The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading: Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine - Couverture rigide

Lunenfeld, Peter

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0262015471 ISBN 13 : 9780262015479

Editeur : The MIT Press, 2011

Synopsis

As we hurtle into the twenty-first century, will we be passive downloaders of content or active uploaders of meaning?

The computer, writes Peter Lunenfeld, is the twenty-first century's culture machine. It is a dream device, serving as the mode of production, the means of distribution, and the site of reception. We haven't quite achieved the flying cars and robot butlers of futurist fantasies, but we do have a machine that can function as a typewriter and a printing press, a paintbrush and a gallery, a piano and a radio, the mail as well as the mail carier. But, warns Lunenfeld, we should temper our celebration with caution; we are engaged in a secret war between downloading and uploading—between passive consumption and active creation—and the outcome will shape our collective futures.

In The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading, Lunenfeld makes his case for using digital technologies to shift us from a consumption to a production model. He describes television as the “the high fructose corn syrup of the imagination” and worries that it can cause “cultural diabetes”; prescribes mindful downloading, meaningful uploading, and “info-triage” as cures; and offers tips for crafting “bespoke futures” in what he terms the era of “Web n.0” (interconnectivity to the nth power). He also offers a stand-alone genealogy of digital visionaries, distilling a history of the culture machine that runs from the Patriarchs (Vannevar Bush's WWII generation) to the Hustlers (Bill Gates and Steve Jobs) to the Searchers (Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google fame). After half a century of television-conditioned consumption/downloading, Lunenfeld tells us, we now find ourselves with a vast new infrastructure for uploading. We simply need to find the will to make the best of it.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Peter Lunenfeld is Professor of Design Media Arts at UCLA.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: The MIT Press
• Date d'édition: 2011
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0262015471
• ISBN 13: 9780262015479
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 240
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible