History repeats itself again as the trend shifts from function to fashion. In Personal, Portable, Pedestrian, a compilation of essays edited by Mizuko Ito, Daisuke Okabe, and Misa Matsuda, the never ending saga of youth taking technology by the reins and changing its function from business to pleasure is reiterated over and over again. From chapter to chapter the same thoughts resonate. It all started as a business tool hijacked by the youth of a nation then developed into a new social and political morality. This is no different than any other form of communication tools from the past. It’s just another reason to write a paper! The pocket protector came first as the pen was handed down to the public! Is it really about this specific technology or is it about the exponential rate of growth in general that humans have made over the past couple hundred years? It’s not even about the rate of growth in Japan vs. any other developed country, the technology may be different (USA PC vs. Japan Keitai) but the outcome is the same. Kids in the USA are to Internet via PC and Web Phone as kids in Japan are to Internet via pager and Keitai.
As far back as recorded history, man has tried to limit the use of tools to a specifically trained group of individuals. Blacksmiths used fire and steel, sculptors used hammer and chisel and writers and painters used pens, brushes and a specific cannon established by the ruling powers. The Renaissance brought the idea of creative use to new heights as science and art were encouraged at least amongst the elite. Now, every kindergartner in public school in the USA gets a 64 pack of crayons, a block of clay, and access to the Internet.
To be creative has been particularly encouraged in the more developed countries as a way to be competitive in the global economy, so, how can we be surprised that the youth would use a tool in a way not necessarily intended? I’ve used a butter knife to hang a door!
As I read the book, I made notations in the margin of my thoughts and ideas sparked by the text only to find the same thing I wrote in the margins in the next essay or two to three essays into the book. It only solidified ideas I had based on being a parent with teenagers with cell phones and not on any scholarly information. We all know women talk more than men! It is engrained from the time we are young that men should be strong and that means silent.
There is something I did not read about in this book…has anyone considered the impact this has on the male psyche as they continue to grow in numbers of people using Keitai or other forms of communication? From a psychological standpoint this seems to be of greater importance than whether or not you decorate your phone with stickers or text during dinner.
As a mother and observant human, I see men and boys in particular opening up more to their friends and family based on their ability to speak without being seen. Its almost like the old adage “children should be seen and not heard" has reversed itself with the onset of mass personal communication. The anonymity that one gets in conversing via text message somehow allows for a more liberal view of boys and men being allowed to express themselves in a more traditionally feminine manner…i.e. “ I feel___.”
Most patriarchal societies have at least an unspoken rule about male communication and that is where much of the gender issues were addressed in this book. The fact that the mobile communication was based on business and business was for so long a man’s world crosses many geographic boundaries. The idea that only housewives and children would use this tool in an “inappropriate” manner just points out this inherent problem in many societies to determine communication and feelings as inappropriate.
As I see it, the focus should be less on the proliferation of the technology (we know its growing exponentially) and less on how it’s being used (everyone wants a companion or a date) and should look more deeply into the paradigm shift based on gender and social infrastructures. I think this book uses the words social and culture to frame a very quantitative perspective of phenomena using numbers rather than as a qualifying term to discern actual temporal changes in psychosocial dynamics.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Well, lets see....
Hello Research Buddies,
First of all I think you should all take a bit of time to listen to Radio Labs episode on Emergence. It is a fine piece of radio broadcasting and I believe will be related to my thesis at least in some form.
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/08/14
I began thinking that I would be making an interactive animation and that my thesis would be related to the role of interactive storytelling online. However, that idea has shifted gears, at least to some degree.
Being a visual creator of media I still want to make an interactive animation but I have realized that the piece itself may be a metaphorical piece that through its design and the visual stories it portrays represents concepts being explored in the theories. My recent exposure to concepts of Memetic Theory and Emergence are having a direct effect on my ideas. How is still hard for me to pin down.
The idea for the animation is to have a interactive whole, a sort of abstracted world that can be zoomed into in order to portray short moments of individuals stories, some profound, some mundane, when zoomed out the work is again a cohesive whole. I am playing with the idea of individual lives, living out their stories and the massive structure created by the combination of the individual.
I see the internet as both a tool and a metaphor for the connection of humanity. For this reason I want this to be an interactive animation that can be put online. Therefore it becomes both an artifact of the concepts explored and a direct participating piece of the interactive whole.
I hope that all makes some sense. I have been making an animated piece for another class I am in. Please feel free to look at the blog I have created for that class. It is related to ideas I have for my thesis but is more of a stream of conscious blog at the moment.
Running Through the Zen Garden
First of all I think you should all take a bit of time to listen to Radio Labs episode on Emergence. It is a fine piece of radio broadcasting and I believe will be related to my thesis at least in some form.
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/08/14
I began thinking that I would be making an interactive animation and that my thesis would be related to the role of interactive storytelling online. However, that idea has shifted gears, at least to some degree.
Being a visual creator of media I still want to make an interactive animation but I have realized that the piece itself may be a metaphorical piece that through its design and the visual stories it portrays represents concepts being explored in the theories. My recent exposure to concepts of Memetic Theory and Emergence are having a direct effect on my ideas. How is still hard for me to pin down.
The idea for the animation is to have a interactive whole, a sort of abstracted world that can be zoomed into in order to portray short moments of individuals stories, some profound, some mundane, when zoomed out the work is again a cohesive whole. I am playing with the idea of individual lives, living out their stories and the massive structure created by the combination of the individual.
I see the internet as both a tool and a metaphor for the connection of humanity. For this reason I want this to be an interactive animation that can be put online. Therefore it becomes both an artifact of the concepts explored and a direct participating piece of the interactive whole.
I hope that all makes some sense. I have been making an animated piece for another class I am in. Please feel free to look at the blog I have created for that class. It is related to ideas I have for my thesis but is more of a stream of conscious blog at the moment.
Running Through the Zen Garden
The Paradox of Choice
This is a great video about the Paradox of Choice. Sociology professor Barry Schwartz delivers a very interesting lecture about less being more. It sort of ties into my thesis...or at least I'd like it to.
In any event, check it out, and definitely surf Ted.com as it's a very interesting site, and may hold some interesting ideas for you in general, or maybe even for your theses and projects.
~J
In any event, check it out, and definitely surf Ted.com as it's a very interesting site, and may hold some interesting ideas for you in general, or maybe even for your theses and projects.
~J
Choosing to Become a Cyborg
My thesis project for this program focuses on ways to increase computer literacy among the general population. As evidenced by the many writings about humans turning into "cyborgs" and the ways in which technology and society influence one another, it is obvious that we passed the point of cultural acceptance of computers long ago, and there is no turning back from the computerized society. However, many of the people in this new technological society still don't really know how computers work or what they are capable of. This concerns me for two reasons: when people don't have a working understanding of new technologies they tend to have an unnatural fear of what they are capable of, thus stifling the potential progress that can be made through further use of new technology; and on the other side of the coin, ignorance of the potentials of new technology also makes people complacent to their use, leading to the possibility of widespread subversion and abuse of technology that could be difficult to reverse in the future.
With computers, I feel that we have a unique opportunity to expand people's minds because there are so many people out there that use them without fear or understanding, and they are using them to access digital media. Cell phones, PDAs, desktops, laptops, and even MP3 players are all first steps towards the transformation of the human cyborg, and they are all tied together through the internet, by which their users access digital media on a regular basis. What better medium, then, for enlightening people to the choices they are making and the responsibilities they have when they make the choice to become the cyborg?
The goal of my project is to reach people with information about how computers work, what they are capable of, and what their limitations are, using an interactive website containing video, audio, and animated teaching tools. I feel that the choice to advance to the next stage of cyborg humanity should be made consciously, and that that can only happen when one is fully informed of what these new technologies are capable of, because then the choice to subject oneself to both the benefits and harms of cyborg existence is made by the individual, not by the "experts" or the corporate, media, or political groups with something to gain.
With computers, I feel that we have a unique opportunity to expand people's minds because there are so many people out there that use them without fear or understanding, and they are using them to access digital media. Cell phones, PDAs, desktops, laptops, and even MP3 players are all first steps towards the transformation of the human cyborg, and they are all tied together through the internet, by which their users access digital media on a regular basis. What better medium, then, for enlightening people to the choices they are making and the responsibilities they have when they make the choice to become the cyborg?
The goal of my project is to reach people with information about how computers work, what they are capable of, and what their limitations are, using an interactive website containing video, audio, and animated teaching tools. I feel that the choice to advance to the next stage of cyborg humanity should be made consciously, and that that can only happen when one is fully informed of what these new technologies are capable of, because then the choice to subject oneself to both the benefits and harms of cyborg existence is made by the individual, not by the "experts" or the corporate, media, or political groups with something to gain.
NOISE
OK, so i'm really interested in the concept of noise - noise in lots of contexts. McLuhan writes that "Ours is a brand-new world of allatonceness. 'Time' has ceased, 'space' has vanished. We now live in a global village...a simultaneous happening. We are back in acoustic space." Noise is a central environmental feature for the modern cyborg, and learning to navigate and cope with noise is part of life within a cyborg culture. Not only is our return to "acoustic space" a product of the literal sonic environment, but it is also a descriptor of the digital environment described by Paul Virilio as "the twin phenomena of immediacy and of instantaneity". Noise comes at us all at once (immediately and instantly), rather than in the manageable, read-at-your-own-pace form of writing. Written language, in the Western alphabetic form, is a map that represents acoustic space. The ear is filtered through the eye. Today, through modern media technologies, the ear can hear for itself the information previously translated through the eye. As Virilio notes, "Nothing is ever obtained without a loss of something else. ... If we are not aware of this loss, and do not account for it, our gain will be of no value." I believe that the increase in noise (both in a sonic sense and a communication theory sense) apparent in modern mediated culture offers both gains and losses, and i hope to develop a more complete understanding of this phenomenon.
Monday, September 24, 2007
participatory spaces and mourning
Since I've been investigating my thesis topic on memorialization and port-mortem data storage and all things digital death-ness, I've wondered how virtual spaces designed to be participatory deal with mourning. In general, most of these spaces lock users out of participation (ie. Second Life memorials to the Virginia Tech shootings, 9/11; static html memorials, post-mortem MySpace/Facebook pages - all of which are usually maintained by one person or by a select group), but an interesting counter-example is the funeral in World of Warcraft that took place a little over a year ago. The funeral was meant for the avatar of person who died IRL, and was raided by a rival guild:
Skip to about 5 minutes for the raid
My question here is how can mourning, a very private, solemn and personal experience be shared, created and carried out in spaces that are for the most part out of the control of users? At the same time, how can we experience death - particularly mass-death or high profile deaths, which often effect large groups of people - in spaces which are built upon a participatory culture without bastardizing or harming that experience?
To be honest, I'm having trouble relating this to the readings we've done so far in class, but there are a few points of correlation I've been interested in exploiting:
Skip to about 5 minutes for the raid
My question here is how can mourning, a very private, solemn and personal experience be shared, created and carried out in spaces that are for the most part out of the control of users? At the same time, how can we experience death - particularly mass-death or high profile deaths, which often effect large groups of people - in spaces which are built upon a participatory culture without bastardizing or harming that experience?
To be honest, I'm having trouble relating this to the readings we've done so far in class, but there are a few points of correlation I've been interested in exploiting:
- Zizek's "Virtual Reality to Virtualization of Reality" explores the role of the hacker in the computer universe and the goal of breaking consistency. I really see the rival guild in this case trying to maintain consistency, as WOW was really a space created for for fighting, not a space for communal meeting. However, what has evolved between its users are deep relationships and bonds. It appears from this that hacking in virtual spaces means to impose an IRL meantality on worlds that are not IRL. I can't say that this is necessarily successful, so I don't know what that might say for the success of memorials in these spaces. There's definitely a new type of memorial rules or concepts that needs to evolve for mourning in these spaces.
- I've always walked away with Haraway's concept of the cyborg as an irreverent, non-genetic (in the sense of not arising from the same origin), blurred being. The standards are different for all cyborg, and they must always be evolving. I don't think the cyborg mourns, perhaps because as each material body dies and decomposes, a closer coupling with the natural world exists, erasing boundaries between culture and nature. However, what happens when a virtual body "dies?" What is the decomposition there, and what boundary might it erase?
- Virilio's "Cyberspace Alarm!" brings up a good point about democracy being threatened by the "caricature of gloval society being hatched for us by big multimational corporations throwing themselves at a breakneck pace on the information superhighways." How can we create methods of mourning in virtual spaces when these spaces are controlled by the few, rather than by the many. For example, while Second Life allows you to experience "an online digital world imagined and created by its residents" Linden Labs (SL's company) is still limiting in what residents can do. Self propogating objects are banned, guns are disallowed, under 18 humans not allowed in the regular space of Second Life! How can a democratic method of creating memorials and public mourning be created in such a limited space? Why can't a user under 18 visit the VT Shooting memorial in regular SL?
Prelude...Digital Divine - The process begins!
To narrow a thesis...
is to expand a mind.
or...
cerebral hemorrhage!
Just another step in the process of narrowing down my broad ideas into a clear and translatable form for mass consumption. My M.A. Thesis will be titled "Digital Divine" and I will be addressing the electromagnetic spectrum as a conduit for digital manipulation of consciousness to include states of spirituality.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Reading Digital Media response
Hello my fellow bloggers,
While I have spent a great deal of my research building around more technically oriented elements, there is definitely a need for stepping back and absorbing some theory. One consistent element of my ongoing research is how fuzzy the line is between tangible "reality" and our sensory translation of what is real. The deeper we delve into the cognitive processes shaping our body in space and what truly is primarily an illusory body schema of where our limbs should be in relation to eachother. We quickly incorporate even a mechanical version of our limbs into our cognitive image of our body very quickly when using this prosthetic device for certain tasks. When we use this extension as a tool such a shovel or broom extending our bodies natural reach, our brain shifts our perception of the tool from being separate/foreign object to being part of our body.
Slavoj Zizek touches on this interesting relationship between flesh and machine with his discussion of the tool verses the machine. He describes the tool as being an extension of the body and the machine automatically imposing a rhythm on man. He discusses these mechanical observations while pondering where the computer falls into this tool-machine paradigm. The dialogue between man and computer creates an interesting relationship where this "non-thinking" device begins effecting the rhythm of the human operator through increasingly complex responses to human demands.
An example of man, machine, tool, and computer fusing together at a very high level is the "C-Leg" This prosthetic leg has a computer chip in the knee that analyzes a human's gate pattern and weighting to construct a sophisticated model of what this person needs to walk smoothly. It even recognizes a stumble or trip and in milliseconds adapts the leg's swing pattern to avert a fall. This team effort between man, computer, machine, and tool displays a significant blurring or the lines between flesh and machine. Neuroscience show us in countless studies that the human's brain is quickly forming new synaptic connections to incorporate this active integration of machine making the prosthetic a part of it's body schema. This person's reality has been skewed through this active physical dialogue.
While I have spent a great deal of my research building around more technically oriented elements, there is definitely a need for stepping back and absorbing some theory. One consistent element of my ongoing research is how fuzzy the line is between tangible "reality" and our sensory translation of what is real. The deeper we delve into the cognitive processes shaping our body in space and what truly is primarily an illusory body schema of where our limbs should be in relation to eachother. We quickly incorporate even a mechanical version of our limbs into our cognitive image of our body very quickly when using this prosthetic device for certain tasks. When we use this extension as a tool such a shovel or broom extending our bodies natural reach, our brain shifts our perception of the tool from being separate/foreign object to being part of our body.
Slavoj Zizek touches on this interesting relationship between flesh and machine with his discussion of the tool verses the machine. He describes the tool as being an extension of the body and the machine automatically imposing a rhythm on man. He discusses these mechanical observations while pondering where the computer falls into this tool-machine paradigm. The dialogue between man and computer creates an interesting relationship where this "non-thinking" device begins effecting the rhythm of the human operator through increasingly complex responses to human demands.
An example of man, machine, tool, and computer fusing together at a very high level is the "C-Leg" This prosthetic leg has a computer chip in the knee that analyzes a human's gate pattern and weighting to construct a sophisticated model of what this person needs to walk smoothly. It even recognizes a stumble or trip and in milliseconds adapts the leg's swing pattern to avert a fall. This team effort between man, computer, machine, and tool displays a significant blurring or the lines between flesh and machine. Neuroscience show us in countless studies that the human's brain is quickly forming new synaptic connections to incorporate this active integration of machine making the prosthetic a part of it's body schema. This person's reality has been skewed through this active physical dialogue.
A little help from my friends
So as we get nearer and nearer the deadline for having our thesis topics solidified, I find myself getting farther and farther from a resolute option. At best I think my ideas are feasible, plausible and theoretically provable, but at worst I lack all confidence necessary to even begin research on an idea.
So I guess I'm looking for a little advice (from anyone who wants to give it.)
My initial thesis idea springs from this statement: Digital technologies, and more importantly the media relay devices within it, are ubiquitous and far-reaching. In modern society, especially in Westernized nations, the reliance upon and unfailing connection with digital media is reconstituting the bicameral mind and leading to the diminution of consciousness. <-- the bicameral mind theory can be explain in some detail here.
I know it's a little far-fetched, but in my head it's ridiculously plausible, and I have lots of connections I'm trying to draw from it, but I guess I'm curious if you all find it interesting and plausible. (Virilio's arcitle from Reading Digital Media somewhat touches upon it, or at least adds another facet to it.)
The second tier to the question revolves around the fact that I'd really like to make a project for it all. My initial ideas revolve around a love for narrative, so I'm thinking of creating a short film to illustrate singular effects of the reconstitution of the bicameral mind due to digital media reliance. Any thoughts?
(that's way too long of a blog post, my bad. but what better people to ask than you guys?)
So I guess I'm looking for a little advice (from anyone who wants to give it.)
My initial thesis idea springs from this statement: Digital technologies, and more importantly the media relay devices within it, are ubiquitous and far-reaching. In modern society, especially in Westernized nations, the reliance upon and unfailing connection with digital media is reconstituting the bicameral mind and leading to the diminution of consciousness. <-- the bicameral mind theory can be explain in some detail here.
I know it's a little far-fetched, but in my head it's ridiculously plausible, and I have lots of connections I'm trying to draw from it, but I guess I'm curious if you all find it interesting and plausible. (Virilio's arcitle from Reading Digital Media somewhat touches upon it, or at least adds another facet to it.)
The second tier to the question revolves around the fact that I'd really like to make a project for it all. My initial ideas revolve around a love for narrative, so I'm thinking of creating a short film to illustrate singular effects of the reconstitution of the bicameral mind due to digital media reliance. Any thoughts?
(that's way too long of a blog post, my bad. but what better people to ask than you guys?)
Saturday, September 15, 2007
share my insanity...I am merely adrift in the sea...
Many of Erik Davis' thoughts cross boundries intersecting the thoughts and ideas expressed by each of us as we explore our own concepts and interpretations of reality...In other words...This is cool Sh!* man...
http://www.techgnosis.com/index.php
http://www.techgnosis.com/index.php
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