Symposium - artecLab - Universität Bremen

,Media
Symposium
Theory’s Role in Digital Media Studies
artec Lab Lab
paper 12
February 16, 2007

0Impressum
artecLab paper #12
Media Theory’s Role in Digital Media Studies
2007

edited by:
Katja Langeland, Özlem Sulak, Selin Özcelik
designed by:
Selin Özcelik, Thanasis Kanakis, Aleksandar Kitov
supported by:
Bernd Robben
David Black, Katharina Kessler, Aizhen Liu, Alina
Anghel, Yarenny Castro Estrada
ISSN 1860 9945 (print)
ISSN 1860-9953 (online)
Copyright © artecLab-paper, Bremen, 2007
Satz und Herstellung im Eigenverlag, 2007
Laboratory for Art, Work and Technology
Universität Bremen
Enrique-Schmidt-Straße 7 (SFG)
D-28359 Bremen
www.arteclab.uni-bremen.de

Table of Contents,
0 Impressum
1 Introduction
p. 1
2 Theorizing Digital Media. Perspectives of
Media Introduction and Communication Studies p. 3
The Phantasm of the ‘Newness’ of Digital Media
Digital Media in the Perspective of Media and
Communication Studies Conclusion
3 Professor’s Discussion
Barbara Grüter
Frieder Nake
Bernd Robben
Heidi Schelhowe
Rainer Malaka
Discussion
p. 11
4 The Digital Shadow As a Redundant Extension p. 21
5 Media Theory: Clarity or Provocation
6 From Marketplace to Agora -
The Internet as a Community Space
p. 23
p. 35
7 Remark on the Meaning of Media Theory
Within Our Study Program p. 47
8 Contact Data
p. 49

1 Bernd
Introduction
Robben
University of Bremen
The Symposium on Media Theory took place on
the 16th of February, 2007 at the Gästehaus of the
University of Bremen. It was the fourth in a series of
events in the digital media study program, in which
four universities are involved:
1st Symposium 17th of February 2006 at the University
of the Arts themed Design,
2nd Symposium 3rd of July 2006 at the University of
Applied Sciences Bremen themed Media: Informatics
and Design,
3rd Symposium 6th of November 2006 at the University
of Applied Sciences Bremerhaven themed
Learning.
The aim of the symposium was to organize a fundamental
debate between all students and teachers of
1

the digital media program about the most important
subjects related to the program. The fourth symposium
treated the question of the role of media theory
in digital media study.
As the symposium approached, a survey was organized
asking all students how they value the relevance
and the role of media analysis and media
theory for the study program, and if they could give
examples of existing courses that show the importance
of media theory or that show the contrary.
However, in addition to the results of this survey, current
students also presented their ideas at the symposium.
Under the challenging topic “Media Theory:
Clarity or Provocation?” they showcased examples
in the field of media theory, described problems of
existing courses, and presented ideas for enhancing
these courses.
Two invited speakers provided the participants with
fresh ideas. Andreas Hepp, Professor of Communication
Studies and Media Culture, discussed digital
media from a perspective of media and communication
studies, theorizing the changing aspects
of social and cultural life and media. The lecture of
Wolfgang Coy, professor of computer science at the
Humboldt University of Berlin, entitled “From Marketplace
to Agora – The Internet As a Community Space”
debated whether the internet has become a market
or shopping mall, and whether it should be modeled
as a common public space.
A further contribution to the symposium was the
exhibition “The Digital Shadow as a Redundant
Extension” by Alessandro Corsini as an offer to
discuss media theory with regard to a finished digital
media project.
2
The symposium provided a passionate discussion
about the role of media theory. It revealed many
different points of view on the topic, and showed
that different understandings are not always compatible
which each other. The discussion facilitated the
understanding of differences and fomented a fruitful
debate between differing approaches. Also, the
symposium highlighted problems in the organization
of courses and of general administrative issues.
The students made various demands to solve
mismanagement.
As a result, we do not have a unified standardized
theory of digital media but indeed obtained a clearer
understanding of concepts, methods and problems.
Thanks to the efforts of students of DM Master
Program, the text of the lectures and the discussions
of the symposium are documented here. I hope
the reader enjoys this documentation as much as I
enjoyed the vivid debate during the symposium.
Bremen, 2007

2Theorizing
Digital Media.
Perspectives of Media and
Communication Studies
Andreas Hepp
Introduction
Theorizing ‘digital media’ is a complex undertaking
that can involve a number of perspectives and
therefore produces different results. Two fundamental
assumptions are necessary for such an undertaking
– assumptions that are reflected in the
title “Theorizing digital media: Perspectives of media
and communication studies.”
The first assumption is linked to the word ‘theorizing’.
It seems to be increasingly problematic
to focus on ‘big theories’ in media and communication,
as media communication itself is a
highly contextualized task. Rather, our task is an
ongoing process of theorizing the changing
aspects of social and cultural life and our use of media
within them.
The second assumption is the relation of my
reflections to media and communication studies.
I want to indicate with this that I only can present
one possible perspective on theorizing digital
3

media, which is the perspective of media and
communication studies, an academic discipline that
is far more diverse than the following arguments
indicate. However, in this perspective, ‘digital media’
or ‘digitalization’ are elements of a much wider field of
media and communication. Therefore, I will not reflect
on a separated theory of digital media. I posit that
such a theory does not exist. I am much more interested
in theorizing digital media in the general frame of
media and communication. Arguing for this is the
main task of the following. I hope this is an invitation
to theorize within this academic discipline.
My aim is to substantiate the following thesis: ‘digital
media‘ had been associated with high hopes of the
‘new‘ on very different levels. Economically, ‘digital
media’ are considered to be ‘new media industries’
beyond traditional centers of media production.
Socially they are regarded as ‘new opportunities’ for
social relations, and culturally they are discussed as
spaces of ‘new cultures’. If we try to theorize these
‘new’ aspects of ‘digital media’ carefully, the perspective
of media and communication studies is important
in two regards: On the one hand, the perspective
of media and communication studies offers a sophisticated
framework for discussing ‘digital media‘ in a
wider context of media and communication. On the
other hand, current perspectives of media and communication
studies are associated with a deeper
investigation of so called ‘digital media‘ as part of a
focus on ‘mediatization’.
To discuss this thesis I want to present an argument
in three steps: First, I offer some critique on the illusion
of the ‘newness’ of digital media. Second, based
on this critique I then contextualize digital media by
presenting some fundamental concepts of media
and communication studies. These concepts offer a
point of departure on how we might theorize the ‘real’
newness of digital media. Finally, I propose that
4
research on digital media opens a perspective for
media and communication studies that will continue
to further develop this discipline. To accomplish
this, it is necessary to contextualize digital media in a
process of social and cultural change.
The Phantasm of the ‘Newness’ of Digital Media
To give you an understanding of what I call the false
impression of the ‘newness’ of digital media, I begin
with some cover pages of the well-known magazine
WIRED.
Published in San Francisco, California since March
1993, WIRED was one of the first successful magazines
on digital media. The location where this magazine
is published has a lot to do with its orientation.
The San Francisco Bay Area has been home to
many developments in digital media throughout its
history. WIRED started to report on how technology
affects culture, economy, and politics. The important
point for me is that its editorial stance was origin
ally inspired by the ideas of Canadian media theorist
Marshall McLuhan. The medium theory, an approach
of which Marshall McLuhan is a representative,
underscores the assumption that the media themselves,
not their content, have an effect on social and
cultural life on the way in which we communicate
and produce meaning, and on how cultural change
takes place.
This fundamental assumption marks the discourse
you find in WIRED. On further inspection on the
discussion of media in WIRED, three ideas of media
‘newness’ are found that are deeply related to the
fundamental assumptions of medium theory. 1. ‘New‘
media industries: The first idea is that digital media
has developed a new kind of media industry. This is
related to the high hopes and expectations concerning
new forms of media

production beyond traditional media centers
– a discourse found not only in WIRED but in
other popular and academic contexts as well.
What is presently known? Based on current
research, for example by Manuel Castells (2001) or
Matthew Zook (2005), we can now say that these
hopes were misconceived. While the way we produce
media has changed, the power of certain
centers of media production have increased rather
than decreased with digital media over the last
decade.
2. ‘New‘ social relations: The second idea is that new
social relations are emerging in cyberspace. There
was a hope that digital media might offer completely
new ways of organizing social relations. The
best-known example for this is the discourse on
so-called virtual communities. But again, what do
we currently know? Based on sociological research
such as the work undertaken by Daniel Miller and
Don Slater (2000), we realize that digital media, like
all other media, are appropriated in the context of
everyday life. Therefore, perhaps the change in social
relations that had been related to digital media
has more to do with a change in social relations in
general.
3. ‘New‘ cultures: The third idea is that new
cultures are emerging in cyberspace. Cyberspace
was related to a cyber culture as a new form
of human living. There was the idea that cyber
feminism, cyberpunks, or cyber politics would
change our present cultures fundamentally. In the
context of the mentioned arguments it becomes
obvious that these movements are not ‘new
cultures’ constituted by digital media. We must
think in a more complex manner about the relation
between digital media and cultural change. The
spread of digital media is embedded in processes
of current cultural change such as individualiza-
tion and the emergence of delocalized communities
such as social movements, belief communities,
popular cultural communities, and diasporas
(cf. Hepp 2006, 2007).
A more careful reflection demonstrates that the
proposed ‘newness’ of digital media does not exist.
From where does such a discourse of the ‘new’ come?
To explain this, it is helpful to review the editorial section
of WIRED. As argued, there is a certain heritage of
technological centrism of medium theory in WIRED,
one that also explains the shortcomings of academic
reflections on the newness of digital media. Marshall
McLuhan, one of the most influential spokesm-
en of medium theory, was one of the inspirations
for both WIRED and other theories of digital media.
In my opinion there at least three necessary aspects
to discuss in this tradition:
1. Technological focus: ‘Technological focus’ refers
to the tendency towards taking a certain technology
(the Internet, the mobile phone, etc.) as the unquestioned
starting point of research. By so doing
we reproduce a technological framework, but why
should we start by discussing ‘digital media’ instead
of reflecting on the challenge of the present ‘cultural
change’ and the use of digital media therein?
2. Technology isolation: This refers to the
tendency to discuss technology in isolation from its
usage in everyday life. We very often find a focus on
certain specific aspects of technology but much less
a focus on how this technology is commonly used.
3. Technology effect: There is an implicit assumption
that technology has a certain ‘effect’ on
culture and society. Very often this effect is theorized
in a quite direct way. The best example of this
is the frequent discussion of the Internet, where
there is an assumption that only because of its
decentralized technological structure the Internet
will increase democracy, personal capability, and so
5

on. It is the idea that a technology has an effect on
cultural change.
One can argue that such a technological centrism
of medium theory is the implicit element of the
problematic fallacy of the ‘newness’ of digital media.
But how would an expert in media and communication
studies respond? Media historian Wolfgang
Riepl (1913), one of the classic voices of media and
communication studies in Germany, formulated
an idea that is known today as Riepl’s Rule. Riepl
deduced that media history is not the ongoing
process of supersession of ‘old’ media by ‘new’, but
rather a process of media differentiation and specialization
in which media must be discussed in the
context of their use. The idea is not that one medium
is lost by the emergence of another, but that an
increasing number of media evolve and receive specialized
focuses. For example, we all still use stone
plates to write, but only in the very special context of
gravestones. Perhaps a media theory from 1913 has
significant relevance in a discussion of digital media
and their diffusion in the 21 st century. If we transfer
the idea of Riepl to our contemporary problems, we
can say that we should not theorize digital media
apart from other media, but as part of a process of
communicative differentiation.
Digital Media in Perspective of Media and
Communication Studies
In conclusion, digital media cannot be theorized as
a ‘revolution of the new’. It seems more appropriate
to investigate them in a more contextualized
matter, a way in which media and communication
studies offer a certain perspective. To make this
perspective comprehensible, I begin with a distinction
between ‘personal communication’ and ‘mass
communication’. ‘Personal communication’ refers
to all forms of communication between two and
more persons, which can take place directly or indi-
6
rectly (via technological devices such as telephones).
‘Mass communication’ is seen as technologically mediated
and public transmission from one entity to a
dispersed mass audience.
This distinction has been the basic reference point
in media and communication studies while focusing
primarily on mass communication. In this perspective
the ‘newness’ of digital media is not an economic,
social, or cultural ‘effect’. Rather, media integrate both
basic forms of communication at the same time.
Technologically mediated personal communication
and mass communication are both integrated. For
example, the contemporary mobile phone is a hybrid
medium with which we call another person (personal
communication) but also to listen to MP3 music (mass
communication).
This brings us back to the idea that we must theorize
digital media in a general framework of media
communication and its differentiation and relation to
further cultural change. Three types of interaction are
distinguished: (see Table 1)
Based on the arguments of John B. Thompson we can
distinguish three types of interaction. The first type of
interaction is face-to-face interaction, a form in which
the co-presence, being the same place at the same
time, is the most important aspect of communication.
As human beings we can utilize a wide range of symbolic
cues. It is a form of communication that is oriented
towards specific others, that is dialogical, and
that builds up local communicative connectivity. The
second type of interaction is mediated interaction,
in which a separation of contexts occurs. Because
of this we have an extended availability of communication
over time and space. We can communicate
across the local, but we must compensate for this
by narrowing our range of symbolic cues. Mediated
interaction is still oriented towards a specific other

table 1: Three types of interaction
source: Thompson 1995: 85 (extended)
and is still dialogical, but its addressed connectivity
is translocal. The final type of interaction is mediated
quasi-interaction. By this, we also have a separation
of contexts and an extended availability in time and
space, again rectified by a further narrowing of the
range of symbolic cues. This form of communication
is not oriented towards a specific other, but to
an indefinite other, a range of potential recipients. It
is monological and its communicative connectivity
is translocally open, i.e. not orientated to a defined
other within translocal communication.
This differentiation of types of interaction helps us
discuss how cultures and societies have changed in
the context of media change (cf. Meyrowitz 1995).
This process started with oral cultures being deeply
linked with face-to-face interaction. Because of the
necessity of co-presence, these kinds of cultures
could only attain a certain level of complexity. Early
scriptural cultures were deeply linked to the emergence
of writing as mediated interaction and could
thus develop a higher level of complexity – especially
in the field of division of labor. Having the possibility
to communicate certain information across
local contexts, a translocally acting elite with a certain
script-based knowledge emerged. Finally, the
existence of modern cultures is deeply linked with
mediated quasi-interaction. Modern national societies
can only be bound by forms of communication
that address an indefinite audience of people
translocally within a territorial frame.
Thus, with Thompson’s differentiation of three
7

types of communication it becomes possible to discuss
certain aspects of social and cultural history
and their relation to media change. But what has
changed with ‘digital media’? An interesting aspect
of digital media is that they have changed the structure
of communicative connectivity. With traditional
mass media, all translocal connectivity was primarily
focused on mediated quasi-interaction in a territorial
frame. There had been communicative relations
in a certain state built up by TV or radio that focused
on thickening communication in certain areas. With
digital media the link between territory and translocal
connectivity is not as strong anymore. So the ‘real
newness’, or more concretely, the specificity of digital
media is the way they allow us to organize communicative
connectivity.
Digital Media in the Perspective of Media and Communication
Studies
Having discussed Thompson’s three types of communication,
we gain an insight on what we can call
the specificity of digital media, i.e. their ability to extend
the reach of communicative connectivity either
as mediated interaction or mediated quasi-interaction.
‘Reach’ can be understood as an extended availability
of media over different social contexts, time,
and space. In media and communication studies the
concept of ‘mediatization’ is used to describe this
reach. With the concept of mediatization we return
to Riepl and his idea of an ongoing differentiation of
diverse forms of communication. As Friedrich Krotz
(2007) explains, the meta-process of mediatization
refers to the increase of saturation of everyday life
with different forms of media communication. The
term ‘meta-process’ indicates that the concept of
mediatization offers a general theoretical framework
in understanding long-term processes of change. It
8
is not possible to research such a long-term process
in one focused empirical study. However, this gives us
the framework to understand in general what is happening
in our changing world.
It is obvious that throughout history the basic number
of technological media has increased as well as
the different uses of these media. Specifically, we
can define mediatization as the ongoing process of
the increase of media communication on temporal,
spatial, and social levels. On the temporal level, the
increasing number of technological media are becoming
more and more accessible. Currently, television
no longer has as many restrictions, but fosters
an ongoing, endless flow of technologically mediated
communication. Similarly, the Internet affords
a possibility for endless surfing. On the spatial level,
media are more and more accessible across different
locales. The telephone, for example, is no longer
a media technology tied to a certain place of communication
such as the office, private home or public
telephone booth. Personalized mobile phones are
available in virtually all locales. The same can be said
for television, as ‘public viewing’ has left the private
home. These examples refer to the social level of mediatization,
which means that an increasing number
of social contexts are marked by media use. Additionally,
computer use is no longer an activity solely
reserved for business contexts. Instead, computer
use has been incorporated into private, public, and
business social spheres. Regarding these three aspects
of mediatization, it is clear that this perspective
encompasses more than a linear process of increase.
With the increase of different media in human life
in general, a synergetic process occurs that brings
mediatization to the forefront. This can be seen in
the way cross-media content production is increasingly
characterized by mediated communication.
Altogether, in a quantitative perspective it is obvious
that we are confronted with a long-standing process

of expanding media communication that also refers
to a qualitative change because of its synergetic aspects.
Conclusion
Aware of the fallacy of the ‘newness’ of digital
media, we can’t understand digital media if we
conventionalize them as something completely
different or new. They must be seen in the context
of different forms of technological media of
communication which we use in everyday life.
In doing so, we gain a different insight into what
the ‘newness’ of digital media may be, hence, their
ability to integrate different forms of personal communication
and mass communication that had
been separated across different media. Such a focus
also offers a point of departure for reflecting the
relation between technological media and cultural
change, a relation that is not a one-to-one effect of
certain media technologies but instead the longterm
process of mediatization.
In conclusion, we should contextualize our theorizing
of digital media in more general questions like
this. If we do so, we overcome the technological
centrism that has plagued much research in digital
media and we obtain a more sophisticated insight
into how digital media are related to present processes
of cultural change. Having this aim in mind,
further work must be undertaken on both theoretical
and empirical levels.
References
Castells, M. (2001): The Internet Galaxy.
Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hepp, A. (2006): Transkulturelle Kommunikation.
Konstanz: UVK (UTB).
Hepp, A. (2007): Transcultural Media Research: Perspectives
for Comparative Media and Cultural Studies
in Times of Globalization. Paper presented at the
Pre-ICA Conference 2007 Methodologies of Comparative
Media Research in a Global Sphere: Paradigms
– Critique – Methods, San Francisco, USA.
Krotz, F. (2007): Mediatisierung: Fallstudien zum
Wandel von Kommunikation. Wiesbaden: VS.
Meyrowitz, J. (1995) Medium Theory. In: Crowley,
D.J./Mitchell, D. (Eds.): Communication Theory
Today. Cambridge: Polity Press, S. 50-77.
Miller, D./Slater, D. (2000): The Internet.An
Ethnographic Approach. Oxford: Berg.
Riepl, Wolfgang (1913): Das Nachrichtenwesen des
Altertums mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Römer.
Leipzig u.a.: Teubner.
Thompson, J.B. (1995): The Media and Modernity. A
Social Theory of the Media.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zook, M. (2005): The Geography of the Internet
Industry: Venture Capital, Dot-Coms, and Local
Knowledge (Information Age Series). Malden u.a:
Blackwell Publishers.
9

3Barbara Grüter
University of Bremen
Professor’s Discussion
Frieder Nake
University of Bremen,
Hochschule für Künste Bremen
Bernd Robben
University of Bremen
Heidi Schelhowe
University of Bremen
Rainer Malaka
University of Bremen
Barbara Grüter
I thought that I would have more time than I expected
when Heidi called me two days ago.
When Heidi called me she said, “Five minutes. Say
something about what you think is central to you”.
Now I feel very exhausted because of the really
good discussion that the students have initiated
here. I will just try to put my mind together and give
you one first idea. First I should say that I am a psychologist
and not a computer scientist. I come from
a different background. When I think about digital
media, I have thought about this topic, ever since
I was a student. As a student I thought about developmental
problems and how something comes
into being. This was my question when I started to
think about psychology. I tried to find an answer
to that question, and I didn’t know at that time
11

that it was such a revolutionary question. I grew up
in times when theory was also inactive, when the
revolution and the communist manifesto were really
what we believed in, of course, in a certain form. So
I thought about the emergence of novelty and how
to approach that question because if you have an
answer to that question, you include the emergence
of novelty. This paradox intrigued me and guided my
further studies and thinking. Later on (I won’t tell the
whole story), I thought that everyone who studies
this question is lost because everyone says, “Okay, it is
a very important question, but nobody wants to fund
it.” So I was very interested in studying this topic but
I also have to make a living from what I am doing. So
I shifted this question to software development. This
particular question is hard to solve although I had a
clear notion of the problem. At that time, when I was
a psychologist and I did not have an idea of software
development, my question was,
“How can a weak logical structure which is guided by
the mind be enhanced to overcome and develop a
stronger logical structure? If you only have the means
of the weak structure, how can you come to that
stronger structure?”
This was the question that I put forward. I tried to put
this question into the framework of software development.
In 1985 I started to think more deeply about
software development. In the beginning of the 90’s
I began to work for a company and there I studied
my empirical subject. I studied the process of software
development over one year. I was there every
week, and on Fridays the company held their meetings.
Additionally, I discussed with 2 male and 2 female
programmers whether they could work on their
tasks and think aloud while working. I recorded this
and studied it as well. This was my encounter with
computer science. Let me jump ahead. I still like to
frame our questions in this way today. My position
12
is that computers only become media by use, and if
we use them, we change them by that use. This is my
starting point with regards to digital media. I have reformulated
this developmental problem by working
in the field of computer science. When I work on the
problems of computer applications such as the ones
we encounter in our master’s project, I look for ways
to formulate this question again. For example, when
I design mobile games, I ask how I can involve the
gamer as a producer of the game. So this is a similar
question to me. So this is just what I want to say. Next
topic now.
Frieder Nake
The question, Heidi, if I understood what you have
put forward, was regarding why, what, and how we
put a particular course into the 600-module of Media
Theory and Analysis. This is how I tried to think
when I thought about what I was going to say here
within a very short time. I was thinking of the course
I was part of just now entitled “Signs, Media and
Algorithms” with the subtitle is “A Semiotic Approach
to the Foundations of Digital Media”. I was not aware
that this course was part of the 600-module, but
that was my personal hang-up because I don’t like
this whole system. The course was closed and Katja
approached me and said, “Oh, I thought this course is
module number or something, while the catalog has
printed something else.” I looked up my files, which
indicated that the course carried the module number
that Katja had expected. So I sent an email to the lady
who is responsible for assigning course numbers. She
was very nice and said that perhaps it was a misprint.
So somehow this has to do with theory, but most
seriously, theory in my mind is the development of

a perspective. The development of a perspective.
The development, of course, has two sides that
everybody knows: there is a process of doing this
and there is a result, hopefully a product. Most of
the time I think that when we use the term ‘theory’,
we think about a finished idea or product. I should
have introduced myself. I am a mathematician, so I
am not a computer scientist nor am I a digital media
person. In mathematics, there are those theories
which you can put into a box, which have a set of
three or five axioms, and those which you can spell
out precisely such that everybody understands.
The latter are the clearest statements of the human
mind - wonderful, beautiful in themselves, logical
in themselves, ethical beyond all doubts, wonderful
- but outside of the realms of arithmetic, there is
no such theory that you can carry home. Theory is
always activity, it seems to me. Peirce thought and
wrote about signs for 40 years and people hate him
because they say, “Please tell me the definition of
what Peirce defines to be a sign.” Then the person
comes up with a definition he found somewhere
on the Internet. He then finds a second one, and he
doesn’t understand either of those two. He says that
they contradict each other. But Peirce is a real theoretician.
He was not content with giving a definition
once; he continued developing his definitions and
theories. So he is the first example of the postmodern
thinker and that is when we started to think and
live theory. Studying at a university is a happy situation
for a short period of time, not being confined
to a factory. Everybody likes to be at a university
because they hate where they are. They talk of the
ivory tower. I like to be in the ivory tower, because
at least it is clean there. I tell the others, “Look, you
are sitting on the factory chimney, it is rather dirty
over there.” This is the advantage of theory in the
ivory tower. It is not good for anything besides
enjoyment and human development. This is why
in my classes, there has never been anything
without theory. But I doubt that I have ever
announced anything like a theory. Foundations,
yes, maybe. Introductions, narrations, and something.
Studying at a university is impossible without
theory, that also means without practice. So
when the students’ SmallTalk discussion came up,
you built a beautiful, theoretical statement, a very
powerful one that shoots up to the moon. Or Java,
because Java is practice, SmallTalk is much more
theory. SmallTalk is object-oriented programming.
Almost naturally, it is not good enough for that,
while Java is more appropriate for playing around.
Alan Kay has a vision. He must be studied in order to
understand object-oriented programming.
Bernd Robben
I studied different disciplines and achieved a degree
in mathematics, sociology, and computing Sciences.
My PhD Thesis is about “The Computer As a
Medium”. Since 1995 I have worked at the artecLab
– the laboratory for art, work and technology, and I
currently teach classes in computing sciences at the
University of Bremen. My main research interests
are media theory, human computer interaction and
mixed reality.
I will not talk about what I think about digital media
theory. I wrote a book about “the computer as
a medium,” which you can read and think about. I
want to talk here about how I organized the course
entitled “Theory, Design and Evaluation of Digital
Media” and present my ideas for this course.
I think the term ‘digital media’ comprises myriad
media forms. The course aims at developing an
understanding of the emergence of one single medium
from these different forms of the algorithmic
13

medium. To understand in depth the emergence of
the algorithmic medium, we made a trip from the
past to the future exploring many attempts at creating
new forms of the computer as a medium. We
compared and discussed different approaches. The
starting point was Vannevar Bush, as we mentioned
here. His paper “As We May Think” led us to further
discussions about the concepts of the pioneers
of computer science such as Douglas Engelbart’s
“Augmenting the Intellect”, Alan Kay’s “Personal
Dynamic Media”, and Alan Turing’s thesis “Computing
Machinery and Intelligence”. The aim was not to
learn the important dates of these great men nor
about their inventions, but to sensitize the students
to the social and cultural conditions of the computer
which must be reflected in a historical view. We did
not study the computer as an object but as a process
of a medium “in the making”. In the second part
of the semester, we broadened our view, discussing
the artistic dimension of the medium, including a
discussion of Marshall Mcluhan’s thesis ‘’The Medium
is the Message”, the concept of cyberspace,
the media spaces, and the aesthetical computing
manifesto.
I hope the presentation of these topics and the
discussions, which the students had to organize
themselves, has helped them to understand the
dawn of the computer as a new medium. The computer
exists as a medium, not a gadget, not an instrument,
not a tool, but a single medium, like writing
is a single medium. Actually, I view the computer
as a new form of writing by which a completely new
media space has emerged. I really think that it is a
radically new medium which creates the network of
artificial memory which we are able to access by using
the computer.
Remembering the starting point from Vannevar Bush
and “As We May Think”, the computer as a medium
14
creates a new network of information represented
in a form that is interactively accessible. It involves
social and cultural conditions which let our thinking
“snap to grid.” This is a quote of Peter Lunenfeld and is
clearly a metaphor. Ending my short statement with
this metaphor may enlighten you as to how I have organized
and coordinated this course. Neither in the
beginning nor in the end did I give a strict definition
of the digital medium, but instead provided a rich set
of materials to think about and to work hard on the
concept of the computer as a medium. The students
not only had to present and to discuss their assigned
subject matter, but were also obliged to write a comprehensive
essay about it. If the students start writing
about the topic of media theory their arguments
have to become stronger, and it is necessary to think
and to rethink about all of these discussions during
the course.
I think this was my idea, more or less. But there is one
more topic. Thinking about the relation between theory
and practice, I had to take into account that my
course is the only one where all students of the Master
Program digital media meet and work together. The
idea was to organize two different practice activities.
First, we visited media institutions in Bremen such as
Radio Bremen, the newspaper Weser Kurier, and the
cinema “Kino 46”. This was a good experience to get
to know media institutions in Bremen, especially for
those students who come from abroad. The second
practical activity was a workshop. We wanted to learn
about core applications of digital media. For text, we
studied Adobe Indesign; for pictures, Adobe Photoshop;
for animation, the 3D software Maya. These
workshops definitely did not work very well. One of
the students’ main complaints concerned the organization
of these activities. These workshops should be
taught at the beginning of the course, because the
aim of the workshops were social in nature, to interconnect
peers through teaching. I think that it makes

sense to organize a practical workshop during the
course “Theory, Design and Evaluation of Digital
Media”. The students are right. The workshop must
definitely be redesigned.
Heidi Schelhowe
First I will discuss my own motivations, thereafter I
will discuss a course I taught in digital media and
finally I will discuss the organization of the course.
My personal motivation: In the early 80’s I started
to study computer science, and before that I studied
humanities. I was a teacher. When I started to
study computer science, it was very clear that the
computer was a calculating machine to rationalize
the calculation. This was the computer in early 80’s. I
was strongly convinced by the theoretical approach
of Frieder Nake. He posited that computer science
is the discipline which rationalizes and mechanizes
the tasks of humans. In the 90’s this changed. When
I had the special subject of theoretical computer
science, I expected that there would be an explanation
of what a computer is. So I had very high
expectations concerning this special subject. This
subject concerns mathematical concepts. I didn’t
really see how it could explain what we were doing
in computer science, but nevertheless, I thought
it was a basis for understanding computing. The
Turing Machine has been this kind of basis for
computer science for a long time, but the practice
of computer science has changed. Especially in
the 90’s the computer changed to become a tool
for the people (see Alan Kay and his ideas), and
then it changed to become a medium. I was really
astonished and I wanted to know how it could
change and suddenly be perceived as medium.
That has been the crucial question for me.
How could that change? It has always been my
concern to ask the question in a deeper way: Why
has the perception of the computer changed from
a machine, to an automaton, to a tool, to a medium?
For me, a medium deals with information and
communication, not with processing and production.
So that was the main question I have always
had in my mind, and I have been really interested in
clarifying this question.
So, let me come to one of the course I taught in
2005. It was a reading course, and we read the
book of Manovich , “The Language of New Media”.
This was a 6-credit-points course, so we had a lot
of time for this book. I felt that he tried to answer
the question of what constitutes digital media
from another point of view. I came from computer
science to the computer medium. Manovich came
from a film media background, and asked what the
difference was between the medium I know from
the whole history of movies, and what was ‘new’
in new media. Together we read his book in the
course. I found it very helpful to look deeply into a
single book together with the students in order to
have one trajectory with which to see the history
of the medium, and to discover the difference in
digital media. I felt that Manovich gave some good
explanations on what he sees as a difference. I also
intended for the students in the course to draw
some connections between concrete design, which
is one of the topics in digital media, and also the
theoretical approach of New Media. This approach
was not effective, because I required that the
students write essays on each chapter. Some
discussed it in a peer review. They each had to
write a short paper, and we discussed one paper at
each of the sessions. The task was to draw a connection
between one of their design works to this
15

theoretical approach. I had the impression that this
was very difficult for the students, but nevertheless
I would try it again, perhaps with more concrete
advice and direction. We should discuss if this was
a good approach to take. I also helped prepare this
symposium, intending to invite the general manager
of one of the most innovative design companies
in Bremen. He cancelled on Sunday, unfortunately.
However, I had a long meeting and a long discussion
with him. He told me that it is very important that
the people who work in his company have a good
understanding of what is happening in our society,
and how this relates to the potentials of digital media.
He said that he and his company always want to
tell their clients what will happen in the future, instead
of only relating to what is happening today. In
order to do that, one must have a good understanding
of what constitutes design, what is occurring in
culture, and the potential of the medium itself. Connecting
these ideas was also a goal of my course. I
don’t know how to do it, but perhaps with the work
that Alessandro will present, we will acquire insight
in how to connect concrete design with the understanding
of a medium. This is my intention when
teaching.
Rainer Malaka
I was not originally scheduled for this round of discussions,
but I took the chance to contribute since
I have already taught a number of courses and will
continue to teach many more. In many discussions, I
get the impression that when we discuss theory we
are in fact talking about different things that accidentally
have the same name.
16
I am a computer scientist by training who has spent
some time in the neural sciences. However, all of
my time spent as a researcher was within natural
sciences, engineering, and computer science and not
in social sciences and whatever exists in that regard.
I do not mean that in any negative way. I simply wish
to state that I am no expert in those fields.
(Comment by Frieder Nake: “It is the sunny side.”)
At the University we distinguish between practical
and applied computer science and my group belongs
to the field of practical computer science. A schism
exists between practical and theoretical things. Some
people tend to say that there are practical things and
that everything else is theory. This brings us into
some kind of dilemma. So what happened to me in
these last 2 semesters? First, there are the bachelor
students who want to do their bachelor report. I have
recounted this anecdote already, but some do not
know it nor do they know my point of view.
So, in comes a bachelor student, and usually I ask:
“What do you want to do in your thesis?”
“Well, I don’t know yet.”
“Ok, so let’s see your skill profile. In what do you excel?”
Then, the answer is:
“Well, in programming I am not so good. I try to avoid
that stuff.”
“Ok, what will you do for your bachelor report,
then?”
The answer then is:
“I would like to do some theoretical work.”
Ok, theoretical work is good. We need theory. As Frieder
Nake said - and I agree with his point - theory is
the foundation upon which we can build. If this student
wants to work on theory - great! After some
more questions and answers, at the end, the student
concretizes:
“I would like to write something about user interfaces
and compare them.”
But is that theory? The claim is that it is theoretical

ecause it is not practical. But this negative definition
does not work. It is not theory, but rather
some sort of journalistic work. This is what you read
in Heise and other news tickers and publications,
where people look at some interfaces and write
articles about them. There is no theoretical foundation.
Of course, you can do it, but what this student
wanted to do was just not practical computer science.
There might be a problem in what we define
as theory here in the digital media program. I am
not yet sure if we all agree on a definition. We all
agree that we need a good foundation, a theoretical
background. Since I am not a social scientist I
can only tell you what I think the theoretical aspect
should cover from the disciplines in which I work,
namely engineering and natural sciences.
We need theory from multiple domains for digital
media. At least three aspects that have not been
mentioned yet seem to be of high importance. First,
we need theoretical computer science, because if
we build digital media, then all this digital media will
be implemented on computers. You cannot avoid
computers. If you want to build digital media that
are smart and do clever things, then you must have
the knowledge of the theory behind it. You must
know what things you can implement and what
things you cannot implement. What are the things
we will never be able to implement? What are the
things that will talk a long while to compute? What
are the things that can be very efficiently computed?
Studying theoretical computer science provides
the foundation to answer these questions.
The second part is Artificial Intelligence (AI). There is
a lot of theory behind AI. Students of digital media
should learn about AI and its theory because many
of them want to build smart devices and smart
media. They work on smart textiles, smart games,
interactive mobile applications, smart intelligent
environments, and so on. But if you want to build
a smart environment or a smart digital media that
understands the user, you need to know about the
world of AI. How can we make the object reason?
If you don’t know about reasoning, if you don’t know
about world knowledge, if you don’t know how to
model it, if you don’t know about these theoretical
foundations, you will not be able to build intelligent
media. So, there is a need for theory here.
A third column of theory might be evaluation.
We will actually have a course next semester on
evaluation techniques. In the study program we
will frequently discuss usability, its theoretical
background, and about the importance of evaluating
interfaces. But if we go through the master theses
or bachelor reports, the evaluation parts come
too short, very often. An often found argument goes
like this: “I built my system and I asked five people
to test it and they found it pretty interesting.” But
there is a wealth of theory on how to evaluate and
test interactive systems including methodology
and statistics. If we want to prove that the things
we have made are functional, then we must test
them and familiarize ourselves with the theories behind
them. If we do not prove that our ideas work
and if the data is not sound and reproducible, no
major conference or journal will accept the work for
publication. This is an inadequate basis for a future
academic career.
These are three aspects about theory that are missing
and which we should more heavily emphasize.
Those who are experts on the other side must make
clear what constitutes their theoretical foundation.
One aspect is history, but I am not convinced that
history is indeed theory. An academic field should be
aware of its history, because otherwise an academic
field is no academic field. If the field of mathematics
would start from scratch and not know about
17

history, then it would not work. And in the same way,
it is very important to know about Vannevar Bush,
Alan Kay, Doug Engelbart, and other pioneers in our
field. But is it theoretical work to read their papers
or is it historical research? We need to teach history,
possibly within a module called “Foundations of Digital
Media”. But we should have a clear understanding
of what we understand to be theory and should not
use the term too carelessly for everything where no
concrete systems are built or programmed. Theory is
not just the absence of practical aspects!
Discussion
...
Problem: Student asks for better scheduling of courses
so one is able to attend several courses.
Barbara Grüter
I see that there is a tension between the poles of
opinion. One position is that we have different perspectives,
maybe even a postmodern perspective on
theory, and there is something we can not stabilize
nor fix. The other position is: We have to build applications
and we have to support you in designing and
building those applications and we need a theory for
that. Therefore we will have problems and we need
more than a postmodern feeling about it. We have
to be clear about what we are doing. So there is a
tension between these two opinions on what constitutes
theory. I wish we could work directly on that.
I would propose to discuss that in a further meeting.
Marion Wittstock asks: Any ideas how?
Barbara Grüter
Yes. For example, I would like to discuss with Rainer
Malaka, who has a very clear mind about what he
wants to have within this program and at least what
concepts we should discuss within the lectures. We
18
might not find a solution to our differences, but I
would like to discuss it together and to redefine that.
Bernd Robben
I think we should discuss a bit more about what Rainer
Malaka mentioned, that there are different meanings
and understandings of the word theory and that
we do not all use the term “theory” in the same fashion.
I always was a person who studied the humanities
but I was also on the “dark side”. I studied both
mathematics and social science, while later studying
computing sciences. So I learned early that there is
no common language between scientists of different
disciplines, which is a large problem. What is the
theory of media?
I think that it may be helpful to look at the same discussion
in the scientific field of computer science:
What had to be understood was the difference
between “theoretical informatics” and “the theory
of informatics”. “Theoretical informatics” consists
mainly of mathematics, while “the theory of informatics”
includes social and cultural aspects of the computer.
If we are building a theory of digital media such as
the concept of the Turing Machine, this distinction
is not only important from a mathematical but also
from social and cultural viewpoints. I fear that there
will not be a general theory that includes mathematics
and social science in the same framework. Those
who treat the Turing Machine from the viewpoint of
social science will not go very deep into mathematics
and vice versa.
In my opinion we should aim at a very broad view
of digital media theory which includes both mathematics
and social sciences (and of course more approaches).
Both approaches are important in digital
media studies. Unfortunately, until now there have
been very few people who have a good understanding
of these different subjects. Maybe there
will be more teachers in a few years such as today’s
students of digital media.

Students comment: Our study is like a jungle. I come
from Indonesia. My proposal is: Why not transform
this whole program into a real jungle? There are no
police. But we students have to deal with the Ausländerbehörde
to get an extended VISA. I was at the
Uni and changed to Bremerhaven. And it is hard to
extend my VISA. Maybe therefore it would be better
to make just one administration. It is better. ... for
foreign students it is very difficult.
M.Wittstock wants to help with the VISA problem.
She underlines the scientific approach.
Student
There are several problems, one being the differences
in the expectations of students. Their attitudes
towards theory are different. Therefore, the
kind of theory they need is different. But I think that
since the whole thing is new, and since the administration
needs restructuring or structuring regardless,
the whole thing can be done all together. This
would be my proposal, meaning that not only due
to this symposium our ideas are taken into account
but also at some of the meeting of the Joint Commission
(GK) some students should come and discuss
what should be included in the theory, what
should not be, and all the other problems. For example,
our class with Bernd Robben was very successful,
but the moment it became really successful was
by complete chance that we had already studied. It
was Terry Winograd whom we studied in Bernd Robben’s
class and in the same week we dealt with the
same topic on a completely practical level for our
Master Project with Peter v. Maydell by chance. And
then it really sank and we were really satisfied and
happy and this happiness and satisfaction lasted for
10 days. Then, it was again one course pulling in this
way, the other one pulling in that way. It should be
that not only administrative affairs should be more
structured, but also whoever claims to teach theory
should be in close contact with someone who
claims to teach practice or projects. And in no other
way exists a joint collaboration, it is just on paper. In
order to become aware of the shortcomings within
this program, the Joint Commission needs the criticism
of the students. We attend the classes and we
see what can be linked between classes to provide
a more efficient and complete learning experience.
This is my recommendation. This would aid our understanding
of what needs should be dealt with.
Frieder Nake
First, it is totally clear, particularly for the students,
that the administrative structure and the management
of this joint endeavor must change radically.
This has always been known but for some reason
has never been done. This must happen. I will move
if this doesn’t happen within the next half year, and
the whole program will be stopped.
Second, it must become much clearer than now
what students who have applied to come here from
all over the world should expect out of the course.
Third, the faculty of these four institutions must get
together. They have never ever met in one room.
There have always been some here, some there off
and on. But all faculty must meet! There must be a
continuous effort over half a year with one meeting
each month with all the faculty. How could any
person in good faith claim that they are running a
program which never has met together? I am totally
more upset than you are. You suffer only because
you don’t get your degree or something, but I suffer
much more, because I have known all this shit
for the last 5 years and nothing ever changes. The
beauty of the jungle, and to start this jungle, is the
same beauty as getting lost, although of course
19

these are only metaphors. At one meeting of the
faculty we should discuss what it means to get lost.
Most likely, these guys in this faculty have never gotten
lost. They must be taught by the students how
to get lost and how to enjoy it. So, there must be an
excursion to some maze somewhere, right? Everybody
must experience this. These guys talk about
practice and theory and media, but they don’t ...
I don’t know.
I had raised my hand to say two words about two
ways to approach what is called theory in the different
meanings of the word. Rainer, you are totally
correct. On one hand, let us think about the Turing
Machine. Without expanding too much on the
topic and without delving into the mathematics,
most likely no theorems will be proven about the
Turing Machine. On the other hand let us consider
the theory of commodity. That is a totally different
one. The Turing Machine is a theory about how
people calculate, and it is obvious that no person
in the world has ever calculated the way the Turing
Machine, if it were built, would be calculating. That’s
why it is a theory. Nobody calculates the way the
Turing Machine calculates, but the Turing Machine
explains how all of them are calculating. Isn’t that
great? That is what theory does to you. Wonderful.
And the theory of the Turing Machine is of course a
beautiful mathematical theory. It must be dealt with
as a quintuple. What is a quintuple? What? I thought
a machine is something that you can carry along.
Rather, it is just something that you write on paper.
That is a revelation. Now, commodity. The first volume
of “The Capital”, which is a book of 3 volumes,
starts by Marx writing, “The wealth of all nations in
which the capitalistic way of production reigns, is
a huge assembly of commodities.” Therefore our
analysis starts with commodity. Marx then develops
in about a hundred pages a totally abstract theory
of the commodity and he is keen on emphasizing
20
that what we are talking about here in the first one
hundred pages has nothing to do with what you
meet on the market. That is my point here. When you
are brave enough to survive 2000 pages to arrive at
volume 3, then you are dealing with what is happening
on the market. Okay, what is my point here? Theory
means to distance yourself from your experience,
from the phenomenon, and from the surface appearance.
That is what theory is. Practice is to get yourself
involved, to get your hands dirty. Life is both of them.
That is why social theory is as good as formal theory
at explaining something we have observed. This faculty
should read Paul Feyerabend’s “Against Method”,
to understand that compared with common beliefs,
formal theories don’t explain anything in the same
way that social theories don’t explain anything. None
of them explains anything. They only describe in that
particular way. Now, axiomatic theories are good insofar
as they deal with something that nobody has
ever observed. Social theories are much more difficult
because they deal with things that everyone
experiences all the time. This is why we believe that
they are not theories. Theory is cruelty because people
want to be right where the things are, right when
the storm comes. I want to grab this thing so that the
storm doesn’t take me away. But theory means to go
away with the storm, to a place where no angels dare
to dream of. Theory is dangerous, practice is trivial;
you just sit there and shit. That’s practice. But theory
is to let your mind go away.
Barbara Grüter
What you said is: Theory is like a cloud.
Frieder Nake
But my clouds are totally clear, my clouds are cubes.

4The
Digital Shadow
as a Redundant Extension
Digital Media Master Project 2007
Presented by Alessandro Corsini
“Digital Shadows” is an interactive installation intended
for placement in urban spaces. It calls for
the use of a camera, several beamers, and a digital
videotracking, editing and archival system. At
first confronted with their real-time silhouette surrounded
by other digital shadows picked by the
system out of the shadows archive, users experience
the sudden and unavoidable alienation of
their own images, stored to reappear in an apparently
unpredictable time and place as context for
another user’s interaction. Polemically using the
city, for millennia the heart and symbol of social
interaction, as projection surface of the imaginary
place where digital and physical identities meet, the
installation reminds us of what great part of our social
interaction has moved to the digital realm and
how little we are in control of it. Born from the effort
of a small group of master students, the project has
reached the objective of promoting and visualizing
a metaphor for the problematic coexistence of real
and digital identities. During the symposium, the
installation will raise theoretical issues concerning
media as “extensions of ourselves” and as “cultural
interfaces”.
21

5Media
Theory:
Clarity or Provocation
Moderation: Katja Langeland, Ricardo Cedeño
Preperation: Özlem Sulak, Yarenny Castro Estrada,
Lorena Fabiola Valdes Altamirano, Aizhen Liu,
Alina Anghel, Selin Özçelik, Ricardo Cedeño, Katja
Langeland.
With the title of “Media Theory: Clarity or
Provocation” the first semester students of the
digital media program initiated a discussion about
the role of theory in the program. With the presence
of professors and students, the debate navigated
between three main issues: the field, the program,
and the key content.
With the phrase “We are lost”, the students provoked
the dialogue about the multidisciplinary aspect of
digital media not only as a program but also as a
field. Under the question about which sciences support
the theory on the field, the answers tended to
emphasize the complexity of digital media. In this
framework, media theory may tend to learn how
to deal with a multidisciplinary field and how to be
open to more perspectives.
As a lecture, the theory classes were the first meeting
point for each generation of students. The theory
class created a space to discuss common perspectives
about the program itself. The result was a
flood of possibilities, improvements and directions
23

that were in constant dialog. Here, these inquietudes
were also discussed and exchanged with most of the
academic community.
Finally, a review of Vannevar Bush and the Aesthetic
Computing Manifesto was given for some students
as a new provocation. But the clarity seems to appear
by considering them as part of the field of digital
media and how they are present in the field.
The following transcription on the next pages shows
some details of the discussion. There are ideas, arguments,
agreements and differences between an
academic community who exchanges opinions and
understandings to find solutions. Please note that
we have abridged some of the text and have made
some names anonymous.
Moderators: This Semester students from different
parts of the world and disciplines met atBernd Robben’s
“Theory of Digital Media” course. Students from
different backgrounds such as computer sciences,
engineering, media and cultural studies, and product
and graphic design created a good environment
in which to discuss media theory. We also realized
that the role of media theory was not at all clear in
our minds. Therefore, our main goal lay between the
two poles of clarity and provocation. We also felt a
bit lost. So we used the opportunity to map the field
of media theory.
Of what topics does the hybrid field of digital
media consist? What kind of media theory arises
from these topics? Here you see a relatively rough
map in which we put the field of digital media studies
in the center, although we admit that this action
could be considered a little pretentious. Continuing,
we have the theories of art, natural sciences, cultural
studies, design, computer science, and media and
communication studies. Together these six fields
form the digital media program, explaining the wide
variety of backgrounds of students within the program.
This generates uncertainties and difficulties in
24
obtaining focus. The question is: How could we approach
these different fields in order to create new
forms of digital media? Is it good to be lost? Maybe
it would be nice if we could get comments especially
from the students. How do you feel? Is this good a
summary of the whole process?
Natural
Sciences
Art
Cultural Studies
Digital Media
Studies
Media /
Communication Studies
Design
Computer Sciences
Barbara Grüter: I am not a student but I can answer
how I feel. Sometimes I also feel that I have been lost.
I think this is a particular feature of our field because
of its complexity and dynamics. We always reach
the limits of what we know. And then of course we
feel lost. We have some previous knowledge and try
to map what we do not know, to understand or to
get a feeling for the unknown. In a certain way the
teachers are in a situation similar to that of the students.
This is the first remark. The secondary remark is
that I would think about this field not only as a summary
or something that is receiving input from different
theories. I would also like to think about our
topics. I would like to think about what we call the

actor or user and his or her relationship to the world
mediated by the media we are trying to understand
and develop. I do not see this relationship in this
map. I would like to put that at the starting point
and then try to understand the contributions of the
other people and fields.
Student: Did you try to choose two theories which
are really opposite and try to combine and analyze
them? This could be a solution to your problem.
You could pick two, combine them and analyze the
third. Or, perhaps make two triangles and then try
to start from the basics and then expand. It is just a
proposal.
Guest: I just wonder how natural sciences constitute
digital media theory.
Moderators: For example, there is a student with a
background in biology, and in our theory course we
studied a topic related to biogenetics. Maybe I could
give you an outline of what we did in this term.
What is a medium? We analyzed the differences between
old media and new media by reading historical
texts such as Vannevar Bush’s MEMEX, which we
shall discuss later in our presentation. We learned
about computer intelligence, human-computer
interaction, information and hypertext as ways to
write and read new media, free software, design,
etc. The most commonly used reference was the
New Media Reader. Some backgrounds were covered
more, some less. Each of these backgrounds
deals with such large amounts of theory that it was
sometimes hard to get people to agree. That is why
we want to continue and to ask: How much of this
map is currently covered by digital media in your
courses? How do you feel about it?
Student: There is very little choice in the courses that
we are offered. I do not see a connection between
course A and course B. This addresses the point of
this mapping system; if these universities provide
courses that cover these several areas, there should
be a connection.
Moderators: This is more like a multidisciplinary
course of study. That is the reason why digital media
is in the center of the map. Supposedly, digital
media connects all of those topics. But sometimes
people in this program of study feel that these topics
are so separated and so different, that it is impossible
to make connections between them. On
the other hand, inside the study program it is also
felt that there is not enough coverage from the different
topics around digital media. There are scant
between lectures. That is why the question marks
appear here. How much of this map is covered by
digital media? Should we cover the entire map?
That may be quite impossible. How much should
be covered? Perhaps 50 or 10 percent. Who decides
which field should be more heavily emphasized for
any topic? How much coverage of a certain topic is
needed in the digital media studies?
Barbara Grüter: The idea is that there is certain,
given knowledge of what has to be taught, like
sections of a cake. So, who decides whether a given
slice of cake is part of digital media or not? But
we do not have such a strict format of knowledge.
In this way, I agree with you that we have to theorize
and develop within media theory the ideas of
how to understand what is beyond our knowledge,
how to build common ground, how to understand
the logical contradictions between different disciplines,
and how to identify novel ways to merge
those different formats. In my view, we have a form
of developmental sciences which has enabled us to
move between different options and to turn them
into new opportunities. Therefore it is not a stabilized
format of knowledge or sometimes there is a
25

little bit of stabilized format but it is not only that. It
comes into movement during our learning and
working processes.
Student: Should all the fields on that map be included
in digital media? I mean, is digital media open
to everybody? For instance, could a heart surgeon
study digital media?
Moderators: I do not know.
Heidi Schelhowe: I am Heidi and I work in a special
application field of digital media and education. That
was what I missed in the picture before that you did
not point out. The idea when we established this
program was also to have several different application
fields such as: How to deal with fields of education?
Because I really feel that we have to understand
something in the field of education, if you want to
apply digital media into the field of education.
Concerning the question of the whole program, the
program as a whole is a new field coming up and
digital media is one. Sometimes you have fields that
are only a combination but I have the impression
that you want a new scientific and academic discipline.
I believe that there is a new discipline coming
up nowadays which is emerging out of computer
science. That is one of the fields. Art and design is
another field. When we started such a program, it
was the same as when computer science began. It
was a combination of mathematics and engineering.
The faculty who thought this field would be
emerging believed that the next generation would
be educated in both fields. But our faculty is educated
in only one field. We are not really able to combine
all these fields. But we have to discuss and have
discourse on what the theory behind it could be and
how it could develop. So we are not able to bring
all of these courses fields together in our courses.
I fear we are not able, so that will be the task of the
26
new generation educated in both fields. But what we
should do is discuss with each other and with you if
there is a new theory developing out of computer
science, design, art, and applications.
Guest: I study human-computer interaction and usability.
I wonder with the map is that whoever comes
to your digital media program has a right to have
their particular background incorporated in the program.
It sounds you have collected all your backgrounds.
This is very interesting because one’s personal
background will always stimulate their interest
in digital media. You make a connection yourself. This
connection may also be institutionalized, but it needs
not be. It could be just your personal connection because
of your background. That is very interesting
and perhaps productive but I think it is not appropriate
for digital media to incorporate that into a theory.
If you look at that map you have a common subject
in the middle with which you are dealing and this is
something that already connects all these other things.
The different surrounding subjects offer their particular
perspectives and those who teach digital media
offer their particular perspectives on those subject.
I agree with Heidi that over time there will be a process
of teaching and communicating with each other as we
are doing now in this symposium. Ideally a common
understanding of what makes digital media a
particular field will emerge. I do not know whether
or not that is the theory. I think of Andreas Hepp who
said that a theory which also applies to other media
will develop. Thus, we have media communication
studies.
Student: For me, digital media is like a cloud covering
all of these subjects. For me it is not so tangible,
I can not exactly define digital media or digital
media theory. For me, digital media is like a tool for all
these subjects which aids in realizing or creating new
things. Digital media courses should not necessarily

involve all of these subjects, but we would obtain
good results if we did combine them.
Student: I am a digital media master student as
well. When we were discussing the terminology
of art or computer science in digital media theory
class, the discussion began and finished with the
same questions, such as: What is art? What is communication?
What is media? We still wonder about
those questions. The common language for talking
to each other is not clear at all. I speak Spanish and
you speak German and maybe Russian, Lithuanian,
or Romanian. We talk about the same things, but
we cannot understand each other. The discussion
feels endless and everytime we arrive back at the
beginning. This is why we still feel lost and are not
able to communicate effectively.
Rainer Malaka: I teach digital media at the University.
Somehow I should know what digital media is.
Somehow I am still in the process of learning it. But
I have to confess that I still do not know what digital
media is.
I think your questions like: What is x, what is art?
What is digital media? are really broad questions
that we should always keep asking ourselves. What
are we doing there? For what are we searching?
What are the answers? These are all great questions.
What is art? is an extremely pertinent question,
because art can be a lot of things, from artistic
things, to craft and the art of programming, to the
art of doing something. Art can have very different
meanings. On the other hand, examine whatever
discipline you study, let it be digital media, computer
science, artificial intelligence or even neurobiology.
What should people learn in that discipline?
Perhaps mathematics, maybe some biology, etc.
You always start and end up like this. And if you go
to a curriculum-based study program somewhere,
you will find teachers who are experts in a certain
domain. Often you would find out that there is no
link between the faculty, or that some of them do
not talk to each other. The older you become, the
less you talk to people; you stick to your own domain.
Some of us still keep trying to communicate
as much as possible with other people. The ones
achieving communication are mostly the younger
ones, the students.
If you are looking for the link between these disciplines,
for the link between the teachers or professors,
then maybe you are the link to bring them together.
This might be confusing, but also a chance
to select your project and to set your center of gravity
somewhere. In most cases, this could be pretty
personalized; you can find your personalized focus
in digital media. There is no predefined thing, in all
four institutions; this is open-ended on purpose.
You can emphasize design, computer interaction,
or artificial intelligence and still study digital media.
In these four semesters, people can just make the
most of their situation. If you really want to find a
definition for digital media then I would say that as
a computer scientist, the center of gravity of digital
media lies somewhere between computer science
and design. Maybe for other people more originating
from art or probably design, the center of gravity
lies more in design and art with some computer
science. There might be one person here, Frieder
Nake, who is sometimes right in the middle. Maybe
he is the center of gravity.
Andreas Hepp: I can really say something about
that question from another perspective of communication
studies. We have a discussion about that
for a long time. What is at the center of the discipline?
I think, one point I just can communicate that
is there is a big difference between discipline as an
academic institutionalized thing and as student
27

program. We, colleagues of mine, are teaching very
different student programs which are sometimes
very short. For media communications, it is the only
question which role media communication plays in
what time. It can be very different, it can be cultural,
it can be social. It can be on a very small scaled community.
And this kind of structuring, you would find
in very different disciplines, at least in social sciences
and humanities.
Frieder Nake: I am a student, too. In this map, with
the six fields identified there, it is intriguing that you
labeled two of them as sciences, two of them as studies,
and two just have names. Let me assume that
they are practices. That is perhaps interesting that
you put them with nicely opposed beginnings and
endings. I wonder of course, why any n number of
other disciplines do not appear, such as philosophy.
It is impossible to study digital media without philosophy.
Or why not semiotics? Semiotics will encompass
all of these. Why not theology or the theory of
dogmatism. You and even some professors start with
“We are lost.” I thought, ”That is great! At least they
are lost, which means something is really stable.”
What else would you expect as a human being other
than being lost. That is why I mentioned theology.
There is no reason to attend a university unless you
are lost. One other reason I know is that you want to
get a better job than the terrible jobs you can find
nowadays. So, we are caught between the disciplinary
question: Where do these disciplines come from?
There is the world; the world is what it is and nothing
else. So, you then wear certain yellowish, greenish
or whatever glasses and you look at the world and
you call that a perspective. You study the world from
a perspective and you discover certain phenomena.
And then somebody says, “Look we are making
money here, we need some guys with green glasses
we call that discipline A and some others from
28
discipline B.” That is for those who do not want to get
lost. It would be great if our study program in Bremen,
with all its complexities, was named “The Study
of Getting Lost”.
Marion Wittstock: I agree with Andreas Hepp and
Frieder Nake. To find out what digital media really is,
we have to formulate the question more precisely.
And “formulating the question more precisely” is not
saying “what is it”. Where, and under which conditions
does this question appear? We are not trying
to get the terms with our basic paradigms. When we
tried that early during the development of the digital
media program, we had some help from Mihai
Nadin. He told us that we would either develop our
own research question and somehow claim a certain
research domain, develop our own methodology,
or digital media would never become a discipline in
its own right. Therefore, I would not say this is getting
lost. We should focus on different aspects, such
as what kind of questions and methodologies from
other disciplines we could follow to delve deeper into
the study of digital media. We should “get lost” in that
sense, to gather those questions and methodologies
from different disciplines. We should apply them to
our research in the masters or PhD projects.
Student: What I have seen in this discussion is that
there is a slight complaint about the fact that there is
no structure to this field. But I think this is the original
character of the digital media subject in itself. Various
digital media show us that everything is constantly
evolving and changing. We are starting to realize this
but if we realize this we have to accept that we have
no stable situation. There are no final decisions. After
each decision is made, we see there is a new perspective
to it. Digital media is rather an intangible
subject. It is cultural technology. If we ask ourselves
how to master this subject, we could be asking: How
do I become a good writer? Should I improve my

writing skills in order to become a good programmer?
What and for whom do I write? There are two
ways and both ways are right. This program should
allow both strategies because we need both strategies
to develop our projects. I think it is frustrating
for some people that we are interested in technology
and that means we like structures that have results
but when we start reflecting upon for whom
we develop these solutions, we find out that this
field is rather dynamic.
Moderators: We want to continue and just slightly
shift the focus of our discussion. While we did our
studies of theory some problems arose, but these
problems were not only related to the discourse of
theory but also with the whole program. We called
this a “case study” of things with which we might
have problems, such as applying theory into practice
or finding missing links. We also had to learn
how to collaborate with people from different backgrounds
and to find common ground on which we
could communicate with each other. Additionally,
the output we have to prepare for many courses
should ideally prepare us for our master’s thesis.
Finally, diversity is missing in the courses. During
the whole semester, we had a lot of discussions
about which things were not working well.
Student: I want to return to the “heart surgeon problem”.
I have been thinking about this during the presentation.
Of course, a heart surgeon can apply to
digital media and he will probably be accepted. This
is exactly what gets me excited about being here.
When he does his surgery, there are cameras inside.
He can do two things: design or art. He could produce
an interactive design of how he performs surgery.
So I could actually experience a surgery before
being in the operating room. If the surgeon records
the videos and external sounds from the street, it
will be a video art piece in which what is interior
and exterior would be played. This is limitless. This
is why I am here, and this excites me. So, coming to
the problems, coming to this list. If I was the heart
surgeon who wants to do one of these two projects,
I would be very lost here. Because I would not be
able to have access to other courses that I would
like to have in order to produce a project as well as
I would like.
The problem is that we cannot go in depth into our
interests. We really do not have time, nor are classes
very accessible. One of the problem concerns language.
The digital media master program is in English.
If we want to take an undergraduate course,
those are taught in German. The credit points do
not match either. I enjoy the fact that the program
is broad but I am upset that I cannot delve deeper
into one subject for a period of time in order to facilitate
my learning goals.
Barbara Grüter: I have one comment to add. The
project is supposed to be an opportunity to go
deeper into one topic. I would suggest for you to
wait.
Student: There is something I would like to add.
What we certainly have learned, although we are
confused, is to collaborate. I think this is a core
issue. Different people come together and have
completely different understandings of the same
thing. At first, you try to communicate and then
you realize how many different viewpoints exist.
Later, you try to apply that knowledge to your own
thinking and try to come up with an alternative
solution. It would be great if this process worked
well. But we would still need time and facilities to
dive into a particular topic. The only course I took
this term in which I had a great understanding was
the course on semiotics, and still I have not had
enough time and am still not satisfied.
29

Student: This blending of professions, is it healthy?
For example, a person may spend eight years on
one thing and he may become very good at that. He
spends four years doing different things, and he may
not be as good in either of them.
Heidi Schelhowe: It may be better to wait until the
second term, because the project is a very central
part of our study program. With the master project
you can delve deeply into one topic. You might
not have the courses but our role as faculty consists
mostly of giving advice on where to find the information
you need. The role of the teachers in the project
is that of a moderator, who helps you find your
own path. In addition, the main part of your master
thesis is about researching one subject very deeply. I
feel that this program gives you more freedom than
other programs.
Rainer Malaka: I think the digital media program
establishes new connections between formerly
divided fields. It is rather important in digital media
to know how to set up these relations and how to
think about whether these relations are sensible or
not. In order to execute these relations, we have to
become technicians to a certain degree. But purely
being a technician and specialist in digital media
would be a broad perspective for this program in
general.
Barbara Grüter: What is digital media? What is art? I
think the questions you formulated in your course
imply that you might have come to some incorrect
conclusions. These questions imply that you may
have the right answers. I do not think that you will
learn the right answer to these questions. You will
see answers from different perspectives and disciplines.
The discipline of digital media, if it is a discipline
at all, is not old enough to have its own perspective.
It does not have an answer to anything yet.
30
Asking many artists these questions and discussing
the answers will not result in a theory. You will not
leave with a theory of digital media but perhaps with
many relevant perspectives which will help you perform
in various contexts. So, you would be prepared
to see in different perspectives, and be able to choose
an area in which to work and apply what you have
learned.
Moderators: Beside the collaboration of people,
we faced another problem in our last digital media
theory course. We studied digital media theory on a
timeline, from the 1940’s to 1990’s. There were people
who asked for more recent theoretical papers during
this class, in order to get to know about recent
developments in this field. What do you think about
that?
Rainer Malaka: I can answer your question only from
my point of view. … You are under high pressure in
two years in this program. I would say in general, all
of the MA students I know have the same feeling. You
have much more experience than our BA students. In
the first semester, it is hard work for every person. You
do not know anything in the first semester. Teachers
teaching the core courses in the MA program have
similar problems. But I can say that everything will
change in the second semester. This is my experience
not only with the MA program in digital media also
with the teachings in that context.
Frieder Nake: It is correct. You are the victims. The
Europeans decided to destroy their well-established
and beautiful third level study programs by turning
them into BA/MA programs without understanding.
At a good university in the US, if anybody applies for
an MA program, this is a mature person with a lot of
background in some subject. And the person believes
he or she wants to scientifically study this subject
matter, not solely for a profession. Because in the US

the BA means “this person has a profession”. At a
good university in the US, you apply after long deliberations
to an institution, such as Carnegie Mellon,
and you go to an interview with four professors
for four days. You have looked up their publications
and ask to study under their guidance. Only a small
number is accepted. As long as Germans and Europeans
do not do this, we will be stuck in this situation.
There must be a foundation. Sixty people are
in this MA program with different ethnic, religious,
professional, age, and experience backgrounds
each year. At first, everybody must accept that we
are lost here. How can sixty of us develop some
identity without considering our backgrounds in all
these German surroundings? …
Barbara Grüter: I am the person who should say
something now. Leave Bremen as soon as you
can! But maybe you are also a victim of all German
professors, I do not know. I want to come back to
the issue of why we teach media theory in the first
term. One proposal from Frieder Nake was to learn
the history of the media we study and get to know
how those things can develop your own research
goals. The second possibility could be just to think
about what it means to build a common ground in
this field. You can conduct this in different ways but
you should think about yourself in this field.
Student: I was really happy to join these high potential
students of the digital media program in Bernd
Robben’s course. I have studied here since 2003,
and took a break for one year. Last semester I got
the chance to have this course. I witnessed some
progress. I want to come back to the efforts many of
you made, because in the media theory course we
saw that the basic problem of “being lost” does not
exist on an intellectual level but on an organizational
level. I have studied this program for a long time
and I feel that it is arrogant to say that these persons
are really creative in being lost. Because I know that
many of you have traveled thousand of kilometers
to come here with specific expectations that you
really want something from this digital media study.
I noticed that in this course because I had so many
discussions with you and I noticed the deep interest
in understanding digital media theory.
So, what I want to suggest is just to be honest in
discussing this point, that there are some very serious
mistakes occurring in the administration.
That is fine. It is a pioneering program of study. It is
difficult to organize such a program within 4 universities.
Most of the students are international ones
who do not know the background of the German
system of education. They do not know about the
differences of the four Hochschulen. That is not
their fault, it is just a communication problem in this
program. Hochschule Bremerhaven starts its
lectures in September, University of Bremen in the
middle of October, HfK and Hochschule Bremen
start at the beginning of October. Is it so difficult
to organize a common starting point for the whole
program?
Frieder Nake: They must do that, but they do not.
Student: Can we become creative students with
creative ideas? This course was the only course this
semester in which all the digital media MA students
were able to meet together.
Barbara Grüter: I am really glad that you were able
to work together in such a course. That was our
aim. But a problem is that we have several topics
here in the middle of our discussion. One is the role
of Media theory in digital media studies, another
concerns organizational problems.
Student: There should be a structure by which
31

someone whose mother tongue is German should
help us through the whole process. This is a very basic
thing. It should not be a problem to change between
the universities. If it is a program organized by
four universities, this should be very simple.
Barbara Grüter: I agree with you. These are hardwired
institutions which really resist to change. We
are trying to build something that allows us to go
through borders and look for the others and communicate.
But we still suffer because of these structures
that you have experienced in a very hard way. What
I can recommend is to write to one professor before
it comes to the end. I think that everybody will help
you to solve this situation of bureaucracy.
(Break)
Moderators: How can media theory change someone’s
vision? We had 16 different topics on media
theory in our course and want to give you
some examples.
Student: Some people wonder why we should read
papers from 60 years ago in order to learn media theory.
The paper I am going to discuss was published
in 1945, so it is 62 years old. But when I read it, I said,
“Wow, Vannevar Bush is an amazing guy!” He had the
idea of a machine called MEMEX. His idea of the ME-
MEX was to compress all books and all information
available into one machine, creating individual trails
and links. The idea of the MEMEX was very influential,
as it strongly influenced Douglas Engelbart, the
inventor of the mouse, the word processor, and the
hyperlink. I read in a Chinese book that Engelbart really
thought of Vannevar Bush as his godfather and
that he considered Bush’s papers and ideas like a bible.
At that time, Vannevar Bush thought of inventing
a machine to which we can talk, which would type up
our words and answer our questions. But until now,
32
speech recognition and related concepts need to
develop further to achieve this goal. Bush also
dreamed up the concept of immediate photography
as well as compression and miniaturization.
Sometimes the students cannot learn anything from
a theory course at all. Maybe I don’t like the course,
the instructor. Or I just don’t like it at all. Perhaps the
teacher has given me reading material which I do not
read. Sometimes other students give a presentation
and I do not come to class. I complain afterwards that
I have not learned anything at all. If you really read,
you will learn different aspects of your field.
For example, you might want to do excellent programming
or work in a profession using Adobe Photoshop.
Have you ever thought about where this
technology originated? Where does object-oriented
programming originate? What is the history of the
Internet? We use the Internet everyday without realizing
where it came from. It comes from Bush’s ideas.
It is amazing.
These questions I often asked myself as a master student
. We should not only learn the technology of the
present, we should be aware of the creative minds
behind the technology. We try to be creative students.
By doing so, maybe we can change the world by creating
tomorrow’s new technology, new software, and
new equipment. That is what I have learned from
these people. I would suggest that if you have not
read this paper yet, you should really read it.
Vannevar Bush believed that there are two kinds
of people. One is the creative man, the other is the
repetitive man. Starting from repetitive thought
you can make some machine which repeats what a
human thought. But this model is limited to
well-defined problems. On the other hand, the
creative mind enables artists to build inspiring pieces
of art which a robot or a computational model
produce with today’s technology.

Vannevar Bush is amazing because he really influenced
the development of computer science in
the 20 th century. However, he was never actually
engaged in the development. His ideas influenced
other people such as Douglas Engelbart.
Student: Why did people give him money? He was
also the founder of a system which actually was
used for building weapons.
Student: He viewed military, industry, and academy
as an iron triangle. They help one another. At that
time, he wanted to build a weapon. But he realized
that weapons can destroy human civilization. Later
his ideas changed towards the belief of new technologies
augmenting human intelligence. That is
my personal experience with media theory and this
paper. I shared my experience with you.
Moderators: Our last topic is the Aesthetic Computing
Manifesto.
Student: I want to say something general about
the theory class. I really enjoyed it, because at the
beginning we read the Vannevar Bush paper and I
wondered why. Afterwards I realized that we were
progressing on a time line and I accepted the fact
that it was going to make sense at the very end. The
Aesthetic Computing Manifesto was the last paper.
I presented it even though I did not have any
idea about the topic prevously. It has two words
that I really like. One is “aesthetic”, the other one is
“manifesto”. I presented relative aesthetic theories
from Kant and David Hume about how we perceive
things, whether it is sensual, and where the feelings
of enjoyment or pain and cognition lay. And then
we discussed different manifestos which were usually
artists’ declarations. It was very intriguing to see
this in the context of computer people. They came
up with a manifesto which showed that they were
very displeased about how things were going and
wanted radical change. That was their intention.
Later when we discussed this in class, it was interesting
to observe that the people from computer
engineering background could not comprehend
the Dadaist manifesto or why it was so important.
It created a good environment of people of two
very different backgrounds exchanging ideas contradicting
and conflicting each other. In my opinion
the Aesthetic Computing Manifesto was a good
example of the core ideas found in the digital
media program. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it
since it suggested a different way of thinking which
is both scientific and artistic.
Moderators: We will close now. We hope that you
may want to add some of your experiences you
had in this digital media theory class. “Clarity and
Provocation: Media Theory” clarifies some incidents
in history and also in our mind, but it will always be
a provocation.
Marion Wittstock: I would just like to add some
advice. You should take your list of complaints to
the joint commission. We will discuss it there.
Frieder Nake: I would like to make one very brief
comment and then ask a question for further
clarification, or at least out of curiosity. A little
comment only, about “Media Theory: Clarity or
Provocation”. I would suggest “and”, because any
attempt to clarify is a provocation in the literal sense
of the word.
This question is more connected to this manifesto
that you apparently discussed. It is amazing that
this particular manifesto, of which I am a co-author,
but I guess the one who was most opposed to that
particular manifesto because I found it much too
lean and smooth and without provocation. You
33

discussed the whole idea of a manifesto as well.
There is a manifesto called “The Software Manifesto”
which would be interesting to read in this context.
It is too long to be a great manifesto. The idea of a
manifesto is important in our context. Two years ago
we hosted an American artist named Mark America.
He taught a block course. They started the first morning
by writing a manifesto. In this way he introduced
the topic of manifestos. There was a journal as well
called Design and Language. In each of its issues it
reprinted a manifesto, starting of course with the
Communist manifesto and then several others. The
idea of a manifesto as one kind of text could perhaps
be something really interesting to study, to take up,
to use as a form in digital media. I would like to think
about it.
Like The Bremen Manifesto of Media Theory.
34

6From
Marketplace
to Agora - The Internet as
a Community Space
Wolfgang Coy
I am very happy to be here. I have deep, deep memories
of Bremen. Yesterday in the Rathaus I had a
very warm welcoming.
Today, I would like to talk about the development of
the Internet in the last ten years. I have been circling
around questions of theory. I will not talk about
theory in a serious sense, because it is certainly not
possible in such a short period.
The topic I want to discuss is the difference between
the Internet before 1995 and after 1995. The special
subtopic focuses on the differences both after 1995
and after 2002. It seems to me that are different
layers of the Internet now, which require that we
take a deeper look at them. I have used some pairs
of words to describe the differences.
The Greek word agora in essence means
‘marketplace’, specifically the marketplace where
Socrates stood around and answered questions
that were asked to him by townspeople. After
answering these questions, some townspeople
became enlightened. At least, Plato was enlightened.
This is agora. At the same time it was also a
35

marketplace were one could buy vegetables and
food of any kind. ‘Marketplace’ and agora are in
essence somewhat the same words for different
things. One is a public space – agora – where politics
happen, where people meet to discuss the state of
the city and state of affairs. Also, it is in a certain way a
place where private meetings could take place.
This difference between private space and public
space is very interesting. Nowadays, in many cities
we have something called “the street”. You can go
to the street, you can demonstrate on the street. But
there are more and more shopping malls built in the
cities. In shopping malls you are not even aware that
you are no longer in the street, but are on private
property and are subject to different legislation. There
is clearly legislation for the street - an open, public
space - and another for the shopping mall. Yesterday,
for instance, we were in the Lloyd passage. I do not
know whether it is a public or private space. It is hard
to tell. It looks like a private space, but I am not sure.
There is even a difference in the architecture. The
same thing happened to the Internet.
The Internet is a public space to some extent as seen
by its history. At least, it was publicly founded and
financed. Now to a large extent it is a shopping
mall. This is an interesting shift. In the context of
media, I want to go back 200 years, when the first
newspapers were regularly published. As Jürgen
Habermas noted in his seminar work of 1961 on
the structural change of the public sphere, the free
press, at least in traditional Western democracies,
was an essential element of the self-reflection of the
new bourgeois society. Self-reflection of society requires
media. Otherwise it can rarely occur. The basic
medium of the parliamentary democracy was the
newspaper. This has changed and it is interesting to
consider what Habermas pointed out back in 1961.
This is in fact is media theory, but not too many
36
people recognize it as such. You have to read this book.
It is a rather large volume, around 800 pages. The
second book you should read is “Process of Self
Reflection” by Nikolas Luhman, which is actually
about the process of self-organization of society. This
process of self-reflection, and at the same time of
self-organization, was not as free as one would assume,
because the press is usually in private hands.
You may hear the saying that “Freedom of the press
is the freedom of the people who own that press”.
This demonstrates that freedom is not easily gained.
And the question which I want to pose is, “What has
changed with the Internet?” Of course, freedom of
the press does not mean that societies have always
been self-reflecting. There was, of course, also a commercial
side of the printing press. In this picture you
see how it looked in London in middle of the 19 th
century. This is also a model of how societies may
develop.
In the 20 th century, this all culminated into what is
now called mass media. I think that mass media is
a product of the 20 th century. It will fade away. Mass
media has neither a future nor perspective. Because
the Internet is not a mass medium, the media processes
inside the Net are also not mass medium
processes. This is also debatable. Perhaps the very
structure of mass media was restricted to the 20 th
century. This is a lucky idea because mass media usually
means a lot of organized joy and entertainment
and very rare moments of reflection. On the other
side, it is a very unlucky realization, because where
will the self-reflection of society occur if mass media
is gone? It is a difficult situation. We are in-between a
very difficult development.
In the next slide you can see and read, in German, the
propaganda of Nazi radio on the left side and the propaganda
of a private television broadcaster in Austria
from ten years ago on the right side. They are very

similar. They say, “There is politics, there is entertainment
and there is togetherness, and we all have to
say together.” The sentence the Nazis used was: “Wir
senden Frohsinn, wir spenden Freude.“ I think this is
the shortest possible description of mass media. It
has nothing to do with news or reflection and nothing
to do with information or education. It is just
entertainment. And this is the very basic structure
of that.
Of course, we can make some short observations
about typical broadcast delivery, broad distribution,
or what quasi-monopole or oligopoly mean
in many countries. It is freely available in public,
it has a broad content of general interest, it is up
to date, it is updated regularly, and it has controlled
information. This means that typical mass
media has some sort of editorial line, certain
opinions which are supported by the producers of the
medium. Usually they have a self-description of
being open to any opinion, but of course they are
not. They are privately owned or governmentdirected.
The main goal is entertainment and the
whole thing is called a “program”. Newspapers
have certain programs, TV-stations have a certain
programs. “Our station sends only the truth and the
truth only”.
Media and networks have very interesting
self-stabilization process, which means that if they
have more users, they usually must generate more
content. If they have more content, they achieve a
higher value. If they achieve a higher value, they
attract more users. This is of course a spiral. It is a
basic strategy of media to try to become important.
Mass media are in some equilibrium of expansion.
They have certain areas they occupy, which they
have to defend against opponents. This may also be
a description of the computer networks in which we
can retrospectively say that ARPANET was the most
important. It was certainly not the only one, but
for several well known reasons it became the general
ground for preparing the Internet. Protocols of
ARPANET have basically become the protocols of
the Internet. In this sense, we can say that the history
of the Internet is ARPANET.
What can we do with such a network? An
awful lot. Initially, ARPANET was intended solely
for computation on a distant computer or for file
exchange. But in fact, we can communicate, we can
chat, we can discuss, struggle, and exchange things
– material or immaterial. We can search for and receive
help. We can help ourselves. We can browse,
search and sometimes find, exhibit, propagate,
organize, advertise, buy, and sell in this network. It
is a very universal tool for many things.
From the very beginning, there were politics in
the Internet. There was the Usenet news which
came from outside to the Internet. It was in fact
founded in media structures. Once it was
recognized as a medium, which is more than just
computing or exchanging files, the community of
the Internet declared very early that it would resist
censorship. This was usually thought to have been
the construction momentum of the Internet, but
it certainly is not. It was a constructive element of
people who used the Internet, who wanted to circumvent
censorship. There have been examples in
Germany and in the rest of Europe. One newspaper
article some years ago was prohibited in Germany.
This article was immediately placed on the internet
in The Netherlands, among other countries. The pirate
community in Sweden was busted by the police
but immediately had a copy in The Netherlands
and other countries. Now that pirate community is
left alone.
We have new ideas concerning licenses on the
Internet. Linux and Open Source are certainly very
37

strongly supported by the Internet, if not even dependant
on the Internet. We have new publishing
licenses such as Creative Commons, Open Access,
and Open Archive. We have a few very loose regulations
on the Internet, such as ITF, or IKN, where more
strict telecommunication laws regulate the Internet
politically but not very deeply.
This general line of thought lead to the Declaration
of Independence of Cyberspace in 1996 by John Perry
Barlow. He declared at a very famous economic
conference in Davos, Switzerland:
“Governments of the industrial world, you weary giants
of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the
new home of mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you
of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome
among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather…
I declare the global social space we are building
to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek
to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us
nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we
have true reason to fear. Governments derive their just
powers from the consent of the governed. You have
neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite
you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world.
Cyberspace does not lie within your borders ...“.
Some of you have heard of John Perry Barlow. He
wrote lyrics for Grateful Dead, and was one of the
founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
This is very important because the Electronic Frontier
Foundation has a lot of money to defend this
point of view in United States courts of law. He has
more words: “Our world is different. Your legal concepts
of property, expression, identity, movement,
and context do not apply to us. They are all based
on matter, and there is no matter here …” And the
final sentence was:“It is error alone which needs the
support of government. Truth can stand by itself”.
38
This is Thomas Jefferson’s quote, not Barlow’s.
At the same time, somewhere in New York,
Washington, or perhaps another fine place, there
was something else going on. Al Gore and others
defined the “Information Superhighway”. This was
not Cyberspace and it was not unregulated. It was
completely different. And the “Information Superhighway”
meant a commercial Internet. It was not
possible before, because until 1995 the Internet was
restricted to scientific and academic use. Even email
from non-participants in the department of defense
projects was only partly supported, it was not deeply
accepted. For relatively low bandwidth, it was permitted.
It was not permitted to use the Internet for
commercial purposes, which changed in mid 90’s.
Commercial Internet meant a lot of things. First,
it meant opening the Internet for commercial endeavors,
but there was also the parallel construction
of commercial high speed backbones such as
UUNet, CIN, and so on. They built their high-speed
backbones. A series of private Internet service
providers entered the field, such as AOL, among many
others.
There was also a technical development, the Internet
as local area network, which allowed better use of the
Internet. There were local internet service providers.
There was a graphically-oriented personal computer,
which supported new applications for using the Internet.
Modems were built into machines or were
easily installed. There was a broad acceptance of the
TCP-IP protocol, which signaled the end of NSFNET,
CSNET, and even ARPANET. There was a growing interconnection
of private networks.
The governance of the system was mainly focused
on the domain name systems. The Internet Corporation
for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was

founded by a very special treaty by the United States
government. The World Web Wide was invented,
and URL and HTML came into existence. There
was a paradigm shift. Suddenly, the users of the
Internet became, in eyes of many, rich participants
or clients. The old idea that “We will sell something
to you” came up. We had search engines, directories,
and portals. Suddenly, mail order became possible,
and electronic goods sprang up. Software games,
video, music, and other products were available
online. Banking was suddenly transferred to the
Internet. Before the Internet, electronic banking
existed through a different set of networks. In addition
we had telecom rules, which meant for instance
asymmetric DSL in Germany. Why would
clients need to upload? We had more or less good
payment systems such as prepay. We had a lot of
name disputes, copyright disputes, security issues,
and privacy issues. Suddenly the entire Internet
drifted into a very commercial situation. Still, we
had growth because it was interesting for more and
more people. Suddenly, many people could join
the Internet without being part of academia. And
again, more users meant more content and higher
values and so on.
There were some successes stories like as Amazon,
founded in 1995 with an online catalog bookstore
in Seattle. It was not profitable until 2003, but it
was paid by stockholders who believed in dotcoms.
It has now 20 million clients in 160 countries. With
20,000 employees it is both the largest bookstore
and the largest online shop worldwide. Amazon
surpassed Barnes and Noble, the largest bookstore
chain in US. Barnes and Noble entered the Internet
at a late stage, and did not have much success,
because obviously it did not understand how the
Internet works. Amazon did it completely differently
and demonstrated that the Internet cannot be
interpreted as just another means of distribution.
Amazon is a success story especially for people who
like making money.
Another success story is that of ebay, an internet
auction site, also founded in 1995. Ebay also has
over 20,000 employees. A third success story, albeit
a smaller one, is Expedia. New commercial enterprises
started. The most famous enterprise is certainly
Google, although not the first. It was founded
in 1998. The name is a misspelling, because the two
founders did not know how to spell “googol”. When
they discovered their mistake, they decided to
keep the domain because they had already paid for
google.com. The story of the invention of Google is
not obvious to most users, which is very interesting.
It is full of advertising, but it looks different than
Yahoo and other search engines. Because the marketing
is usually on the right side, most users seem
not to mind its presence. This marketing does not
feature companies such as CocaCola or BMW, but
rather micro-marketing in the sense that whatever
one is looking for on the left side is very well suited
to what is on the right side. It is a very profitable
idea. It now has a market value of 150 billion dollars.
It is a bit more than IBM which makes me somewhat
sad. It is funny to see what may happen with
something as innocent as a search engine. In one
way it was also the first example of viral marketing.
It could also be considered as spam, but it was not
meant to be spam; it is web-spam so to say. All of
this happened parallel to the Internet.
Another very strange success story is the Apple
iTunes Store, which exhibits a unique interplay
between hardware and software, or rather hardware
and content delivery. It was created to support
the hardware distribution of Apple and of course it
did so. It generated a lot of money with its associated
Apple hardware and succeeded against the
resistance of the music industry. This is very strange.
39

The music industry was not interested in this distribution
channel, because in its opinion it would not
make money. Now, it is around 11 % of the total music
distribution and 80% of online music distribution
in the United States. Apple has already sold 2 billion
songs for 99 cents, and they offer 3.5 million songs.
This is another story of impossible behavior and it
is strange to think that the music industry, which is
always announcing what they can do and who has
rights to distribute which music, could not compete
with Apple. They do not understand their own business.
Apple, who was not too much interested in the
music industry, understood the business of electronic
music distribution much better.
The commercialization of the Internet has already
occurred. It has been somewhat successful after a
few years. It could have signaled the end of the Internet,
but it did not. This is of course why we still
use it. There were things that were not completely
commercialized or were not commercial at all. I have
a long list here on the left hand side presenting some
ways to fund the Internet without actually being
involved in commerce. Public relations is one aspect.
One can pay to be a part of a website filled with
public relationship products. It is not real a
commercial act, at least, not an exchange act. Some
add-ons can be given away for free. It can be done as
a public service. Academia does a lot of these things,
such as research funding. There are an awful lot of
hobbyists supporting the Internet with their websites
and other services. There are even some legacy
Internet sites that have been continuously online
without being shut down.
A very well-known project among the legacy sites is
the Gutenberg Project, which now contains 20,000
titles and averages over 2 millions downloads per
month. It has been a large success story even though
there has been no money exchanged between
40
users and operators. In addition, Archive.org has been
successful at collecting movies, TV and audio files in
large amounts. It is a wonderful place to look for old
video and audio documents.
The third success story is Wikipedia. A thorough
study of the Internet cannot exist without mentioning
Wikipedia. At least, my students seem to think
it is the only source of information. Though sometimes
I disagree with this opinion, to large extend
it is a very fine encyclopedia. Maybe it has revived
the idea of an encyclopedia. In Germany, there is
now Maya online, a large encyclopedia that has
given up its commercial endeavors in a certain way
and is provided free of charge. They have a very
large encyclopedia, in competition with Wikipedia.
Sometimes one is better, sometimes the other.
There are a lot of open access journals and books
as well. In general, natural sciences and technology
science, and mathematics journals are moving
towards open-access structures on a level comparable
in quality to printed journals. There is peer review
with new ideas, impossible in printed area. In some
years perhaps scientific journals will vanish to a large
extent. This will not occur in all fields because the
cultures of different fields are different, but if you
have higher prices you get less users and if you have
less users you must raise the prices.
In the Information Superhighway hype after the commercialization,
we were told, finally we have a global
Net, a global village envisioned by McLuhan, who
meant of course TV. Internet supports localization
also. We have new possibilities in the last three years
where localized versions of the Internet are possible.
Google Maps made this very visible. This is a map
of my University, all the streets. There are satellite
images, ever sharper from month to month. East of
Berlin is a little sharper than the west in my

opinion, this seems to be related to the satellites.
This is an introduction to a mash up, to Web 2.0.
Maps and earth are put together; satellite and street
descriptions in one image is something new. We did
not have that before.
It is very funny to discover, when you are familiar
with a city, streets which do not exist on the map.
All street maps have a lot of errors. Suddenly, the
Internet is not longer only global, but is also local.
Now it is possible to find a pizza place close to your
home. That’s why even the commercialization will
change, because it is possible to get very good and
direct services. Who will suffer from that? I think indirectly
the local newspapers will suffer, because
they thrive on classified ads. Maybe they will have a
similar development as scientific newspapers.
On the other hand, we have a growing aspect
in Network communities. Communities can be
either connected by the Net or they can be localized
and connected by the Net. This is one aspect of
Internet use. Of course, communities can be without
the Net, but this is outdated. That’s so 20 th century
that we no longer care about that.
Early communities in the Net were global by nature,
which meant they were American. In Google you
still find news groups, now called Google groups.
But somebody had to pay for the server, they did
it and they did quite nicely. It is possible to find
enormous numbers of interest groups.
There were groups outside the Internet very early
on such as America Online (AOL) and the German
AOL. It is a very strict community, at least in
terms of the discussion groups. There are other
more political groups such as slashdot.org, a very
important online newspaper. New concepts such
as Flickr have also arisen in the last few years. Flickr
is clearly a new concept because users can easily
introduce not only text, but also multimedia.
Tagging, the possibility to comment on the works
of others, helps to discover other interesting works.
Suddenly the Web has become not only a mapping
of commercial work into the Internet, but also a
breeding ground for new services which may either
be commercial or non-commercial. Commercialization
is not the main point. General Motors is not
using the Internet to tell everyone to buy their cars
– we all know that they are very bad for the environment.
However, suddenly people are talking to
each other on a quite different level.
There is another development, YouTube, through
which nearly ever aspect of human life is
documented in some way. There even exists video
of street fighters from Basque country burning a
Spanish flag.
Another Internet application is Second Life, which
is especially difficult for people of my age to
understand. Second Life hosts between one and
two million inhabitants in a strange, parallel world.
Membership grows by 10 to 15 percent per month,
which is not bad. Strangely enough, Second Life is
a place where something similar to real money is
being exchanged. 272 Linden dollars equals one US
dollar. $64 million per year are exchanged through
this virtual currency. Even Business Week was aware
of that even though it is virtual, it is still valued as
‘real money’. Hence, it has become a focus of the
economic world.
There are other Internet communities which are
much larger. Eight million people pay $10 per
month to be able to play World of Warcraft online.
There are more than half a million people any
time in this game looking for other people to kill.
(Laughter)
41

There is also the connection to the real world
- Myspace.com. It is a definite must for school children
in the U.S. and it is becoming more and more so in
Europe. There are localization websites such as
places.com, where you not only know about other
people and their interests, but also see where they
live. There are likely only a few users in Berlin, but
this amount will surely grow. One of the strange
things about the Internet is that there are so many
new communities that it is hard to predict which will
grow. It is much like witnessing a ‘hotspot’ in town
that is currently popular. One month everyone goes
there, but next month people are uninterested. It
is very difficult to predict which will become popular.
Strangely enough, companies are paying considerable
amounts of money to purchase internet
community websites with the hopes that they will
become more popular. I am not so sure that this will
occur.
Community building, which was one of the very
early aspects of the Internet, is back again. This may
have commercial side effects; people are paying to
be able to play Warcraft online. However, it is not so
important. The money being exchanged is not so
much that it would be correct to suddenly call this
a completely different internet. One must also pay
for Internet access, through which a certain amount
of money flows. What we are witnessing is really a
form of post-commercialization or at least a departure
from the idea of the ‘Information Superhighway’,
which has been put into the hands of the large
companies. It is not quite so simple. Suddenly, we
have rediscovered the old spirit of the Internet as a
place where people meet, where people cooperate
and become either friends or foes. Recently, the Internet
has become a place where real politics happen.
This is not something of which most people
are aware at this moment, but it will start. For me,
the first endeavor of online political campaigning
42
was during the U.S. presidential campaign of 2004,
in which Howard Dean became the most highly visible
candidate for presidency in the Democratic Party.
He lost the nomination to John Kerry. Dean was the
Governor of Vermont at the time. He had a campaign
which was not funded by large companies. The entire
campaign relied on people contributing $10 or
$20 through his campaign website. Although like
most presidential candidates he toured the country
looking for contributions, he was the first presidential
candidate who really utilized the Internet as a
supportive medium. If he would have raised funds
more consistently, perhaps he would have succeeded
in capturing the presidency. His campaign advisor
wrote a book in which he claimed that this was
the consequence of Dean having not relied more on
the Internet, when he started to behave like the other
candidates. Howard Dean’s campaign was one of the
first to use an Internet-based grass-roots approach to
democracy. There was a website called Info America
which is now called Democracy for America. It is still
active in the Democratic Party, although the situation
has changed. The other candidates and parties
are now well aware of the ‘Power of the Internet’. The
next election will be quite different. The Internet will
certainly be used much more that in 2004.
-Video from Howard Dean’s Campaign-
From this video footage we can see that in 2004 it
was still difficult to have enough server power to
distribute videos. The answer of the president-to-be,
George Bush, was, of course, that he did not use the
Internet; he used television because he had enough
money to make television advertisements. The advertisement
had a plain message.
-TV ad of George W. Bush-
Bush uses television, he denounces Dean as someone

shouting. Of course Dean is shouting because he is
communicating to the people. This “Television vs.
Internet” has had an interesting effect. Of course, all
politicians have since discovered that the Internet
is a useful campaign tool. Not long ago, Tony Blair
gave his first podcast interview to The Sun in January.
This is notable because The Sun is not a very
serious newspaper. Using The Sun as medium for
propaganda shows how much Blair is struggling.
Technically, The Sun were the only ones able to put
this podcast on the Internet. How advanced is our
beloved leader Merkel?
-Angela Merkel’s talk -
It is interesting to see her opinion on the network.
Here is another message:
-A video about Net Neutrality-
Of course you can ask whether old politics can adapt
itself to this new medium. In the United States, there
are now recommendations that the Internet should
no longer be treated like telephone lines, but more
like cable lines, in which a provider may decide who
is allowed to use the line. It is a very difficult decision
and a strict reversal from the way we currently
use the Internet. In the future, you might not be
able to look at your favorite YouTube video, because
the line might become occupied by pay-per-view
content. Telecom providers suddenly decided that
if content is delivered over the Internet, it should
be accessible only when paid. That is strange from
a telephone perspective because with telephones,
you do not pay for that what you discuss but simply
for the connection. Satellite and cable television
schemes operate differently; one pays to be
reachable through these media. This is the subject
of discussion in both the United States House of
Representatives and Senate. Massachusetts
Senator Ted Kennedy took part in this discussion by
producing a statement using YouTube. It is funny
to see how young people were astonished by seeing
that old-fashioned politicians were using “their
medium”. It is interesting to watch how politics are
growing by using the Internet.
There have been answers from the telecoms who
are interested in regulation of the Internet. Google
thought about it, but they now take a firm stand
against regulation of the Internet. However, others
are interested in making money in this way, and
they answered by producing television ads, not
through Internet communication.
-TV ad about Net Neutrality -
We see again that politics is in a field between old
mass media such as television, and the new medium,
the Internet. It is interesting. But I cannot predict
what will happen. It is very hard to say. I only
wanted to provide some examples that show that a
new medium changes the attitudes of consumers.
The traditional reactions of Bush and the telecom
providers using television advertisements show
that it is possible to use a large amount of money
and still only somewhat reach a balance with those
using the internet. It is a strange thing. There is still
so much money going into television advertisements,
even though it is so cheap to utilize the Internet
for the same goals.
To summarize, perhaps the Internet is still a public
space; I hope so. So the Internet is an agora, not primarily
a marketplace. Of course, it is still a marketplace,
this cannot be denied, but the general public
is still able to use the Internet. And these are some
names which are certainly not all free from commercial
interests, but there is a lot of action happening
within the idea of a public space.
43

Perhaps I should now provide a very short postscript
on theory.
Theory is very important because we have to interpret
history. I should say, we certainly should not
learn from history. I do not believe that we can learn
much from history, but there is a very important
point. We should study history to know how some
idiotic developments came into being and to learn
why some things are so strange. We can very easily
witness this by looking at history, although unfortunately
this does not instruct us about how to behave
in the future. It is difficult to predict the future
by studying history. We may interpret past media
revolutions but we can only describe and comment
on the unfinished processes of an ongoing digital
media revolution. Unfortunately this contradicts the
first speech, in which we were told that the revolution
is over and everything is finished. I do not believe
that. I think it is a very interesting area and it is
very nice to live in these times and observe what is
happening. Thank you.
Discussion
Question: You have mentioned a lot of forms of the
Internet which was quite enlightening but you did
not mention the word ‘blog’. Is it different from the
others, is it the same, is it only a variant? How would
you classify it in your scheme?
Wolfgang Coy: I didn’t mention it because I only
had 50 minutes. It certainly belongs in the discussion.
Ted Kennedy’s statement is a blog. It is much
more interesting to read blogs of average people.
It is important, it belongs to the realm of communication.
Blogs are not mentioned in the tradition of
mass media because blogs are similar to “letters to
the editor“. But usually the letters to the editor go
directly into the wastebasket. Most of the letters appearing
in traditional media are written by editors.
44
So now we are faced with a situation in which everybody
is able to write whatever he or she wants and
nobody will read it. It is perfect. Blogs are very a interesting
form of expression. I did not discriminate it
for any reason. But I had only 50 minutes and blogs
are not very visual. So I have opted to discuss more
visual topics.
Question: What do you think about the fact that people
have started to download gigabytes of data from
the Internet and the subsequent increase in bandwidth?
Wolfgang Coy: Bandwidth changes everything. Actually,
singles are no longer sold by the music industry,
because everything is now distributed by the iTunes
Store or something comparable. In the very near future,
compact discs will cease to be sold. The question
will be how fast content can be delivered. The
small Indie record companies have stopped producing
CD’s. You saw the difference between the movie
of Harold Dean on YouTube, which is more or less
comparable to a TV stations. I still hesitate to say that
YouTube will soon replace TV, but there are already
people who are much more interested in watching
YouTube than television. But with enough broadband,
Internet users also can be the TV station, which
is something new and unpredictable. The situation is
changing very quickly and broadband access presents
an entirely different situation. There is also the
thought of ever smaller computers more or less integrated
with cell phones. This will be available very
soon because the technology is already here. I cannot
predict it perfectly of course.
Question: People who are very optimistic about Internet
as public space agora, I think in some cases
they are too optimistic, too American in a sense
(Laughter). They have this idea that as long as everyone
has access everything will be fine. I was in China

last year, and people there have a totally different
opinion. Even, here in Germany, there are doubts
if everything should be open to everybody. Well,
this is not the only thing for democracy; just having
everything open.
That’s my first point. Second thing is the “shopping
mall and public space” question. In a shopping mall
you cannot do political activities. If you go onto
one of these sites like YouTube, which is powered
by Google, a company bigger than IBM, this is not
public space. The great thing is, it is a big business.
Do we really believe that in the future everybody
will have the same access, or it will be controlled
by the shareholders who might moderate the
discussion which takes place? Obviously, I am
somewhat skeptical.
Wolfgang Coy: It is certainly not a system that will
change the people. Of course you can take a server
and put your blog there, so you are present but
you are not at YouTube. May I remind you about my
initial remarks. I see that mass media are declining,
but I am not sure what will happen with the
conglomerate of the Internet as a medium. It is an
open question. I can support some visible means.
Of course, I am hardly completely American.
(Laughter).
Question: Wolfgang, what do you think, what is your
speculation about differences between Europe,
North America, Japan in these issues as compared
to Africa, Middle East other regions of the world.
Will they rapidly catch up?
Wolfgang Coy: I am a scholar, I aim to learn. I can’t
answer that question, because it is difficult to develop
a sense of a culture. I think all of these students
here have more experience with that than I do.
Question: There are two questions that are for me
quite interrelated. Do you see any other upcoming
scheme of financing the advancement of the Internet?
Related to that, I am interested in issues of
security, privacy, spam, etc.
Wolfgang Coy: If we are not able to fight spam, the
Internet will be closed. It is easy to see that. I have
no simple solution except than to find those who
perpetrate spam. In the United States, 9 years of
punishment are given for 3 spam mails. This seems
slightly exaggerated. All of these problems exist.
A lot of us are engaged in fighting these problems.
Question: How would you judge the role of privacy
in regards to future Internet development?
Wolfgang Coy: There are new questions of privacy
arising every day. In the last year, I would say commercial
misuse of privacy was more prevalent than
state misuse. Our Minister of the Interior did quite a
lot to convince me that he is still quite dangerous.
(Laughter) There are real problems and somehow
they have to be addressed.
Question: Last year there was a decision by a German
Court that if you run a public discussion forum
you are immediately responsible for any illegal
postings that appear there. Do you think that a
decision like that from the courts will make it difficult
for people to run small forums?
Wolfgang Coy: There are of course fights; it is never
without any contradictions. That is very clear. You
can avoid that by going out of the country, which I
do not support. I think it should be allowed to have
such a board in Germany. In the long run, neither
justice nor existing politics will prevent the Internet
45

from going in these directions. But this is not a prediction,
this is a hope.
Question: If mass media goes down, what will serve
as a source of self-reflection for people?
Wolfgang Coy: This is the hundred billion dollar
question. I am not going to answer it, I am still working
on that. (Laughter) You are right; this is the final,
central question.
46

7Remark
on the Meaning of
Media Theory Within Our
Study Program
Barbara Grüter
By nature, digital media as a discipline is
interdisciplinary, like each other discipline. The
interdisciplinary character of digital media
expressed in our study program as the collaboration
of media informatics, media design, and media
theory is on closer inspection easily differentiated
as a collaboration of all disciplines and even
further a collaboration of all actors engaged
in the design, development, and use
of digital media. The risk of understanding
digital media like this is losing sight of the central
goal of our work. But who defines this goal?
Starting collaboration with the other party we
experience the predefined role assigned to us by
the other party and encounter the fear of subordination.
Media designers fear becoming slaves of
media informatics and vice versa. Designers and
computer scientists seem to believe that theorizing
digital media is something everybody can
do. Media theorists seem to escape into realms
of philosophical abstraction or postmodernism.
47

And of course there is the role of the generalist, who
combines and dissolves all contradictions by just being
a designer, computer scientist, and media theorist
all at the same time.
Starting mutual evaluation of our work, we encounter
contradicting value systems. How shall we deal
with that?
At the first glance media theory seems to be the answer
but instead it mirrors the problem. It reflects the
interdisciplinary character of digital media in being a
conglomerate of different media theories referring to
those very different disciplines, ranging from mathematics
and formal logic as the traditionally estimated
highest peak of science, to design and art as the
traditionally estimated counterpart, further ranging
from neuroscience, to cognitive theories, linguistics,
semiotics, psychology, sociology, and economics.
Each of those theories coming from very different
disciplines claims to be the only and naturally leading
one. Logically, incompatible claims collide in the definition,
the design, the development, and the study of
digital media.
What if we turn around and specifically search for this
collision? It might be the source of development and
innovation. How can we exploit this interdisciplinary
potential of digital media? Is a plural form of concept
development for digital media possible? Is a developmental
form of collaboration possible within our
study program? I am convinced we already work on
that.
I characterize my view of media theory by the following:
concepts, computers, and software applications
become media within and by use.
Activity theory is one possibility to conceptualize this,
allowing a plural form of motion at least for me.
48

8Contact Data
Prof.
Dr. Andreas Breiter
AG IT Management
Faculty 03 -
Mathematics / Computer Science
University of Bremen
Am Fallturm 1
28359 Bremen
Phone: ++49 (0)421 218 7525
Email: abreiter@ifib.de
http://www.ifib.de/
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Coy
Institut für Informatik
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Unter den Linden 6
D-10099 BerlinPhone: ++49 (0)30 2093 3166
Email: coy@informatik.hu-berlin.de
http://waste.informatik.hu-berlin.de/default_e.
html
49

Prof. Dr. Barbara Grüter
Department 4 –
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of Applied Science
Flughafenallee 10
28199 Bremen
Phone: ++49 (0)421 5905 5486
Email: grueter@fbe.hs-bremen.de
Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp
Institute of Media, Communication and Information
(IMKI)
Faculty of Cultural Studies
University of Bremen
Enrique-Schmidt-Strasse 7
D-28359 Bremen, Germany
Phone: ++49 (0)421 218-67620
Email: andreas.hepp@uni-bremen.de
Internet: http://www.andreas-hepp.name
Prof. Dr. Rainer Malaka
AG Digital Media
University of Bremen
P.O.Box 330440
D-28334 Bremen
Phone: ++49 (0)421 218-64402
Email: dm@tzi.de
http://medien.informatik.uni-bremen.de/
Prof. Dr. Frieder Nake
Faculty 03 - Mathematics / Computer Science
University of Bremen
P.O.Box 330440
D-28334 Bremen
Phone: ++49 (0)421 218 3525
Email: nake@informatik.uni-bremen.de
http://www.agis.informatik.uni-bremen.de/
50
Dr. Bernd Robben
University of Bremen
ArtecLab
Enrique-Schmidt-Strasse 7
D-28359 Bremen, Germany
Phone: ++49 (0)421 218 61852
Email: robben@artec.uni-bremen.de
http://www.arteclab.uni-bremen.de
Prof. Dr. Heidi Schelhowe
AG DiMeB
Faculty 03 - Mathematics / Computer Science
University of Bremen
P.O.Box 330440
D-28334 Bremen
Phone: ++49 (0)421 218-64731
Email: schelhowe@artec.uni-bremen.de
http://www.dimeb.de/
Symposium Media Theory’s Role in Digital Media
Studies, 2007
February 16, 2007
10 am – 7pm
Gästehaus der Universität
Teerhof 58
28199 Bremen
www.dm-hb.de
Symposium Guests:
Andreas Hepp, Andreas Breiter, Alessandro Corsini,
Barbara Grüter, Bernd Robben, Frieder Nake, Heidi
Schelhowe, Rainer Malaka, Wolfgang Coy, the students
of the course “Theory, Design and Evaluation
of Digital Media” Winterterm 2007/2008 and guests
(professors, students, assistents, and many more).
Special thanks to all students who supported this
documentation, especially by contributing their
opinions.