Up to the present, there are so many controversies on the internet piracy. What is internet piracy? The term of internet piracy is commonly used to refer to unauthorized uses of content or copying patented material on the internet. Last few years, Internet piracy has been increased enormously. It has become such a worldwide problem. Then why there is piracy on the internet? Why a lot of people continually committed internet piracy? There must be some reasons for this act. Mostly, a lot of people download music, videos, games and software piracy from the internet because they want to enjoy the services and share the contents with spending less money. Many teenagers are more likely to downloading free music than purchasing physical CD on record shops. Also, people use software piracy and peer to peer filesharing websites. Furthermore, some people engage in internet piracy for commercial reasons. It financially derives great benefit them from their activity. They sell and advertise the pirated materials at competitive prices on the internet. Generally, it is hard to make people pay to download or listen to music and stop from purchasing illegal pirated software programs.
In order to prevent the internet piracy, there are many anti-piracy campaigns especially for youngers in most of the Europe and Asian countries. Also, some new system for detection of online music and online video piracy (DIF) has been introduced recently. Now People are continually making efforts to reduce the rate of internet piracy and software piracy. However, I think internet privacy will not be completely removed. Though, we can still reduce the rate of internet piracy.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Can the music industry dance to the Club Penguin boogie?
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The music industry says that P2P hurts artists (and the industry), but P2P users have become accustomed to downloading music for free. Is freemium a potential compromise?
In this week's lecture we briefly discussed a hypothetical music business model that balances unpaid digital downloads with ticket sales for live concerts... Hmm... Sounds like freemium! You get unrestricted access to the main course – songs, in digital form – but you don't get dessert – live gigs, standard and limited physical releases – unless you pay.
Compare this pay-for-concerts model to the Club Penguin model and you see an immediate difference. Where's the premium digital content? Club Penguin's physical merchandise can be equated with the concerts and physical albums from our music model. However, Club Penguin's subscriber content constitutes an additional digital-only category of premium content. If you give away digital songs, what do you have to offer as paid-for digital content?
Perhaps the music industry needs to find something other than songs to offer as premium digital content. How about a live stream of a studio performance that can only be accessed with a unique code that you receive after purchasing songs? This example may not be the best (someone could record and distribute the stream!), but my intention is to suggest that this way of thinking merits further investigation.
Our hypothetical model seems to come close to the current reality of the music business, with one major difference: people are paying for digital downloads. The Norwegian research discussed in lecture and a 2006 Canadian RIAA study both seem to indicate a self-mediated freemium among P2P users, whereby each user determines what they personally deem to be content worth paying for from the pool of free content. Maybe this shows that services like Spotify and KKBOX, which separate song content into free and premium versions before reaching the consumer, have a valid place in the market.
Compromise seems increasingly necessary, but the music industry would prefer access to digital songs to be completely locked down. If Apple found a way to block all illegally procured content from your iWhatever-you-use, would you continue to use it or seek out an alternative?
Sci-fi and feminism
The post-human predicament impolices a blurring of gender boundaries. I think this does not always work to the advantage of women, though. Many feminists have turned to both writing and reading science fiction in order to try and assess the impact of the enw technological world upon the representation of sexual difference. All fans know that science fiction has to do with fantasies about the body, espicially the repreductive body. Science fiction represents alternative systems of procreation and birth, ranging from the rather child-like image of babies born out of cauliflowers, to monstrous births through unmentionable orifices. This gives rise to what Barbara Creed defines as the syndrome of the monstrous feminme. Thus it is no coincidence that in Alien, a classic of this genre, the master computer that contorls the spaceship is called 'Mother' and she carries the characteristics of being vicious, especially to the heroine (Sigourney Weaver). The maternal function in this film is displaced: she reproduces a monstrous insect by laying eggs inside people's stomachs, through an act of phallic penetration through the mounth. THese are also many scenes in the films of ejection of smaller vessels or aircrafts from the mother-dominated, monstrous and hostile spaceshift. Mother is an all-powerfl generative force, pre-phallic and malignant: she is a non-representable abyss from which all life and death come.
Following feminist critics of science fiction, I want to argue that science fiction horror films play with fundamental male anxieties and displace it by inventing alternative view of reproduction, thereby manipulating the figure of the female body. Julia Kristeva has argued that the 'horror' part of these films is due to the play with a displaced and fantasized 'maternal' function, as holding simultaneously the key to the origins of life and to death. Just like the Medusa's head, the horrific female can be conquered by being turned into an emblem that is to say becoming fetishized.
Modleski has pointed out that in contemporary culture, mena re definitely flirting with the idea of having babies for themselves. Some of this is relatively naice, and it takes the form of experimenting with new and definitely helpful social forms of new fatherhood. In postmodern times, however, this male anxiety about the missing father must be read alongside the new repreductive technologies. They replace the woman with the technological device- the machine- in a contemporary version of the Pygmalion myth a sory of high tech 'My fair Lady.'
Following feminist critics of science fiction, I want to argue that science fiction horror films play with fundamental male anxieties and displace it by inventing alternative view of reproduction, thereby manipulating the figure of the female body. Julia Kristeva has argued that the 'horror' part of these films is due to the play with a displaced and fantasized 'maternal' function, as holding simultaneously the key to the origins of life and to death. Just like the Medusa's head, the horrific female can be conquered by being turned into an emblem that is to say becoming fetishized.
Modleski has pointed out that in contemporary culture, mena re definitely flirting with the idea of having babies for themselves. Some of this is relatively naice, and it takes the form of experimenting with new and definitely helpful social forms of new fatherhood. In postmodern times, however, this male anxiety about the missing father must be read alongside the new repreductive technologies. They replace the woman with the technological device- the machine- in a contemporary version of the Pygmalion myth a sory of high tech 'My fair Lady.'
Technologically Determined Monks?
After this last weeks reading of Negroponte's 'One Laptop Per Child', and then reading subsequant blogs about the believed effects such a wide distribution of laptops to young children in poverty sticken countries would have, I couldn't help but remember my year spent abroad living in Thailand.
In 2003 I was an exchange student and went to live in one of Thailand poorest regions, Esan. Tourism here is minimal, and while people may still use squating toilets, while young ragedy kids still run up to stopped busses at traffic lights to sell 'flattend chicken on a stick' to patrons, and clothing is all handwashed, the media technology they had was the newest you could possibly imagine.
I would be walking down the street, and see monks with shaven heads and bright orange robes talking leisurly on the newest cell phone; at malls I would see huge gaggles of young school monks (every male has to be a monk for at least two weeks in their teenage years) each gathered around computer monitors, gaming archads, or even purchasing playstations.
But you know what I noticed most? While they may have all the newest electronic media devices, they are everybit still Thai. Monks, cell phones and all, still meditate, and sing songs in the early morning as they walk down the street to eat what food people put out for them at dawn. Kids sill learn their ancient history and what it means to be thai. Even though they can watch America shows on their fancy computer screens or tv's showing burgers and pizzas, the food they still prefer is, low and behold, fried rice and fried noodles. (trust me, its probably safest that way as my personal experience with 'american style speggeti' invovled fettichini noodles, ketchup, karrots, and sliced up hotdogs...)
I'm not saying that technology does not influence, it most certainly does. It opens up and brings in new ideas, knew thoughts, ways of being, acting, eating, everything. But just because you give a child a computer does not mean that everything will be different. It does not mean, for one, that it will solve all of the problems of third world poverty or even that it will neccesarily help, nor does it mean that it will change their culture so much in the end as to be unrecognizably westernized and take children away from the cultural elements they grew up with. Giving every child a computer in poor regions is simply adding one more new elements to a group of humans in a world that is always under constant change and reconstruction. Nothing is every static.
Third World Country + First World Technology = One World?
I'm a bit on the fence about the OLPC idea, on one hand, I'd like to think that children in poverty stricken countries deserve the right to a device that would help to bridge the digital divide and get a fair chance at some sort of education. Yet a part of me thinks that the money could be put to better use such as providing better health care, water pipes to villages where it's needed most and teaching them agriculture and farming so that these places can learn to feed themselves.
Some of my main concerns are that these are 6-12 year olds; I'm just not sure how well they'll look after such a device. If I recall correctly, when I was that age I was quite rough with many of my own possessions. Other points of concern are that the children won't have enough strength to physically power the hand generator so that the laptop could run, they could sell it off for food, find online pornography if the Internet was available to them, or theft and jealously could result in them losing the device forever.
But perhaps we're being a bit harsh here. OLPC is a nonprofit organization with a specific mission. Think of it this way, (for example) World Vision let's you sponsor a child and pay for their food, healthcare, water, etc…, but it may not pay for other things such as footwear, a family to live with, education, etc... So let's give them a chance. If you look up the specifications of the OLPC laptop, you'll find that it's available to children in schools and they have battery rechargers that can charge 10 batteries at once.
A very interesting research is being done by Sugata Mitra, an education researcher who says that "There are places on Earth, in every country, where, for various reasons, good schools cannot be built and good teachers cannot or do not want to go..." And that's true, even for those who teach for World Vision. In his research, he planted some computers in a slum in New Delhi, India and monitored the results of the usage. What he found was that kids will learn how to use the computer and then teach each other; a peer teaching peer environment that invokes curiosity, self learning and competition for knowledge.
We may think that children in these countries won't want to learn on a laptop or that their energy is better spent doing something else. But seriously, what will the kids do in their spare time? Make Nike shoes and clothes for you and me? Enslave themselves to prostitution because no one else gave them a laptop and a bit of hope that they could overcome third world struggles? Or give them a laptop, an education and a better chance at an equal future?
Google It
One of the things I most often use the internet for is a simple ‘Google it’. I see or hear a phrase or word I don’t understand, I can Google it. Someone on Television mentions something technical that goes over my head, I can Google it. It’s a simple and easy way to learn a little about a lot. For all that some talk about television, the internet and everything new media making younger generations stupid; it’s more of an argument of the need for the retention of knowledge.
For example, if one hears the phrase, ‘Statute of Limitations’ and has no idea what is meant, it’s simple to type it into Google and go to the Wikipedia entry and get an explanation. A couple of weeks later someone mentions it again, do you remember? Yes? Great. No? Don’t worry about, just Google it. The internet gives us the ability to change the way we remember information. If we can use the internet to so easily recall the information for us, what’s the big deal with not trying really hard to make sure something sticks in our minds without the extra help from our friend Mr Google?
For example, if one hears the phrase, ‘Statute of Limitations’ and has no idea what is meant, it’s simple to type it into Google and go to the Wikipedia entry and get an explanation. A couple of weeks later someone mentions it again, do you remember? Yes? Great. No? Don’t worry about, just Google it. The internet gives us the ability to change the way we remember information. If we can use the internet to so easily recall the information for us, what’s the big deal with not trying really hard to make sure something sticks in our minds without the extra help from our friend Mr Google?
Friday, October 8, 2010
Is Software Piracy a problem?
Personally, I have always thought that using pirated software was ok, mainly because I wasn’t using the software to make any money. I kept telling myself that I don’t download music illegally, so I should be able to borrow and use free software. I understand that downloading music illegally takes away profits from the musician, which is why I purchase songs that I like on iTunes and from various music stores. We always hear how much money software creators have; therefore I don’t feel bad when I decide to use their creations without paying for them. After attending lectures and tutorials I am starting to think differently.
I found an article online that discusses the problem of software piracy. (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2003/04/58306) It explains that if “the piracy rate dropped to 30 percent, economic growth could increase by $400 billion and it would create 1.5 million jobs and generate $64 billion in taxes. That is alot of jobs that could be created if people didn’t use pirated software. I just think that software creators and companies need to think of a new way to distribute their products. Gaining access to a pirated version of nearly every software is extremely easy, and since it’s so easy, people choose to use them. Another contributing factor to why software piracy is so high is because of the software prices. Most everyday people can’t afford to buy a $2000 copy of Final cut pro deluxe edition. Maybe some kind of online renting option should be created for people that do not intend on using software to benefit them financially.
The article goes onto to say that they believe they can stop a high percentage of people from pirating software by simply just raising awareness. Kruger states, “There's a moral and ethical reason for respecting people’s intellectual property rights. They deserve to receive a return on their investment”. From spending time thinking about this topic of software piracy, I now see how unfair it is to the creators of the product. From now on I won’t be downloading any more pirated software.
Laptop has been eaten. Now what?
Are you weirded out by the fact that an 11 year old owns a cell phone? So by that same train of thought you would be just as weirded out by the concept of One Laptop Per Child. As I was reading the reading (LOL) for this week, I found this concept by Negroponte very bizarre and slightly unnerving.
This could severely impact the social and cultural aspect of a child’s life especially for children growing up in Third World Countries who are not used to a lot of technology in everyday life. I grew up in the Philippines so I know what it’s like to not have technology at the press of your fingertips and we used to make up our own games to pass times. As for education, I believe schooling is the most effective tool for a child’s learning and so I agree with Brian Winston’s stance that is slightly against Negroponte’s vision.
Though if you were to look at it from a different perspective, this could be just Nicholas Negroponte’s way of trying to help shape the world through technology. As there are a lot of organizations out there, such as World Vision (http://www.wvi.org) and Oxfam (http://www.oxfam.org) , who help children that are worse off with basic necessities like water, food, shelter and schooling.
You can’t help but be slightly cynical and critical about Negroponte’s vision for the 2 billion children out there in the world. Questions arise on how are these Third World Countries are going to find a power source to run these laptops let alone finding a decent and constant water supply. I think for electricity is my biggest issue with these laptops. Winston quoted Bill Gates in the reading in which Gates was more worried about how certain countries were going to supply the energy as a normal laptop would take about 20-30 watts to run within a few minutes and a child in a Third World Country could only handle 5-6 watts. It just seems odd to supply kids between the ages of 6-12 (I mean c’mon SIX-YEARS-OLD) with technology laden instruments and expect them to learn this way. Maybe I’m a little old fashioned but a lot of people in tutorial found this solution very odd indeed.
If I had to make the world a better place, laptops for kids would not be my ideal solution. Even that phrase, laptops for kids, and associating laptops with children boogles my mind!
Video Games considered Sport?
The popularity of videogames has excelled as a large part of new media technology, especially with prominent interest amongst youth. These games are continually becoming the socially acceptable outlet for physical play, and this is becoming more acceptable and is infiltrating more households, especially those with children. My arguement is not if videogames are appropriate, (although I think many are not, as they construct and play into generalised gender roles) but instead if we consider them a fully fledged extracurricular activity, to the point where as a culture the lines of technology and sport have become so blurred that we begin to associate values of sporting achievement with those of achievement in the undefined realm of videogame activity.
The clip below is an advertisement for Nintendo Wii which does just this. The game is a multiplayer format, which includes various simulations of sports, as played by a stereotypical nuclear family. The game offers various adaptors and controllers to perform the functions of such sports to a more realistic degree; just a few of these include car racing, tennis and boxing. As children grow into this obscure realm, where now sporting achievement is able to be simulated in a fun family environment, we look at the youth of today and their personal choices and they reside in a world full of technological choices, and it is not before long that they may begin to choose technology over the real thing. It is interesting that this product is marketed at the typical household or family, but without realising the potential results. The seriousness and popularity of this game is one which deems it successful and profitable to have made enough of an impact on a the present generation, and in doing so redefines sport, and demeans it to pressing buttons over competing in a physical game.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Work, Leisure, and Profit
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Facebook and its Profits
It has been said that advertisers take advantage of the time and free labour users invest in interacting on Facebook to make money. From a Marxist perspective, this is unfair on the user as he or she gains nothing in return. I find this perspective when applied to digital capitalism highly problematic. I say so because the social networking site is not one-sided in its profits. Marx considers profit to solely mean 'money' or anything monetary. I think that for SNS, profit means a 'gain' and the gains of SNS works both ways - Corporates AND users. Some people gain unconscious and conscious profits from using Facebook, so it really depends on personal motivation. Besides the site as a network to find friends and maintain connections, other two non-monetary profits I want to point out that has been discussed in lectures are: Facebook as informing identity, and Facebook as facilitating news-sharing.
I don't want to go in-depth into the theoretical facet of identity, so I will just summarize in a few sentences. Facebook provides its young adolescent users with opportunities to experiment with identities and maybe settle on one. Though identity is a process of "becomings", that is, it's never stable, the site enables these young teens to portray online who they are or who they'd like to be in real-life. This informs the person they eventually construct themselves to be in real-life. The site for them is also a platform for social interaction and esteem boost. My point being, though they popularize the site which monetarily profits advertisers and Facebook developers, these users also gain something that influences their lives in the long run (whether they know it or not).
Concerning the profit of news sharing, journalism has now expanded beyond the television set and the newspapers. People are now active in the production and consumption of news, and this is facilitated on social networks where they can share news with other users. News is now a "social currency" disseminated through social spaces like Facebook. This gift economy is profitable to users as they shape who they are and examine their ideologies around the news they share, while corporates consequently earn monetary profits. To me, it's a win-win situation, only the gain/s or 'profit' differ.
Of course, if you're a stale Facebook user, you need not worry your money is being laundered as you only need to be active on the network before you can blame advertisers for money laundering. Even if we admit they’re making money out of our network use, we are not labouring for free; rather, we’re only paying for the beneficial services they’re providing. These services include: keeping in touch, facilitating social relations and identity negotiations; and sharing news. If Facebook owners decide to start subscription, that to me, is money-laundering. The subscription will be the surplus value where what we gain in return is less than what goes out of our pockets and the amount of labour we exert.
Facebook-use and Leisure
I’m however not completely on the side of Facebook or any other monetarily-profitable social networking site. This is because of the notion of ‘leisure’. I agree with the Frankfurt School theory that leisure is supposed to be a compensation of work but it benefits capitalists and not the individual. In the case of Facebook, I don’t see the site as a place of leisure. We are still using our bodies to produce surplus value. In a way, ‘leisure’ can involve consumption which according to Marx is only encouraging capitalism, as we consume to buy more. However, consumption should be outside of work. If using Facebook during ‘leisure times’ only produces more profit for the capitalists behind the network, then that is not leisure. Though we may gain the three gains I highlight above, we're not partaking in leisure. Leisure should be free of two-sided gain or profit, no matter what 'profit' entails. Using an example from a student in my tutorial, if cleaning the toilet which gives the person a feeling of fulfilment means this reward is productive, at least, there's no monetary value attached to it, thus it is an activity outside capitalistic gains.
Do we have the right to completely "own" our profiles, or is Facebook ultimately the property of its owners? 2) Do users have the agency to ignore or click adverts?
Privacy, Profile Ads, and Agency
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Personalized ads
So you open your homepage, click to browse profiles or play a game, and to the right hand side, you notice a line of different sorts of adverts. Of course, you get this all the time, so it's only natural to ignore it instantly, but you don't. Why? Because at least two of those ads appeal to some of your personal interests. For a moment, you start to wonder how in the world Facebook could direct ads that the personal information you'd put on your profile. You remember reading somewhere that Facebook measures the quality of our interactions and relationship to determine what we see in our news feed, so you settle for this scientific justification. But the thing is, you can't stand adverts anymore especially when they invade the space you thought was private. You can't stand it, but you can't get rid of it.
I certainly feel like this and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I don't want anyone to measure up anything about me, deliver it to advertisers (who make money out of my free service), and then dish me with ads I didn't ask for in the first place. The questions to consider are: do they need permission from me? Should they pay me money if I respond to that advert? My answer shockingly is...no. I say this because just as the information we disclose to the public sphere is no longer in our control and ownership, so is what we put online in a public space like Facebook. We may own our profiles, but we don't own the site in which our profile is situated. Though privacy settings may apply to its users, it does not apply to the corporates behind it. Is it unethical for employers, educational institutions or commercial entities to access and use information we make publically available online, or is it our own responsibility to limit and control personal information? On Facebook, no matter how private we choose to set our information, the control we have is minimal because of the context the information is situated. Same thing applies to e-mails and any other site where we get random adverts in our 'private' spaces. So, I don't think we should complain about this. BUT, what about when they're making money off this, what do we get in return? How do we respond to adverts though?
Agency
As Marxists would claim, consumers and producers of cultural products have little to no agency to think and reflect on what they're doing - that is, assisting the capitalist system. These bodies of thinkers reckon the cultural industries manipulate us into using our bodies for free labour, and we get paid less than the amount of work we do. They see us as passive consumers who think we need something, when really, we only fulfil temporary desires only to keep the manipulative system of production going. Cultural theorists claim otherwise. According to them, we are active in our production and consumption. I lean towards this cultural perspective in terms of advertisements and the amount of 'control' or agency we have on them. Marx would say because these ads are specifically personalized and imported into our online private spaces, the capitalist (advertiser) gains his money, and due to our false consciousness, we go ahead and succumb to the ad. This is a bit far-fetched. Certainly, we do not always respond to ads on television, so why would we respond to online ads? We are neither passive nor are we oblivious to the profit advertisers make from this process.
So in short, privacy is limited whether we like it or not. Corporates are ultimately in control of our online spaces and the private information we put there. With adverts, it’s a choice to click. I ignore it if I have no interest in it. Facebook is its owners' property so I believe they can do what they want to do with my information, as long as it does not harm me or any other user in any way. Thus, it is no longer a matter of privacy, it is a matter of harm.
So you open your homepage, click to browse profiles or play a game, and to the right hand side, you notice a line of different sorts of adverts. Of course, you get this all the time, so it's only natural to ignore it instantly, but you don't. Why? Because at least two of those ads appeal to some of your personal interests. For a moment, you start to wonder how in the world Facebook could direct ads that the personal information you'd put on your profile. You remember reading somewhere that Facebook measures the quality of our interactions and relationship to determine what we see in our news feed, so you settle for this scientific justification. But the thing is, you can't stand adverts anymore especially when they invade the space you thought was private. You can't stand it, but you can't get rid of it.
I certainly feel like this and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I don't want anyone to measure up anything about me, deliver it to advertisers (who make money out of my free service), and then dish me with ads I didn't ask for in the first place. The questions to consider are: do they need permission from me? Should they pay me money if I respond to that advert? My answer shockingly is...no. I say this because just as the information we disclose to the public sphere is no longer in our control and ownership, so is what we put online in a public space like Facebook. We may own our profiles, but we don't own the site in which our profile is situated. Though privacy settings may apply to its users, it does not apply to the corporates behind it. Is it unethical for employers, educational institutions or commercial entities to access and use information we make publically available online, or is it our own responsibility to limit and control personal information? On Facebook, no matter how private we choose to set our information, the control we have is minimal because of the context the information is situated. Same thing applies to e-mails and any other site where we get random adverts in our 'private' spaces. So, I don't think we should complain about this. BUT, what about when they're making money off this, what do we get in return? How do we respond to adverts though?
Agency
As Marxists would claim, consumers and producers of cultural products have little to no agency to think and reflect on what they're doing - that is, assisting the capitalist system. These bodies of thinkers reckon the cultural industries manipulate us into using our bodies for free labour, and we get paid less than the amount of work we do. They see us as passive consumers who think we need something, when really, we only fulfil temporary desires only to keep the manipulative system of production going. Cultural theorists claim otherwise. According to them, we are active in our production and consumption. I lean towards this cultural perspective in terms of advertisements and the amount of 'control' or agency we have on them. Marx would say because these ads are specifically personalized and imported into our online private spaces, the capitalist (advertiser) gains his money, and due to our false consciousness, we go ahead and succumb to the ad. This is a bit far-fetched. Certainly, we do not always respond to ads on television, so why would we respond to online ads? We are neither passive nor are we oblivious to the profit advertisers make from this process.
So in short, privacy is limited whether we like it or not. Corporates are ultimately in control of our online spaces and the private information we put there. With adverts, it’s a choice to click. I ignore it if I have no interest in it. Facebook is its owners' property so I believe they can do what they want to do with my information, as long as it does not harm me or any other user in any way. Thus, it is no longer a matter of privacy, it is a matter of harm.
1) Advertisers make money off our information, should we get anything in return? 2) Does using Facebook count as Leisure?
Move over Steve Jobs
The Android mobile phone platform is taking off. Google says it's activating 200,000 Android phones each day. That's a lot of phones. Android's being called "the kind of smash hit that techies dream about". Latest reports say the Android is shifting the balance of power back to Silicon Valley and credit it with seriously upping the stakes in the fight between Android's owners Google and Apple.
And the first Android-based tablets are due out this year.
Writing in Newsweek, Daniel Lyons suggests we're now at the point where we can say the PC is being displaced by smartphones and tablets. Which is amazing when you consider how long it took to get from the mainframe to the PC.
Researchers are estimating there will be 5 billion mobile phones in service by next year. There's only 7 billion people in the world, so that suggests a pretty high penetration of mobiles on all continents, including Africa (maybe Negroponte should be aiming at "One Tablet per Child").
Within a decade, it's estimated that the technology will be so cheap that all those billions of phones will be smart phones - which really does make the notion of One Tablet per Child realistic.
Maybe Andy Rubin will take over from Steve Jobs as the coolest geek on the planet. Possibly his smartest move was using open-source software. He argues that using open-source means an "accelerated form of evolution", meaning every company that uses the software (eg Motorola, Samsung) contributes to its development, unlike a closed system like Apple.
Everybody's suing everybody else of course - Microsoft is suing Android, Apple is suing phonemaker HTC, Oracle's suing Google - which as Lyons says proves everybody is taking Android very seriously.
Leaving the final word to a Harvard researcher: "I can't imagine anything since the spinning jenny that will so profoundly change the lives of people..." Maybe he's right.
And the first Android-based tablets are due out this year.
Writing in Newsweek, Daniel Lyons suggests we're now at the point where we can say the PC is being displaced by smartphones and tablets. Which is amazing when you consider how long it took to get from the mainframe to the PC.
Researchers are estimating there will be 5 billion mobile phones in service by next year. There's only 7 billion people in the world, so that suggests a pretty high penetration of mobiles on all continents, including Africa (maybe Negroponte should be aiming at "One Tablet per Child").
Within a decade, it's estimated that the technology will be so cheap that all those billions of phones will be smart phones - which really does make the notion of One Tablet per Child realistic.
Maybe Andy Rubin will take over from Steve Jobs as the coolest geek on the planet. Possibly his smartest move was using open-source software. He argues that using open-source means an "accelerated form of evolution", meaning every company that uses the software (eg Motorola, Samsung) contributes to its development, unlike a closed system like Apple.
Everybody's suing everybody else of course - Microsoft is suing Android, Apple is suing phonemaker HTC, Oracle's suing Google - which as Lyons says proves everybody is taking Android very seriously.
Leaving the final word to a Harvard researcher: "I can't imagine anything since the spinning jenny that will so profoundly change the lives of people..." Maybe he's right.
Is Google making us stupid?
This morning as I was sitting down at the breakfast table and layed out in front of me was the 'Neurological Foundation of New Zealand's News letter, and the headlining article was exactly this, 'Is Google making us stupid?'
The article is based around a review of an article of the same name written by Nicolas Carr two years ago, talking about the effects of the Internet on our brains, being a Neurological magazine it is focused on the physical affects.
Well according to the article the jury is out. Some claim we are now super human since we don't have to memorize trivial stuff therefore allowing us to use our brain for some other higher powers. Others stress that the internet is turning us into lazy couch potatoes with short attention spans.
However Colin Blakemore, a neurobiologist from the University of Oxford points out that these scholars who say that we are going to regress are only referring to the uneducated masses and that they don't mind taking advantage of the benefits that the internet has had on their own research. (Kind of like a double standard I have learned to accept from the educational elite...)
According to this article being literate changes the way our brain works, so why then couldn't knowing how to work a computer for internet surfing too have an affect? As we use different parts of our brains differently it changes the default connections. Naomi Alderman adds that this difference between what we know and what we choose to do with this knowledge is what makes us human.
I love how she puts it. 'Time was when we didn't need to be reminded to read. Well, time was when we didn't need to be encouraged to cook. That time's gone. None the less, cook. And read. We can decide to change our own brains - that's the most astonishing thing of all." My default these days tends to be browsing the internet, but I am going to take the advice of Alderman and go read a book.
The article is based around a review of an article of the same name written by Nicolas Carr two years ago, talking about the effects of the Internet on our brains, being a Neurological magazine it is focused on the physical affects.
Well according to the article the jury is out. Some claim we are now super human since we don't have to memorize trivial stuff therefore allowing us to use our brain for some other higher powers. Others stress that the internet is turning us into lazy couch potatoes with short attention spans.
However Colin Blakemore, a neurobiologist from the University of Oxford points out that these scholars who say that we are going to regress are only referring to the uneducated masses and that they don't mind taking advantage of the benefits that the internet has had on their own research. (Kind of like a double standard I have learned to accept from the educational elite...)
According to this article being literate changes the way our brain works, so why then couldn't knowing how to work a computer for internet surfing too have an affect? As we use different parts of our brains differently it changes the default connections. Naomi Alderman adds that this difference between what we know and what we choose to do with this knowledge is what makes us human.
I love how she puts it. 'Time was when we didn't need to be reminded to read. Well, time was when we didn't need to be encouraged to cook. That time's gone. None the less, cook. And read. We can decide to change our own brains - that's the most astonishing thing of all." My default these days tends to be browsing the internet, but I am going to take the advice of Alderman and go read a book.
Piracy....how?
Let’s face it; there is no real way of controlling this so-called problem of piracy. I’m sure everyone has at least one stereotyped geeky friend who likes to download stuff and, not to mention, carries around a 1 terabyte external storage device in their backpack. How many do I know? Well, let’s just say, I would have to grow some extra fingers on both hands.
Am I ashamed or disappointed in them? No, of course not. But, I’m also not condoning to the wider population either. As far as I know, not a single one of them sells their downloaded material (unlike those dodgy people you see on shows like Target selling from behind a counter of a store). And many of these geeky friends admit in the end that it’s better to go and watch in the movie in cinemas or buy/hire out the DVD of a movie or television series.
What about all the music that is being downloaded then? I think it’s hilarious that there is an outrage over downloading music. If I wanted, I could go down to the local library, issue out a recent released CD from a band I’m interested in for $1, go home and play it on my laptop, burn a disc for myself, add other songs from other bands, and give it to a friend to keep. Not only have I ripped off the band, music companies etc, I have also saved my money whilst gaining some love and appreciation from a fellow peer who did not have to go out of their way to buy their own copy of music when someone they knew had one anyway. For me personally, I don’t like to rip off our Kiwi bands because I have this supposed New Zealand identity I want to uphold and support.
How can anyone control this type of ‘sharing-is-caring’ mentality? For one, I think it can only benefit bands with their music becoming somewhat viral (even used on personally made YouTube videos, which can also bring up questions of copyright) and spreading their image across spaces. I mean, isn’t that how The Beatles became famous in the U.S.? Everyone technically heard them before they saw them.
And let’s be honest, the middle-man is really the one being ripped off here. Radiohead removed the middleman altogether and decided to sell their new album In Rainbows over the internet, with fans paying whatever they felt it was worth – from nothing to £100. It has been called high-risk by critics, but I fail to see how it can be when you are reaching out to a new breed of fans. What did the music industry hierarchy expect when new media technology progressed to what it is now and what it will be?
Am I ashamed or disappointed in them? No, of course not. But, I’m also not condoning to the wider population either. As far as I know, not a single one of them sells their downloaded material (unlike those dodgy people you see on shows like Target selling from behind a counter of a store). And many of these geeky friends admit in the end that it’s better to go and watch in the movie in cinemas or buy/hire out the DVD of a movie or television series.
What about all the music that is being downloaded then? I think it’s hilarious that there is an outrage over downloading music. If I wanted, I could go down to the local library, issue out a recent released CD from a band I’m interested in for $1, go home and play it on my laptop, burn a disc for myself, add other songs from other bands, and give it to a friend to keep. Not only have I ripped off the band, music companies etc, I have also saved my money whilst gaining some love and appreciation from a fellow peer who did not have to go out of their way to buy their own copy of music when someone they knew had one anyway. For me personally, I don’t like to rip off our Kiwi bands because I have this supposed New Zealand identity I want to uphold and support.
How can anyone control this type of ‘sharing-is-caring’ mentality? For one, I think it can only benefit bands with their music becoming somewhat viral (even used on personally made YouTube videos, which can also bring up questions of copyright) and spreading their image across spaces. I mean, isn’t that how The Beatles became famous in the U.S.? Everyone technically heard them before they saw them.
And let’s be honest, the middle-man is really the one being ripped off here. Radiohead removed the middleman altogether and decided to sell their new album In Rainbows over the internet, with fans paying whatever they felt it was worth – from nothing to £100. It has been called high-risk by critics, but I fail to see how it can be when you are reaching out to a new breed of fans. What did the music industry hierarchy expect when new media technology progressed to what it is now and what it will be?
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Einstein's Infinite Playlist (Or the Theory of Facebook Relativity)
Einstein's Theory of Relativity posits that time passes more slowly the closer you are to the centre of a massive object. Replace the word 'massive' with 'dull' and it also describes half the classes we've all invariably taken at some point. This means that classes with fat lecturers are going to be extremely boring.
Einstein would have been fascinated with our current technological state. The world has seemingly been kicked into ever-higher gears over the last few years. All new stuff is speedier than the last lot of... stuff. Small dense things like iPhones seem to suck all our time into them, just like a black hole. Steve Jobs sticks everything but the kitchen sink into a post-it sized lump and calls a press conference to announce his latest masterpiece that will revolutionise the way we live. Though in saying that I'm sure he'll put in a kitchen sink app in the iPhone 5.
The thing is, the faster technology gets, the more impatient the world seems to become. We are hungry for speed! It has affected our perception of time. Having movie take 2 hours to download seems like a vast expanse of time bridged only by the little green progress bar that taunts you with its inching green evil. Ahem. Rationally speaking the speed should be irrelevant - the movie will download eventually. But I want it all, and I want it now!
Queen reference? Sweet.
Every new generation of laptops, cell phones, toasters, whatever, all promise to be faster! And they are. Why have a perfectly good toaster that makes your bread crunchy and brown in 30 seconds when you can have the new iToast from Apple that does it in 25 seconds AND you can play Tetris while you wait! Our perception of the toasting would be altered and those extra 5 seconds with the old toaster would turn into an unbuttered Hell. Everything gets faster and the more technology we use, the slower everything else seems to get. Right?
So Adam, I hear you say, what is your point? And what's Einstein got to do with this?
What Einstein basically said is that the faster you go, the slower everything else seems relative to you. This is a social application of that theory but I'm sure you get the idea.
Speed does not necessarily denote a better product or experience. You will not fit more into your day simply because your new phone can do more stuff, more quickly. You will not become more efficient because your processor is 8 Ghz instead of just 4. Faster processors do have their place, I agree. Perception of time is not altered solely by technology. It is also a social thing and always has been. But technology is an important factor. Faster stuff has meant that society as a whole has seemingly sped up, and social conventions have changed. In the 21st century, faster must mean better. Digital must be better than analogue. We must all do more with our time and still make it for coffee at 4.30! Lies! An old-fashioned mix CD you make from scratch will always be more romantic than simply assembling a playlist and saying to your lover: "Hey download these." Efficiency does not a relationship make.
Perception of time changes as we age. But I wonder if the evolution of our perception will be different to that of previous generations because we grew up in a more rapidly changing world?
Before I confuse myself any further, I will end with an amusing factoid.
The humble pigeon would die of boredom while watching the Matrix. Not because Keanu Reeves has less acting talent than Megan Fox, but because pigeons perceive the world at a much higher frame-rate, so to speak. So while we see a continual moving image, the pigeon would see a slide show. Thus Einstein's Theory of Relativity is embodied by the common pigeon. And that's what he has to do with it all.
Feel free to comment! Maybe you'll make more sense of it than I have.
Banksy and MBW
I think one of the most frustrating arguments to date surrounding the Internet and new technology is the hyper sensitivity of copyright. Now don't get me wrong I agree to a certain extent that works should be copyrighted so that people can not profit off the blood, sweat and creative genius of others. But where do you draw the line??
Is using the hype generated by something to promote your own product a bad thing? If so then why hasn't programmes like 'The Vampire Diaries' been taken off the air for riding on the back of the 'Twilight' saga? Am I missing a link? Do they pay Twilight royalties? and then does 'Twilight' pay 'Count Dracula'? Not only does this bother me, but where is the line drawn between folktale and Disney? I mean its not like Walt Disney came up with the Cinderella story. They just have conceptualized the story and spread it to every corner of the world in such a way you kind of can't imagine her without her blonde hair up in a bun and blue dress. Is this our fault if we then draw on this image when retelling this Grim brothers tale? If you saturate the world with your message you kind of have to expect someone to draw from it.
It is more easy than ever to copy someones work, and sure I don't think that it is fair that people make money from the act of copying someone else... But sometimes you have to realise this is going to happen and you might as well appreciate that side of humanity. I mean we are creatures of Fashion.
This brings me to the title of this Post, 'Banksy and Mr BrainWash. For those of you who have not heard this hilarious tale, it is the basis of a film I highly recommend to anyone. 'Exit Through the Gift Shop' (2010)
This film is a massive ironic critique on the acceptance of street art (which started as a counter culture) into popular/art culture. Banksy does this through the fictional character of Mr Brain Wash. Well actually we don't really know if hes fictional or not. He is set up to be real in the film, but there are plenty of skeptics out there. But regardless people are paying up to 200,000 USD for his works, which are basically ripped off Banksy paintings. The film follows this over the top French man as he firstly learns about, and then becomes a 'street artist' by copying ideas, techniques and even subject matter from all the people he knows. Instead of working his way through the unpopular stages of his creativity which all the other graffiti artists we are introduced to do, he simply copies other work. I like to think of this as a little running commentary of today's society. We all copy rip and burn each others things. the best of us make manage to create a new spin on an old story, while others are content with enjoying someone else's creative labour. Banksy seems to realise that you can't really separate the good from the bad, perhaps we should all take a page out of his book.... If we are too strict about copyright laws then we leave no space for people to build on old ideas.
Is using the hype generated by something to promote your own product a bad thing? If so then why hasn't programmes like 'The Vampire Diaries' been taken off the air for riding on the back of the 'Twilight' saga? Am I missing a link? Do they pay Twilight royalties? and then does 'Twilight' pay 'Count Dracula'? Not only does this bother me, but where is the line drawn between folktale and Disney? I mean its not like Walt Disney came up with the Cinderella story. They just have conceptualized the story and spread it to every corner of the world in such a way you kind of can't imagine her without her blonde hair up in a bun and blue dress. Is this our fault if we then draw on this image when retelling this Grim brothers tale? If you saturate the world with your message you kind of have to expect someone to draw from it.
It is more easy than ever to copy someones work, and sure I don't think that it is fair that people make money from the act of copying someone else... But sometimes you have to realise this is going to happen and you might as well appreciate that side of humanity. I mean we are creatures of Fashion.
This brings me to the title of this Post, 'Banksy and Mr BrainWash. For those of you who have not heard this hilarious tale, it is the basis of a film I highly recommend to anyone. 'Exit Through the Gift Shop' (2010)
This film is a massive ironic critique on the acceptance of street art (which started as a counter culture) into popular/art culture. Banksy does this through the fictional character of Mr Brain Wash. Well actually we don't really know if hes fictional or not. He is set up to be real in the film, but there are plenty of skeptics out there. But regardless people are paying up to 200,000 USD for his works, which are basically ripped off Banksy paintings. The film follows this over the top French man as he firstly learns about, and then becomes a 'street artist' by copying ideas, techniques and even subject matter from all the people he knows. Instead of working his way through the unpopular stages of his creativity which all the other graffiti artists we are introduced to do, he simply copies other work. I like to think of this as a little running commentary of today's society. We all copy rip and burn each others things. the best of us make manage to create a new spin on an old story, while others are content with enjoying someone else's creative labour. Banksy seems to realise that you can't really separate the good from the bad, perhaps we should all take a page out of his book.... If we are too strict about copyright laws then we leave no space for people to build on old ideas.
Land of the Long White Fibre-optic Cable
Auckland is famous for a sprawling transportation network that every government seems determined to add to in order to solve the car-clog crisis. If John Key has his way, the entire nation will sport a jolly nice shiny new fibre-optic-cable-to-your-door communications network. And then we'll all have internet so fast our desktops will burst into flames. Cue fireextinguisher.exe
But will this really improve things? Who will use all that data? Does New Zealand need to be the Land of Milk, Honey and Bit-torrents?
I am a high-data user. I can personally chomp through 30GB of data in a fortnight. 60 in a month if I'm particularly bad. I've seen the American advertisements. for 100GB per month. Relatively cheap too. Personally I am in favour of high data caps. But in our society it would be like having a Ferrari with only 1 km of straight road nearby. Nice to have and shiny too, but you simply never use it. Those in favour of high speed, high data internet say it will benefit all New Zealanders and open up technological avenues that we otherwise never conceived of. Rubbish, says I. Unless you are particularly data-heavy, playing a lot of MMO's, downloading movies and endless YouTube clips and everything else at www.etc.com, having internet so fast that it makes the download box explode won't be of much benefit to you.
Prioritised download plans is an idea that our wonderful lecturer posited. You would pay for certain kinds of data to be prioritised and thus they would download quickly. So, for example, you could pay for a Movies Package and those files such as avi, mpg, mp4 etc, would all download at top speed whereas surfing TradeMe would be comparatively pedestrian. High-speed internet would allow for more dynamic pricing schemes and (God willing) cheaper internet access.
There is a point where the speed and amount of data available would become irrelevant. It would be effectively limitless data at nigh-instantaneous speeds. I think what we want is more fast data. And I think what we need is high media download speeds.
I want my movie downloaded in under 20 minutes. But I don't give a toss about how fast Facebook loads.
But will this really improve things? Who will use all that data? Does New Zealand need to be the Land of Milk, Honey and Bit-torrents?
I am a high-data user. I can personally chomp through 30GB of data in a fortnight. 60 in a month if I'm particularly bad. I've seen the American advertisements. for 100GB per month. Relatively cheap too. Personally I am in favour of high data caps. But in our society it would be like having a Ferrari with only 1 km of straight road nearby. Nice to have and shiny too, but you simply never use it. Those in favour of high speed, high data internet say it will benefit all New Zealanders and open up technological avenues that we otherwise never conceived of. Rubbish, says I. Unless you are particularly data-heavy, playing a lot of MMO's, downloading movies and endless YouTube clips and everything else at www.etc.com, having internet so fast that it makes the download box explode won't be of much benefit to you.
Prioritised download plans is an idea that our wonderful lecturer posited. You would pay for certain kinds of data to be prioritised and thus they would download quickly. So, for example, you could pay for a Movies Package and those files such as avi, mpg, mp4 etc, would all download at top speed whereas surfing TradeMe would be comparatively pedestrian. High-speed internet would allow for more dynamic pricing schemes and (God willing) cheaper internet access.
There is a point where the speed and amount of data available would become irrelevant. It would be effectively limitless data at nigh-instantaneous speeds. I think what we want is more fast data. And I think what we need is high media download speeds.
I want my movie downloaded in under 20 minutes. But I don't give a toss about how fast Facebook loads.
Stepping out of the wasteland
Another Technodream last night.
This time I was floating amongst a scenic picture of a forest and looking to my left and right there were different versions of me floating passively through the perfect scenic space. My other self’s skin was in fluid motion each working as human monitors for different webpage’s that I had associated identities for. An adolescent version of myself skin pulsed with every heartbeat, etched upon him was my bebo account from my school days. There was another version of me who was a walking YouTube, his face was the video and below him was moving text being typed onto his skin all written by my hand - the comments I have made on that seductive site. Across from Mr YouTube was a banal version of myself, a boring sad eyed, boy with my plain facebook profile running down the length of his torso. Every tagged photo of myself tattooed into his limbs in all there miserable glory. There was MySpace me, stumble me and trademe me. The leader of technological doppelgangers was a body that was perpetually sinking into itself. Covered in new tabs where all my secret wanderings into the world of the web were being explored. His eyes reflected the darkness of my pursuits…the consequences of curious fingers.
Suddenly the background was right clicked, the mouse pointer moved mercilessly towards the properties option and within an instant I and my selves were trapped in the maze of a Windows 95 screensaver bumbling along hitting walls turning with ease only to encounter another wall we were trapped.
In my last dream, the lord of the internet asked me why pursue when I am technology too? Well it would seem that my reliance on technology has resided due to the fact that by an act of what I can only describe as sub-conscious intent I knocked over a glass of water on to my parasitic laptop rendering it useless.
There was no withdrawal period and the world outside the laptop screen has never been so rich in beauty.
Aldous Huxley in Brave New World Revisited quotes Dr Enrich Fromm who argues that "Our Contemporary Western society in spite of its material, intellectual and political progress , is increasingly less conductive to mental health, and tends to undermine the inner security, happiness, reason, and the capacity for love in the individual; it tends to turn him into an automaton who pays for his human failure with increasing mental sickness and with despair hidden under a frantic drive for work and so called pleasure...Let us beware if defining mental hygiene as the prevention of symptoms. Symptoms as such are not our enemy, but our friend; where there are symptoms there is conflict, and conflict always indicates that the forces of life, which strive for integration and happiness are still fighting."
Within tutorials for 314, no one has celebrated the technology we are studying. For example we all have admitted to the secret shame of our facebook faux pas and reasons for joining. Mine was to fulfil my voyeuristic tendencies - and I was not alone. Not one of us put up there hand in defence of facebook and proclaimed there love for the site and how great it was. Instead the general mood was one of unacknowledged resentment that pestered our feet like the incoming high tide as we walked along the beaches of denial. Every one of us admitted to the general anxieties that facebook created. We have created this new society on what is and physically indefinable medium and within that society there are conditioned unarticulated codes of conduct that we feel we must adhere too undermining our intuitions of the internet. We perceive the internet to be a free space of unparallel exploration one where there are no consequences and for those of whom to choose it, one can be as naughty as they like. We feel that we shouldn’t have to conform or to have our actions monitored and then put on display, yet, as the internet is developing we have less and less freedom to act privately.
Huxley describes the city as a place where the paramount feelings of the inhabitants are ones of worthlessness and isolation as our relationships to other people are defined by what we do and our objective function in life is aid the construction of a happy society. The internet on first glance offers us a chance to escape from these pressures. It is entertainment that we can control. It is personal and we can sketch ourselves in whatever fashion we like onto various webpage’s and sites. However, the internet is an urban being, a vast city of information where our indents are the equivalent of a single second story window amongst an endless world of complex high-rises. If you can reach meme status for a while you may be a billboard or piece of public art but eventually you will fade out as the attention of the masses is focused onto another something.
The roots of our fascination with stardom and celebrity are easily traceable as our life becomes more and more urbanised. We feel lost and insignificant, just one of billions amongst the ever increasing population of the world. Seeking relief we flee to our computer and partake in the world of the internet where we seek to establish ourselves in this new and promising virtual world. Yet, we have ruined our chances of becoming recognised as we have overpopulated the internet and reduced it to a new society that once your laptop gets wet, seems insignificant and petty.
Why does it seem so? Aside from the anxieties that are tied to our commitment to the establishment of a new online society and those feelings of guilt as we pursue and investigate that which we should not, the internet is a relatively unrewarding medium of which little benefits arise in comparison to the significant and ever increasing time we spend in front of our glowing monitors.
There is no hard work with the internet everything is made so easy that consequently nothing has any value. I consume music over the internet like a gluttonous piglet hell-bent on devouring more than I possibly can as I have but one life and over a lifetime of music. I do not cherish these songs I look at them as instances of minute pleasure amongst a sea of indifference. I do not wait for TV shows to come to me, I watch them in bed for hours and hours digesting whole seasons on rainy and sunny afternoons. There is no feeling of joy as the ads stop and the show continues as there are no ads. There are no conversations to be had either, generally I watch alone and the world outside is rendered voiceless as I sit with headphones on eyes glued to screen in front of me. I no longer have to look hard for obscure one of a kind items that mean the world to me as I sought so hard to find them amongst hours of shopping, I go online type down specific properties of the items I want buy them and then they arrive. Since my laptop has been down the memories of the webpage’s that I frequented have been thrown into the fire. I can’t remember my favourite sites and what that tells me is that in the context of my life they were and are completely insignificant. Sometimes it is better to work for the things you want. There is truth in this, a little bit of pain amplifies the sweetness of your endeavours, rewards remain rewards not moments watered down by their ease and frequency. Unlike the thousands of songs that populated my iTunes, the records that I own that I can smell and feel that I have to maintain and look after, that I have to flip halfway through the listening process are cherished possessions that I truly love. In the technological world we are lacking the ability to emotionally connect to the digital bodies of entertainment that inhabit this lacklustre space.
Nothing that comes from the internet is special anymore because of this we consume and consume hoping to find the thing will be. As a result, the investment of ourselves into the internet is neither a special or significant act. Just like there are thousands of funny as YouTube videos there are thousands beyond thousands of you. It is within our biological nature to be unique but the world of the internet is forcing us to conform to set regulations that force us to perform in certain ways depending on whatever identity or website we are prescribing too. Everything in a sense has been done and we are just copies of copies of some hybridised untraceable identity that we all base our internet identities upon. As the feeling of resentment rises we are slowing drowning in a culture of judgement. Bullies feel insecure and to remedy their own introspective scrutiny they hassle those they deem weaker. The internet allows us all to be bullies, and judge others as we make up for our insecurities. We are just one window in a land of a billion skyscrapers.
Our generation’s ability to empathise with others has also been reduced, but to some relief this is not our fault. As postmodern poets we live in a fragmented society where information is fat and unhealthy with no substantial value. Information is like fast food - easily obtainable. Consequently news is being reduced to that of a meme, it occurs, its partially considered then it’s gone and real tragedies are but blips of entertainment amongst a plethora of other attention seeking media texts. We are lacking a connection with the real and we continue to delve deeper into a world where we forget that people are people not the event we connect them too or the YouTube video that we watched.
Because as we invest more time in branding ourselves, we are creating a framework where one can only perceive of us as our internet pages and the humanity that is inherent to all of us is being reduced due to the parameters of a frequently changing innately insignificant world that is neither rewarding nor relevant.
Like my dream selves my contribution to the internet has already been forgotten. My facebook page is a grave that no one visits and my internet self remains in a walled maze to which there is no escape. The attention seeking intentions that led me to the walled wasteland perhaps have ends that could free me, but, do I want to be freed? In the end I will be tethered to a weight and dropped into the deep dark waters of the internet ocean where I will blink and drown till I am forgotten.
This time I was floating amongst a scenic picture of a forest and looking to my left and right there were different versions of me floating passively through the perfect scenic space. My other self’s skin was in fluid motion each working as human monitors for different webpage’s that I had associated identities for. An adolescent version of myself skin pulsed with every heartbeat, etched upon him was my bebo account from my school days. There was another version of me who was a walking YouTube, his face was the video and below him was moving text being typed onto his skin all written by my hand - the comments I have made on that seductive site. Across from Mr YouTube was a banal version of myself, a boring sad eyed, boy with my plain facebook profile running down the length of his torso. Every tagged photo of myself tattooed into his limbs in all there miserable glory. There was MySpace me, stumble me and trademe me. The leader of technological doppelgangers was a body that was perpetually sinking into itself. Covered in new tabs where all my secret wanderings into the world of the web were being explored. His eyes reflected the darkness of my pursuits…the consequences of curious fingers.
Suddenly the background was right clicked, the mouse pointer moved mercilessly towards the properties option and within an instant I and my selves were trapped in the maze of a Windows 95 screensaver bumbling along hitting walls turning with ease only to encounter another wall we were trapped.
In my last dream, the lord of the internet asked me why pursue when I am technology too? Well it would seem that my reliance on technology has resided due to the fact that by an act of what I can only describe as sub-conscious intent I knocked over a glass of water on to my parasitic laptop rendering it useless.
There was no withdrawal period and the world outside the laptop screen has never been so rich in beauty.
Aldous Huxley in Brave New World Revisited quotes Dr Enrich Fromm who argues that "Our Contemporary Western society in spite of its material, intellectual and political progress , is increasingly less conductive to mental health, and tends to undermine the inner security, happiness, reason, and the capacity for love in the individual; it tends to turn him into an automaton who pays for his human failure with increasing mental sickness and with despair hidden under a frantic drive for work and so called pleasure...Let us beware if defining mental hygiene as the prevention of symptoms. Symptoms as such are not our enemy, but our friend; where there are symptoms there is conflict, and conflict always indicates that the forces of life, which strive for integration and happiness are still fighting."
Within tutorials for 314, no one has celebrated the technology we are studying. For example we all have admitted to the secret shame of our facebook faux pas and reasons for joining. Mine was to fulfil my voyeuristic tendencies - and I was not alone. Not one of us put up there hand in defence of facebook and proclaimed there love for the site and how great it was. Instead the general mood was one of unacknowledged resentment that pestered our feet like the incoming high tide as we walked along the beaches of denial. Every one of us admitted to the general anxieties that facebook created. We have created this new society on what is and physically indefinable medium and within that society there are conditioned unarticulated codes of conduct that we feel we must adhere too undermining our intuitions of the internet. We perceive the internet to be a free space of unparallel exploration one where there are no consequences and for those of whom to choose it, one can be as naughty as they like. We feel that we shouldn’t have to conform or to have our actions monitored and then put on display, yet, as the internet is developing we have less and less freedom to act privately.
Huxley describes the city as a place where the paramount feelings of the inhabitants are ones of worthlessness and isolation as our relationships to other people are defined by what we do and our objective function in life is aid the construction of a happy society. The internet on first glance offers us a chance to escape from these pressures. It is entertainment that we can control. It is personal and we can sketch ourselves in whatever fashion we like onto various webpage’s and sites. However, the internet is an urban being, a vast city of information where our indents are the equivalent of a single second story window amongst an endless world of complex high-rises. If you can reach meme status for a while you may be a billboard or piece of public art but eventually you will fade out as the attention of the masses is focused onto another something.
The roots of our fascination with stardom and celebrity are easily traceable as our life becomes more and more urbanised. We feel lost and insignificant, just one of billions amongst the ever increasing population of the world. Seeking relief we flee to our computer and partake in the world of the internet where we seek to establish ourselves in this new and promising virtual world. Yet, we have ruined our chances of becoming recognised as we have overpopulated the internet and reduced it to a new society that once your laptop gets wet, seems insignificant and petty.
Why does it seem so? Aside from the anxieties that are tied to our commitment to the establishment of a new online society and those feelings of guilt as we pursue and investigate that which we should not, the internet is a relatively unrewarding medium of which little benefits arise in comparison to the significant and ever increasing time we spend in front of our glowing monitors.
There is no hard work with the internet everything is made so easy that consequently nothing has any value. I consume music over the internet like a gluttonous piglet hell-bent on devouring more than I possibly can as I have but one life and over a lifetime of music. I do not cherish these songs I look at them as instances of minute pleasure amongst a sea of indifference. I do not wait for TV shows to come to me, I watch them in bed for hours and hours digesting whole seasons on rainy and sunny afternoons. There is no feeling of joy as the ads stop and the show continues as there are no ads. There are no conversations to be had either, generally I watch alone and the world outside is rendered voiceless as I sit with headphones on eyes glued to screen in front of me. I no longer have to look hard for obscure one of a kind items that mean the world to me as I sought so hard to find them amongst hours of shopping, I go online type down specific properties of the items I want buy them and then they arrive. Since my laptop has been down the memories of the webpage’s that I frequented have been thrown into the fire. I can’t remember my favourite sites and what that tells me is that in the context of my life they were and are completely insignificant. Sometimes it is better to work for the things you want. There is truth in this, a little bit of pain amplifies the sweetness of your endeavours, rewards remain rewards not moments watered down by their ease and frequency. Unlike the thousands of songs that populated my iTunes, the records that I own that I can smell and feel that I have to maintain and look after, that I have to flip halfway through the listening process are cherished possessions that I truly love. In the technological world we are lacking the ability to emotionally connect to the digital bodies of entertainment that inhabit this lacklustre space.
Nothing that comes from the internet is special anymore because of this we consume and consume hoping to find the thing will be. As a result, the investment of ourselves into the internet is neither a special or significant act. Just like there are thousands of funny as YouTube videos there are thousands beyond thousands of you. It is within our biological nature to be unique but the world of the internet is forcing us to conform to set regulations that force us to perform in certain ways depending on whatever identity or website we are prescribing too. Everything in a sense has been done and we are just copies of copies of some hybridised untraceable identity that we all base our internet identities upon. As the feeling of resentment rises we are slowing drowning in a culture of judgement. Bullies feel insecure and to remedy their own introspective scrutiny they hassle those they deem weaker. The internet allows us all to be bullies, and judge others as we make up for our insecurities. We are just one window in a land of a billion skyscrapers.
Our generation’s ability to empathise with others has also been reduced, but to some relief this is not our fault. As postmodern poets we live in a fragmented society where information is fat and unhealthy with no substantial value. Information is like fast food - easily obtainable. Consequently news is being reduced to that of a meme, it occurs, its partially considered then it’s gone and real tragedies are but blips of entertainment amongst a plethora of other attention seeking media texts. We are lacking a connection with the real and we continue to delve deeper into a world where we forget that people are people not the event we connect them too or the YouTube video that we watched.
Because as we invest more time in branding ourselves, we are creating a framework where one can only perceive of us as our internet pages and the humanity that is inherent to all of us is being reduced due to the parameters of a frequently changing innately insignificant world that is neither rewarding nor relevant.
Like my dream selves my contribution to the internet has already been forgotten. My facebook page is a grave that no one visits and my internet self remains in a walled maze to which there is no escape. The attention seeking intentions that led me to the walled wasteland perhaps have ends that could free me, but, do I want to be freed? In the end I will be tethered to a weight and dropped into the deep dark waters of the internet ocean where I will blink and drown till I am forgotten.
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