new media

Panopticon Irony

2010-05-03T16:54:00.001-04:00

Panopticon Irony
by Jonathan Chou

Technology as a whole has seen the modernization and reinterpretation of countless tools and concepts conceived by thinkers of the past. Take the abacus that became the calculator, the calculator that became the computer. Take Da Vinci’s flying machine that became the airplane and the helicopter. Many of the things society takes for granted as recent innovations are in fact technological reapplications of ideas thought up long ago. Perhaps one of the most relevant and commonly used of these reapplications is that of Michel Foucault’s Panopticon. As Foucault details in his essay, “Panopticism” from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, the Panopticon has served as a model for “hospitals, workshops, schools, prisons” (205), and now, in contemporary society, technology has allowed for the expansion of its applications, inspiring modes of thought like Phil Agre’s “capture” theory, obsession about the boundary of the public and private spheres, and more physical applications like increased security in prisons, more effective contamination wards, more effective ways to educate. One such reapplication of the Panopticon that stood out among the rest because of its increasing popularity as a new media object is the fairly recent surge of blogging. In many ways, blogging is a new, modern interpretation of the Panopticon on the internet, allowing for technology to serve as a confining, imprisoning force just as much as a liberating force. More specifically, I’ll be investigating Blogger through this class’s (MCM 0230) application of Blogger to collect weekly blogposts.

First however, the basis to this comparison must first be detailed. The Panopticon was conceived at the end of the 18th century by Jeremy Bentham in response to the threat of a potential plague, theorized primarily to be used as a building in which the contaminated could be quarantined and isolated. Soon after the idea was published, the Panopticon became recognized for its countless uses and served as a model for, as mentioned above, prisons, schools, hospitals, and other such institutions. In order to facilitate this investigation, an introduction of the structure of the Panopticon will be presented simultaneously with a comparison of the Panopticon, as it was explained in 1785, with the Panopticon, as it can be seen in the class’s use of Blogger. To begin, the basic structure of the Panopticon involves an annular building which surrounds a solitary tower from which all sides of the building can be seen. The building itself contains isolated cells where the occupants of the Panopticon are contained. The Panopticon is built in such a way that each captive can be seen constantly yet are unable to see the supervisor, situated in the tower. For the class’s Blogger, this structure is obviously mimicked metaphorically by taking the form of a blog in which the original creator of the blog, the one who invites and manages the blog, can be seen as the supervisor, standing in the middle of the Panopticon. This supervisor is able to see the occupants, who are the invitees and posters on the blog, and their every action, which manifests itself as a blog post. In the beginning of the Foucault excerpt, Foucault details the system in which the contaminated city is surveyed by what he calls syndics, surveyors of a section of the city. In the case of the class’s Blogger, the TA’s who go about grading and reading the posts are synonymous to these syndics. Interestingly, according to Foucault, these syndics were to be sentenced to death if they left their appointed streets. One of the key characteristics of the Panopticon that Foucault presents is the transparency of the Panopticon – “any member of society will have the right to come and see with his own eyes how the schools, hospitals, factories, prisons function” (207). Like the real Panopticon, Blogger is an open space that allows anyone who wishes to look into the Panopticon to enter and read the occupants’ posts. In fact, the blog that the class uses not only preserves the posts of all occupants, but also the posts of past occupants, creating a new type of Panopticon that spans not only the entirety of the class, but also time.

In terms of conceptual applications, Blogger takes on almost all attributes of the Panopticon. Perhaps, the first aspect that should be explained because of its importance in laying a base for other conclusions is the visibility granted to occupants on the Panopticon. As Foucault explains it, “visibility is a trap” (200). Unlike orthodox prison structures, the Panopticon is fully lit and there are no corners of the cell space that the supervisor cannot see. Like the architectural Panopticon, Blogger serves to mimic this idea of visibility by impressing upon the bloggers a sense of privacy and freedom. Bloggers are free to formulate ideas, and personalize their account, but the truth is that everything that is posted can and will be seen by the creator of the blog, if not by the syndics who can be assumed to have special priveliges. True, it is possible to edit a post, but even that can be seen and monitored. As Matthew G. Kirshenbaum presents in his essay “Every Contact Leaves a Trace” from Mechanisms: New Media nad the Forensic Imagination that every choice made through technology leaves some trace, some evidence that can eventually be used. Indeed, it is possible to see the time when each blog is posted, or edited. Here is evidence:
Hi Jonathan,
I will consider whatever you send me last before 5pm to be the final draft.
Best,
Matt
(3:21 PM)
It is impossible to submit this essay after 5 pm simply because every action carries evidence of when it was done, and possibly, given the technology and access, where it was done from. However, it is impossible for the blogger to feel the presence of the supervisor, just as the occupants of the original version of the Panopticon are not able to see the supervisor either – “He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication” (200). Foucault goes on to posit the mindset of the occupants, saying that the power the Panopticon promotes is one that is self-sustaining. The belief that they are always being watched by “the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon” (201) forces the occupants of the Panopticon to act in a certain way, tailoring their decisions and actions so as to minimize the possibility that they will be noticed by the supervisor. Applying this idea to Blogger, bloggers are unable to detect the presence of the supervisor, or the syndics, who may or may not be reading every word that is posted on the blog, censoring it for purposes that will be investigated later on.

Thus, if Blogger, and more specifically the blogging website used for MCM 0230, can be seen as a modern application of the Panopticon, then the same effects and implications the Panopticon introduces are also relevant to Blogger and the blogging website. The first effect that Foucault posits for the Panopticon is its ability to “observe performances, to map aptitudes, to assess characters, to draw up rigorous classifications” (203). With the use of a Panopticon, “it is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good behavior, the madman to calm, the worker to work, the schoolboy to application” (202) because of its ability to induce a sense of visibility in the occupants, reinforcing their own captivity. This means, for blogging, that there need not be a strict sense of what kind of posts must be produced because bloggers will naturally produce the best posts they can in order to avoid detection. More important than this, however, is the effect of a Panopticon-esque blog-posting system on the dissemination of information and education. Because of the isolated, controlled nature, any blogger can be picked out of the rest, any blog post can be erased by the original creator and syndics, tailoring what is open to the public to read and absorb into whatever the creator desires to be shared. In this way, if the idea of the Panopticon can truly be applied to blogging, then blogging becomes a way for the creators to control the bloggers “because it is possible to intervene at any moment and because the constant pressure acts even before the offences, mistakes or crimes have been committed” (206). This constant pressure being the pressure not only to conform to what the supervisor will not notice as an anomaly, but as well as the pressure of the supervisor being able to see all, and change all. Essentially, what this accomplishes is the destruction of any type of rebellion – “there is no danger of a plot, an attempt at collective escape, the planning of new crimes for the future, bad reciprocal influences… if they are schoolchildren, there is no copying, no noise, no chatter, no waste of time” (200-201), and, especially, no posts that undermine the very structure of blogging.

Thus, Blogger, and the blog MCM 0230 uses, becomes a prison. More specifically, a prison of thought, and time. The idea of the Panopticon has seen widespread use in contemporary society and indeed, perhaps any educational facility needs to resemble a Panopticon in order to function efficiently. Without a structure that is able to stop nonconformists, society would cease to function correctly.

Section 03 Late Post: Gaming Conversation with Sophie

2010-05-02T18:14:00.000-04:00

I had a lovely conversation with Sophie after a Wednesday section eons ago about gaming. Sophie prefers casual gaming to hardcore gaming. She said she has had limited experience with gaming in general but when she was a little girl, she played hardcore games at her friend's house.

Sophie stated that the main reason she didn't enjoy hardcore gaming is because the concept of her avatar "dying" bothered her greatly. This seems to strengthened the Dibbell cybersex reading that we did in that the physical human user has an emotional connection to what occurs in the digital interface.

Section 03 Late Post How does one measure cultural value?

2010-05-02T17:23:00.001-04:00

"Free labor is the moment where this knowledgeable consumption of culture is translated into productive activities that are pleasurably embraced and at the same time often shamelessly exploited" (Terranova 37)

The free labor model of websites such as Youtube and Myspace which rely on users to freely submit content are described of as exploitation by Terranova (obviously speaking to an audience that would be well versed in Marxist theory); these content developers are not financially compensated for their work. Terranova asks why do these users continue to work for free with her answer being that users produce free labor because it gives them some sort of pleasure.

Free labor also occurs on the internet because of an alternate economy to the economy of capital: the cultural economy. Although the users of myspace might not have a monetary reward for their content they receive the ability to say "Check Out My Myspace Page www.myspace/aoifjeoaijfeoifja". The reward for having free content on these sites is a certain cultural prestige. Because there is no monetary value to such cultural capital, how does one measure the cultural value of such user content?

Facebook: The Social Psychology of Capture and Surveillance

2010-04-30T18:20:00.003-04:00

By Andrew Lenoir, David Paesani, Jelena Jelusic

To adequately dissect the global Facebook phenomena, it is important to note, not only what power it has over its users, but also the need it fills to justify their continued patronage. Through discussion of Foucault’s Panopticon model and Agre’s Capture model of control, the structure and function of Facebook will be engaged, exposing it for what it is and what it means for all those that use it.

Facebook falls into the realm of visual and linguistic metaphors, as discussed by Foucault and Agre respectively. In the Panopticon, the guards establish their power over the prisoners by creating the illusion that someone is always watching from the shuttered tower at the prison’s center. Similarly, when one joins Facebook, and any photograph of them is uploaded, the user is immediately tagged in the picture. Photographs can be taken willingly, or uploaded from another user’s camera or camera phone without the subject’s knowledge or permission. These little details of the user’s day to day life appear as picture updates on the user’s friend’s newsfeeds. The same issue occurs when one friend writes on another’s wall, allowing anyone on their newsfeed to see a snippet of conversation. Updates to one’s profile, whether about changing music taste, or the ending and beginning of relationships similarly become public knowledge amongst a user’s friend base. However there is also the similarity with Agre’s capture model in that the “guard” subject is not one set person or group of people. If a user is friends with his family members, they may know what he got up to on Saturday night when he was supposed to be studying. If it is a user’s future employer, some recorded behavior or opinion, in either photograph, status update or wallpost, may be later count against their employment.

When Foucault explains the system of surveillance, he offers the model of the town governed according to the principles of surveillance: “...the town immobilized by the functioning of an extensive power that bears in a distinct way over all individual bodies...” (198) The system of surveillance relies on the existence of a single authority that collects and possesses all the information (there is only one central tower of the Panopticon). However, in case of Facebook, the surveillance principle is not its only means of functioning because there is no clear single authority that has exclusive right over the information distributed. Instead there is the autonomous, and generally unbiased newsfeed home page, which automatically updates all news from the user’s friends and centralizes the information. The capture model, on the other hand, offers a decentralized and heterogenous model for circulation of information. These two are not mutually exclusive. Though the newsfeed offers a central site for information, users decide what objects of news are worth looking into and what friends they want to check on. On Facebook, every user observes a certain number of other users, but never everyone and he never becomes the only observer. In this way, every user functions as a local center for the storage and exchange of information. Every user’s news feed is the tower of the Panopticon, and every user is a decentralized, autonomous guard choosing where to look.

Surveillance means observing in space and often functions by “invading” the space of the observed. Agre offers structural metaphors, where activity is captured as it falls into preexistent categories within an institutional setting. Unlike the panopticon model’s reliance on a physical space, Facebook is abstract- already a characteristic that distinguishes it from the surveillance model. The freedom of Facebook boils down into preexistent categories of action (poking someone, joining groups, writing on someone's wall, chatting etc) and they always remain within the institutional setting of the website. The activity of a user on Facebook is captured within these categories rather than surveyed like in the metaphor of the Panopticon.

While this surrender of privacy is inherently troubling, the fact that millions of people have willingly surrendered it to gain access to Facebook shows the model is working. Facebook, by its very nature forces the user to examine and recreate himself by the very act of joining. Questions that would ordinarily require some level of intimacy: religious views; political views; relationship status; are all answered in the initial set up of one’s profile. The user picks his own photograph to represent himself, he chooses what bands and books he thinks will look good on his list of favorites. Facebook allows one to construct oneself as he’d like to be, and then interact with others through that façade. Facebook allows for the construction of a new “me” made up of what “I” am not. It is the same sort of freedom provided by program’s like “SecondLife”, however all the users are directly tied to the real world and their real friends. The users of Facebook have signed a social contract, linking this idealized “profile avatar” of themselves within Facebook back to their real identities. The phrase, “That picture cannot wind up on Facebook, ” has become highly-prevalent in common discourse, both out of fear of other’s seeing (and potential real world consequences, i.e.- Parents see pictures of you drinking) but also of damaging one’s profiles good name. Much in the way the Panopticon causes its prisoners to internalize their guard’s gaze, turning themselves into model inmates, the potential of one’s actions being witnessed on facebook, complicated by the fact that there is no set guard, but rather “everyone” watching, forces the user to internalize a similar gaze, modifying their behavior.

Where as the Surveillance model of control has a connection back to the state, the capture model connects to a higher ideal, in this case the human need for interaction and relationship. By providing games to play, such as MafiaWars and Farmville, Facebook provides new means for users to interact and expands its own role in interpersonal connection. Facebook has become completely ingrained into how this generation socializes: it is a hyperreal that reaffirms personal popularity and the belief that one has “friends”, despite the fact its impossible to actively consider more than 150 people at a time. Each user has agreed to a social contract surrendering their control. By giving every user access to anything posted by their potential friends (or even friends of friends), Facebook has also provided an ever watching, all recording bank of information for their users’ access.

DormLife Frequently Asked Questions

2010-04-30T17:02:00.002-04:00

Dormlife Frequently Asked Questions

In reference to Agre’s concept of ‘the capture model’, how would Dormlife alter the behavior of its users?

One of the conditions for Agre’s ‘capture model’ is that a large amount of information is “captured”. Computer programs then filter through this information to look for certain identity markers of the subjects. This identity can then be targeted for economic niches, “the organization of personal information as the commodity” (738). Dormlife would work in the same way in that it would surmise the identity of a user through a collection of data about location, events at those locations and the media associated with those locations. It would then use that identity to best cater certain advertisements to the users that are deemed relevant to the user’s lifestyle. In this way, the ‘capture model’ of Dormlife reinforces the behavior of its users; it spits back out to the user products that it believes will speak to the user as a subject. It also introduces the subject to products that fit with his or her identity thus introducing the user to new products to incorporate into this behavior. The capture model works to reinforce and speak to already existing behaviors.

How does Dormlife address issues of identity security and privacy?

Dormlife focuses primarily on location. You find people through location, and their Dormlife location doesn't betray their privacy any more than a real location could. To see a user’s profile and their currently living situation or any of the information or media they add to Dormlife, you must ‘knock on their door’ or find them through roommates that you are friends with (if the set to allow this latter option). Just like in the real world, you can go up to strangers’ doors and knock, so (also just like in the real world) privacy is dependent on the intelligence and caution of the user.

The user is in control of how their information is displayed. Anytime they post anything, they will be given the options to make the information available to everyone, make it available to only ‘roomies,’ or select a custom group of people who can see. There is one exception: the room journal is always visible to anyone who has lived in that location. When choosing who can see the content, you may also choose how you sign the content. Dormlife provides two signature options: sign as your room number and year, or sign as anonymous (which simply doesn't provide any information, not even “anonymous’, just the content). You may sign the content with you name, but Dormlife will not; Dormlife only shows your name inside your dormroom webpage. The user always has the ability to delete what they have added to any part of the site.

With so much potential anonymity, users may fear the possibility of identity theft. Dormlife would need to have some relationship with the institutions it hopes to focus on. Dormlife would need some verification system which may rock the socks off some student privacy advocates; if a website can ask for confirmation down to the specifics of which room you live in, the world has ended as anti-”the man” hippies and whiny criminals who have something hide know it. It is not possible to trust college students, their universities and a website made by college students with the responsibility of confirming student room assignment in a way that is not dangerous for the student? Perhaps not, but if the student says they want their institution to tell Dormlife where they live–for the sake of the honesty and thus the effectiveness of the site–and if the institution agrees to work along, why should theorists highlight the possibility that it might be used improperly? (Because that is their job...) Just remember the following: computers “can only compute with what it captures” (749), meaning that like with any social networking site, the user and in this case, the academic institution, get to decide what information they are willing to risk to a website. Dormlife can only capture the information that is submitted to it.

Societies are defined by their location and inhabitants. Facebook and MySpace are profile-centric social networking sites, where the main focus of the society is its inhabitants. Facebook initially seemed to have some formal focus on location, as every user was required to be registered at a school. This eventually broadened to allow high school, and then eventually Facebook networks became almost unlimited including any city or place of work (and by allowing users to not have a network). Facebook used to provide a network webpage for each network, but eventually ended this. Facebook now seems to be it’s own world, with the different user pages being different locations. With the profile being such a focus of the Facebook site, privacy is obviously important to consider. Facebook, as it name implies, allows users to browse through people in the form of profiles of information. In contrast, Dormlife centers information on the location in which an event occurs. Because the focus is not individual people but instead the spaces that they inhabit, privacy most likely would be less of an issue than with a social networking site such as Facebook. The purpose of Dormlife is not to reveal personal information about oneself such as in Facebook; the purpose is to create a digital community through physical spaces.

Jack Horkings

Farah Shaer

Jamie Lynn Harris

iPad

2010-04-30T16:57:00.008-04:00

In the introduction to Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins argues against the understanding of convergence as merely a technological phenomenon, stressing instead that convergence represents a very important cultural shift in the relationship between the consumer and media content. The active, participatory consumer who crafts individual entertainment experiences by making connections across dispersed media outlets has replaced the old conception of the passive consumer. Convergence culture reflects a shift from industrial capitalism, in which consumers were viewed as a monolithic demographic to which mechanically reproduced and unpersonalized commodities could be marketed. As Donna Haraway explains in A Cyborg Manifesto, in post-industrial society "the home, workplace, market, public arena, the body itself--all can be dispersed and interfaced in nearly infinite, polymorphous ways" (163). Haraway's image of the cyborg, which is always a fractured, partial identity, pushes back against the essentialist image of the consumer in industrial society. What Jenkins' convergence culture and Haraway's cyborg point toward is a new flow-based mode of subjectivity that sets the stage for a rhetoric of personalization through its focus on difference and change over static identity. With the introduction of the iPad, Apple takes advantage of the rhetoric of personalization to channel the user's desire for a distinct new media experience into the act of consumption. More than Apple's previous new media devices, the iPad intensifies the enclosure of the consumer within an Apple-centric closed system of media convergence, one in which the consumer's needs for various media content are met through Apple.

In the April 2010 Wired article "How the Tablet Will Change the World", Steven Levy writes that "the iPad offers a streamlined yet powerful intuitive experience that’s psychically in tune with our mobile, attention-challenged, super-connected new century" (http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/03/ff_tablet_levy/). What appears as Apple's catering to convergence culture in a form that "streamlines" the participatory experience for iPad users is actually an ideological restructuring of user subjectivity, an ideology driven solely by the capitalist profit motive in which the user is always and above all a consumer of and through Apple. Behind a rhetoric of efficiency, ease, and choice, Apple has in fact created a structure in which it is the entity through which all media and information can or must be accessed. As Levy notes, the "rigidly enforced standards of aesthetics will ensure that the iPad remains an easy-to-navigate no-clutter zone," a feature that seems wholly to the benefit of the user, but in fact plays into Apple's consumption paradigm. The strict aesthetics of the iPad, with its icons arranged in orderly rows across the screen allows for very little of the personalization afforded by the desktop of a computer. Whatever desire a user may have for personalization or individualization must be satisfied through the act of consumption through the App Store, of selecting and purchasing apps with which to outfit one's iPad. Apps are only available through the App store, and all developers and publishers must have their apps cleared by Apple. The App Store is the final and arguably the most crucial component in an Apple-centric closed system, one in which the need to go beyond Apple is preempted or denied. Users not only get their apps solely through the app store, but they must also surf the web on Apple's Safari browser, can only access web media that is QuickTime compatible, and must use the iPad's iPod to listen to music or watch movies.

In a sense, it is possible to argue that Jenkins foresaw this type of corporation-centric convergence, writing that convergence "is both a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottom-up consumer-driven process" (18). Jenkins saw corporate convergence in "new media conglomerates" like Warner Bros., which "have controlling interests across the entire entrainment industry" (16). Apple's model, however, is new and totalizing in that it also acts at the level of the device with which consumers access their media content. By starting with the media technology, with the success and ubiquity of the iTunes and App stores it is easy to forget that Apple was first and foremost a electronics developer, and then expanding to the regulating of media content, Apple was able to create a closed system unlike any other. Through the iPad, Apple complicates Jenkins' argument that "convergence does not occur through media appliances, however sophisticated they may become" (3). While the Apple-centric style of convergence does not occur solely through the iPad, the device nevertheless plays an instrumental role in Apple's consumption ideology as this "media appliance" allows Apple to shape a specific form of convergence culture. Furthermore, through the iPad Apple problematizes Jenkin's argument that "delivery systems are simply and only technologies," opposed to "cultural systems" (14). By restricting access to software and thereby creating a monopoly on "delivery", Apple incorporates the delivery technology as an element of capitalist ideology.

Apple's restrictions on software appear to intentionally circumvent the bottom-up, collective trend in theories of new media after the company initially used them to market their products. As closed and totalizing as Apple's closed system may be, however, it is important to remember Jenkins' "convergence refers to a process, not an endpoint" (16). Quoting Pool, Jenkins asserts that "convergence does not mean ultimate stability or unity [but rather] operates as a constant force for unification but always in dynamic tension with change" (11). American culture is in a state of transition, similar to the one Jenkin's posits, in which media conglomerates battle confusedly for what markets and delivery technologies (it is interesting to note this media war also coincides with what Haraway terms "boundary wars"). If Apple's current war with Adobe is any indication other new media corporations--if not consumers--may soon wake up and break down the walls of Apple's self-centric structure, allowing for new and different systems of convergence to emerge.

The Wii

2010-04-30T16:24:00.000-04:00

Ryan Sammartino
Kapil Mishra
Conor Biller

In her article “Reload: Liveness, Mobility, and the Web,” Tara McPherson discusses the unique experiences of the Internet, many of which apply directly to the Wii and suggest parallel experiences between them. McPherson claims that the Web’s cursor is “a tangible sign of presence implying movement” (McPherson, 201). The slightest move of one’s hand can move him limitless distances through cyberspace. The Wii’s remote mimics this dynamic, but also expands on it: Wii users literally point to where they want to go, using the motion sensing technology of the game to wirelessly control their movement through it. With the stroke of the remote, one’s location changes in the Wii world, giving the remote the power of “liveness” shared by the Internet (McPherson, 201). As McPherson says, the Web’s liveness “foregrounds volition and mobility, creating a liveness of demand...a sense of causality” (McPherson, 202). Flicking the Wii or clicking its buttons can take the user to an endless variety of worlds, immediately and at the user’s whim. Like with the Internet and mouse, the user has complete control because of the remote: control of where they go or what they experience, a control which McPherson terms “volitional mobility” (McPherson, 202).
The user’s choice to navigate the screen occurs through an immediate process. The motion of the remote control instantaneously affects the motion of the cursor, causing rapid gratification during game play. Jenkins, in “Games, the New Lively Art,” remarks that when observing the immediacy of game play, one should look “not in terms of how convincing the representation of the character and the fictional world is but rather in terms of the character’s ‘capacity’ to respond to our impulses and desires.” The Wii characters are essentially replicating the user’s movements, as a swinging of the arm translates to the swinging of a racquet. In addition to this visual gratification, the controller vibrates at appropriate times (i.e. ball hits the racquet) to create an accompanying physical gratification. The game console, however, strips away the aesthetics and sharpness of the fictional world to compensate for its attention to interaction. The remote control functions as an extension of the arm, serving as the vital connection to the character and game play. One might wonder if it’s worth taking away the visual appeal, but Jenkins points out that it is the “expansion of the player’s capacity which accounts for the emotional intensity of most games.” While a conventional game controller typically measures a character’s strength by how frequently the user pushes button X, Wii’s innovative design requires a faster motion by the user’s arm. The user’s freedom to move his arm in any direction leads to the same freedoms and movements for the character.
However, within the confines of the Wii, the user’s control by arm movement is just that—control by arm movement. The Wii remote’s interactivity does not extend any further. Whereas Jenkins focuses on a character’s ability to respond to the user’s full range of desires and commands, the Wii limits the characters primarily to the user’s ability to gesture. What cannot be gestured cannot be accomplished. For example, in Wii Tennis, the system’s popular tennis “simulation,” the player has full control of the strokes of his racquet. He can slice, he can use topspin, he can pull the ball wide or he can drive it straight. And while the versatility of the racquet via the Wii remote offers the illusion of actual tennis, character limitations keep that illusion grounded. Because of the nature of the Wii remote, the player is entirely stripped of his freedom of movement. So while the “emotional intensity” Jenkins discusses is certainly present in the often hyper-competitive Wii Tennis, the Wii’s programming directs character movement and therefore restricts a significant portion of user control. The overlying idea is that the user overlooks this limitation because of the specific and powerful control he possesses over the racquet.
The structure and form of the Wii intervenes in the user’s otherwise-complete control over their player in the game, but it also intervenes in the broader narrative of their gaming experience, hindering their volitional mobility in subtle but not invisible ways. The Wii’s design and form prevents the user from having complete bodily control over the remote, and it also prevents them from having complete control over the path and progression of their use of the Wii. This problematizes the parallels between the Wii and Tara McPherson’s reading of the Internet as a realm of user freedom and choice.
McPherson claims the Web “can be multidirectional and also simultaneous, both forward and backward at once” (McPherson, 203). In other words, there is no true limit or necessary direction to the path an Internet user must take while experiencing the Web. Once the Internet user enters an address, he or she can enter another with the same ease: the user can go forward endlessly via the address bar, mobile in any direction desired. The Wii, however, is neither simultaneous nor dimensional. Even though both the Web and Wii offer a myriad of experiences, they do not overlap within the Wii, and cannot be accessed from one to the other. For example, suppose a Wii user wishes to leave Wii Sports and experience the Wii Shop Channel. He must first return to the homescreen, then find and select the Wii Shop Channel. On the other hand, Web users need only type a new web address to mobilize themselves in the exact direction they have chosen. The Wii’s interface and design impede the user’s volitional mobility by tethering users to the homescreen.

The Liveness of Desire

2010-04-30T10:45:00.003-04:00

Written by Ann Ford, Karynn Ikeda, Sophie Savryn

The iPod is an object of desire: a personal device, a fetish object, essential for the music consumer. Users desire the iPod and its promise of mobility and freedom, but the iPod is also a vessel through which they can then express future desires. Desire begins as a force outside of the user that he or she plugs into but is then reworked through the user's interaction with it. According to Tara McPherson in her article "Reload: Liveness, Mobility and the Web", the modality of volitional mobility is used to describe that desire plays an active role in navigating the Web. Mobility is a key aspect linking the iPod to the Web. Yet, the iPod complicates the modality of scan-and-search by holding onto the older modality of flow. The iPod's disjuncture of space and time separates it from the web.

The web is different than that of television primarily through the difference in navigation. McPherson differentiates between “flow” and the “scan-and-search” as two modalities of experiencing media. Flow is the feeling that one freely coasts through one's interaction with media objects. McPherson illustrates the concept of “flow” through the experience of watching television. We immerse ourselves in a television program that constitutes a continuous and unified trajectory. The “scan-and-search,” alternately, exposes Web users to different segments of data simultaneously, and thus they employ a scan-and-search method of viewing so as not to miss anything. McPherson states: “This is not just channel-surfing: it feels like we’re wedding space and time, linking research and entertainment into similar patterns of mobility” (204). Unlike TV, in which the choice to change the channel is the extent of one's ability to navigate the medium, the modalities of the Web allow for the manipulation of space and time, amplifying the effect of the user's desire on one's experience.

The iPod, like the Web, has disrupted the experience of “flow,” a modality that resembles listening to music on the CD player or the walkman. Prior to the iPod, one primarily listened to a cohesive album that constituted a musical narrative. The navigation of the iPod depends upon the modality of volitional mobility, in that the user must choose music and navigate through one's library to construct a personalized listening experience. Additionally, the Shuffle feature on the iPod, which randomly selects the next song from the user's music library, enables one to listen to an eternal mix tape, again resisting the traditional coherent narrative of the album. Instead, users listen to individual songs similar to the way in which they see individual web segments, allowing for a scan-and-search method of spanning countless genres and periods of music. Ultimately the experience of listening to the iPod depends upon a mobility of the user through the iTunes library, desire prompting action.

However, the iPod also incorporates an experience of flow into scan-and-search that makes it unique from both the Web and television. Similar to the flow modality associated with TV, simultaneity is not possible with the iPod; one can only listen to a single song at a time, similar to the division of channels on a television. The agency essential to the Web is reduced in the iPod. A common thread between TV and the Web is the desire to not miss information. Yet, the iPod resists the anxiety inherent in both the scan-and-search modality and the flow modality with respect to missing: "Whereas this fear of missing something in the realm of television may cause the user to stay tuned to one channel, not to miss a narrative turn, this fear of missing in the Web propels us elsewhere, on to the next chunk" (204). One's music exists permanently in the archive of the iTunes library and then downloaded into the iPod itself, therefore the desire to navigate through the iPod is not based on anxiety. The songs cannot be missed because they are already embedded within the iPod's hard drive. The desire to navigate, then, exists free of anxiety. Thus, the mobility that creates the sense of "liveness" in the iPod is attributed to the immediate desire of the user to listen to music whenever and wherever, rather than the object itself embodying "liveness", such as live broadcasts on TV or the instant updates of the Web.

The iPod further demonstrates a schism from McPherson's description of liveness by countering her point that the user is “wedding space and time,” with the Web. Physically, the media object takes up such little space yet manages to hold within itself so much time: hours upon hours of music fit into a very tiny nano or iPod shuffle. This small size enables mobility, creating the wherever of the iPod. The whenever of the iPod is structured a little differently. The act of "plugging in" to the iPod expresses a desire to dissociate space from time, willing one separate from the other: one hopes to mentally escape the physical space one is in, or to pass time when it seems to linger. Both scenarios disengage the user from the now: the current space or the current time. To listen to the iPod whenever means that one must sacrifice the time of present when this when occurs. The volitional mobility that accounts for the "wedding" of space and time on the Web instead divorces the two in the iPod. Though the Web and TV stress that "liveness" corresponds to real time, the iPod's liveness allows one to move through real time by fracturing it.

Through volitional mobility, the iPod becomes the ultimate expression of the user's desire. Desire prompts our navigation from song to song, but unlike television and the Web, this desire to act is not motivated by a fear that the user will miss the next thing. The iPod distinguishes itself from its parent media, TV and the Web, in that its mobility, which contributes to its "liveness", is not based on how one navigates the device, but rather depends upon the user's desire to be mobile. This desire to move away from the parent media is both in the physical device - to use it the listener must be away from the computer - and in the theory - moving away from flow and scan-and-search to carve out its own modality: a volitional liveness that allows navigation to transcend the device itself, swapping real time for iPod time and escaping space through the iPod.

Tara McPherson, “Reload: Liveness, Mobility and the Web,” The Visual Culture Reader, 2nd Edition, Ed. Nicholas Mirzoeff (New York: Routledge, 2002), 458-470.

Dormlife

2010-04-28T09:11:00.001-04:00

Dormlife is a location-based social network that allows you to connect with present, past, and future residents of your dorm. You can’t travel into the future, but once the future gets here–and your time in the dorm has passed–you can still follow what’s going on...if you’re some lame creep. WARNING: If you find yourself saying “I wish it worked more like Facebook!” it is possible that the creators intended for certain inconveniences to emphasize the relationship between Dormlife and the real-world locations it digitizes.

S03. Internet Memes

2010-04-23T01:59:00.002-04:00

Reading Jenkins' treatise on Convergence, I became stuck upon the idea of "consumption... [as] a collective process," and its relation to my favorite part of the internet, the internet meme. According to wikipedia, a meme can be defined as "a postulated unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena."

Watching the spread of certain videos ("David after the dentist", "Charlie the Unicorn", etc) and images (Lolcats) without any real explanation invokes in me a certain belief in a collective unconscious, or at least in the concept of ideas that spread rapidly like plague. Perhaps this has more to do with Keenan's assertion of the self-other construct being just that (constructed), in the way that peer pressure is actually an internal influence, but it strikes me as odd that many people become aware of the same material at the same time.

With the rise of KnowYourMeme.com and Digg.com, these objects themselves are being spread wider and faster than ever before, drawing further parallels in the way that the spread of the internet represents the spread of a single, universal culture that is a convergence of all the others that went into its creation.

S.03 Freedom of ...

2010-04-23T01:24:00.002-04:00

We continually redefine the idea of freedom. What is it? How related to control is it? It seems that this we we again redefined freedom with passion as a basis for the argument. Basically what I concluded from the lecture on wednesday that passion is the freedom to explore what you want to explore. This concept further the idea mentioned earlier in the class that control is freedom and visa versa. If that statement is true, control is freedom than essentially what is being said is you have the ability to develop you own passion; you have the freedom to pursue learning and other adventures. What I think the real questions is does this conception of control and freedom have a positive reflection or negative? At what point is it bad and what point is it good?

Free Labor = Crowd Sourcing, Friday 11am Section

2010-04-22T19:20:00.001-04:00

The article “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy” by Tiziana Terranova made me think hard about current internet trends. I find it interesting that this was written in 2000, well before Youtube , Facebook, and Wikipedia. The “free labor” that she discusses is called “crowd-sourcing” and is a key factor controlling affecting the success of social media companies. The arguments being presented here are stronger than ever and I would not be surprised if others felt this paper was ahead of its time. I find it hard to understand what it was that she had in mind when writing this and don’t think I would have believed her if I read it in 2000.

My favorite part of the reading can be found on page 37 where she writes:

“Free labor is the moment where this knowledgeable consumption of culture is translated into productive activities that are pleasurably embraced and at the same time often shamelessly exploited.”

This, in a nut shell, summarizes the rest of the paper and perfectly encapsulates emerging internet trends. Fan fiction, as was described in class on Wednesday, is a perfect example of this. Fans love reading the new material, but the original writers themselves can take advantage of it without any compensation to the fans. Facebook’s user-agreement stipulates that any original material on the social networking site is property of Facebook. In other words, crowd-sourcing is the name of the game on the internet these days because of all the useful material that free labor produces. Terranova calls these new workers “digital artisans.” I also find it particularly interesting that the younger generations seem to be adopting these new trends quicker. Although I consider myself a heavy internet user, I have never contributed to Wikipedia, been an active member of an online community, and have never uploaded a video to Youtube. On the other hand, there is no limit to how many 13-year olds upload video after video of them ranting nonsense. I think modern crowd-sourcing sites are the beginning of this trend toward harnessing the power of crowds online and am excited/scared to see what comes next.

Friday 11 am Session Blog Post

2010-04-22T19:11:00.001-04:00

The formation of free labor, according to Tiziana Terranova, is the result of the digital economy in a macroeconomic sense. For individuals, their laboring is sometimes voluntary, but not willing. They understand that “the free stuff offered around the net” is “either a product that gets you hooked on to another one or makes you just consume more time on the net. After all, the goal of the access people and telecoms is to have users spend as much time on thoe net as possible, regardless of what they are doing” (50). A lot of my friends who claim to be “addicted” to Facebook, among whom a lot are aware of the commercial mechanism of the website and of the nature of their addiction, somehow can’t help spending hours on their addiction, or labor, of roaming on Facebook everyday. When we think about what happens when people do that, Csíkszentmihályi’s concept of flow seems to fit into the picture. In the users’ long-time vision, they don’t want to spend that much of time on Facebook; but they cannot not want, because they are subject to be immersed in the flow of exploring the random stuff online. Their situation of “escaping, but never leaving” is due to the capturing nature of the labor, which utilizes their addiction, more than self-fulfillment. This form of voluntary but unwilling labor exemplifies the convergence of leisure and labor in new media economy in a different aspect, with the individuals being the subject of this convergence, rather than active practitioners.

Open Source Software

2010-04-22T18:50:00.001-04:00

I have been using Open Office for quite a while and I never really asked myself what is the ideology behind creating Open Source software. I started using it not because I knew how to modify the source code, but because it was free and I wanted to try it. I never thought Word was any better than Open Office though. However, using Open Office did change the way I perceived buying computer software. In particular, it did not seem very reasonable to me to pay for something that I can get for free and that is not really significantly different.
Yet, I still don't think I completely understand the difference between “free beer” and “free speech” in terms of computer software. Even after reading Open Source Initiative, I still did not think programmers were awarded enough for the work they did. On the other hand, when I thought about it in more general terms, I realized that people from many professions do not get sufficient awards for the work they do. In fact, the income one receives does not (and often is not) proportional to the amount of effort one invests or the talent one possesses. That is why, in my opinion, free labor is so important.
Free labor is what makes functioning of the capitalist society possible. Free labor enhances the flow of information greatly, enabling more people to participate actively in the functioning of that same capitalist society. Without free labor, information would circulate much slower which would, in return, cause not the development of the capitalist society, but rather its stagnation.
Taken in that context, the ideology behind Open Source software makes much more sense. Ultimately, Open Source is not something that would destroy programming profession, but rather help it develop to a more advanced level. True, in the very beginning, programmers would most likely experience financial difficulties, but, Open Source software could lead to higher demand of programmers due to the fact that it stimulates individualization of software for specific needs of the users and due to the availability and possibility to modify the source code.
No one could stop the programmers from selling copies of modified Open Source software that would satisfy needs of particular users. In that way, not only would programmers still have their jobs, but the users would have software that would be more appropriate to their needs.
However, the complete transition between standard commercial and Open Source software would be certainly very hard, if not impossible. For that, we have to start perceiving computer software as a tool of our electronic “speech”. Because of that, we should have the right to use it just like we use other people's written or spoken thoughts.

S03 Collective Intelligence

2010-04-22T18:31:00.002-04:00

"Consumption has become a collective process" (Jenkins 4).

There are times when I get on Facebook that several people have posted the same video. Where is this information coming from? It is as if there is a collective source of knowledge. This is what the internet does. It provides for a collective space for knowledge to be shared in. When there is a scandal, almost everyone has the same information. It creates a collective memory and essentially connects an imagined community not only on the source (Facebook) but also information.

How does this information even come about? Sites like Google cater to larger companies who purchase ad space and it caters to the consumers who choose the popular websites. The consumer chooses a lot of what appears when they enter a website because it is based on what the consumer has a tendency of checking online. (All my Facebook adds mention Jason Mraz and fraternities) "The Internet is the material evidence of the existence of the self-organizing, infinitely productive activities of con- nected human minds." (11) All this work by the consumer is creating free labor. We create the content that appears on websites and at the same time consume it.

Friday 11am

2010-04-22T18:27:00.000-04:00

I was a little confused by Jenkin’s Convergence book. He says, “I will argue here against the issue that convergence should be understood primarily as a technological process bringing together multiple media functions within the same devices” (Jenkins 3). Alright fine that’s all well and good, but then for the next couple pages the only references to convergence he makes exemplify the contrary. He goes into detail about how the cell phone represents a convergence (that he believes to be unnecessary) of phone, web, video, picture, music storage, and navigation. The cell phone is the perfect example that refutes his argument. He brings it up, and then does not explain why it is not an example of convergence. Later he mentions Microsoft and Sony and how they planned on disguising convergence within their game consoles. Indeed these consoles do represent a form of convergence; they can be used for enjoying games, movies, or music. I think convergence is better represented in the examples Jenkins uses in order to try to change how people think about convergence.

-Ben Trotter

S03 - Hackers

2010-04-22T18:25:00.002-04:00

When I pulled a new issue of Wired from my mailbox today, I was unsurprised to notice that the cover article, "Geek Power: How Hacker Culture Conquered the World," was quite relevant to this week's readings. In the article, author Steven Levy follows up on the hackers he chronicled twenty-five years ago for his book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. These included Bill Gates, Richard Greenblatt, Richard Stallman, and Steve Wozniak. In a look towards the future, Levy also turns his focus on "the next generation" of hackers, namely Facebook's founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. While Stallman remains faithful to the ideals of the Free Software Foundation and his GNU project, he admits, "I have certainly wished I had killed myself when I was born." Perhaps this is due to the next generation's view of hacking as a "humming economic engine." The Internet guru Paul Graham and Mark Zuckerberg believe that they have managed to retain some of the hacker ideals even as they combine hacking with "entrepreneurial effectiveness." What we should challenge however, is this new generation's assertion that big business as a means to find the broadest audience possible fulfills the ideals of broad, unrestricted distribution or that Facebook's "hackathons" are the same as releasing early, often, and having the kind of beta-tester and co-developer base achieved through what Ryamond calls the bazaar model.

Digital Media- Spark of International Controversy

2010-04-22T17:57:00.002-04:00

11 AM Section

Convergence- new media is convergence. Think of the ipad, the ipod, the iphone... basically any Apple product, or as Jenkins puts it, "The other week I wanted to buy a cell phone- you know, to make phone calls. I didn't want a video camera, a still camera, a Web access device, an mp3 player, or a game system." The phone of today has become a one stop shop, where you can make calls (which of course is becoming rarer and rarer due to the features of internet/IMing and/or texting), surf the internet, watch tv, listen to music, take pictures, preview music, play games, and about a thousand other things; convergence has become the future. Why have a laptop, mp3 player, tv, or landline telephone when you can just get a nifty little blackberry or iphone, perks of the others wrapped in one? Yet the funny thing is, even though there is this convergence all these other forms of technology still run rampant, and are promoted as necessary for one to be a citizen or rather a "new cultured" human being- and even here convergence is the perk, convergence is the answer, convergence is supposed to make lives easier not more anxious. Oh well. That- anxiety- is what people are left with, a device that makes them neurotic on what is constantly happening, whether thats finding out from friends via text, facebook, AIM, checking the New York Times or Perez Hilton. The problem with convergence is that it complicates everything, it sets out doing what is was meant not to do.

Section 3: Big Picture Communication

2010-04-22T17:18:00.006-04:00

Sometime after the human race harnessed fire, in what we call the twentieth century, humans started doing some relatively awesome stuff. We figured out flight (...to the moon), started to more fully understand how to treat ill members of our species (...or clone them), and conceptually began to grasp our global situation (...we don't get along, but when we do we prosper). We learned so much from each other that some guy who helped a bunch of other people destroy and larger bunch of other people in a globalizing war decided we may need a machine to facilitate in our information retention and organizational system. Shortly after that desire we arrive at now, here, on the internet.

The massive archive of collective human knowledge and information we hold on our computer hard drives, in our libraries, and in our minds cannot be organized by a single human, but must be organized with the facilitation of communication. Some argue that verbal communication is partially based on the fact that since our eyes are both on the front of our face we have to turn more to see our surroundings. We teamed up and the ones who had better warning systems for predators propagated the survival of their genes by not being killed. Eventually those warning sounds became language, both verbal and written. We express our selves with our body through 'body language' and signs, or by using our body to push sound waves to other bodies' ears, or by leaving symbols of thoughts to be read by others (perhaps in a letter–if it looks like you're writing one to the Paperclip in word–or on a blog). We began to develop ways to extend the range of these visuals and sounds of communication. Now we can leave visual and audio recordings of ourselves or our symbols all over the internet and beam them all around the world almost instantly.

If the goal of human existence is to preserve our personal physical body as much as possible, and to appease it with direct benefit for its actions in a small picture way, then things like Facebook and open source are a threat, because they reject the priority of the body for the sake of the mind. For Facebook, the body is the profile and our physical bodies are simply a part of the equation (as much as a computer is; a middleman), which may at least seemingly undermine society's current opinion of corporeal existence (that it is super important; that can never be ignored, as it is our first mediator to existence, but other mediators like Facebook profiles or our art may be just as influential if not more). For open source, personal credit and monetary benefit may be sacrificed, which also threatens a society of competing individuals. It seems unfair to give away knowledge we individually obtained over time for free, but we may not be giving it for free; in return we expect human betterment which we may personally benefit from.

If the goal of human existence is for the betterment of our entire race (which in turn benefits the selfish being we all fundamentally are), things such as Facebook (with the decorprealizing/globalizing effect of internet profile communication) and open source (super globalized cooperative progress) certainly provide better access to more of the collective human knowledge. Now we must decide: once we break the world down into the big picture mosaic of physics and atoms that it is, do we want to keep knowledge as a luxury and limit access to our individual discoveries or act with our species as one single being? Our 'body' would be the collection of all our bodies, just like our bodies are collections of cells that communicate for a common goal of mutualistic existence; our minds would be all one mind facilitated by communication (like a computer with more than six million hard drives, many of whom have hard drives themselves). It works on an atomic level, and a cellular level, but atoms and cells don't whine as much as humans do. We've made it pretty far as a race that hates itself, imagine what we could do mutualistically.

Jordan - Matt's 11 Friday Section

2010-04-22T16:37:00.002-04:00

This is a response aimed at Jenkins' essay "Worship at the Altar of Convergence". Jenkins' writes that, "a medium establishes itself as satisfying some core human demand," and I am interested in what the contemporary pervasive mediums are, what core human demands they do satisfy, and how does the development of technology itself develop these core human demands. In western culture, if you were to ask any individual what they consider a type of media or medium they would probably say television, radio, and art; however, it seems that many people do not recognize the internet as media for some reason. (I just asked two of my roommates, they both said television, radio, and art.) I believe the core human demand that the internet is attempting to fulfill is establishing a space for information that situates the individual in the post-modernist society. Space is definitely a form of media that has been evolving as the internet evolves.

I disagree with Jenkins' claim that the black box will never exist as evidenced by the divergence of technologies. He immediately points out how annoying it is to have so many different devices and technologies. Ultimately, there will not be one black box; however, think of the black box as an essential system of situated mobility. It will be a system that utilizes mobile devices networked over a broad public national network to any other device anywhere on the system. Additionally, you will have a point of situation, whether it is a web page or a networked hard drive, that contains your relevant information that you want to have with you as you move. This way your iphone can act as a remote control for your television. That's what I think will happen and I disagree with Jenkins.

Jenkins, convergence S 03

2010-04-22T16:34:00.003-04:00

What interests me most about convergence is the way that it redefines the term consumer. When we are surfing the internet or even watching a television show via the web we are interacting with that television show in a way that makes us not only a consumer but also a producer. We are encouraged to contribute to comment pages or blogs about the shows we are watching. We are encourages to rate them, star them etc. We are even encountered with instances where our television characters themselves become consumers and producers at once, as in, when a television character (as many do from the Office or Barney from How I Met Your Bother) has a blog that exists within the same webpage that you are using to view the television show, regardless of who is actually the writer of that blog, they have had to use, or consume, a program created by somebody else in order to create that blog. Therefore, they have too become consumers. We are encountered with instances where we assume to be producers, where we are creating something like fan art but instead we act as free advertising for the very same thing we are assuming to produce. Then comes such problems as copy right laws and how they aid and harm certain industries. I recall reading that the show South Park when it started had very lenient copyright laws to enable consumers to duplicate parody and recreate the show. This gave the consumers a sense of control and they felt as if they were part of that show they were watching. This boosted rating and when the show boomed they were forced to enforce harsher laws to protect the show, and enable it to bring in more revenue. In this way, the sense of control that was created for the consumer was in a way a ploy to get to get them to tune in more, and therefore it was not control at all, and they were not producers at all. Rather, they were reproducers and everything they produced was somehow owned by, or lead back to the original conglomerate that created that which they are consuming. This also makes me think of such sharing sites as Youtube, where if a video has enough hits or if a character is popular enough, it brings the attention of the larger media owners to it, and eventually and for enough money, they can own that idea that at first was in the name of an individual consumer/producer.
Jenkins talks a lot about what it means to converge. He seems to say that convergence is a state of mind. That convergence occurs in our mind as much as it does in our appliances.Convergence, to him seems to be a positive movement forward. It is a way for old media to meet new media and for old media to find a new meaning to new audiences. Like the theater that becomes elitist or the comics that become specific to certian audiences. He says that the difference between old media and new media is that new media is interactive. It gives us the chance to create a collective memory and it deceneralizes media. but i wonder if this is actually a good thing because this means that we start to hold the position of consumer/producer. We are using programs in order to produce material that is then put into another program through which the owners generate revenue through advertising; therefore we as producers are free labor ( even if it is a labor of love). Or we create content, whilst watching a video that tells us how to produce content. Or we begin to expect to be able to produce and consume at the same time, or to consume different things all at once. We begin to expect to be able to have our music on our computer, ipod and phone. We begin to expect to be able to take a picture with our phone and send it to a friend. The incident that he first mentions about the “Bert is Evil” problem that Sesame Street had just seems absurd and yet so normal. We are faced with these kinds of things everyday now with our convergence culture.
This kind of humor is normal, if not hilarious. When a show like Family Guy parodies a song or a clip from a film, are they in danger of being sued? What about a person who parodies a clip and posts it on Youtube? If anything they are generating more buzz for whatever it is they are parodying. It is free labor. The other thing that has come out of convergence that I am fascinated with is Viral Advertising it is by far the best thing that advertisers have ever done. Viral advertising is produced by a “producer” but is read like it is produced by a producer/consumer. It is everywhere and it is created in a way that it converges with our culture, our habits, our needs, our wants and goes unnoticed as advertising, but is rather enjoyed as a form of entertainment.

Friday 11am Section

2010-04-22T16:24:00.001-04:00

“It only does everything.” That is what Sony marketing executives have to say about their Playstation 3. And while many people, Communications Professor Henry Jenkins included, would argue that such a claim is not only false but entirely impossible, the numerous functions of the system are impressive to say the least. Sony's machine “only” reads the newest and most popular movie discs (Blu-Ray), plays the newest and most visually astounding video games (PS3 games), allows users to watch youtube, check their facebook, and browse the internet, among other functions. Prior to the Playstation 3, Sony's line of game consoles had been just that—a line of game consoles. Their functionality had been limited almost exclusively to playing video games. But their newest product illustrates the growing trend of convergence in media.
Certainly, the Playstation 3 is not the only example of media convergence, nor is it the ultimate example. Everywhere people go, media is becoming relevant and significant across multiple platforms. The term convergence itself, in Henry Jenkins' mind, refers to “the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences” (Jenkins 2). Jenkins' three part definition can be easily illustrated by the recent efforts made by godaddy.com. The company, which earns money by selling domain names, airs brief, misleadingly risque ads that end with a message: go to godaddy.com to see the rest of the ad. This method is occasionally successful, and results in the viewers seeing the coordinated effort between two platforms to communicate the company's message.
Convergence, though, does not end at just a definition. As content flows across various media, “consumers are encouraged to make connections” (Jenkins 3). Obviously it is impossible for one person to know everything or make every connection. However, everybody knows something. As a result of this incomplete personal knowledge, a collective intelligence is formed. That means that the bits and pieces of information possessed by multitudes of people are pooled to add up to a more complete whole. The richness of information in media helps to stimulate a desire for discussion, which in turn generates a buzz surrounding the content. Therefore, collective intelligence serves as an alternative form of media power (Jenkins 7). This leads to an important point of convergence—it takes place in brains, not appliances. As the crossover takes place in people's minds while discussing information, they piece things together and begin to contribute in there own way.

Wii and Convergence

2010-04-22T14:02:00.002-04:00

I think the Nintendo Wii is the perfect example of convergence culture. Jenkins defines convergence as “the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries” (2). The Wii is at its core a video game console, but it is really so much more than that. On the menu page, there is an option for uploading your photos from an SD card and it has the current weather and news stories. You can connect to the Internet over the Wii Wi-Fi Network to interact with other people and go shopping. The different applications you can do with the Wii each have their own “channel” (eg. Internet channel), which is interesting because it is juxtaposing the idea of TV channels, video games, and the Internet all into one. You are looking at the TV screen and “flipping through the channels,” essentially changing programs, but it from a video game console, not the actual TV.

When the Wii first came out, it cost $5 to be able to use the channel to browse the Internet. After two years it was made free and everyone who had previously purchased it could get a refund. Making the channel free showed how deeply integrated the Internet had become to the media of video games- they have converged. Also, it means the TV basically becomes a computer. The Wii brings together all the media forms to create ultimate convergence.

The Wii actually facilitates convergence within its own genre. Using the online store, you can buy “classic console” games, which go all the way back to the first ever Nintendo console. No other system can boast having such backwards compatibility. Past and present media are both available in the Wii and coexist side by side.

Lastly, the Wii can now be used to watch TV and movies. Netflix recently introduced a disk that Netflix members can request for free, and it allows you to watch your TV shows and movies from Netflix on the Wii. The Wii is literally a combination of a DVD/VHS player, a TV, a camera, a computer, and a game console. The Wii 100% accomplished the challenge of “expand[ing] the potential uses of this cheap and readily accessible technology so that it…smuggled convergence culture right into people’s living rooms” (8). The appeal of this broad range of media cultures is apparent in the Wii’s success- it leads the market in sales over its competitors Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, which have Internet capabilities but nothing like the multi-media approach of the Wii.

Friday 11AM Section

"Free like speech"

2010-04-22T13:54:00.003-04:00

The idea of "Free like speech" as opposed to "Free like beer" references Agre's theories of Grammars of Action in two ways. First, open source software, and for that matter all software and all code-based material exist within protocol: users can customize, manipulate, optimize, and utilize software programs, but only to a certain extent - only as much as the code will allow. Second, though the original intent of "free like speech" probably wasn't to directly reference Agre, this phrase brings to mind the freedom of speech that exists within a grammatical system. We are able to express thought, emotion, create near infinite combinations of articulation - but only within a grammatic protocol. Some structuralists may say that a thought does not exist until it can be articulated: we are therefore imprisoned in the system of grammar (and language) - we are unable even to think without the lens of protocol.

Emily for Matt's section

Blog #10 - S03

2010-04-22T00:46:00.001-04:00

In “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy,” Tiziana Terranova discusses postindustrial societies’ emphasis on knowledge as a new commodity for consumption. While I had never directly considered knowledge in this way, as an entity as commodified as anything material, what struck me more about Terranova’s article was not the idea of free labor and its fueling of Internet capitalism (though it is simultaneously exhausted and largely unrewarded), but rather the extents to which this free labor stretches – just how many free laborers the Internet is contingent upon, individuals who make possible some of its largest capitalist enterprises yet are not acknowledged or reimbursed for their efforts. Moreover, they are often not even aware of their own labors. When you consider a site like eBay, mentioned in a post below, it is quite amazing how holistically the entire system depends on free labor. Users must photograph, describe, and post their products to be sold; sellers must browse seemingly endless pages and bid constantly to secure their win. Negotiations between the winning bidder and the seller are common, and occur directly through email: what, then, does eBay really do to sustain itself, besides providing the domain and interface through which buyers and sellers may find one another? For, once they do find each other, the labor rests almost entirely on them. Of course, eBay, like all other large commercial websites (e.g. Amazon) has adopted customization features, telling users what products they might be interested in based on past purchases, but even still, the site itself, i.e. its paid and acknowledged employees, are not particularly responsible for the site’s capital revenue. The users’ labors, the posting and bidding and emailing and shipping, fuel the site through its commission and seller fees.

Even a site like Facebook, where no direct transactions involving the users are executed, still depends on the free labor of those who join it. The more Facebook users, the more wall postings and uploaded pictures and general time spent on the site – all a sort of labor in itself – and thusly the more site traffic, which attracts the advertisers that clog the margins of our screens and create large amounts of revenue for Mark Zuckerberg et al. To go a step farther, even news websites like The New York Times Online or CNN online – which certainly do create much of their own revenue through their journalists – still depend partially on the free labor of others. News coverage of the riots in Iran last year, for example, was deeply rooted in the cell phone videos and pictures submitted to the NYT, CNN and others by people far removed from the organizations – people present at the event itself. It was their labor, their strife and the effort of capturing it, which allowed online news publications to break the news with on-the-scene video and photographs.

And yet, as Terranova very astutely says, free laborers are not entirely exploited: they have a “desire for affective and cultural production that is nonetheless real just because it is socially shaped,” which creates an interesting distinction between the free-labor-dependent capitalist structures of the contemporary Internet and, perhaps, a stricter Marxist view of capitalism (Terranova, 36-37). There is a sense of “fulfillment through work” that drives the voluntary labor of so many web users (37). We enjoy viewing and consuming Facebook pictures, and thus post them to create/produce our own fulfilling experiences. With eBay, there is a monetary/material gain (whether you buy or sell) but fulfillment plays its part too. And of course, in the example of online news sources, one might contribute to worldwide awareness of a cause or event; the free laborer’s contribution and production has undeniably beneficial ramifications in the news world, thusly supporting Terranova’s claims of “fulfillment through work,” even when it is free, uncompensated, under-appreciated work.

The little black box of dreams

2010-04-21T22:47:00.002-04:00

I want to talk about the black box (issues of myth that surround convergence) in Jenkins' article and relate it to Terranova's theories about freedom and control.

The image of a "black box of convergence" that Jenkins discusses posits resided in my mind. I couldnt help but see similarities between it and the sleek black, rectangular iphone and now iPad. The black box is an ideal goal for convergence that has real wold corollaries (ipod, kindle, blackberries, xbox etc) but at the same time is imaginary, something to strive towards, inovation, simplicity. The ideal black box wouldnt be a fixed object but rather durable hardware that can adapted to the flexible and always updated world of software, allowing for the new inovations to work on the device. There are always new apps coming out, that make the iphone not just a point of convergence for media but a toolbox, a means of currency and transaction (imagine a not to far off world where creditcards will be embedded into phones). Inherent in this image is a not so far off world where not just media converges but all technology may converge.

This idea attracts our society because of its implicit promises of freedom, mobility etc. Indeed today many people aspire to have location free jobs, or ones in which mobility becomes possible. In our postfordist society this is increasingly more possible (appaderai points to this in his idea of Ethnoscapes). The imaginary associated with this is a CEO doing work from the a beach in Fiji, sipping a momosa. Such freedom is an ideal: to travel the world, to follow a loved one, to shake up the stagnation of daily rhythms, and live life to the fullest (sorry gettting a bit carried away here) but that is the point.

Essentially convergence becomes synonymous with ease, and freedom, and convienence. Authorship of the little black box means early retirement, fame, accomplishment, buisness. Both the consumers and the producers participate in this goal. Consumers want it and will pay for it, while producers want to create it. This creates a situation in which the quest for utopian convergence fuels productivity, research, innovation. This work essential is unpaid because profits are hypothetical based on meeting a future goal. But those who enter the race, enter willingly and most importantly freely

The myth then that surrounds convergence is responsible for late hours, for technological juicing of human productive power, and de-emphasis on the individual in favor of the synergistic energy of collaboration.

Perhaps convergence is an interesting way to think about Appaderai's theory of consumption fetish where there is both a fetishism of the producer and a fetishism of the consumer.

Now i turn to the appaderi's social imaginaire. Appauderies idea of nostalgia and the social imaginare- which he says: "Social imaginare is built around re-runs". We are stuck in the the media of other temporalities the past yes via the re-run culture, but also the future, imaginary culture (of convergence) which we strive towards.

Fuller's article about Microsoft discusses our hope for more autonomous workers, and also that work gets absorbed into the technology via the convergence of skill and capabilities into one interface. But at what point does this hope become oversaturated? is it only imaginary? Has it yet been realized in society?

Are we simply taking the neoliberalism promise too seriously and becoming addicted?

It seems that capitalism is trying to manage our desire for change/progression (is there a difference?). but equally it could be that we we project onto capitalism our disires and ideals. and that capitalism can regulate our actions without itself having agency other than simply being a promise or a set of rules.

So then my questions break down here . i want to know how capitalism regulates social desires. And what does marx have to do with it?

Word -- changing the face of programs

2010-04-21T19:16:00.001-04:00

While we did not talk about this article much in class, I was really interested in Matthew Fuller’s “It looks like you’re writing a letter.” To me, this article not only illustrates what we’ve been studying regarding control society, the user vs. the creator and the things that the user can do in the world that the creator has given him.
Like Fuller, I am typing this article on word, and I can agree with him that since lot of the space “is taken up with grey toolbars pocked with icons.” This gives the user so much to do. From personalizing the toolbars to deciding which tools we want to use, we feel like we have a lot of freedom. This multiplicity of offerings is also available on the other applications in Microsoft Office.
While it seems like there is much freedom given to us as the user, we must remember that, like when using one of Google’s many websites, we are still in a system, and cannot go outside the boundaries, unless we are the ones programming a new version of Office. This brings us back to the control society and the idea of “always escaping, never leaving.”
It also is illustrating it’s control over us by “shifting things about in the workplace…And what it changes into at work effects how it is used, what it allows to be done, outside of work.” Word is also changing standards by changing what we think is normal for a program to give us, as “the volume of features…is often represented as a disastrous excess, but…[is] fitted up as standard” now.
I think that what word and programs in general have been doing are very interesting and definitely pertinent to the changing face of programming, and I hope that we can talk about what Fuller wrote about in section tomorrow.

BLog10--Matt's Section Fri 11am

2010-04-21T18:13:00.000-04:00

Because I brought up the Terranova piece in an earlier blog post, I want to address that reading this week. To me, it is one of the most applicable readings that we cover in the class. It is also, just as Qian mentioned a few posts down from me, a terrifying notion. Within the notions of freedom and control, Terranova’s ideas truly shed a new light on the twisted control that is present on the web. I definitely feel freer on the web than I do in the real world: I can say whatever I want behind a veil of anonymity via sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. I can peruse through peoples’ belongings in unprecedented ways via sites such as eBay and Craigslist. However, my participation in these sites leads to my overall control under the auspices of the web, according to Terranova. All of these sites clearly fit into her idea of free labor—none of them could work if people were not constantly updating and adding digital material to the sites.
I want to take eBay as a perfect example of Terranova’s ideas. eBay is quite possibly one of the largest market sites on the web. Its big rival is most likely Amazon, but their difference is remarkable. Amazon is a company: it runs by selling books from its own warehouses, but eBay runs person-to-person, with people selling their belongings to one another. This website would be completely defunct if it did not have the many users it has today. It is as if we are all working for the website. How paradoxical is this though? Because this website is used as a convenience, something that people can easily get rid of old things with and make a few dollars on the side with, eBay is not thought of as controlling. Thus, the freedom and control that the web gives us is interestingly intertwined. In section this week I think it would be interesting to think about this intertwinement. Most of all, does the web give us more freedom or more control?

2010-04-21T15:07:00.005-04:00

Reading over the Fuller link this week, I found myself continually disagreeing with the analysis of Microsoft Word as an application. On paper, sure, the number of permutations of preferences and selections is downright ridiculous. In practice, I know what I'm doing and I rarely if ever feel overwhelmed by the formatting options. It is when I use more basic, traditional text editors, like TextEdit, that I find myself really confused. At some level, that's just the nature of becoming accustomed to an application - you know how it works insofar as you need to use it, and anything else becomes uncomfortable.

At some other level, though, my perspective is fundamentally different from Fuller's. Word was released years before I was born - my generation pretty much grew up on it. Beyond that, I think people who were born into the world of affordable personal computers as lifestyle necessities have a totally different perspective on them. We know how to cut down immense amounts of information into just the relevant and how to ignore the constant interruptions to the flow of computer use - as we discussed in class, virtually nobody reads over the terms of use documentation anymore. I see my friends dodging software updates (for better or for worse...) and circumventing registration for websites like it's second nature. The image of a toddler using an iPhone is the perfect illustration of this idea - bafflingly complex interactions with technology take on a disarming quality of fluency among those who grow up in an environment where that technology is commonplace.

This is why the tone of Fuller's piece didn't resonate strongly with me - the ideas are compelling and accurate. It's the presupposition that I've been extensively frustrated by the Word software that misses its mark. It's not that I don't think the program has design flaws that could have been thought through more thoroughly from the start - I just think those flaws have a rapidly decreasing salience to the experience of the average user.

Wednesday Section

2010-04-21T13:12:00.003-04:00

I thought Daniel's post worked excellently to illustrate Monica's critique of Jenkin's distinction between technologies of "delivery" and cultural media. Daniel's example of the Guatemalan village complicated the distinction in an odd way, the "media" of the television can also be seen her as a mere delivery technology delivering a fantastical, intangible commodity of Western society. However small, many of us could exert some influence on something like "The Hulk" by influencing its American box office, or among the more privileged crowd becoming MCM concentrators and going on to work in the Media industry; thus we have access to the medium's cultural aspects than a post-colonial other. So perhaps Jenkin's dichotomy IS true, but for racialized, or ethnocentric reasons not addressed.

Wednesday Section April 21st- Users and Convergence

2010-04-21T12:52:00.002-04:00

One of the major insights of new media theory surrounds its questioning of the forms of producer/consumer in relation to not only digital economies, but traditional forms of media that are translated to a digital existence. In this field the subject of new or digital media is no longer a spectator or reader, but conceived in the paradoxical position of the user. The user as a category for theorizing those who consume new media is a paradoxical position because it calls into question the passivity of consumption.
In Jenkins piece, it is through convergence that we not only see a way in which old media emerge n the new, but "a change in the way media is produced and a change ijn the way media is consumed" (16). Speaking further to this Jenkins writes, "Convergence requires media companies to rethink old assumptions about what it means to consume media, assumptions that shape both programming and marketing decisions. If old consumers were assumed to be passive, the new consumers are active...[i]f the work of media consumers was once silent and invisible, the new consumers are now noisy and public" (18-19). Whereas the film spectator was silent in their seat in the house of disciplinary media, Jenkins calls us to rethink the new media or digital user as extremely visible.
One question I wish to bring to discussions is whether the users of digital technology especially surrounding the internet can always be thought of as "noisy" or visible because the media themselves are public? In a sense how are new media technologies always caught up in a process in which users become the producing consumers contributing not only their "free" or immaterial labor but to a collective knowledge. If this is the case then it requires us as Terranova suggests to question notions of the employment. Under this new form of consumption Terranova recognizes that "Often the unemployed are such only in name, in reality being the life-blood of the difficult economy of 'under-the-table,' badly paid work, some of which also goes into the new media industry" (46). Not only does such a formulation question the binary of producer/consumer in relation to the media but to the economy at large forcing us to ask if such a binary is even possible in our control society.

Blog 10: Free Work and/as Civic Volunteerism

2010-04-21T12:29:00.003-04:00

As I brought up in class, the concept of free labor is not at all new to late capitalism. In fact, as we discussed, new media institutions (e.g. Google, Facebook, AOL, open-source software) have tried to appropriate the culture and practice of free labor in the production of knowledge from the academy. The academy, meanwhile, looks back even further to democratic ideals put forward in the political theory of Rousseau and other late Enlightenment and early modern thinkers. It is this connection - between free labor as practiced via new media in late capitalism and free labor as civic volunteerism in a participatory democracy - that I would like to explore further.

By virtue of living in a participatory democracy, we are called upon to do a great deal of free labor - we need to vote, pay attention to the news, stay engaged in community affairs, etc. Meanwhile, we are also often called upon to work for (and/or give money to) social causes that we deem worthwhile (although America's obsession with charity may harken more to our brand of capitalism than to democracy in general). This kind of work can be as varied as giving food to a local homeless shelter, volunteering at a nursing home, protesting for workers' rights, or writing op-eds in the paper. I propose that we do these things for several reasons. First, it is a way of building friendships and community. Second, we have certain moral beliefs toward the causes that we support, and so this can of work gives us pleasure and satisfaction in trying to realize the kind of world that we want. Third, we might feel that it is our responsibility to the community.

I posit that the rationale behind free labor in new media is very similar to what is typically seen as volunteerism. There are, however, a few key differences, which need to be explored more. First, in typical volunteerism there is little prospect of renumeration from the work that we do (i.e. not only do we work for free, but nobody else makes money off of what we do). This is fundamentally called into question in new media (e.g. Linus, the millionaire; the NetSlaves of AOL). Second, typical volunteerism builds communities of physical proximity. Free work online builds communities of shared interests that are not place-based. This change might have important political implications, but I will ignore those for now. Third, the prospect of exhaustion would appear to be much more present in free work within new media. On the other hand, since volunteerism involves a more permanent connection tied up in place (through, for instance, personal relationships with neighbors), it is less transient and less likely to coincide with exhaustion.

I'd like to continue exploring this relationship between community volunteerism and free work in new media.

Wednesday 2pm Section

2010-04-21T11:15:00.002-04:00

During Paige's lecture, I was particularly interested in how the impetus to freeware and open source functions as a critique of privatization but not of the politico-economic system or the drive to consume that is commensurate with it (read: capitalism). How can we understand this in the context of Jenkins statement that "consumption has become a collective process" (4)? Interestingly, what seems to be elided in this collective process of consumption is the individual, also known as what I had understood to be the very bedrock of liberal/capitalism as we know it. We seem to live in a culture of the me: of the i-phone/Google/car/computer/etc. Everything we use in the digital realm seems endlessly personalizable by the user. So much advertising seems to be aimed squarely at this 'individual', at constantly inviting construction of our identity through our consumption, but then what about this collective business?

Leaving aside the psychoanalytic challenge that I see at once protesting any collapse of theoretical concepts into a 'collective' with commensurate theoretical problems of subjectivity, agency and the unconscious involved in a translation of these concepts from the individual to group scale, how might we see the concept of the individual as always-already presupposing a collective? That is, can we really understand the individual/collective binary as a hard and fast distinction anyway? To what extent do these individualizing imperatives found in consumer advertising (e.g. "if you use [read: buy] X detergent, YOUR clothes will be super soft! [and hence YOU as an individual will be happier]) have always assumed a silent collective to which the individual is invited to participate (e.g. "if you use [read: buy] X detergent, YOUR clothes will be like EVERYONE ELSE'S clothes in that they will be super soft [and hence YOU as an individual will become part of a happy COLLECTIVE of X detergent-using people])?

Moreover, can we see how the dynamic of production, for artifacts like Wikipedia and Linux, Facebook and Myspace, can actually reinscribe this neo-liberal consumption/production as two sides of the same collective process? Does this suggest that the very binary of consumer/producer no longer functions in the same way and is thus always-already complicated just as individual/collective is?

Blog Post #10

2010-04-21T10:47:00.000-04:00

The term “free labor” given by Tiziana Terranova could be a little horrifying. It sheds a very different light on the open source movement. Words like participation and collaboration are of course still relevant, but it seems they do not necessarily guarantee the creation of a utopia which the Internet had been entrusted with the potential to be from its emergence, free from controls of the real world, state or corporate. As ‘Netscape went 'open source' and invited the computer tinkers and hobbyists to look at the code of its new browser, fix the bugs, improve the package and redistribute it, specialized mailing lists exchanged opinions about its implications,” enabling maybe the better and faster upgrading of its browser for free, than could be done by hiring a group of engineers to work on it. Because the Internet is a site of limitlessness. They could hire the best people they can find, but somewhere on the Internet there must be someone better. And of course however many people they hire it will not be as many as those that are active on the internet. What is more, the Internet offers an “open communications environment” that is hardly conceivable in any one company. It is the most wonderful space for generating new ideas and knowledge that is crucial to today’s digital economy. What capitalism needs to do is to find ways to capture these ideas and knowledge and turn them into profit. Terranova’s essay tells us that it has found ways to do it, for free. It really bothers me to think that the many activities that we enjoy as leisure activities that better our lives, such as uploading YouTube videos, and for some people, fixing the bug of an open source browser, can be conceptualized as tasks that generate profits for some corporation that I have nothing to do with, and that we are not paid for it too. I need to think more about what to make of it that the line between work and leisure is blurred to such an extent that it’s actually possible for people to generate profits while genuinely believing that they are having fun. But then, it’s not their own profits that they are generating, so this is a kind of exploitation for sure.

Qian

Anna's section

Wed. Section: Conversation with Alexis

2010-04-21T02:54:00.001-04:00

I forgot to post the conversation I had with Alexis a couple of classes ago about Diner Dash. Alexis recounted that the game had reminded her of a time in high school where several girls were playing a game entitled, “Cake Town.” She said that it was very similar to DD in terms of time management and embodied “causal gaming.” She went on to say that their guy friends were pretty flabbergasted as to why they were playing the game, saying that it was pointless.

I had said that I actually just paid a lot of attention to the narrative because I had already read the article. I really questioned the necessity of the narrative to the video game. I honestly just that it made the game sexist. I just couldn’t understand why she left the male-dominated business world where she was making a lot of money. I didn’t think that it did anything to enhance my gaming experience. Alexis added that she questioned why she couldn’t make it in the business world and asked if it was because she wasn’t smart enough.

I thought it was pretty annoying that we as videogamers could not decided that choice, and we were only offered that one option to become a “waitress.”

Then we discussed the game-play in general. We both thought it was really easy to “get into the zone” or as Csikszentmihalyi termed it: flow. And then we both thought that this was because it was very rudimentary and I thought this was because our abilities were fairly matched with the difficulty of the game so we were able to “lose time.”

Wed. Section: Who's at the Bottom? Who's at the Top?

2010-04-21T02:33:00.003-04:00

I was so interested in Jenkins’ article entitled, “Introduction: ‘Worship at the Altar of Convergence.” I was going to talk at length about how culture is altered and mediated by technological advances and convergences, but then, I happened upon this paragraph and I became a little self-righteous:

“Most of the people depicted in this book are early adopters. In this country they are disproportionately white, male, middle class, and college educated. These people who have mastered the skills needed to fully participate in these new knowledge cultures. I don’t assume that these cultural practices will remain the same as we broaden access and participation. In fact, expanding participation necessarily sparks further change. Yet, right now, our best window into convergence culture comes from looking at the experience of these early settlers and first inhabitants. These elite consumers exert a disproportionate influence on media culture in part because advertisers and media producers are so eager to attract and hold their attention. Where they go, the media industry is apt to follow; where the media industry goes, these consumers are apt to be found. Right now, both are chasing their own tails.

You are now entering convergence culture. It is not a surprise that we are not yet ready to cope with its complexities and contradictions. We need to find ways to negotiate the changes taking place. No one group can control access and participation” (23).

First, I want to commend Jenkins for even bringing this up. I feel like most theorists gloss over the dominance of privileged groups on consumption, production, and the breach/conversation between the two.

In section, I think I would really like to unpack the above citation, in particular, the role of race/privilege in new media (and in relation to the statement I made above). I think it would be interesting to see how unprivileged groups consume new media and how they are (un)able to influence the production of new technologies and/or convergences. I’d just like to investigate how new media simply functioning as a system of oppression. Or is it? Or what is at stake with these privileged males being the most influential in the production/consumption of new media? And how are unprivileged groups interacting with these new technologies? How are they demanding a right to participate within the culture?

An anecdote that I’d like to share is while I was in Chajul, Guatemala (a rural area populated by primarily by people of indigenous Mayan descent), the only technology I saw was a TV in their homes. Many families saved up a lot of money so they could buy a TV. They would live in houses with dirt floors and only one big room… and usually only a couple of beds that would serve as the sleeping place for a fairly large family. But inside, they would have one light, and then one TV. And the TV that was available in Chajul was very interesting – it would be very mainstream. The only program I remember distinctly was that the movie, The Hulk, played frequently. I am still struggling with this image and how I can place it in this theory or reconcile my various thoughts about this… Here are families that have never been farther than 10km from Chajul, Guatemala, seen a building over three stories… and they are seeing all the sky-scrapers and various technologies in the movie…. without any type of way to participate in that culture or that media consumption.

**

On a completely different note, I think it might be interesting to see how people have used media to further their societal/cultural roles. This is pretty embarrassing, but my mom sometimes does stand-up comedy … and in one of her sketches, she makes of me and announces herself as stalker mom, stalker e-mom. And she talks about how she can facebook stalk me etc etc.

And she also makes fun of me because one time, I was pretty nervous about a pimple I had on [I can tell you exactly where if you really want to know, but I think I’ll spare the Internet at large] I’ve had MRSA three times, and MRSA is super serious! So what I did was I opened Skype and asked my Mom if it looked like MRSA or if it was normal…. I just think this is just simply absurd… and it wasn’t MRSA.

I think it would be interesting to see how we have performed various tasks that once we would have been impossible to do not in real life, but now with this new technology, we can do it miles away. And I don’t just mean, “Instant Message […] from the other side of the globe” (17). In particular, I’d like to focus on societal, cultural, and familial roles.

**

I also want to investigate and problematize the idea that the “single black box” and how Jenkins doesn’t think there ever will be just ONE. I want to investigate what new media objects seem to not be compatible… and why? On both a technological-sense, but more in a simply functionality-sense. I think I like that my phone could be an ipod, a camera, a phone, web-browser, a gaming device… but I think I’d rather my computer to watch a movie or write an email because I want to see the movie and I am a faster typist on a keyboard and feel more at ease with the space on the monitor. Just like we haven’t made a table that can also turn into a bed, but we have made tables that can be easily made into bigger tables…. What technologies MAKE SENSE to be converged and what DON’T? And WHY?

**

And I also want to talk about how American culture is being affected by new media convergences. And maybe it is beneficial if we don't concern ourselves with the question: how it is both a bottom-up and top-down industry… but rather, WHO is at top and WHO is at the bottom?

WS: Convergence

2010-04-21T01:58:00.001-04:00

Jenkin’s text introduces convergence as a new means of understanding media chance. This change, Jenkins argues, “operates as a constant force for unification but alays in dynamic tension with change,” reminiscent of Manovich’s discussion of the battlefield and juxtaposition of existing media forms.

While I find Jenkin’s overall argument concerning the role of “new media” in the shift in function and status, rather than the death, of “old media” objects” compelling, there are a couple of points that I would like to put pressure on. For example, Jenkin’s analysis of media convergence relies on a separation between technology and culture. He writes, “ Delivery systems are simply and only technologies; media are also cultural systems. Delivery technologies come and go all the time, but media persist as layers within an ever more complicated information and entertainment stratum”(14). While Jenkin’s notes the problematic focus on media change to solely technological changes, the division that he sets up is one of culture and technology, a separation that is also subject to critique.

In what ways does Jenkin’s overlook or narrowly define apparatuses or rather "hardwares of representation", referring to them as merely delivery technologies? It is important to investigate the ways in which these technologies produce or facilitate markets, distribution, culture, and industries. What would be the role of the commodity and more particularly, commodity fetishism, in Jenkin’s analysis?

How can we take changes in technology, but not necessarily, “media,” as Jenkins might define it seriously? What about Liang’s example of cassette technology and the questions of piracy, an issue that becomes increasingly brought up in relation to new technological innovation? In what ways does Jenkin’s paradigm disable any account for these phenomena (Jenkins 13)?

Monica Garcia

Wednesday 2pm section: Convergence

2010-04-21T01:05:00.001-04:00

I found Jenkins’ article on convergence extremely fascinating. However, I disagreed with him in few areas.

1. Jenkins says that the television did not kill radio. It merely assigned a different function and status to it. He says that new media does not kill old media but that they co-exist. I think he takes the word ‘kill’ too literally. Television made radio obsolete and in a way killed it so that now it is rarely used as a medium for entertainment. Same with movies and theatre.
2. He says that there is no single black box that will replace all other black boxes. In the very next paragraph, he mentions how the mobile phone’s functionality has been expanded to include a countless number of features. I believe that the mobile phone has tremendous potential to evolve and will in some time become the black box that Jenkins believes will never exist.
3. “What we are now seeing is hardware diverging while the content converges.” I think that hardware after years of divergence has finally begun to converge, as the cell phone moves towards becoming the single black box in our lives.

I understand that the book was published in 2006 when Jenkins could not have possibly foreseen the amount of technological advancement that would take place in the next few years. However, he believed that we were “entering an era of prolonged transition and transformation in the way media operated.” I believe, we are now approaching the end of that era.

Can the Free Software movement be a growing movement?

2010-04-21T00:24:00.002-04:00

I find the goals and ideas of the free software movement appealing and even inspiring. The central basis for the free software movement is the support and contributions of the relevant community. Software could, in this mechanism, be developed by any user; however, the language used in the GNU Manifesto suggests that the development is done by "programmers". A question that arises is the real identity of programmers, and the definition of "relevant community" that free software development is dependent on.

The GNU Manifesto suggests that the needs that (will) arise with free software development, such as support and advertisement, can be met by entrepreneurial programmers. This exemplifies the extent to which the community is the foundation for software. However, it is evident that it is programmers, coding essentially for no pay, that account for the development of the software; thus the community is primarily, if not totally, comprised of programmers.

One question I have about this model is the distinction between users and programmers. Part of this can be answered by saying that the user is the programmer, and vice versa. Thus, the use of the software facilitates its continuous improvement and expansion. However, the skill of programmers is not possessed by a large market of the population. Wikipedia works because writing English is easier than writing code for the vast majority of us. Can users then be required to be a programmer? For the software to become prevalent and benefit the public, the answer must be no.

Then, where is (or is there) a transition from the software being meant to be used by programmers to be used by the general public? The quality of user interface is crucial to this question. And I think this poses a major problem for the free software movement. If the software is primarily being used and developed by programmers, it is very unlikely to be packaged neatly and tidily like so many of the popular Apple programs. I think a mechanism for developing user-interface in addition to content is necessary for free software to compete with privately developed software in the general public. Furthermore, in the present market, if good ideas are developed in free software, the ideas can be taken and used by private software developers. Thus, a distinct advantage of free software is taken away. This leaves the main question being the public's willingness to pay extra to have the software have a simple and friendly user-interface and as well as hold-your-hand support. Looking at Apple as a case example, I would say the free software movement is fighting an uphill battle.

Open source software, WS

2010-04-21T00:03:00.000-04:00

Open source software is created by its users in a Bazaar environment, as Raymond explains. Users have a well earned sense of ownership and pride in their software. This made me consider recent commercials for Windows 7 with the slogan “Windows 7 was my idea.” Microsoft seems to want their users to feel the same way about a product that users have no part in making and which cost a whole lot more than Linux. Why? Are Free Software starting to make a dent in their profits, or is the sense of power that comes from “controlling” the software simply a good marketing ploy. Another important question is why are Free Software not more widely used considering how much better they are than other choices? I would bet that it is the lack of advertising.
As we discussed earlier in the course, people are often overwhelmed by the endless options they have that they will often simply settle for the norm. Without advertising, Free Software is unknowable and intimidating to the mainstream consumer. Not to mention its attendant subculture of computer experts and programmers that makes the average person feel out of place using such an “elite” tool. Why isn’t their more effort going into changing this?

Wednesday Section, Jenkins

2010-04-20T20:32:00.001-04:00

I agree with Jenkins in that convergence should be thought of as a cultural shift. When consumers find new information and “make connections among dispersed media content,” they are blurring the line between producers and consumers (3). While the two roles used to be distinct, as in newspaper companies sending their product to the printing press, media users and consumers are now one and the same. News gets posted online and instantly readers can interact with the material and share their opinions of the news worldwide. We don’t quite understand how the roles got blurred, but we all participate as both producers and consumers.

In general, the blur was made possible by our minds interacting with new resources. Just like the connection someone made between Sesame Street’s Bert and bin Laden, pieces of information can be combined to draw new connections that no one saw coming.

In a way, it’s this convergence that allows our individual thoughts to be shared in a world where everyone is exposed to the same digital information. You can’t just make a statement or release a product; you have to create something and also project it through many forms of media. We have to be over-prepared to defend ourselves, as we can be instantly attached through blogs. People can share their opinions on your product; for example, a company can release their product but is instantly vulnerable to individual comments. Companies lose control over the reviews they advertise, and a quick web search can highlight everything wrong about their product.

When Jenkins brings up freedom and control on page 11, earlier discussions in the course were brought to mind and almost united. Every technology we’ve discussed thus far enhances freedom and control, just for different groups of people. Thus, we have to be ready for the “transition and transformation” that will never end. At least not in the predictable future.

Wednesday 2pm Section

2010-04-20T20:16:00.004-04:00

From Terranova's paper:

John Horvarth, however, did not share this opinion. The “free stuff” offered around the Net, he argued, “is either a product that gets you hooked on to another one or makes you just consume more time on the net. After all, the goal of the access people and telecoms is to have users spend as much time on the net as possible, regardless of what they are doing. The objective is to have you consume bandwidth.”

This quote completely overlooks the major message of sharing and collaborating on the Internet. While it's true that there a plenty of free services who offer themselves to get you to buy the premium version, or ad-supported services that make more money the longer you use them, there are tons of services that exist strictly because someone decided to share.

Consider most Web forums, which may make money off of advertising, but the users aren't paid to post. Here, huge communities of people will share information to help each other out. No one is obliged to post or even incentivized in most cases. People share for the sake of sharing.

We also have to consider some of the major open source projects that are available for free. Firefox may be a profitable product, but many of its developers are hobbyists who share their time and skills simply to work on improving what they feel to be a significant piece of software.

These are just some examples, but it goes to show that although much of the free services that we use are profitable for some people, there are many users or entire services that are free for the sake of being free. There is a certain moral freeness that can make a product more satisfying to use, or make it seem more trustworthy, since the development is done by passionate volunteers.

S03 - blog post #10

2010-04-20T19:35:00.001-04:00

Since I’m not all that technically inclined, I’m going to start off with a quick admission that some aspects of this week’s readings went right over my head. When the readings started delving into the actual process of replacing source code and creating structural databases of code, I couldn’t help but lose focus. Sorry.

Anyway, I had a few questions that occurred to me during Paige’s lecture, so I guess I’ll just repeat them here since they didn’t get answered during class. First of all, I wonder what gives someone like Richard Stallman the power to create a manifesto regarding open source technology. If the point of open source is equality of production, doesn’t his position as the de facto leader of this movement give him inherently unequal power? If the master hackers get the most power, there doesn’t seem like there would be true equality…

My other question is about users. What is the ultimate difference between open source software and proprietary software (I forget if there’s a good term for this…) at the level of the user? Would I see an appreciable difference if I were to use Linux as opposed to Windows? Or is open source software more an ideological question for the user – it seems almost to break down into a capitalist/socialist dichotomy, and the user must choose between them. For a hacker, I can see the pull that using open source software might have, but for the user, I really can’t see it. Truthfully, I wouldn’t want to use something that has a new version released every day because I wouldn’t feel like I could rely on it – even if bugs are fixed more quickly, there are more bugs the user will come into contact with.

"State of the art", Wed. Section

2010-04-20T15:03:00.002-04:00

The “manifesto” has come up several times now throughout the course (in keeping with the networked structure, no doubt). Firstly, the idea of cyberspace was discussed in John Perry’s declaration of the freedom of cyberspace (not a manifesto per se, but akin to one). The utopian view extolled by Perry seems to resemble the “the digital worker” who “achieves fulfillment through work and finds in her brain her own, unalienated means of production” (37) as discussed by Terranova. The similarity is found through the simplicity both the ideas of Perry and the mythical digital workers possess. A cyberspace community completely free of government interference seems as idealistic as a digital worker that achieves fulfillment through work, despite a lack of pay. Government and money can’t be dismissed quite so easily, though.

Terranova addresses this as she begins her argument with the NetSlaves, arguing that it “points to a necessary backlash against the glamorization of digital labor, which highlights its continuities with the modern sweatshop and points to the increasing degradation of knowledge work…the NetSlaves…embody a complex relation to labor that is widespread in late capitalist societies” (33). She later references the “Marxist alienation” that the gift economy was supposed to bring (38), which again goes back to the very idealistic stance taken of the digital economy. But in the end, just like Jenkins, Terranova claims that the solution isn’t all that simple, but is rather categorically complex. The Internet doesn’t embody or break with capital (54), which dismisses any kind of simple, reductive nature of the Internet and its relation to capital.

This seems very different from what Stallman is pushing for in his “GNU Manifesto.” The heavy emphasis of community, and the loyal commitment to the “state of the art.” (3). In light of the AOL Sweatshop, this seems perhaps a bit too idealistic. The Manifesto is meant to inspire, but it demands a lot. In a sense, it seems like a manifesto calls for an overhaul, but Cyberspace, unfortunately for Perry, isn’t so detached from the rest of society that it can function completely independently of capital.

From the moment the Internet was heralded as Cyberspace, it seemed to open up and complicate many different dualities (reality/hyperreality, producer/consumer). The free/capital duality seems to be yet another one. So how can the idealistic works such as the GNU Manifesto be viewed in light of analytic works that say the state of new media cannot be so simple? Do idealistic views of new media have any sort of agency if capital will inevitably come in and complicate them?

A Free World?

2010-04-20T12:01:00.004-04:00

Blog Post #10

Friday 11 AM Section

In “The GNU Manifesto,” Richard Stallman raises an interesting point when discussing how people would rather pay for software than use an open-source version. I realized I made a similar decision after purchasing my MacBook. Needing a program that would allow me to type up documents, I paid $150 for the software bundle of Microsoft Office even though my friend stressed that I didn’t need to spend any money if I used Open Office, which he recommended. Despite his vote of confidence for the program, I could not get myself to buy it.

The two issues I felt in this situation were touched upon in the manifesto:

1. I didn't believe a free program could be up to par with software that required a purchase.

2. I didn't feel comfortable using a free program in the first place; it felt like stealing.

Thus, regarding the second point, it shocked me when Stallman writes: “Extracting money from users of a program by restricting their use of it is destructive because the restrictions reduce the amount and the ways that the program can be used. This reduces the amount of wealth that humanity derives from the program. When there is a deliberate choice to restrict, the harmful consequences are deliberate destruction.” Stallman’s belief in sharing for the common good is admirable, but I would like to know how exactly programmers would supplement their income. In fields such as athletics, the answer is easy. We pay the price of a ticket to watch these athletes display their talent. In other creative fields, such as music (is music considered intellectual property?), it is possible to follow the example of open source software (something they really should do). Imagine how much easier it would be if all artists’ songs were available for free. Don't despair too much for the musician, he/she can still earn a living by charging for concerts, etc. It is this scenario that Stallman proposes for programmers – create a product, and then do something related that people will pay you for. Truly, I’m curious: Is it feasible to envision a society where the majority of people use open source software?

Seepage and control

2010-04-17T15:44:00.001-04:00

The idea of seepage makes me think of a world where all domains have seeped into each other. Now there are lectures on mobile phones, but what about quizzes in between popular game levels, or the information city and the grey market combining with legal structures. I cant help but think that the seepage will continue until there are no clear distinctions between education, entertainment, and business. Although these structures will continue to rebuild themselves against the seepage, they wont be able to keep the changes out because it’s the nature of the global markets that updates are necessary to staying ahead. You can’t educate the kids unless you reach them through their mediums. The real question though, is whether seepage is a bad thing? On one hand, like I mentioned, it is the price of a consumer culture that thrives on updates. However, it complicated modes of control when there is too much seepage. Take the cell phones for example. Once the lectures on are the phones how can the professors control in class cell phone usage? There is no efficient way to tell if they are actually looking at the lecture or if they are playing games or texting. This translates into other domains as well. Once the borders between disciplines becomes so porous its impossible to control the usage of shared technologies. This does pose a problem for success and efficiency creted through control. There will have to be a new way to motivate people to do what is necessary to support themselves and the economy.

S03. Telephonic Panopticon

2010-04-16T08:51:00.002-04:00

Apologies on the lateness of this post. Apparently I fell asleep writing it last night. Very strange.

Reading Yoon's article, it occurs to me that the Korean government should be happy that their youth are apparently more interested in organizing candlelight vigils than other forms of protest. From what I can tell, the independence of South Korean internet services is less out of preference for them over the western options, than out of a desire for government control. It also wouldn't shock me if the government is the source of certain moral panics related to technology. Girls turning to prostitution to feed their phone bill occurs to me as both a bizarre image, and one of those things parents/ government spread around to make the new generation appear crazy. Remember rainbow parties? Neither do I.

I'd like to have seen this article go into the description of the effects of camera phones, which have in recent years been rearming the American populace. Due to the discreteness of many phones capable of recording video the presence of cell phones around any and all police, government and military activity has left them open to attack. "Did that officer taze only when necessary? I guess I'll let the internet decide," and then it goes on the internet.

Wikileaks, strikes me as the purest form of this vision, an anonymous webpage for the posting of leaked controversial materials. The confluence of cell phone technology and the internet to spread this material represents a reverse panopticon effect. Those once doing the watching are now the one's always being watched.

S03 - Cell phones and how to use them

2010-04-15T20:43:00.000-04:00

I found Yoon's text, “The representation of mobile youth in the post-colonial techno-nation of Korea” particularly interesting this week and I mostly agree with the arguments of the text and I think they are applicable not only to the youth in Korea, but generally to the youth all around the world. In my opinion, cell phones are dangerous both for us and the people around us. However, I say dangerous, not necessarily bad.
Perhaps the biggest danger is the fact that, in my opinion, cell phones stimulate alienation among people, while providing them more tools for communication at the same time. This happens not only because we substitute texting and calling for real meetings, but also because sophisticated technology sets some new ethical dilemmas we are not always prepared to answer properly. Recording people who are not aware of being recorded is just one example of how technology introduces some new ethical problems. Jeopardizing one's privacy can be one of the reasons people might not feel as safe around other people as they used to before. There is more potential fear of being exposed than before and that potential fear may increase alienation in the modern society. At the moment, a great majority of cell phones have cameras or the option of recording sound. The examples of how such properties of cell phones were misused are numerous both in popular culture and real life. Even though most of the people are probably not constantly afraid of being recorded, the awareness of the possibility of being recorded exists and that possibility suffices to make our society a little more like a Panopticon. The more a society is controlled, the less are people in it likely to be open with each other and that is why I claim that cell phones help in increasing alienation in our society.
On the other hand, the argument about cell phones enabling us to communicate with more people than ever before is still valid. Yet, I think that, when we meet people, quantity should not be more important than quality. Has the quality of our friendships really improved since we have cell phones? That is certainly debatable, but after looking at older generations, I would not say so. While the existence of cell phones makes the exchange of news (or gossips) much faster and easier, it does not change our capability to care about others. Even though cell phones often enable physical contact easier, I am not sure that they improve psychological understanding among people.
Cell phones are potentially a big danger not only when it comes to the general level of literacy, but also for the system of education in general. They enable a completely new way of “cheating” on the exams, along the fact that they tend to reduce vocabulary of people who “text” frequently.
Now, even though I listed all of these potential dangers of cell phones, I still own one and I don't think my existence would be much improved if I did not have it. I think that every one of us has a possibility to decide the extent to which something like a cell phone changes us. Moreover, we can think of a cell phone as a new challenge that, if mastered, can help us create better relations to other people and make our living easier instead of making it harder by, for example, reducing our vocabulary.

2010-04-15T19:26:00.000-04:00

Matthew Fuller in his essay “ It looks like you are writing a letter” notes the “disastrous” excess of features in Microsoft Word:

“Since its early versions Word has swollen like a drowned and drifting cow. The menu bar has stretched to twelve items, the number of toolbars to eighteen. Don a white coat, open a calculator, multiply these two figures, then cube them and you get a scientifical idea of the extent of the domain which Word now covers.”

According to Fuller, this changes the nature of “writing a letter” in Word because, “the user or worker or soldier appears only as a subsystem whose efficiency and therefore profitability can be increased by better designed tools.” However, “a program such as Word doesn't deny autonomous work or the desire for it, but parasites it, corrals and rides it at the same time as entering into an arrangement of simultaneous recomposition of scope.”

Here I notice that Fuller acknowledges that Word doesn’t deny the “desire” for “autonomous” work --- personal projects “whose goals s/he has invented and whose criteria for success are not socially predetermined”. However, here we can also notice that the desire of the workers is manipulated by the tool they are using: they wouldn’t have had the desire to use a lot the features if Word didn’t invent them and put them out there. For example, a user who’s never seen so many fonts before he sees them on Word, will have the desire to write his letter in fancy fonts once Word gives him the options. The tool transformed the workers’ desires, and even “created” some desires --- “false desires”, according to some Frankfurt scholars.

S.03 Mobile Phones in Korea/US

2010-04-15T19:18:00.003-04:00

Yoon’s “The representation of mobile youth in the post-colonial techno-nation of Korea” outlines some of the contradictions which come with the development of South Korea’s mobile phone industry. Mobile phone use is extremely prevalent among the Korean population (particularly among teenagers) and the electronics industry is expanding at a faster rate than ever; the government’s “financial support and de-regulation policies since the 1990s have encouraged the growth of the mobile media industry and of handset manufacture” (110). I found it very intriguing that despite (or perhaps because of) the powerful “drive to become a techno-nation” (109) which began in the 1980s, there is also very strong criticism of, and even panic surrounding mobile phone use. The mobile phone is considered “destructive to local culture, and brings with it a certain level of ‘media panic’ in the public domain” (111). While Korea is at the forefront of research and development of technology, there seems to be a very strong investment in the conservation of traditional values. I’m curious as to how much this contradiction is present in other cultures—for instance in the US.

In the US, cell phones are clearly tied to identity. The brand and model you choose, the apps you install, the files you have, the ringtone you order—these things which you consume define the person you are. This is also reflected in the commercial we watched in class: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Usw4c7bdqcA. For every style there is a phone to match it, the ad claims. This promotion of individualism is exactly what South Korean media sphere seems to fear. According to Yoon’s article, this fear emerges because of a number of presumptions; these include the idea that the mobile phone “encourages excessive consumption”, is a “threat to learning and the development of literacy”, “precipitates the loosening of familial and communal bonds” and “can instigate social disorder” (112).

During lecture I was reminded of this commercial which ran a few years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySR3hpieiQc. Although the style of the ad is lighthearted and comical, I found it interesting that the subject matter includes some of the features Yoon lists. The most obvious of these is the fact that the children are speaking in chat slang, which clearly addresses the idea that mobile phones affect literacy. The fear that it encourages excessive consumption is also apparent since the children are being scolded for their cell phone bill. The scene takes place in a living room with a family, and the grandmother character is texting her friend instead of interacting with the other family members—this refers to a third fear, which is that mobile phones precipitate the loosening of familial bonds. Although the children are clearly being berated for their cell phone use, this ad mocks rather than takes seriously these social issues it addresses. I’m curious as to how an ad like this would be received in Korea, and where exactly, historically, these discrepancies in the cultural perception of mobile phone use come from.

Cell Phone Use in Korea, Friday 11am Section

2010-04-15T19:11:00.000-04:00

My attention this week was captured by the article, “The representation of mobile youth in the post-colonial techno-nation of Korea.” I’ve long wondered about the cultural impact of the cell phone and so was pleased by this reading’s analysis. My impression from the article is that the Korean population is particularly alarmed by the prevalence of cell-phone use by young Koreans. I also found it interesting how there seems to be a general consensus in Korea to try to satisfy the need to adopt new technologies without giving up those cultural traditions that define what it means to be Korean. The arguments being expressed by this article seem to limit this threat to the cell-phone with little mention of the role that the internet plays. For example, the “mobile panics” listed on page 111 can just as easily be born from internet use as they can from cell phones.

While I can understand how most of these “panics” came to be, I’m wondering how cell phones “precipitate the loosening of familial and communal bonding.” All the article talks about with regards to this particular issue is how the absence of familial mediation could breakdown communal ways of communication. It seems to state this as some sort of fact when I find the reality to be the exact opposite. The cell phone makes it possible to keep in touch with others in unprecedented ways. I’m not just talking about the fact that since everyone has a cellphone, you can contact whoever you want, when you want. The cell phone facilitates traditional, physical communication by enabling you to coordinate with people at all times. I remember the days before everyone had a cell phone where I would have to meet people at specific times and places if I wanted to see them. With cell phones, I can meet with more people much more easily.

I also think describing extensive cell phone use as addictive is the wrong way to look at the issue. I use my computer everyday because I have to, not because I’m addicted. The same goes for my cell phone. I don’t understand the thought of exercising “self-control” when it comes to everyday tools because their usefulness requires me to use them.

S03 - Flow and Closure

2010-04-15T18:57:00.000-04:00

Reading about the anxiety (the ‘mobile panic’) of the South Koreans, concerned that the mobile phone could be destructive to local culture, brought to mind an article I read by Peter Geschiere and Birgit Meyer about the “dialectics of flow and closure” that emerge with globalization. It also brought to mind Ien Ang’s “In the realm of uncertainty” and George Marcus’ point that “the globe generally and intimately is becoming more integrated […] paradoxically is not leading to an easily comprehensible totality, but to an increasing diversity of connections among phenomena once though disparate and worlds apart’ (163). This goes along with Geshiere and Meyer’s argument that the “homogenizing tendencies which appear inherent to globalization as such, seem to imply a continued or even intensified heterogeneity in cultural terms” (601).

This move towards an “intensified heterogeneity” is signaled by the mobile panic in the Koreans, who see the use of new abbreviations, acronyms, Arabic numerals, and English as a threat to the Korean language, which is seen as “a key cultural symbol of the imagined homogeneity and purity of Koreans” (113). Even as—or because of the fact that—technological devices facilitate the global flows of culture, which would seem to point to an eventual homogenization of the world (present perhaps in Jameson’s ‘nostalgia for the present’ and Appadurai’s example of the Filipinos’ nostalgia for a world (culture) they have never lost), there is increasing anti-imperialist sentiment (with America or the West as the cultural imperialists) “intrinsically related to a vision of authentic cultures that have to be protected against the onslaught of cultural imperialism” (Geschiere and Meyer 1998: 604). As in the South Korean case, there emerges a desire or necessity to define cultural boundaries, to determine what is and is not ‘Korean culture’, what is emblematic of this culture, and to somehow protect it. Geschiere and Meyer challenge this vision of the “authentic” or “endangered” culture. They do not do so specifically through a discussion of flows through new media, however, so I think it would be productive in section to discuss the ways in which flows and closure operate specifically through new and social media.

Friday 11am Section

2010-04-15T18:51:00.002-04:00

Kyongwon Yoon's essay he writes about about the changing language of Korean text messages. He says that some Koreans believe, “mobile phone precipitate the degradation of the Korean language…increase in the use of new abbreviations and acronyms and also the frequent use of Arabic numerals and English instead of Korean characters in text messages” (Pg. 113). Korea is a country that wants to be extremely technologically advanced, but also retain its cultural and national identity. I feel that the Japanese parallel this desire to be ahead of the game while still upholding its traditional customs and beliefs. How is it that these Asian countries (Korea and Japan) have successfully industrialized while other countries such as China, which is the home for many more people, failed. Is it because of their disciplinary actions? Also, if you think about the United States and how much progress we have made technologically, does the democratic law we live in today act as a catalyst for new and innovative ideas? I know that we talked about this awhile ago but I remember our discussions about Foucault's Panopticism and what it means to live in a highly disciplinary society. The Chinese have always lived under a large, censored regime. Could it be that the threat of punishment could lead, not to productive, efficient workers, but rather, stunt inevitable progress?

Mobile devices and homogenizaiton.

2010-04-15T18:44:00.002-04:00

In Yoon's article on mobile phones and youth culture she suggests that mobile phone is a dual symbol of techno-progress and also a threat to homogeneous culuture. In this sense the mobile phone serves as an example of how the phone looses touch with its original referent. In this sense it fulfills Appadurai's theory about homogenization and homogenization of culture. Once the mobile phone becomes an object which no longer coincides, but rather threatens, the post colonial "imaginaire" of Korean culture. The tension of mobile phones promoting individuality seems to provoke the question of indigenization and mcdonaldization. Can individuality and indigenous culture be promoted and perserved in a globalized society? or do they threaten global order? National order?

Blog Post 9 Thurs. 1pm

2010-04-15T18:38:00.003-04:00

I am particularly interested with Yoon's article about the potential misuse of cell phones in our youth. Being an iPhone owner myself, it's easily concluded that I use it for excessive consumption throughout all facets of my everyday life. In any situation, whether I'm searching for instant accessible information, e-mail, socialization through texts or facebook, or even pure entertainment, my iPhone provides that instant gratification. My dependency on my cell phone allows me to do anything I need to without moving but also limits my physical abilities to do certain tasks myself (somewhat scares me that I instantly recognize the use of my iPhone to reach a solution for any problem).
A second issue that I faced as a constant cell phone user is the limitation and threat against my literacy and socializing abilities. Most youth relationships are founded on text messages instead of face-to-face, in real time, communication. I've noticed that text messaging in young relationships changes how the conversation would originally happen if it were in person. In doing so, it can change a young person's personality to one with less personable or socializing skills. In addition, clearly as Yoon states, text and instant messaging has created a new form of language that only a certain youth can understand. Each type of "code" changes among different societies to where only those in that 'circle' can understand it. I think this can seriously hinder a child's ability to formally and correctly communicate with elders, or even as they grow older it can limit their ability to progress into a professional.
I worry about our youth's dependency on the progressive movement of technology, specifically cell phones. An overpowering percentage of our youth have cell phones not only for communicating with the outside world but purely to establish a social life or keep up with those around them. I wonder how dependent our youth will become and how it will affect future generations in their professional careers, if at all.

Friday 11am, Matt G

2010-04-15T18:37:00.003-04:00

Yoon's article led to to think a lot about the role of technology in society. Over time, as advances in technology become more commonplace, they lose their novelty and people who were originally skeptical of integrating this technology into their lives have no choice. Take something as simple as touch screens for example; at one time people viewed them as unreliable and avoided them at all costs, now they are being used in bus stations, checkout counters, etc. and their use is required to complete simple tasks. As certain technologies become more developed, they become part of society and their use becomes a component of daily life. Popular support and the development of these technologies becomes a process that naturally weeds out the superfluous and establishes the useful ones until something better comes along.

Matt's 11 AM Section

2010-04-15T18:24:00.004-04:00

Relevant Not Relic

This response is triggered from a fear of aging and Appadurai's essay Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy which discusses cultural reproduction in a rapidly changing global environment. Is it strange that at 21 I am already hearing my friends tell me that they are getting older, as if the prime of their lives is drawing to an end? Is it strange that sometimes I may find myself agreeing with them? It seems to me that whoever coined the phrase thirty is the new twenty was probably forty, and they don't know what some younger people actually think.

That being said, I feel like I am already preoccupied with time and aging. I see my grandparents, disconnected; I see my mother, getting connected; I see myself, connected; I see my younger sister, obsessed with being more connected. I wonder, is this difference in technological preference not only a disjuncture in terms of patterns of communication (phone vs email, talk vs text, vidchat vs IM, face-to-face vs voice-to-voice) but in terms of our cultural understandings and ultimately our cultural reproduction? How does the film re-make exemplify elements of this discrepancy, and through the Freudian understanding of the Death Drive, ultimately take the form of a heterotopia.

In the context of the five terms Appadurai denotes as ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, finanscapes, ideoscapes, the term temporascape is a necessary addition to the list. A temporascape, as I want to define it, is best understood in the context of one piece of information or one disjuncture in the global cultural flow. The temporascape is a snapshot of disjuncture, information, and flow at a certain point in time as it relates to an individual or broader social group.

The temporascape provides a deeper understanding of the five other landscapes by highlighting the importance of time. For example, the introduction of a piece of information or technology during the acculturation process of a child may alter the actual experience of childhood in ways that create disjuncture in the simulated experience of what childhood should be as provided by the historical experience of their parents.

Thus, this can loosely be drawn to touch upon the film remakes that have been extremely popular in recent history; and in extension, how the idea of replication in cinema relates to the temorascape, the death drive, and to heterotopias. Consider for example, the socialized idealization of a superhero, like Batman or James Bond (yeah, whatever... he's not really a superhero), who's immortality creates temporal disjunctures across eras (eighties Batman vs. The Dark Knight, 70's Bond vs. millenium Bond). The acculturation of these immortal fictional figures takes place over time, and, more often than not, a child in the 2000's may be exposed to 70's James Bond or Eighties Batman.

The temporascape is the defining factor for whether this event is accepted or becomes traumatic. The child, exposed to the stunning visual form of contemporary film and, in a broader sense, temporascape of the technoscape in which his reality is situated, creates expectations for the representation of the immortal character which holds an idealized place within his society. Thus, if the technology that 70's James Bond uses is old-fashioned, his behavior culturally outdated, the video quality sub par by modern standards, or the plot line irrelevant in the contemporary landscape, then the child's expectations are not met. A tension develops between the child and his father, who may have introduced him to James Bond, or the child and society as a whole, who seems to hold James Bond in an idealized place.

The remake is a response to this traumatic experience where we attempt to create a contextual relevant reiteration of the character; however, we actually replicate the traumatic experience in the future by prolonging the character's life so that we see their age--not in the sense that they age themselves, but they become a relic of another time, unchanged and disconnected. It is a tradeoff between the trauma of aging and the birth of a new contextually relevant interpretation; however, it is also a heterotopia because the remake simultaneously represents, contests, and inverts the original film, situated in its own temporascape, to represent the landscape of the contemporary temporascape. In essence, it is a paradox because it does not extend the life of the character; rather, the character is a pheonix that requires death for life (This is why I refuse to watch the new Indiana Jones).

For me this has implications to my life. Stay relevant, do not become a relic of another time like Clint in Gran Torino. In today's rapidly changing society, letting yourself become disconnected is a precursor to death, and, more often than not, attempting to re-connect requires the death of the self in order to re-situate into a new temorascape. You must evolve with the changes of the society, and because it is changing so fast you really need to be on top of things or you'll bet left behind. Honestly, it seems like it makes sense to me, but I don't really want it to.

To use Oh Dey Su from Oldboy as an example, how traumatic is it to spend 10 years of life disconnected now as opposed to just one hundred years ago? Time is relative, is age relative to the speed at which technology evolves and global social change occurs? Is that why thirty might actually be the new twenty?

The American Thumb Tribe

2010-04-15T18:08:00.002-04:00

Friday, 11Am

Kyongwon Yoon's article on the state of the mobile youth in South Korea and the idea's of mass consumption led me to a few conclusions.

1. The world has become too reliant on technology. Our culture, in particular, creates an idea of necessity for the newest and latest product. For one not to have the newest Apple product is for one to be a leper. My 11 year old nephews have had high-tech cell phones since they were eight, the question I posed to my sister was, "who the hell are they going to call, the wiggles?", they've since become the trend setters and now all of their friends have similar phones (which further exacerbates the problem, making distraction, laziness, and procrastination more readily available), but my claim still stands: what is the necessity of having a mobile phone when you're in the sixth grade? Exceptions of course are made when it comes to cases of emergency (its what I had when I was their age), but to have unlimited access to text messaging and calling at that young of an age is almost irresponsible, as Yoon explores in his essay. That amount of technological access without the maturity to back it up, or even the necessity of it, promotes laziness and can even promote a delay in social communication (by which I mean face-to-face communication). Instead, culture has become insistent on e-mailing, texting, IMing, and -maybe, if one is lucky-phone calls. The art of normal social interaction is starting to deteriorate, 15 years ago, when one said I'll meet you at this place, at this time, that's where you were (not that I remember, but so I'm told, and something Wendy has mention in lecture), today on the other hand, texting at the last minute has become to norm and cancelations are pretty rampant. Communication between family members may also become strained, for example, my parents will text me... even when we're all at home, they ask me to do something via text when they're in the very next room. If they're doing that at 60, what will the next generation bring, child rearing through a video phone?

2. The necessity of the phone or new technology in general has become a drug. People all throughout the world, as noted by Yoon, feel an anxiety when they are without their cell phones or other media devices- as if one can't go a day without the precious device that brings such pertinent and thrilling information like, "i'm going to the ratty," "i'm walking through the mall", or, the most common, "I'm well, how are you?" Yet this drug may be even more dangerous than any other addiction, smokers, alcoholics, and hell, even crack addicts take a break every once in a while; they don't always have access to their poison of choice, but technology is a constant, you are surrounded by it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. It may be the only constant left. For even if your phone is dead, you computer crashed, your printer is out of ink, whatever the circumstance, you're bound to have someone around you with whatever resource you need. Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it has plenty of pro's for its cause, information can be given faster, every one can be in contact with one another; you don't have to lose contact with the people you care most about, just because you live on the other side of the world, in fact, because of technology, the world has grown smaller, but- the great verbal eraser- the cons can be very extreme, you don't have to take as much responsibility for your actions, you can be constantly anxious of the next text message or phone call, and you can be easily surveilled, people can know what you're doing, where you're going, and every other minute detail within a matter of seconds, the curtain between the private and public spheres can be easily drawn and exposed.

.. I have more to say, but in the essence of time, I will post something even more substantial later, just for fun.

Blog #9 [S03]

2010-04-15T17:58:00.002-04:00

I found the clip from Blade Runner that Matt showed us on Wednesday to be particularly relevant to the Appadurai, Liang and Yoon articles that we read this week, insofar that it portrayed a sort of globalized cultural convergence that threatens national identity while emphasizing the individual in unprecedented ways. Yoon’s article highlights the desire of non-Western nations to “catch up materially with the west” and “overcome their own inferiority complexes,” while simultaneously reconciling these desires with the urge to maintain local and national culture and identity (119). Lawrence Liang, similarly, claims that the trends of piracy emerging in Asia are also efforts to catch up to the West: “ways through which people ordinarily left out of the imagination of modernity, technology, and the global economy [insert] themselves into these networks” (12). In a time of such rapid globalization, made possible in large part through technology and new media, there seems to be an almost universal struggle to locate oneself in what Jameson calls totality.

Appadurai claims that technology, capital, media, ideology and ethnicity “flow” globally in ways never before seen, connecting nations and peoples who stay “open” to the “forces of media, technology, and travel” (14). In a world so transcendentally globalized, it becomes incredibly difficult to firmly locate oneself within totality. It is interesting to place the problematics discussed in Yoon’s article in the context of Appadurai’s, to take into account the rapid deterritorialization which Appadurai astutely notes. The issue of “catching up” technologically with America becomes somewhat moot for, say, the Korean who moves to the United States and subsequently has access to its technologies. But new problems arise. The diaspora of any given nation or people must reconcile the ideologies, mediascapes, and financescapes of their new and native homes once they become a part of the ethnoscape and even if they can embrace the technoscapes. Just as, so Yoon claims, Western technoscapes often invade other nations and bring with them the rest of the -scapes, so too do those in the global ethnoscape (“tourists, immigrants, refugees, exiles,” etc.) bring their own -scapes to the table in an age of deterritorialization.

It seems to me, then, that the globalization of our world’s culture, technology, ideology and the like could, at its peak, result in a certain hybridity or convergence while still being, as Appadurai claims, “disjunctive.” The Korean immigrant carries with him American cell phones and laptops upon moving to the US, but will also bring with him Korean ideoscapes, mediascapes, and more. I grew up in Dallas, where there is a fairly significant Korean population, and throughout town were scattered a variety of Korean Christian churches – I find this to be exceptionally relevant to this idea of convergence and hybridity. Christianity has a huge presence in Korea, despite being a traditionally Western religion; not only has a Western tradition invaded an Eastern nation, but the East has brought their Western faith with them – back to the West – as part of the ethnoscape. Indeed, there is a definite convergence of Christianity in this example, only possible in a world as globalized as ours. [Of course, the churches are specified as Korean Christian, which I suppose challenges the notion of true hybridity or convergence (true hybridity, in theory, only being achieved if Caucasians, African-Americans, Asians, etc. practice their faith in the same place), but it does speak to the increasingly convergent tendencies of our contemporary globalized world.]

I think Blade Runner very astutely represents these problems, despite coming at a time before the Internet or cell phones. The Los Angeles depicted in the film has a million different ethnoscapes (the language barrier between Harrison Ford and Edward James Olmos, who is Hispanic but speaking an Asian language); technoscapes (electronic billboards, flying cars, etc. – technologies contributed to from all over the earth, presumably); and so on. Ridley Scott brilliantly portrays the multiculturalism of this future world in a single wide shot of Los Angeles, presenting a world so hybrid and convergent that it might seem unreal to us, though in fact the film might be somewhat prophetic in this regard.

11 am section

2010-04-15T17:53:00.000-04:00

I found there to be an interesting irony in Wolfgang Ernst’s Dis/continuities that, in a way, helped to further his point. He claims that media archaeology is about uncovering the predecessors, or “rediscovering the losers in media history for a kind of benjaminian messianic redemption” (Ernst 106). This statement implies that the archival history of media is in fact a collection of the technology that came before. He comments on how new forms of technology such as the internet can and are often used to archive this history of media. “The so-called 8-Bit Museum, the homepage for 8-bit computers and video games, is an example of the computer-based Internet developing an archive of its own genealogy (an unbroken lineage so far), reminding us of the wonderful archaeological époque of the 8-bit computer when “computer”

did not automatically equal ‘Windows-PC’” (106). It is interesting that when the article was written in 2005, the “Windows-PC” was synonymous with computer, however I believe this definition has changed. While windows is by no means an technology so outdated that it will soon be found in an internet museum of its on, it has in many ways lost the association that Ernst speaks of. If one were to take a random sampling of students at Brown University, or any other college for that matter, I bet the amount of “windows-PCs” would be about the same as the number of “apples.” At some point, if Apple continues to perform as well as it has recently, there might be a day when windows does in fact fall the point of just being another archived “archaeological” element of digital media, with its “museum” existing either online or on whatever future version of the internet is in store.

-Ben Trotter

S03 Mobile Panics

2010-04-15T17:23:00.002-04:00

I happen to be the owner of a smart phone, an iphone to be exact. I have the instant gratification that McPherson spoke about in my hands. If I get lost, I can search for a map giving me directions from my exact location, even if I don't know what my exact location is. If I'm confused about a fact, I can pull up my Wikipedia app and have it answered. Almost anything I need is there instantly. Yoon speaks of the mobile panic that can occur when instant gratification is presented to us in a cellphone.

In contrast, representations of the mobile phone as a threat to culture have frequently appeared in the dominant media discourse based on several presumptions. First, it is suggested that the mobile phone encourages excessive consumption; second, that it is a threat to learning and the development of literacy; third, that it precipitates the loosening of familial and communal bonding and causes pathological behaviors; and fourth that the politically engaged and collective use of mobile phones can isntigate social disorder. Consequently, there is a fifth presumption: that regulatory action to combat the cultural side-effects of mobile phones is required.

Yoon's first point about mobile phones encouraging excessive consumption is absolutely correct. My iphone is a great example to that. All the apps in it are meant for instant gratification. Whether it is to purchase an item, gain information, or find entertainment, everything is instant. The fact that there are currently around 6.4 million iphones activated in the US leads me to believe that we are a country approving of this excessive consumption.

Now the other point that Yoon brings up is the threat to learning and the development of literacy that mobile phones provide. I grew up with technology most of my life so I may be biased, but i don't believe mobile phones are that problematic. While a calculator app may promote you not using your brain to count, there are other apps that encourage you to think and learn. The Dictionary.com app, for example, is used constantly by my dad whose second language is English to learn how to pronounce words he is not familiar with. There are plenty of other apps that encourage you to learn like one that lets you read an ebook or learn Spanish. Yes, a lot of us like instant gratification, but isn't gratification isn't always a threat to our intelligence.

motion and stasis in new media

2010-04-15T13:20:00.002-04:00

Throughout Appadurai's essay on disjuncture between landscapes of the current global cultural economy, emphasis is placed upon movement: greater and faster progression and motion of people, capital, technological advance, and images than ever before. He claims that it is because of this constant rapid flow that our global landscape is shaped by the overlaps, the fractures, the spaces between the five facets of our cultural economy. This emphasis on motion brings to my mind its opposite: Manovich's theories on the imprisonment of the viewer by the screen. In VR, in cinema, on personal computers, the viewer/user is held captive by the screen; one cannot physically move while using or watching the technology. Until the rise of smartphones (which don't physically immerse a user, though can mentally immerse a user), the use of a screen-based object required physical stasis or entrapment (entrapment especially in VR). This juxtaposition of human non-movement and technological (for humans, by humans) constant flow is fascinating to me.

One question I had was on Appadurai's definition of production fetishism - he totally lost me in his description.

Language and Globalization

2010-04-15T12:41:00.002-04:00

In his article “The representation of mobile youth in the post-colonial techno-nation of Korea,” Kyongwon Yoon talks about the changing language of Korean text messages. He says that some Koreans believe, “mobile phone precipitate the degradation of the Korean language…increase in the use of new abbreviations and acronyms and also the frequent use of Arabic numerals and English instead of Korean characters in text messages” (Yoon 113). Korea is a country that wants to be extremely technologically advanced, but also retain its cultural and national identity. It seems like they want to move into the future while still remaining somewhat in the past. This is a futile wish, because if you use technology, you are connected globally and are forced to forfeit some aspects of your individuality. It is impossible to escape the globalization that comes with technology and media, because now every locality and country shares its news and events with the rest of the world as soon as or sometimes before they share it with their own people. We are all linked through global media vectors, and wanting to be advanced but stay homogeneous is not feasible in our modern society.

Yoon says that the Korean language is a “key symbol in the imagined homogeneity and purity of Koreans” (113). Therefore, the changes to the language represent the changes in their culture as a whole as a result of interacting with the world. The problem is summed up perfectly when Yoon says how threats to the language because of this technological revolution, “reflect Koreans’ dilemma in the process of globalization; while new modes of communication made possible by the new media technologies enable local people to revise their ways of communication, they also present a threat to the dominant order of local society” (113). A language is something that a nation can honestly call its own, and having that “marred” or “polluted” by outside influences is seen as a breaking down of the boundaries making up what people think of as “Korean.” It also shows that with globalization, no aspect of society or culture is safe; everything is vulnerable to the effects of the global village.

Reading this also made me think of the clip from Blade Runner that Matt showed in lecture. In it, there is a clear separation between the English speakers and the Japanese speakers, and the language barrier makes communication difficult. The two languages represent the two cultures coexisting/opposing each other in the futuristic society. I think that sort of thing is what the Koreans are afraid of happening- they want to keep their culture separate and the breaching of their language is the first step to that. Yoon even says the texting language is called “aliens’ language,” (113) because it can’t be deciphered by the older generation who isn’t familiar with the terms and characters. This divide of old/young, advanced/not advanced is similar to the division between the two cultures and between the older technology and the futuristic, superior electronics in the movie. The young people, the ones who accept change and are willing to bend to the will of global media, the “aliens,” are the ones who will live successfully into the future, and the older people, afraid of transformation and loss of national identity, are stuck in the future with a nostalgia for the simpler past.

Friday 11 AM Section

Techno-Nation + Commodification

2010-04-15T11:47:00.000-04:00

This week I was particularly intrigued by Kyongwon Yoon’s article, “The Representation of Mobile Youth in the Post-Colonial Techno-Nation of Korea.” Yoon describes the rapid production and consumption of mobile media in Korea, providing an interesting and instructive discussion on science and technology as commodities: “Above all, in terms of a historical positioning, the mobile phone was represented first as a ‘technology’ and then gradually as a ‘commodity’ (Yoon, 3). Technology and scientific knowledge are all now defined as commodities that have a specific price and cultural value, and can be exchanged in the market place. According to Marx, a thing is considered a commodity when its production consumes human labor and becomes the primary focus of the community. This definition supports Korea’s notion of segyehwa (globalization) and the country’s drive to become a techno-nation. At first the mobile phone symbolizes a new age of technology; however, it quickly loses its global significance and becomes a material object – one that is “representative of the lifestyle of a consumer society” (Yoon, 3). As Yoon emphasizes at the beginning of her article, everyone carries a mobile phone; “it is deeply embedded into everyday life” (Yoon, 1). When does a technological achievement become a raw material that can be bought or sold?

Blog Post #9

2010-04-15T11:11:00.005-04:00

Friday 11 AM section

Looking through the posts, I see that I came upon a similar realization as Fiona. Last week, when we discussed hardcore vs. casual gamers, we focused especially on how gaming was divided along gender lines. I couldn’t help but realize that Yoon’s article also brings attention to gender. He writes, “Furthermore, in contrast with representations of computers, representations of mobile phones in Korean advertising and newspaper editorials tend to present the mobile phone as a feminine, light and playful technology.” (Yoon, 110) This seems ironic since later Yoon discusses the fact that the use of the mobile phone was considered male and adult. Women and teenagers could not be trusted to properly use a mobile phone because, for example, they might use it excessively. It appears that regardless of the actual device, the whole field of technology is placed in the realm of the male. Why is this so?

Throughout the article there is also the presence of different relationships of control. There is the relationship between the phone and the user (how the mobile phone can overpower the user to the point where one becomes addicted to the technology). In addition, the distribution of power/control is more uncertain when both parties in a social relationship (parent/child, husband/wife) have a mobile phone. For example, one concern that is briefly touched upon by Yoon is the worry that mobile phones will cause a loosening of familial bonds. I find the fact that a medium that allows people to constantly keep in touch can also make one feel isolated to be an interesting phenomenon.

Mobile Panic -- Sorry it's late!

2010-04-15T10:44:00.002-04:00

While reading “The representation of mobile youth in the post-colonial techno-nation of Korea” by Kyongwon Yoon, I was struck by the idea of mobility. These so-called mobile youth are “considered destructive to local culture” (p. 111) in the way that they use their mobile phones anywhere and anywhere and are on their phones so much that Yoon suggests that this consumption of mobile technology is affecting not only consumption patterns and literacy, but also is actually “precipitates the loosening of familial and communal bonding and causes pathological behaviours” (p. 111.) While this theory may go a little too far, it definitely has basis and can easily be applied to American youth.

This panic shouldn’t be just surrounding the mobile phone, though. Everything is mobile these days. Laptops are getting smaller, cell phones can do more and more things, wi-fi internet is available almost everywhere, and many of these mobile devices that recently come out (like the iPad) have more of a cultural and status value than function, but still are consumed. While we are sometimes panicking about the mobility of the generation, we are also facilitating it by buying into the culture and allowing the culture and the products a means to infiltrate our lives.

Blog Post #9

2010-04-15T01:15:00.001-04:00

In “The representation of mobile youth in the post-colonial techno-nation of Korea” Yoon offers an analysis of the mobile phone culture and the social responses to it that interests me a lot. That is partly because I grew up in China and have seen similar phenomena associated with the mobile phone in China, and have been kind of perplexed by them. According to Yoon, “the mobile phone's interruption of study and schooling is believed to increase the pathological behaviors of young people” (115). I remember how mobile phones were forbidden in my high school, and how the general opinion among students was shaped to associate the use of mobile phones with “bad” students – it was not uncommon to hear about stories of students who were too absorbed in their mobile phone activities and caused bad consequences one way or another. Yoon writes about concerns in Korea about mobile phones’ ability to threaten “communal ways of communication.” I also remember my classmate writing an essay about how the proliferating mobile phone usage is harming intimate/authentic experience of interpersonal relationships, impairing the bonds between family members and close friends. And I am talking about a few manifestations of a kind of dominant attitude/opinion among the public. Yoon reads these phenomena as driven by that “the dominant system of representation does not allow the signifiers of possible lives imagined by new literacy and technology to find a place in the everyday practice of ordinary Koreans” (119). This offers us a good reason to re-examine the notions that technology makes revolution, which has been proclaimed more and more often these years, with more and more “revolutionary technologies” coming up. But technologies are neutral for sure. Historically, newspaper emerged at a time when a new middle class was coming into being and was demanding cultural democracy. Thus as the first mass medium it has often been associated with democracy. But if we look at how in 1950s to 1970s China newspaper was used by the state as an effective means to control and guide people’s opinion, it is not hard to separate the newspaper technology from the institutional structure and practice determined by the social and economical relations at a specific historical and spatial point. I suspect the same could be said about mobile phones and computers, although at present it’s a lot more complicated to find the right way to say it. If this is the case, it is really problematic that people think a new technology should have the power to guide a people to the pursuit of freedom.

Qian

Anna's section

WS: From Technology to Commodity

2010-04-14T23:56:00.003-04:00

In Kyongwon Yoon’s “The representation of mobile youth in the post-colonial techno-nation of Korea,” the transformation from the mobile phone’s status from a technology to a commodity highlights many of the tensions throughout this week’s reading. Initially seen as a symbol for Korea’s national growth and a new technologically situated identity, as the mobile phone proliferated into society and into the hands of youth and other previously marginalized users of technology, this use shifted into a representation of consumer society at its worst. In the case of Korea, “technology” was tied to a future promise and hope, or as Yoon writes, to “a recurring post-colonial desire to catch up materially with the West” or “to overcome their own inferiority complexes” (119). Commodity, however, became the somewhat ugly present state of affairs, tied to an anxiety of marginalized users.

The discursive shift from the mobile phone as technology to commodity took place with the emergent use by youth and other non-dominant social groups. It is this discursive shift that that we can also see at in Lawrence Liang’s “Porous Legalities and Avenues of Participation.” During the boom of cassette-tape recordings and technology that took place in India during the 1980s, the presence of T-Series and the illegalities that they initiated marked their entrance and dominance into the market, changing not only the music industry and cassette culture in India, but also, as Liang argues, the technology of cassette production into a mass commodity (10).

In both examples, these acts of commoditization are marked by a deviancy by marginalized sectors of society, both socially and economically. These meanings as taken up in public discourse, Yoon argues, emerged through an asymmetrically constructed discussion of consumption versus production. Whereas Korean youth were seen as stricken with “an excessive consumer behaviour that needed to be controlled”, sparking a media panic or anxiety surrounding the threat of social disorder due to youth mobile phone usage and related technologies, in Liang’s example, an equal anxiety surrounded production by non-state and non-elite actors. In the case of India’s cassette technology production, the sector’s growth and popularity was shaped and created by the actions based on what Liang describes as “porous legalities.”

The tension between production and consumption is only further complicated in the nation’s aspirations in modernity and their relation to the public sphere. For Korean youth, it became a threat of collective participation and socialization that perhaps pointed to discourses of excessive consumption. In India, the cassette-technology producers created a culture and market based on a transgression of deviancy from the law. In what ways do these figures unveil a “a dispersed logic of production and consumption,” where these two areas are no longer as separable? In what ways have relations of production become enmeshed or masked by social relations and do these groups trouble such social imaginaires?

Monica

Blog9, Section Fri. 11AM w/Matt

2010-04-14T21:17:00.000-04:00

The New Age is the age of New Addiction

Yoon’s discussion of a “thumb-tribe” in South Korea is fascinating and clearly, true. I don’t believe that the thumb-tribe is contained to South Korea, however. Our addiction to mobile devices is growing every moment. I just attended a lecture (on International Relations, unrelated--), and during the two-hour period, I checked my phone four times. Did it vibrate? No, I just was checking to see if I had anything. I know that I am guilty of it and many others in my generation are. We are growing every more addicted to our mobile devices, with Yoon’s article clearly articulating that South Korea is in the lead.
I want to bring up a device that exemplifies this and plays to our generation in an almost sickening way. A new phone has been released, known as the Microsoft “Kin,” and it is built purely for social networking. According to CNN, the phone has “a home screen that’s constantly updated with feeds from services like Facebook and Twitter.” The company openly states that it is geared towards teens and young twentysomethings who are obsessive about broadcasting their each and every move. Yoon blames the making of our techno-generation on Korea’s “post-colonial process of introducing new technologies.” Clearly, Korea is not the only one creating new and different ways to play to the youth’s addiction. Every technology company is looking for the next big thing that will catch on and be “cool” to our generation. They have easy success with such a vast culture of consuming present in our societies. To me, all of this sounds familiar—easy selling, youth targeting, and a figurative (or is it actual?) addiction. Is Microsoft the new Marlboro? Is Steve Jobs our new Mr. Camel? I know this is a stretch and a bit pessimistic, but the similarities are undeniable! Our youth is consuming these products at an uncanny rate, and it is just easy to keep making them- just like cigarettes.
In conclusion, if we don’t be careful with our new addictive products, we may be on our way to a society just like South Korea’s, a verifiable “thumb-army.”

Article on Kin:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/ptech/04/12/microsoft.phone.kin/

And, look at the relationship between the Apple ad and the Cigarette ad (playing to the sexiness of the product):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcDpFLSTZWU (Apple)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbMt9ytjEmo (Winchester Cigarettes, 1969)

Yoon’s “The representation of mobile youth in the post-colonial techno-nation of Korea”

2010-04-14T17:36:00.002-04:00

“…Representations of the mobile phone as a threat to culture have frequently appeared in the dominant media discourse based on several presumptions” (Yoon 111). Yoon goes on to name the presumptions that the mobile phone encourages too much consumption, that it threatens learning and literacy development, that it dismantles family ties and bonding, and that political use of mass media of mobile phones can cause social disorder. While I do not see the last presumption as a bad thing, I paid close attention to the idea of reclusiveness in American youth. A friend of mine tutors at a high school, and weeks ago he told me how anti-social the freshmen class is. He said “all they do is text” and classrooms were essentially quieter despite the clicks of button-pushing. I then thought of my frequent visits to India, and how everyone seemed to have a cell phone during the last visit. But the cell phone there was only for the sake of location. The mobile phones had all the capabilities of texting and camera, but I noticed that people did not keep cell phones on them while at home. I thought of Yoon mentioning the anxiety people have when the phone is not attached to them. I understood clearly because the same phenomenon happens to me. While convenience of a cell phone relates to its functions and what it can do, at the same time its dependence grows, which would mean the lack of having it at any point of time would cause anxiety. If the functionality of a mobile phone becomes more complex and easier, then the social behaviors that the media warn about appear more imminent.

Modes of Using: Cellphones/Casual Gaming

2010-04-14T17:23:00.004-04:00

I was interested to note the reappearance of the genderization of technology this week; cellphones are marketed in Korea in the same way that casual games are conceived of in the gaming world: as "feminine, light and playful" (Yoon). Again, the feminine technology is taking on the role of the technology for mass consumption. Yoon contrasts the cellphone with the computer in terms of the way in which it has been presented to the Korean market - computers, presumably, are seen as serious, "masculine." The Yoon article adds the layer of the association with youth and youth culture that characterizes the cellphone, and creates a connection between the feminine and the playful and Korean teen culture.

The fact that Yoon goes on to document the ways in which cellphone technology has been framed as a force for the disruption and destruction of culture and family is worth looking at through the perspective of cellphones as "feminine." Traditional conceptions of femininity usually paint women as strengthening or centering elements in the home; I wonder how the "feminine," "mass-consumption" technology has come in this case to represent just the opposite: a force for the dismantlement of culture and the disruption of the lives of Korea's youth. What is going on here with respect to the meaning attached to femininity and technology?

S03 - blog post #9

2010-04-14T17:17:00.000-04:00

I found Matt’s lecture today to be really interesting, especially the example of the IndyMedia website that he showed us. Thinking about the increasingly globalized nature of the world today, I can’t help but feel like that website is a great example of both equal statuses for all nations worldwide and of the imposition of symbolic power that one nation might enact upon another. Equality comes in the ability of all users to add news updates to the site, regardless of location or language. Wherever one logs onto the website, the essential format will be the same – wherever one happens to be, whatever news story one happens to be looking for. At the same time, though, the website does have specialized sections for various regions of the world to allow a more localized experience with the site. While equality is possible, then, it is not necessarily mandated.

At the same time, though, I think about the distribution of resources throughout the world and the ways in which a site like IndyMedia could end up propagating, in some ways, the cultural hegemony it otherwise seeks to disrupt. At face value, it may seem like IndyMedia is exposing worldwide consumers to news events that they otherwise might be unaware of, thus expanding our knowledge of other cultures. However, the type of people who are able to use IndyMedia severely narrows the exposure we have to the rest of the world – we are getting news stories from literate, computer-savvy, and politically interested parties, rather than from a truly diverse and democratic sector of the world’s population. What promotes itself as an independent media source is very likely to be controlled largely by a certain group of people with their own agenda to push – we are not getting independence, but the minority agenda presented as majority.

Plus, there’s the issue of language when it comes to true equality on the web. Someone in class said that their IndyMedia homepage showed up in Spanish because they had their computer set to Spanish, but otherwise, most people would get English. The default language put in place during computer production affects the overall web experience and in the end, seems to allow for such subtle symbolic power plays. Thus, the default of English in the global technology community (and, more and more, Chinese or Japanese), and all of the cultural assumptions carried along with it, become a global norm. The IndyMedia front page is only available in eight languages overall – someone who doesn’t speak any of those languages is no longer on an even playing field.

Am I being too harsh on IndyMedia, or does anyone agree with me that it’s not as much of an equalizer as it makes itself out to be?

[wednesday] representation / appropriation

2010-04-14T10:12:00.002-04:00

Yoon argues, "As far as Korea is concerned, new technology is filtered through old and hegemonic systems of representations" (188). I thought that this statement completely dismissed many facets of a complicated issue that Yoon explores! I think Korea DESIRES that the new technology is filtered by this way, but is it really? No. And I think that it is this disconnect upon the "desired" and the "actual" local repositioning of mobile phones that is worth the investigation. I guess I find it hard to believe that the Korean government is able to (re-) control or re-produce "dominant social relations in terms of age, gender and social class." I wished that Yoon talked more about HOW this happening and HOW it is working and failing to maintain or re-articulate the "old." As far as I'm concerned, it's again "one mobile phone = one broadcast" -- and I wonder how governments are limiting the broadcasts to reiterate cultural value and erase "new" ways of thinking about identity on a "global stage" (108).

OK. Now, I'd like to talk about a far-fetched relationhsip between Tiger Woods and this article. Yoon writes, "Concurently, the ne wtechnology is appropriated by its local users through a process of local filtering in that the technology is represented, imagined and appropriated differently when subjected to different cultural and social filters. In this doubly articulated process, a new technology is localized by cultures and also to some extent globalizes the local" (108).

So I heard about the Tiger Woods commercial and I thought it sounded completely ridiculous and thus, I NEEDED to watch it. So I clicked a top result and I get a parody. And then I click another one... I get another parody. And another one. Until finally I get the real thing. I just find it so interesting how so many people have appropriated this commercial and re-articulated its meaning.... I find it fascinating how easy and FAST users manipulate media to provide social commentary.

For those interested in the ACTUAL Tiger Woods Commercial:

And of course, a parody:

[Wednesday] Seepage and Flows

2010-04-14T02:22:00.001-04:00

I am intrigued by Liang's idea of seepage, "those act that ooze through the pores of the outer surfaces of structures into available pores within the structure, and result in a weakening of the structure itself" (14). In this case, the structure being referred to here is often culture, the state, or society. Bringing this back to Appadurai, this seepage can be seen as consequence of the disjunctive flows. One example of this is the consumer, who through commodity flows, has been "helped to believe that he or she is an actor, when in fact he or she is at best a chooser" (16). Global advertising leads to a seepage of importance and a false sense of agency. Appadurai even points out that the nation-state must defend against being too open to these flows or run the risk of revolt (16).

By these examples, movement, invoked by seepage and flows, would seem to be dangerous. However, movement is built into the network and thus we cannot not want it. Movement is a dangerous necessity.

Cell phones

2010-04-14T01:44:00.001-04:00

I found Yoon’s article on cell phone usage by teenagers in South Korea extremely interesting. Although I agree that many times, the media hypes up news which is fairly inconsequential, I must concede that I agree with some of the issues brought up by the Korean media related to cell phone usage by high school students. I think it is undoubtedly true that cell phone usage in high school classrooms serves as a distraction. I cannot possibly imagine a situation in which students actually learn through their cell phones and download lectures. That seems to me a bit unrealistic. I also agree that cell phones can undoubtedly be misused in high schools for cyber bullying. Also, it is certainly true that having a cell phone leads to individualization, thereby taking away some of the power that familial and communal structures hold. However, it could be argued that cell phones allow parents to keep track of their children. Also, every month, the parents can choose to receive an itemized bill which would tell them exactly how their child uses his or her cell phone.
I believe that there is nothing greater than technological innovation. Even though every new invention can be used in harmful and undesirable ways, I do not think it is feasible or intelligent for governments to try and control the spread of technology and curtail usage among certain age groups. The good done by the cell phone is far greater than its evils, and the evils cannot be controlled by bans, but must be cut out by spreading awareness.

Wed Section. Media Discourse.

2010-04-13T23:51:00.003-04:00

There are several components of Yoon's "The Representation of Mobile Youth in the Post-Colonial Techno-Nation of Korea," that I would like to push in order to raise questions and prompt further discussion. The first regards what Ellen discussed in her post, the panic of illiteracy surrounding the new languages of mobile phones. The second is the way Yoon his argument constructing a description of how a "discourse" emerges around mobile technology. The third stems from what I see as the politics of gender that is constructed around new media technologies and strategies in a divergent number of cultural studies texts concerning new or digital media.
Ellen's post assures us that from a psychological/neurological perspective the "panic" Yoon addresses may be just that, a panic. The english web slang of abbreviated terms such as brb and gtg processed as new language(s) may not exactly counter the Korean national panic surrounding the youth's adoption of "'aliens' language'" (6). The Korean language, as Yoon points out, "has been viewed as a key symbol of the imagined homogeneity and purity of Koreans, changes in and cultural threats to the Korean language via new technology reflect Koreans' dilemma in the process of globalization" (6). For Yoon and the other authors he sites the discursive production of the phone seems to contain this two-way functioning of what we may call "power". At one pole is the discourse surrounding the mobile phone as a technology of Korean redemption and key process in emerging as a global player. The "dilemma" in this process is the weakening of traditional structures such as the devaluation of the Korean national language. I find this battle between the national language of Korea which seeks not to change with the introduction of a new medium that Yoon points to through his example from educational content for mobile devices and what he calls "new forms of literacy" fascinating. Why does Yoon leave these new forms of literacy for the majority out of his argument? Is it a result of his focus on "the local repositioning of mobile phones, rather than the repositioning of locale by mobile phones" (1)?
While I do not want to make too much of a theoretical jump when it may be unnecessary I would like to point to the similarities in both the language and framework sketched out in Foucault's History of Sexuality: Volume 1 and Yoon's article. Foucault's work considers the discursive production of "sex," that took place in the 18th century as a process in the formation modern nation-state. "Sex" was regulated through the proliferation of discourses and institutionalization or medicalization of its terminology and of individuals who did not directly conform to what thereby became produced as the "norm." I find this particularly interesting because I feel that the discourse produced surrounding the "mobile phone" is constructed in the same, or at least a similar, way. There are those that are produced by the discourse surrounding this technology as the "norm" of consumers and those that are aberrant (teenagers, women, etc.). I think this can be even pushed further noting how Foucualt's historical and sociological work on his subject leads him to the notion of biopower, a power that functions not like the sovereign's ability to take life but the state's power to control the body and regulate it through aspects of control. Is what Kyongwon Yoon describes as a technology that is "virtually a part of the body, in that it is deeply embedded into everyday life," the site at which a new discourse and therefore a functioning of the biopolitical emerge?
Finally, I think that it is interesting that both advertising images and newsmedia, what Yoon equates with "the dominant system of representation," present the mobile phone as "feminine" (3). Do you think that this construction or imagination of a technology can be seen to fall along the lines of the screen being written as the "feminine" pole of new media technologies to the hardware of masculinity?

Porous Legalities, Wed. Section

2010-04-13T23:26:00.005-04:00

In the paper, “Porous Legalities and Avenues of Participation,” Lawrence Liang mentions how the major label GCI, although technically a rival of the newcomer T-Series, ended up having to hire them to help meet their product demands. I thought this was interesting. In one sense, what T-Series was doing was vaguely legal. They were producing a lot of cover albums, which was allowed under India's IP laws. But they were involved in some other activities whose legality was not as apparent (or believable), especially the illegal obtainment of unreleased film scores and the sabotaging of other companies' cassette tapes.

So for GCI to reach out to T-Series for help in a sense legitimizes their operation. By treating T-Series as a partner, the giant corporation GCI acknowledges them as a company that is on the same level. It gives off the impression that GCI is accepting of T-Series' ways. I don't know if that's a result of my American, capitalist, or global views. Perhaps these companies didn't have to worry about image, and anything that brought in the rupees was fair game (I guess so long as the state was ok with it).

Here and now, I think companies are, and have to be, much more concerned about their image. This makes partnerships hugely important, and it means that the companies that your company hires must also be reputable. When news comes along that an American company's offshore labor, for example, is not being given acceptable levels of compensation or are treated inhumanely, consumers become disloyal to the brand, and may actively protest it.

I'm not sure how well this relates to our theme of Modes of Using or Mobilize, but it got me thinking back to earlier this semester when we discussed how companies are not just companies now. I remember the example about Google's motto "Don't be evil." I think it's pretty cool that consumers care about the brands they support, because it encourages companies to act responsibly.

/ramble

dilemnas of culture

2010-04-13T21:33:00.002-04:00

I found Yoon's reading on the role of cell phones on Korean youth interesting and surprising. The first question I had was: how much of the media frenzy over the impact cell phone use is having on Korean youth is true? The first thing that struck me was that it seemed the media in Korea was exaggerating the problem similar to, and even more than, U.S. cable news constantly exaggerates many issues with technology and/or youth. However, what struck me as especially interesting was how Yoon was able to relate this media craze to the cultural crisis, whereas I would argue the motive of cable news here is almost solely for ratings. The conflict that Yoon presented was between modernizing through technology similar to the West, and preserving "traditional cultural values". Thus the "threats" that cell phones posed, such as the weakening of family/community bonds and the danger to literacy, and are publicized by the media act as a "repositioning" of this new technology.

Based on this, I also wonder how Yoon would look at other new technologies, specifically video games. From friends, I have heard that video games are so popular among youth that they are almost glorified. Video game "professionals" can reach rock-star status, and matches are often viewed like sporting events. It is interesting to think that cell phones are given such bad publicity while video games transcend to such a level in culture.

This reading also made me wonder about the role of "repositioning" of technology in American culture. As mentioned, cable TV often presents possible issues with new technology and new media objects. However, these issues do not seem to reach the status that Yoon describes of Korea. Instead, I would suggest that these issues likely arose a while ago in the U.S., and that our culture has been "repositioned" in response. Is this inevitable for Korea as well?

2010-04-13T15:52:00.004-04:00

"A close reading of the computer as medium, though revels that there is no multi-media in a virtual space, only one medium, which basically calculates different sounds images, words, sounds indifferently, since its able to emulate all other media"

The passage above struck me when I first read it, I had been definitely under the spell of the computer as a multi-media instrument. On further analysis of the passage, I realized how that confusion was fit perhaps an inherent quality of the computer, it appears that a sort of mimetic faculty within the medium itself is working to ensure I confuse the one, highly variable medium with an actual multi-media device.

On a completely different note, although I really liked the argument in the piece, I am weary of statements that imply the internet has stopped disciplinary modes of access through constant flux, although this is certainly a phenomenon, I think to truly interrogate the social and cultural implications of digital media the persistence of closed databanks which are "sealed off" in the internet.

The Other, Wed. Section

2010-04-13T15:19:00.002-04:00

In Appadurai’s article, he asserts that “The world we live in now seems rhizomatic (Deleuze and Guattari 1987), even schizophrenic, calling for theories of rootlessness, alienation and psychological distance between individuals and groups” (3). The most complicated aspect of this assertion is that our world is “schizophrenic.” The definition of schizophrenia (the web definition at least), states that is “a severe mental disorder characterized by…emotional blunting, intellectual deterioration, social isolation, disorganized speech and behavior, delusions, and hallucinations,” Or “a state characterized by the coexistence of contradictory or incompatible elements.” Schizophrenia is a violent disorder, but then the second definition allows for an almost peaceful definition, with the mention of “coexistence.” The tone given off by “rootlessness” and “alienation” are more in keeping with the severity of the mental condition, however, this is maybe because as a reader I react against the idea of being “rootless/alienated”.

The word recurs in “The Other Information City,” as Lawrence Liang says “Every major city in the contemporary seems to have a not very hidden schizophrenic desire” (1). He attributes this to a “Post Globalilzation anxiety,” furthering the motif of being mentally unbalanced or unstable through the use of “anxiety”. The “mythical other” the city wants to become could be at the expense of the present, but what exactly are the stakes of having such a complex/irrational desire? Anxiety and schizophrenia suggest that this desire is disruptive to the state of the city.

The idea of the Other is implicated in the mention of schizophrenia, as the depictions of people afflicted with the disorder of having two personalities (the Jekyll/Hyde stereotype) suggest that one person always has within him/herself an Other that can’t be interacted with. However, the idea of the Other is discussed in “The Other Information City” is not quite so intense. The Forum, the mall in which one has the negative promise of not running into people unlike you, keeping the Other at bay. Tourists also figure into this idea of the other, in which one is on the outside of a culture, and the very title puts the tourist outside of the closer community. The “unseasoned IT Tourist” at Infosys shows that one is outside of the culture, while the employees are simultaneously being taught how to assimilate to any culture in the world on the very premises. Thus tourism in this day and age allows for everyone to be a tourist anywhere, if there are no original roots to begin with. Appardurai also discusses the Other in terms of the tourist, claiming that the “past is usually another country,” and the “tourist fantasies” contend that “your present is their future” (4). Thus, in this case, the Other can’t be interacted with, because it is perceived of as in a different time.

The ideas aren't perfectly related, but the idea of being balanced/stable and being rootless/alienated demand whether or not this state of being is good or bad, or if good/bad doesn’t even factor in. The connotations of the descriptions used in both articles have a sense of foreboding, but I wonder if foreboding and fear is intentionally implied and if so, why?

Mobile Youth--Wednesday Section

2010-04-13T13:14:00.000-04:00

Yoon’s report presents interesting data on the effect of mobile phones on the Korean culture. He divides the effects into two categories, health and culture. While the health risks are minimal (such as electronic radiation, which to me doesn’t sound minimal!). The cultural effects are more lasting. Of these, I was drawn to the cultural threat on learning and literacy.

The fear of mobile phone language is similar to the changes in written grammar with the emergence of Instant Messaging and email. Yoon writes that “the emerging technological environment does not necessarily contribute to young people’s literacy.” The new acronyms, abbreviations, and frequent use of numerals and English catchphrases overpower the traditional Korean sayings and characters. For example, emails are now somewhat “coded” in “alien language.”

These new phrases and languages are starting to be researched. Are these abbreviations processed as actual words? Or, as I tested in an fMRI group project last semester, are they processed as the phrases they represent?

When I started the project, little research was available for us to reference. Because of this, we started from scratch and hypothesized that IM words such as “brb” (representing the phrase “be right back’) and “gtg” (“got to go”) would be processed as the phrases they represent, rather than new 3-letter words. By comparing these 3-letter words to 3-letter words, 3-letter meaningless words, and 3-word phrases, we found that American college students process 3-letter words as unique words, not as phrases or nonwords. More specifically, the brain regions responsible for bilingual thought processes (the left caudate nucleus, as discovered by Crinion et al in 2006) activates when processing IM words.

Though our subject pool was not diverse (all were Brown students), the study has interesting implications for people who worry about the future of written language. As stated in Yoon’s article, many worry that the new phrases and codes that we frequently use will destroy our learned grammatical techniques. What we may not have expected, though, is that when you switch from typing an IM to writing a paper, you are actually subconsciously switching languages. So, maybe we have less to worry about than we thought!

looking for a group - Assignment option 2

2010-04-11T21:20:00.003-04:00

I want to do assignment #2 and create a media object. i have a few ideas. and am open to any other ideas, or groups that want to create a media obect.

"Modes of Using"

- Develop a game mod that answers Galloways call for a more conscious counter gaming - Hopefully the mod will address some curtural problematics in gaming (gender roles)

the mod would be more conceeptual than an actual modification ...

- Create a web based game concept/narrative using Jenkin's "a new lively art" gaming aesthetics and Tara McPherson, “Reload: Liveness, Mobility and the Web”. It is also able to be pedagogical.

- Creating a game concept/narrative: based on Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto".

I am open to any other ideas, or groups that want to create a media object.

Contact me!! : Michela_Fitten@Brown.edu

Looking for group

2010-04-11T21:02:00.002-04:00

I wanted to do my project on the Windows Mobile 7 and its new Foursquare application and relate that to the data/traces and modes of using and analyse it in detail. If anyone is interested, please email me at Rohan_thakur@brown.edu

Conversation with Monica Garcia after Wednesday's Lecture

2010-04-10T17:11:00.000-04:00

Monica: How was the game for you?
Me: It was definitely a good way to kill time for a player, but also when I was playing it, I felt a little bit too pushed because I was constantly urged to do serve the customers.
Monica: You mean you feel it was stressful when you were playing?
Me: Yes.
Monica: But what do you think about it as a casual game? Why did you choose hardcore game over casual game?
Me: I’m not really a gamer. But if I ‘m given the choice, I will choose hardcore game because the experience is more constructive for me. I felt stressful when I was playing a casual game as easy as Diner Dash because I never had choices when I play; all I had are urging orders and demands from the customer. But with hardcore games, the users can design their own avatars, what do they want to do with their game experience. Therefore I think hardcore games are more empowering, whereas casual games like Diner Dash is like an imitation of labor in real life, only the pressure is not real. Why did you choose casual games over hardcore games?
Monica: I don’t play many games as well. I don’t want to invest in games, so casual games, which don’t require downloads and much commitment in time and money are therefore good choices. I also feel that casual games are all about getting faster, and a good way to kill time. Hardcore games are too much investment and engagement for me.

Section 3 Friday 10AM - Who is more powerful, the user or the profile?

2010-04-09T03:15:00.005-04:00

I was watching Southpark on my computer on the internet, because I forget what televisions are, and when I realized the episode focussed on the Facebook society I decided I would blog about it before I even knew it would be so highly related to our recent discussion of the blurred differences and similarities of the physical and digital worlds (I've decided to stop using the term 'real' and rather described the physical world as such because unreal things don't exist; the internet is just as real).

Anyway, in the episode You Have 0 Friends, Stan Marsh attempts to delete the profile his friends made of him and for him, but it defends itself by digitizing Stan and brining him into a blatantly Tron-style visualization of Facebook where they will eventually meet and battle (obviously). In this Tron-Facebook digital media world, Stan Marsh walks through a community of people announcing what is immediately on their mind as well as proclaiming they like a lot of things. Of course, if we had to literally walk around the world of Facebook, even as digital profiles or sweetass blue avatars, it would be too annoying to posts statuses and to announce we like things as we do in the real world (by speaking...and body language).

Although much of the information on Facebook is garbage, when it is used helpfully Facebook truly is an efficient tool for information distribution and archiving; everyone can see when the most popular girl at school becomes a fan and likes some silly little band, and when you like the same band you are more like her and thus more popular. Obviously that sounds ridiculous! But maybe only because society thinks it's dirty to admit that is how things might work.

In another portion of the episode, the writers compare Facebook to the stock market. Many times it seems certain changes in the stock market are fueled by rumors, and the news media also arguably helps in the propagation. Sometimes it even seems like the stock market just isn't real, it just some crazy organized numbers gambling game fueled by silly nothingness. Of course, the stock market does have a very real affect on peoples livelihoods so it is given respect as if it were as real as physical goods. Facebook is like a stock market for social capital, and although it certainly is not the only source of social livelihood for most of those involved, it can be helpful in organizing the social realm.

The Southpark writers also manage to touch on the perks of chatroulette. Eric Cartman describes it as "an amazing gathering place where people from all over the world can share ideas." Of course, when he tries to use it as a friend-making tool for his classmate Kyle, the pair encounter mostly men masturbating. They do eventually find a friend though. "This is the way the world works. If you want to find some quality friends, you've got to wade through all the dicks first."

When the user and the user's profile battle at the end, the profile is huge compared to the user. It could be argued that the profile has more power by having more direct contact with a larger network of others. Power in numbers, numbers due to the speed and organizational tools within the digital realm, power due to survival of the fittest and the popularity of majority rules (wins every time).

Birthdays have changed due to Facebook, specifically the human habits for remembering them. Everybody knows everybody's birthday these days because their public wall is covered with their friends' wall-post-advertisements publicizing their birthday, not to mention Facebook itself reminding you when your friends have special days coming. Today, April 9th, is my birthday. I told Facebook my birthday was April 1st, as an April fool's joke, and then I told Facebook to not display my birthday. Now I'll get to know who my real friends are, right? Well, no, for me whether or not you know my birthday doesn't really dictate our friend status (it's complicated), but I also don't need to have direct contact with the material body that fuels your mind to consider you a friend (its just a bunch of carbon and water and other elements from the periodic table anyway).

I think it is important for everyone to decide how much time the want to spend in each world the live in (the physical world, Facebook, Second Life, etc.) and in that manner rationalize the realness of each respective world in order of how important and helpful it is to your tastes and goals. There is no such thing as unreal, right or wrong. I'm going to bed.

Temporarily at 11am section

2010-04-08T23:40:00.003-04:00

The work often lapses into pure data, streaming real-time code up the screen with little or no representational imagery at all...but at other times the game's source code is ignored (15).

I get the feeling that the more an art form becomes the very thing that can be reproduced, such as in Benjamin's discussion of art forms that rely on mechanical reproduction (such as the photo and film), the harder it is to both foreground the apparatus and experience the work of art simultaneously. In Counter-cinema, there can be characters acting out the drama while cameras and stage equipment can be viewed in the same shot, thus presenting a strange coupling, however in the case of the video-game, where there is a less indexical relationship to external referents, one can switch from 'game play' to "streaming code." I'm pretty interested in what anyone thinks this means. What does it say about digital media that the kind of ways complicating the medium don't work

S.03 "The Internet is Free Porn"

2010-04-08T23:38:00.001-04:00

The computer screen even in its reflective nature serves as a great means of hiding actual characteristics. What made me think of this concept was the viewing of Machima.com in class. The video clearly illustrates that most males secretly use the Internet to access free porn. However they also physically depict the male treky and female treky differently furthering the depiction of male versus female online. The male trekys are muscular and have deep voices. On the other hand the female character has breasts and a high singing voice that is constantly being interrupted. Besides the basics of physical interaction and depiction there is an even deeper difference between male and female online depictions that exists in this video. It specifically deals with how different people specifically different genders utilize this feature of the Internet. Where a male figure can masturbate in the privacy of his own room, a female figure reacts differently this means of hiding. The video more directly deals with how males use the Internet to hide them partaking in common manly acts. On the other, and more subtly the video eludes to the idea that female and possibly males use the protective nature of the computer screen/ Internet to hide physical insecurities and differences. On the Internet and particularly in games such at World of War craft and Second Life your character doesn’t directly show images of you therefore people can hide insecurities about their appearance, actions, and emotions online. The video demonstrates this when the female treky provides examples of the male trekys partaking in seemingly girly actions such as sending flowers to a girlfriend through an online service.

What puzzles me still is how a medium such as the Internet can serve as a paradox? It sometimes allows people to be themselves because they are more comfortable behind the mask the Internet provides. However their does exists this countering exploitation of stereotypes.

S03 - Gaming and Problems of Gender

2010-04-08T20:53:00.000-04:00

As I showed earlier in the posted interview Emily and I had, I was never a big fan of computer games, especially not “hardcore” games. They somehow always frightened and/or annoyed me – I guess it was really easy for me to start “believing” the illusions they were creating. The most “hardcore” game I've ever tried was Counter Strike and I got killed as soon as I started playing it. The people I was playing it with were all boys. However, when I remember it now and when I think about representations of gender in computer games, I notice one strange thing – while my guy-friends were always aware of me being of different gender when we hung out, once we started playing Counter Strike that awareness disappeared completely. Before that, they would use only appropriate vocabulary when I was present, but while we were playing, they were saying the most inappropriate things I could imagine. I had a feeling that, at that moment, gender differences did not exist between us.
However, I agree that representations of gender in computer games are very often stereotypical and that “casual” games are often considered more appropriate for female, and “hardcore” for male players. Still, that is not something that necessarily makes me feel bad, because I feel I could always enter the sphere of “hardcore” gaming without fear of being discriminated against in any way, while I don't think many guys would go around talking how successful they were in Dinner Dash. It probably has a lot to do with wish-fulfillment. I think that men often feel pressured to live up to standards of “manhood” presented in popular media and that “hardcore” games give them the illusion of extraordinary strength and power. Therefore, it is no coincidence that “hardcore” gamers are often described as “unmanly” people with poor social lives (urbandictionary.com). Knowing that computer games provide us the illusion of being better than we could possibly be in reality, we are likely to associate people who enjoy that illusion too much with the lack of power (illustrated through physical or spiritual attractiveness).
Similarly to the assumption that “casual” games are for females and “hardcore” games for males, the assumption that gamers are necessarily socially inactive is wrong. In my opinion, similarly to web sites for social interaction, computer games might be a useful tool to help us learn more about social interaction. That is, if we don't take them too seriously. If we observe our fellow players we can learn about different responses to different situations in the game. Once they “get into” the game, people tend to behave naturally and that can be extremely valuable. On the other hand, if we completely “believe” the illusion that a game creates for us, than that game becomes our second reality. Compared to other types of media, for example television, it is much more interactive and much more able to actively change the way we perceive ourselves. In that way it can be useful and help us build up more confidence, but it can also isolate us and make us more like stereotypes we read about on urbandictionary.com.

S03 Assasins Creed and Heavy Rain

2010-04-08T20:46:00.002-04:00

As many observers have noted, we don’t speak of controlling a cursor on the screen when we describe the experience of playing a game; we act as if we had unmediated access to the fictional space. We refer to our game characters in the first person and act as if their experiences were our own. James Newman has argued that we might understand the immediacy of game play not in terms of how convincing the representation of the character and the fictional world is but rather in terms of the character’s “capacity” to respond to our impulses and desires
Jenkins

The Jenkins article was very interesting to me because I was always surrounded with hardcore gamers and have considered at some point going into the gaming industry. I think video games are definitely an art form because they evoke so many emotions in their players. People who play video games are so invested in them, in the characters, the graphics, the concepts and the game play all at once. I remember when Final Fantasy came out and the hype that came with it. I remember the way my friends talked about the game: the conversation consisted of comments on the way the characters interacted with their surroundings, the quality of the image, the quality and back stories of the characters and the story of the game all in all. When I was interested in video games I was interested in the graphics and the amazing way in which video games try to mimic the real but yet create their own real in the process. I say this because even though video game designers, and animators, try to replicate things like light and motion they are doing it in the context of a world that is fantastical and they can thus manipulate things to achieve an even greater emotion than reality can.
This article also made me think of two specific games, Heavy Rain which is an interactive drama video game and Assassin’s Creed which as I recall was state of the art when it came out because of the level of interaction that occurred between the main character and his surroundings. I thought of those two games because they both have a completely different style of play. The first has a very limited amount of game play but the user still feels like they are in complete control of the characters life, as he can control the small impulses and detailed actions of the character, and those actions in turn change the course in which the story goes, even though the ending may be constant. The thing is that the gamer is aware of the ending because the game plays out like a motion picture, except that little arrows appear on the screen whenever the character is doing something the gamer can manipulate. The game makes up for this though in the level of intensity of the story and the graphics. Assasin’s Creed on the other hand is highly interactive. The character can bump into people in the crowd and can listen in to conversations etc. I remember how interesting it was playing that game because of the kind of responses that you got as a player from the game. What I mean by that is the way your actions translate into the game, also the fact that you can stray from the mission and go into the crowd. The level of game play in Assasin’s Creed is incredible and the way the character moves is so precise that one can not help but feel connected to that character which in turn provokes a lot of reaction and emotion.
These kinds of games are in complete contrast to Diner Dash which we played. I know Jenkins makes the argument for the usefulness of gaming, which I agree with but I think it varies from game to game. I feel like a game like Diner Dash, though it may train you in some sort of speed or concentration power, it is still mindless and does not require a whole lot of strategy or skill. The graphics are also nothing to be amazed at in our day and age nor is the character responses to actions. All in all that game was entertaining but not at all capturing or engaging.

Conversation between Anne and I

2010-04-08T19:08:00.002-04:00

For early clarification, we're both casual gamers, since there weren't any "hardcore" gamers left; we made do. Also, this is not an exact conversation, that is, it is not verbatim, it is, however, very close.

Anne: I don't play games much.

Me: I don't either. I'm very much a tetris person or even diner dash, something where I don't get to invested in the game.

Anne: That is something I've noticed as a difference between casual games and hardcore games, the personal attachment. In the hardcore games there are these different set of rules, they're more intricate, and you have to discover them by playing more and more and trying to get further and further.

Me: That's really interesting because its true. Casual games are very straight forward on their rules and playing. There isn't much that changes. Each level might be harder, you could be given less time or more to do, but the rules are still the same.

Anne: Exactly, games like tetris or solitaire or other common computer games, bubble breaker, etc.

Me: Right. I suppose my only even somewhat form of hardcore gaming was when I was little playing Nintendo64 or Pokémon on gameboy. Which still aren't that hardcore, there is much more narrative, but the rules and space are very limited, not much changes throughout the games.

Friday 11am Section

2010-04-08T18:43:00.000-04:00

While playing Diner Dash, I seemed to have the opposite experience as Ben. Though I play video games reasonably frequently and never get too involved in the outcome, I found myself getting personally offended when customers got angry with my service or left my restaurant. It was only later that I realized the constraints of the video game world helped me to overlook just how outlandishly rude and unreasonable my virtual patrons were. They would leave if I took more than a few seconds to take their order. They would shortchange me in tips if I left an empty plate on their table for a few seconds. Clearly they should be aware that my restaurant is staffed by only one cook and a waitress from the Progressive Insurance commercials. But its a video game, so the absurdities are easier to ignore(especially in a casual time killer rather than a more hardcore game).

Friday 11am

2010-04-08T18:30:00.001-04:00

Playing Diner dash while keeping in mind the concepts surrounding video games was an interesting experience. I played “endless shift” mode and once I started it was like I was trapped on the job. I kept thinking to myself, “why do I care whether or not “people” on my screen got “mad” and left my “restaurant.” Of course there were no people getting mad or a restaurant for them to get mad at, there was only a program being operated by me clicking my mouse. Games seem very boring when you take this perspective so what is the appeal? While playing I kept paid attention to how involved I was becoming mentally in the game and realized that as the shift progressed (endlessly) I became tired mentally, as if I was actually serving the people I was “serving” in the program. The correspondence to how I felt in the real world compared with how my avatar, Flo, would have felt in the game world is what makes video games appealing. While most of the time the connection between the real and the game is something that does not involve a simulation of work, even work can seem fun when its dressed up as it was in Diner Dash. Diner Dash is enjoyable because it allows the user to organize an otherwise chaotic scenario, a feeling similar to the pleasure that comes from organizing shapes in Tetris.

S03 - The Lively Art

2010-04-08T18:23:00.002-04:00

In this post I will bring up two questions that I hope we will be able to discuss in section tomorrow.

First, as I read through Henry Jenkins' "Games, the New Lively Art," I wondered what how he would respond to Nintendo's Wii console. According to Jenkins, the kinetic nature of gameplay is important. He quotes Steven Poole, who writes that "a beautifully designed videogame invokes wonder as the fine arts do only in a uniquely kinetic way." The videogame must and can move. With Wii games such as Wii Sports, the player must move as well. Jenkins notes that the early iterations of these "contemporary games", such as Frequency and Rez, which I understood as earlier version of the popular Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, were unique and appealing because they "sought to expand the sensory experience available to players", who became performers as well. As performers, they received the pleasure of "intense and immediate feedback". I am interested in how many of the arcade-style games (the early WarioWare Smooth Moves comes to mind), the sports and fitness games, and the performance-style games popular on the Wii not only signify a rise of casual games (as Soderman writes) but also move video games back towards the early arcade forms in which the kinetic nature of the game (both of the character in the environment of the game and of the player) was highlighted over the aesthetic and more purely visual part of the game. Designers of the early games such as Tetris and Pong didn't have the kinds of technologies for cinema-quality graphics, which can explain the primitive nature of the graphics. But why is it that the games I mentioned above have similarly "primitive" graphics? Compare the personal trainer on Wii Fit or the Miis to the characters of Mass Effect, for example. Why the choice of somewhat kitschy graphics in Smooth Moves? Is it a throwback to the old arcade-style?

My second question came to mind during my conversation with Matt, who essentially asked "what is the pleasure in playing games that emulate real life?" Why play Diner Dash when you can go out and be a waiter? If games present an escape from the real world and an ability to explore what Branch Davidian called "alternative utopias and apocalyptic moments," then why the intense desire to play at real life? Games like The Sims, for example, are wildly popular. I have some ideas on this and would like to discuss further with everyone in our section tomorrow.

Barthes Deconstruction vs. Galloway's Grammar of Countergaming

2010-04-08T18:22:00.004-04:00

Friday, 11 AM

I suppose the main theme throughout all of my blog posts- as in other students' posts- is the discussion of what most speaks to us. This post is no different. To say that my favorite reading from the week was Galloways would be a blatant lie (that distinction goes to Soderman), however, this reading is what stood out to me, because it resonated with previous readings we've done including Barthes and screenings/labs we've done including Timecode and The Matrix.

What struck me in this essay was Galloway's ideas on the Grammar of countergaming, he says:

"Hollywood almost universally removes he apparatus from the image, while art or the avant-garde filmmaking is often unafraid to include it in any number of visual experiments. In gaming, this same division is evident: mainstream games almost never reveal the guts of the apparatus, while artist-made game mods do so quite often- Because the tecnical apparatus of gaming is quite different from film, so too the status and quality of foregrounding is different. The gaming apparatus may be foregrounded through image or through code."

My first thought went to Barthes, the idea of "revealing the guts of the apparatus" is a dead match for Barthes ideas on the writerly text (or mods and their "boringness" which gets to follow his ideas on bliss-jouissance- in "The Pleasure of the Text"), his wanting to dissect what is written and constantly giving it new meaning, or finding something... some connotation, some form that is different. Of course this thought was exacerbated by the final sentence of the paragraph, "The gaming apparatus may be foregrounded through image or through code," the use of code is redisplayed, but in a new form, that doesn't necessarily refer to the writerly text, but can in fact give the term new meaning and a more interesting connotation. This then led me to a sort of reverse thought process from mods to the writerly text, by which I mean I began considering the writerly text as an art form as avant-garde as the mods instead of a stripping or decoding process. My second thought was placed with Timecode. Not because it follows Barthes, per se, but because it follows a "gutting" of the narrative, in the film you are being taken into these peoples "lives" which display the truth or naturalness of human daily life or rather something raw and different as opposed to the romanticized forms of films that are constantly being produced, this displaying more of what we wish life was like instead of what it is.

Jordan - 11 am Friday Blog Post

2010-04-08T18:19:00.002-04:00

With most of these readings, I enjoy taking the authors' often philosophical assertions and examining their implications in the business world. Just as many of our readings point out, like Fredrick Jameson's Cognitive Mapping and Tara McPherson's Liveness, Mobility, and the Web, the development of technology is governed not only by human necessity, but also by economic profitability. The notion of flow in television is a necessary invention in order to prolong the engagement of the viewer with the media and more importantly advertising.

Should the concept of flow, as McPherson explains, really be understood as a means to, "unite the disparate bits of information, advertising, and narrative comprising and evening's television into a seamless whole, establishing a planned sequence which is more important than the individual segments which might seem to categorize TV programming"? McPherson fails to examine how the synthesis of information is influenced largely by capitalism, and that 'planned flow' may be the perversion of a more natural form in order to meet necessary economic demands.

Flow did not emerge as the best way to integrate these bits of information; instead, it emerged as the best way to keep viewers hooked. Each segment, a cliffhanger; each advertisement, a moment of tension or relaxation; each ending, the start of a new beginning. Here, it is the structure of the information that conforms to economic demands and advertising; however, the web, it seems, is a structure above these economic demands for profit. It is actually an engine for ubiquity and an accumulator of information disguised as a productive force and a proliferator of information.

Truthfully, the items that the internet does create to enhance productivity naturally separate themselves from advertising in ways similar to real life. There are no explicit advertisements in the office, in the classroom, or in the library; instead, the advertisements are located between these areas of dynamic attention, mobile pathways, or to areas of static attention where the individual subjects themselves to an event but is not directly incorporated within the event, like sporting events. Web based advertisements will continue to develop forms that are suited to the user's most common mode of interaction with the media in context; and thus, this expectation, this prediction, will influence the future architecture of the web.

The same way that malls are constructed to force individuals past the maximum number of store fronts by locating escalators in optimal positions, the web will be structured. The same way that an individual advertises a campus event by delivering a short informational message at the beginning of a class as opposed to a billboard on the side of the highway advertising discount furniture, web based advertising will adapt to fit expected behavior in context. The notions of mobility and liveness uncover the relationship between capital and architecture in the digital domain.

Friday 11 am Section

2010-04-08T18:06:00.004-04:00

After attending Wednesday's lecture I immediately thought of the family dynamic present during my childhood. My brother, Stephen, would definitely be categorized as a 'hardcore gamer'. He has been playing videogames as long as I can remember. Starting with SEGA's Sonic the Hedgehog and continuing throughout the years, to more difficult and challenging games. I think back to what Professor Chun said about the gender barrier between the games and realized that it is more flexible than one would initially believe it to be, at least in correspondence to my upbringing.

When we were kids, my parents raised us almost equally. I often hear my dad say, "That's my boy," when I do something particularly manish but that's just the way it is. I climbed trees, I played sports, I got into fights at school and played videogames. Above is a picture of Stephen and I playing a Co-Op of Halo on Legendary. Not to brag or anything. But I have found that over the years, to us, the "fun factor" as described by Jenkins is not based on the graphics of the game, but rather, the ability of the game to make us become invested in it. This investment is made possible through the gameplay, music, story, but most importantly, the characters.

For example, when playing Final Fantasy VII for the first time I was absolutely stunned. I fell in love with the characters and had such a large emotional investment in them that the graphics didn't even matter. Rather than my first celebrity crush being Leonardo DiCaprio or Brad Pitt, I fell head over heals in love with Zach Faire, a supporting character in FFVII, without even knowing what he really looked like or sounded like because they didn't have the technology for voice overs yet! It was the writing that made the game. However, in Final Fantasy X, when the graphics were unlike anyone had ever seen before, and it was the first time voice overs were introduced in the FF world, because the characters (mainly Tidus) were lacking in growth and development emotionally, they relied heavily on the visual and audio aspect of the game. Both Stephen and I were indifferent to FFX. I did not get chocked up because of the graphics or flashy costumes just because I'm a girl. However, I truly think that is only because my parents did not implement gender stereotypes upon either of us growing up. I looked up to my brother and wanted to be involved in whatever he was doing. It affected my childhood in a negative way unfortunately because of the gender roles so heavily present in our society. Obviously I had more guy friends than girl friends and the girl friends that I did have were also outcasts to a certain extent. Eventually I picked up some of my own habits and interests that were more 'feminine' according to the status quo and played sports which helped me bridge the gap in my school. Once highschool came around people started to realize that these self implemented barriers we've placed up around us are actually made of air and can be easily torn down. I will continue to play games that interest me regardless of graphics because the pleasure I receive from the game itself is more important than visual stimulation. However, if a kick ass game has some killer graphics then obviously I'm all for it.

PS: Here is the conversation that Daniel Valmas and I had on Weds lecture.

Daniel Valmas: What was your experience with DD?

Alexis: It reminded me of when I was in highschool and these girls were playing cake town and it was the same exact thing. I remember our guy friends were like, "What are you doing? It’s so pointless."

Daniel: Yeah, I already read the article so I paid attention to the narrative. I don’t think the narravite contributed to the game but just made the game sexist in a way. Why is she leaving the male dominated business world where she’s making a lot of money? It has nothing to do with further on in the game.

Alexis: Exactly, like why can’t she make it in the business world? Is she not smart enough?

D: And why can't we decide what she does? We only have like one option for her to pursue. How was the gameplay for you?

A: I really like video games and was really in the zone. I found it very rudimentary and easy.

D: I thought it was very easy too. Someone asked me a question and I was like, "I can’t talk right now, I’m trying to feed these people." My ability matched the difficulty of the game so I was able to ‘lose time.’

Emotion, Representation, and Story

2010-04-08T17:46:00.006-04:00

I see a problem in what Soderman and Galloway describe as the most essential aspects of gaming. Both, in one way or another, say that gameplay easily trumps narrative/representation as more important. Galloway takes issue with how “aesthetics are elevated over gameplay” (115) in what he calls the countergaming movement, and Soderman argues that “representation in games is usually superficial, insignificant and generally less meaningful whereas action and gameplay carry the true force of signification.” But then, they both agree that the emotional experience that games offer is what makes them popular and compelling. I don’t believe that a truly fulfilling emotional attachment can be felt when the story is lacking.

Players (and people in general) feel connected to characters overcoming obstacles and going through personal growth. And as much as we like to deny it, appearances are important in our world. If you took an immensely popular game (one with recognizable characters and story, not something like Call of Duty), you would most certainly find that the main characters are humanoid and reasonably attractive. If you took those characters and turned them into grotesque and disfigured monstrous creatures, members of the Ku Klux Klan, faceless shapeless blobs, or some other unappealing or hated thing, I can almost guarantee the game’s popularity would change.

I consider myself a hardcore gamer, and I know that visuals and story are important to me. This isn’t just because I’m female, either, because my male hardcore gamer friends feel exactly the same way. We have all cried, had our hearts pound with excitement, or felt joy when a momentous event happened in the game to the characters we had grown attached to. This “`fun factor,’…the quality of the emotional experience” as Henry Jenkins says, is intricately linked to how the game looks and how the story unfolds. I think that in many games, the gameplay is simply the way through which the story progresses.

A recent example that clearly highlights this issue is the game Final Fantasy XIII. The Final Fantasy series is especially known for having deep, moving plot lines and memorable, relatable characters. The game has been praised for having the most visually impressive graphics ever to appear on a screen, tied with only the movie “Avatar” in terms of looks. In his review of the game for The New York Times, Seth Schiesel said, “the real star of Final Fantasy XIII is its visual design and animation team, which has created some of the most impressive, compelling digital animation on the planet.” My friend, a fellow hardcore gamer and lover of all things gamic, describes the game to me as “totally epic and amazing,” but when I asked him about what he thought the most important part of the game was, he said it was the graphics. He told me that the game just wouldn’t be as good with any lesser graphics. Clearly, representation is a vital aspect of video games, and I think that discussing the emotional effectiveness while disregarding appearance and story is a wrong-minded approach to video game analysis.

Here is the trailer to Final Fantasy XIII (although not quite accurate, because it looks far better on the PS3’s Blueray technology and a HDTV.)

Friday 11 AM Section

S03 Diner Dash and McPherson

2010-04-08T17:27:00.003-04:00

Diner Dash was extremely addictive. When thinking about McPherson's argument of flow of television in comparison to gaming, games have an ultimate objective in which you can change the flow. There is no linear thread because through your character you can break the rules or change the narrative a bit. In Diner Dash, your objective is to work in a restaurant, but sometimes you can upgrade items to help you accomplish the goal of pleasing the characters. While Diner Dash isn't as elaborate as other games like Halo, this small option can give the user a lot of power. In television, there is no option of changing the flow. The only form of interruption is changing the channel or commercials, but even commercials are premeditated by the network. Now having television on the internet allows the viewer to have more control and they can interrupt the flow. I feel like all of this is part of the instant gratification that McPherson speaks about. To have a sense of control is part of the appeal to gaming and the internet. I feel that even games like slot machines when translated into video games usually add the option of stopping the wheel when you want since the earning of money isn't a option anymore.

Games, the New Lively Art - Friday 11am Section

2010-04-08T16:58:00.001-04:00

The Henry Jenkins piece that we read this week may very well be my favorite reading thus far. This is because I felt a personal connection to the ideas that he presented. As someone who identifies as a serious gamer, I thoroughly enjoyed his analysis of the reasons why critics dismiss video games as an art form. I was surprised to find that Gilbert Seldes arguments were not so different from the ones I’ve made in the past. One problem that I’ve often experienced when talking with critics/skeptics is that they often have not played the games they’re arguing against. According to Seldes, video games are art because there is an affective force to them and they create strong emotional impressions. It’s difficult to convince someone that a game has that attribute if he hasn’t experienced it himself.

According to Jenkins, “The ability to characterize certain media forms as “cultural pollution” also impacts how the general public perceives those people who consume such material.” For me, this is one of the most compelling statements in the reading because it captures the cultural environment that gamers live under. Because of their origins, video games are often thought of as being for children. The general public fails to understand that the largest gamer demographic is 20-40 year old males or that the video game industry is larger than the movie industry. I used to have a hard time simply convincing others that gaming was a legitimate hobby. However, I think the culture around video games has started to change in recent years because of how popular/accessible the Wii has been and the rise of casual games like Farmville. I would love to see the day when the general public put video games on the same level as movies or when the best gamers are afforded celebrity status for their accomplishments.

Blog #8: Diner Dash and Conversation with Anne - S03

2010-04-08T16:45:00.002-04:00

Though I identified as a “casual gamer” by Soderman’s definition of the term, and though Anne preferred the experience of more hardcore games, we found common ground in Diner Dash and both took great enjoyment out of the game. There are a lot of casual games, however, that I feel might not appease so much to a hardcore gamer: after playing God of War for hours upon hours, would a gamer really want to play Tetris on his cell phone if he was for some reason pried away from the TV screen? Yet there is something about Diner Dash that seems almost universally appealing. Anne and I agreed that the game found a perfect happy medium: it wasn’t too complex or emotionally or intellectually challenging, but at the same time, the semblance of logic which it did require prevented it from being brainless. To me, this spoke to one of the more fascinating parts of Soderman’s chapter, the paradox of time management games like Diner Dash: though casual games, Soderman argues, are in large part designed as ways to “kill time,” they simultaneously depend on and perhaps even contribute to the development of the user’s time management skills. To play Diner Dash is to kill time by managing it. After spending much of the day in the library, I found the hour spent playing Diner Dash to be a perfect break: a way of killing time before heading back to the Scili, but without being completely mindless (like, say, playing Pac Man on a cell phone, a game completely contingent upon reflexivity and reaction time, but with no real strategy or logic required). Since both Anne and I enjoyed the game so much, despite preferring two antithetical kinds of games as a general rule, I wonder where exactly Diner Dash fits on the game spectrum: while clearly not hardcore, neither is it entirely “casual” or its purpose merely to “kill time.”