Cultural Convergence

Aims and objectives

The unit of study is designed to achieve the following objectives:

• Assess the historical significance of cultural technologies of mediation (such as speech and writing).
• Evaluate the impact of new cultural formations such as cyberspace on traditional notions of community, presence, writing and speech.
• Critically review the development of electronic media founded on principles of interactivity and remote sensing.
• Develop an understanding of key terms and concepts in electronic communications, such as multi-media, telepresence, cyberspace, virtuality, and hypertext.

Teaching methods

Lecture and tutorial

Assessment

Seminar presentation (10 minutes) 20%, Short Essay (1000 words) 30%, Major Essay (2000 words) 50%

Content

This unit of study is a critical exploration of communications in the transition from print to electronic culture. Focusing on the word as the basic unit of communication, it traces the gradual technologising of the word as it moved beyond the immediacy of speech and social community, to the mediation of writing and its initiation of remote telecommunications.

Central to the formation of an electronic culture is the issue of convergence, in which new modes of communication, such as hypermedia, combine formerly discrete forms to create powerful communications environments. Such environments require new literacies, which in turn transform the way in which we construct the world into meaning. Cultural Convergence also seeks to evaluate the impact of new social formations (such as cyberspace) that are being constructed on the basis of these literacies, assessing the degree to which virtual communities are changing the nature of social interaction, and modifying traditional notions of identity, space, location and meaning.