This is a Second Edition of a book first co authored for 2003. The book offers students conceptual frameworks for thinking through a range of key issues which have arisen over two decades of speculation on the cultural implications of new media .

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New Media: A Critical Introduction

Shopping is the most important contemporary social activity, and, for the most part, takes place in the shopping center. Developers and designers of the retail built environment exploit the power of place and an intuitive understanding of the structuration of space to facilitate consumption and thus the realization of retail profits. They strive to present an alternative rationale for the shopping center's existence, manipulate shoppers' behavior through the configuration of space, and consciously design a symbolic landscape that provokes associative moods and dispositions in the shopper. These strategies are examined to obtain an understanding of how the retail built environment works, and how we might work against it.

The “Magic of the Mall”: An Analysis of Form, Function, and Meaning in the Contemporary Retail Built Environment

Ubiquitous computing is unusual amongst technological research arenas. Most areas of computer science research, such as programming language implementation, distributed operating system design, or denotational semantics, are defined largely by technical problems, and driven by building upon and elaborating a body of past results. Ubiquitous computing, by contrast, encompasses a wide range of disparate technological areas brought together by a focus upon a common vision. It is driven, then, not so much by the problems of the past but by the possibilities of the future. Ubiquitous computing’s vision, however, is over a decade old at this point, and we now inhabit the future imagined by its pioneers. The future, though, may not have worked out as the field collectively imagined. In this article, we explore the vision that has driven the ubiquitous computing research agenda and the contemporary practice that has emerged. Drawing on cross-cultural investigations of technology adoption, we argue for developing a “ubicomp of the present” which takes the messiness of everyday life as a central theme.

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Yesterday’s tomorrows: notes on ubiquitous computing’s dominant vision

Since the term 'cyborg' first emerged in the early 1960s it has gradually evolved to encompass an ever wider array of fields ranging from in vitro fertilization to science fiction cinema. In this article the idea of the cyborg will be explored in relation to the physical infrastructure of the city. It is suggested that the cyborg metaphor usefully challenges dualistic conceptions of urban space that revolve around antinomies such as nature/culture, body/technology, real/unreal and concrete/abstract. A cyborg perspective highlights complexity, hybridity and indeterminacy and emphasizes facets of the urban experience that remain extensively hidden in conventional accounts. Yet the cyborg concept also extends to functionalist, neo-orgamcist and technologically determinist approaches in which the role of flows, networks or biomorphic patterns takes precedence over the political dynamics of urban space. This article develops an alternative reading of the cyborg based around the need to rethink relations between the corporeality of the urban experience and the continuing political salience of the public realm.

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Cyborg Urbanization: Complexity and Monstrosity in the Contemporary City

This chapter begins by helping the reader to grasp the comprehensive nature of Nathaniel Berman's work, and the subtle perspective that he brings to the legal world when it is confronted by the passions to which nationalism and colonialism give rise. In his work, cultural Modernism interacts with the international law of Danzig; the fantasies surrounding Jerusalem with the concrete political and legal projects for that city; internationalist dreams with the institutional programs for Bosnia and Palestine; and the most industrious international bureaucracy with the most creative and audacious legal imagination. Berman makes use of all of the notions in the course of his work on "imperial ambivalences". His goal is to show that we cannot interpret the international law of the interwar period without understanding it as a site of Modernist cultural construction and contestation - rather than as a mere adjunct to, or reflection of, cultural developments external to it. Keywords:colonialism; cultural Modernism; imperial ambivalences; international law; Nathaniel Berman; nationalism

A Critical Introduction

Scott Bukatman's Terminal Identity —referring to both the site of the termination of the conventional "subject" and the birth of a new subjectivity constructed at the computer terminal or television screen--puts to rest any lingering doubts of the significance of science fiction in contemporary cultural studies. Demonstrating a comprehensive knowledge, both of the history of science fiction narrative from its earliest origins, and of cultural theory and philosophy, Bukatman redefines the nature of human identity in the Information Age. 

Drawing on a wide range of contemporary theories of the postmodern—including Fredric Jameson, Donna Haraway, and Jean Baudrillard—Bukatman begins with the proposition that Western culture is suffering a crisis brought on by advanced electronic technologies. Then in a series of chapters richly supported by analyses of literary texts, visual arts, film, video, television, comics, computer games, and graphics, Bukatman takes the reader on an odyssey that traces the postmodern subject from its current crisis, through its close encounters with technology, and finally to new self-recognition. This new "virtual subject," as Bukatman defines it, situates the human and the technological as coexistent, codependent, and mutally defining.

Synthesizing the most provocative theories of postmodern culture with a truly encyclopedic treatment of the relevant media, this volume sets a new standard in the study of science fiction—a category that itself may be redefined in light of this work. Bukatman not only offers the most detailed map to date of the intellectual terrain of postmodern technology studies—he arrives at new frontiers, providing a propitious launching point for further inquiries into the relationship of electronic technology and culture.

Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction

The headlong rush, the rapid montage, the soaring superhero, the plunging roller coaster— Matters of Gravity focuses on the experience of technological spectacle in American popular culture over the past century. In these essays, leading media and cultural theorist Scott Bukatman reveals how popular culture tames the threats posed by technology and urban modernity by immersing people in delirious kinetic environments like those traversed by Plastic Man, Superman, and the careening astronauts of 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Right Stuff. He argues that as advanced technologies have proliferated, popular culture has turned the attendant fear of instability into the thrill of topsy-turvydom, often by presenting images and experiences of weightless escape from controlled space.

Considering theme parks, cyberspace, cinematic special effects, superhero comics, and musical films, Matters of Gravity highlights phenomena that make technology spectacular, permit unfettered flights of fantasy, and free us momentarily from the weight of gravity and history, of past and present. Bukatman delves into the dynamic ways pop culture imagines that apotheosis of modernity: the urban metropolis. He points to two genres, musical films and superhero comics, that turn the city into a unique site of transformative power. Leaping in single bounds from lively descriptions to sharp theoretical insights, Matters of Gravity is a deft, exhilarating celebration of the liberatory effects of popular culture.

Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century

The Artificial Infinite: On Special Effects and the Sublime

List of Illustrations Appreciations Introduction: The Lively, the Playful, and the Animated 1. Drawn and Disorderly 2. The Motionless Voyage of Little Nemo 3. Labor and Anima 4. Disobedient Machines 5. Labor and Animatedness 6. Playing Superheroes Notes Bibliography Index

The Poetics of Slumberland: Animated Spirits and the Animating Spirit

In the early days of Disneyland, one Tomorrowland attraction was the Autopia, where youngsters could drive actual, though miniature, automobiles. Disney intended these young citizens-to-be to thus learn traffic safety at an early age and hence to be prepared to enter the L.A. freeway system. Unfortunately, the children took "demented delight" in crashing the cars, and the ride had to be put on tracks.' One can hardly blame the kids for resisting the park's immaculately conceived system of guidance, but the Disney ethos could not tolerate these signs of technological breakdown. Disneyland began as a park where Walt could extend his miniature train set within a framework of realistic landscape effects. A fascination with Americana further informed the project, and dioramas depicting historical periods and events (much like the tableaux of early film history) were placed along the train's route in a "coherent sequence." Finally, its design worked to construct a safe and clean environment, thoroughly distinct from the chaos and boorishness of the traditional amusement park. The result was an America reduced, frozen,

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/778872.pdf

Scott Bukatman

Papers

Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction

Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century

The Artificial Infinite: On Special Effects and the Sublime

The Poetics of Slumberland: Animated Spirits and the Animating Spirit

There's Always Tomorrowland: Disney and the Hypercinematic Experience