Assignment 13
Walking into class the first day, I was expecting the course to be completely different. I had assumed it was going to be easy since I’m such an avid digital media user. However, from that first day and on I realized I was completely wrong. It felt as if I had to clear my head of what I knew digital media as and then learn about it all over again, in textbook style.
I look back and I feel as though this class was a real eye opener because it felt like I was learning a whole new concept of what digital media was. What everyone else in the class knew or had heard about already was all new to me. This made it difficult at times. There was so much I had to really look into to try to understand what the chapters were talking about. I didn’t know that so much background information on digital media existed.
What I enjoyed most was Astra Taylor’s book and learning about the New Communalists, New Left and everything with Stewart Brand. Taylor’s book was enjoyable to read because it laid everything out for me. Since I had to read it with an open mind, I feel as though I just took in all the information without really judging on her opinions. I especially enjoyed reading about copyrights and who actually owns what once its out in the cyber world. In Fred Turner’s book, what sticks with me is the New Communalists, New Left, and Stewart Brand. This may be because I had to do a lot of digging deeper and rereading for my presentation. Either way I think I enjoyed just leaning about the different opposing sides and what each side did for the Internet.
Readings I found most difficult were from Trebor Scholtz’s book. Most of the chapters just didn’t click with me and I think it may have been because most of the readings were so dense with information. Not only were they dense but also the language was a bit too complex for me to get into the book.
Digital media definitely structures a lot more of my life than I originally thought it did. I think it’s more structured because there’s so much more behind it that I didn’t think was associated like consumerism, privacy, and ownership. All of these take part in our lives and it’s good to now see where it all started and still continues.
