Digital Theory & Aesthetics: Network Cultures Theories and Practices Essay (Critical Writing)

The world of information became more versatile and accessible via Internet and its technologies. The spread of the network is huge and is constantly developing. It is obvious now that the high-tech culture embodied in computers as a source of access is increasing expanding new audience and boarders of influence: “terminals are no longer dedicated; cultural producers are now recurrent and mobile multi-taskers; art is online, on the street, on a screen and coming at you from a million different places, now” (Gye & Munster, 5). Blogs, e-mail, web-cams are surely realized by means of Internet. The networks are included into it as a constituent part. The types of them are usually divided into on-line and local. Many companies, for example, implement local networks in order to separate their managing correspondence.

As Alexander Galloway notes in his work, the processes of web space are strictly standardized by several protocols: HTTP, HTML etc. These standards are under control of some institutions as of this issue, for example, ANSI (American National Standards Institute). Machines need to have a special language in terms of mutual connectivity. The networks are based on the systems (Unix-based) and “software is largely written in the C or C++ languages” (Galloway 187).

The protocol has many to do with clear and meaningful information. The author describes a case of inserting the surname in order to identify its meaning for a computer. The fact is that machine does not accept single graphical presentation in letters, but being wrapped in brackets and other significant signs it is clear to get the idea of surname concept. That is why the networks are following definite rules and frameworks in their usage. They are distributed with the help of protocols which are “based on a contradiction between two opposing machines, one machine that radically distributes control into autonomous locales, and another that focuses control into rigidly defined hierarchies” (Galloway 196). So the networks are about control describing a complex of different difficult streams and counter streams within the Internet space.

Media plays a great role in nowadays life. The Internet resources are full of content about news, music, movies, blogs, posters etc. The issue of network produsage stays important in the context of intensively growing requirements of society. There is a paradigm shift about the means of distributing information within masses. As Axel Bruns writes, the present intention to get “away from industrial-style production models and towards produsage” gains momentum at the moment.

The diversity of means which lead to spreading of the current pieces of information in the world global audience of users succeeded by virtue of “software production (through open source), knowledge management (through the Wikipedia and other wikis), and news (through open news sites and the news-related section of the blogosphere)” (Bruns 283). The only question to be unanswered still is what the way for produsage models in applying their intrinsic range of problems is. It concerns “operational sustainability, intellectual property issues, and quality control” (Bruns 284).

Living in the progressive world people has identified the significance of the networks in providing them with everything necessary. In accordance with the aesthetic side of the Internet it will not be odd to mention that many of arts are engaged into web integration. It is obvious, for instance, when an artist does not have a possibility to perform his works due to several reasons, he can gladden the admirers with the performance via Internet uploading the snapshots of pictures. So the art and web technologies have many to do with; their mutual effect is grave and reasonable.

Reference List

Galloway, A ‘Protocol vs. Institutionalization’; New Media, Old Media, edited by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Thomas Keenan, Routledge 2003, pp 187–198.

Bruns, A “Towards Produsage: Futures for User-Led Content Production.”, Proceedings: Cultural Attitudes towards Communication and Technology 2006, eds. Fay Sudweeks, Herbert Hrachovec, and Charles Ess; Murdoch University, 2006. 275-84.

Gye, L & Munster, A ‘Distributed Aesthetics’; Monash University, Faculty of Art & Design, Multimedia & Digital Arts, 2005.