As the title suggests (“Technology is Culture: Two Paradigms”), this essay explores the influence of technology upon culture.  Specifically, Zimmermann examines the ways in which Western digital technologies powerfully influence and shape the cultural production of non-Western, particularly Chinese, consumers.  The essay offers an anecdotal account of how many contemporary Chinese citizens are “forgetting how to write” by hand, and explains that this is due primarily to their dependence upon computers.  Since written Chinese consists of thousands of characters, and since computers are encoded in written English, not Chinese, Chinese computer users are forced to write within the technological confines of an English based operating system that is based on far fewer characters (26 alphabetic letters).  Zimmermann briefly explains the complex methods that allow the Chinese language to be composed on what he calls an “English-speaking” technology, particularly on how these methods are phonetically based, not character based.  Also, he demonstrates how these methods, which are ultimately determined by technological constrictions, are slowly eroding Chinese citizens’ knowledge of written characters.  He then discusses the “two paradigms” he sees emerging as a result of the influence of technology on culture, which he identifies as “the accumulation process” and “the struggle against difference.”  By the former Zimmermann means the process by which contemporary technologies are created, and how this process depends on the collaboration of large groups of specialized individuals.  No one person, Zimmermann contends, can understand all the components and operating system of a computer, and thus when anyone uses a computer they are forced to rely on the work and decisions of myriad individuals.  These technological decisions made by sundry individuals will have a great impact on the type of product you use and the different applications that that product will have.  In other words, any time you use a technology as complex as, say, a computer, you will be relying on the labor and decisions of more people than you alone could ever hope to replicate or fully understand.  That means that the labor and decisions of others will largely determine the way in which you are able to use a specific technology.  This leads to Zimmermann’s second paradigm, “the struggle against difference.”  According to Zimmermann, since we rely on the accumulated efforts of many individuals whenever we use a complex technology, we are therefore only allowed to use that complex technology according to the ways in which the designer intended for it to be used.  We can see this very clearly in the example provided above, where Chinese-speaking computer users are forced to adapt to an English-speaking technology, and the debilitating effects that this can have (i.e. loss of the ability to write by hand in one’s own language).  Zimmermann thinks this is particularly alarming when it comes to digital arts technology, such as music mixing software, because the artist then becomes dependent on a creative technology that is defined and determined by people other than themselves (and oftentimes, in the case of non-Western technology users, people from a radically different cultural background).

    Gasser and Ernst’s essay is organized into three parts: the first focuses on digital technologies and the internet, the following is a basic description of contemporary copyright laws, and the final section focuses on the need for reformed copyright laws more amenable to the digital age.  More specifically, the first section focuses on what the authors refer to as “participatory culture,” and how such a thing is facilitated by digital technologies and the internet.  It examines this concept of participatory culture from both a theoretical and practical point of view.  The following section discusses copyright law in its present form, focusing on key aspects of it like the right to make derivative works, fair use, and unilaterally inhibiting technologies such as DRM.  Finally, the essay concludes with reform suggestions for how to enhance creativity by enabling greater participation.  It discusses both why a participatory culture is desirable, and possible strategies for copyright reform that would facilitate participatory culture.
    This essay is a very concise, accessible introduction to copyright law and the concept of participatory culture.  One major flaw that I found with the essay, however, was its demand that new copyright law take “information quality” into account.  Who, for example, will become judge of the quality of information, and upon what standards will they make their judgments?  This would obviously be a contentious issue, and one that the essay only barely addresses.  Also, this essay adopts a fairly utopian conception of digital technologies and the internet, a view that seems to be shared by many contemporary cultural critics.  The authors see digitization and the internet as great tools of democracy that will allow for a “participatory culture” unlike any previously known.  While these are nice, comfortable theoretical positions to take, that does not necessarily make things so.  As regards my own project, I am more interested in how these utopian visions of the “democratization” effect of digital technologies and the internet are coerced and manipulated by larger corporate or commercial interests.  For example, this essay discusses how new copyright law needs to provide for “informational autonomy,” but I am interested in how this so called autonomy is ideologically coded and oftentimes highly coercive.  In addition, this article relishes in the means of production being made available to all through digitization and the internet, but I want to know how this changes and is exploited by companies like Dorito’s that broadcast user generated content.  Will these democratized means of production simply be co-opted by corporate interests, or is there something truly liberating and democratic about these tools?  Anyway, overall this is a great essay to read as an introduction to participatory culture and copyright law.

    This essay examines how digital technologies, paired with the internet, will cause “significant restructuring of the motion picture industry.”  Initially it examines certain digital technologies – such as video-on-demand, broadband, digital file compression, streaming media, etc. – and then speculates on the capabilities these technologies will have in the near future.  Then it turns to the “motion picture value chain,” and examines each aspect of the chain (e.g. production, duplication, distribution, etc.).  Following this look at the motion picture value chain the essay turns to the potential impact of digitization.  The major effects this essay imagines digitization will have are cost reduction (e.g. cheaper to shoot a film in digital than film, etc.), disintermediation (e.g. video-on-demand eliminates the need for video rental stores, etc.), and a shift in bargaining power (e.g. since the means of production are lowered content producers no longer have to remain subservient to Hollywood or studio demands, etc.).  Finally, the article examines the implications of digitization for “Stakeholders.”  It looks at how digitization will impact movie studios (e.g. shift to blockbuster-only model, etc.), distributors (e.g. digital distribution requires no physical transfer of objects, etc.), movie theatres (e.g. emphasis on the “experience” of the movie, not the movie, etc.), and video rental stores (e.g. what will they provide?, etc.).  The essay concludes with business models designed to take into account the impact of digitization on film.
    This is an amazingly concise, prescient, and illuminating essay.  It details in a very systematic manner the impact that digitization is likely to have (and, considering this was written in 2004, there predictions all seem to be coming true), and the implications of this impact.  One thing it neglects to address, however, is the distribution of DVDs to buy and own.  Will this form of distribution fall by the wayside as well, or will things like director commentaries and other bonus features make it a desired commodity?  Also, what if you can stream the bonus features – will people still want to own something tangible?  Overall, though, this essay is extremely helpful for anyone interested in studying the impact of digitization on the movie studio system both from a consumer and content producer point of view.   
    As far as my own project is concerned this essay is a useful account of the relationship between commercial studios and individual consumers.  Also, its discussion of the impact of digitization on content producers, and the shift of power likely to ensue there, is extremely relevant to my own interest in user generated content.  Further, this essay describes the “bargaining power” content producers are likely to gain as access to the means of production increases, and while this is most likely the case, for my purposes it is also necessary to examine how commercial studios will work to limit the bargaining power of producers or co-opt the work of content creators for their own commercial ends (e.g. Dorito’s Super Bowl ads, etc.).               

    This essay critically examines cinema in light of both contemporary technologies and ideologies surrounding the medium.  One of the dominant themes throughout this piece is the role of the “auteur/author,” and how the “question of the author” originated (eg. Cahiers, etc.), how it was radically cast into doubt (e.g. post-structuralism, Barthes, Foucault, etc.), and how it manifests itself today in both tacit (e.g. “software authorship,” etc.) and more explicit (commodified auteurs like Spielberg, Lucas, etc.) ways.  It does this through a close examination of concepts surrounding auteurism as well as reactions against it, and identifies technological innovations that have either reinforced or destabilized the significance of the author.  Notaro also discusses the politics of “collective authorship,” which is a concept that deserves significant attention due to the ever increasing technological means of collaborative artistic production.  The essay examines many burgeoning companies, websites, film festivals, and aesthetic movements that claim to facilitate “collective authorship,” and very successfully unravels the ideological underpinnings of many of these institutions.  Finally, the essay concludes with a brief discussion of “Hollywood 2.0” (a term coined by Wired magazine) and “Future Cinema,” and speculates on what the future of cinema may look like, and more importantly what people are claiming the future of cinema will look like.  Notaro very aptly concludes by pointing out the prevalence of a “techno-utopian mood” that often makes grandiose claims about the democratizing effects of new technologies and the internet, but which in reality simply mask in highly effective ways systems of authority.  As Notaro herself puts it, there has been a “disappearance of acknowledged authority.”  In other words, the “techno-utopian mood” employs a rhetoric of democracy and freedom which in fact works to inhibit both democracy and freedom through its concealment of authority.  Notaro then offers a new conceptual model for interacting with cinema - that of “performance and performers” - as a means for critically reevaluating the role of cinema or authorship and our relationship to these things.
    This is an exceptionally useful and interesting article for anyone interested in the contemporary debate over the politics of both authorship and digital technologies.  It engages with the concept of auteurism since the term’s inception with Truffaut all the way through to contemporary commentary on “collective authorship” as espoused by groups like the Open Source Movement.  Notaro is able to intelligently examine the range of discourses surrounding authorship, cinema, and digital technologies in order to establish relevant concepts of her own through which we gain powerful critical tools for discussing and analyzing these complex issues on our own.  Anyone that has ever felt repulsed by the “techno-utopian mood” of so many contemporary cultural critics (anyone who has read, for example, Henry Jenkins’s wildly popular book Convergence Culture will have experienced something close to repulsion) will find an ally in Notaro, and for others merely interested in the contemporary debate surrounding media, technology, and authorship, this essay is exceptionally well written and insightful.  For all these reasons I think this essay will be particularly helpful for my own project and its analysis of authorship, technology, and marketing.