Narrating the Digital Turn: data deluge, technomethodology, and other likely tales

In this paper it is argued that digital technologies will have a transformative effect in the social sciences in general and in the fast developing field of narrative studies in particular. It is argued that the integrative and interdisciplinary nature of narrative approaches are further enhanced by the development of digital technologies and that the collection of digital data will also drive theoretical and methodological developments in narrative studies. Biographical Sociology will also need to take account of lives lived in, and transformed by, the digital domain. How these technologies may influence data collection methods, how they might influence thinking about what constitutes data, and what effects this might have on the remodeling of theoretical approaches are all pressing questions for the development of a Twenty First Century narratology. As Marshall McLuhan once put it “First we shape our tools and then our tools shape us”.

Un recorrido pandémico de las prácticas docentes mediadas por la tecnología desde la perspectiva del determinismo tecnológico

El determinismo tecnológico nace en la Escuela de Chicago con figuras como William Ogburn, y nos muestra su versión más radical en Jacques Ellul. Pero será Marshall McLuhan, promotor de la Escuela de Toronto, el que trascienda este enfoque, ya que la tecnología pasa de ser el factor determinante per se al factor determinante en el progreso social y la globalización planetaria. Lo esencial de estas ideas radica en la capacidad autónoma de la tecnología, pasando esta a ser el “factor determinante”. Durante la pandemia hemos y somos testigos una vez más de este hecho, y es el análisis de ello el propósito de este ensayo. La comunicación ha sido sujeto de una redefinición a escala global que pone de manifiesto la presencia ineludible del determinismo en nuestros días; tanto es así, que se adentra imparablemente en las aulas. ¿Son compatibles el determinismo tecnológico y la docencia?, ¿puede ser el primero herramienta del segundo? De eso nos ocupamos en las siguientes líneas.Bajo estos enfoques y postulados deterministas, que forman parte de las tradiciones de los estudios en comunicación, nos proponemos analizar a modo de ensayo el papel que los medios de comunicación han tenido durante la pandemia del COVID-19. Sin duda, este necesario revisionismo y tensión de las teorías clásicas con los contextos actuales, cargados de incertidumbres y relativismos constituyen un aporte a discusiones necesarias que debe darse.

The Beauty of the Fragment Reconstituted in the Great Wall

Max Hattler’s short abstract animations demonstrate an awareness of the form’s historic 1920’s European Abstract Animation precedents, is informed by the structurally focused minimalism of the 60’s and re-tools pre-cinema toys. Yet his work speaks to the contemporary technological environment he occupies and experiences directly. His move to Hong Kong and his recent Serial Parallels is also a predictive probe into future media environments. Hattler’s digital architectures are designed to make sense of the technological situation of speed and information overload which Vilem Flusser marks as amnesic and Marshall McLuhan identifies as an acoustic space readable through pattern recognition. His practice makes productive use of the flexible and modular qualities of contemporary digital image-making technologies for both production and publication purposes.

McLuhan on Shakespeare and Shakespeare as McLuhan

Over 400 years ago, during the early days of the print revolution, William Shakespeare offered insights into the media environment of his times. Though he was a poet and playwright, his observations were strikingly similar to those of Marshall McLuhan in the twentieth century. In every one of his plays there appear media references: books, letters, reading and writing. This essay examines how he viewed the impact of literacy and printing on both individuals and the society at large.

The aesthetic experience of learning between real and virtual

From Socrates to Dewey, learning is linked to reality and movement, in relation to the aesthetic implications of the communication/education dynamic: the possibilities offered by the virtual in the educational logic exist as a choice to increase reality, not decrease it. The article retraces stages of pedagogical thought in which the question of movement is central, opening the history of education to the work of Marshall McLuhan who first investigated the relationship media-learning. Also in the didactic practices of the current pandemic moment of "distance learning” has been introduced, we cannot disregard the idea of education as an "aesthetic experience", in search of beauty and of a balance, precarious yet rich, between real and virtual.

Marshall McLuhan e o ciberespaço

A emergência das Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (TIC), tem alterado de maneira drástica a dinâmica das relações humanas com suas instituições, em especial, seu relacionamento com o Estado e suas instâncias políticas. Este trabalho investiga o papel do Ciberespaço na dinâmica sociopolítica, por meio da análise das características mediáticas da Web como ponto de referência para tais transformações. E, para tanto, recoloca na ordem do dia a tese de Marshall McLuhan, como questão: “o meio é a mensagem”. No mais, esta apresenta-se como uma pesquisa teórico-exploratória de caráter bibliográfico, a partir de incursões na literatura, com o objetivo de examinar o conceito de media como fundamento para a construção de um ambiente informacional. Como resultado, espera-se evidenciar um mosaico conceitual que desvende pontos importantes sobre o desempenho do Ciberespaço na dinâmica entre Estado e sociedade, a partir dos aportes teóricos trazidos pela área da Ciência da Informação e disciplinas relacionadas.

Information Technologies, Reading, and the Future of Higher Education

The article addresses the challenge for universities and colleges to prepare students for the world they inhabit through relevant course offerings and new approaches to teaching. Unfortunately, these structures of higher education still resemble chapels, where the professor is ‘priest,’ and with a pedagogy that is informed by monologue, methodological nationalism, and a general lack of awareness of the rapidly changing social and physical world around us. Starting with the Gutenberg revolution, and following the ideas of Marshall McLuhan, Sven Birkerts and Joseph Brodsky,the article approaches the consequences of the new information technologies that are profoundly rewiring our minds and replacing our ability to think critically. The author asks: what might education look like today? How might we challenge young people to learn how to think? The first task appears to critique and transform the political architecture of classrooms and the teacher centeredness of pedagogical activity, replacing monologue with dialogue. Students need to be shown how to critically distance themselves from the seductions of information technologies, and educational institutions should return to requiring deep reading and discussion of extended narratives.