Class Culture, Networks and Globalization

According to F. Kittler, topology and graph theory not only announce modernity, but inaugurate it. In fact, nowadays, the omnipresence of the effects of communication is due both to the ubiquity of information devices, of a reticular nature, and to a communicational ideology, which seeks to legitimize discourses, behaviors and actions. Globalization depends heavily on a vast and intricate network of digital networks, where automation processes, which began to show superhuman powers already during the industrial revolution, reached unimaginable levels. In the logic of networks, people are mainly data to be manipulated by specialized artificial intelligence algorithms, in the service of digital capitalism and a myriad of political trends. The information age is, therefore, an age of infowars, infobombs, infodemics and massive surveillance projects such as Pegasus, which are associated with new artistic and cultural forms.

1) Communication and Culture

1.1 Timeliness of the communication question

1.2 Cultural experience in the information age

1.3 Modernity and communicational rationality

1.4 Network society and omnipresence of the effects of communication

1.6 Paradoxes of cultural globalization

1.7 Globalization, acceleration, and universalism

2) Technologies, Networks, and Information

2.1 Introduction to Topology

2.2 Graph theory and graph algorithms

2.3 Applications of graph theory

2.4 Information Theory (Shannon)

2.5 Mimesis and Immersion: virtual, augmented, and distributed reality.

2.6 The reticular logic of information technologies

2.7 Cultural borders of information technologies

2.8 Computational Ubiquity, the Internet of Things and Cloud Computing

2.9 Virus, fake news, infowars, infodemics, Infobombs

3) Creativity

3.1 The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (1886)

3.2 Art and technique

3.3 Digital, interactive and networked arts

3.4 Interart, Intermedia

3.5 Artistic research

METHODOLOGIES:

1) Theoretical exposition with debate on the contents – students will have to present and debate the chosen topics in class;

2) Analysis and discussion of case studies;

3) Reading and analysis of scientific articles;

4) Viewing and discussion of documentaries and other relevant digital content associated with the program.

5) Computational and interactive demonstrations

• Appadurai, Arjun (2004). Dimensões Culturais da Globalização. Lisboa. Editorial Teorema

• Castells, Manuel (2018). Ruptura. A crise da democracia liberal.  Zahar

• Castells, Manuel (2002). A sociedade em Rede. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.

• Duarte Rodrigues, Adriano (2010) Comunicação e Cultura. Editorial Presença

• Latour, Bruno (2005). Reassembling the Social - An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford University Press.

• Kittler, F. (2013) The Truth of the Technological World: Essays on the Genealogy of Presence. Stanford University Press

• Mcluhan, Marshall (1964) Os meios de comunicação como extensão do homem. Cultrix

• McLuhan, Marshall (2011). The guttenberg galaxy. Toronto Press

• Rodrik, Dani (2011) The Globalization Paradox. W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

• Shannon, Claude (1948) A Mathematical Theory of Information. University of Illinois Press