Deck 37: The Information Age

Question 1

As communications theorist Marshall McLuhan famously observed,"the ________ is the message."

A)audience
B)medium
C)feedback
D)message

Answer 1

B

Question 2

A classic kind of total art,________,was pioneered by the American artist Allan Kaprow (1927-2006).Kaprow,who coined the name for this conceptual genre,called it "a performance that occurs in a given time and space."

A)the Happening
B)the Be-in
C)performance art
D)total art

Answer 2

A

Question 3

Discuss the ways in which new directions in science and philosophy have influenced information age culture.

Answer 3

The profound advances in science and technology during the information age have worked to make the planet smaller,the universe larger,and methods of navigating the two ever more promising.Modern physics,genetics decoding,and brain research have allowed humans to view themselves as an entity in even more minute terms,from chaotic quanta to combinations of DNA units.
While science moves forward optimistically to reveal the underlying natural order,philosophy has entered a phase of radical skepticism that denies the existence of any true or uniform system of thought.The Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein held that all forms of expression,and,indeed,all truths,are dominated by the limits of language as a descriptive tool.Following Wittgenstein,philosophers tried to unlock the meaning of the text (that is,any mode of cultural expression)by way of a close analysis of its linguistic structure.These explorations led to postmodernism,the defining aesthetic of late twentieth-century culture.

Question 4

The oversized paintings of ________,modeled on comic-book cartoons,bring attention to familiar clichés and stereotypes of popular entertainment.

A)Oldenburg
B)Lichtenstein
C)Johns
D)Warhol

Question 5

String theory seeks to unite quantum physics with which of the following?

A)the Doppler effect
B)gravity
C)the theory of relativity
D)time and spatial theory

Question 6

________ became the popular mode of analysis in philosophy,linguistics,and literary criticism in the late twentieth century.

A)Deconstruction
B)Reconstruction
C)Dialectic
D)Rhetoric

Question 7

The world's first online,nonprofit English-language encyclopedia,________,was launched in 2001.

A)Britannica
B)the World Wide Web
C)Google
D)Wikipedia

Question 8

The decade of the Holocaust and the devastation of World War II prompted the postmodern shift from an industrial Age (dominated by farming and manufacturing)to a(n)

A)computer age.
B)service-sector age.
C)information age.
D)neo-Renaissance age.

Question 9

________,the quintessential style of the information age,embraced the imagery of consumerism and celebrity culture as mediated by television,film,and magazines.

A)Abstraction
B)Neoclassicism
C)Op art
D)Pop art

Question 10

The proponents of ________ find that universal patterns underlie the seemingly random operations of nature.

A)deist theory
B)superstring theory
C)string theory
D)chaos theory

Question 11

The operation of conflicting visual cues and the elemental effects of colors and shapes on the faculties of the human retina is a style known as

A)abstraction
B)neoclassicism
C)op art
D)pop art

Question 12

The two key contributing factors to today's historical age as explained by the text are

A)transglobal communications and computers.
B)television and computers.
C)television and cell phones.
D)television and the European Union.

Question 13

Nam June Paik initiated the ________ genre with performance pieces and electronic installations.More ambitious in size and conception,however,are the artist's multi-screen television installations.Megatron (1995),for instance,consists of 215 monitors.

A)digital art
B)computer art
C)viewer art
D)video art

Question 14

________ artists appropriate (or borrow)preexisting texts and images from history,advertising,and the media.

A)Abstract
B)Modernist
C)Mannerist
D)Postmodern

Question 15

Differentiate among the wide variety of postmodern styles: pop art,assemblage,minimalism,neorealism,total art,and video art.

Question 16

________ is a literary genre that gives an original (and fictionalized)narrative context to contemporary events and situations.

A)"Old" media
B)Subjectivism
C)Docufiction
D)All these answers are correct.

Question 17

Describe the basic features of postmodern architecture,opera,and dance.

Question 18

Explain the basic features of postmodern literature and magic realism.

Question 19

Discuss the ways in which high technology and the information explosion have influenced late twentieth and early twenty-first-century culture.

Question 20

Arthur C.Clarke,H.

A)nonfiction
B)suspense
C)science fiction
D)poetry