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Research Assignment 4

2007-04-25T18:58:00.000-07:00

In my blog, I wrote about how humans are evolving beyond what has been the defining characteristics of humanity. But as New Media has shown us, it is not just humans that are changing but computers as well. As we merge with computers such as people wearing robotic limbs or using pacemakers, computers have merged with us to become more human-like. In the assignment, I will examine this change in computers using chapter 1 of Hans Moravec's "Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence" as the primary source.

At the beginning of this chapter, he discusses some of the earlier versions of artificial intelligence starting with where the term “cybernetics” came from. It was coined by Norbert Wiener from MIT to give a name for “the unified study of control and communication in animals and machines” (7). Moravec then goes on to give specific examples of how computers progressed from the electric turtles built by W. Grey Walter in the 1950’s and the John Hopkins Beast of the 1960’s, to the Colossus decoder machine and the robot arm invented by George Devol.

His next point is how robots interact with their environment. During the early days of robotics, scientists were occupied with world knowledge or the awareness of the physical world surrounding us. Moravec describes some of the attempts to create such a machine like Shakey the robot, made by the Stanford Research Institute. By equipping Shakey with various tools like a television camera, their idea was to implement within the robot, "logic-based problem-solving methods to a real-world task" (14). They hoped by doing this that it would allow for easy navigation around a space. But as experiments showed, Shakey's flaw was being unable to deal with uncontrolled situations. As Moravec explains, trying to make the robot deal with the unexpected should not be looked at lightly as humans had to learn over the course of "billions of years of experience about the nature of the world and how to survive in it" (15).

From there Moravec makes a correlation between intelligence and mobility. Based on his research, the more mobile a creature is, the more intelligent it will likely be. He cites plants as an example of an organism that is not as smart as other organisms. But Moravec does declare that when it comes to robots that "programs which tackle incremental problems similar to those that faced early animals" (17) are being developed to this day. In fact he expects this to happen in up to forty years as he is waiting for "a reasoning program backed by a robotics world model" (21).

In an interview for the website, http://www.robotbooks.com/Moravec.htm, he talks about this further. He is confident that robots will be able to completely replicate human intelligence stating “I know of no credible hint that the essential behavior of any possible neural arrangement cannot be emulated by sufficiently powerful universal computers with the right input and output equipment running the right programs” (2 of 4).

Besides the example of Shakey the robot, other machines were references that have similar abilities to move. Robots like the Stanford Cart which could move but could not reason and NASA's Robotics Research Vehicle which was being developed to travel to Mars but was halted due to the mission cancellation.One of the problems with the field of robotics is that the people who are developing these robots, who come from a variety of work fields, are not communicating with one another. As a result, their robots don’t work as well as they could because these forces are not putting their knowledge together. This might be one of the reasons why robots are not yet a fixture in the household.

Another reason is that robots at this time are unable to deal with the variety of things that go on in a household. But as Moravec mentions, the better the robots are made, the more demand there will be for them, and the higher chance they will be improved upon. If it continues like that then it won't be long before robots are viewed in the same way we view software. Just as different software have different applications, so to will robots such as those who "do light mechanical assembly (from a factory automation company)...assemble and cook gourmet meals from fresh ingredients (a collaboration of a computer type and a Paris chef)...investigate bomb threats (sold to police departments worldwide)" (24) and the list goes on. And if that occurs then the humans who were previously doing those jobs will become computer programmers, programming their robotic counterparts to do their former jobs. Household robots are already in the developmental stages such as machines with multiple legs and hands that can sense what it is holding all the way to robots that can sense its environment and everything in it.

Moravec goes further into how machines might develop emotions as well as a conscious, starting with his examination of convergent evolution which "is used by evolutionary biologists whenever species that are only very distantly related independently develop similar characteristics..." (39). When it comes to robots that switch to alternative commands when faced with the unexpected, is it just a reflection of the programming or does it show human traits like determination and the ability to imagine different outcomes. If so then they are learning which would be based on the system of pleasure and pain, where the robot will do whatever results in more pleasure than pain.

How this article relates to New Media is that robots represent how old ideas are enhanced with new methods. Throughout human history, we have depended on tools to survive and progress, going all the way back to using bones and clubs. And just as bones were tools, so are robots for the future as Moravec wrote about in his discussion of the robots in the household.

Work Cited

Moravec, Hans. Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence. Cambridge: Harvard UP: 1988.

Post-Humans

2007-04-25T18:57:00.000-07:00

In class a couple of weeks ago when we discussed the movie "AI: Artificial Intelligence" and how the post-humans at the end were mistaken for extraterrestrials, it made me recall a similar discussion I had heard days before. In it a guy was talking about how big children are today, especially in height. His belief was that the reason behind the widespread growth spur was the food that these kids eat. All the steroids and growth hormones that they put in animals and fruits are contributing to bigger people. Even though studies would say that this is unlikely due to the fact that growth hormones would “be destroyed by cooking” (Redmond, 1 of 1), this does raise the question of how our technology is changing us.

It starts off with all the advances made in medical technology. Not only are more mothers surviving childbirth than in the past but people are living longer in general. According to the Population Media Center, "the world's population is growing by nearly 80 million people per year"(1 of 2). With more people, obviously you're going to need plenty of food to feed them and that's where growth hormones come in. Cornell University did a study on the effects of hormones in our food and stated that "certain hormones can make young animals gain weight faster. They help reduce the waiting time and the amount of feed eaten by an animal before slaughter in meat industries. In dairy cows, hormones can be used to increase milk production. Thus, hormones can increase the profitability of the meat and dairy industries"(Consumer, 1 of 6).

With more and more people being born, it is unlikely that these food alterations will end anytime soon. It makes me wonder in the next 50 to 100 years what humans will look like. More and more people are diagnosed with obesity, helped in part by this food. Will everything have to be resized because everyone is obese. There is evidence of that today with airlines increasing the size of the seats aboard the airplane to accommodate the growing number of big people.

Work Cited

Redmond, Geoffrey. “Question of the Month.” Hormone Center of New York. Online. Internet.
http://www.hormonehelpny.com/question/hormone_01503.htm

“Consumer Concerns About Hormones in Food.” Online. Internet.
http://envirocancer.cornell.edu/Factsheet/Diet/fs37.hormones.cfm

“The Magnitude Of Population Growth And Its Consequences.” Online. Internet.
http://www.populationmedia.org/issues/issues.html

Research Assignment 3

2007-04-05T04:51:00.000-07:00

Is New Media a sin against Christianity? While listening to the class discussion on avatars, I couldn't help but think about religion. Historically the name "avatar" is synonymous with humanity fused with God-like abilities. But in the world of computers, avatars are meant to be the digital representation of yourself. This is sort of like the movie "The Matrix" where the character Neo is human in the outside world but in the virtual world has messanic powers. Except in our world, mostly everybody has the chance to create their avatars that have powers in the computer world. The problem with this is that according to Christianity, no one should play God. This is just one of the issues with New Media I will bring up as I explore how new media breaks the laws according to the Ten Commandments.

As was said earlier, avatars in computer games allow people in the outside world to pretty much do whatever they want in the computer world. In short, to be a god in another world. But one of the first commandments states "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" (1 of 1) even if that god you worship is you. In the Bible there was an angel who thought he was God, his name was Lucifer as it says in Ezekiel 28 Verse 17 "Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth;I made a spectacle of you before kings" (1 of 1).

Imagining yourself as someone else is nothing new to media, but whereas old media like novels gave you a character, new media allows you to invent your own character. Even characters that are already created can be modified. In the video game "Tenchu" you can play as the ninja, Rikimaru. With each level, the better you do the higher your score is and as a result the more items you receive to help complete your mission. One of those items is a healing potion that will instantly rejuvenate you to full strength at any time. If you keep taking the potion, chances are you will survive anything becoming almost superhuman. One thing worth mentioning is that in order to score better in the level so you can get things like the healing potion, you have to kill people using sneak attacks. In a way, the game encourages you to not just kill people, but do it in a way that is dishonorable. This brings up one of the commandments that says "Thou shalt not kill" (1 of 1). Arguers will say that technically no one actually got killed. But what they don't won't mention is that even though no one died, the intent was there. When we have bad intentions in our heart then that can be just as bad as sinning as Roger Foster of "Good News" magazine wrote a article on the nature of sin at:
http://www.gnmagazine.org/issues/gn63/badsin.htm

Intent also comes to mind when it comes to pornography. The makers of porno websites and videos depend on the lust of the mostly male audience to make money. Not only is this lust considered one of the seven deadly sins but it also could be breaking the commandment of "Thou shalt not covet" (1 of 1). Covet in the dictionary implies that you desire sexually someone you cannot have, which gives a fantasy aspect to it. Yet recently there has been news that producers of porn are planning on converting porn films into high definition which will make porn actors look even more real than before. If things keep going the way they are, it might get to the point where porn films are converted into virtual reality programs where the user can enter a porn scenerio. It is clear that pornographers have adapted new media to serve their purpose like Playboy magazine. Traditionally confined to print, the men's magazine has expanded into new media with not just a cable channel and videos on the internet of the playmates, but Hugh Hefner has also created playmates specifically for the Web, called cybermates.

So far all the problems I have tied to new media have involved intent but what about when it goes past intent and becomes a crime. The issue of DRM and stealing music and movies is a good example. Back during the days of old media, this situation was less of a problem because whatever you stole was lacking something from the original. For instance, I knew people who would rent video tapes from video stores and make another copy just for them. But while they had their own copy of the video, the picture and sound quality of their copy was always not as good as the original video store copy. Digital technology changes this notion as everything copied digitally exactly resembles the original because as Negroponte pointed out, "bits are bits" (p 18). Of course there are some who would like to see a more communist mentality applied that allows everyone to share everything but once again I cite the contents of the Bible. In the Ten Commandments, one of the laws requires that you not steal. Stealing is defined as taking something that doesn't belong to you. The Bible reveals that God did not intend on humans following communism for the reason that if God did then this commandment would have no meaning if everything belongs to everyone.

Work Cited

Negroponte, Nicholas. "Being Digital." Random House: New York, 1995.

"Ezekiel 28:17 (New International Version)"
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel+28:17&version=31

"Ten Commandments."
http://www.americanprotest.net/images/t-shirts/500w/ten-commandments-kjv.jpg

Video Games' Influence

2007-04-05T04:47:00.000-07:00

Recently in Macon there was an incident where two men were playing video games and one of the men decided to shoot and rob the other one. In the news report, the way the reporter recounted the event was as if the video games had something to do with it. Reports of video games inciting violence are nothing new. Ever since the 90's when "Mortal Kombat" came out, people especially parents, have complained that this media influences kids to go out and emulate the actions in the games. Nowadays the big issue is with the video game system "Nintendo Wii" which requires that you physically move the control stick in order to make your virtual character move. But the problem arises if you get too involved in the games as recent news reports people accidentally throwing their control sticks into the TV and even some people suffering injuries as a result of moving around the wrong way.

On the positive side, "Nintendo Wii" is one of the first systems to demand that players get off their butt and move around instead of just sitting down. People like Henry Jenkins from MIT are experimenting with ways of using video games as an educational tool. I myself would argue that video games are necessary. For me, I play because they are fun and allow me to vent my anger in a way that doesn't harm anyone.

There is only one gripe I have against these games. Excessive use can cause people to exclude themselves from the outside world. For instance, I have a 21 year-old step brother who plays video games all day. He doesn't have any outside obligations like school or work and because he is financially set for the time being, can afford to do nothing. Even though he has friends and goes out occasionally, he is not learning skills that are vital to being successful in this world such as responsibility and work ethic. It is skills like that that are learned over time by engaging the world in a way that video games have yet to match. Overall I believe video games are a positive influence just as long as you don't let the game control you.

"Pullulation"

2007-03-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

The word "pullulation," as Janet Murray defines it means "a splitting of reality" (31). In other words, pullulation represents having more than one reality. William Blake touched on this when trying to justify his unique teaching methods. Murray compared this phenomena to the notion of alternate realities, most visible in movies like "It’s A Wonderful Life" and "Momento." Towards the beginning of "Hamlet on the Holodeck," she debates whether or not different realities are necessarily a bad thing. She gives some reasons why this idea is a threat to humanity as highlighted by science fiction authors like Ray Bradbury. In Bradbury’s "Fahrenheit 451," the protagonist Montag observes his wife being mesmerized by a futuristic television called a televisor. Eventually, a mentor of Montag named Faber comments that “the televisors are evil because they create “an environment as real as the world”” (21).

In another science fiction novel called "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, the protagonist Savage is also overpowered by a futuristic medium. In this case, the medium is called a feely, which is a movie that attracts your attention by manipulating your senses. Murray states that “the horror of the feely theater lies in knowing that your intense responses have been calculated and engineered…” (19). This seems to be the underlying theme of the media in both novels which is that they immerse viewers in a world that feels just like reality.

This problem was even addressed, as Murray references, in an episode of "Star Trek: Voyager" where the starship crew are hallucinating dreams that are brought upon by an evil alien telepath. The crew “are mesmerized by an illusion so intense that it blocks out imminent danger” (21) yet Murray questions whether straying away from reality will hurt us or if it can help us. In the same Star Trek episode, after the alien is defeated, Captain Janeway sits back to ponder what lesson she could learn from that ordeal and comes to the conclusion that she gained valuable insight about herself which can help her grow. Murray remarks that like Janeway we can get something positive by these new forms of media as “it provides a safe place in which to confront disturbing feelings we would otherwise suppress; it allows us to recognize our most threatening fantasies without becoming paralyzed by them” (25).

So with new media like interactive video games and etc, the idea of pullulation is becoming more fact than fiction. I happen to be one of those people who believe entering another reality is not a negative thing. One of humanity’s biggest problems is our lack of understanding for people or things that are different from ourselves. New media can help relieve part of this issue. For instance, imagine playing a video game where you are a character of a different race or religion and the character must go through experiences that pertain to them. Would that make you feel different or raise your awareness about that particular race or religion?

Work Cited

Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck. The MIT Press: Massachusetts. 1997.

Research Assignment 2

2007-03-01T10:58:00.000-08:00

When I first approached "E-Crit," I wondered what this book had to do with New Media. One of the major points that he tries to make is how visual aids can enhance the learning experience. After going through this book, O’Gorman seems to be giving his opinion on how the advantages of New Media can benefit the educational system in a way that has never been done before in history. In this research assignment I will analyze how he highlights this idea.

Throughout the book, O’Gorman makes a lot of cases that visual aids are the best way for humans to learn. And if he has to pick one ambassador for this belief, it would probably be artist and philosopher William Blake. Blake was one of those thinkers who thought outside the norm and probably in O’Gorman’s mind was ahead of his time. One of Blake’s paintings, called ‘Nurse Song,’ receives special attention for what the message is. The painting depicts a woman who is holding a child’s head while another kid sits in the background. Even though this picture appears docile, it actually depicts a nurse trying to make the kids study or as O’Gorman states “a scene of children coming into experience, being forced to abandon the (admittedly romanticized) innocence, creativity, and jubilation of childhood” (53). Blake was opposed “against educational practices (both informal, as practiced by parents and nurses, and formal as in the Royal Academy) that privileged imitation over invention, and held reason above creativity” (53) and saw using images as a way to prevent it.

According to some studies, Blake might be correct as according to a political scientist named James Flynn, “the rate of gain on standard broad-spectrum IQ tests amounts to three IQ points per decade, and it is even higher on certain specialized measures” (73). Many account this increase in IQ’s to all the images that children are bombarded with from video games to television as they live in a “playful and visually rich environment in which these elements are communicated” (73). And it is not just kids that are benefiting from a visual culture as everyone has gotten smarter, not just for what a symbol means explicitly, but what it means implicitly as well. For example, O’Gorman uses Rene Magritte’s picture of a pipe to show us the impact of images on the human mind. The idea of the painting “is a negative lesson, an exercise in unlearning or deprogramming a set of habits which are second nature” (34). In other words, an object like a pipe is just an object. We attach ideas or meanings to that object that give it importance and represent a part of our life. For instance, the handicapped symbol is more than just an image. The symbol represents a portion of the public that for some reason is not the same as regular people. They are lacking in something and should be looked at as such which is why we should always give them the advantage whether it means giving them the best seats or the closest parking space. The handicapped symbol is a form of discrimination which appeals to one of humanity’s basic urges of fearing or watching closely those who are different. But unfortunately most of the public is unaware of these hidden messages because they don’t notice, which becomes part of the transparent language. One of Blake’s goals was that if he could repeat different images “for the purpose of building an argument that will impact the vision of the reader” (68) then in other words, the person will engage the image. By engaging or participating, the person will be more likely to remember and develop their own ideas.

Just as there are those who would welcome these different ways of teaching, as O’Gorman believes there are “those who wish to challenge this understanding of good sense” (16) which he calls the 'Republic of Scholars.' They seek to ignore the remainder which is defined as “puns, anagrams, false etymologies, macaronics, and metaphor of all breeds…” (4) and basically anything that draws up a visual image. It is O'Gorman’s belief that these academic scholars should look at new ways of teaching and accept these remainders as part of the canon.

As for how this pertains to New Media, the last chapter of the book is how school courses need to be flexible with New Media. He tries to assure teachers that “hypericonomy is not about immediately throwing out our current discursive practices, but about provoking change and inventing transitional, even provisional, strategies that bridge the gap between print-centric and computer-centric practices” (95). So he would welcome media like films or computers to teach the students of the future.

Work Cited

O’Gorman, Marcel. “E-Crit: Digital Media, Critical Theory, and The Humanities.” University of Toronto Press: London, 2006.

The Hypericonic De-Vise

2007-03-01T10:57:00.000-08:00

As I started reading Chapter 3 of "E-Crit," I noticed that the title of the chapter was called "The Hypericonic De-Vise." I wondered what "hypericonic" was and why O’Gorman spelled 'device' the way he did. When I finished reading the chapter I was still a little confused but I did spot some clues throughout the chapter that might explain what the title means.

Hypericonomy is a word that is very vague in the book. O'Gorman defines it as "an economy of hypericons" (67) which really doesn't explain anything if you do not know what hypericons are. The definition of hypericons is never mentioned but every time he uses that word, its in relation to using some sort of image or symbol to give a meaning. For example he mentions that "hypericonomy borrows from Blake this strategy of pattern recognition for the purpose of building an argument that will impact the vision of the reader. Of course, hypericonomy also borrows from the pictorial logic of advertising and of Hollywood film, both of which assail us with the repetition of icons on a daily basis" (68). From this description, it leads one to think that hypericonomy involves the abundance of icons that have a cultural meaning such as the McDonald's restaurant's 'Golden Arch,' which symbolizes fast food and etc.

As for what "de-vise" means, I will start with the prefix "de" which suggests something is lacking or below. The meaning of vise is explained on page 67 when O’Gorman explains a scene from the movie Casino where a mobster puts a guy's head in a vise in order to scare some information out of him. The vise becomes a way of retrieving information. The last hint of what this chapter is about involves William Blake who is mentioned extensively in this chapter. One of Blake's beliefs is that humans should not limit knowledge and be taught the same thing or else schools would become "an education in ignorance, a mill for producing mental cripples, or 'blockheads'" (60). So combining all these elements, maybe the phrase 'Hypericonic De-Vise' means retrieving a limited or certain amount of information or meaning from icons and symbols.

Work Cited

O’Gorman, Marcel. “E-Crit: Digital Media, Critical Theory, and The Humanities.” University of Toronto Press: London, 2006.

The Turing machine versus the Memex

2007-02-15T09:54:00.000-08:00

When I was reading the essay on the Turing machine by J.D Bolter and the fact that it was an earlier version of the computer, I started to think back to the essay done about the Memex by Vannevar Bush. The Memex can also be thought of as an earlier computer. That made me wonder what the similarities and differences between the two are.

The Turing machine, as described by Bush is “an abstraction, a creation of logic and mathematics” (42). He related his idea of mathematics and logic to a game. In any game there is a set of rules and you are given information that pertains to those rules. Nothing else in that game matters more than following the rules and that makes it logically. Another example would be if you were in a virtual reality world, all that matters is following the logic of that simulated world. When it comes to the Turing machine, the key is to give it a set of rules in which to operate. Information that is stored in the machine must agree with those rules. If the Turing machine is programmed to know that 1 + 1 = 2, then you should always expect that if you add 1 and 1 together, you won’t get anything other than two.

The Memex on the other hand was described by Bush as “a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility” (36). In other words, the Memex is a computerized version of the human brain. This machine works by storing information onto a tiny microfilm and placed into the system. When a person wants to look at some of the data like a book, they only simply have to tap “its code on the keyboard, and the title page of the book promptly appears…” (37). This is sort of similar to the Turing machine in that they both follow a set of orders given to them and cannot do anything that are outside of those orders. In the case of the Memex, if there is information that is not stored than, don’t expect it to locate it for you.

The main difference between the two is how they operate. The Turing machine operates by using tape that “is divided into cells, each of which may contain only one symbol, and there is a marker to indicate which cell is being inspected at any given moment” (Bolter, 42). And on this tape information like binary codes can be held. The Memex like was said earlier uses microfilm instead of tape to imprint data.

Work Cited

Bolter, J David. “Turing ‘s Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age.” London: Penguin, 1993.

Bush, Vannevar. “As We May Think.” 1945.

Research Assignment 1

2007-02-01T10:53:00.000-08:00

Marshall McLuhan pointed out in his essay “The Medium is the Message” that “it is only too typical that the “content” of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium” (1 of 8). What he was implying was that what you typical see in a medium keeps you from being aware of the ideas generated from that medium. This idea is no different when it comes to television. Shows alone on TV are telling us things in our minds on the conscious and sub-conscious level. In this research assignment, it is television soap operas in particular that will be analyzed to reveal what hidden messages are behind this medium.

Author Tania Modleski wrote an essay called “The Search for Tomorrow in Today’s Soap Operas” in which she theoretically discusses some of the ideas drawn form soaps. First, she talks about the differences between Harlequin Romance novels, another form of media, and TV soaps. Her main point is that unlike novels which have an end, soaps build on the expectation for an end that never comes. According to her, soaps make you “tune in tomorrow, not in order to find out the answers, but to see what further complications will defer the resolutions and introduce new questions. Thus the narrative, by placing ever more complex obstacles between desire and fulfillment, makes anticipation of an end an end in itself” (583). Her point about no resolutions leads to an analysis of women and family. Modleski comments that “the family is, for many women, their only support, and soap operas offer the assurance of its immortality” (584). What she is implicating is that in soap operas, because the family never experiences a happy ending, the women’s job of comforting everyone will never end. When it comes to the mother figure, soaps portray them as the wise person who is able to sympathize with everyone’s problems without having any demands of her own. Another way of saying it is the mother is expected to take care of everyone else’s problems except for her own. But as was said earlier, problems on soaps never end and Modleski highlights this when she declares “soap operas convince women that their highest goal is to see their families united and happy, while consoling them for their inability to realize this ideal and bring about familial harmony” (584).

Modleski then goes into talking about the opposite of the ideal mother which is the bad mother, or the villainess. The difference between the two is that while the good mother looks out for everyone without concern for herself, the villainess is selfish only doing things to suit her purpose. For instance, the villianess might simply be “a mother trying to manipulate her children’s lives” (583). But as Modleski mentions, there is one key similarity between the good mother and the villainess. Like the good mother who is powerless to permanently fix her family, the villainess never succeeds in her plans as long as “the spectator, encouraged to sympathize with almost everyone, can vent her frustration on the one character who refuses to accept her own powerlessness, who is unashamedly self-seeking” (586). So in a way, mothers in real life who may ne powerless are allowed to get angry at other women who are powerless.

The next point Modleski makes is about the structure of soaps. In her opinion, when someone watches a soap opera, many distractions can be found from the various commercial breaks to the style of the narrative. As she remarks with “women viewers reception itself often takes place in a state of distraction” (588), housewives in particular are busy doing other things while watching soaps like cleaning the house and etc. Because soap opera writers know that the women viewers are going to be distracted, they know to “repeat important elements of the story several times” (589). In doing so, soaps have multiple storylines and focuses just like the average housewife, and it is this element which Modleski says separates it from classic male narratives. Narrative from a male point of view features “maximum action and minimum, always pertinent dialogue, speeds its way to the restoration of order” (591) meaning that things are resolved at the end unlike in soaps.

Modleski’s essay pertains to New Media because as Negroponte’s definition said, new media is about “looking at old content in different ways” (62). Her essay asked that we look at the medium of soap operas from a female perspective, specifically what messages are being sent to the housewives.

Work Cited

Marris, Paul and Thornham, Sue. "Media Studies: A Reader, Second Edition." New York University Press: New York, 1999.

McLuhan, Marshall. "The Medium Is the Message." The MIT Press: Princeton NJ, 1964.

Negroponte, Nicholas. "Being Digital." Random House: New York, 1996.

Analyzing Negroponte's Definition of New Media

2007-02-01T10:52:00.001-08:00

In "Being Digital," Negroponte defines new media as "it's both about new content and about looking at old content in different ways. It's about intrinsically interactive media, made possible by the digital lingua franca of bits. And it's about the decreasing costs, increasing power, and exploding presence of computers" (62).

When he mentions "new content" I assume he is talking about the internet. Through the World Wide Web, the user is able to gain access to information that they otherwise would be unable to from reading news about smaller foreign countries to diagrams for building a bomb. So if that is the meaning of "new content," then "looking at old content in different ways" must mean that information we've already been used to is presented in a new form. For this, I refer back to the class discussion where it was said that media allows us to see reality in different ways. One form of media can be changed into another at the command of the user. For example, there is a software called Final Draft that is used to write different types of scripts. Even though Final Draft is mostly about writing texts, if you want to hear your script, one of the features has a computer voice that will read the text to you. Negroponte is also on point when he says "interactive media" as I think he is talking about example like the header. Negroponte refers to headers as "a bit that tells you about the other bits" (18) meaning their is data that lets you know about the data ahead like setting internet radio to only play music you like. And last, Negroponte's statement about computers is true as they are getting more powerful and less costly. Unfortunately, when it comes to computers getting cheaper, this only applies when they are almost obsolete. For this I use video games as an example as Playstation 2 years ago cost hundreds of dollars but now that newer systems are out, the price has gone down considerably.

Work Cited

Negroponte, Nicholas. "Being Digital." Random House: New York, 1996.

The Medium is The Message Part 2

2007-01-18T09:41:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week I was having a conversation with a co-worker about whether or not federal crimes like counterfeit money was a worse crime then murdering someone. I argued that killing someone was a worse offense while the other guy took the opposite view using the U.S government as proof that he was right. The idea of thinking as an individual and thinking as a group made me think of one of McLuhan's ideas that media makes humans less community-minded and more focused on one's self.

McLuhan uses an example of ancient tribes that are beginning to gain knowledge of the outside world when he remarks, "the Bedouin with his battery radio on board the camel." But from reading that section of his essay, I get the sense that McLuhan is making it seem negative when he says "we are no more prepared to encounter radio and TV in our literate milieu than the native Ghana is able to cope with the literacy that takes him out of his collective tribal world and beaches him in individual isolation."

Even though I agree that the collective mind of a tribe is lost when its members begin to gain awareness of more than what they have been taught in the tribe, I don't understand why that is a bad thing. I will use the United States as an example. One could say that America is one of the most individualistic countries in the world especially if you compare it to places like China. Even though this country has plenty of problems, it also has plenty of opportunities that you cannot find in other places such as the issue of women's rights. One of the reasons for this is that people are allowed to be individuals. In fact it's when we are not allowed to live our own lives that problems arise. The problem of illegal drugs is one example. If the U.S government allowed its citizens the right to use these drugs, would drug-related crimes go down? Would the government make more money taxing drugs than trying to police it? Places like New Amsterdam have experimented with legalizing drugs to great success. I am not saying that everyone should just be for themselves because that is one of the problems with the United States, but what I am saying is that there should be a balance between looking out for yourself and for others.

the medium is the message

2007-01-15T19:05:00.000-08:00

After reading this essay there are a lot of things that are left under speculation. For starters, in the first paragraph towards the end, what is McLuhan talking about when he refers to "the technique of fragmentation." Another idea that confused me was his discussion on the birth of movies and fragmentation. Was he saying that after the invention of the motion picture that things stopped happening in linear sequence. One more question I have is when McLuhan cites J.C Carother's book, "The African Mind in Health and Disease." Is he saying that literacy and media make us less communal and more individualistic.

timco

2007-01-11T11:26:00.000-08:00

today at TIMCO where i work my co-worker told me that some guy she was attracted to was cheating on her with one of her friends. so i have good news today.