Summary of Chapter’s 13-14.
Chapter 13-Rice discusses that thus far, cool has been used to describe technological innovation, this chapter, however, Rice begins to examine how cool and corporate development merge on the internet resulting in a futuristic, Web-based writing process starting with a concept known as cooltown.
Cooltown, named by computer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard, is a mythical, futuristic environment in which our lives are completely intertwined with technlogy in everything we do, wear and drive.
Cooltown derived from Marshall McLuhan’s media theories in that all media form into two kinds; hot and cool. Hot media according to McLuhan is high definition, low viewer participation in order to understand the content’s meaning, such as, magazines and films. Cool media on the other hand is low definition, high viewer participation such as using a telephone and reading comics and cartoons. The main point behind McLuhan’s media theories was to enforce that with cool media so much more participation was needed to gather other media form’s production and meaning, therefore, seeing all ideas as interlinked.
Rice brings back ‘tie-in’ philosophy, which when based on cool flourish on the Web, also strongly relate to cool and technology.
Chapter 14-Rice begins to address cyberculture. Cyberculture, is fundamentally cool in that it creates a highly participatory atmosphere. Rice gives the example of cyberspace like a collage. Collages are cutting and pasting unlike items into one “frame” to produce a new representation. We must, like collages, become active participants in the creation and proliferation in order to make sense of cyberspace media.
Tim Beners-Lee’s writing Enquire to record connections among projects and people at CERN resembles McLuhan’s work in how it links unrelated information in order to demonstrate how information connects in many ways. Rice states using Sportsline’s site, how viewing sites that have their audience interacting while gathering information, are cool websites. The coolness level depends on how much effort the audiences applies to understanding what the site says.
