MCS.101 Lancaster Uni

How many films should one watch, how many comic books should one read, how many Disney+ series should one see before being ready for Spiderman No Way Home (2021) or Endgame (2019)? This week in MCS.101 we discuss the increasingly complex 'multiverse of madness' of transmedia.

"Amazon has been unusually explicit about its plans. The Everything Store is becoming an Everything Tracker, collecting and leveraging large amounts of personal data related to entertainment, fitness, health, and, it claims, security" theatlantic.com/technology/arc…

Late to the twitter game but my first book has just been published! Can the audience become a surrogate for the authoritarian state? Performing Fear tackles that question through an ethnography of authoritarian media making in Singapore.

"Last year, people bought about 8.5 million analogue TV antennas, which have become cheaper, smaller, and smarter than they were in the 1990s" theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2…

"Time to call your ex-boyfriend’s cousin’s mother to let her know that her free access to your Netflix account is coming to an end" vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022…

Interesting to see how Ford uses imagery of analogue nostalgia, not only to connote 'silence', but the future as well. The analogue not as a sign of yesterday, but of 'tomorrow'.

"The world has become enamored with famous donkeys, iguanas, and ferrets. TikTok is currently obsessed with an affable, photobombing emu; and the late Grumpy Cat — one of the original animal influencers — made it all the way to American Idol" mic.com/life/what-its-…

"“People are a little bit more adventurous with their digital armor (...). And sometimes they’re not recognizing the limits of that technology.” For one (...) users expect their devices to work." expmag.com/2022/10/how-gp…

"Across Latin America, a generation of young sound artists and producers are unsettling Eurocentric assumptions about the boundaries of ambient music" pitchfork.com/thepitch/these…

"Growing the diversity of the UK’s digital talent pool and increasing digital skills for all young people is vital not just for improving social mobility and the economy, but for building the kind of society we need, today and tomorrow" theguardian.com/society/2022/o…

"South Korea has the highest “robot density” in the world, with 93 robots per 1,000 human workers in manufacturing (...) [a]nd the use of robots is increasing exponentially" expmag.com/2022/10/in-sou…

"A portal in the multiverse could open up and drag our Earth into some dark alternate reality in which Disney has bought up every studio in Hollywood (as opposed to merely Marvel, Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox) as part of a devious plan" theguardian.com/film/2022/oct/…

"The new end credits saw London’s East End transformed to show the river Thames bursting its banks with parts of the capital under water" ok.co.uk/tv/eastenders-…

"The surging success of the job simulator, in which players take on seemingly mundane real-world careers, shows that our relationship with games is a lot more complex" theguardian.com/games/2022/oct…

Welcome to all new MCS students!

In the first week of MCS.101 we complicate the idea of 'old' and 'new' media by looking at how games, written novels, cinema, comic books, drawings, and paintings all merge seamlessly together in contemporary media. We look at Ms. Marvel, Loki, FreeGuy, Spiderverse and more.

"Researchers worry that these systems produce images that can cause a range of harms, such as reinforcing racial and gender stereotypes" washingtonpost.com/technology/int…

"What is a travel moment if you spend most of the time documenting it these days? It’s a question we ask about most life experiences now" refinery29.com/en-gb/is-socia…

"[T]rawling TikTok or Twitter you can find countless riffs on the idea, from fake Claire’s ads advertising “self-care” lobotomies to Doomer memes about the hopelessness of escaping late capitalism. Lack of affect is the new affect" pitchfork.com/features/overt…

NO it’s a toy based on a movie based on a toy, based on a movie in a movie about toys. Get ur facts straight.