Search results
et al . 2019 ); but, as a primary research question, it falls outside the discourse on Bronze Age innovation, which is still overwhelmingly centered on male elites and their shining swords. A modern example of the power of individuals to act as nodes in human networks, disseminating ideas, practices, technologies, and ways of life can be found in the rise of the social media influencer. “Influencers” have been around since the 1980s as a marketing strategy to create an apparent groundswell of word-of-mouth support for new products or technologies, but the early
an exhibition. This means that the museum would have to go to them, in a virtual 329 330 Afterwords sense, and via the Internet. After all, the new technologies are products as well as agents of cultural change.4 How could social media, especially Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, be harnessed to disseminate information about the holdings of Pacific materials in North American and European museums? How could ordinary persons who cannot travel but have access to the Internet participate in discussions and debates about these cultural treasures that are a part of
Yeats’ unease of a century before, it seems the tipsy drive to innovate and improve our technological infrastructure was giving way to an anxious hangover. The technologies at whose development we had marveled and for whose growth we had cheered in the previous decades – online stores such as Amazon and social media platforms such as Facebook – were becoming sinister. The tech-utopianism of the 1990s and early 2000s was succumbing to a more critical stance. Indeed, recent years have made clear that, contra the optimistic theories of prominent technology
delegation accompanying the head of state and members of the diaspora communities in German-speaking c ountries, 67 68 Europe a number of Samoan visitors, travelling in Europe to meet family or attend cultural and business events, attended the exhibition during its run (30 January – 30 November 2014). Word of the exhibition had already spread on the night of the opening through news and social media to the Southern Hemisphere, especially Samoa. Some matai sent Samoan relatives or trusted German friends to see for themselves and tell them about it. Most of the
body politic to deal with the social ills and poverty that lie behind crime. This discussion marks out a different terrain within which museums now work. Black lives Matter, like other similar social movements groups, made even more global through social media and that emerged to secure 95 96 Europe the rights of those most vulnerable, presents museums with new challenges. The NMAAHC actively creates safe spaces where all human beings are respected, valued and cared for. The museum holds itself accountable in communicating a message of hope that has shaped black
concomitant emergence of cyborgs or post-humans – people whose selfhood and cognition are distributed in networks that include human and non-human entities (Haraway 1985 ; Hayles 1999 ). Thus, shifting socio-technical systems implicitly also shifts our conceptions of ourselves, changing how we are constituted and how we forge relationships with each other. The recent flurry of research and popular inquiry around how increasingly popular social media technologies are (or are not) changing the ways we form and maintain relationships (e.g., Dunbar 2012 ; Wellman 2011 ) is
How is the new made known? The communication of innovations is closely bound up with their adoption: often the mechanism by which one learns about a new thing is also the impetus for trying it out oneself. So, for example, I spend a lot of time on social media talking about teaching with other academics; and, when one of them whom I trust suggests an assessment they developed, or a new class activity, I am likely to test it. Hence the innovation spreads. This is a classic case of diffusion via the vector of a trusted early adopter as described by Rogers ( 2003
leisure (Binford 1968 ). 3 I want to highlight the cultural importance that Pascoe’s book has had in Australia since its publication. Aside from the numerous book awards for which it has been nominated and that it has won (including the 2016 Indigenous Writers’ Prize in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards), it is a regular topic of discussion on Indigenous social media, where its thesis is held up as an example of the sophistication and dignity of Aboriginal Australian cultures and peoples, and it has recently inspired an acclaimed adaptation by Aboriginal and