What Makes New Media "New?"

In our first week of discussions in COM 324 (Readings in New Media) at Queens University in Charlotte, we discussed the following:

• Alan Turing and "The Imitation Game," The Turing Test, Predictions from 1950 for 2000 and Eugene Goostman;
• Isaac Asimov and predictions from 1964 for 2014, Facetime, Skype, Google Self-driving Cars, Roombas and more;
• Our Visions of the Future from film and television;
• Theodor Adorno's desciption of the "Culture Industry" and its power to "standardize" our thinking about the past and future and other things through its "non-democratic" machinery of one-way communication; and
• How President Obama and Kanye broke the grip of monolithic media power.

NOW, we enter the discussion of the one key element that makes New Media "New": AGENCY. It seems a "system of rejoinder" DOES exist, Theodor!

Each week, each student will READ ALL ASSIGNED READINGS, but will lead a thoughtful discussion on one or more of the readings/viewings as assigned in the previous class meeting. In preparation, each student will build a blog to record notes, thoughts and questions on the reading as a guideline for leading discussion.


Students may use whichever blog format they wish, but if student has no preference, the instructor recommends Blogger as an easy way to do a blog with a Google/Gmail account - the MAIN SITE IS HERE, and INSTRUCTIONS ARE HERE for Blogger.

For each reading assigned, the student will post the following notes in the blog before midnight Sunday:

1. Who, What, When, Where, Why, How? (Overview of the reading)
2. Most important, puzzling, sketchy, scary, incorrect, prescient, hopeful, intelligent, relevant, etc. points?
3. What questions are raised?
4. What implications are made?

Students will send blog URLs to Professor by Sunday Midnight.

**All readings and links for viewings are in the COM 324 My Course/Engage resources.