The Cyberculture: Technology, Nature and Culture paper was a complex and thorough read. It has terms and meanings involved in the paper that I have not heard of, nor used before in any of my own writing.
The paper is introduced by insinuating how new media is a thing that shapes and forms a part of Cyberculture, and the importance of this link between the two. It investigates the way science and culture and media practices and theories are linked, and how they provide key biological advancements in technology and critical thinking in practise; such as in intelligent prosthetics. It compares the genetic links and advancements that create and shape change in the way technology creates impulsive abilities through explorations of new advancements, and the creation of unique theories that indicate how humans have the physical and psychological genetics that imply the mass presentation of calculation and reckoning, referred to as ubiquity of computation. The paper continues to form the links between the scientific realm of imagination, and the realism that influxes into the modern society and real world through interaction of media technologies.
It also explores cybernetics, and compares this to Cyberculture. The use of making these comparisons draws upon how cybernetics is now a part of nature, and has grown into the everyday consumptions that we use, such as food. The term cybernetics is used and described as one that is a combination of interests, technologies, and biology in physical and living things.
This report overall, explores and identifies how technology has changed and adapted into our cultural, realistic, and everyday experiences, to create and define new meanings and explorations of how technology has advanced, and thus impacted and merged into our lives.
Rankin: The Story of Life Magazine
The Life Magazine documentary introduced the viewers to the story of this magazine, and its iconic history. I have never read, or seen footage from the magazines before, so this documentary was a first exploration in Life Magazine for me. It starts by introducing Life’s main purpose, of being a photojournalism magazine, and how it documented Americas growing influence on the world through the 40’s 50’s and 60’s. The narrator and photographer, Rankin, explores some of the photographers that worked for Life through these decades, and how they have influenced the world of photography.
Through watching this documentary, I learned how this magazine captured and captivated the events that it covered through dynamic and innovative photography, and exploring the new world of freedom found within it. The imagination of the photographers that where interviewed and included in the documentary, such as Alfred Eisenstaedt, captured the very essence of what Life Magazine was all about; spontaneity, inspiration, and innovation of creating a story in pictures.
Throughout the programme, this exploration of the many different photojournalists that worked for life, gives a piece of insight and imagination into the world of what it was like to be a photographer for Life. Often, it was said that to work for Life Magazine was more respected that being the reporter, captured in the fact that the reversal of a reporter having a photographer, was turned into the photographer having a reporter, or scout to work with them.
The captivation of the transformation Life had gone through from post-war through to the sixties, showed the growth and love that the public and other journalism professionals had for the magazine.
Rankin discuses throughout, how Life Magazine gave shape and identity to events such as the end of the war, the assassination of JFK, and the civil rights movement.
Life Magazine was an outlet for journalism in that time like no other. Starting in 1936, the photographers that had worked for life changed the image of the events in the world and how they were viewed. Rankin explores this through the documentary, and encapsulates the story of Life Magazine through his interviews, and reinvention of some works.
The documentary showed me thoroughly what Life Magazine did throughout its history, and in my research for the essay I am conducting, I will use some examples of Life’s work, as examples of true, and authentic journalism.
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