Digital Media Lecture 1: Basic Concepts Georgia Gwinnett College School of Science and Technology Dr. Jim Rowan

First: Stuff about the Mac Mac vs PC http://wiki.ggc.edu/wiki/Ford_vs_Chevy,_Country_vs_Rock,_Mac_vs_PC..._Humans_never_fail_to_amuse! MacStuff for the PC user http://wiki.ggc.edu/wiki/JrowanSpring2012MacStuff Making a PDF by printing Forcing a program to quit Using Grab for screenshots Using Preview to change file formats Using PhotoBooth to take pictures Using TextEdit to create text

Second: Stuff about the Wiki Ward Cunningham http://wiki.ggc.edu/wiki/PeopleInComputing#Ward_Cunningham About the wiki http://wiki.ggc.edu/wiki/WikisAreWonderfulThankYouWardCunningham Parts of the wiki page… Differs slightly from browser to browser

More: Stuff about the Wiki Wikis keep their entire history Wiki formatting http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Formatting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cheatsheet

Now: Telling the story The media used affects the way the story is told http://wiki.ggc.edu/wiki/TellingTheStoryITEC2110WikiTextJrowan Live performance Audio capture Video capture Written as a book Paint a picture Perform on stage Build into a computer game

New technology… New opportunities Alfred Hitchcock The Birds Old school… long, continuous takes Storyboard planning Quentin Tarantino Pulp Fiction The speed of the cuts increases violence of the scene TV series 24 With HD you can now have 4 screens

New technology New affordances! Don Norman Cognitive scientist Affordances come from ecological psychology Adapted affordances to design http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_psychology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Norman

Affordances of media The scroll The bound book Only one rule needed to read this: End of line? Go to the beginning of the next line The bound book More rules than the scroll: Same rule as scroll plus… Bottom of left page? Go to top of right page Bottom of right page? Turn page, go to top of left page. Page numbers had to be invented TOC was invented to access middle

Affordances of media The bound book The electronic document History is kept as “editions” The electronic document History can exist as versions The web based document No history kept Go back and everything is changed Did it change? Are you at the wrong spot? http://www.archive.org/index.php But a wiki does! http://wiki.ggc.edu/wiki/WikisAreWonderfulThankYouWardCunningham

More: Affordances of media The bound book -Index and TOC only +You know when you are finished Electronic document (like pdf) & the web-based document? +You can search the contents Web-based document? -You don’t know when you are finished

New technology adoption… problems arise http://wiki.ggc.edu/wiki/TellingTheStoryITEC2110WikiTextJrowan#Adoption_of_new_technology..._make_it_familiar

New technology adoption… Follows a predictable path New form tries to act like the old Newsreels “copied” newspapers Before Alan Kay C:\ is all you got Alan Kay at XEROX PARC http://wiki.ggc.edu/wiki/PeopleInComputing#Alan_Kay The desktop metaphor Makes stuff visible Put things in the world not head The best way to predict the future…

New technology adoption… Follows a predictable path… then develops it’s own vocabulary Tell the story at the same point in time but from several different views The Thomas Crown Affair - 1968 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063688/ TV was around how long before they had multiple screens like the TV series 24?

Interaction? Interactive? That’s Human Computer Interaction Intermingling of computers, engineering, human perception, psychology, affordance and human performance Taught here as ITEC 4130 From my list of ancient cultural references: Check box… yes. Radio button?

In this class this semester… We are interested in media forms found on and transmitted across the Internet, how they work and how to manipulate them We will build them as projects Audio Still images Bitmapped vector graphics Moving images video camera 3D animation

The maturing Internet… new affordances? new vocabulary? In the ‘90s it was a source You would “look something up” Businesses justified the expense this way Now it’s a transmission medium What’s next? Go bravely forth! It’s still the wild wild west out there!

In Summary Media is changing Internet is changing Affecting us socially Giving us new capabilities Mosquito ring tones? Challenging our views of legality Copyrights? Challenging our views of appropriate behavior Spam Media provides opportunities for new interactions and new ways to communicate This class is about media and how it works

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