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Definitions
of Texts and Technology
from
the UCF graduate
catalog...
The
doctoral program in
Texts and Technology (T&T) provides training in
an interdisciplinary field combining scholarly study, creative
production, and critical
assessment of digital media texts. Texts include visual, audio,
multimedia, and
performance, as well as printed and spoken words. The curriculum
emphasizes
theory and practice in new media supplemented by historical grounding
in
pre-digital media studies. Both a teaching practicum and professional
internship experience are required of all students to familiarize them
with
textual technologies from both academic and professional perspectives.
This
unique and innovative program prepares students for positions in
research,
teaching, and program development. Areas of research and production
include web
design, multimedia production, distributed education, entertainment,
publishing, information architecture, and visualization. Areas of expertise include: Electronic Textual Publication and Archiving
Rhetorical and Critical Studies of Science and Technology
Digital Pedagogies and Social Networks
Invention and Assessment of New Media Practices
from
faculty and students
I tell folks my program acknowledges that texts are more than black ink
on white paper. Texts are also visual representations,
demographics, architecture, art, language, hypertext….and we
are interested in how people are influenced and motivated by these
texts. Consequently, we pay attention to how people live
inside their text, create new texts, and impose texts on
others. It’s a program that emphasizes theory and
invention, and demands an interdisciplinary approach to answering
current questions. T&T is a program about paying
attention to a technological, textual shift that is still so new and so
close to our eyes that it’s tough to see – at least
for me.
___
Texts are
technologies. Conversely, technologies are (arguably) texts.
T&T researchers seek to understand the reciprocaljuxtaposing,
transforming, and otherwise engaging with technologies and texts.
___
Texts and technology defines the scholarship that results from the
investigations of the convergences of culture (critical theory,
science, art, information, and people) and technology.
___
There’s
a digital revolution underway. T&T is about
understanding the revolution, not from a technical standpoint but from
a standpoint of critical theory. Then you have to move into
specific sorts of things and interests like web design and presence,
hypertexts, digital poetics, how digital technology changes scholarly
archives, etc.
___
WHO: cross-cultural, diverse backgrounds, careers ranging across
traditional academic endeavors to entreprenurial/industrial
applications
WHAT:
juxtopositions/convergences of text
consumption/production/access/audience interaction,
reciprocity/interrelationships between T&T, mediation of
forms/forms of mediation, community involvement
WHERE:
interdisciplinary
fields (humanities, cultural studies, computer/technical), Central
Florida
WHEN:
stemming from solid
background in history of communications, extending into the future...
WHY:
need to ask/answer new
questions (scholarship) in context of Information Revolution
HOW:
use/invent a
variety of methodologies (critical theory/practice, qual/quan, social
sciences, technical), internships
___
Well, I would
start by saying it's the study of how texts are mediated by technology,
which I see as incorporating a strong historical component. By looking
at the history of technology (and perhaps by not narrowly defining
technology as a 20th century "invention"), we can come to an
understanding of how different technologies interact and change our
texts and our lives.
___
My definition of the program: it explores the theories that inform
texts of many kinds, it explores the medium for these texts whatever
that medium might be, and it explores the interrelationships between
texts and the technologies used to produce them.
___
For
me, T&T is the study of the interrelationships among texts,
technologies, and lived experiences, all embedded in broader, dynamic
cultural networks of power. Texts can include bodies, and technologies
are not limited to digital technologies. In fact, I think the most
important technologies to study (for the planet) are biotechnologies,
including medical and agricultural ones.
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