Film Studies and Technocultural Studies majors at UC Davis have merged into Cinema and Technoculture. The faculty have been hard at work on developing this new major, and it is going through the review process. Declared students will be grandfathered in to the existing programs to complete their major. They will also have the option of switching to the new major if they choose. The faculty of UC Davis believes these new additions will improve the program and hope their students take advantage of them.
Technoculture: The Key Concepts argues forcefully that contemporary culture, self, and identity are profoundly interwoven with technology: we are 'techno-bodies' inhabiting 'techno-spaces'. The book combines rich empirical examples with an exciting range of social theory, encompassing the Frankfurt School, Debord, Baudrillard, and Haraway. Not only is this a crystal clear introduction to the cultural studies and social theory of technology, but researchers in the field will find many new theoretical connections and novel insights.'' Charles Thorpe, University of California at San Diego ''A very well written and engrossing intervention into Science and Technology studies that can also serve as an introduction to the field for higher level undergraduate and graduate students and for anyone truly interested in the role of science and technology in human society today.'' Chris Hables Gray, The Union Institute and University” –
We live in a world where science and technology shape the global economy and everyday culture, where new biotechnologies are changing what we eat and how we can reproduce, and where email, mobiles and the internet have revolutionised the ways we communicate with each other and engage with the world outside us.Technoculture: The Key Concepts explores the power of scientific ideas, their impact on how we understand the natural world and how successive technological developments have influenced our attitudes to work, art, space, language and the human body. Throughout, the lively discussion of ideas is illustrated with provocative case studies - from biotech foods to life-support systems, from the Walkman and iPod to sex and cloning, from video games to military hardware. Designed to be both provocative and instructive, Technoculture: The Key Concepts outlines the place of science and technology in today's culture.
Arts | Culture
Arts and Culture Online Courses provide a deeper understanding of Greek civilization, exploring aspects of the daily life of Ancient Greeks, such as philosophy, theatre and rituals that gave ancient Greek culture its distinctive character. These online courses offer the opportunity to enhance your knowledge of a culture that was the originator of Western civilization. Explore the full range of the courses and invest in your personal development.
Technoculture: The Key Concepts, by Debra Benita Shaw, Berg Publishers, 2008, 224 pp., hardback £50.00, paperback £14.99.
Debra Benita Shaw begins her new book by telling us that ‘to speak of contemporary cultures as technocultures makes obvious sense’ (p. 1). Registering the pervasive influence of technology at an empirical level is one thing, exploring how to think beyond this ‘obviousness’ something else. The challenge is more difficult with books on ‘key concepts’ as they need both to introduce new readers and to engage with those familiar with the area. Shaw's book succeeds in achieving this balance. Defining the study of technoculture as ‘the relationship between technology and culture and the expression of that relationship in patterns of social life, economic structures, politics, art, literature and popular culture’ (p. 4), she traces these relationships in a series of chapters that explore the intersection of technology with social theory, science, nature, art, the body and modes of communication. Much of the discussion in this lively text resembles the best aspects of technoculture itself with its capacity to reveal provocative and insightful connections. If I have any reservations about the book it would be with its overall understanding of technoculture and how one might respond to it. I'll take this up after saying a little more about the book.
Chapter One explores the challenges of technology for modernity, examining ideas from Marx, Heidegger, the Frankfurt school and Castells along the way. Shaw emphasises the transformations wrought by technology, from changes in work and social relations to more fundamental assumptions about what it means to be human. The second chapter focuses on technoscience, critiquing theories of scientific objectivity and neutrality and showing how the fusion of science with technology undermines any universal claims to truth. Foucault's power/knowled sege relation is considered through a discussion of scientific expertise and the place of scientific discourse in consumer culture. After science, the book examines the place of nature in technoculture, often regarded as a constitutive outside to technology. Drawing on Haraway and Latour, Shaw reveals the impossibility of any absolute separation between nature and culture and reveals various ideological investments behind attempts to essentialise nature. Here we see the beginnings of a theme throughout the book, that the capacity for technology to disrupt normative categories reveals an emancipatory potential within technoculture itself.
This idea is extended in the fourth chapter which traces the history of relations between technology and the body. If technology can discipline and commodify bodies, it can also, particularly in the move toward more abstract informational bodies, break down prescriptive categories about corporeal identity. In relation to space, the subject of the next chapter, Shaw traces the connection between spatial production and forms of mastery, from the Wild West to militarised simulations, from dreams of cyberspace to iPods. She gives a nuanced account of the debate over the technological privatisation of space and the cultural politics that result from this condition. The final chapters consider the development of modern and postmodern aesthetics and forms of expression and reveal the degree to which artistic and communicative endeavours are underwritten by co-existing technologies, and, equally importantly, how the deconstructive capacities of technology unravel received understandings of art and culture
One unwelcome by-product of technoculture is information overload and in an era where academic publishing has expanded any book exploring ‘key concepts’ needs to distinguish itself. Technoculture succeeds for a number of reasons. Firstly, key concepts are linked together and contextualised in illuminating ways, rather than simply passively listed. So while major social and cultural theories might follow a broadly historical trajectory, Shaw gathers them up into a series of engaging narratives. Secondly, the book uses case studies at
• Conclusion:-
the end of each substantive chapter. The chapter on ‘technoscience’ ends with a study of GM foods, ‘technonature/cultures’ with cloning, ‘technospaces’ with a study of videogames and so on. These case studies draw together the chapter's concepts and also reveal the complex way in which power and politics have to be thought as technology unsettles taken for granted understandings of the world we inhabit. Thirdly, Shaw relies throughout the book upon science fiction to illustrate the ambivalent potential of technoculture. She is clearly a fan of SF and the power of this genre to extrapolate existing trends and manifest deeply-held fantasies and fears about technology serves the book well. The discussion of Lang's Metropolis and Chaplin's Modern Times allow Shaw to highlight modern attempts to critique the cult of the machine, while The Matrix and Neuromancerserve as useful evocati
ons of the more complex notions of hyperreality and the technological sublime.
Thank you…………
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