Communication and Control: Tools, Systems, and New Dimensions

by Robert MacDougall (Editor), R.E. Burnett (Contribution by), Kevin Cummings (Contribution by), Vincenzo DeFlorio (Contribution by), Ryan Eanes (Contribution by)

Overview

Communication and Control: Tools, Systems, and New Dimensions advocates a systems view of human communication in a time of intelligent, learning machines. This edited collection sheds new light on things as mundane yet still profoundly consequential (and seemingly “low-tech”) as push buttons, pagers, and telemarketing systems. Contributors also investigate aspects of “remote control” related to education, organizational design, artificial intelligence, cyberwarfare, drones, and even binge-watching on Netflix. In line with a systems view, the collection takes up a media ecological view. This work will be of interest to students, scholars, and researchers in communication, new media, and technology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780739198766
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	07/01/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Robert C. MacDougall is professor of communication and media studies at Curry College.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: A Brief History of Communication and Control in Humans and Machines.
Robert C. MacDougall

Chapter 2: Four Dimensions of Control.
Robert C. MacDougall

Chapter 3: Panic Button: Thinking Historically about Danger, Interfaces, and Control-at-a-Distance.
Rachel Plotnick

Chapter 4: A Waiting Room Without Walls: Paging, Pagers, and the Future of Mobile Communication.
Benjamin Morton

Chapter 5: Chained to the Dialer, or Frederick Taylor Reaches Out and Touches Someone
Brett Lunceford

Chapter 6: Chatbots in the Metropolis: Turing and the Communicative Labor of the Multitude
Kevin Cummings and Cameron Kunzelman

Chapter 7: Remote Control from the C-Suite: Chief Knowledge Officers, Chief Learning Officers, and Globalized Corporate Noopower.
Robert Gehl

Chapter 8: So Many Choices, So Little Choice: Streaming media, artificial intelligence, and the Illusion of Control.
Matthew Pittman and Ryan Eanes

Chapter 9: Educational Policy and Political Action as Mechanisms of Remote Control.
Zeke Kimball and Karla Loya

Chapter 10: Mobile geospatial search and the limits of knowledge: linking application design and use in time and space.
Jim Thatcher

Chapter 11: Reflections on the Nature of Organization, Control and Resilience in Sociotechnical Systems.
Vincenzo DeFlorio

Chapter 12: Mediascape as Battlefield: Infrastructure Convergence and Smart War.
Kathleen Oswald

Chapter 13: Remotely Piloted Vehicles, Ubiquitous Networks, and new manifestations of Control in Open Society National Security Environments.
R.E. Burnett

Chapter 14: Remotely Human: The ‘Remote-Me’ and the Emergence of the Companion-Head. Madhusudan Raman

Editorial Reviews

MacDougall has assembled a satisfying spectrum of voices to track how the pulsing, global spray of electrons we stubbornly call "media" continues to transform us. From theory to case study, Communication and Control is truly cutting-edge stuff that will put you in the feedback loop.

Roger Stahl

Almost no part of life stays untouched by technology and media. Yet our everyday understanding of technological systems, media dynamics, and data networks is still relatively low-key in comparison. This powerful collection of essays comes to offer timely guidance by creatively and critically mapping the media ecologies of a rich array of systems, networks, and fields. A must-read for anyone who wants to probe the extent to which “control” controls.

Yoni Van Den Eede

This fine edited volume covers a broad spectrum of theoretical and applied topics. For the theorist, there are stimulating reinterpretations of Norbert Wiener and Marshall McLuhan. For those more intrigued by case studies, behold the chapters on push buttons, pagers, call centers, and chatbots. By consolidating so much varied work on emerging communication systems, this collection does exactly what a good anthology is supposed to do.

Graham Harman

The shift from analog to digital is about much more than efficiency, precision, and progress. As MacDougall points out, it is a dramatic shift in what it is to be human and how we relate to the world. Computers are enveloping areas of expertise that were once the sole domain of human creativity and are transforming the relationship of humans to those domains. Such a shift is difficult to see and discuss, but MacDougall gets the conversation started.

Michael Wesch