I chose to read Ray Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines Chapter Nine: 2009. I picked this particular chapter because I was interested in Kurzweil’s predictions about a time period that is now only 2 years away. Initially I had intended to read 2099, but since it is not likely that I will be around to see 2099 I decided to go to the opposite extreme.
The first section on actual computers is interesting and it’s what I’d like to focus on since there are so many new computer products being released right now that are comparable.
Already, we can see things like Bluetooth, which connect various gadgets wirelessly. Products that are Bluetooth compatible (and thus, are able to communicate with one another) include headsets, office equipment, laptops, handhelds, video game equipment, cell phones, automotive parts, etc. etc. This reminds me of Kurzweil’s “Interactivewear” cartoon at the beginning of the chapter where all the things a man is wearing communicate with each other and with the man himself. Our cars tell us when they are low on certain fluids or if parts are broken. Adding the ability for these things to talk to each other could provide an avenue to determine problems more quickly and find solutions to those problems easier.
Although I don’t think we are as close to ditching the traditional laptop just yet, they are getting much smaller. Sony has a Vaio that is small enough that you literally hold it in your hands to use it. This computer could be described as book-size or smaller, which is a description Kurzweil uses. Also, this computer does not have an external keyboard, but does have an integrated camera and microphone, and uses Flash memory rather than a “rotating platten” such as a hard drive or CD/DVD ROM (Kurzweil 189). Kurzweil’s 2009 computer is not so far off.
Kurzweil also discusses jewelry becoming computers. We now have watches with computers in them that are comparable to what Kurzweil describes. The Suunto company sells watches that keep track of a person’s heart rate, can be used as a personal trainer, a GPS, and measures a golf swing, among other things. I don’t see how it is much of a stretch to incorporate these things into earrings, necklaces, rings, bracelets, hair clips, etc. By 2009, perhaps my earrings will be able to talk to my Bluetooth headset and tell it that I need to lose a few pounds, and then the headset will send this information to my computer, which will then send me an email or perhaps simply tell me that I’m chubby and recommend a new diet and exercise regimen. Really, it boils down to simply combining these three technologies to produce the level of technical communication Kurzweil predicts. I believe that is not only realistically possible, but almost inevitable within the next 2 years.
Works Cited:
Kurzweil, Ray. The Age of Spiritual Machines. New York: Penguin, 1999.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Remediating Print Poetry: Research #3
I chose to use Jay David Bolter and Richard Grussin’s, Remediation, as one of my New Media theorists for my Senior Project paper. The primary chapter I focused on was “Chapter 2: Mediation and Remediation” since it discusses using a medium to remediate other (generally older) media. A basic definition of remediation is using one medium for “reforming or improving on another” (Bolter 59). My project involves using digital images (film or photos for the most part) to enhance and augment print elegy. Since print writing is considered a medium, I feel this is a remediation of print poetry by digital imagery.
By combining print elegy with images I am able to create “imagetexts” which provide a more rich message than the picture or the words by themselves would (O'Gorman 31). Also, I am able to apply “hypericons” to provide a similar function, the difference being that hypericons have a multiplicity in their messages that imagetexts do not (O'Gorman 19). This would allow a more broad ability for interpreting a piece in various ways. Bolter describes the situation of remediation as, “arguing that at this extended historical moment, all current media function as remediators and that remediation offers us a means of interpreting the work of earlier media as well” (55). The interpretation of print poetry within the framework of digital pictures and film gives print poetry a pictorial element that is becoming prevalent due to the pictorial nature of the internet and television. Since the trend appears to be heading toward having more pictures than words, print poetry needs to assimilate on some level. Also, the reflective quality poetry has on the culture and society producing it fits the idea that digitizing and remediating poetry is a natural step in its evolution. Our society is becoming more digital and more pictorial everyday, so our poetry should reflect this.
Bolter writes, “television, film, and now computer graphics threaten to remediate verbal text both in print and on the computer screen—indeed, to remediate text so aggressively that it may lose much of its historical significance” (57). I feel there are two ways to interpret print losing its “historical significance” (Bolter 57). One: print technology will become null if pictorial, digital technology continues to become more popular since the use of print will die out. Or, two: print will no longer require a socio-historic background knowledge since hyperlinks, pictures, and film will displace the necessity for research into the atmosphere of the time a print work was produced. Obviously, both possibilities could come about, but my personal lean is toward the second option. My efforts in digitizing elegy are centered around the idea that images will explain aspects of the poem that my words do not. A person can watch the digital elegy and understand the atmosphere surrounding the poem. He will see images of the person being memorialized, so when I describe the color of my grandmother’s hair in words an image will be associated with those words which shows her hair. If I describe a road in a rural Georgia town using vague, descriptive terms I can place the text on top of a picture of that road so the audience will more fully understand without having to look up background information explaining what I was talking about. In this way print is remediated without disappearing from the annals of history. I truly hope the first option does not come about, as I personally love print and would be saddened if it were forgotten.
The defining argument for remediation is this: “Each new medium is justified because it fills a lack or repairs a fault in its predecessor, because it fulfills the unkept promise of an older medium” (Bolter 60). This is similar to updates to your operating system. You are not really aware that something isn’t working up to par, but when you receive the newest fix you are made aware of the lack the previous version had and generally do not want to revert back to it. Media simply do the same thing on a deeper level. This is not a system problem with a computer, but a communication problem with society and since human beings communicate through various media, sometimes it becomes necessary to “fix” the old forms of communication or to re-invent them with the new societal norms in mind.
Works Cited:
Bolter, Jay David, Richard Grussin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999.
O'Gorman, Marcel. E-Crit: Digital Media Critical Theory and the Humanities. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Incorporated, 2006.
By combining print elegy with images I am able to create “imagetexts” which provide a more rich message than the picture or the words by themselves would (O'Gorman 31). Also, I am able to apply “hypericons” to provide a similar function, the difference being that hypericons have a multiplicity in their messages that imagetexts do not (O'Gorman 19). This would allow a more broad ability for interpreting a piece in various ways. Bolter describes the situation of remediation as, “arguing that at this extended historical moment, all current media function as remediators and that remediation offers us a means of interpreting the work of earlier media as well” (55). The interpretation of print poetry within the framework of digital pictures and film gives print poetry a pictorial element that is becoming prevalent due to the pictorial nature of the internet and television. Since the trend appears to be heading toward having more pictures than words, print poetry needs to assimilate on some level. Also, the reflective quality poetry has on the culture and society producing it fits the idea that digitizing and remediating poetry is a natural step in its evolution. Our society is becoming more digital and more pictorial everyday, so our poetry should reflect this.
Bolter writes, “television, film, and now computer graphics threaten to remediate verbal text both in print and on the computer screen—indeed, to remediate text so aggressively that it may lose much of its historical significance” (57). I feel there are two ways to interpret print losing its “historical significance” (Bolter 57). One: print technology will become null if pictorial, digital technology continues to become more popular since the use of print will die out. Or, two: print will no longer require a socio-historic background knowledge since hyperlinks, pictures, and film will displace the necessity for research into the atmosphere of the time a print work was produced. Obviously, both possibilities could come about, but my personal lean is toward the second option. My efforts in digitizing elegy are centered around the idea that images will explain aspects of the poem that my words do not. A person can watch the digital elegy and understand the atmosphere surrounding the poem. He will see images of the person being memorialized, so when I describe the color of my grandmother’s hair in words an image will be associated with those words which shows her hair. If I describe a road in a rural Georgia town using vague, descriptive terms I can place the text on top of a picture of that road so the audience will more fully understand without having to look up background information explaining what I was talking about. In this way print is remediated without disappearing from the annals of history. I truly hope the first option does not come about, as I personally love print and would be saddened if it were forgotten.
The defining argument for remediation is this: “Each new medium is justified because it fills a lack or repairs a fault in its predecessor, because it fulfills the unkept promise of an older medium” (Bolter 60). This is similar to updates to your operating system. You are not really aware that something isn’t working up to par, but when you receive the newest fix you are made aware of the lack the previous version had and generally do not want to revert back to it. Media simply do the same thing on a deeper level. This is not a system problem with a computer, but a communication problem with society and since human beings communicate through various media, sometimes it becomes necessary to “fix” the old forms of communication or to re-invent them with the new societal norms in mind.
Works Cited:
Bolter, Jay David, Richard Grussin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999.
O'Gorman, Marcel. E-Crit: Digital Media Critical Theory and the Humanities. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Incorporated, 2006.
I Wanna Be a Hacker: Blog #6
After reading the chapter, “A Brief History of Hackerdom,” from Eric S. Raymond’s The Cathedral and The Bazaar, I find myself more interested in the “folklore” of computers and the internet. I knew some basic facts about the MIT lab and ARPAnet from lower level Information Technology classes I’ve taken, but none gave such an interesting viewpoint of the happenings of the people behind these inventions. Raymond describes the events that lead to today’s internet and personal computer in a way that brings the whole history to life. I can easily relate to the Free Software Foundation hackers and their fight to keep some software from becoming proprietary.
For years now I have heard reference to Unix machines, but never personally worked within that OS. I knew that Linux was based off of Unix simply because of the similar sound in the names and befriending a few hackers in high school. However, not once did I guess that there had been such a prevalent social and political war going on within the hacker community. The idea that there are people who have the wherewithal to break from tradition so completely and try their own way is amazing. It seems the computer, and its many tendrils of succession, have produced the largest organized group of creative, free-thinkers to come along since the Hippie generation. The difference here is that hackers seem to lean toward useful application in their creative, free-thinking rather than merely being creative, free-thinkers. The software programs, operating systems, and free, redistributable source code produced by these minds are consistently useful, more efficient, more stable, and better overall than most commercial parallels.
In the social sphere, it appears that hackers were the pioneers of internet community, a sense of teamwork that was unprecedented, and a desire to share and share alike. Today, I can relate to these ideals primarily through my online gaming experiences as well as chatting. I have become rather close friends with multiple people I never had the opportunity to meet due to their far location. I have experienced teamwork in the form of group fighting in games, but this also manifested itself in one particularly interesting experience. At some point in one of the myriad online games I’ve played, I got to see a “guild” tutoring one of its members in Algebra in the game. This was a regular event since the tutee was having trouble in his Algebra class and apparently a few of the other members were math people. I was blown away by this “teamwork” and sharing of knowledge to help someone fully unknown outside of the game. I know, not the same level of teamwork involved with creating an operating system with multiple people around the world pitching in, but this action being proper within the gaming world stems directly from the hacker sense of community.
In the political sphere, I find it interesting that hackers banded together to help stop two political movements which would have fettered computer users: the Clipper proposal and the "Communications Decency Act." In both instances there was a physical manifestation of the digital hacker community in an effort to keep government from having too much control over computer encryption and the internet. The fact that this sense of community is so strong that it can overrule political and governmental actions is remarkable.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After rereading my post, I feel I primarily summarized Raymond and gave my personal opinion about the hacker community. To be honest, I'm not sure I know in what way or how to analyze this piece. It is history from the mouth of one who was there (for the most part). I wasn't even alive when a large part of this history was happening. Since we watched the first half of Revolution OS in class I have a little bit of prior knowledge about the subject, but not a lot. It is enough to know that most of the players in this history agree about how the personal computer and the internet developed.
For the most part, I feel as though I should just stare, mouth agape, at this history and glory in the wonder of how it all happened. These days, most people take the internet for granted. My three youngest brothers were born into an already existent internet society where anything that is important is on the internet. I can still remember the first time I accessed the internet on my own personal computer. The sense of freedom that came from such an endless supply of knowledge and communication was exhilirating to say the least. It is imagining not having it that creates wonder in me, because life would be so much more difficult and cumbersome. To have to go back to solely using paper mail, to have to actually speak to someone rather than message them, to be cut-off from the possibility of knowing people in other countries, to have to type papers on a typewriter and look up books with the Dewey Decimal system.... It is a terrifying prospect.
I suppose I didn't really do anything more than add more of my opinion just now. Oh well. Apparently this is what the history of computers inspires in me, so I'm just gonna run with it. ;P
Works Cited:
Raymond, Eric S. The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Cambridge: O'Reilly and Associates, 1999.
For years now I have heard reference to Unix machines, but never personally worked within that OS. I knew that Linux was based off of Unix simply because of the similar sound in the names and befriending a few hackers in high school. However, not once did I guess that there had been such a prevalent social and political war going on within the hacker community. The idea that there are people who have the wherewithal to break from tradition so completely and try their own way is amazing. It seems the computer, and its many tendrils of succession, have produced the largest organized group of creative, free-thinkers to come along since the Hippie generation. The difference here is that hackers seem to lean toward useful application in their creative, free-thinking rather than merely being creative, free-thinkers. The software programs, operating systems, and free, redistributable source code produced by these minds are consistently useful, more efficient, more stable, and better overall than most commercial parallels.
In the social sphere, it appears that hackers were the pioneers of internet community, a sense of teamwork that was unprecedented, and a desire to share and share alike. Today, I can relate to these ideals primarily through my online gaming experiences as well as chatting. I have become rather close friends with multiple people I never had the opportunity to meet due to their far location. I have experienced teamwork in the form of group fighting in games, but this also manifested itself in one particularly interesting experience. At some point in one of the myriad online games I’ve played, I got to see a “guild” tutoring one of its members in Algebra in the game. This was a regular event since the tutee was having trouble in his Algebra class and apparently a few of the other members were math people. I was blown away by this “teamwork” and sharing of knowledge to help someone fully unknown outside of the game. I know, not the same level of teamwork involved with creating an operating system with multiple people around the world pitching in, but this action being proper within the gaming world stems directly from the hacker sense of community.
In the political sphere, I find it interesting that hackers banded together to help stop two political movements which would have fettered computer users: the Clipper proposal and the "Communications Decency Act." In both instances there was a physical manifestation of the digital hacker community in an effort to keep government from having too much control over computer encryption and the internet. The fact that this sense of community is so strong that it can overrule political and governmental actions is remarkable.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After rereading my post, I feel I primarily summarized Raymond and gave my personal opinion about the hacker community. To be honest, I'm not sure I know in what way or how to analyze this piece. It is history from the mouth of one who was there (for the most part). I wasn't even alive when a large part of this history was happening. Since we watched the first half of Revolution OS in class I have a little bit of prior knowledge about the subject, but not a lot. It is enough to know that most of the players in this history agree about how the personal computer and the internet developed.
For the most part, I feel as though I should just stare, mouth agape, at this history and glory in the wonder of how it all happened. These days, most people take the internet for granted. My three youngest brothers were born into an already existent internet society where anything that is important is on the internet. I can still remember the first time I accessed the internet on my own personal computer. The sense of freedom that came from such an endless supply of knowledge and communication was exhilirating to say the least. It is imagining not having it that creates wonder in me, because life would be so much more difficult and cumbersome. To have to go back to solely using paper mail, to have to actually speak to someone rather than message them, to be cut-off from the possibility of knowing people in other countries, to have to type papers on a typewriter and look up books with the Dewey Decimal system.... It is a terrifying prospect.
I suppose I didn't really do anything more than add more of my opinion just now. Oh well. Apparently this is what the history of computers inspires in me, so I'm just gonna run with it. ;P
Works Cited:
Raymond, Eric S. The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Cambridge: O'Reilly and Associates, 1999.
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