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February 07

Introduction, Media Convergence and Popular Culture

WEEK 1 – FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 07

Session I (~120 minutes)
Introduction and Overview to Media Technology and Popular Culture

Overview of communications history and cultural effects of disruptive technologies. The intersection between social, cultural, historical, technological, economic and legal issues. The changing media environment – analog to digital, wired to wireless, terrestrial to extraterrestrial, etc. The aesthetics of hybrid media— transmedia storytelling, participatory culture, perceptual challenges, non-linearity, genre-mixing, backstory, serialization, appropriation and transformation.

· Henry Jenkins, “Convergence? I Diverge”, Technology Review http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/jenkins0601.asp

· Brenda Laurel, Utopian Entrepreneur, (pp.84-86)

· Alfred Chandler, Jr., Inventing the Electronic Century, (pp. 6-12)

· P. David Marshall, “The New Intertextual Commodity”

· “Harmonic Convergence,” Wired, August 1999

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.08/dl_timeline.html

Session II (~60 minutes)

Guest Speaker: Bob Metcalfe

Dr. Robert Metcalfe is the inventor of the Ethernet protocol, founder of 3Com, Inc., IEEE Medal of Honor Recipient and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He also raises sheep in Maine and is not above eating his hat when his public predictions are incorrect.

Background Reading:

· “The Legend of Bob Metcalfe,” Wired, November 1998 http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/metcalfe.html