Generations of prehistorians have offered a series of interpretations of a change in mortuary practice which took place during the Neolithic period in Britain (4000‐2500 BC). The decline of communal tombs and the introduction of single grave burial has been understood in terms of population movement, increasing social hierarchy, ideological change, or a shift from ancestor rituals to funerals. This article considers the treatment of the human body in death, and offers an interpretation which stresses changing relationships between the living and the dead.
This article considers the ways we may regard the new public computer networks as "liberal machines." Although libertarian expectations of the Internet's potential as a technology of freedom are likely to be disappointed, digital communications networks remain the source of powerful but unrealized aspirations on the part of governments, "netizens," and international agencies. The tasks we assign to liberal government may be more complex in the new media environment, but they have not disappeared. New technologies are perceived as creating new problems for governments and citizens, but through the prism of information policy these same technologies are also seen as offering unprecedented new capacities for redressing perceived deficiencies in Western cultural and political communities. This article discusses the role of governments and international bodies in two key fields of information policy: the management of illegal or harmful material and the adaptation of intellectual property rights to digital networks.
How are "grey market" imports changing media industries? What is the role of piracy in developing new markets for movies and TV shows? How do jailbroken iPhones drive innovation? The Informal Media Economy provides a vivid, original, and genuinely transnational account of contemporary media, by showing how the interactions between formal and informal media systems are a feature of all nations – rich and poor, large and small. Shifting the focus away from the formal businesses and public enterprises that have long occupied media researchers, this book charts a parallel world of cultural intermediaries driving global media production and circulation. It shows how unlicensed, untaxed, or unregulated networks, which operate across the boundaries of established media markets, have been a driving force of media industry transformation. The book opens up new insights on a range of topical issues in media studies, from the creative disruptions of digitisation to amateur production, piracy and cybercrime.
In: New media & society: an international and interdisciplinary forum for the examination of the social dynamics of media and information change, Band 24, Heft 11, S. 2531-2547
Photogrammetry is the science of using photographs to make measurements and derive three-dimensional (3D) data about objects or terrain from two-dimensional (2D) imaging. In this article we view photogrammetry through the lens of geomedia studies, arguing two things. First, we suggest the accumulation and concentration of photogrammetric capabilities, technologies and knowledge, from the First World War onwards can be understood as both part of the 20th-century creation of a 'government machine', and a crucial element within the longer-run 'cartographic project'. Through both world wars and the post-war period, aerial photogrammetry emerged as a fundamental capability for government-supported geomedia infrastructure and spatial information capture – what we term an extended geomedia infosphere. Second, we examine the critical dynamics of digitization, automation and platformization. These developments, we argue, have led to a redistribution of photogrammetric capabilities and technologies outside governmental cartography, with implications for platforms and geomedia studies.