Page 23 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

APPLICATIONS

global resistance, a collectively run web-based media outlet that has
spawned local sites and centres throughout the world.
A separate wave of anti-globalisation sentiment has manifested as a
conservative scepticism about the rapid increase and hybridity in
cultural choice, brought about by forces described as globalisation.
Localism is upheld as possessing authenticity and ‘natural’ community,
and face-to-face relations are privileged over mediated communica-
tion. The prescription underpinning this stream of anti-globalisation
thinking is a return to smaller, geographically centred communities.
Critics have seen this revival of the local as a nostalgic yearning for a
mythical past that overlooks the benefits of an extended and diverse
cultural field. It is a vision reminiscent of 1950s’ America but without
the necessary acknowledgement of how such societies have been
constrictive of peoples’ rights and suspicious of difference.
See also: Culture jamming, Globalisation
Further reading: Barret-Lennard (2001)

APPLICATIONS

Software comprising the electronic instructions used to direct
computers to perform certain functions. Software is divided into
two categories: ‘systems software’, which enables the computer to
operate; and ‘applications software’, which serves the end user. An
application requires systems software in order to exist. Examples of
applications include e-mail, browsers, word processors and spread-
sheets. The expression ‘killer application’ (or ‘killer app’) describes
software applications that are highly sought after.
Applications, together with infrastructure and connectivity,
make up the information communications technologies, or ICT.
Applications are set to become more important economically, as ICT
infrastructure and connectivity mature.

ART–SCIENCE INTERFACE

Modernity was characterised by the ascendancy of useful over fine arts;
technology over old master. Eventually, following a book by novelist
C. P. Snow, it was widely accepted that contemporary societies had
fractured into ‘two cultures’, one based on science, the other on the
arts and humanities. But the tension and mutual incomprehensibility

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