Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies

The ‘new’ communication technologies occupy a highly contingent place in social consciousness: at once central to our everyday lives, and yet capable of generating anxiety and uncertainty. This article traces some aspects of the relation of everyday people to new media technologies and evaluates the reception and impact of new technologies in their public contexts. Drawing on the thinking of writers such as Slavoj Z<caron> iz<caron>ek and Jonathan Crary, we argue that both the fears and celebrations of the media have a considerable lineage. We critically address issues of technological determinism, particularly examining the connection between new media technologies and the politics of global relations.

Practice-based research and actual collaborative projects between artists and scientists have shown that knowledge about each other's fields, whilst necessary for identifying probable outcomes of mutual benefit, cannot anticipate the emergence of the possible – does knowledge in the form of written papers or experiential artworks emerge from loose collaborations or the highly specified kind? Case studies from early 1970s video through to contemporary digital projects examine collaborations between artists, scientists and technologists and the involvement of audiences with interactive media art that will, between respondent and correspondent, create human computer interaction of a different order, a new aesthetics of interdisciplinary spaces.

This study examines China's current internet media policy in terms of the nature of the policy, the policymaking process, major forces driving the policy and future trends. Through face-to-face, in-depth interviews of 19 high-ranking Chinese policymakers, this study provides unusual insight on these issues from an inside perspective. A ‘push and control’ internet policy suggests that the leadership has relaxed in its ideological claims, yet still wants to control online content. China has also shifted the media policymaking process from the Party to government operation. The Party's road map for economic prosperity has been a key driving force in this shift and ensures that internet policy is heading in a positive direction, though it is not straightforward. Finally, the policymakers’ attitudes toward the new media and value transformation have had a significant influence on policy formation. The study proved premises from both communication and development and media dependency theories with regard to the case of the internet in China. It is the first research project of its kind on the topic.

This study explores the applicability of the diffusion of innovations theory to internet development in rural China by examining internet diffusion and usage patterns in two rural areas of China's Gansu Province. Its ethnographic research design allowed the researchers to interact with the rural people under study and obtain first-hand data on their adoption and usage of the internet. The results show that in the context of rural China, where the local economy and infrastructure can hardly sustain such an advanced technology as the internet, the diffusion and usage of the internet are determined not much by the will of individuals, but by the change agency. As the weakest social class in terms of their share and control of social resources, Chinese farmers as individuals do not play an important role in the adoption of the internet, which tends to be the result of organizational initiatives.

The construction of multiple personae by musicians is a practice that continues to be prevalent: from Robert Schumann, through David Bowie, to recent techno artists. In this article I examine the work of one artist who may be music's most prodigious multiple and who may be deemed not one, but many different artists. Techno-chameleon Uwe Schmidt, aka Señor Coconut, aka Geeez ‘n’ Gosh, is a musician who has radically intensified the creation of multiple personae and here I situate his work as part of a contemporary technocultural moment; one where recent technologies have further enabled, destigmatized, and for some individuals, made preferable or even necessary, the idea of the performed, multiple identity. As such, by enacting certain key concepts of a postmodern and/or posthuman conception of identity, artists like Schmidt thus problematize traditional modes of artistic representation, marketing, and reception that were previously based upon notions of individual authorship.

This study examines the potential of PCTV (watching television on your PC) among consumers. An intercept field study that included product demonstration with a convenience sample of US adults was conducted (N = 309). Expectancy-value theory was used to measure respondents’ interest in PCTV. While a majority had heard of the product, expectations of what PCTV could provide remained low and as a result, value and subsequent interest was low. As terrestrial broadcasting, cable, telephone, internet companies and other programming providers explore the potential market for PCTV and promote that market, the possibility exists that value related to PCTV could be developed. In other words, PCTV remains an open field waiting for leadership to manifest its diffusion.

The designers and programmers of internet settings may indicate that images and events are distributed in real time and as they happen, the technologies are alive, and that the form is unique, but television and internet sites employ similar narratives about liveness, intimacy, and spatial entrances. Internet renderings of liveness suggest that representations are unmediated because images and texts are presented at the same time as the viewer is watching. This makes the various mediated and constructed aspects of the technologies, including the continuation of normative beliefs about gender, race, and sexuality, easier to ignore. Considering how television structures the viewer, historical and critical writings about television liveness, and narratives about internet liveness, and applying this literature to webcams and other internet settings, indicates that these internet renderings are a part of ongoing cultural conventions and provides methods to resist the more stereotyped aspects of these representations.

This report reviews ‘REFRESH! The First International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology’ held at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Alberta, Canada, from 28 September to 1 October 2005. The event dealt with the interconnections between media art, science and technology, although its mission was not absolutely clear. As the review points out, there was some vagueness in defining the goals, partly related to its interdisciplinary nature. The review then places the event within a cultural and institutional context and discusses plans to turn it into a continuing tradition.