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  Kim H. Veltman               

Understanding new media: augmented knowledge and culture

Kim H. Veltman

abstract

The term "new media" is most often associated with the Internet and the phenomenal technological advances that have taken lace in the last decades. In "Understanding New Media: Augmented knowledge and Culture", author Kim Veltman looks at these developments and identifies five types of consequences of the networked environment - technological, material, organizational, intellectual, and philosophical. Veltman reviews physical changes (e.g. development of size and speed in computing, wireless communication, agile manufacturing), and argues that the most profound potential changes lie in intellectual and philosophical domains. Unlike technological determinists, Veltman shows that there are at least three differing and sometimes competing goals and visions for new media around the world. Whereas America foresees an information highway, Europe envisions an information/knowledge society and Japan strives clearly for a knowledge society. China and India are playing an increasing role in such visions of the future. 7hese visions are very long-term. For instance, the director of Google has claimed that his (American) vision will take at least three centuries to achieve.
Veltman thus reveals a big picture of the digital revolution that is something fundamentally different from simply the introduction of yet another medium to our culture. Information Communication Technologies (ICT) are becoming Universal Convergent Technologies (UCT). This calls for us to rethink McLuhan's brilliant and provocative suggestion that every new medium simply uses the prior mode as its message. It marks a paradigm shift in our relation to all media, to all our senses, all our expressions. The new media are transforming our definitions of culture and knowledge, our ways of knowing, and transcending barriers in ways that will have lasting implications for centuries to come.

keywords

Information Communication Technologies (ICT), Internet, Universal Convergent Technologies (UCT), digital revolution, knowledge management, new media, virtual culture

catalogue card

Title: Understanding new media: augmented knowledge and culture
Author: Kim H. Veltman
Publication: Calgary: University of Calgary Press, cop. 2006
Subjects: Digital communications-Social aspects, knowledge management, virtual reality, computers and civilization
ISBN: 1-55238-154-4

index

PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I. TECHNOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES: INVISIBILITY
1: COMPUTERS
2: MOBILITY
3: MINIATURIZATION

II. MATERIAL CONSEQUENCES: VIRTUALITY
4: PRODUCTION
5: SERVICES
6: INSTITUTIONS

III. ORGANIZATIONAL CONSEQUENCES: SYSTEMICITY
8: (KNOWLEDGE) MANAGEMENT
9: LEARNING

IV. INTELLECTUAL CONSEQUENCES: CONTEXTUALITY
10: PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE
11: COLLABORATION
12: ENDURING KNOWLEDGE

V. PHILOSOPHICAL CONSEQUENCES: SPIRITUALITY
13: CHALLENGES
14: SYNTHESIS
15: CONCLUSIONS

EPILOGUE 1: THE ADVENT OF NEW PLAYERS AND CHANGES SINCE 2000
EPILOGUE 2: MCLUHAN IN THE ELECTRONIC AGE

APPENDICES
NOTES
INDEX