AbirChattopadhyay: September 2012

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Technology and Human Rights

Lecture and PP Presentation for Human Rights Students...

Slide #1

What is Technology?

In social communication and media studies…

Technology is considered as the Signified or Concept of any activity (or Act) that resides with its referents or real life objects; i.e. machines, software, or anything made or invented.

Slide #2

Technology…contd.

u Technology is also a phenomenon that human beings experience in their lives. So user groups realize technology.

u Technology also considered as unit means what human beings execute. Oral techniques; literate techniques etc.

Slide #3

Technology & Technological:

Technology therefore appears

u Concept;

u Phenomenon;

u Experience;

Technological however indicates

u Referent or Outcome;

u Individual Judgement;

u Convention; like ‘Computerized’;

u Finally, human ‘arbitrary’ rights to define any category;

Slide #4

What is Technology?...contd.

The modular presentation looks like

Signifier = Signified + Referents

(Intellectual Act) (Technology) + (Objects)

So every Act can give birth of a specific concept of a new technology.

Slide #5

University of Toronto proposes

Canadian Communication School derives Social Transformation in view of the development of technology.

Theorists like Tim O’Sullivan, Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan et. al. formulated social transformation in three distinctive social features;

Slide #6

University of Toronto proposes contd.

u Oral Society: Oral Communication Technology drives the society.

u Literate Society: Literate Technology drives the society.

u Electronic Society: Electronic communication technology drives the society.

u Global Village: Convergence of all communication & media Technologies.

Slide #7

Technology as Signifier:

u Problem now pops up when Technology is considered as a driving force or an ‘Act’ itself;

uIf technology now is the signifier, what would then be the signified and referent?

uIt then affects human ‘arbitrary’ rights.

uTechnology then drives your knowledge, satisfaction, need, and all other cognitive outcomes; like, computer softwares today drive your needs, knowledge and social positioning;

Slide #8

When Technology itself is the Signifier…

Slide #9

The Signified is just a Package that soaks up all other concepts…

Slide #10

The truth…abuse…

Source: Academics for Justice

Slide #11

The newer Ghettos…

Source: Academics for Justice

Slide #12

The new fireworks…

Source: Academics for Justice

Slide #13

New questions…

Source: Academics for Justice

Slide #14

Leaving out…Bare Frames

Slide #15

So Human Rights…

In a post ‘Mass-ification’ era of packaged mediation;

Does ‘Human Rights’ exist at all as signified for mass?

Slide #16

Universal Declaration of Human Rights…nevertheless

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Slide #17

Technological Determinism

u So Technology provides space to know new things;

u Technology also rules the space;

u Digitalization of TV gives you freedom of choice; but within what is provided;

u Technological space is therefore not a natural space;

uTechnological space or media space squeezes public space to individuated space;

u But this is only for consumption not to exert human rights

Slide #18

Technology and message

Noted French Poststructuralist Jean Baudrillard proposed:

Øglobal explosion of technology is being mirrored into implosion of understanding; a typical consumerist mode of introspection;

ØImplosion mirrors explosion of information; promotes consumption of information;

ØConsuming information creates a greater illusion of technological explosion;

ØThe more we consume information the less we consume meaning;

Slide #19

Human Rights Elements

u All underlined traditional Signifiers are largely owned by technocapitalist media houses; except some remote ethnic identities

u All red Signifieds are now defined as media products; it is highly evident in Social Networking Sites.

Slide #20

Slide #21

Human Rights Signifiers…

u If now ‘Human Rights’ matters at all, does it exist as ‘Right’ or a note of all round ‘Consumption’?

u All newer spaces like social networking sites, shopping malls, amusements parks, water resorts, even publications belong to the same political economy of signification that only promotes outright consumption.

Slide #22

Human Rights Signifiers…

u It is thus very hard to rally with the belief that a specific post in a social networking site can organize a revolution; toward the end of a thirty year tyranny; If so…

u Consumption of mediated contents then can lead to a revolution any moment!! Leftists and Radicals should learn something out of it.

Slide #23

New Declaration of Human Rights

u Consumption rules the social order that includes Individual Human Rights also.

u Philosophy of the hour:

I shop therefore I am;

Slide #24

Final ‘Human Rights’ Signifier…

Thank You

Cultural Studies #8

Adaptive Structuration theory

This is a perfect sequel of Anthony Giddens’ Structuration or Socialization theory, which tries out human behaviour producing or reproducing social systems through some given rules and resources. Naturally AST points out group and organizational interaction. In this discourse the theory discards techno-centric view and emphasizes on social aspects in spite of recognizing the existence of information technology important for interaction. AST is widely used to describe how the social systems like radio, television, internet influence societies and in turn become motivated to update themselves.

Cultural Studies #7

Ideology

Categorization of idea[s] that refers to both individual identity and mass political identity also. Ideology constructs human identity through codification. Raymond Williams (1977) defines: the set of ideas which arises from a given set of material interests or more broadly from a definite class or group. Stuart Hall while defining politics of signification argues that ideology can no longer be seen as a dependent variable, a mere reflection of a pre-given reality in the mind. Nor are its outcomes predictable by derivation from some simple determinist logic. The depend on the balance of forces in a particular historical conjuncture; on the politics of signification.

Cultural Studies #3

Consumption: Toward a definition

Consumption is as active exchange as production. In consumption there is an active appropriation of signs, not the simple destruction of an object. What is consumed is not simply a material object that satisfies an all too rational need, but a symbolic meaning in which the consumer places himself in a communication structure where an exchange occurs which is profoundly tied to the whole system of political economy. In order for the system to be reproduced there must be not simply the reproduction of labour power but the continuous reproduction of the code.

Cultural Studies #2

Extension of Marxism: politics of signification

Marx theorized the origin of political economy as a transformation of the mode of production and relations of production. But there has been a second decisive change in political economy that involved a “process of social abstraction” that refers not to the commodity but to the “sign” following the central logic of signification.

Important is to articulate a critique of the political economy of the sign which is the dominant social form of advanced capitalism. Political economy had generated its mode of signification from the outset, during renaissance, but Marxian theorization did not move up to the radically new form of social exchange. Global postmodern mediation of the 21st century can only be understood through the understanding of the politics of signification.

Cultural Studies #1

Baudrillard Reading: The System of Objects: crisis of classification

How can we hope to classify a world of objects that changes before our eyes and arrive at an adequate system of description? There are almost as many criteria of classification as there are objects themselves: the size of the objects; its degree of functionality; the gestures associated with it (rich or impoverished? Traditional or not?); its form; its duration; the time of day at which it appears; the material that it transforms; the degree of exclusiveness or sociability attendant upon its use (private, general or public use?) and so on. Indeed all such means of categorization may seem- when they are applied to an ensemble, such as the set of objects, that is undergoing a continual mutation and expansion barely less contingent than the order of the letters of the alphabet.

Each object corresponds to an operation, often a tiny or heteroclite operation, but nowhere is any system of meanings even touched upon. So instead of getting objects as defined by their functions or by the categories into which they might be subdivided for analytic purposes, important is to note how people relate to them and with the systems of human behaviour and relationships that result therefrom.

AbirChattopadhyay

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Technology and Human Rights

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Sunday, September 2, 2012

Technology and Human Rights

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