[Air-L] Convergence

[John Monberg]

I agree that the Carey chapters are extremely useful in raising  
enduring questions about convergence, especially value-laden claims  
made about every new generation of communication technology that are  
framed as non-political.

Alan Liu's "Laws of Cool" does a great job of historicizing the  
evolution of communication technology, in particular the politics of  
design and the mission of the humanities in a digital era, in a  
theoretically sophisticated manner.

Shaun Moore's "Media/Theory: Thinking about Media and Communications"  
raises many fundamental questions about interaction without falling  
into a deterministic framework.

The "Digital Bohemia" chapter in Richard Lloyd's "Neo-Bohemia: Art  
and Commerce in the Postindustrial City" grounds convergence in a  
specific social context, adding ethnographic detail along the  
theoretical lines of Castells and Saskia Sassen that students near  
Chicago might especially appreciate.


John Monberg