Frederick Winslow Taylor
scientific management; the theory of management that analyzed and synthesize workflows
• Main objective was improving economic efficiency
Taylorization
1936 comedy film written and directed by Charlie Chaplin
• Remediated silent movies when sound already emerged
• What is the relationship between technology, media, and human possibility?
Modern Times
Examination of Modern Times by Chaplin
Take note of the title “modern”:
• Associated with the notion of time (opening scene with ticking clock)
• Herd of sheep fade to workers
o Equates the sheep with workers all under the clock of time
• All communication is through media/sound (big boss on the screen)
o Humans are dependent on technology; maybe even foolish to do so bc it break down (i.e. the feeding machine)
o Disconnecting
o Surveillance (the boss in the bathroom)
• Chaplin goes through the machinery, the gears
o We become part of the machine
• 1% boss in the beginning reading a comic book
• We become it!
o Trained to be machine-like → Insanity
• So trained by TIME that we become SHEEP
• Economics/Efficiency which drives Innovation
• The use of humour
• critique of Taylorization
Modern Times Remediated in Lucy – Candy Scene
What does this example of remediation reveal about the nature of television?
• Both convey:
o Dehumanization
o Taylorization
o Humour
• Quantity over quality
• We can’t keep up to what technology is doing to us
• Function of Television:
o Critique in 1930s to being sold by the television to be consumers
Example of taylorization
i.e. Powerpoint as a point of taylorization
• closing down possibilities rather than opening them
• university system is dehumanizing us
• students are paying more
- To entertain
- To disseminate news and information
- To market products *
Three Primary Roles of TV
Escape
Social comparison
Satisfaction of keeping up with what is taking place in the world; to gain cultural capital
Reasons why people watch tv
Television competes successfully for time with other activities because
Undemanding nature and convenience of access
- Book called Keywords and gives their history
* Television (1974)
Raymond Williams
Williams critiqued McLuhan’s technological determinism
• Suggests that consideration of intentions is the way out of the technological determinism trap
Technological Determinism
- Invention of tv was not a single event or series of event
- There is no way the tv is creating a new society or new social conditions
i.e. European Inventions: Development of Television
Social History of Television as Technology
objectives and consequent technologies to meet those objectives operate within an already existing system
• This dictates to some extent the development of technology
Examples of this:
• expansion of tv was rapid c the patterns already est in radio business
• basic structures of national networks and local stations in place
• wide appeal of entertainment
• commercial advertising
• government licensing and regulation established
Social History of the Uses of Television Technology
Operational communication
Technology of specific messages to specific persons (telegraphy) vs sending varied messages to general public
Point-to-Point VS Broadcasting
- Radio and tv as “mass communication”
- Characterizes many people as “the mass”
- Means of cultural power
The Concept of Mass Audience
- Statistical thinking
- Audience measurement
- New science of sociology
i.e. Neilson boxes monitoring what and when you watch to gather stats
Requirements of Mass Audience
- Obsolete – no such thing as mass audience
- Simplistic –issues of taste and class, “taste segments” might be more accurate
- Self-serving – study of audiences works further; mass audience is a commodity
- Social character of the audience –
Criticisms of Mass Audience Concept
Criticisms of Mass Audience Concept
Audience Profile
• Your demographics are being sold
In television, the audience is the product
of having to do with television, especially the visual aspect of television program or broadcast
televisual
• Immediacy
• Transparency – concept of televisual news, particularly within the newsroom, is that is offers “a window on the world” (Walter Cronkite and that’s the way it is); Fiske and “The Transparency Fallacy” it is not transparency
o Examples: news/political coverage which raises issues about television’s complicity in the events portrayed
- Flow – defining feature of broadcasting is planned flows (Raymond Williams)
- Hybridity – tv is a “super-text”
What makes tv tv?
- The Nuclear Family
* Utopian promise of increased social life and dystopian outcome of social seclusion
Audience Behaviour
The Honeymooners “TV or not TV”
Making room for TV
Marshall McLuhan: The Medium is the Message 1977
• MEDIUM is more important (i.e. print)
• Content is not important
• i.e. where the content is more important/just as important as the medium: The Bible
• the message is absolutely vital in some cases
• a search for identity through “violence” (disruptive)
o i.e. little girl saying she wants to be bionic woman (a media product)
Videodrome
• We are colonized by our devices
• Social manipulation and mind control
• About losing our bodies; putting devices into himself
• We take media forms (Prof Oblivion; we have different names; how we present ourselves on media such as our email addresses)
• “Tv is reality and reality is less than tv”
• How much of an emotional relationship are we building with the media form?
David Cronenberg
What is the message of TV? →
The Televisual
