13. From the Spider to the Web: Innis’ Ecological Approach to the Evolution of Communication Technologies

Shifman, Limor; Blondheim, Menahem; Watson, Robert O.

doi:10.3138/9781442689442-016

Cited by 6 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…But there was another kind of major danger that prompted the Committee on Communications to eliminate texting. It relates not to the morphology of the message but to its potential scalability and synchronicity (Shifman and Blondheim, 2007; Miller et al, 2016). Put simply, text messages by cellphone can be “broadcast”: disseminated instantly from one to many.…”

Section: Gossip and Subversion: The Text Message As A Broadcast Mediummentioning

confidence: 99%

It’s the text, stupid! Mobile phones, religious communities, and the silent threat of text messages

Rosenberg

Blondheim²,

Katz

2019

New Media & Society

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This study explores the Jewish ultra-Orthodox “kosher cellphone,” a device that can be used only for voice calls. It asks why the leadership of this highly textual community didn’t stop at blocking Internet use over the kosher cellphone and went on to block texting messages as well. Using both interviews with ultra-Orthodox anti-cellphone-activists and content analysis of online discussions among community members, the study analyzes the perception of threat that underlies the prohibition of texting, and explores how this prohibition is received in the community. The findings show that in contrast to the threat posed by improper content, which affects the external boundaries of this enclave community, blocking texting stems from a perception that the technology’s configuration threatens intra-communal monitoring and the control of the dissemination of information within the communal space. Our findings add a number of dimensions to the current understanding of the nexus of new media, social control, and isolated religious communities.

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Section: Gossip and Subversion: The Text Message As A Broadcast Mediummentioning

confidence: 99%

It’s the text, stupid! Mobile phones, religious communities, and the silent threat of text messages

Rosenberg

Blondheim²,

Katz

2019

New Media & Society

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“…For instance, Zhao [39] argues that the Internet (and assumedly the Web) is both space and timebiased: although the Web is a key driver towards globalization and reducing geographic divides in a virtual sense, so too does it enable citizens to construct new notions of democratic governance and data sharing in the long-term (such as through Wikis and peer-to-peer networks) that are arguably important to deconstructing traditional spatial, temporal and powerrelated constraints. Further still, by applying a "six dimensions framework" (that represents a taxonomy for conceptualizing all media technology and considers the morphology, scalability, synchronicity, directionality, mode, connectivity and throughput of the medium), Shifman and Blondheim [40] conclude that the Innisian perspective (with respect to both political economy and thoughts on space-time bias) cannot, in actuality, be effectively applied to the Web because it, in itself, represents not one distinct medium but a "meta-medium" that encompasses traditionally separate media like printed matter, various audiovisual channels, and so forth. Instead, since the Web serves as a delivery vehicle for such media (and since it may indeed deconstruct both space and time parameters) the corollary extending from the arguments above is that attempts to extend determinism and medium theory to the Web are fleeting -we remain in control because the meta-medium can thus reflect such varied "extensions" of its users and, if managed sufficiently, the breaking down of bias can serve society well in mitigating the historically imperialist tendencies of other forms of communication.…”

Section: A Mcluhan Innis and The World Wide Webmentioning

confidence: 99%

Web Science and society: Towards a theoretical foundation for an emerging field of study

Dick

2009

2009 IEEE Toronto International Conference Science and Technology for Humanity (TIC-STH)

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In 2005-06, researchers from the US and the UK met to outline a framework for a new discipline called "Web Science". What resulted was the foundation of the "Web Science Research Initiative" (WSRI), a multidisciplinary body charged with a mandate to explore -as one coalesced unit -the Web's evolution, design, operation, governance and impact on society. For example, Web Science scholarship is designed to integrate discussions on how new Web-related ICTs (such as the Deep and Semantic Webs) affect online content and the society that ultimately interacts with it. Though the discipline itself may be new in name, it is not necessarily new in concept. Indeed, after providing a look at the WSRI's framework and some recent responses to it, this paper serves to highlight existing and historical traditions in communications theory that inform the Web Science research agenda. Specifically, I situate key themes within the broader discourse of technological determinism versus theories on the social construction of technology (SCOT), as well as medium theory. I thus consider how the tenets of Web Science should ideally seek to understand both the Web's impact upon society and what steps may be taken by us to mediate, if desired, its further proliferation through a mainstream environment predicated on technological convergence. The central question inherent in this exploration is how researchers may extract utility from work completed in this discipline, both now and in future.

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“…Script as a new medium represented change on all six fundamental communicative dimensions. In contrast, and as we shall see, the digital turn represented no new potentiality on any of the dimensions; however, it enables the integration and use of all possible options on all six dimensions (Shifman and Blondheim, 2007).…”

Section: The Media Of Revelation and Of Ritualmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, the Internet, the platform of most new media, is widely considered a meta-medium, integrating and combining the gamut of communication options, without introducing any novel basic capacity of mediation (e.g. Botler and Grusin, 1999; Shifman and Blondheim, 2007). Each of these previously discovered communicative affordances has been embraced, even sanctified, by the religious mind in the past, and its theological morals digested.…”

Section: Beyond Parable: New Media As a Religious Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

Media Theology: New Communication Technologies as religious constructs, metaphors, and experiences

Blondheim

Rosenberg

2016

New Media & Society

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Recent studies have seen religious observance as inherently related to available communication technologies. This study follows this thrust but complements the focus on religious praxis with a look at media theology-the ideological dimension of the religion and media nexus. It traces three distinct facets of media theology: the way religious sensibilities affect how we create, shape, apply, and establish a relationship with media technologies; how media technologies serve as tools for grasping aspects of theology; and finally, how media use can launch mental and existential religious experiences. The study's orientation is historical, charting the development of the relationship between media technologies and the religious mind in the Abrahamic religions from the biblical media of fire and cloud through script and electric communications and all the way to the Internet.

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13. From the Spider to the Web: Innis’ Ecological Approach to the Evolution of Communication Technologies

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

It’s the text, stupid! Mobile phones, religious communities, and the silent threat of text messages

It’s the text, stupid! Mobile phones, religious communities, and the silent threat of text messages

Web Science and society: Towards a theoretical foundation for an emerging field of study

Media Theology: New Communication Technologies as religious constructs, metaphors, and experiences

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