Shannon and Weaver, Wiener

              I surprisingly enjoyed the readings more than had been expected. I personally have never been fond of math and when I realized the theme behind the readings was mathematical I became somewhat apprehensive. Nonetheless, I found the logic and theoretical orientation behind the readings to be stimulating and thought provoking. I hope Shannon and Weaver might be pleased that their choice of written symbols was (at least somewhat) accurately transmitted into my mind and thus decoded into my subjective understanding of their message. Alas, the product of my interpretation is yet to be seen. I suppose it is affecting my behavior in a desired way, after all, I am thinking about the material in a critical way and reorganizing the information that seems rational for me.  

            I want to address one topic in this blog, feel free to comment and to criticize. Shannon and Weaver state, “if the signal being transmitted is continuous (as in oral speech or music) rather than being formed of discreet symbols (as in written speech, telegraphy, etc.), how does this affect the problem” (99)? They go on to address topics such as entropy and the probability of word combinations within an individual’s potential word choices. Furthermore, that the English language is essentially 50% redundant, which statistically influences the probability and choice on has in communicating. As far as continuous vs. discreet communication goes, would the does the influence of the Internet and blogging introduce a new medium? As with oral communication, one can continue a conversation, but it lacks the immediate response that oral communication does. This surely will affect the algorithm because it gives the transmitter longer to weigh out what she or he wants to say. Moreover, because the communication is anonymous, there seems to be a freedom to abandon rationality and to embrace emotional thought in response to others.

            I want to comment on entropy because both Shannon and Weaver & Wiener bring up the second law of thermodynamics. Weiner states, “a message can lose order spontaneously in the act of transmission, but can not gain it” (Wiener, 7). Various psychopathologies come to mind. One characterized by a seemingly all-encompassing entropy, one in which there seems to be no order and the probability of the next word endless, is schizophrenia. In this disorder the disorganization of speech and thought is extreme. I know that this wasn’t a major theme for the Wiener reading, but he does mention intellectual property and secrecy on page 17. It reminded me of the great extent at which musical artists go to keep their music a secret until the release date. For example Lady Gaga’s new single wont be released until February 13^th. Ironically as I am writing this, one of her songs just came on from my playlist… which reminds me of algorithms that predict the probability that something will be communicated. I just checked and my playlist has the potential for transmitting 1,756 different signals, 22 of which are Lady Gaga, meaning there was a 1.2% chance that my playlist would choose to encode a Lady Gaga song into my brain. Typically it would be decoded into some sort of excited emotion that might result in dancing, however, this time the result was different because it resulted in a synthesis of a written transmission from Shannon and Weaver, Weiner, and a musical transmission from my playlist/Lady Gaga. As in Shannon and Weaver’s Problem C (the problem in effectively getting the desired action out of communication), I do not know if my action was the desired response from any of the transmissions, however, I should suspect it was effective since I am further exposing their work to the public in my written transmission. 

Clouds of Habermas and Enzensberger

             I found Habermas to be a useful historical tool. Having been raised in a time when mass media and communication is such an innate part of life, I found it interesting that “literature had to legitimate itself in coffee houses” (Habermas, 33). Although this has changed, there is still an aspect of this culture today. Coffee houses often exhibit art and provide a space for individuals to study and talk (albeit mostly gossip) about various topics – ranging from politics to cinema. Nonetheless, they surely do not represent the once exclusive, yet public for the male bourgeoisie, stomping grounds of intellectuals and art critics, or as Habermas puts it, the “Kunstrichter” (41). Moreover, the coffee houses provided a space for these men to gather and discuss periodical essays covering various artistic, philosophical, and political issues. Parallels exist between theses periodical articles and social networks today. I think of them as private blogs. Blogs of course that lack the speed and accessibility that bloggers today enjoy. 

            It is this very speed and accessibility, provided by new technologies (e.g. the radio, television, telephone), during the twentieth century that increased the position in the stratification system for lower socioeconomic status (SES) populations. Suddenly even low SES people were to form an opinion. However, this also initiated the need for mass entertainment and advertising. I supposed in a sense it seems the proletariats have improved their position within society. Nonetheless, the elite still control the advertisements and entertainment industries. They control the standard of culture, what it is to be normal. They control the advertisements and shape them to benefit themselves. After all, some ridiculously small statistic of the human population controls some ridiculously large number of our cumulative wealth. The trick is to hinder the masses from perceiving this as a self-presentation of private interest.

            Enzensberger was more applicable to current issues in social media. Furthermore, he used lots of examples, which really aided in my digestion of the work (yum)! I love that he created an analogy of critical inventions in “verbal traffic” on page 125. He basically predicted the Internet in my opinion; he just didn’t have the tools in the 1960’s to outline the specifics of the invention. As he put it, humans utilized “articulate language, writing, the printing press,” and then some unknown revolutionary tool that would use integrate our biological design for oral and visual communication. The Internet provides a synthesis of visual images, and depending on the usage writing and auditory stimuli. It is speedy not only in the sense that we can transport information from point a to point b in a second, but also that we can cognitively process the information more efficiently than pure writing (at least as a whole – that is the inclusion of low SES individuals). Suddenly you don’t have to have a twelfth grade reading level to participate within the culture. Instead of having a firm understanding of syntax, grammar, vocabulary, etc., you can utilize your innate ability to perceive emotion, body language, and auditory comprehension. Suddenly we are all critics; we are all producers within society. It’s just that the intelligentsia are organizing, editing, dubbing, the information we receive. In this respect they shape some degree of our consciousness, some degree of how we perceive the world to be. What the hell, as long as we are happy?

The role of the intellectual in the modern, media-saturated world: Ardent & Benjamin

             The role of the intellectual in the modern (twentieth century), media saturated world certainly seems to have changed from the nineteenth century. The proletariats, as Ardent and Benjamin refer to them as (although I see this as somewhat pompous and outdated), suddenly have access to mass media. There is an increase in leisure time because the vast majority of individuals no longer have to partake in hard labor in this period, which opens up time for entertainment. This sudden, and shocking revelation in the 1930’s must have been somewhat upsetting for the educated intellectuals of the time, especially those unfamiliar to the American culture.

            Both Ardent and Benjamin talk about the destruction of a high form culture and art in mass society. There is a dialectic principle here. The principle that a certain bourgeois quality of art must merge with mass production of lower quality entertainment (the antithesis), to eventually synthesize into something new. Ardent states that the role of the intellectual loses a certain aspect of quality in place of a very rapid speed of production. That is, the consumer is no longer interested in a message or lesson within art, rather they are interested in pure entertainment, which may be completely cliché at times. I find it amusing that Ardent uses “My Fair Lady,” a film now considered a great American classic, as a lower form of art to contrast against Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” This argument outlines certain flaws in capitalism because of the high demand of newness, which lowers quality in place of speed. This inspires the intellectuals, as producers, to spit "trash" out quickly to make a profit. The role of the intellectual (although well educated) is to organize, disseminate, and change cultural objects in order” to make them suitable for low cognitive functioning human beings (Ardent, 284).

            Benjamin expands this idea of a synthesis with the proletariat. The author (intellectual) as producer will discover her “solidarity with the proletariat, but also with her solidarity with other producers who earlier seemed scarcely to concern her” (Benjamin, 87). He uses music as a metaphor; this is a perfect example for today as well. Benjamin argues that the need for experts diminishes as a result of jukeboxes for mass entertainment. Today we don’t even need singers to sing, in place of a voice, we have synthesizers to put their voices into tune.  Furthermore, we don’t even need new music, rather the intellectual now identifies popular and successful music from a few decades ago and re-organizes them into, perhaps, a pop-rap song with an Annie Lennox tune in the background. Essentially, mass production has significantly hurt the quality of our culture and left the intellectual in mass-media as a re-organizer, rather than a creative mind. 

Una prueba

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