Page 10 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

INTRODUCTION

In 1969, computers were the size of rooms; computer disks the size of
woks. Time spent on them was so valuable you had to hire it by the
hundredth of an hour (0.6 of a minute). These impressive machines,
however, had about as much computing power as the old PC that
people nowpass on to the kids because it is too slow. But those
behemoths – the IBM 360s – were used in 1969 to send people to the
moon. In the same year, the year of the Woodstock music festival and
the first episodes of Sesame Street, the first Boeing 747 jumbo jet rolled
out of its Seattle hangar. It was in 1969 also that, using the resources of
a military budget distended by Cold War fears and the continuing
Vietnam War, the US Defense Department’s Advanced Projects
Research Agency invented a ‘packet switching’ technology – better
known now as the Internet.
Communication was entering an unprecedented phase of intensi-
fication; culture was flowering; information was valuable and the sky
was the limit. The media, communications and culture were moving
centre stage, becoming among the most dynamic areas of con-
temporary life.
Since 1969 computing, communication, media and the field of
popular culture have changed and burgeoned. Computing is many
times faster and nowmuch more socially pervasive. International
transport is now a mass medium in its own right. The Internet grows
exponentially each year. The neweconomy has made its presence felt.
But things have not changed out of all recognition. The USA is still
the engine of innovation and growth, and simultaneously a source of
anxiety and hostility. Jumbos are still flying. And some of Woodstock’s
greatest hits are still playing. People don’t go the moon any more, but
they do go to Disney World, which also began life in 1969.
Communication, cultural and media studies are also of this vintage;
relatively young by academic standards. They grewout of the period
in the 1960s and 1970s when higher education began to take modern
communication, culture and media seriously. This was also the time

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