A story is only as effective as the medium it is told through, a National Public Radio commentator and author said.
Douglas Rushkoff, the third speaker in The Provost's Lecture Series, started his presentation, "I've been thinking a lot about Star Wars lately." This drew a laugh from the audience and set the mood for the rest of Rushkoff's speech titled "Communicating Through Technology" Thursday evening.
"My media literacy moment happened while I was watching Return of the Jedi," Rushkoff said. When R2D2 and C3PO were able to free Hans Solo and Luke Skywalker by telling a story through holographic images, Rushkoff realized the power of the medium used to tell a story.
The television had this power for people when it was created. People had a magical box in their living rooms, and if a person could get his picture in the box, he had to be something special, Rushkoff said.
"Real [media] literacy is knowing the books were written by people with agendas," Rushkoff explained.
The media literate know a story is told in two parts, the what and the how, he said. The what is the story itself; the how is the way the story is transmitted. This concept stood out to Jenny Shea, a communications studies major.
"This is important because I often have a message, and I don't know how to share it," Shea said.
The remote control, the Nintendo joystick and the keyboard changed the media, Rushkoff said. The remote control deconstructed technology by allowing the viewer to escape the commercial. When the Nintendo joystick demystified the technology, people were able to manipulate the pixels on the television. Finally the keyboard introduced the "do it yourself" media, he said. This empowerment of the consumer took power away from the media.
A wonderful, chaotic culture emerged; so wonderful and chaotic someone had to stop it, Rushkoff said. So for each of these technologies, someone found a way to undo their effects.
Society started to say children who played with remote controls had Attention Deficit Disorder.
"What do we do to a population not watching TV?" Rushkoff said. "Drug them so they do."
In other areas, computer interfaces, like Windows, were created to undo the Nintendo joystick, and people were told content was more important than contact, Rushkoff said.
The new advances in media have led to an individualist culture, he said. The focus was put on the individual, not the community. When he was younger, there was a community barbecue. Then his family moved, and they got their own Weber grill and barbecuing became a competition. Weber made more money because each home had a barbecue, Rushkoff said.
The only way past this "renaissance" is to get into creation, Rushkoff said.
"It is not enough to tear apart the models we don't like; you need to put them back together," he said.
When a game player starts a video game, she plays to a point. Then she goes and finds the cheat codes. The player is still playing, only she is playing from outside the game. Then she goes back and writes her own levels. When she uploads the levels for others to play, she is really uploading her story, Rushkoff said. This opportunity to participate in each other's story is really where technology is going.
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