What is a mashup? - ZDNet explanes (2006)

Media Literacy

The word "Windows" is a word out of an old dialect of the Apaches. It means: "White man staring through glass-screen onto an hourglass..."



Creative communities develop culturally specific practices and archives using a mixture of old and new media streams (tv,internet,books,radio...)


Technological innovations support new ways of communication, some for the better some for the worse and the techno interface often stimulates unusual human behaviour. Artists tend to work between definitions and boundaries and provide that critical dimension that sucks in the technology and spits most of it out again.


Websites like engadget provide a media stream for a specific profile set of consumer who's creativity and culture is determined by a never-ending postmodern gadget culture.


I believe that older media provides essential contextual markers to understand todays 'fast?' media global industry spin and there is a need for universities to develop art-media archaeology courses and all schools to provide 'media literacy' as a statutory element within the curriculum.


My essential reading regarding the inferface between old and new media is 'Beyond the Image Machine', a history of visual technologies, David Thomas