1. Fluid Fiction UNDERSTANDING MEDIA STUDIES: Relationship of Culture & Technology Session 1 | McLuhan’s Four Laws of Media Session 2 | Meaning and Cultural Change Session 3 | The Uses of Literacy

2. Fluid Fiction How does one understand the cultural impact of media?

3. Fluid Fiction What is the relationship between technology and culture?

4. Fluid Fiction What is the meaning of a particular technology? How can we see on the unobserved and the unintended impact, as well as on the obvious and preferred? The Medium is the Message |

5. The personal and social consequences of any medium – that is of any extension of ourselves – result from the new scale introduced into our affairs by any new technology. The message of any medium or technology is the change in scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs. The Medium is the Message |

6. What is Culture? How is Meaning Produced? How is Culture Reproduced? The Role of Media Technologies?

7. A state of refinement associated with the arts, philosophy and learning The particular and distinctive way of life of a specific social group or period Culture is the process of human development

8. What is Culture, then? A whole WAY of life when people engage in the PRODUCTION of MEANING over time and over place “Culture is ordinary; that is where we must start.” Raymond Williams

10. Cultural meaning must be reproduced every day By everyone, everywhere To maintain relationships To maintain structures To maintain life Cultural hegemony is the domination of a diverse society by a ruling class, who propagate their worldview through the manipulation of cultural meaning (beliefs, symbols, perceptions, values, customs) such that their world view is accepted as the cultural norm

11. The Uses of Media Literacy Making Media, Making Meaning offers the possibility of doing things differently It is a counter-hegemonic action

12. What is literacy? What is technological literacy? What is media literacy? Understanding Media | The Uses of Literacy

13. What is the relationship between Literacy and technology, historically and currently? How do digital technologies influence the traditional practices of reading and writing? How are new literacies learned? Further Questions to Consider

14. For Teachers: What are the important objectives of media literacy? For Designers: How can you respond to and anticipate the development of new literacies? For Artists: Why should you care? And Even More Questions to Consider

15. What is the relationship between literacy and technology, historically and currently? Literacy is the ability to read and write. (the technological definition) Literacy is the capacity to function within a given cultural context. (the cultural definition)

16. What is the relationship between literacy and technology, historically and currently? Literacy and numeracy develop together 8000 BCE: Symbols used to manage stocks and trade of goods Writing develops independently at least 4 times in 4 different early civilizations: Mesopotamia, China, Mesoamerica, Egypt Limited to: scribes, royal storehouse managers, clerics

17. Egyptian record for the allocation of beer

18. What is the relationship between literacy and technology, historically and currently? Literacy for the common person in Europe: The Printing Press, 1439 The Reformation, Martin Luther, 1517 The Scientific Enlightenment, 1650 Coffeehouses Pamphlets Newspapers Public libraries Public schools Co-education Mandatory schooling The abolition of slavery

19. What is the relationship between literacy and technology, historically and currently? READING: Pictograms, Marks, Notes Scrolls, Parchment, Codex, Book MUCH LATER…… WRITING: Alphabet Pencil, pen

21. Abililty to read ACROSS media forms Ability to understand the conventions of different forms of expression: text, image, graphic, animation, cinematic, aural Genres play an important mediating role Reading as “sampling” Traditional (typographic) literacies remain crucial, but how? How do we READ now?

22. Through the use of multiple languages of symbolic meaning making: alphabetic, graphic, cinematic, animation, visualization, simulations, sonic, musical, etc. Requires specialized (technological) authoring environments Authoring has become a collective practice Design/authoring merge Tool learning in foundational; always has been! How do we WRITE now?

23. How do we LEARN now? Through social interaction with peers and elders Through the synthesis of information across multiple channels Through engaging with new technologies of knowledge construction By traveling among places of information exchange

25. Just-In-Time Learners……… ………need to be taught skills of critical thinking and creative synthesis

26. “A Pedagogy for Original Synners” Paper presented at the Neo-Modern Language Association Philadelphia, 2020 Anne Balsamo Techno-Humanist-At-Large LA, SF, Mexico City, Singapore, Sydney, Stockholm

27. A Manifesto for Original Synners Open: Extensible, participatory, non-proprietary, collaborative, distributed, multi-disciplinary, and multi-institutional Hybrid: Combines digital and physical spaces, blurs lines between academic and everyday social, creative and expressive practices, crosses traditional generational and cultural boundaries Media Rich: makes use of audio, video, interactivity, and simulation; appeals to multiple senses; relies on whole body sense-making

28. Commit to learn to use new technologies Commit to learning new ways of reading Commit to learning diverse modes of expression Commit to learning new practices of knowledge production Commit to learning how learning is changing Seek to educate and inspire students-as-mutants, not students-as-replicants A Manifesto for Original Synners

29. HOW TO DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY? HOW DOES THE FUTURE BECOME THE PRESENT?

30. The Future Begins in the Imagination

31. The technological imagination is the quality of mind that enables people to think with technology to transform what is known into what is possible. This imagination is performative; it improvises within constraints to create something new.

32. It is through the exercise of their Technological Imaginations that people engage the matter of the world to create the foundation for future world making. This imagination asks not only what CAN be done, but also, more importantly, what SHOULD be done.