media theory

2005-12-12T17:03:00.000-08:00

i'm not sure how this blog has really affect my usual writing and reading routines. i think for whatever reason though, posting blogs as opposed to writing response papers seemed much more relaxed. i guess it was mostly because writing on the internet and not handing in a physical paper feels less academic. while writing on my blog i don't feel the need to worry as much about my grammar or whether or not i capitalize words or even if i use words that seem less than paper-worthy. on the other hand though, because of my lax attitude towards writing on the internet, i don't think i put the appropriate effort into an activity which i assume was used to replace response papers. for good or bad though, this was the first time i used a blog and it definitely helped to remove some of the reservations i had about putting writings in public space for anyone to read. it didn't end up being as frightening as i thought it would be, but i'm not sure if i'm going to have my own blog anytime soon.
fyi-my final project can be found at url: pages.pomona.edu/~erp02002/mediatheory.htm

2005-11-28T12:26:00.000-08:00

after reading about folksonomies such as flickr and delicious, i tend to agree that they are not nearly as helpful as search engines when one is in need of particularly specific information on a subject- even trudging through some of the results on google can be frustrating when one needs something fast. i do believe that folksonomies can offer some very interesting knowledge, if the user has some spare time to waste on the internet. i know i spend countless hours on the internet aimlessly looking at different websites that sound interesting or that i may have read about in a magazine or on another website. with this being said, i think using a folksonomatic? website like delicious to search around and see what sort of bookmarks are listed for different keywords could help raise some interesting revelations. seeing what websites other people, especially if it is a large population of people, connect with certain keywords could help to create a better understanding of people in our society. why was the connection made? are there any clues as to the type of person who made this connection? what are some of the other connections a person made to other words? can any conclusions be made? i think it would be a fun way to try, perhaps erroneously, to do some detective work and possibly understand the ways of thinking and connections made by other people in our society.

2005-11-20T22:38:00.000-08:00

i believe that doc searls and david weinberger were completely naive when they wrote, world of ends. they seem to think that it is some sort of anomaly that corporations are trying to make money off of people through the internet and that sooner or later companies will realize that the internet can't be owned and cease trying to make money. of course companies are trying to make money off of the common people who use the internet-it's the capitalist way to try and make as much money off of your fellow person as possible. they probably already know that they can't actually "own" the internet, but their not just going to give up making money due to a technicality. it seems silly for people to be able to buy and sell land and water and other natural resources, but it still happens, what makes searls and weinberger think the internet would be any different?

2005-11-15T11:19:00.000-08:00

"once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from talking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left. leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth's atmosphere to a company as a monopoly."
marshall mcluhan, understanding media pg. 68
i think this mcluhan quote fits with connected quite well. shaviro writes about the metaphorical enslavement of our body parts- our eyes and ears and nerves- that inevitably occurs when we become members of our rapidly excelerating network society. we must learn to give up/sell ourselves to the highest bidder.

2005-11-14T11:07:00.000-08:00

i understand shaviro's point, that our social reality is looking more and more like a science fiction novel with each new technological innovation, but haven't most people been expressing this point? i enjoyed reading Connections more than some of the others readings we have read, but shaviro didn't add much new insight for me. perhaps his insight simply went over my head, but i believe he just didn't go in depth enough in each of his short "chapters". i feel as if each of these "chapters" should be an abstract for a larger essay where we could then read, if we so desired, to gain a more in-depth analysis of shaviro's ideas.

2005-11-08T09:12:00.000-08:00

i was thinking about the ways in which it becomes much more difficult for members of a cyber community to identify each other, than members of a real life community. with the exception of real life communities based on the apparent proximity of all its members, such as towns and nations, different cultural signifiers become relatively important for the members of a community to represent themselves as such and distinguish other members from society as a whole. signs, such as a particular style of dress, consumption choices, and the overall ways in which a person carries herself can be important factors in distinguishing a member of one community from a member of another community. these signs are all but lost in cyber communities.
granted, when one is participating on a particular website or message board that is considered a community by its members, it is assumed that all of the participants are part of the community, but once members move to a new website or message board, this connection is lost, even if two of the people happen to be members of both communities. i realize that part of the appeal of cyber communities is the anonymity of the process and the ability to let your "cyber persona" exist solely in the one particular community, but i believe the recognition, between members of a community, provided by the signs of real life can be quite beneficial and serve to help the goals of many communities.
if a community has specific goals or changes it is attempting to make to society as a whole, it becomes important for solidarity and support for members of that community to be able to see strangers and recognize, based on the generally accepted signs of the community, other members. this seems to be what is lost with cyber communities, the ability to recognize each other in settings other than the demarcated "home" site of the community.

2005-11-02T22:18:00.000-08:00

after viewing the Ambassador Hotel database narrative, i can honestly say that a feeling of uneasiness came over my body. i fully understand the positive aspects and innovation of the dbn, but in my dystopian view of the world, i can see how these could one day be detrimental to actual interaction with the real world. as we become more and more able to engage in so many activities through our computer, we move further away from engaging in activities in the real world. for example(and i'm guilty of these as well) we converse with friends through instant messanger instead of making the five minute walk to their dorm room to have a real life, face to face conversation or we order products online without any of the social interaction that once went into going to the store and making a purchase. now, i realize the advantages of these acts and that these things are not as bad as i'm framing them-we're not in danger of only interacting with the outside world through our computers, but there is no substitute for the real thing. so, back to the dbn, in the future, i can see these being used as a way for people to explore other areas of the world, such as the pyramids or the eiffel tower or ellis island. on the one hand, this would be great for people who would not be able to experience these areas in person, but the problem is that they are completely taken out of their context. their is no experience of the people or the culture. they may know what it looks like inside and out, but they would not be able to make the same connections between these places and their greater implications within their respective societies. well, this makes sense in my head, i hope it makes some sort of sense to others.

2005-10-10T11:55:00.000-07:00

After reading both Afternoon and Disappearing Rain, I believe that Disappearing Rain is a much more user-friendly hypertext. I supposed it simply has a lot to do with the times in which each text was written and the frame with which we read each, but the interface for was more recognizable and comfortable for me to use a space for reading on a computer. It also seemed as if this text had less paths than Afternoon had available. I read numerous passages multiple times with this text and I was able to pretty coherently understand the general narrative of the story, I think. With Afternoon, I rarely read the same passage twice and couldn't even begin to make connections between what the different sections I was reading. Perhaps the reading of Disappearing Rain was more enjoyable for me precisely because of that- the fact that I was able to translate what I read into a discernible story and thus understand it more like a print novel than a hypertext.

2005-09-27T23:47:00.000-07:00

I have another descriptive example, explained to me a few weeks ago, that can be used to describe both the concept of the infinite series of divergent and convergent occurrences in The Garden of Forking Paths, and the concept of non-hierarchical data storage and retrieval posited by both Vannevar Bush and Theodor Nelson. A metaphor created by the French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, compares the interworkings of a non-hierarchical data retrieval system to the botanical term "rhizome". In botany, a rhizome is the stem of a plant that expands horizontally underground creating a network of roots where at any point a new plant may sprout up. As the growth progresses, there is no way of distinguishing where the plant begins or ends. So, much like the concept of the "rhizome", the internet is a nearly infinitely connected system of computers with the ability for new computers to "sprout up" off of any network of computers. I thought that it was pretty cool that aspects of technology and nature can operate with the same complex principle.

2005-09-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

On page five of the introduction, Lisa Gitelman is speaking of the dual symmetries of success and failure when she states, "Technologies that succeed exert a teleological tug; mimeographs tend to erase electric pens on the way to photocopiers and facsimile machines." This brought to my mind a different form of success and failure with the programs we use on our computers. It is not so much the success of a completely new technology taking over and "erasing" an old technology, but the way in which computer programs, such as web browsers and music programs like iTunes, are constantly updating their software to create new versions that fix the bugs of older versions. Once new versions of programs are introduced, the older versions become obsolete and incompatible with the newer versions within months.
An example that quickly jumped to my mind deals with the whole web art movement that was growing quite rapidly in the late 1990s and was supposed to revolutionize art. Many of these web artists would play around with the latest versions of web browsers until they learned how to manipulate the different bugs as they pleased. They would then create web pages that played off of the bugs from different browsers, so when one would open the page with X version of web browser, hundreds of error dialogue boxes would appear, or the page would continually resize itself.
As internet users began to upgrade to newer and newer versions of web browsers though, the bugs would be fixed and nothing would happen, the art was gone, or perhaps 'fixed' by the newer versions. The web art was lost without any chance to view it again; it had all but been erased from history in its actual form, only to be mentioned as a phase of digital art.

2005-09-04T13:45:00.000-07:00