Apparently, Professor Winokur has told us we don't have a blog post due this week. He wants us to focus more on the final exam next week, but I just briefly wanted to close out this blog formally.
I promised I'd give some thoughts on the book Neuromancer, though. I will say as much as I liked reading this book, I couldn't read it without mentally comparing it to and mentally framing it in the context of The Matrix as I'm more familiar with it and they both carry very similar themes. In fact, it almost seems like the Wachowski Bros. just rewrote Neuromancer and then changed the names and the ending for The Matrix.
However, both authors do deserve some credit for their work. Seeing as Nueormancer was really a seminal work that kicked off the cyberpunk genre, the Matrix really couldn't exist without them (and yes, I do realize that almost accusing the Wachowskis of plagiarism was NOT a good segue into that statement).
I do have to credit the Wachowskis for creating the work that holds up better of the two. The Matrix was released in 1999 and Neuromancer was published in 1984. By 1999, such progress was made in terms of personal computers and the internet becoming household items that The Matrix seems more believable and realistic as a commentary on the current state of technology and where it will lead. However, as we touched on in the second to final lecture, Gibson did successfully predict today's youth "hookup" culture with the surprisingly tasteful sex scene between Case and Molly he included. I don't even think we need to get into how sexting and snapchats exacerbated that.
Well, I'd like to close out this blog by saying it's been fun and this class has given me some of the best discussion I've ever been a part of. I hope this blog in particular has been as fun for you to read as it has been for me to write.
Monday, April 29, 2013
Monday, April 22, 2013
Inside Art, Media and Materiality
This week's blog post is in response to the Hayles reading Material Metaphors as well as Manovich's article Avant-Garde as Software.
In regards to the readings themselves, I found that as a whole they supplemented each other better than they did this afternoon's lecture in class (which itself felt like a bit of a retread of the lectures early on about authorship in certain spots).
The Manovich reading had some relation to our class discussion, but overall it felt a little too vague in spots. Manovich is a great writer and he explained his concepts in regards to software and media very thoroughly, but he should've spent a little more time on the art history lesson he tried to introduce at the beginning. He should've better explained how that tied into his article.
The Hayles reading was substantially better due to its relative brevity and scope. Hayles did seem to branch out too much in the middle and try to introduce several new points of discussion at once, but he tired it all back together nicely at the end by defining his concept of "materiality".
I leave you with my final takeaway from Monday's very interesting and engaging class lecture on the creation of art. Everyone has their own different idea of what constitutes art. Art can be both in the eye of the beholder and in the intent of the creator. The creator can create something they believe to be a work of art which could be panned by some and praised by others. The beholder can in return trash something or hail it as a great work of art.
Most works of art are usually trying to express some message or point of view on life. A creator of some work could have their intended message either widely misinterpreted or completely ignored by the general public. It is up to the beholder to gleam the creators intent or see an alternate form of expression.
That's all for now. Next week, will be my last blog post for this class. I will be blogging in response to the science fiction novel Neuromancer which I plan to start reading Wednesday morning at work. See you then!
In regards to the readings themselves, I found that as a whole they supplemented each other better than they did this afternoon's lecture in class (which itself felt like a bit of a retread of the lectures early on about authorship in certain spots).
The Manovich reading had some relation to our class discussion, but overall it felt a little too vague in spots. Manovich is a great writer and he explained his concepts in regards to software and media very thoroughly, but he should've spent a little more time on the art history lesson he tried to introduce at the beginning. He should've better explained how that tied into his article.
The Hayles reading was substantially better due to its relative brevity and scope. Hayles did seem to branch out too much in the middle and try to introduce several new points of discussion at once, but he tired it all back together nicely at the end by defining his concept of "materiality".
I leave you with my final takeaway from Monday's very interesting and engaging class lecture on the creation of art. Everyone has their own different idea of what constitutes art. Art can be both in the eye of the beholder and in the intent of the creator. The creator can create something they believe to be a work of art which could be panned by some and praised by others. The beholder can in return trash something or hail it as a great work of art.
Most works of art are usually trying to express some message or point of view on life. A creator of some work could have their intended message either widely misinterpreted or completely ignored by the general public. It is up to the beholder to gleam the creators intent or see an alternate form of expression.
That's all for now. Next week, will be my last blog post for this class. I will be blogging in response to the science fiction novel Neuromancer which I plan to start reading Wednesday morning at work. See you then!
Monday, April 15, 2013
Inside The Matrix
This week's blog post is merely in response to our class viewing of the 1999 sci-fi thriller The Matrix last Thursday as well as this Booker article on the film.
I believe this is the third time I've seen The Matrix. I remember my dad renting it from Blockbuster when it first came out (remember those?) and the second time was when we were learning about "the hero's journey" in my ninth grade English class. It's been so long since I've seen the film that I there were some parts from Thursday's screening that I didn't even remember that well.
Still, it is quite a captivating and dynamic effort from the Wachowksi brothers that still seems to hold up better than both it's released-within-six-months-of-each-other 2003 sequels The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. The Booker reading didn't quite add to my takeaway from the film, but it did raise an interesting point on pages 258-59 about how the film industry is seemingly hell bent on exploiting the creativity of filmmakers and distorting our reality only for their personal gain and profits. Otherwise, the only real purpose it served was to point out what elements of other works The Matrix had "borrowed" from.
In class these past two weeks, we have already discussed The Matrix and its relationship to Plato's Cave, Baurilliard and the Simulacrum adnauseum. Rather than retread along those points, I'd like to reiterate what my real "takeaway" from The Matrix was as I had previously mentioned. I took it was a chilling warning of things to come in regards to our own technological advancements.
In class, we mentioned how the The Wachowski brothers had obviously meant the film to be some kind of rant against modern technology and how the filmmakers chose to include shots of phones from the 20s and 30s as well as 50s TV sets (and what looked to me like 80s era computers) in a 90s movie. I thought that choice was deliberately made to supplement the film's message and illustrate how far we have come technologically to that point in time. The Wachowski brothers wanted to show us the then current state of technology so they could bring it to it's logical conclusion by showing scenes of people addressed as "coppertops" wired into an alternate technological reality while the real physical world around them has turned into a wasteland.
\
All this time, characters are talking about how this is the "real world" and what we previously experienced as real was just an illusion meant to hide all of this from us. The message of The Matrix may carry more relevance in 2013 than it truly did in 1999. With the rise of both the smartphone industry and social networking platforms as ever advancing billion dollar commodities, people are now carrying around a technology that is consuming them every where they go and easily allowing them to enter into new worlds where their real or true identity carries substantially less meaning. It hasn't quite gotten to the point where we are so wired into this technology that we've adopted it as our one true reality, making us unaware that we are really just living in a vast wasteland (at least not in the most literal sense yet) but I have a feeling that this could be the not too distant future.
I think I'll stop here as I intended to make this blog post shorter and the fact that I have a film paper to write for media ethics right now. See you next week!
I believe this is the third time I've seen The Matrix. I remember my dad renting it from Blockbuster when it first came out (remember those?) and the second time was when we were learning about "the hero's journey" in my ninth grade English class. It's been so long since I've seen the film that I there were some parts from Thursday's screening that I didn't even remember that well.
Still, it is quite a captivating and dynamic effort from the Wachowksi brothers that still seems to hold up better than both it's released-within-six-months-of-each-other 2003 sequels The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. The Booker reading didn't quite add to my takeaway from the film, but it did raise an interesting point on pages 258-59 about how the film industry is seemingly hell bent on exploiting the creativity of filmmakers and distorting our reality only for their personal gain and profits. Otherwise, the only real purpose it served was to point out what elements of other works The Matrix had "borrowed" from.
In class these past two weeks, we have already discussed The Matrix and its relationship to Plato's Cave, Baurilliard and the Simulacrum adnauseum. Rather than retread along those points, I'd like to reiterate what my real "takeaway" from The Matrix was as I had previously mentioned. I took it was a chilling warning of things to come in regards to our own technological advancements.
In class, we mentioned how the The Wachowski brothers had obviously meant the film to be some kind of rant against modern technology and how the filmmakers chose to include shots of phones from the 20s and 30s as well as 50s TV sets (and what looked to me like 80s era computers) in a 90s movie. I thought that choice was deliberately made to supplement the film's message and illustrate how far we have come technologically to that point in time. The Wachowski brothers wanted to show us the then current state of technology so they could bring it to it's logical conclusion by showing scenes of people addressed as "coppertops" wired into an alternate technological reality while the real physical world around them has turned into a wasteland.
\
All this time, characters are talking about how this is the "real world" and what we previously experienced as real was just an illusion meant to hide all of this from us. The message of The Matrix may carry more relevance in 2013 than it truly did in 1999. With the rise of both the smartphone industry and social networking platforms as ever advancing billion dollar commodities, people are now carrying around a technology that is consuming them every where they go and easily allowing them to enter into new worlds where their real or true identity carries substantially less meaning. It hasn't quite gotten to the point where we are so wired into this technology that we've adopted it as our one true reality, making us unaware that we are really just living in a vast wasteland (at least not in the most literal sense yet) but I have a feeling that this could be the not too distant future.
I think I'll stop here as I intended to make this blog post shorter and the fact that I have a film paper to write for media ethics right now. See you next week!
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Inside Play and Second Life
Before I begin, I'd just like to point out that last week's blog referenced an article that was actually supposed to have been read for this week instead of the week before. That article was LaFarge's Winside Out. To make up for this glaring oversight, I will use this week's blog entry to respond to the two readings I missed from last week which are Julian Dibbel's A Rape In Cyberspace and the Boellstorf excerpt The Subject and Scope of this Inquiry. I will also discuss an article meant to be read this week and that is Huizinga's Nature and Significance of Play.
Huizinga's article was very well written. The author really explained and established the concept of "play" well and provided some well chosen and vivid examples. Dibbel's piece was quite provocative, obviously, but it was an interesting personal narrative on MUDs and MMORPGs as well. I took it as a warning of things to come and as a look at how the anonymity of cyberspace and its possibility of a brand new identity for any user can seriously take its toll on the human psyche. Boellstorf's piece took on essentially the same subject matter, but it was obviously much less dark and surreal. Boellstorf took a more genuine almost journalistic approach to the effects of Second Life, essentially telling it like it is.
Again, rather than raise a whole new point from these readings I'd like to reiterate a point I made in the lecture. Different cultures are willing to except different things as real to different degrees. One thing all cultures can agree on is that they are willing to except anything, any character or creation, as real if they see that it represents something very much real or something they believe in. It could be a product being advertised or simply an abstract concept, as long as people see something real behind something they believe in, they will accept it as real.
I would've spent more time on this entry if I wasn't so incredibly busy this week. See you next week!
Huizinga's article was very well written. The author really explained and established the concept of "play" well and provided some well chosen and vivid examples. Dibbel's piece was quite provocative, obviously, but it was an interesting personal narrative on MUDs and MMORPGs as well. I took it as a warning of things to come and as a look at how the anonymity of cyberspace and its possibility of a brand new identity for any user can seriously take its toll on the human psyche. Boellstorf's piece took on essentially the same subject matter, but it was obviously much less dark and surreal. Boellstorf took a more genuine almost journalistic approach to the effects of Second Life, essentially telling it like it is.
Again, rather than raise a whole new point from these readings I'd like to reiterate a point I made in the lecture. Different cultures are willing to except different things as real to different degrees. One thing all cultures can agree on is that they are willing to except anything, any character or creation, as real if they see that it represents something very much real or something they believe in. It could be a product being advertised or simply an abstract concept, as long as people see something real behind something they believe in, they will accept it as real.
I would've spent more time on this entry if I wasn't so incredibly busy this week. See you next week!
Monday, April 1, 2013
Inside Virtual Worlds
This week's blog post is in response to both the excerpt Simulacra and Simulations from Jean Baurillard's Selected Writings as well as Antionette Lafarge's piece Winside Out: An Introduction to the Convergence of Computers, Games and Art.
Despite its relative brevity at only five pages (in print anyway) the Baurillard reading was plagued by applying too many examples to its premise. As I was reading this, I felt the author applied roughly a baker's dozen examples to his rather lofty concept.
It seemed that they all attempted to make their own points that were wildly different from each other and that there were so many of them that they ran a serious risk of contradicting one another instead of all tying back to the central theme of the article which in this case was to explain the concept of the "simulacrum". Baurillard's writing should've done a better job of getting in, unpacking its central premise, applying two or three simple and relevant examples to it and getting out.
However, the article does make more sense when read with Lafarges' piece on video games as it is a good companion concept to simulation. Lafarge does a considerably better job with her writing style at first. She starts off great drawing lots of relevant parallels between life, art and games and is slightly better at engaging the reader and keeping focused than Baurillard.
However, Lafarge quickly loses steam at the end because she appears to be explaining modern video game concepts that appear to be common knowledge to the target audience for this article. If she were trying to broaden her audience by including a "glossary" of terms at the end, this would be the wrong way to go about doing that.
Still, going back to Baurillard, his reading is based around a concept that it quite relevant to digital technology in this day and age. I'd like to explore this concept just based on the following quote from Ecclesiastes he opened his article with.
"The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth - it is the truth which conceals that there is none.
The simulacrum is true."
Applying this statement to the way we interact, online this could mean that no matter how many avatars or alternate identities we hide behind online to try and keep "anonymous", our real selves can never be concealed. Other online participants who we react with will see right through them immediately. While our online activities may be referred to as "simulations", our online identities are not necessarily the "simulacrum." Our real life identities are the "simulacrum" because "the simulacrum is always true".
That's it for this week. I have other homework to finish. Bye.
Despite its relative brevity at only five pages (in print anyway) the Baurillard reading was plagued by applying too many examples to its premise. As I was reading this, I felt the author applied roughly a baker's dozen examples to his rather lofty concept.
It seemed that they all attempted to make their own points that were wildly different from each other and that there were so many of them that they ran a serious risk of contradicting one another instead of all tying back to the central theme of the article which in this case was to explain the concept of the "simulacrum". Baurillard's writing should've done a better job of getting in, unpacking its central premise, applying two or three simple and relevant examples to it and getting out.
However, the article does make more sense when read with Lafarges' piece on video games as it is a good companion concept to simulation. Lafarge does a considerably better job with her writing style at first. She starts off great drawing lots of relevant parallels between life, art and games and is slightly better at engaging the reader and keeping focused than Baurillard.
However, Lafarge quickly loses steam at the end because she appears to be explaining modern video game concepts that appear to be common knowledge to the target audience for this article. If she were trying to broaden her audience by including a "glossary" of terms at the end, this would be the wrong way to go about doing that.
Still, going back to Baurillard, his reading is based around a concept that it quite relevant to digital technology in this day and age. I'd like to explore this concept just based on the following quote from Ecclesiastes he opened his article with.
"The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth - it is the truth which conceals that there is none.
The simulacrum is true."
Applying this statement to the way we interact, online this could mean that no matter how many avatars or alternate identities we hide behind online to try and keep "anonymous", our real selves can never be concealed. Other online participants who we react with will see right through them immediately. While our online activities may be referred to as "simulations", our online identities are not necessarily the "simulacrum." Our real life identities are the "simulacrum" because "the simulacrum is always true".
That's it for this week. I have other homework to finish. Bye.
Monday, March 18, 2013
Inside Archiving and Memory (and ANOTHER new blog?!?)
This week's blog post is in response to both Mike Featherstone's article Theory, Culture and Society and David Carr's semi-provocatively titled piece Is Google Making Us Stupid?
I really liked reading both of these articles. They were both very thorough and yet succinct at the same time, although Carr's piece felt like it may have left some loose ends untied.
Speaking of Carr's article, I see where he's coming from with his argument that the internet is in some way tinkering with our brains and our memories. However, I view this phenomenon in a different way that I don't believe he really touched on.
The internet isn't destroying our brains or our memories as much as it is just changing how we retain information as well as what we are more likely to retain.
The human brain seems to be more likely to remember information that it took a lot of effort to track down (i.e. spending hours in a library combing through stacks and poring over a book). With the advent of Google and the rest of the internet's database of information, the entire concept of "tracking down" information has become pretty much obsolete.
We take the internet for granted in the assumption that it will always be there with us. Knowing a vast wealth of information is always going to be available at our very fingertips, we are less inclined to remember anything knowing that we can always easily look it up in the exact same spot in cyberspace later on with little to no effort on our part whatsoever. Carr kind of glossed over this in favor of writing about how the internet is shortening everyone's attention spans this way.
That's is for this week. I won't have a blog post next week because I don't have one due over the week of spring break. I leave you with a link to a brand new blog that I am a coauthor of with classmate Taylor Reed. This is for my big semester project in my Digital Journalism class. This makes five blogs that I now am expected to maintain. So long!
I really liked reading both of these articles. They were both very thorough and yet succinct at the same time, although Carr's piece felt like it may have left some loose ends untied.
Speaking of Carr's article, I see where he's coming from with his argument that the internet is in some way tinkering with our brains and our memories. However, I view this phenomenon in a different way that I don't believe he really touched on.
The internet isn't destroying our brains or our memories as much as it is just changing how we retain information as well as what we are more likely to retain.
The human brain seems to be more likely to remember information that it took a lot of effort to track down (i.e. spending hours in a library combing through stacks and poring over a book). With the advent of Google and the rest of the internet's database of information, the entire concept of "tracking down" information has become pretty much obsolete.
We take the internet for granted in the assumption that it will always be there with us. Knowing a vast wealth of information is always going to be available at our very fingertips, we are less inclined to remember anything knowing that we can always easily look it up in the exact same spot in cyberspace later on with little to no effort on our part whatsoever. Carr kind of glossed over this in favor of writing about how the internet is shortening everyone's attention spans this way.
That's is for this week. I won't have a blog post next week because I don't have one due over the week of spring break. I leave you with a link to a brand new blog that I am a coauthor of with classmate Taylor Reed. This is for my big semester project in my Digital Journalism class. This makes five blogs that I now am expected to maintain. So long!
Monday, March 11, 2013
Inside Authorship
This week's blog post is in response to three articles. They are The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes, Models of Authorship in New Media by Manovich and Michel Foucalt's piece on the function of the author.
They were all very short HTML based pieces (which I appreciate at this time of year) but they were very straight forward and got their points across wonderfully (even if Manovich's writing felt a little unfocused).
Barthes' piece was rather unusual for it's length. I felt like I was reading the CliffNotes for a much larger piece of literature I was supposed to have read all the way through for this class, but since that wasn't the case here, I appreciate the brevity of this article.
Still, Barthes and Foucault had the most interesting takes on this subject. The concept of "authorship" is something fresh and clever to me in this context as I haven't read or heard of it being bought up in a digital media context until today.
It is a very relevant and important topic for this class and I'm glad it was bought up. While Barthes and Foucault's articles were written quite some time ago, they can be applied to today's world much more easily. Barthes and Foucault viewed authorship mostly as a deep philosophical concept and applied it to the medium of books and literature. This can be better applied to the internet and social media. Manovich briefly touched on this, but didn't quite get there as he was more interested in talking about how it applied to writing software.
Both articles claim that some insight into the author's identity is key to deciphering their text so, in essence, if one were to "remove" the author form said text then figuring out its meaning would be virtually impossible. It is true that whatever the medium you write in, your writing stays with you forever. At the same time, it belongs to the public and whatever you write will be associated with your identity forever not just as an author but as a human being. Your writing both consciously and subconsciously reflects who you are inside.
This especially holds true for the the internet and especially social media. You can remain as anonymous as you want to online, but what you write is attached to an identity and said identity is forever bound to you as a person. Social media is different because your putting your real identity there and whatever you write and produce is associated with you personally and will stay with you forever as the internet becomes less tangible and more consuming of our lives and memories. Books are one thing, they are in print which is a tangible medium. Still, the stories within become part of our culture and consciousness. The internet is also different because if you're not constructing a work of fiction, then you must be consciously posting what you yourself are doing or thinking at any given moment in real time.
I guess what I'm really trying to say here is no matter where you're writing, be careful and responsible of what you write because you don't know how wide your audience reach could get.
That's it for this week. For now, I leave you with this link to my new website where I've made some major design changes. See you next week!
They were all very short HTML based pieces (which I appreciate at this time of year) but they were very straight forward and got their points across wonderfully (even if Manovich's writing felt a little unfocused).
Barthes' piece was rather unusual for it's length. I felt like I was reading the CliffNotes for a much larger piece of literature I was supposed to have read all the way through for this class, but since that wasn't the case here, I appreciate the brevity of this article.
Still, Barthes and Foucault had the most interesting takes on this subject. The concept of "authorship" is something fresh and clever to me in this context as I haven't read or heard of it being bought up in a digital media context until today.
It is a very relevant and important topic for this class and I'm glad it was bought up. While Barthes and Foucault's articles were written quite some time ago, they can be applied to today's world much more easily. Barthes and Foucault viewed authorship mostly as a deep philosophical concept and applied it to the medium of books and literature. This can be better applied to the internet and social media. Manovich briefly touched on this, but didn't quite get there as he was more interested in talking about how it applied to writing software.
Both articles claim that some insight into the author's identity is key to deciphering their text so, in essence, if one were to "remove" the author form said text then figuring out its meaning would be virtually impossible. It is true that whatever the medium you write in, your writing stays with you forever. At the same time, it belongs to the public and whatever you write will be associated with your identity forever not just as an author but as a human being. Your writing both consciously and subconsciously reflects who you are inside.
This especially holds true for the the internet and especially social media. You can remain as anonymous as you want to online, but what you write is attached to an identity and said identity is forever bound to you as a person. Social media is different because your putting your real identity there and whatever you write and produce is associated with you personally and will stay with you forever as the internet becomes less tangible and more consuming of our lives and memories. Books are one thing, they are in print which is a tangible medium. Still, the stories within become part of our culture and consciousness. The internet is also different because if you're not constructing a work of fiction, then you must be consciously posting what you yourself are doing or thinking at any given moment in real time.
I guess what I'm really trying to say here is no matter where you're writing, be careful and responsible of what you write because you don't know how wide your audience reach could get.
That's it for this week. For now, I leave you with this link to my new website where I've made some major design changes. See you next week!
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