Virutal Culture on the Sunset Strip

And so we come full circle with what is likely to be my final entry in my KCB201 blog as I am of a mood to take a much closer look at the topic I first introduced in my very first post. ‘How do technologies become cultural technologies’ is the question I posed way back on April the fourth. At the time I was still finding my feet regarding this assignment and was just looking to get some runs on the board early and concentrate on the bigger issues in later blogs. It wasn’t until now, whilst looking over some of my entries that I read over that little dejected piece and, quite surprisingly, it immediately piqued my interest immediately. As a lover of film and someone who works part time at a cinema complex that topic immediately connected with something that had very recently occurred to me regarding the film’s being produced. For I had been noticing the ways in which the film industry, undoubtedly a cultural institution in our contemporary society, had been impacted on, and shaped by many of the technologies discussed in this unit. This impact can be seen in both obvious and subtle ways as it has affected not only the way the industry is run and product is distributed but also the content of the product itself. whether it be through the Viral marketing for the latest batman film integrating interactivity with traditional media, film’s being made with online assistance serving as an example of open-sourcing or subtexts in popular mainstream films regarding online community evidenced in the recent Diane Lane vehicle, Untraceable, the presence of virtual cultures in an old-school cultural institution like cinema is evidence of the cultural worth of interactive technologies.