On the Social Implications of Invisibility: The iMac G5 and the Effacement of the Technological Object

Schaefer, Peter; Durham, Meenakshi Gigi

doi:10.1080/07393180701214520

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Despite the convergence of companies, business interests, technological platforms, cultural actors and other agents, it remains essential to untangle the succinct positions and interests of various players. Technological systems, such as labour relations and consumer positions, are implied increasingly rather than manifest (Schaefer and Durham, 2007). This is the power of technologies and regulatory systems governing our everyday lives and defining individual identities vis-à-vis collective identities.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wikinomics and its discontents: a critical analysis of Web 2.0 business manifestos

Dijck

Nieborg

2009

New Media & Society

214

113

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'Collaborative culture', 'mass creativity' and 'co-creation' appear to be contagious buzzwords that are rapidly infecting economic and cultural discourse on Web 2.0. Allegedly, peer production models will replace opaque, top-down business models, yielding to transparent, democratic structures where power is in the shared hands of responsible companies and skilled, qualified users. Manifestos such as Wikinomics (Tapscott and Williams, 2006) and 'We-Think' (Leadbeater, 2007) argue collective culture to be the basis for digital commerce. This article analyzes the assumptions behind this Web 2.0 newspeak and unravels how business gurus try to argue the universal benefits of a democratized and collectivist digital space. They implicitly endorse a notion of public collectivism that functions entirely inside commodity culture. The logic of Wikinomics and 'We-Think' urgently begs for deconstruction, especially since it is increasingly steering mainstream cultural theory on digital culture.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wikinomics and its discontents: a critical analysis of Web 2.0 business manifestos

Dijck

Nieborg

2009

New Media & Society

214

113

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“…The dual function of passé media elaborated here—to pass through connecting points, and to be produced as boring, from its inception, in the name of greater speed and efficiency—reflect the desire to efface time and space. However, as Schaefer and Durham () point out, this transcendence is illusory. So, what spatial practices are produced in this perpetual desire of effacement?…”

Section: Passing Over and Passing Through The Busesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By rearticulating communication and transport, we see that transportation and communication media are both material, constitute spatial/temporal production, and are utilized for the desires of the other's annihilation: Physical transport makes data transport seem immaterial, just as communication seems to make transport time instant. Buses highlight what gets erased when conceptual metaphors efface the material associations of physicality in transport/communication toward “an illusory union that seems to transcend the material world” (Schaefer & Durham, , p. 41).…”

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confidence: 99%

Passé Media: Communication and Transportation on Commuter and Computer Buses

Gehl

Cozen

2015

Commun Theor

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This essay proposes the concept of "passé media" as a contribution to scholarship that combines communication and geography, as well as to work that foregrounds background processes of networked, digitized social production. Passé media, communication and transportation technologies that both connect endpoints and are acclaimed only until the next technology arrives, reveal at least three attributes: (1) a novel way to conceptualize mobility, (2) the transformation of use-value to exchange-value, and (3) the continued ecological imprints of digital technologies. To illustrate, we turn to the bus, deployed both for transportation (commuter buses) and communication (computer buses). We argue that the moment of the bus highlights the ways in which spaces of connection are simultaneously privileged and ignored, highlighted and effaced. It's a bus-age wonder, Magic Bus-Pete TownsendWaiting for a bus is a quotidian experience in two senses. First, the wait for a commuter bus: standing on a curb near a sign, watching the time, listening for familiar sounds of the rumble of diesel and the relief of the air compressor to lower the bus on its suspension. This is waiting for transportation. Second, the wait for the computer bus, the internal pathway in all computers where data are passed back and forth between the processor and memory. This wait involves watching graphical interfaces that display percentages processed or loading bars. This is waiting for communication.Often, these two activities occur simultaneously; commuters play with their smartphones while waiting for the bus to arrive, and they wait for the app to load.

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“…And although Microsoft has replaced Big Blue as the Goliath to Apple's David, these comments are as relevant today as when they were first published. The binaries of work versus play, sickness versus health, and in turn, difficulty versus ease are heavily exploited in the "Get a Mac" campaign and serve to reinforce the corporate ethos that has developed from Apple's corporate mythology (Linzmayer, 2004), product design (Schaefer & Durham, 2007), and previous marketing campaigns (Jenkins, 2008;Scott, 1991;Shields, 2001). Apple clearly prepackages an identity construct with their technology.…”

Section: Identity and The Consumer Societymentioning

confidence: 99%

Better at Life Stuff

Livingstone

2011

Journal of Communication Inquiry

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Apple's "Get a Mac" advertising campaign defines for its audience the dichotomy between the casual, confident, creative Mac user and the formal, frustrated, fun-deprived PC user through a series of comical television spots featuring human representations of each technology. The company has been largely applauded over the years for their creative, innovative, and thought-provoking marketing, and "Get a Mac," winner of the American Marketing Association's 2007 Grand Effie award, fits nicely with Apple's tradition of infusing cultural ideology into their ads. Utilizing the methods of close reading and ideological criticism, this study considers the North American "Get a Mac" television campaign as a popular culture text with embedded implications about consumption, identity, and class. The text reveals a number of thematic dichotomies that obscure meaningful issues of difference and class while promoting the spectacle of consumption and the myth of self-actualization through commodities.

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On the Social Implications of Invisibility: The iMac G5 and the Effacement of the Technological Object

Cited by 6 publications

References 13 publications

Wikinomics and its discontents: a critical analysis of Web 2.0 business manifestos

Wikinomics and its discontents: a critical analysis of Web 2.0 business manifestos

Passé Media: Communication and Transportation on Commuter and Computer Buses

Better at Life Stuff

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