SQ6: Platform

In this week’s reading, Bogost and Montfort explained the way that platform studies can be so much more reaching and analytical than simply taking a digital medium at face value. Platform studies go beyond the common denotation of a thing and wonder why that thing works according to the way it is structured and what it is at core value. In the article, we read, “Platforms are pervasive in all sorts of computing. Personal computers like the Apple are platforms. Programming languages such as BASIC can be thought of as platforms.” So, we can see that the typical way of thinking about media can be broadened so much more when it pertains to studying platforms per say.

Now, being able to differentiate between calling something a medium and a platform is where it can get tricky, but like it said in the article, “The real question should be whether a particular system is influential and important as a platform”. What is this platform helping us achieve? Is if effectual?

So, looking an example of new media today, we can see the platform of social media like Instagram, that uses the online digital medium. Instagram is a much more simplified Facebook that allows users to only post pictures or short videos, with or without captions. If we take it with the approach of looking how cultural studies and platform studies interact, we see that media like instagram came about throughout the progression of technologies. Now, looking at it through the cultural influence (the why it was made and the events surrounding the creation) is where the analysis gets more interesting. In the article, we read, “Platform studies is about the connection between technical specifics and culture”. So, platform studies are a way of seeing what technologies were available to make a certain platform exist--the internet and coding softwares that were alive for the time of creation of social media. Then we see how “It [platform studies] looks at how social, economic, cultural, and other factors led platform designers to put together systems in particular ways”. The context of the thing influenced the thing itself. The need for more global connection, or sympathy, the call for a simpler way to connect easily  throughout the masses.