After Theme 3: Research and Theory

 (N.B. This is the study blog for the course Theory and Method for Media Technology. More detailed information regarding the theme as well as the course is available on the course page [1].)

During last week, we have been studied on the theme Research and Theory. Several readings have been done to prepare and understand the theme, including two research papers [2] and [3]. Further, a lot of interesting discussions have been made with both professors and classmates. The concepts have been much better understood after lecture and seminar. 

First of all, the lecture is well organized by Prof. Leif Dahlberg. Two main topics have been introduced, i.e. Theory and Research. Lots of definitions and clarifications regarding the two key terms have been given in class. What I get most is the explanation professor gave on different research. According to Leif, two main types of research have been identified with specific examples, which are applied research and pure or basic research. I particularly like the examples between KTH and Stockholm University. As a student of both universities, I can't agree more with Leif on his argument that applied research is more popular in KTH while theoretical research is more common in SU. For me, it is very good to know this difference clearly at the very beginning of my new master study journey, in order to make sure everything is on the right track.

Secondly I would like to emphasize again that seminar is very useful and helpful for my study. As mentioned above, lots of definitions and clarifications on the key term theory have been given in lecture. However, some abstract conclusion about the concept are still unclear to me until having more vivid discussion with classmates during seminar. In the lecture, we have done a brainstorming in small group discussion on the question "what is man".  While in the seminar, we discussed deeper about our understanding to the key concepts. We shared questions, findings as well as answers. With the help of my group members and seminar leaders, we agree on the same understanding of what "theory" is. 

Theory is different from hypothesis. Although a common use of theory implies something unproven like hypothesis, they are still different. Hypothesis states a relationship between two or more, while theory often tries to provide an explanation to the hypothesis. 

The theory is thus an answer to WHY. 

It is hard to talk theory in broad perspective. 

Theory is not about truth. In most cases, theories are regarded as true till they have been proved as WRONG, then old theories will be replaced by the new ones. 

Theory is always about "stepping back" from the observation. It can be understood as to make a deeper thinking on why this observation happened. 

Theory is abstract. 

Theory is what practice not. 

Theory is not existed by itself.

Those are all for today’s blog. Thanks for reading. Your valuable comments are welcome. Please let me know if you find anything interesting or want to have a further discussion. I am looking forward to more discussions in seminar with you all.

---

Sources:

[1] https://www.kth.se/social/course/DM2572/page/theme-3-research-and-theory-2/

[2] Tan, Mingfeng, and Xiao Su. "Media cloud: When media revolution meets rise of cloud computing." Service Oriented System Engineering (SOSE), 2011 IEEE 6th International Symposium on. IEEE, 2011.

[3] Gregor, Shirley. "The nature of theory in information systems." MIS quarterly(2006): 611-642.

Comments for Theme 2

1. denise-theoryandmethod.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-critical-media-studies-22.html?showComment=1443442298433&m=1#c770439733617043796

2. http://oscarlimback.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-critical-media-studies-after.html?showComment=1443442952185&m=1

3. http://tamfmtol.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-post-critical-media-studies.html?showComment=1443443578058&m=1#c1176442861661234490

4. http://theorymethodmediatech.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-critical-media-studies-after.html?showComment=1443452611468&m=1#c6105308113836900813

5. http://rchcc.blogspot.se/2015/09/reflection-of-theme2.html?showComment=1445808630170#c2395589110720914785

6. https://agrik.wordpress.com/2015/09/21/theme-2-post-seminar/#comment-45

7. http://paullinderoth.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-critical-media-studies-after.html?showComment=1445816476761

8. http://u1vfukfo.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-post-posting-critical-media.html?showComment=1445817714271#c215857926883351933

9. http://securepathofscience.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-critical-media-studies.html?showComment=1445818734474#c7724133631135646216

10. http://ixxzw.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-after-seminar.html?showComment=1445819331393#c3137295979010066348

Before Theme 4: Quantitative Research

(N.B. This is the study blog for the course Theory and Method for Media Technology. More detailed information regarding the theme as well as the course is available on the course page [1].)

First of all, I would like to clarify some difficulties I go through for this assignment. Initially it is not easy to identify quantitative methods clearly in the research papers with a focus on media technology. Based on my search, I notice that most of those papers are applied research paper instead of theoretical research papers. And theory and methods are not always clear stated in applied research paper as the ones within theoretical research area, since mostly applied research discusses more on framework, proposed architecture, and so on. Maybe this is just limited in my sight or we share the same issue here. If you have found any tips on this, please do share with me. Thank you in advance. Secondly, I am confused about how to look for the impact factor for a particular paper. It seems that the impact factor for the journal is available, but only citation number is available for the paper. In this case, my strategy is to choose a journal with high impact factor, then look for an example paper following most cited order.

As a result, The selected research paper is Sensing Trending Topics in Twitter by Aiello L.M et al [2], which published on the journal IEEE Transaction on Multimedia. The journal is of high quality with an impact factor of 2.303. And it also claims that the article influence score is 1.01. The paper compares six topic detection methods on three Twitter datasets related to major events, which differ in their time scale and topic churn rate. So I think it is using quantitative methods, and in a good way. 

Which quantitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

In the paper, the authors started that "The methods we test cover three different classes: proba- bilistic models (Latent Dirichlet Allocation), classical Topic De- tection and Tracking (a common document-pivot approach) and feature-pivot methods." For me, it is more like data collection and analysis by using topic detection algorithms. When analyzing data in a countable way, it is quantitative method. It is particularly useful to sorting big data and conducting research with a large amount of data. With the considerable data, the results will be more reliable for the research. 

What did you learn about quantitative methods from reading the paper?

The paper presents a good use of quantitative method for big data analysis. In particular I feel impressed for the algorithm part. It is something I never look into before. I feel it is very technology way, and I hope I am on the right track. 

Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the quantitative method or methods have been improved?

I have not found any main methodological problems of the study. But I think the use of the quantitative method can be improved with combination to the qualitative method. Take content analysis as an example, quantitative methods are valuable and useful to mapping and categorizing data. As Lacey and Luff (2001) [3] argued, “the quantitative data can be beneficial because it is categorized quantitatively, and subjected to statistical analysis”. In this way, it enables the researcher to easily summarize empirical data by using statistics or graphs for further analyses. However, as Neuendorf (2002) [4] identified in her book, “although quantitative content analysis uses a broader brush to provide a general outline for the research, it is typically less in-depth and less detailed”. In media landscape, Robertson and Levin (2010) [5] also argued that “purely quantitative approaches fail to gain analytical purchase on the meaning-making properties of media texts”. Therefore qualitative methods are useful here to combat this challenge, as “quantitative and qualitative research are common to be used at the same and be viewed as different ways of examining the same research problem” (Gray and Densten, 1998) [6].

Those are all for today’s blog. Thanks for reading. Your valuable comments are welcome. Please let me know if you find anything interesting or want to have a further discussion. I am looking forward to more discussions in seminar with you all.

---

Sources:

[1] https://www.kth.se/social/course/DM2572/page/theme-4-quantitative-research-2/

[2] Aiello, L. M., Petkos, G., Martin, C., Corney, D., Papadopoulos, S., Skraba, R., ... & Jaimes, A. (2013). Sensing trending topics in Twitter. Multimedia, IEEE Transactions on, 15(6), 1268-1282.

[3] Lacey, A., & Luff, D. (2001). Qualitative data analysis (pp. 320-357). Sheffield: Trent Focus.

[4] Neuendorf, K. A. (2002). The content analysis guidebook. Sage.

[5] Robertson, A., & Levin, P. (2010). Europe as Other: Difference in global media discourse. Statsvetenskaplig tidskrift, 112(1).

[6] Gray, J. H., & Densten, I. L. (1998). Integrating quantitative and qualitative analysis using latent and manifest variables. Quality and Quantity, 32(4), 419-431.

After Theme 2: Critical media studies

(N.B. This is the study blog for the course Theory and Method for Media Technology. More detailed information regarding the theme as well as the course is available on the course page [1].)

As a study review blog, I will reflect on the efforts I made for the second theme. Frist and foremost, a lot of reading has been done for a better understanding of this theme, such as the book Dialectic of Enlightenment [2] by Adorno and Horkheimer and Walter Benjamin’s influential essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity" [3]. In addition to these, I want to discuss more about our blogs. It is so great to read other’s blogs. Your guys’ interesting and inspiring views make me much better understand the philosophic texts, especially for the great examples you made.

During this week’s study, I found several concepts have been misunderstood before, but I am very glad that they have now been clarified clearly after lecture and seminar.

Firstly, to get a better understanding of Nominalism, we discussed it compared with Realism. One of my classmate said that ‘Nominalism is more specific, while realism is more general.’ This is interesting to me and help enhance my understanding of Nominalism. As Nominalism is often used with not changing, it can be seen as a metaphysical view in philosophy, in which abstract ideas or concepts do not exist.

What other important and useful thing we learned from the lecture is to investigate something within its born context though the cultural and historical lens. In this sense, a more completed picture and a more reasonable sense can be achieved.

There is also a pair of key concepts for this theme, which are ‘substructure’ and ‘superstructure’. Besides my previous knowledge of the concepts, one classmates proposed another interesting explanation to them as ‘The substructure was everything related to the production, such as machines; while the superstructure was the art, for example entertainment. It is a good way to make examples to discuss the abstract philosophical terms with relation to our studied subject media technology.

Last but not the least, my understanding of ‘enlightenment’ is well improved. And another important term I learned this week is the ‘AURO’, which is a kernel view according to Benjamin and can be referred to ‘uniqueness’ or ‘authenticity’. What’s more, I also find the Allegory of the Cave from Plato [4] is very interesting and helpful to understand this week’s theme. Learned from his example, it can be concluded that not only the philosopher but also the scholar or just each of us who wishes to seek wisdom should try to be freed from the cave and come to understand the shadow as well as the reality.

Sources:
[1] https://www.kth.se/social/course/DM2572/page/theme-2-critical-media-studies-2/
[2] Adorno, T. W., & Horkheimer, M. (1997). Dialectic of enlightenment (Vol. 15). Verso.
[3] Walter Benjamin (1968). Hannah Arendt, ed. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", Illuminations. London: Fontana. pp. 214–218.ISBN 9781407085500.

[4] Plato. (1945). The republic of Plato (Vol. 30, pp. 175-203). New York: Oxford University Press.

Comments for Theme 1

1. http://securepathofscience.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-1-theory-of-knowledge-and-theory_14.html?showComment=1445864186925#c1086061219112673092

2. http://rchcc.blogspot.se/2015/09/reflection-of-theme1.html?showComment=1445865904268#c5012600485274659949

3. http://happyblogger7.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-1learning-summary.html?showComment=1445870021125#c1518567468774572856

4. http://oscarlimback.blogspot.se/2015/09/after-thelecture-and-seminary-last-week.html?showComment=1445870651306

5. http://paullinderoth.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-1-theory-of-knowledge-and-theory_14.html?showComment=1445871256539

6. http://tamfmtol.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-1-post-theory-of-knowledge-and.html?showComment=1442845993040#c8662756377529229766

7. http://ixxzw.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-1-theory-of-knowledge-and-theory_10.html?showComment=1445865281664#c3999636103157670150

8. http://denise-theoryandmethod.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-1-theory-of-knowledge-and-theory_12.html?showComment=1442846356721#c4923713701379645479

9. http://theorymethodmediatech.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme1theory-of-knowledge-and-theory-of.html?showComment=1445866560834#c3956056026642920897

10. http://u1vfukfo.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-1-post-posting-theory-of.html?showComment=1445871724994#c7638433317723707227

11. Additional Comments https://agrik.wordpress.com/2015/09/13/kant-vs-plato-2/

A good reflection starts with an interesting and inspiring quote. “Our world is a shared experience Fractured by individual perspectives.” I like the sentence and thanks for your sharing. In your reflection, I found the three issues you pointed out are very useful and helpful for us to understand the theme, which are open-ended philosophical discussions, no ultimate universal ‘truth’, and we see the world though perception. It is important to keep them in mind. In addition, I agree with you that ‘Kant was not right all the time’. In fact, I think no one was always right, or maybe there is no right can be always right. (This sounds a little bit silly, but I hope you get what I mean.) Similar to lacking of the god’s point of view, I think knowledge shares same limit just as us. That may be another reason for why a priori and a posteriori knowledge exists. But again you make good argument that ‘no knowledge can exist independent of previous knowledge’ and “Knowledge requires knowledge.” This is definitely a logical thinking and makes a great connection with previous discussions. Thanks for your interesting share. Well done!

Before Theme 3: Research and Theory

 (N.B. This is the study blog for the course Theory and Method for Media Technology. More detailed information regarding the theme as well as the course is available on the course page [1].)

To find a research journal that I believe is relevant for media technology research, I did a lot of search work on the Internet. During this process, some journals have not been finally chosen since their impact factors are below 1.0. This is unexpected result which I would like to discuss more with professors and classmates, because most of them are popular or recommended by Google or other big websites. If they are not ‘that good’ or ‘influential’, then why they are that ‘popular’? Anyway, the final research journal I found is IEEE Transactions on Multimedia (IEEE MULTIMEDIA), which is high quality with an impact factor of 1.78 (according to Research Gate’s data[2]). This journal is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering the breadth of research in multimedia technology and applications, including: circuits, algorithms and architectures, software design, synchronization, joint processing of multimedia/multimodal signals/data, compression, storage, retrieval, networking, multi-modality devices/ systems [2]. Personally, I think this is a journal which more close to ‘technology’ rather than ‘culture’ compared to the other ones in my search results. This is another main reason for my choice.

On the other hand, the selected research paper is Media cloud: When media revolution meets rise of cloud computing by Tan and Su [3]. The paper is published in the high quality journal IEEE TMULTIMEDIA aforementioned. It is of high quality and relevant for media technology research. In the paper, the authors argue that a media revolution will come due to the technology development of both Internet and Media, and thus proposing research on ‘media cloud’. To be more specific, the aim of the paper is to discuss the challenges of media cloud and propose a new architecture for the media cloud. The theoretical framing is based on the key concept ‘cloud computing’. For the research method, the authors try to integrate the successful technology ‘cloud computing’ and media processing, thus proposing a new architecture for the media cloud. (How to name this methodology has to be decided later.) Furthermore, the findings of this paper include the possibility of the integration of cloud computing and media processing, and a comprehensive overview on the recent media cloud research work. The authors also discuss the challenges of the media cloud; and then summarize its architecture, the architecture, the processing, and its storage and delivery mechanisms. With regards to the implications of the paper, the most important thing is the new architecture proposed for the media cloud, and also suggestions on how to build a media cloud and several future research topics.

As theory is something proved to be well-substantiated, and scientific theory is acquired by using scientific method; it is important to understand theory with relation to scientific method in my opinion. A theory has to be repeated tested and confirmed through observation and experimentation [4]. In the example paper, the theory is about ‘cloud computing’, although it may also be seen as a new technology. It is a question that how to define it properly from an academic perspective. In Gregor’s opinion, theory here can be seen “as statements that say how something should be done in practice”[5]. In this way, the theory employed in the selected paper can be characterized as Type 5 Design and Action (according to Table 2 in Gregor[5]). As a result, the benefits of using ‘cloud computing’ theory are mainly on its practical function. Take the selected paper as an example, it can discuss possibility as well as propose new model in media studies based from practical reasons for practical solutions. It is also evident that a ‘practical’ paper is not that ‘theoretical’ in academia. In my other research results, I notice that there are many papers with a focus on theoretical discussions. In those papers, theories are much clearer with an independent section called ‘theoretical framework’ or ‘theoretical discussions’. In most times, theory or theories can be found in the ‘literature review’ part.

Those are all for today’s blog. Thanks for reading. Your valuable comments are welcome. Please let me know if you find anything interesting or want to have a further discussion. I am looking forward to more discussions in seminar with you all.

---

Sources:

[1] https://www.kth.se/social/course/DM2572/page/theme-3-research-and-theory-2/

[2] http://www.researchgate.net/journal/1520-9210_IEEE_Transactions_on_Multimedia

[3]Tan, Mingfeng, and Xiao Su. "Media cloud: When media revolution meets rise of cloud computing." Service Oriented System Engineering (SOSE), 2011 IEEE 6th International Symposium on. IEEE, 2011.

[4]The Structure of Scientific Theories http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/structure-scientific-theories/

[5] Gregor, Shirley. "The nature of theory in information systems." MIS quarterly(2006): 611-642.

After Theme 1: Theory of Knowledge and Theory of Science

(N.B. This is the study blog for the course Theory and Method for Media Technology. More detailed information regarding the theme as well as the course is available on the course page [1].)

In this blog, I will reflect on all the efforts I made for the first theme, so this could be seen as a study review blog.

In order to get a better understanding of the course, a lot of reading and information search work has been done during both the preparation and conclusion phases. To be specific, two main texts recommended by course professor have been thoroughly read and studied, which are "Critique of Pure Reason" [2] from Kant, and Plato’s The Theaetetus [3]. Meanwhile, I also did some research work from the wikis and dictionary with regard to the key concept and terminology mentioned in the works, which provided me some interesting hints to think deeper about the theories. On the other hand, more papers and books written by other authors have also been read and reviewed for the course preparation as well as the assignments writing. These extra readings include “From Eudoxus to Einstein: A History of Mathematical Astronomy [4]”, “companion to philosophy of science [5]”, “Science & the Scientific Method: A Definition [6]”, “Philosophy of the Cultural Sciences Preliminary draft [7]”,“ Conjectures and refutations [8]”, and so on. In addition, I also spent some time to discuss the questions from assignment and the works with my friends who majored in philosophy. They kindly shared their understandings with me and their words inspired me a lot.

It is a very glad study experience and I am now proud to say that a much better understanding of the theory regarding knowledge and science has been learnt during last week. Before this course, I was always thinking that neither knowledge nor science is a strange word for most people, especially for the students like me. When we were little, we might think science more from the view point of natural science, such as biological science, physical science, earth science, etc. And we might also assume knowledge as all the useful information which cannot be acquired without learning. However, a new idea was well received based on this study that both ‘knowledge’ and ‘science’ are far more than that. Previously I tried to conclude that the relationship between science and knowledge is illustrated as shown in Figure 1 [9]. It is simply described that on one hand science is not same as knowledge; on the other hand ‘scientific knowledge’ is what matters most for scientific practice. Furthermore, I believe that knowledge is important to all of us, and science is a useful tool to enable us getting to understand the world around us. Therefore, I understand that we must study and employ scientific methods to obtain scientific knowledge. Yet, I did not think too much on how we acquire knowledge until this course. It is very good to know that when we try to learn the world, we have to think about the relationship of objects and our cognition since both of them are important. It is a good argument from Kant that “objects must conform to our cognition”, because it is very inspiring at that time and even for now as well. Departure from this point, a lot of example had been proposed by me and discussed with others. Some were good examples, while some were not. In the future, I would like to continue to discover and discuss more if possible. I believe this is a very good thinking not only for my research career but also for a better understanding of life itself. This also relates to another question regarding the perception. For me, life is a journey of perception. All we can get or learn from our life has to be based on our perception. Therefore, personally I like the quote “Knowledge is perception” very much. Knowledge is all the information we learn from life or the world. And yes, everything we learn is actually the perception. We have to see, to hear, to feel, and so forth. After that, we can understand, think, believe, etc. As a result, I think the argument that “we do not see and hear ‘with’ the eyes and the ears, but ‘through’ the eyes and the ears” is very persuasive and reasonable to me. Again, perception might be more like a tool, and what real matters is the deeper thinking with mind which enables us gain the knowledge and know the world.  To conclude, I enjoy this study experience much. It makes me not only think more about knowledge and science, but also understand more about life. Maybe this is the essence of philosophy, or maybe this is the real objective for learning.

Figure 1 The Relationship of Science and Knowledge

That's all for today’s blog. More information might be added later after further discussion with professor and classmates if necessary. Thanks very much for your reading. Your valuable comments are more than welcome.

---

Sources:

[1] https://www.kth.se/social/course/DM2572/page/theme-1-theory-of-knowledge-and-theory/

[2] Kant, I., & Guyer, P. (1998). Critique of pure reason. Cambridge University Press.

[3] Theaetetus, by Plato, section §152e http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0171%3Atext%3DTheaet.%3Asection%3D152e

[4] Linton, Christopher M. (2004). From Eudoxus to Einstein: A History of Mathematical Astronomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-82750-8.

[5] Psillos, Stathis; Curd, Martin (2010). The Routledge companion to philosophy of science (1. publ. in paperback ed.). London: Routledge. pp. 129–138. ISBN 978-0415546133.

[6] Bradford, A. (2015). "Science & the Scientific Method: A Definition." from http://www.livescience.com/20896-science-scientific-method.html. 

[7] Carlshamre, S. (2014). "Philosophy of the Cultural Sciences Preliminary draft."

[8] Popper, K. R. (1954). Conjectures and refutations, Minumsa.

[9] Tianzi Wang. Assignments for course Scientific Method and Research Ethics VT 2015.

Before Theme 2: Critical media studies

(N.B. This is the study blog for the course Theory and Method for Media Technology. More detailed information regarding the theme as well as the course is available on the course page [1]) 

In this blog, eight questions will be answered as the pre-seminar assignment. The first four questions are regarding book Dialectic of Enlightenment [2] which written by German Frankfurt School philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, while the other four are related to German philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin’s influential essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity" [3]. Accordingly, this blog will be composed of two sections focused on the two works, with different parts based on different questions.

Section 1 Dialectic of Enlightenment

1.      What is "Enlightenment"?

Honestly this question is exactly the first thing popped in my head when I read the instructions for the first time. The word ‘Enlightenment’ looks unfamiliar to me, especially when it connects with ‘dialectic’. Therefore, I did some search work on it. According to the dictionary[4], firstly it can be easily understood that it refers to the act of enlightening or the state of being enlightened from its origin; secondly it may refer to the Buddhist or Hindu concept ‘Prajna’ which sounds even more confusing to me; lastly it can be explained with a philosophical movement of the 18th century which seems to be the key I am looking for to the question. As a result, I look deeper to the ‘Age of Enlightenment’. Meanwhile, I also noticed that Kant had tried to answer this question as well. In his word, ‘Enlightenment is the human being’s emergence from his self-incurred minority’[5].For me, I believe that the meaning of ‘enlightenment’ here may refer to the insight or awakening to the nature of reality.

2.      What is "Dialectic"?

Developed from Ancient Greek, ‘dialectic’ comes from ‘dialego’ which looks similar to dialogue. Based on its definition, ‘dialectic’ is a method of argument for resolving disagreement. To be more specific, the purpose of the dialectic method of reasoning is resolution of disagreement through rational discussion, and, ultimately, the search of truth.[6] Some key words may need to be highlighted here include ‘resolve’, ‘disagreement’, ‘rational’, and ‘truth’. In other words, dialectic is different from persuading. Although it aims to resolve disagreement, the ultimately search of truth as well as through rational discussion may be more important to define it properly.

3.      What is "Nominalism" and why is it an important concept in the text?

Personally I think ‘Nominalism’ is a very interesting concept. It is “a metaphysical view in philosophy, according to which general or abstract terms and predicates exist while universals or abstract objects do not exist.” It is an important concept in the text since it can be seen as the basis of the theory in the text. That said, nominalism supports the key viewpoint in the text.

4.      What is the meaning and function of "myth" in Adorno and Horkheimer's argument?

In Adorno and Horkheimer’s argument, myth can be seen as the enlightenment. This can be understood as the way to improve argument of the enlightenment. On the other hand, they also mention that enlightenment can also be seen as the myth. This is the way to judge the development of the modern theory.

Section 2 "The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity"

1.  In the beginning of the essay, Benjamin talks about the relation between "superstructure" and "substructure" in the capitalist order of production. What do the concepts "superstructure" and "substructure" mean in this context and what is the point of analyzing cultural production from a Marxist perspective?

Both “superstructure” and “substructure” are familiar concepts. The “superstructure” refers to the sphere of values, norms, institutions, and so on; while the “substructure” refers to the economic activity. Their relationship between these two concepts can be explained as the famous quote from Karl Marx that “substructure determines superstructure”. In Benjamin’s essay, ‘superstructure’ is related to ‘the work of art’, while ‘substructure’ maybe can connect to the ‘mechanical reproduction’. To analyze culture production from a Marxist perspective is a very good point of view to introduce the key argument and main discussion regarding the relationship of mechanical reproduction and the work of art in his essay.

2.    Does culture have revolutionary potentials (according to Benjamin)? If so, describe these potentials. Does Benjamin's perspective differ from the perspective of Adorno & Horkheimer in this regard?

(I am not sure with this question, and I will only try to answer it.)

Yes, culture has revolutionary potentials according to Benjamin. The potentials include matter, space, and time. All of them are immemorial. The great innovations of the technique will transform the art.

In this regard, Benjamin’s perspective differs from the perspective of Adorno & Horkheimer.

3.      Benjamin discusses how people perceive the world through the senses and argues that this perception can be both naturally and historically determined. What does this mean? Give some examples of historically determined perception (from Benjamin's essay and/or other contexts).

In my opinion, it can be simply understood as that people perceive the world through the senses like what they see, hear, taste, touch, and feel; or that people perceive the world from what they believe is real. And this perception can be both naturally and historically determined. That said, what we learn from nature and history means a lot when we are trying to learn a new thing. For example, if naturally we like sweet food, then we will believe the sweet food taste good. If historically we believe sweet food are good for our health, then we will think a new sweet food such as fruit benefits our body. Take another example in art, if historically we believe Shakespeare, Rembrandt, and Beethoven are great artists, we may think they will make great films too if film is available in their times. 

4.    What does Benjamin mean by the term "aura"? Are there different kinds of aura in natural objects compared to art objects?

The term “aura” is a fancy concept. In Benjamin’s words, the “aura” may mean the key element in a work of art which is lacking in the reproduction. That is the uniqueness of a work or art. To be specific, it refers to “its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.”

Yes, there are different kinds of aura in natural objects and art objects. Compared to natural objects, the aura of art objects includes not only the time and space but also the deeper connection to the artist. In other words, what and how the artists implement in the work of art or even the connection between the artist and the work of art can also be treated as “aura”. For example, if we go to visit the Fuji Mountain in person, we may feel the ‘aura’ of the Fuji Mountain if the time and space is right; but we cannot feel the ‘aura’ of a work of art based on Fuji Mountain if we just visit there. Instead, we have to stand in front of the work of art, and try to make a deep connection with the artist to feel the ‘aura’.

Note. All the words are just my personal views for now. Some of them may be updated or changed when I learn more in the future. Please let me know if you find anything interesting or want to have a further discussion. You are always welcome to comment on my blog. Thank you for reading.

Refences:

[1] https://www.kth.se/social/course/DM2572/page/theme-2-critical-media-studies-2/

[2] Adorno, T. W., & Horkheimer, M. (1997). Dialectic of enlightenment (Vol. 15). Verso.

[3] Walter Benjamin (1968). Hannah Arendt, ed. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", Illuminations. London: Fontana. pp. 214–218.ISBN 9781407085500.

Before Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science

(N.B. This is the study blog for the course Theory and Method for Media Technology. More detailed information regarding the theme as well as the course is available on the course page [1].)

In this blog, I will focus on and discuss two questions: One regarding the words from Kant saying in the preface to his book "Critique of Pure Reason" [2] (page B xvi) (second edition); The other one related to Socrates’s argument to the discussion of the definition “Knowledge is perception”, as well as its relation to the modern terms “empiricism”.

For the first question, my initial understanding to Kant’s words is focused on the relationship of our cognition and objects. On the presupposition, it is said that “it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to objects”. But Kant argued for its possible problem which may lead us to “nothing” with a priori. Thus he further proposed his idea to trying another assumption that “objects must conform to our cognition”. In other words, Kant rethinks and discusses the relationship of our cognition and objects, particularly with a focus on which one should be thinking first in our assumption when we try to explore the world or expend our cognition.

To get a better understanding of this, I am thinking to find an example to illustrate his words. Firstly, what is the presupposition that “all our cognition must conform to objects”? Then, what would be the problem with the presupposition in the example? At last, what would be happened if we change our assumption to that “objects must conform to our cognition”? One possible example I find is about Nicolaus Copernicus’ model of the universe. As everyone knows, he proposed to “place the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe” [3] in his model. At that time, this was a very bold idea. The reason to that is similar to what Kant’s talking in his book. That said, if we follow the presupposition that “all our cognition must conform to objects”, we may understand the world from the real objects which we can see or feel. Then it is very hard to understand Copernicus’ model, as it is very hard to see the center of the universe. As Kant said, if we believe that all our cognition must conform to objects, we may only get limited cognition and be stuck somewhere on the way. But if we try to change the assumption to let objects conform to our cognition, then there will be more bold idea coming out like Copernicus’ model. Although it is found out that Copernicus’ model is quite limited in our new knowledge system, which gained thanks to the development of technology. We still have to admit that the model itself is a big step for the knowledge journey. In other words, if we drop the priori that our cognition must conform to objects, we are able to break the limits and embrace more bold ideas which form in our cognition but may be not easy or possible to be observed from objects.

On the other hand, the second question is about the discussion of the definition “Knowledge is perception”. I find this definition very interesting. It may come from the famous The Theaetetus [4], one of Plato’s dialogue concerning the nature of knowledge. When Socrates argues that we do not see and hear "with" the eyes and the ears, but "through" the eyes and the ears; I think he wants to point out that we don’t get the knowledge with our perception, instead we gain the knowledge with our mind. To be specific, “we do not see and hear” indicate the knowledge or our understanding of the world; “with” the eyes and ears refer to the perception we have, while “through” the eyes and ears emphasis that perception is just like a tool. The real mechanism makes me gain the knowledge is the deeper thinking inside us.

At last, what is the relationship between Socrates argument and the modern terms “empiricism”? Personally I will not say that Socrates argument is directed towards the “empiricism”. According to the definition, Empiricism is “a theory that states that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience” [5]. That said, empiricism shares the same idea with Socrates that knowledge comes from sensory experience (“through eyes and ears”). However, the empiricism emphasizes evidence and experiments in the philosophy of science, while Socrates did not mention these at all. Socrates argument focuses more on the denial discussion of “knowledge is perception”, with a lack of discussion on how “perception” working for the knowledge. Moreover, Socrates also did not mention whether he agreed on the sensory experience is the “only” or “primary” source for the knowledge, as empiricism stated. Therefore, it is safe to say that Socrates argument may lead to the modern terms “empiricism” somehow, but it may be not correct to say that Socrates argument is DIRECTED towards “empiricism”.

That is all for today’s blog. Thanks for reading. Your valuable comments are welcome.

Sources:

[1] https://www.kth.se/social/course/DM2572/page/theme-1-theory-of-knowledge-and-theory/

[2] Kant, I., & Guyer, P. (1998). Critique of pure reason. Cambridge University Press.

[3] Linton, Christopher M. (2004). From Eudoxus to Einstein: A History of Mathematical Astronomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-82750-8.

[4] Theaetetus, by Plato, section §152e http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0171%3Atext%3DTheaet.%3Asection%3D152e

[5] Psillos, Stathis; Curd, Martin (2010). The Routledge companion to philosophy of science (1. publ. in paperback ed.). London: Routledge. pp. 129–138. ISBN 978-0415546133.