The computer was equipped with an Intel Celeron chip and it also had a monitor and printer. This configuration would have been sold for $549.99, but it had a $450 discount. Only five PC were available in each CompUSA’s store.
This kind of offer has been made by CompUSA before and it is a new trend in this business area. Hewlett Packard offered a similar PC for $198.99. The machine had a 335 Celeron from Intel, 256MB of memory, a 40GB hard drive and a DVD-ROM. Its normal price would have been around $649.
There are hopes that this type of discounts will continue because the holidays are not so far away and another important factor is the price of the components that it continues to drop.
But there are other interest behind the new low PC prices. HP and Acer are trying to gain more market shares. Hewlett-Packard is also trying to regain lost ground to Dell. While Acer is aiming to build on its successes in the past two years that have made it the fastest-growing major PC maker in the world.
Source: http://news.soft32.com/a-new-100-dollar-pc_197.html
Friday 28 December 2007
Wednesday 19 December 2007
Not my fault!!!
I know that I haven't updated my posts for a few days, but don't put the blame on me. It's its fault.
Tuesday 11 December 2007
Lynda.com
Lynda is a video training provider for application like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Flash, Adobe Dreamweaver, 3ds Max , Adobe Fireworks etc.
At the site you can find extremely useful video tutorials for each application. The tutorials consist of Quicktime videos with narration and exercise files. The legal ways to have theses tutorials is to buy them through the official site and, in no case, you should download them illegally from torrent sites.
It's a great help, especially, for semi-pro or, even, pro applications.
Cheers!
Friday 30 November 2007
Spacewar!
According to Dr. Stewart's notes (found at Blackboard Academic Suite):
"Most historians of video games also hail Spacewar!, coded by students working at MIT in 1961-62, as an important milestone in the development of video games. Spacewar was developed on the experimental PDP-1 operating system which allowed multiple users to share the computer simultaneously. Spacewar could be played as two-player game involving warring spaceships. However, none of these early programs were consider to be important or worthy of further comment at the time."
Here you can read about the origin of Spacewar
Here you can play Spacewar online
Pay-by-mobile trial starts in London
During a trial starting Wednesday, shoppers in London will be able to buy Underground tickets and newspapers with a wave of their mobile phone.
Hundreds of people have been given special handsets fitted with a built-in credit card and an Oyster card, the device used to pay for train and bus tickets in London. When the phone is passed over a scanner in stations or shops, money is deducted from the mobile phone as payment, the trial's organizers said.
People can spend up to 10 pounds at a time at selected shops and cafes, including cafe chain Coffee Republic, alcohol retailer Threshers, and book shop Books Etc.
Wireless transactions are common in some countries, such as Japan, where consumers already use mobile phones to pay for everything from burgers to train tickets. Organizers say that if the six-month London trial is a success, the scheme could be extended to include bigger payments, more shops, and concerts and plays.
Those taking part will receive 50 pounds (about $103) worth of Oyster journeys, 60 pounds off their O2 phone bill, and 200 pounds to spend with the in-built Barclaycard. The companies behind the trial include Transport for London, mobile-phone firm O2, Barclaycard, Visa Europe, and Nokia. (source: Reuters)
Thursday 29 November 2007
Generative, Robotic and Participative Art
Generative art refers to art that has been generated, composed, or constructed in an algorithmic manner through the use of systems defined by computer software algorithms, or similar mathematical or mechanical or randomised autonomous processes.
According to Dr. Stewart's notes (found at Blackboard Academic Suite):
"One of the most influential mathematicians working with numbers was Fibonacci, who described number series that have fascinated artists ever since. These so-called Fibonacci Numbers - (a series such as 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987) have influenced a whole range of artworks from sculpture to animation.
More recently artist and animators have found the mathematics of fractals and mandelbrot sets to be useful in describing organic structures such as the curve of a sea-shell.
A number of artists have explored the opportunities made available by computers running generative programs. They have used fractal and Fibonacci programs to generate artwork. These techniques are now available and are used by animators and website designers."
Generative Music
"As Michael Nyman notes:
"Experimental composers are by and large not concerned with prescribing a defined time-object whose materials, structuring and relationships are calculated and arranged in advance, but are more excited by the prospect of outlining a situation in which sounds may occur, a process of generating action (sounding or otherwise) , a field delineated by certain compositional rules." (Nyman 1999:4)".
Performance Art
"As I mentioned in an earlier lecture on cyborgs the artist Stelarc has explored the relationship between the body and machine in his work. In the Bio-Robotic Choreography work (2001) he developed an ‘insect-like robot” and explored human/machine interaction. As the project notes on the Arts and Humanities Data Service website notes:-
“The robot served as an extension to the human body, enabling the participant to experiment with alternative kinds of choreography. The robot's mode of locomotion, its direction and speed were controlled by the shifting of the human participant's weight or torso movement” (AHDS 2001)."
Stelarc
Stelarc (born Stelios Arcadiou on June 19, 1946 in Limassol, Cyprus to Greek Cypriot parents) is an Australian performance artist whose works focus heavily on futurism and extending the capabilities of the human body. As such, most of his pieces are centered around his concept that the human body is obsolete. Until 2007 he held the position of Principal Research Fellow in the Performance Arts Digital Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University in Nottingham, England. He has two daughters, one of whom (Astra Stelarc), has continued in his footsteps as an artist.(source: wikipedia.com)
Queen - Heaven For Everyone video clip feat. Stelarc
You can also visit Dr. Stewart's webpage "Betwixt and Between"and in the section "cybertext", you can find very good examples of generative art, using flash graphics. Furthermore, I searched for examples of generative art and I found some interesting video installations. So, I created a playlist on YouTube and if I find something else, I'll add it to the playlist.
The playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=BBC01E0E25ECCFF0
According to Dr. Stewart's notes (found at Blackboard Academic Suite):
"One of the most influential mathematicians working with numbers was Fibonacci, who described number series that have fascinated artists ever since. These so-called Fibonacci Numbers - (a series such as 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987) have influenced a whole range of artworks from sculpture to animation.
More recently artist and animators have found the mathematics of fractals and mandelbrot sets to be useful in describing organic structures such as the curve of a sea-shell.
A number of artists have explored the opportunities made available by computers running generative programs. They have used fractal and Fibonacci programs to generate artwork. These techniques are now available and are used by animators and website designers."
Generative Music
"As Michael Nyman notes:
"Experimental composers are by and large not concerned with prescribing a defined time-object whose materials, structuring and relationships are calculated and arranged in advance, but are more excited by the prospect of outlining a situation in which sounds may occur, a process of generating action (sounding or otherwise) , a field delineated by certain compositional rules." (Nyman 1999:4)".
Performance Art
"As I mentioned in an earlier lecture on cyborgs the artist Stelarc has explored the relationship between the body and machine in his work. In the Bio-Robotic Choreography work (2001) he developed an ‘insect-like robot” and explored human/machine interaction. As the project notes on the Arts and Humanities Data Service website notes:-
“The robot served as an extension to the human body, enabling the participant to experiment with alternative kinds of choreography. The robot's mode of locomotion, its direction and speed were controlled by the shifting of the human participant's weight or torso movement” (AHDS 2001)."
Stelarc
Stelarc (born Stelios Arcadiou on June 19, 1946 in Limassol, Cyprus to Greek Cypriot parents) is an Australian performance artist whose works focus heavily on futurism and extending the capabilities of the human body. As such, most of his pieces are centered around his concept that the human body is obsolete. Until 2007 he held the position of Principal Research Fellow in the Performance Arts Digital Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University in Nottingham, England. He has two daughters, one of whom (Astra Stelarc), has continued in his footsteps as an artist.(source: wikipedia.com)
Queen - Heaven For Everyone video clip feat. Stelarc
You can also visit Dr. Stewart's webpage "Betwixt and Between"and in the section "cybertext", you can find very good examples of generative art, using flash graphics. Furthermore, I searched for examples of generative art and I found some interesting video installations. So, I created a playlist on YouTube and if I find something else, I'll add it to the playlist.
The playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=BBC01E0E25ECCFF0
Wednesday 28 November 2007
The Virtual Disappearance of Miriam
A very good and interesting example of cybertext:
The Virtual Disappearance of Miriam
WRITING & CONCEPT
Martyn Bedford
FLASH DESIGN & ANIMATION
Andy Campbell
LAUNCHED AS PART OF
The Ilkley Literature Festival 2000
(Source: Dreaming Methods)
The Virtual Disappearance of Miriam
WRITING & CONCEPT
Martyn Bedford
FLASH DESIGN & ANIMATION
Andy Campbell
LAUNCHED AS PART OF
The Ilkley Literature Festival 2000
(Source: Dreaming Methods)
Computer-mediated Textuality - Narrative, Author, Knowledge, Self & Power
The following text is based on Dr. Stewart's notes found at Blackboard Academic Suite.
Hypertext. Does it change everything? Is it the end of books? Here are some cultural characterisations of books and computer-mediated texts (Stewart. 2006:57&74):
* bounded;
* fixed; and
* finished.
* evanescent;
* flexible;
* fluid;
* kaleidoscopic;
* multiple;
* plastic;
* provisional;
* transient;
* vibrant; and
* volatile.
"...hypertext fiction was building on a recent literary tradition in which there has been considerable interest in non-linear writing."
Is this post, and every other text, non-linear? Probably, yes. It, probably, is non-linear in space since the reader can be redirected to other pages and other texts through links,photos and videos. Even if someone does not think that the term "non-linear" can be used in this occasion, I believe that the computer-mediated reading experience is completely different than the real reading experience. A book has a structure, a beginning and an end. Hypertext has a more complicated structure (which can be edited and changed anytime) including digital "crossroads" (links, videos and photos). What about beginning and end?
Hypertext has a beginning but the end seems absent. The end isn't absent; it's not unique. In every hypertext we have the opportunity to define which part of the text is our ending, so we have many endings in one text. When reading a book, the end is defined by the last page and the back cover. Hypertext allows us to read selectively what we want and place our own full stop wherever we want.
Another question. I can find Dr. Stewart's notes at Blackboard Academic Suite as hypertext. From there I copy-paste some parts of the notes to my blog, using the opportunities that hypertext offers. If I print these notes in 4-5 pages, have I transformed hypertext into a simple "linear" text? Personally, I think yes. When I read Dr. Stewart's notes online, I have the opportunity to use the links, to watch videos related to the subject or read related articles. Therefore, my reading has not a specific structure. When I print the same notes, I cannot use the links so I am, just, reading 4-5 pages with a beginning and an end. If hypertext is printed, it loses some basic structural elements and, then, it gets a different form.
What is a cybertext?
According to Dr. Stewart's notes:
"In her introduction to Cyberspace Textuality, Computer Technology and Literary Theory Marie-Laure Ryan defined a cybertext as:
"a cybernetic system that generates a different sequence of signs every time the work is experienced" (Ryan 1999:16)
However, It is important to recognize that cybertexts do not have to be computer-mediated, for as Espen J.Aarseth noted:
"A cybertext is a self-changing text, in which scriptons and traversal functions are controlled by an immanent cybernetic agent, either mechanical or human." (Aarseth 1994: 71)
In his seminal work, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature Aarseth recognised that the ancient Chinese text the 'I Ching' is an early example of a human-controlled cybertext. He also regarded tarot cards, runes and other divinational texts as early human-controlled cybertexts.
Typologies of cybertext
The majority of Aarseth’s book deals with computer-mediated cybertexts. He provides a fascinating typology of examples, such as:
Chatterbots;
Story writing programs (like Racter);
Interactive Fiction (IF); and
Multi-user Dungeons/Domains"
Hypertext. Does it change everything? Is it the end of books? Here are some cultural characterisations of books and computer-mediated texts (Stewart. 2006:57&74):
Cultural characterisations of books
* durable;* bounded;
* fixed; and
* finished.
Cultural characterisations of computer-mediated texts
* ephemeral;* evanescent;
* flexible;
* fluid;
* kaleidoscopic;
* multiple;
* plastic;
* provisional;
* transient;
* vibrant; and
* volatile.
"...hypertext fiction was building on a recent literary tradition in which there has been considerable interest in non-linear writing."
Is this post, and every other text, non-linear? Probably, yes. It, probably, is non-linear in space since the reader can be redirected to other pages and other texts through links,photos and videos. Even if someone does not think that the term "non-linear" can be used in this occasion, I believe that the computer-mediated reading experience is completely different than the real reading experience. A book has a structure, a beginning and an end. Hypertext has a more complicated structure (which can be edited and changed anytime) including digital "crossroads" (links, videos and photos). What about beginning and end?
Hypertext has a beginning but the end seems absent. The end isn't absent; it's not unique. In every hypertext we have the opportunity to define which part of the text is our ending, so we have many endings in one text. When reading a book, the end is defined by the last page and the back cover. Hypertext allows us to read selectively what we want and place our own full stop wherever we want.
Another question. I can find Dr. Stewart's notes at Blackboard Academic Suite as hypertext. From there I copy-paste some parts of the notes to my blog, using the opportunities that hypertext offers. If I print these notes in 4-5 pages, have I transformed hypertext into a simple "linear" text? Personally, I think yes. When I read Dr. Stewart's notes online, I have the opportunity to use the links, to watch videos related to the subject or read related articles. Therefore, my reading has not a specific structure. When I print the same notes, I cannot use the links so I am, just, reading 4-5 pages with a beginning and an end. If hypertext is printed, it loses some basic structural elements and, then, it gets a different form.
What is a cybertext?
According to Dr. Stewart's notes:
"In her introduction to Cyberspace Textuality, Computer Technology and Literary Theory Marie-Laure Ryan defined a cybertext as:
"a cybernetic system that generates a different sequence of signs every time the work is experienced" (Ryan 1999:16)
However, It is important to recognize that cybertexts do not have to be computer-mediated, for as Espen J.Aarseth noted:
"A cybertext is a self-changing text, in which scriptons and traversal functions are controlled by an immanent cybernetic agent, either mechanical or human." (Aarseth 1994: 71)
In his seminal work, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature Aarseth recognised that the ancient Chinese text the 'I Ching' is an early example of a human-controlled cybertext. He also regarded tarot cards, runes and other divinational texts as early human-controlled cybertexts.
Typologies of cybertext
The majority of Aarseth’s book deals with computer-mediated cybertexts. He provides a fascinating typology of examples, such as:
Chatterbots;
Story writing programs (like Racter);
Interactive Fiction (IF); and
Multi-user Dungeons/Domains"
Monday 26 November 2007
iPod Touch
First of all, iPod Touch is great (i know that maybe in 2-3 months something else will be greater but that's the interesting thing with gadgets). I went to Apple's Regent Street store in London and I gave this thing a hard time! Very nice characteristics though the keyboard is a bit annoying (we can't have everything!).
Amazon.co.uk: iPod Touch prices
YouTube videos of people using iPod Touch:
Saturday 24 November 2007
The Commercialization Of The Network
Are we happy with the commercialized web? It depends. It depends on how we are using the web. For the consumer internet-user, the commercialization of the web is a positive development. For the regular internet-user the commercialization will have negative and annoying effects.
It's true that in the internet someone can find everything and at affordable prices. Sites like Amazon and Ebay give many choices to all the consumers. The advertisers are aware of the fact that internet is the best market up-to-date and that is why every time you visit a webpage you see annoying ads like these. As far as the future commercialization is concerned, I think that depends on the feedback that the internet will have on the advertisers. If internet is, still, going to be a wide market, then things are going to get worse for the common users who just want to use the internet. This future situation will, of course, satisfy buyers.
The only thing that matters is to decide in which side do you belong? Consumers or "surfers"? Using the internet as a market place is not a bad thought but everything must have its limitations. Otherwise there'll be a time in the near future when consumers will be fed up by the increase of quantity and the decrease of quality of the internet's products. Globalization helped to the spread of the internet commercialization but we must not forget the emerging phenomenon of localization which forces all the financial powers to adjust to a new era, when the e-commerce should be used wisely, with specific target audience and have a discrete presence. After all, everybody loves to e-buy, but nobody loves pop-ups and ad-ware.
Monday 19 November 2007
Is the black background colour of my blog ecological?
Blackle VS Google
What's going on?
http://ecoiron.blogspot.com/2007/01/black-google-would-save-3000-megawatts.html
How is Blackle working?
http://ecoiron.blogspot.com/2007/08/history-in-january-2007-mark-ontkush.html
What's Google's answer?
http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2007/09/google-clarifies-black-google-blackle-may-not-save-energy/
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/is-black-new-green.html
What about a test?
http://techlogg.com/content/view/360/31/
Verdict:
I prefer Blackle
I prefer Google
Friday 9 November 2007
Media - The News In The Age Of Computers
The following text is a summary of Dr. Stewart's notes (found at Blackboard Academic Suite), including my own comments:
News have a long history. In ancient Greece, there was the agora: a central gathering point where the wealthy men were going to hear the news. Of course, news, back then, had a different form than the one it has nowadays. News had to do with tales of warfare, trade and politics. Others great empires of the past, like the Ancient Rome, the Hun dynasty and the Incas had invested in roads, not only for facilitating trade, but also for speeding up the transmission of the news. A good example for the importance of the news, even in the ancient societies, is the greek Pheidippedes, who ran about 28 miles in a day, just to bring to Athens, the news of the greek victory at the battle of Marathon.
After the speeding up of the oral news, the written news came up. The concept of the "record" is, of course, extremely important, today, in the world of news. The idea of the "record" came up in 59 BC, in Ancient Rome with the "acta". "Acta" was a sheet in which the proceedings of the senate of the Ancient Rome were written. Julius Cesar asked these sheets to be pinned up in a public place, as well as, to be sent throughout the Roman Empire.
In the end of the 16th century, the newly introduced printed technology led to the print of news pamphlets in Western Europe. Gradually, news sheets were produced on a regular basis. The coffee houses, in London and Paris, helped in the spread of these new sheets. It took another few hundred years to get over the obstacles and produce a mass circulation daily newspaper. The Times appeared in the 1840s.
During 20th century, humanity experienced the "massification" of the Media. Inventions, like the telegram, camera, telephone, television and early computers, all contributed to the increase of the speed and the power of the dissemination of the news. Nevertheless,news gathering, during the 20th century was an expensive and complex procedure. That is why, the dissemination of the news was in the hands of a few (powerful enterprises, state). Telecommunications satellites increased the speed by which news was transferred from continent to continent, but it has been argued by Negroponte that the new media are bringing about the de-massification of the existing media. Nowadays, personalized news is a common phenomenon. Readers have the opportunity to receive emails, sms and other phone services containing, only, the news that are really interesting in (politics, sports, entertainment etc.). However, did this rapid development of the dissemination of the news help in receiving the "real story"? Can we trust the sources without being suspicious of propagandist information? Is it possible "creating" the news and, at the same time, being objective about it? Can we trust the journalists? The governments? Maybe we should not trust anyone?
Nowadays, media are owned by a few people or by governments. Journalism , until recently, was a profession without special training and specialization and that is why everyone with language skills could, easily, become a journalist. Sometimes, journalists were (or are), just, puppets in the game of propaganda and they were (or are, I repeat) under the control of the owner or the government. It is widely accepted that objective news media are like the Black Rhinos: they are out there, they exist but I have not seen them. So, the only person that we could trust, as far as news is concerned, is ourselves? Are we going to believe only what we see and be suspicious of the rest? Rejecting news because of the lack of trust in the news is like a broken pencil: pointless. This super-mediated era demands from the users/readers/consumers to create their own filters. The news should be filtered, according to the reader's/viewer's/listener's background, ideology etc. For instance, if someone lives in England and watches a BBC report about Gordon Brown, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, should not reject or accept immediately the information presented. By filtering the report, he should stay in the facts, rejecting the comments or the complicated info. Of course, the method that I suggest is a bit insulting towards the journalists, because it, totally, ignores their place, but since journalism has become such an "unstable" and , at the same time, "powerful" profession, I think it is not my fault. Cheers!
News have a long history. In ancient Greece, there was the agora: a central gathering point where the wealthy men were going to hear the news. Of course, news, back then, had a different form than the one it has nowadays. News had to do with tales of warfare, trade and politics. Others great empires of the past, like the Ancient Rome, the Hun dynasty and the Incas had invested in roads, not only for facilitating trade, but also for speeding up the transmission of the news. A good example for the importance of the news, even in the ancient societies, is the greek Pheidippedes, who ran about 28 miles in a day, just to bring to Athens, the news of the greek victory at the battle of Marathon.
After the speeding up of the oral news, the written news came up. The concept of the "record" is, of course, extremely important, today, in the world of news. The idea of the "record" came up in 59 BC, in Ancient Rome with the "acta". "Acta" was a sheet in which the proceedings of the senate of the Ancient Rome were written. Julius Cesar asked these sheets to be pinned up in a public place, as well as, to be sent throughout the Roman Empire.
In the end of the 16th century, the newly introduced printed technology led to the print of news pamphlets in Western Europe. Gradually, news sheets were produced on a regular basis. The coffee houses, in London and Paris, helped in the spread of these new sheets. It took another few hundred years to get over the obstacles and produce a mass circulation daily newspaper. The Times appeared in the 1840s.
During 20th century, humanity experienced the "massification" of the Media. Inventions, like the telegram, camera, telephone, television and early computers, all contributed to the increase of the speed and the power of the dissemination of the news. Nevertheless,news gathering, during the 20th century was an expensive and complex procedure. That is why, the dissemination of the news was in the hands of a few (powerful enterprises, state). Telecommunications satellites increased the speed by which news was transferred from continent to continent, but it has been argued by Negroponte that the new media are bringing about the de-massification of the existing media. Nowadays, personalized news is a common phenomenon. Readers have the opportunity to receive emails, sms and other phone services containing, only, the news that are really interesting in (politics, sports, entertainment etc.). However, did this rapid development of the dissemination of the news help in receiving the "real story"? Can we trust the sources without being suspicious of propagandist information? Is it possible "creating" the news and, at the same time, being objective about it? Can we trust the journalists? The governments? Maybe we should not trust anyone?
Nowadays, media are owned by a few people or by governments. Journalism , until recently, was a profession without special training and specialization and that is why everyone with language skills could, easily, become a journalist. Sometimes, journalists were (or are), just, puppets in the game of propaganda and they were (or are, I repeat) under the control of the owner or the government. It is widely accepted that objective news media are like the Black Rhinos: they are out there, they exist but I have not seen them. So, the only person that we could trust, as far as news is concerned, is ourselves? Are we going to believe only what we see and be suspicious of the rest? Rejecting news because of the lack of trust in the news is like a broken pencil: pointless. This super-mediated era demands from the users/readers/consumers to create their own filters. The news should be filtered, according to the reader's/viewer's/listener's background, ideology etc. For instance, if someone lives in England and watches a BBC report about Gordon Brown, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, should not reject or accept immediately the information presented. By filtering the report, he should stay in the facts, rejecting the comments or the complicated info. Of course, the method that I suggest is a bit insulting towards the journalists, because it, totally, ignores their place, but since journalism has become such an "unstable" and , at the same time, "powerful" profession, I think it is not my fault. Cheers!
Wednesday 7 November 2007
Michael Wesch
Michael Wesch is a cultural anthropologist and media ecologist exploring the impacts of new media on human interaction. He graduated summa cum laude from the Kansas State University Anthropology Program in 1997 and returned as a faculty member in 2004 after receiving his PhD in Anthropology at the University of Virginia. There he pursued research on social and cultural change in Melanesia, focusing on the introduction of print and print-based practices like mapping and census-taking in the Mountain Ok region of Papua New Guinea where he lived for a total of 18 months from 1999-2003. This work inspired Wesch to examine the impacts of new media more broadly, especially digital media. (Source: Kansas State University website)
His video "The Machine Is Us/ing Us" became the most popular video on YouTube with more than 3.000.000 viewers. The video has to do with the changes that web 2.0 has brought, brings or is about to bring in our lives. You can find the video at the right side of the page, at YouTube M&C Videos or here:
You can read a very interesting interview of Michael Wesch, talking about the ideas that led him to the creation of this video, here: http://battellemedia.com/archives/003386.php
Furthermore, you can visit the webpage of Michael Wesch's digital ethnography working group, a team of cultural anthropology undergraduates, exploring the impacts of digital technology on human interaction and vice versa: http://mediatedcultures.net/
Recently, a new video was uploaded by Dr. Michael Wesch entitled "A Vision Of Students Today" that has to do with being a student in a digital era and society.
Since the famous video of Michael Wesch is about web 2.0, it would be good if we take a look at it:
WEB 2.0
What is web 2.0? There is not a definite answer but there are a lot of possible answers and definitions. Mr. Stewart writes:
"Building on this rather complicated meme map, Michael Platt offers the following five qualities as being defining characteristics of web 2.0
• Network and devices as a platform
• Data consumption and remixing from all sources including user generated data
• Continuous update
• Rich and interactive UI
• Architecture of participation
(after Platt 2006)"
"Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the weorld wide web, is quoted in an interview with developerWorks in August 2006 as saying:-
“Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is, of course, a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along."
"So what are typical web 2.0 sites:-
Delicious - http://del.icio.us
Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/
Blogger - http://www.blogger.com
YouTube - http://youtube.com/
Many commentators also include social networking sites like:
MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com"
"Two other terms that have also gain wide currency amongst commentators in the last two years are APIs and mash-ups. According to ‘librarything’, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are “ways for one computer to talk to another, simple ways of getting and giving data without having to share programming code”. APIs are not a new thing in computer programming...This ‘openness’ means that developers outside of the corporate group can develop applications based on the web service. At first, this might appear to be a risky strategy as the third party developers can develop applications that compete with the company’s offerings...Open APIs also allow developers to combine data sets into new applications called a ‘mash-ups’. For example, it is possible to combine mapping data with photographic data drawn form two different databases. "
Are Bloggers ‘Citizen Journalists’? : Journalism and Web 2.0
"A recent article by Donnacha DeLong published in the National Union of Journalists has rekindled a long running debate about the relationship between bloggers and traditional news journalists. In this piece DeLong argues that problem with web2.0 and bloggers is that they are seen by some commentators as “replacing traditional media” . DeLong argues that this is a bad thing because “professional media provide users with something that we need to fight to retain – truly authoritative content”. However, those who “those who argue that Web 2.0 is the future want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.”
Should blogging be treated as a threat to traditional journalism? Nope. I don't think so. I believe that blogging should be treated as a research tool. Journalists could gather a large amount of possibly important information by communicating with the "citizen journalists". Nevertheless, since journalism faces its own decay, it's absolutely understandable why every writing effort by amateurs is considered a menace. Blogging means more opinions, more sources and, therefore, easier and more complete research for the professional journalists.
Is anybody going to be happy to get his/her news from a blogger or from a government website? Nope. We can't deny the amateur element of blogging. We, also, can't deny the non-subjective coverage of the news from a government source. Of course neither journalists are subjective and they, almost, always follow guidelines but if we have to live in a lie let's choose the most convenient one, right? To conclude, I would trust only professional journalists.
Web 3.0? We still don't know the definition of Web 2.0 and a new term came up. To tell you the truth I don't care even if there is the term Web 156.0. I think that, nowadays there is the tendency of creating a term and, then defining it. Ok, this is good for writing big essays and "interesting" articles but, personally, I find it boring. I don't like to find blogs or webpages that try to be fortune-tellers, predicting what Web 5.0 will be. I don't care how you name it, I care about the content. Creating terms without content, in my eyes, is provoking and naive. But that's just me.
Friday 2 November 2007
The Body, The Mind & The Computer
In this post, the combination of the body, the mind and the computer is going to be analyzed. Terms like Arificial Life (ALife), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Cyborgs are going to be discussed, according to Dr. Stewart's notes (found at Blackboard Academic Suite):
Artificial Life: ALife
"In his book, Virtual Organisms Mark Ward describes research into the phenomena of Artificial Life (ALife). ALife is the study of systems related to life, “its processes and its evolution”. It is based on designing programs, simulations or robotic systems that are self-replicating and capable of maintaining ordered patterns over time. According to Stephen Levy:
"Artificial life, or a-life, is devoted to the creation and study of lifelike organisms and systems built by humans. The stuff of this life is non-organic matter, and its essence is information: computers are the kilns from which these new organisms emerge. Just as medical scientists have managed to tinker with life's mechanisms in vitro, the biologists and computer scientists of a-life hope to create life in silico" Levy.
Arguably, the most famous example, of ALife research is the computer game- Conway's Game of Life. This is not a computer game in the conventional sense, but is a simulation based on a chequer board on which a series of generations are projected according the rules lay out below.
Rules for Conway's Game of Life
* Any given cell on the checkerboard is either alive (on) or dead (off).
* If a cell is alive, it will continue to be alive in the next iteration, or generation, if and only if it has either two or three neighbours that are also alive.
* If a cell is dead, it will continue to be dead in the next iteration, or generation, unless exactly three of its neighbours are alive, in which case it will be born.
Overtime completely random selections will mutate into a series of stable and self-replicating systems."
Inorganic Life
"Proponents of Alife research suggest that the informational properties of life are not unique to organic life forms, such as humans. It is argued, therefore, that life can be formed out of any material capable of maintaining an order. Interestingly, the idea of inorganic ‘life’ is not new...One of the most famous cautionary legends is Frankenstein's 'monster' which originated in a book by Mary Shelley. In this story dead flesh is brought back to life by Frankenstein's experiments. As the critic Maurice Hindle notes:
“As a cautionary tale warning of the dangers that can be cast into society by a presuming experimental science, Frankenstein is without equal” (Shelley 1985 pg 7)
This story, which pre-dates contemporary transplant surgical practice by nearly two hundred years, still acts as a warning to researchers and society. One of the significant aspects of Shelley's story is the way the monster is treated by human beings. This intelligent thinking entity is utterly rejected as an abomination and driven by this rejection to terrible acts. The monster also struggles without success to understand the nature of its being. The story ends with the destruction of both the monster and its creator."
Artificial Intelligence:AI
"Another strand of the vitalist argument has centred on the uniqueness of the human ability to reason and make intelligent decisions (the Latin designation of our species Homo sapiens literally means ‘knowing man’). However, in the foreword to The Posthuman Condition: Consciousness Beyond the Brain Robert Pepperall argues that:
“the development of an artificially conscious entity may happen within our lifetimes” (Pepperall 2003:iii)
One of the holy grails of computing is to make an intelligent machine that could successfully complete a Turing test (by convincing a human that it was an another intelligent human). This research area goes under the name of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Unlike a conventional program that uses pre-set algorithms (worked out by their programmers) to solve problems, AI programs are designed to learn (these programs sometimes make use of interconnected neural nets). Over time, these programs develop ‘models’ of their worlds and they exhibit behaviour that their programmers can’t predict. Sometimes they have quite uncanny capabilities. For example, in the 1990s an IBM computer Deep Blue beat the world chess champion Gary Kasparov at a game of chess.
Enthusiasts for AI computing, such as Ray Kurtweil (see website below), claim that AI computers will soon be as smart as human beings. Kurtweil also claims that computers might make a suitable environment for human intelligence. In his book, The Age of Spiritual Machines; How we will live, work and think in the new age of intelligent machines he sketches out a future in which organic human beings upload their minds to superior AI computers in order to enjoy better lives.
One of the challenges facing designers of AI systems is the notion of consciousness. This sense of self-awareness is thought by many philosophers to be the cornerstone of any definition of intelligence. A true Turing machine would have to know of its own existence as an entity and have a sense of self. See the Emperor’s New Mind by Roger Penrose (1989)."
DNA: The Digitisation of Organic Life
"Let's return to Richard Wise's key observation about digitisation:
"The key concept and technology behind multimedia has been digitisation: the conversion of images and sound to numbers, making them amenable to manipulation by a computer." (Richard Wise pg 2)
To what extent is organic life amenable to manipulation though the messages encoded in the genome?
The first stage of this ‘digitisation’ was implemented with the Human Genome Project. This massive scientific undertaking sequenced the whole human genome (all the DNA in the human cell) so that it is now possible to ‘read’ the code that makes up human life (as well as number of other species). With other developments in molecular biology (such as the cloning of Dolly the sheep by scientist at the Roslin Institute) this situation might rapidly develop into full-blown manipulation (read and write).
Are we happy to manipulated like a digital text?
It is already possible to select the characteristics of a baby, such sex, before it is conceived. In the future it might be possible to dial-up a child from coded sequences or alter our own genetic code. This will raise all sorts of moral issues about who should have the power to make these kinds of decisions. A recent Guardian article reports that the scientist Craig Ventner has constructed a chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and “is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth”.
This is a controversial area. The manipulation of life has already caused concern amongst the general public. In particular, there have been protests at the release of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) into the wild. Cell stem research using human embryos has also given great cause for public concern. Both experiments have been branded as Frankenstein's monsters by pressure groups. They see such practices as being 'unnatural'; whatever that might mean."
Robotics: The Body's Return?
"In 1979 The Robotics Institute of America defined a robot as:
"A reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools, or specialized devices through various programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks".
The industrial robotic arm, used to spray cars, is the classic implementation of this idea. The arm, using a series of motors and sensors can carry out repetitive actions that would be tiring and dangerous for a human being to do. These commonly deployed machines, however, are just the beginnings. Workers in their area are trying to produce 'artificial creatures' that display many of the functions of life such as spontaneity, autonomy and self-regulation. So far the results have been rather mixed.
Early robot designers at MIT based their work on AI and programmed their robots to make cognitive maps of their locations, so that they could 'understand' their environments. These robots turned out to be very slow, and unable to deal with changes. More recent work by researchers such as Rodney Brookes devised much simpler robots that do not have centralsed cognitive elements in their programs. Instead Brookes modelled their systems on insects, with a series of simple routines built one of tope of another. These robots have been amazingly successful at producing life-like results. Brookes argues that it is important that his robots have the following features; situatedness and embodiment.
"A situated creature or robot is one that is embedded in the world, and which does not deal with abstract descriptions, but through its sensors with the here and now of the world, which directly influences the behaviour of the creature.
An embodied creature or robot is one that has a physical body and experiences the world, at least in part, directly through the influence of the world on that body. A more specialised type of embodiment occurs when the full extent of the creature is contained within that body." (Brookes 2002 pg 51)
The implication of Brookes' work is that intelligence requires a body. The body also gives, the entity purpose and potentials. Brookes and many others argue that the future of AI and robotics lies with a fusion between man and machines?"
The Cyborg Ancestry; 'Cybernetic Organism'
"The world's first cyborg was a white lab rat, part of an experimental program at New York's Rockland State Hospital in the late 1950s. The rat had implanted in its body a tiny osmotic pump that injected precisely controlled doses of chemicals, altering various of its physiological parameters. It was part animal, part machine.
The Rockland rat is one of the stars of a paper called "Cyborgs and Space," written by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline in 1960. This engineer/psychiatrist double act invented the term cyborg (short for "cybernetic organism") to describe the vision of an "augmented man," better adapted than ordinary humans to the rigors of space travel. Clynes and Kline imagined a future astronaut whose heart would be controlled by injections of amphetamines and whose lungs would be replaced by a nuclear-powered "inverse fuel cell. The contemporary realisation of the cyborg is somewhat different. Human beings have been fitted with devices such as heart pace makers and insulin pumps. However, these devices are not under the immediate control of their human host and largely work on a chemical basis though, cochlea implants, that help treat certain types of deafness do interact directly with the human nervous system, converting sound to electronic machine signals and then to nerve signals.
A more integrated vision of man and machine has been realised by a Kevin Warwick in an experiment conducted over the Summer 2002. Warwick, who is a professor of cybernetics at University of Reading, had an electrical implant surgically placed into the median nerve of his wrist. With this implant he was able to communicate using his nervous system, for example, in one demonstration he drove a motorised wheel chair without using a joystick. In another experiment, Warwick connected his wrist implant up to the Internet, and he was able operate a robotic arm in Reading. This experiment raises the notion of a 'distributed' cyborg body.
I, Cyborg: Resistance is futile
The Borg Collective from the TV series Star Trek is a powerful fictional warning, in this case about the dangers of the cyborg and the hive mind. This alien species are imagined to have lost any respect for individuality and they seek to assimilate everything else into their collective. They communicate using a system a little bit like the Internet and have no concept of privacy or free-will.
Not all visions of the cyborg are apocalyptic. Donna Haraway, for example, sees the independence between organic life and technology as being a long-term and on-going phenomena. In a Wired interview she noted
"Technology is not neutral. We're inside of what we make, and it's inside of us. We're living in a world of connections - and it matters which ones get made and unmade."(Kunzru)"
I, personally, do not have any comment or thought about these matters because they have enormous importance and they play (or will play) a very important role in our lives. So I am not for or against something because this field seems extremely large, sensitive and complicated to me. Nevertheless, I recommend you read Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto" (previous post) and watch "The Matrix" for a wider look at the subject. Cheers!
Artificial Life: ALife
"In his book, Virtual Organisms Mark Ward describes research into the phenomena of Artificial Life (ALife). ALife is the study of systems related to life, “its processes and its evolution”. It is based on designing programs, simulations or robotic systems that are self-replicating and capable of maintaining ordered patterns over time. According to Stephen Levy:
"Artificial life, or a-life, is devoted to the creation and study of lifelike organisms and systems built by humans. The stuff of this life is non-organic matter, and its essence is information: computers are the kilns from which these new organisms emerge. Just as medical scientists have managed to tinker with life's mechanisms in vitro, the biologists and computer scientists of a-life hope to create life in silico" Levy.
Arguably, the most famous example, of ALife research is the computer game- Conway's Game of Life. This is not a computer game in the conventional sense, but is a simulation based on a chequer board on which a series of generations are projected according the rules lay out below.
Rules for Conway's Game of Life
* Any given cell on the checkerboard is either alive (on) or dead (off).
* If a cell is alive, it will continue to be alive in the next iteration, or generation, if and only if it has either two or three neighbours that are also alive.
* If a cell is dead, it will continue to be dead in the next iteration, or generation, unless exactly three of its neighbours are alive, in which case it will be born.
Overtime completely random selections will mutate into a series of stable and self-replicating systems."
Inorganic Life
"Proponents of Alife research suggest that the informational properties of life are not unique to organic life forms, such as humans. It is argued, therefore, that life can be formed out of any material capable of maintaining an order. Interestingly, the idea of inorganic ‘life’ is not new...One of the most famous cautionary legends is Frankenstein's 'monster' which originated in a book by Mary Shelley. In this story dead flesh is brought back to life by Frankenstein's experiments. As the critic Maurice Hindle notes:
“As a cautionary tale warning of the dangers that can be cast into society by a presuming experimental science, Frankenstein is without equal” (Shelley 1985 pg 7)
This story, which pre-dates contemporary transplant surgical practice by nearly two hundred years, still acts as a warning to researchers and society. One of the significant aspects of Shelley's story is the way the monster is treated by human beings. This intelligent thinking entity is utterly rejected as an abomination and driven by this rejection to terrible acts. The monster also struggles without success to understand the nature of its being. The story ends with the destruction of both the monster and its creator."
Artificial Intelligence:AI
"Another strand of the vitalist argument has centred on the uniqueness of the human ability to reason and make intelligent decisions (the Latin designation of our species Homo sapiens literally means ‘knowing man’). However, in the foreword to The Posthuman Condition: Consciousness Beyond the Brain Robert Pepperall argues that:
“the development of an artificially conscious entity may happen within our lifetimes” (Pepperall 2003:iii)
One of the holy grails of computing is to make an intelligent machine that could successfully complete a Turing test (by convincing a human that it was an another intelligent human). This research area goes under the name of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Unlike a conventional program that uses pre-set algorithms (worked out by their programmers) to solve problems, AI programs are designed to learn (these programs sometimes make use of interconnected neural nets). Over time, these programs develop ‘models’ of their worlds and they exhibit behaviour that their programmers can’t predict. Sometimes they have quite uncanny capabilities. For example, in the 1990s an IBM computer Deep Blue beat the world chess champion Gary Kasparov at a game of chess.
Enthusiasts for AI computing, such as Ray Kurtweil (see website below), claim that AI computers will soon be as smart as human beings. Kurtweil also claims that computers might make a suitable environment for human intelligence. In his book, The Age of Spiritual Machines; How we will live, work and think in the new age of intelligent machines he sketches out a future in which organic human beings upload their minds to superior AI computers in order to enjoy better lives.
One of the challenges facing designers of AI systems is the notion of consciousness. This sense of self-awareness is thought by many philosophers to be the cornerstone of any definition of intelligence. A true Turing machine would have to know of its own existence as an entity and have a sense of self. See the Emperor’s New Mind by Roger Penrose (1989)."
DNA: The Digitisation of Organic Life
"Let's return to Richard Wise's key observation about digitisation:
"The key concept and technology behind multimedia has been digitisation: the conversion of images and sound to numbers, making them amenable to manipulation by a computer." (Richard Wise pg 2)
To what extent is organic life amenable to manipulation though the messages encoded in the genome?
The first stage of this ‘digitisation’ was implemented with the Human Genome Project. This massive scientific undertaking sequenced the whole human genome (all the DNA in the human cell) so that it is now possible to ‘read’ the code that makes up human life (as well as number of other species). With other developments in molecular biology (such as the cloning of Dolly the sheep by scientist at the Roslin Institute) this situation might rapidly develop into full-blown manipulation (read and write).
Are we happy to manipulated like a digital text?
It is already possible to select the characteristics of a baby, such sex, before it is conceived. In the future it might be possible to dial-up a child from coded sequences or alter our own genetic code. This will raise all sorts of moral issues about who should have the power to make these kinds of decisions. A recent Guardian article reports that the scientist Craig Ventner has constructed a chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and “is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth”.
This is a controversial area. The manipulation of life has already caused concern amongst the general public. In particular, there have been protests at the release of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) into the wild. Cell stem research using human embryos has also given great cause for public concern. Both experiments have been branded as Frankenstein's monsters by pressure groups. They see such practices as being 'unnatural'; whatever that might mean."
Robotics: The Body's Return?
"In 1979 The Robotics Institute of America defined a robot as:
"A reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools, or specialized devices through various programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks".
The industrial robotic arm, used to spray cars, is the classic implementation of this idea. The arm, using a series of motors and sensors can carry out repetitive actions that would be tiring and dangerous for a human being to do. These commonly deployed machines, however, are just the beginnings. Workers in their area are trying to produce 'artificial creatures' that display many of the functions of life such as spontaneity, autonomy and self-regulation. So far the results have been rather mixed.
Early robot designers at MIT based their work on AI and programmed their robots to make cognitive maps of their locations, so that they could 'understand' their environments. These robots turned out to be very slow, and unable to deal with changes. More recent work by researchers such as Rodney Brookes devised much simpler robots that do not have centralsed cognitive elements in their programs. Instead Brookes modelled their systems on insects, with a series of simple routines built one of tope of another. These robots have been amazingly successful at producing life-like results. Brookes argues that it is important that his robots have the following features; situatedness and embodiment.
"A situated creature or robot is one that is embedded in the world, and which does not deal with abstract descriptions, but through its sensors with the here and now of the world, which directly influences the behaviour of the creature.
An embodied creature or robot is one that has a physical body and experiences the world, at least in part, directly through the influence of the world on that body. A more specialised type of embodiment occurs when the full extent of the creature is contained within that body." (Brookes 2002 pg 51)
The implication of Brookes' work is that intelligence requires a body. The body also gives, the entity purpose and potentials. Brookes and many others argue that the future of AI and robotics lies with a fusion between man and machines?"
The Cyborg Ancestry; 'Cybernetic Organism'
"The world's first cyborg was a white lab rat, part of an experimental program at New York's Rockland State Hospital in the late 1950s. The rat had implanted in its body a tiny osmotic pump that injected precisely controlled doses of chemicals, altering various of its physiological parameters. It was part animal, part machine.
The Rockland rat is one of the stars of a paper called "Cyborgs and Space," written by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline in 1960. This engineer/psychiatrist double act invented the term cyborg (short for "cybernetic organism") to describe the vision of an "augmented man," better adapted than ordinary humans to the rigors of space travel. Clynes and Kline imagined a future astronaut whose heart would be controlled by injections of amphetamines and whose lungs would be replaced by a nuclear-powered "inverse fuel cell. The contemporary realisation of the cyborg is somewhat different. Human beings have been fitted with devices such as heart pace makers and insulin pumps. However, these devices are not under the immediate control of their human host and largely work on a chemical basis though, cochlea implants, that help treat certain types of deafness do interact directly with the human nervous system, converting sound to electronic machine signals and then to nerve signals.
A more integrated vision of man and machine has been realised by a Kevin Warwick in an experiment conducted over the Summer 2002. Warwick, who is a professor of cybernetics at University of Reading, had an electrical implant surgically placed into the median nerve of his wrist. With this implant he was able to communicate using his nervous system, for example, in one demonstration he drove a motorised wheel chair without using a joystick. In another experiment, Warwick connected his wrist implant up to the Internet, and he was able operate a robotic arm in Reading. This experiment raises the notion of a 'distributed' cyborg body.
I, Cyborg: Resistance is futile
The Borg Collective from the TV series Star Trek is a powerful fictional warning, in this case about the dangers of the cyborg and the hive mind. This alien species are imagined to have lost any respect for individuality and they seek to assimilate everything else into their collective. They communicate using a system a little bit like the Internet and have no concept of privacy or free-will.
Not all visions of the cyborg are apocalyptic. Donna Haraway, for example, sees the independence between organic life and technology as being a long-term and on-going phenomena. In a Wired interview she noted
"Technology is not neutral. We're inside of what we make, and it's inside of us. We're living in a world of connections - and it matters which ones get made and unmade."(Kunzru)"
I, personally, do not have any comment or thought about these matters because they have enormous importance and they play (or will play) a very important role in our lives. So I am not for or against something because this field seems extremely large, sensitive and complicated to me. Nevertheless, I recommend you read Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto" (previous post) and watch "The Matrix" for a wider look at the subject. Cheers!
Thursday 1 November 2007
Donna Haraway & Cyborg Theory
"Donna Haraway (born September 6, 1944 in Denver, Colorado) is currently a professor and chair of the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States. Cyborg theory was created by Donna Haraway in order to criticise traditional notions of feminism -- particularly its strong emphasis on identity, rather than affinity. She uses the metaphor of a cyborg in order to construct a postmodern feminism that moves beyond dualisms and moves beyond the limitations of traditional gender, feminism, and politics." (source: wikipedia.com)
Full Text of "A Cyborg Manifesto"During my undergraduate studies in the department of Communication and Media Studies at the University of Athens, I translated, as a part of an assignment, the full text of "Cyborg Manifesto" to greek.This is the .doc file:
Greek Version of "A Cyborg Manifesto"
Comic Version of Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto"
page 1
page 2
page 3
page 4
page 5
page 6
page 7
Short film adaptation of Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto"
A very interesting video-interpretation of Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto"
Wednesday 31 October 2007
Friday 26 October 2007
William Gibson & the Birth (& Death?) of Cyberspace
William Gibson & Cyberspace
“The term cyberspace was originally used in a short story (entitled “Burning Chrome”) by the Science Fiction writer William Gibson. In the 1984 novel Neuromancer he develops this idea by describing it as:
“A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts...A graphical representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non-space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding..."
Peltola notes that Gibsonian cyberspace has been identified as having four features:
- It is described with familiar spatial images like cities, buildings etc used as metaphors of social structures;
- It is made of information, offering great power to those who can manipulate information;
- Bodiless consciousnesses live there; and
- It is possible to attain immortality in cyberspace, because there everything is data only.
Barlovian Cyberspace
“In contrast to Gibsonian cyberspace, other commentators have noted another more socially-based model of cyberspace that has come to be known as Barlovian cyberspace. Barlovian cyberspace is name after John Perry Barlow ( the lyricist with the band the Grateful Dead). Barlow is the founder of the Electronic Freedom Foundation. In 1996, he issued 'A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace' - mainly in response to the censorship debate surrounding the US's Communication Decency Act - and in this tract he describes a vision of cyberspace in which:
"We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth, We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence of conformity. In our world, whatever human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts. We will create a civilization of the Mind in cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before"
Barlovian cyberspace has been characterised as a free, frontier zone with images that suggest a group of settlers moving into empty, virgin lands much in the image of the films depicting the American Wild West...The Barlovian model is a more social characterisation of cyberspace based on interaction between individuals, in contrast to the informational ideas of Gibsonian cyberspace. Both, however, share the use of spatial metaphors. What Barlow seems to be envisioning is a place with a community with particular and different values existing in cyberspace; not necessarily a nation, but certainly a community.”
A very interesting opinion about the relationship between society and technology is expressed by Neil Postman here:
Myths Of Cyberspace
According to Dr. Stewart’s notes (found at Blackboard Academic Suite):
“Richard Wise noted in 2000 that many of the pioneers of computing made the claim that the widespread adoption of the technology was “an irreversible advance for democracy, community and a decentralised society” (Wise, 2000:38). These claims can be thought of a series of interlocking myths that help to shape society's ideas of the Internet and 'cyberspace'.
The following list is my understanding of these myths.
- Cyberspace is a place apart, and so not subject to rules that apply t
o the 'real' world; - The technology of the Internet makes it free from control by governments and other non-cyberspace institution so that the internet is borderless and free of constraining factors;
- The technology of the Internet makes it possible to be anonymous and so free to adopt any identity that you chose on-line;
- The technology of the Internet will bring about the demise of the nation state;
- The widespread adoption of the Internet will result in the 'de-massification' of the media;
- The technology of the Internet is making us more social and helping to foster a new kind of community;
- The technology of the Internet is bringing about prosperity and well-being based solely on a weightless, 'knowledge-based' economy;
- We are on the verge of a new political era of computer-mediated democracy;
- The development of the internet is unique and exceptional in human history and not subject to social forces that characterised the adoption of other important technologies”
The Death of Cyberspace
What do we mean by “Death”? By “Death of Cyberspace” we mean the mix of the boundaries between reality and cyberspace. Nowadays, it is getting more and more difficult to distinguish a real activity from a virtual one. Before now, entering cyberspace was a totally immersive and emotional experience. Nowadays, cyberspace has become a part of our real life and vice versa. As a result of this, the immersive elements of cyberspace are getting lost, so according to Dion Hinchcliffe, the “death of cyberspace” is an emerging term.
On the one hand, I agree with this term, because cyberspace is a part of our everyday life and we use it as an extension of reality but on the other hand, I think that there are many activities inside the cyberspace that can offer an immersive experience. My first thought has to do with virtual communities. Second Life is a wide-spread virtual community and people can participate in a fictional world that offers emotional experiences. So, although virtual communities, such as Second Life, present a completely different environment than the real one and although the user can experience bodiless consciousness, in the end, the illusion of being a part of a real world is created. So, the user starts his “journey” from the real life and ends up to experiencing the illusion of real life, because of the immersive procedure. I don’t know if you would call that “the death of cyberspace” but I would call it the circle of life of cyberspace.
To conclude, the “death of cyberspace”, is, according to my opinion, an existing phenomenon but I think that we have to recognize the fact that technology plays a very important role in our lives, so it may have different forms and shapes that we are not familiar with and that we, still, cannot explain. Virtuality and bodiless consciousness are elements of the cyberspace and, I think, they will always be. It’s for sure that some things will be changing, but there will, always be some functions of cyberspace that will distinguish reality from cyberspace itself and that is happening because cyberspace is reality’s support tool. Cyberspace can imitate reality, it can be incorporated to real life and it can be separated from reality, but it can’t replace reality (but who am I to judge?) .
The Matrix
The movie called “The Matrix” deals with the boundaries between reality and cyberspace. In the movie the reality is the cyberspace and people live in an illusionary, non-existent, fake world, controlled by machines. This movie is a very good example of crossing the boundaries between reality and cyberculture and you can watch a short sample here:
Bodiless consciousness and virtuality
When someone is logged into Second Life or he is talking on the phone or he is reading a book, does he experience the separation between his mind and his body? I believe yes. I know it is not a diplomatic answer but that’s what I believe. I think that, in all these occasions, the user of the media is experiencing virtuality because each image, each spoken word and each written word lead to a virtual environment, different from the one that surrounds us. Imagination helps us “escape” and by “escape” I mean separating the mind from the body and living, just for a while, somewhere else. When we talk on the phone we find it very difficult to control our moves, when we read a book we “escape” to an imaginary world, when we log into Second Life we “live” a second life. So, virtuality and bodiless consciousness have, also, to do with very common things (such as a mobile phone, a TV, a newspaper, a book etc.) and it’s clear that we do not find these two characteristics only in cyberspace, but also in the items we use in our everyday life.
Cheers!
Monday 22 October 2007
Second Life & CSI NY
(source: secondlife.com)
"What is Second Life?
Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely created by its Residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by millions of Residents from around the globe.
From the moment you enter the World you'll discover a vast digital continent, teeming with people, entertainment, experiences and opportunity. Once you've explored a bit, perhaps you'll find a perfect parcel of land to build your house or business.
You'll also be surrounded by the Creations of your fellow Residents. Because Residents retain the rights to their digital creations, they can buy, sell and trade with other Residents.
The Marketplace currently supports millions of US dollars in monthly transactions. This commerce is handled with the in-world unit-of-trade, the Linden dollar, which can be converted to US dollars at several thriving online Linden Dollar exchanges."
For more info and for joining this community visit http://secondlife.com/
Th
e reason that I am presenting the information about Second Life (although I don't like virtual communities) is because the hit TV show CSI NY (an American police procedural television series, which premiered on September 22, 2004) is going to use Second Life to solve a murder. What do I mean? In the fifth episode of the new season (season 4, episode 5, "Down The Rabbit Hole") of CSI NY, a killer on the show will escape into Second Life and he will not return to television until spring. In the meantime, the audience can help investigate the crime online. As a fan of all the CSI series, I find the idea very innovative and intriguing. I am not sure if it is going to be successful, but nevertheless it is very interesting to use the combination of a hit TV show and a virtual community as a way to increase interactivity between the audience and the media. This matter has many aspects and introduces new elements to interactive media. The user becomes the leading actor.
I, also, found some very interesting info about this subject at TVGuide and at Virtual Worlds News and you can also watch the trailer here.
You can download the whole episode from: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000W5LS8Q/ref=atv_dp_series
"What is Second Life?
Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely created by its Residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by millions of Residents from around the globe.
From the moment you enter the World you'll discover a vast digital continent, teeming with people, entertainment, experiences and opportunity. Once you've explored a bit, perhaps you'll find a perfect parcel of land to build your house or business.
You'll also be surrounded by the Creations of your fellow Residents. Because Residents retain the rights to their digital creations, they can buy, sell and trade with other Residents.
The Marketplace currently supports millions of US dollars in monthly transactions. This commerce is handled with the in-world unit-of-trade, the Linden dollar, which can be converted to US dollars at several thriving online Linden Dollar exchanges."
For more info and for joining this community visit http://secondlife.com/
Th
e reason that I am presenting the information about Second Life (although I don't like virtual communities) is because the hit TV show CSI NY (an American police procedural television series, which premiered on September 22, 2004) is going to use Second Life to solve a murder. What do I mean? In the fifth episode of the new season (season 4, episode 5, "Down The Rabbit Hole") of CSI NY, a killer on the show will escape into Second Life and he will not return to television until spring. In the meantime, the audience can help investigate the crime online. As a fan of all the CSI series, I find the idea very innovative and intriguing. I am not sure if it is going to be successful, but nevertheless it is very interesting to use the combination of a hit TV show and a virtual community as a way to increase interactivity between the audience and the media. This matter has many aspects and introduces new elements to interactive media. The user becomes the leading actor.I, also, found some very interesting info about this subject at TVGuide and at Virtual Worlds News and you can also watch the trailer here.
You can download the whole episode from: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000W5LS8Q/ref=atv_dp_series
Wednesday 17 October 2007
Johnny Mnemonic, William Gibson & Cyberspace
Johnny Mnemonic is a 1995 cyberpunk movie, loosely based on a short story of the same name by William Gibson, in which Keanu Reeves (Matrix) plays the title character, a man with a cybernetic implant in his brain designed to store information. It portrays Gibson's standard dystopian view of the future with the world dominated by large corporations and with strong East Asian influences.
William Gibson & Cyberspace
The word "cyberspace" (from cybernetics and space) was coined by science fiction novelist and seminal cyberpunk author William Gibson in his 1982 story "Burning Chrome" and popularized by his 1984 novel Neuromancer.
William Gibson : writer - the father of cyberpunk
Bibliography , Biography, Blog etc. - source: William Gibson Official Website
"New" & "Old" Media
According to Dr. Stewart's notes (found at Blackboard Academic Suite): "Firstly, it is important to see beyond a technological determinist perspective of the media and realise that terms like old and new media are rooted in the cultural assumptions of the society using such terms. Secondly, to see that computer-based media are being used in an era already deeply effected by the effects of earlier mediation.Thirdly, to provide a intellectual framework with which to discuss the effects of media (Old and New) and fourthly to argue that what is new ( if indeed anything is new about New Media) has to be considered from many different directions."
So we have to look around us and wonder: is this an "old" or a "new" media? Is the phone an "old" media? What about Internet? "Old" or "New"? I find it very difficult to define what is "old" and what is "new". Nevertheless, there is a yardstick-based model for discussing the binary opposition between ""Old" and "New" Media. According to the notes:
"In all, Leaning identifies about five types of 'yardstick' (considered by many commentators as being applicable to this issue) that could make a meaningful distinction between old and new media.
- Systemic
- Technical
- Aesthetic
- Logical
- Political
Systemic Considerations
Systemic attributes are the ways in which the media are dealt with by the market and by the state.In particular we have to consider
- Ownership - The number, diversity and Sector of the Ownership;
- Regulation - Government, Inter-Government, Industry Standards and 'Social Mores';
- Access- How is easy is it to set-up in a particular media etc.
Technical Considerations
- Electric vs Non-electric - All media identified as new are electric (unlike newspapers). However, not all electric media (e.g. 19th Century Telegraph) are now regarded as new media.
- Analogue Vs Digital - all new media identified are digital, but again this is not an exclusive definition.
By being digital and electric the new media tend have certain other sub-characteristics:-
- Digital media tend to be easy to reproduce (a point that is well made by Richard Wise in his book Multimedia: A Critical Introduction). Information is not copied, but reproduced through a set of instructions. This ease in turn gives rise to a number of cultural phenomena such as 'peer-to-peer' file sharing, with open source software programmers making their code available to one another or music fans sharing of digital music files through file formats like mp3.
- User Control of flow - Digital Media make a virtue of hypertextuality, links and interactivity.
- Relative Ease of geographical distribution. The digital media are examples of what economists have been describing as the 'weightless' economy. They are easy to pass around the world via cables and satellites. However, it is worth noting that just because they are realatively easy to disseminate does not mean they are easy to access or control.
Aesthetic Considerations
It is worth asking the question - Do new media look, sound, taste, touch, smell and act any differently from old media?
Remediation
Bolter and Gruisin, in their book Remediation, propose that new media constantly 'remediate' existing media forms ie: they borrow ideas, convention and images from older, established forms. This is not idea uniquely associated with the new media though, as it is worth noting that the start of the TV news has a series of headlines ( a term and concept borrows from print newspapers). It does, however, mean that interface designers etc. will be subject to conservative cultural forces that will demand that their productions conform 'old' print-based models. Old media informs the look and feel of new media.
[We will come back to Remediation during the course of this module time and again. We will question this theory's applicability, its use and insight. You might be interested to know that there are other theories of the relationship between media - for example Lev Manovitch has recently developed a compex typology that explores the relationship between New Media and Film.]
To quote Leaning:-
" new media will not be dramatically different in look and will constantly borrow and make reference to the styles of the old media"
As we will see this is particularly pronounced with branding and the aspects of corporate culture involved with marketing.
Mediamorphosis
Another author that has considered this question is Roger Fidler in his book Mediamorphosis. Fidler argues for a process of change deeply dependent upon the interactions between media (old and new) and the wider society. Fidler gives a very good account of the development of text systems. In particular, he focuses on the 'failed' new media such as the Prestel 'teletext' system developed and implemented in the UK in the 1980s. The system is still in operation but has never been the success that either the Internet or the Minitel system developed in France has been. One of the key differences identified by Fidler has been the importance of person-to-person communication in the uptake of a new technology. In particular, the chat-rooms, e-mails and other flirting spaces of mintel and the world wide web.
Interaction/Interactivity
Interaction is a key 'buzzword' word in media circles at the moment and a number of definitions of new media centre on struggling with what a meaningful definition and usage of this term might be. I will address this key term in later lecture, however, just for now it is worth considering - what do we mean by interaction, who is interacting whom/what? Is this an exclusive feature of media ( new or old)? Is this the 'holy grail' of the new media project?
Tim Berners-Lee, the computer scientist who developed the world wide web at CERN, for example, wishes to develop the web beyond its current hypertext links and interactive pages to make it a 'fully intercreative medium'.
What does Berners-Lee mean by intercreativity? How this different from "Old" Media.
Logical Considerations
Leanings argues:-"With the new media the user is no longer just a consumer."
The old media needed enormous capital, cultural and technical resources. This is no longer true with new media. It was very, very hard to set up a television station. It is much easier to set up a website. In fact individuals have been able to set-up their own pages. It is easy to become a new media author ( in fact a number of commentators have argued that it is too easy) and to express your views, complete with typing errors, spelling mistakes and factual inaccuracies. This is important for our discussion of late modernity as the state and the corporate sector formerly had sole control over the dominant hegemonic forms of information.
Political Considerations
At this point in the lecture it is worth contexting cyberculture in two other contemporary cultural debates, namely those surrounding globalisation and individualisation. These processes have been described by Manuel Castells ( among many others) in his trilogy The Information Age. In this massive work he describes the economic and social changes that have already occurred as a result of a network society. In particular, the global capital markets, the inter-connectedness of markets for goods and labour and the dramatic effects on corporations of processes such as outsourcing. New media, the technology, its practitioners and the wider culture loosely referred to as cyberculture are the child of this network society and also one of its driving forces. However, this does not mean that new technology automatically guarantees a new world order (as witnessed by the bursting of the dot.com bubble in 2000). The future is never that simple!"
Do we need to distinguish "old" from "new" media? When I am using the internet or the phone does the characterization "old" or "new" media affect my use? Personally, as a user of media, i never thought of characterize the media I use. I never thought it was going to be useful. I still don't, but I am sure that helps in order to understand the procedure of mediation and to be able to develop new techniques and forms of mediation.
Another question that I have is: "New" and "Old" Media or "New" vs "Old" Media? I mean that the media which are considered "old" should help to the development of the "new" ones? Or there should always be a "race" in the field of media about which is the "newest" and which the "oldest" media? I hope the correct answer is "New" and "Old" Media and this is why I chose this title for my post. I would like to see different media to be connected to each other because this connection, firstly, affects the users. The technological gap between people, which is caused by many different reasons (age, geography, economy, gender etc) is getting narrower and, in the end, it will not be the technology that will define people, but people who will define technology.
Wednesday 10 October 2007
M&C Websites - The Million-Dollar Page
The Million-Dollar Page
Alex Tew's dollar-per-pixel advertising page that raised over a million dollars in just a few months.
In order to learn its origins and history click here.
What do we mean by Media? What do we mean by Cyberculture?
First of all, what do we mean by Media? What do we mean by Cyberculture?
The study of the Internet, as an example of computer mediation, has raised all sorts of issues that have forced media theorists and practitioners to look again at the key questions of Media Studies, namely
1. What do we mean by Media? and
2. Why is Media Studies an important subject to study?
Personally, I would not like to be asked “What do we mean by Media?”. It is like asking how many stars are in the sky tonight. No one, of course, knows the real answer , but also no one can confirm the answer. A lot of theoritics tried and still try to define Media including all of their aspects, answer to the question “Why Media (plural)?” and which are the Media, “Is telephone a medium?”. Personally, I am very confused about this matter. On the one hand, I, stubbornly, do not care about what we mean by Media, on the other hand, I want to know everything about Media in order to understand how they work, how powerful they are and which are their limitations (if there are any). I believe that the question “What do we mean by Media?” is not going ever to be fully answered, since the technological developments and the new forms of expression will always raise new questions. But these studies will always provide exercise for the brain and a good chance to publish new articles and books.
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