Lecture 1 - Rough Magic

From the first lecture in media histories and cultures, the main article that stuck out for me and interessted me was looking at the first frame by frame film, the first photograph(s) and the first game made. Looking back on these historic pieces of media and comparing it to media I'm more familiar with growing up interessted me on how much technology and media have progressed over the years. For example the first photograph took 10 minutes to capture and anything moving wouldn't be in the photo; in the photo you see an empty victorian street with one man getting his shoes shined, you only see this man because he is getting his shoes shined and has stood still for most of the 10 minutes. Whereas now cameras can capture in seconds.

Media convergence is simply the middle of two relationships (the medium). An example of this is that with the earliest mobile telephone you could simply ring people and most games could only be played on a console (for instance an atari to play snake). An example of media convergence is more modern phones, where now you don't need a game console to play games as you can play games on your mobile phone. A more recent example would be that a few years ago you would need a computer to use the internet but now you can use your phones to access the internet. Mobile phones are now more like mini computers considering their main function is meant to be a telephone. 

For example the iPhone (left).

Culture is a difficult topic to define. The opposite to culture would be nature, but neither of these words can be defined clearly. The basic understanding of culture would be that culture is man made, its the way we live, the stuff we enjoy. Whereas the basic understanding for nature would be that it is something untouched and unseen by anyone.