Week 2 - Explaination of topic 1

Basically this weeks first task consists of answering a few questions, which can be backed up from last weeks reading (lister. p.g.1-44)
this questions needed to be answerd, see below, have been copied from the mchome webpage.

a) p. 2 With Windows Vista replacing XP and Office 2007 replacing Office 2003, (and so on), what is ‘upgrade culture’ all about? Is some new media change just consumerism thought up by big business?
b) p. 3+ According to Lister et al., some commentators stress the ‘newness’ of new media, but others (such as Kevin Robins) can be seen to be saying that nothing fundamental has changed, because new media technology is another product of capitalism, and therefore will fit into and serve a pre-existing capitalist society and culture, rather than transform it in any fundamental sense. Any thoughts? Can we critique this position?
c) p.11 Are new media a source of ‘progress’ in the sense that they enhance things we do in spheres of social activity – business, education, shopping, democracy etc? Could we say that such a proposition involves an ‘ideology of progress’?
d) p.12 is there a clean break between analogue and digital media (cf. Bolter and Grusin’s concept of ‘remediation’)? Can you identify any commonalities? For example, is email based on the language of ‘letters’ and ‘the postal service’ because we have tried to fashion its communication functions in terms we are already familiar with?
e) p. 17 Digitality and code. Imagine you couldn’t compose your assignments on computer. How would a hand-written editing and composition process be different?
f) p. 21 What do you make of Lunenfield’s concept of ‘immersive interactivity’? What could we apply it to?
g) p.27 What do you understand by ‘non-linear, non-sequential reading and writing?’ Does it capture the experience of the Web?
h) p.33 If new media allows more people to be involved in cultural production (compared to mass media) what are these new voices saying in public? In a DIY and click-to-send setting, what kind of things are people sharing with others that comes from their private/domestic world and might otherwise not be distributed?
i) p. 42 (and preceding discussion of interactivity) Is there such a thing as ‘ideal interactivity’? What form might it take? You can also refer to Meikle’s four types in the week 2 lecture.

ill be answering these questions before i begin the next task.