Comments on: Digital Culture as a Response to Social and Environmental Tragedy

By: Dominic

Dominic — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 05:28:49 +0000

We used and abused what ever P.R.I.S.M. was set up for. We jimmy-rigged a couple of reel-to-reel Sony videotape machines. The edits were never perfect. There was always an electronic jiggle on the cut. Most of the time we edited in camera.

By: Steve Gorelick

Steve Gorelick — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 02:44:10 +0000

What program was it that handed us all that cutting edge equipment at the time? I think our worlds opened up with that stuff and yet I dont recall under whose auspices this occurred. I do know they left us alone and the results were incredibly fun. We didnt have editing eqipment then, did we? By the way, how was video edited in 1969? Seriously/

It would have been some large dedicated machine , no?

By: Dominic

Dominic — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 02:33:25 +0000

I’d like to think that we were cutting edge in our own way, Steve. We were lucky to go to a high school in the mid-1960′s that had a program allowing us to experiment with video and videotape equipment, albeit analog, that the average consumer wouldn’t get access to for another 10 or 15 years. We jumped on that “scary path” with ease and excitement.

If only one of us had been larcenous enough top steal those tapes – we then could have posted them on YouTube and found technological closure with the digital generation!

By: Steve Gorelick

Steve Gorelick — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 23:12:44 +0000

So true. What really amazes me , though, much more than tech savvy, is the ability of some of my colleagues and young people to be so comfortable with social change, to assume that it is going to happen and to ride it rather than fight it. Sociologists elevated social change to such a key concept and focused enormous attention on how it plays out, But I am not sure that there was an easy transition to the reality of just how fast it can happen. Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions got at it, but for a lot of sociologists and for people in general, the speed of technological and social change has been enormously disorienting.

Think about it as it relates to media studies, We had 30 or 40 years when radio and print were dominant, Then another 30 or 40 years when television was. But then, as if we were reaching the very top of a roller coaster before it starts down, the digital revolution came and we were careening down this exciting and scary path.

By: Dominic

Dominic — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 19:00:02 +0000

Expect no less from students that have had access to the Internet for more than half of their lives. When we boomers started using computers initially it was only in our work places. The present young generation uses them in every aspect of their lives, not just as part of a job. That’s why they will dream up digital concepts, uses and gadgets that we never will.