Attention

I was planning my 309 assignment, but all of a sudden i just couldn't be bother and started to watching clips of youtube.

The issue i want to address and talk about is "attention"

Has the development of technology decrease our attention spam??

The development of technology has contributed to the development of multitasking where the user can consumer multiply about of media at once.

Now that leads to another question: the so called dumbest generation, lacking the ability to think, is it causes by the content from the website or just due to the lack of attention we contribute to thinking about the information?

In Mark Bauerlein's article "the dumbest generation" stated that youth are more comfortable with multitasking, and the information they consume from the website are dumb ed down, made shorter, easier to consume.

The way we consume information from books, in the library at home, the focus that we put towards the material is close to 100%. No distraction from music from ipods, calls and txts from mobile phones.

But now the distribution of attention is different due to technology, the fact that technology have developed in to some more personal made it apart of our everyday life. Good example of this would be music and the use of ipod. The size of the ipod made it so its easier to carry music on the go, allowing users to listen to music on the bus, in the library and even in a lecture. The multitasking function on mobile phones allows users to listen to music and play games while sending a txt all at the same time, with out saying the same goes for the computer, allowing multiple different application to be open at the same time.

Which divides our full concentration towards a certain subject and decreasing our attention spam, as the applications allowing users to jump around from program to program and site to site in a instant

Anahid Kassabian in the article "inattentive engagement" is interested in the problems of listening and how general people divides the attention in to primary and secondary, where primary is the main focus of sound, eg at the lecture, taking notes so the main focus is what the lecturer says. Secondary is the spill over or the other kind of sound that occurs at the same time but we do not take full awareness of, eg the entry of late comers to a lecture, or the quick comment from people in the class.

The point is that the ear can't really select what they want to hear, its the brain the labels the information that comes in.

With little information from silents and the book, the brain doesn't have to organize and arrange information that is coming in hence allowing the readers to fall in to the state of deep think about the subject their reading. but due to the distraction, people now don't have a main focus and don't remain on a subject for long as there's always something new hence people don't spend a lot of time considering and questioning the ideas the consume.

That's my assumption... happy to hear you perspective on this idea.

That's Not Natural

Zizek makes a really good point; that "ecology" is a concept which likens "nature" to spirituality. Humans are not out of nature, we haven't been thrown from the garden. In fact if we took notice that the world is still our garden, that shit doesn't just disappear, then we might actually want to do something about it. As it is, when we consider ourselves as cyborgs or machines or somehow separate and above nature, then we can see our problems as also separate, and we look for some solution that isn't there, like moving to space.

If God is punishing you, it is still a universe of meaning. Reason has developed out of something, it is not enough to listen to your own thoughts for no amount of money. A universe of meaning equates the dollar amount of your time to your effort, a love triangle of fetish. A universe of meaning doesn’t do charity work for nothing, and if our shit disappears then we let it because it doesn’t affect us in our segmented space.

‘Space’—your personal space, private space, public, mental, ecological, social, natural, workspace etc.—is all one thing. The walls of your house don’t segment it or contain it. Your house is like a machine with pipes and lines in and out, or it’s like an organism. “Visible boundaries, such as walls or enclosures in general, give rise for their part to an appearance of separation between spaces where in fact what exists is an ambiguous continuity. The space of a room, bedroom, house or garden may be cut off in a sense from social space by barriers and walls, by all the signs of private property, yet still remain fundamentally part of that space” (Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. 87). In other words we all live in the same space, our boundaries are arbitrary, and they work to create a sense of property and ownership when in fact the world is a shared singular space.

Categorizing space into natural vs. unnatural (us) creates problems which we cannot fix until we realize that we’re all part of the same space, and moving off the planet isn’t going to save us. It might save some of the richer ones though.

Power and Technology

They aired this on Channel 7 last night, it is a documentary called Us Now which explores the idea/s of changing the way we manage government to use new technologies. They are looking at this idea that democracy could be truly transparent and truly run by everyone. But first the current administrations have to get over the paranoia of being transparent, and get over the need for copyright etc. I like what he says at the last bit of this video, that revolution happens not when people adopt a new technology but when they adopt a new behavior, a remark which itself gives people power over government instead of the other way around.

worth having a look at their site too which includes all of the content of the film in sections. “The potential for transforming democracy is huge. People are leaving the democratic realm in their droves because they have little purchase on it, it doesn't seem to respond to them, they don't have a voice in it, it is not talking about what they are talking about. In contrast the web allows people to have conversations with other people, to voice their views, to meet, to share and mobilise and so all through the world you see now new forms of political mobilisation, whether they are very, very local campaigns about traffic or noise, to global campaigns about the environment and poverty enabled and organised by the web. So the web is a really powerful tool for mobilising people around things they share and they care about and that should have and does seem have the effect of re-energising democracy and, of course, in the developing world, in authoritian regimes, the web is the only place where democratic debate takes place. So the big contests about democracy in China, in Vietnam, in Burma, the web is the place where democratic debate is taking place. It is the best hope for promoting democracy in any of these places.”

This optimistic view is what early internet advocates were hoping for when they suggested that the internet was going to be a free democratic tool. Is it too optimistic? I think perspectives like this one leave out the business side of the web. The ‘web’ doesn’t really exist as it used to, and it is problematic to consider the web as a place. Most users of the web are users of applications like email, facebook, google. These are businesses that want our activity. They get advertising revenue from it. They can also potentially influence the way we think and the way we communicate. These ‘places’ are not free of capitalist influence. Furthermore, the web in general is not free of its materiality. If we think of the web as a place, we can forget where we are when we use it. And the fact is that there are more people who don’t use the internet than those that do, especially in the countries that might profit most from democratic debate. (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm). Ultimately, people need computers, they need interfaces, and they need access. How can it be a democratic tool when most of the time, access is purchased?

Might As Well Face It You're Addicted To.... Porn.

Out of everything available in the world today is porn really that bad? Who are the people hurting? If you're addicted to drugs then you can kill yourself or others with the habit, the same goes for alcohol or cigarettes. So who are these people hurting with their "porn addictions"? Looking at some of the factors that help label anything as an addiction I came across these, "recurrent failure to resist impulses to engage in a specific behaviour," as well as "pleasure or relief at the time of engaging in the behaviour," so does that make every 16 year old boy an addict as well? It seems slightly on the ridiculous side to me. Perhaps we as a society are still uptight about sex in the first place and that's why such an overt expression of sexuality like pornography is so frowned upon by people the world over. I think we just haven't ever really moved on from those Victorian era sensibilities that meant a women who chose to stray from her husband was looked on as sick or evil, or that enjoying sex was a crime.

The young married couple who were trying to cope with the husbands "porn addiction" sort of baffle me if im being honest. What if the wife didn't have issues with pornography? Would his daily porn habit go from being a dirty little secret to something they did as a couple, or perhaps even become part of their foreplay? It seems to me that the only reason it was looked on by that couple as bad, dirty or even an addiction is because the wife took an issue with it. What if he had been doing something else on the computer? I don't know about anyone else but I play Tetris at least twice a day to either relax or if I'm bored and have nothing better to do.... and sometimes when I should be doing something like working on university assignments for example. What if he had been playing Tetris instead? Would he have been addicted to Tetris instead of porn, or wouldn't it not have been as big of a deal because society doesn't really frown upon Tetris the way it does pornography.

How much do you love your technology?

It may seem strange to us to think about falling IN LOVE with technology, not just a mere love for your new ipod or iphone but physically, emotionally and psychologically in love with an artificial object.
Take this man for instance he is the creator of Roxxxy, the life-sized, doll which comes with artificial intelligence, an articulated skeleton and flesh-like synthetic skin.

This has become the companion of many men, it has given them the opportunity to fall in love, get married and you never know maybe in the future creators will start to make baby dolls and men will regard it as their first born daughter/son, can a person really fall in love with a doll or anything technological to be frank and still experience the same emotions a person experiences when they find their true love?

*note the (XXX) in Roxxxy's name, this doll was originally designed as a sex doll, but with the advancement of technology Roxxxy now has an inbuilt personality, five to be exact...

Your interested?

Okay let’s go through the choices of selection

Bachelor number one is called Wild Wendy she is outgoing and adventurous

Bachelor number two is called Frigid Farrah she is reserved and shy.

I think you get the point..... This doll can literally hold conversations with its partner supplying men with not only sexual needs but emotional needs..... this doll allows men to choose everything about their doll from the skin colour to the size of the dolls breasts, giving men the opportunity to "build" their perfect ideal women for prices ranging from 5,600 and up (depending on the choice of features of course) you can have your very own doll.....

Still not convinced? Okay, okay....."She can’t vacuum, she can’t cook but she can do almost anything else, if you know what I mean,’ =D (Douglas Hines, of manufacturers TrueCompanion.)

Don’t worry Ladies a male sex robot is coming out soon his name is Rocky (how romantic).

But hey I guess these days you can fall in love with almost anything...no really I mean anything...take this man for instance he has fallen in love with a pillow...

Lee Jin-gyu fell for his 'dakimakura' - a kind of large, huggable pillow from Japan, this pillow has the picture of a popular anime character printed on the side. The image is Fate Testarossa, from the 'magical girl' anime series Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha.

Technology has become so a part of our lives that it can even enable us to fall in love with it...even if it means marrying a pillow with the picture of the anime character printed onto it.

Can’t wait to see what technology has in store for us in the future.

Source: http://www.metro.co.uk/home/

Jobs for the (Play)boys

Yes, I'm a frustrated headline writer. Anyway, apropos of this week's topic, here's an interesting piece on the rather awkward way in which squeaky-clean Apple and squeaky-but-not-so-clean Playboy have come to a mutual arrangement for the iPad.

Is the Internet ruining porn?

Recently I read an article that was recommended in our Pornography lecture, titled “Lights, Camera, Lots of Action. Forget the Script”. The article discusses how the pornography industry is slowly starting to lose interest in plot and dialogue. They believe ‘moviemakers’ are beginning to focus less on story lines, and are instead filming shorter scenes that can be uploaded onto the Internet in “several minute chunks”. The article states that the rise in popularity of the Internet has caused the pornography industry to lose money in DVD sales. Mr Fishbein has estimate that DVD sales have fallen at least 50% in the past few years. It is because of this that porn stars, like Savanna Samson aren’t getting the chance to emerge themselves in their character roles.

The pornography industry has successfully transformed with the Internect. In order to keep making money, they have cut back on making DVD’s and focused more of their time on creating small clips to upload to the Internet. Most pornography sites offers a monthly/yearly membership, this small fee allows audiences access to the sites pornographic content.

Personally, I don’t think porn stars such as Savanna Samson should worry about not being able to develop their characters. It should be the least of their worries; after all they are porn stars not actors. If there not excited anymore then maybe it’s time to leave their chosen profession. Even with fewer story lines, the porn industry is doing just fine. As the Internet has grown in popularity, the porn industry has grown with it. The Internet has provided its users with instant access to pornography, making it just a mouse click away.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/business/media/08porn.html?_r=3&scp=3&sq=porn%20internet&st=cse