We can understand the influence of electronic media on culture from three aspects: first, the impact of movies, television and computers on philosophy and aesthetic concepts; The second is the influence of movies, TV and computers on the way of thinking; The third is the influence of computer network on human activities and behavior patterns. In short, the network is changing people's way of thinking and behavior, so it is necessary to conduct in-depth research on electronic culture, adjust and improve the humanity of science and technology.
Keywords: electronic media; Philosophy; Aesthetics; Mode of thinking; way of life
The evolution of film, television, computer and philosophy/aesthetics.
Since the appearance of electronic media, film, television and computer, three important electronic media related to audio-visual images, have had an important impact on global aesthetics, philosophy and culture, and on the other hand, they have become symbols of aesthetic, philosophical and cultural historical changes.
(A) the film and its concept system
The appearance of movies accords with the turning point of aesthetic theory from imitation to expression, marks the turning point from realism reflecting the world to modernism expressing the world, and accords with the evolution from classical philosophy to modern philosophy.
History can be divided in many ways, and it can also be represented by many types of objects. If we look at the historical evolution from the perspective of media changes, then the occurrence of western modernity is roughly synchronized with the production of printing culture. Novels based on printing culture and prospered because of this technical condition also came into being at this time. Since the west entered modernity, novels have become the most important aesthetic form. The novel production mode and novel appreciation mode created by the writer (readers read in one room alone) are in line with the western personality culture. Said well discussed the relationship between the narrative features of the novel and the global expansion of the West. Balzac and Zola are representatives of novel creation mode, which embodies the close relationship between works and reality and history. The mainstream of novel theory is imitation theory and typicality theory. Film creation has turned the writer's personality into a collective and career that integrates director, screenwriter, actor, art, photography and editing. The final result of the production process is editing, which plays an important role in scriptwriting, performance and photography.
The relationship between artistic creation and reality in the process is only in the primary stage. Reality was divided and reorganized in an artistic way in the shooting of the scene, and changed qualitatively in the final editing, and montage became the essence of the film. From the classic example of Kuleshov 1920, we can appreciate the "magic" of film montage;
1 A young man came from the left;
A young woman came from the right;
3 The two met and shook hands, and the young man lit it with his finger;
A big white building (the White House of the President of the United States);
5 Two people went to the steps.
In fact, each shot was shot in a different place. The White House shot was cut from the film, but after being grouped in the above order, it became a continuous appearance in the same place. Reality can only become art through deformation, variation and change of heart. Important concepts in art philosophy and aesthetics, such as absurdity, expression, intuition and unconsciousness, can be understood concretely and profoundly through the relationship between movies and reality. Other kinds of modern art, such as novels, paintings, music, etc. With the changes different from the classical form, it is easy to solve after understanding the film.
(b) television and conceptual systems
The appearance and popularization of television not only keeps pace with the transition from modern to post-modern, but also supports the transition from modern to post-modern in aesthetics and philosophy. Film art has aesthetic unity. Television has become an all-round television covering the world, which integrates the contents of various fields into its own program table and column box. The content of TV shows the post-modern philosophical implication: no center, while the form of TV shows the post-modern aesthetic style: collage. Before and after TV programs, from current political news to humorous sketches, from historical recollection to TV shopping, from classic movies to live sports, different logics coexist. A program is constantly interspersed with advertisements, forming two completely different narratives. Although TV continuously decomposes the real world in terms of phenomena, it persistently constructs an ontological world in essence, just like existentialism, the consciousness and unconsciousness of schizophrenia, the superficial phenomenon and deep structure of structuralism, the world phenomenon of phenomenology and theology and the hidden God, etc., and movies show modernist beliefs in deep structure. In the TV era, you often use the remote control to switch from one channel to another, which shows the post-modern centerless broadcasting. Television highlights the post-modern landscape in a brand-new way. Postmodern philosophy and aesthetics have been embodied concretely and vividly on TV: plane and depth, fragment and whole, center and edge, structure and deconstruction, original intention and interpretation are all presented in a brand-new postmodern way in TV form.
(c) Computers and conceptual systems
The appearance of computer has changed the aesthetic view dominated by TV, deepened the post-modern collage into a kind of global communication, and led to the transformation from post-modern philosophical aesthetics to the integration of global philosophical aesthetics.
Since the rise of western modernity, a unified world history has been formed. In the computer age, its richness and essence are presented in the most real and vivid way at the same time. Although TV presents a post-modern diversified fragment structure, it still rules the fragments with a program table. However, the Internet has created a post-modern debris flow around the world, which is a "no" flow that is difficult to manage in an orderly manner: it forms a unstructured flow together with the "existence" of other media such as TV, movies and newspapers. The Internet has achieved the most thorough "democracy" and changed the classic space-time structure. Books, newspapers, movies and television are all an orderly linear structure, and a central idea can still be formed under the control of a whole; On the other hand, the Internet has formed a huge interwoven network without center and boundary, completely erasing the boundary between edge and center. Derrida's pursuit of essence has been delayed in time and space.
On the Internet, Foucault's exposition of scattering, uniform origin, difference and fracture, Jameson's and Baudrillard's descriptions of postmodern aesthetic styles, such as parody, plane, fragment, collage, appropriation, parody, lack of depth, history and anti-totality, are all reflected, and this embodiment is no longer limited to highly developed western society, but flows endlessly around the world. The computer presents a new hierarchical structure: different from the previous linear logic, it presents a circular connection, different from the previous pyramid control structure; It also presents a borderless flow logic, which is different from the previous one.
Stable logic, you can define the subject layer by layer. It can be said that global interaction has been the most vivid and intuitive embodiment in the computer. Therefore, in the computer age, electronic culture has reached a qualitative peak, and the qualitative difference between electronic culture and printing culture is highlighted. Anyone roaming on the Internet will feel its hierarchical structure. You read a text, which contains some important concepts that you want to understand thoroughly. Moreover, these words have different eye-catching colors from other words in the text, which means they can be clicked. After clicking, enter the second layer of the file. There are some puzzling places in the second layer, so you can open it again and enter the third layer of the text. And so on. But these levels are not just the entry and exit of the layers, but can jump out of the layers and even return to the original layers. Therefore, the relationship between layers is cyclic. A specific document is an integral part of the whole Internet, and it forms an interactive network with various documents in the whole Internet. This new arrangement brings a new way of feeling and forms a new way of thinking.
Before the internet appeared, writing and reading were the same as reading, that is, from one line to the next, from one page to the next. The arrangement and reading of the Internet are hierarchical, jumping up and down between layers. Therefore, reading culture brings the linear reasoning logic of time; Internet culture brings about the juxtaposition of space and interactive circular thinking logic. In Internet logic, a text is intrinsically related to other texts. On the one hand, the text itself is incomplete, on the other hand, it communicates with other texts, which makes it have potential depth, and it can expand itself to all related aspects at any time, thus having variable depth. When you write software and arrange the contents of your works hierarchically by computer, you are training yourself a new logic, which is more in line with the concept of the global village.
A new philosophy and aesthetics of globalization have emerged and will continue to emerge from the Internet, and are understood by people through the practice of the Internet. It is in this sense that the media itself is a world view. Only by understanding this point can we have a deeper understanding of the new structure and relationship between media and the world, aesthetics and philosophy, as well as the way of thinking and behavior of human beings in the new era of globalization.
Electronic culture and the evolution of new thinking logic
Before the emergence of electronic culture, printed matter was the dominant culture. Printed matter is not only a media form, a carrier form, but also an ideological form and a logical way, on which a modern systematic logic is based. This is a logic of viewing, cutting, classification, geometry, three-dimensional, linear and understanding, and the ideological system since modern times is based on this logical way influenced by printed matter.
After the emergence of electronic culture, especially its main forms such as movies, television, computers, etc., there appeared a new logical form different from the printing era. Therefore, to understand the difference between modern western thought and modern thought and post-modern thought, it is necessary to understand the difference between printing culture and electronic culture; To understand the difference between modern logical thinking mode and modern logical thinking mode and post-modern logical thinking mode, we must also understand the difference between printing culture and electronic culture. In western thought, there are modern and modern points. From the media point of view, these two eras are the difference between the printing era and the electronic era.
The electronic age has formed its own new thinking logic, which is different from the printing age, and this new logical thinking has produced three kinds of thinking logic with the help of three styles that have an important impact on the cultural concept system: film, television and computer. This new logic has profoundly influenced people's way of thinking about the world, profoundly influenced the way the world presents people, and profoundly changed people's way of life in the world.
(A) the film and montage logic
The organization of film production gives the world a montage logic. Montage is a French transliteration of the word editing, and its principle is editing principle. It is the logic of montage that constitutes the film. In film production, each shot can be shot in different places and times, but it is combined into a perfect whole. In film production, every time and space shooting is real, while the edited film is fictional; In the finished film, the edited film is real, and its authenticity is based on a large number of clips. This principle of film composition makes us fundamentally change the proposition of truth. In classical novels and paintings, how to express the truth of reality is a process of perfectly reproducing reality. In movies, montage is logically broken into parts, turning the stone into gold, presenting people with realistic movies, and such realistic movies make people question the reality similar to movie screens. Montage can create movies as well as reality. In this sense, the whole process of modernity can be regarded as a logical process of montage. History, like a film director, has turned a scattered world history into a unified world since the17th century, and various cultures have been organized into the modernization process of the whole world. Montage logic allows us to look at reality in a new way, think about the origin of modernity and understand the organization of the world.
(b) TV and remote control panel logic
The appearance and popularization of television make it an indispensable part of people's cultural life. Watching TV every day will produce a new logic. This is the logic of the remote control board. If the montage logic of movies is a director's logic and a logic of organizing the world from the creator's point of view, then the remote control board logic of TV is a viewer's logic and a logic of reorganizing the virtual world from the viewer's point of view. Television also has a manufacturing side. The creation of TV is to face the world and show this diverse world with different channels. From this point of view, TV, like movies, has a center. On the one hand, the juxtaposition of channels in TV presents various collages without center; On the other hand, its column editing and channel system embodies the principle of unification. But the audience is free to watch TV, and the audience's choice of columns is realized through the remote control board; The display of TV is controlled by remote control panel. If we say that in the TV era, the picture of the world is mainly presented in the form of TV.
Now, the presentation of TV is organized according to the logic of remote control board. If TV programs have their own consistency and systematization, then in the process of TV broadcast, this consistency and systematization are always disrupted by the remote control board and presented in a fragmented way and in a strange combination way, which is unexpected to anyone. The movement of the remote control panel blends different characters and pictures, which has a real post-modern effect. The dominant position of the remote control board shows the initiative and dominance of the audience in the TV era, and also shows the arbitrariness and subjectivity of the audience. Most importantly, it constitutes the presentation logic of TV pictures. The logic of the remote control panel has become a main way for people to watch the world in the post-modern era, and it also affects the way people think about the world and the way the world is presented: the Iraq war, the Indian Ocean tsunami, the drug control in South America, the carnival in Brazil, the beauty pageant in Hong Kong, and the singing in Jay Chou ... All under the guidance of the logic of the remote control panel, people are presented with a world landscape organized by post-modern debris.
(c) computers and click logic
The appearance of computer network has given the world a kind of click logic. By clicking, you can freely visit various websites, enter and exit various levels, and jump freely in various contents; The appearance of computer content is presented by clicking logic. If the montage logic of movies is an organizing principle of directors and the remote control logic of TV is an organizing principle of viewers, then the click principle of computers is the principle of global interaction and dialogue between the subjects of two kinds of content.
As far as the organization of the Internet is concerned, it has the characteristics of movie montage logic. In space, it is not condensed into a work of art like a movie, but brought into the whole world network. Methodologically speaking, it uses the spirit of montage, and can bring everything, whether homogeneous or heterogeneous, here or there, into its own whole. It is precisely because of its vast and infinite space that it forms a whole completely different from the film and a whole consistent with postmodernism and globalization. Specifically, it is: First, there is no fixed part in this whole, and websites can be added at any time and withdrawn at any time. The increase or decrease of the network does not affect its integrity. Second, there is no fixed relationship within the whole. Websites can be associated with these websites or those websites. The internal relations of the whole network and the specific content of a website can be infinitely rich in combination with different contents of various websites. This is especially manifested in online search: enter a phrase to get a combination, add a word to this phrase, subtract a word, and change a word, and you will get different combinations. The essential difference between the network world and the film and television world lies in the tolerance of printed matter. In this sense, the emergence of computers symbolizes the ultimate victory of electronic culture over printing culture. The appearance of movies can't make electric culture occupy the main position; The emergence of television has occupied the dominant position of culture, but it can't accommodate books; However, computer networks can contain all forms and things of all times (including things in the printing age). Not in movies and TV, but on the computer. By this time, the electric culture has really become the mainstream of culture.
The way netizens watch the Internet has the logical characteristics of TV remote control board. Internet surfers can choose the websites and webpages they want to see and go back and forth among many websites and webpages. Compared with TV channels, there are trillions of pages on the Internet. In such an infinite space, the logic of the remote control board has been fully exerted, and the essence and function of this logic have also been displayed to the greatest extent. The more web pages there are, the more prominent the subjectivity of the surfers will be. No matter how different these pages are in type, content, style and form, they are all organized by users' clicks. Clicking gives surfers the greatest freedom, and also gives surfers a self-centered way to organize the world.
From this perspective, clicking is just an extension of the remote control board; The essence of the click principle lies in interaction and dialogue. This is the biggest difference between computers and movies, and it is the biggest difference between click logic and montage logic and remote control board logic. In the cinema, you can't talk to the movie while watching it; Don't talk to TV while watching TV; However, when surfing the internet, surfers can talk to webmasters and any other surfers by clicking, and they can express their opinions and immediately become part of the webpage. It is in this kind of interaction and dialogue that click action becomes the behavior that best represents the way of human existence in the era of globalization, and click logic therefore becomes the cultural logic that best represents the era of globalization.
Third, the computer network and ideology in the era of globalization
Internet access has become a necessary form of social operation and a necessary part of personal survival. People interact with the Internet and the world through the Internet. Day after day, "online behavior" changes people's activity patterns and social patterns, and of course it also changes people's concept patterns.
Since the emergence of electronic culture, the theme of ideological change by the network has been constantly discussed. The appearance of movies, radio, television and computers has led the change of philosophy to a new height every time. If we divide the times from the perspective of media, its oral, written, printed and electronic forms constitute different stages of human evolution. If newspapers are the highest point in the printing era (in newspapers, everything in culture can be accommodated), then computers are the highest point of electronic culture (in computers, all forms of culture, including newspapers in the printing era, can be accommodated). The emergence of computer network is accompanied by the emergence of a new wave of globalization, namely, information globalization triggered by the new information mode dominated by television and computers, economic globalization characterized by the transnational flow of capital, the disappearance of the bipolar world, the world's search for a new political order, the political globalization in which various global cultural forces participate, the fun globalization dominated by consumption, and the formation of culture by the Internet, movies, television, videos, songs, clothing, food, tourism and advertisements. Therefore, computer network has also become the particle of ideological change in the era of globalization. Mainly in five aspects:
First, the change of space-time structure and the networking of "I am in mode" have led to the change of space-time concept. People exist in a certain time, "I am here" is the starting point of classical philosophy, and "here" is the stipulation of space-time model. In the previous (oral, written and printed) times, people were separated from "there" in space, and "here" meant "now"; As far as time is concerned, man and "time" are separated. In electronic culture, when people make overseas calls, "here" and "there" suddenly combine; Satellite TV live broadcast recombines and enjoys the time concepts of "now" and "then" such as day and night between the two hemispheres; Internet chat rooms connect the ends of the earth into a geographical existence of * * * time. From telephone, radio, television to network, electronic culture has reached a new particle in the transformation of space-time structure, which is temporality.
The difference and distance in space have completely different meanings, and the new space-time structure has formed a new "I am the mode". The video conversation on the Internet makes "I am" appear in a new way. This is a kind of me in the era of globalization, which was unimaginable in any previous era. Philosophy, aesthetics, culture and a series of characteristics of the globalization era are all theoretically explained from this new "I am in the model".
Second, the transformation of organizational world mode and the "click principle" network have caused the transformation of organizational world mode. Based on certain principles, when the world is organized into a whole, people's definition of the world is completed. Different times have different ways of organizing the world, which is a logical system. This logic runs through all aspects: philosophical system, literary structure, artistic form, architectural style ... In the computer age, a new logical way has emerged, which is the aforementioned "click logic". Click has become a way to organize the world.
Thirdly, the transformation of meaning generation form and the networking of "line-following mode" have caused the transformation of meaning generation mode. In the pre-computer era, meaning was defined by the subject in a fixed range, which was fixed in the leader's office or in the editor-in-chief of TV. Meaning is defined before it is provided to public space. On the internet, an idea may be followed immediately after it appears, which criticizes or deconstructs the established idea and makes a published idea enter the place of discussion and debate. This makes people's thoughts in offices and editing rooms appear as a series of attachments before they form their own public thoughts or images. The breadth of the internet enables these posts to come from all directions, from people of all colors. Therefore, the process of posting posts makes online publishing ideas public.
* * * thoughts or public * * * images have gone against the original intention and lost their original unity. Online thread-following mode has changed the process of meaning generation, making the formation of meaning a process of collusion and group modification that is easier to be discussed and criticized. The resulting ideology and image of the masses are more compromised, integrated and holographic in the era of globalization.
Fourthly, the change of the stage form and mode of "the principle of mass discussion" is determined by the characteristics of the network, which constitutes the stage for the masses in the era of globalization. The biggest difference between this public stage and the public stage in the pre-computer era is the "opinion principle" of the network itself. In the pre-network era, any kind of public speech was organized and controlled in a planned way: the editors of newspapers, publishing houses and TV stations made the final check on public speech. This is the realistic foundation of philosophy, society and thought in the computer age. There is no editor-in-chief on the Internet, and everyone can speak on the stage. The "subjectivity principle" in the network era has become the "opinion principle" in the network era. People of all colors from all over the world, from the upper middle class to the lower middle class, can express their opinions and opinions no matter how different their ideas, theories and values are. The "public opinion principle" of the network has opened up a huge public sphere with great influence and representativeness.
The main features of globalization. Faced with this new way of speaking, other public speaking methods have to change their structures.
Fifth, compared with the "virtual world" and the real world, the network is a virtual world. Appear on the internet, you can use a pseudonym, just like an actor appearing on the stage in the form of a role. This makes the network have another function and become a way to integrate personality. Psychoanalysis holds that human personality includes the id of desire, the social ego and the sacred superego. In the pre-network era, the desired id was suppressed by the social id and the spiritual superego and entered the unconscious; Once the unconscious wants to appear, it will be examined by consciousness and spirit, and it will have to be shown in the form of dreams or art. As stanislavski said, there are some things in people's hearts that people don't want to say in their own names; When a character name appears on the stage, people may speak freely. The virtual world of the network is like a public stage, and everyone can appear as an actor. With this virtual space-time, people can express themselves freely, and the network can also become a way of personality integration similar to dreams and art. On the one hand, the appearance on the network is different from dreams and art, which is realistic, and people know that they are surfing the Internet. On the other hand, it is emptiness, and people realize that others don't know who they are.
What people can perform freely on the internet is the combination of reality and reality provided by the virtual world of the network. In this kind of network expression, the ID/ego/superego in personality psychology has reached unity. In this sense, the online virtual world gives people a way of personality integration. In a word, the internet is changing people's thinking and ideas.