Thursday, February 25, 2010

S03 Manovich Response

In Lev Manovich’s chapter of the Language of New Media what really stuck with me was his slightly unorthodox comparison of humans and the Internet. More specifically the article brought an uneasiness how similarly my mind works to how the interworking of a computer function. Manovich states, “The interface imposes its own logic on [the media].” (65) Which I then paralleled to how everyday experiences impact my thoughts and actions in the future. For me it was also similar to how my Internet knows my top sites. Based on how many times I have visited a particular site, my main screen has a list of all those particular ones therefore “imposing its own logic” on my server. Manovich takes the duality of human and Internet even further by stating that “an artwork is the result of a collaboration between artist/programmer” 67. I interpreted this as “an artwork” being some one’s favorites bar or main screen and the “artist/programmer” represents the connection between human and Internet. I took this to mean that since artist and programmer are so alike in the way they act and think that they collaborate together to make a final project.

Conclusively I want to look back at the beginning of the chapter to end my thoughts. In the beginning Manovich brings up the 1982 film Blade Runner. After a brief reading of the film’s synopsis I got a Steven Spielberg A.I. vibe. However with the idea of a futuristic Artificial Intelligence in mind while continuing on my reading, I concluded that the similarities of humans and computer alongside the collaborative interactions today make the idea of artificial intelligence not that radical as it is almost in existence right now.

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