Guests filtered in and greeted colleagues, as ceiling fans furiously whizzed overhead and attempted to cool the last few sun rays streaming through the large Frazier Pavilion windows.
W. Russell Neuman speaks at the Buesseler Lectureship at the Frazier Pavillion Tuesday evening.
The Tuesday evening gathering was the 2015 Cathryn Anne Hansen Buesseler Distinguished Lectureship in Print Media. The lecture is held in memorial for the annual series’ namesake, Buesseler, a former professor in the then-Department of Mass Communications at Texas Tech University. This year, it also served as a part of the College of Media & Communication’s “Reaching Audiences” two-day conference, which covered media management and analyzing big data topics.
The keynote speaker of the dinner, W. Russell Neuman, walked up to the stage, stood behind the podium and promptly pulled up a photo of Johannes Gutenberg on the screen to begin “The Digital Difference: How Technology and Economics Interact in Media Evolution.”
“What I’d like to do is tell some stories,” began the professor of media technology at New York University who can also boast former White House, Harvard and Yale experience.
Dinner is served to guests at the Buesseler Lectureship.
As servers replaced empty salad plates from the white-clothed tables with steak and mashed potato dinners, the professor and author of several books then launched into a history lesson, describing the “romanticized history” of media. He began with Gutenberg and the printing press before moving on to telephones and radio, ending in the modern era with the Internet.
While Neuman verbally summarized communication history, he flipped through a slideshow with historical photographs, accompanied with his own dry, witty comments. Under the span of “The Golden Age of Newspaper,” a few bullet points encouraged the public to stray from picking a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel and advertised print media originated to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.
“Each technology came along and found its place at the table in a stable arrangement,” Neuman explained of various media platforms, “because each technology for delivery had a unique property for getting content to the audience. My argument tonight is that the Internet changes everything.”
Pulling up a slide titled “Decline of Bottleneck Technologies,” the scholar’s following image contained “production” pointing to “technical medium,” which, in turn, pointed to “audience.” With another click of the remote, the “Internet” was displayed underneath, bridging the distance between the three.
A few picked at chocolate cheesecakes on the table during the duration of a summary about Internet history and how the advertising field has changed in response.
Neuman answers audience questions after his lecture.
“A fundamental relationship between the audience member and media changes,” Neuman concluded.
A summary slide listed “The medium of communication is the medium of transaction,” “The effect of advertising is no longer magic” and “Content is king” as final points in the lecture. Then, the image of Gutenberg popped up, once again, this time with a speech bubble proclaiming “Thanks!”
In a comment to The Hub@TTU, Neuman explained his claim of the Internet changing everything encompasses education underneath its umbrella, but some alterations have yet to be seen.
“The New York Times announced, as the New York Times does, that 2012 is the year of the MOOC,” the professor said of the moniker for “massively open online courses.”
He explained the article claimed free, digital delivery of full courses from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and Stanford University would bankrupt higher education.
“It’s 2015, and universities are still around,” Neuman said. “But, the key difference between a free venture online, where information is provided, and the university degree is twofold. One, it’s the socialization of being on campus and dealing with students and faculty, and second, it’s the certification.”
Neuman argued neither of those opportunities are a part of the online experience.
“There will be a difference, but it hasn’t played out yet,” he said.
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