Hypothesizing the Empty-ness

I think people generally have a hard time dealing with the fact that their lives don't matter in the grand scheme of things. This is something we all are born knowing, having an intrinsic awareness of our ultimately pointless existence. We are told from day one how to push this knowledge to the side. Our parents tell us how special we are, and early media tells us the same, along with how limitless our possibilites can be. They never tell you that you are one tiny life of 6 billion other homo sapien sapien lives, and 1 tiny life on a planet full of immeasurable life. Statistically speaking, your chances of mattering are close to nil. So, we subconsciously decide to deal with it in our own ways; we want to last, we want to be known, renowned, and we want, by the ened of our lives, to have mattered some in the world. To do this, to fill the void, we engage in the act of objectifying ourselves so that we can last, so that we can be remembered, documented. We want to be cool. We want people to say "hey- you know that guy? He's one cool motherfucker, that guy is."

So very many people are caught up in the cool syndrome; it is inescapable. There is no deliberate defiance to cool; to actively rebel against cool is to be cool. Plus, cool is so often a perspective thing, you're cool one way or another. If Tommy is the alpha-male all-american cool kid, then you might be the societal reject delinquent, who throws off an open "Fuck you" attitude just as a way to compensate for too many issues at home. Sport a leather jacket and you are automatically the bad boy; a letterman jacket gives you the notoriety of being a jock type. Based even on the slightest aspect of dress style, you can act as though you are one of the social models, or be the "edgy" guy who tries to satirize it all.

Think for a minute of the people in your life who you feel have impacted you; all the role models both seen and unseen. How much of them do you see in yourself? How much of what you see in them have you simply tacked onto yourself? Personally, I can see how I feel insignificant compared to the universe, and how I see my personal role models as heros of a sort, men who have largely defied the creeping sensation of emptiness and made something of themselves. These people are far from perfect; they've struggled and fallen from grace in their time. This demonstrates to me the phoenix ability, that no matter how far we stray from the path, it will always be there to come back to.

I think the best person to describe something close to this emptiness is here: What The Water Feels like to the
Fishes

Informal Research, HW 27

If you're looking for an easy way to ingest the dominant perspective on being cool, there's an easy media to turn to; literature. Specifically, teenage literature. No other group is as overtly concerned with coolness and being cool as adolescents. They have nothing really substantial to worry about most of the time and so they try to fill the vacuum with nonsensical concepts of coolness and flattery.

Seemingly in spite of this, cool fiction arises to suit the demographic.

A personal favorite author of mine, Ned Vizzini, wrote a book that initially seemed to challenge the dominant view of coolness, but still wound up coming back to a different dominant idea: being yourself. (It seems more and more like a disney-esque cliche). His book Be More Chill describes the stereotypically uncool teen as he tries to drop his uncool habits and become socially accepted. Unique to the otherwise typical story is the inclusion of a device known as a squip, an ingest-able supercomputer designed to literally make you more popular, to increase your social standing. In addition, it can write your papers for you, help memorize lines in a play, and give you the answers to questions as they come at you.

If you enjoy teen-angsty fiction, this is a good pick, though I would sooner recommend one of Vizzini's other works, "Teen Angst.....Nah" or "It's Kind of a Funny Story", the latter of which is one of my favorite all-time books.

Interview Snippet (From Cool Friends)

Who's Cool? from Tom O'Brien on Vimeo.

Post 24 - Cool Story

I like the world a lot better when nighttime rolls around. It's like the darkness covers the earth in a specific silence, a particular emptiness that is both isolating and inviting. I was sitting on the ledge of the brownstone's rooftop, dangling my feet over the edge. It's been so long since I felt like a kid, it was time I revisited it.

"Do you ever think about time?" I asked my friend laying next to me. I meant time in the sense of the infinite; that time continued regardless of what we had to say about it. It never ceased to trouble me that my mere existence didn't even register on the grand scale of time, the universe, and everything. I get what, 70 years before I wave goodbye to a life led living alone? Is it even worth it? Should I even see it out to the end? 6 billion people on earth.... its an easy thing to feel like a face in a crowd, especially when the crowd is tiny, on the edge of the universe, where our existence wouldn't even trouble our immediate surroundings.

"It's 1:45." She replied, clearly not understanding my sentiment.

"I meant time on a vaster scale, more like, how we try to pin it down through clocks and calendars, but only ever wind up with a brief delusion of control. Whether we like it or not, time goes on, we age, but time doesn't."

She sighed, shook her head. She didn't like it when I got this way, thinking about "depressing stuff". She wanted to maintain her façade of simple happiness and pleasure as long as she could. Nothing existential there, she wanted to live exclusively in the concrete. Time is negotiable through clocks and calendars, and in New Zealand, it's tomorrow. I wonder how many other people are experiencing this same feeling, in a similar conversation, on another rooftop? Too many to comfort my thoughts of unoriginality.

"Things get a lot easier when you just accept them as fact." She told me, reassuring. She sat up and moved closer to me, leaned into my shoulder. Her touch was electric, set my nerve endings on fire, gave me goosebumps. I wanted her to know I loved her, but I couldn't do that to her. She continued. "Of course time goes on, forever, vast and infinite. But there's no real reason to trouble yourself over the time you get to experience it all. You live, you die- it's always been that way. What more do you want? Your life is more important than you think.... you get to make it your own, regardless of what happens to you."

I took her words in carefully, her voice like honey, her reassurance guiding. I suppose that somewhere I felt better about what she said; it just didn't register right now. I guess I wouldn't truly believe it until I found that out for myself. I can't just be told things and accept them right off the bat, I need to get there myself. I put on a smile and turned to look her in the eye, and she met my glance. She smiled warmly back, some pleading in her eyes; she wanted me to feel better, to feel that I mattered. I suppose I'm getting there.

My smile turned apologetic as I took out my pack of cigarettes, picked one out, put it to my lips. I put the pak away and reached for my lighter on the floor (roof?) behind me. I panicked when i didn't immediately find it. I turned back around to her to ask if she'd seen it. She was holding it in her hand, a serious look on her face. "You know what I think of these" she said.
"I can't help it, and I just want to release a little." I retorted. She frowned, her forehead crinkling. "Don't do that," I whispered.
"What?" "Frown that way, it ruins your face." "My face?" "Yeah, your face, your beautiful face." She let the frown drop, and I took the lighter from her fingers, lit up. She lay back down, closed her eyes. I lay down and rested my head on top of her stomach, pulling on my cigarette. I blew up, exhaling the smoke, watched it drift and swirl away, fleeting and beautiful, fluid and graceful, expiring too soon for anyone to realize it. I imagined my life as a stream of smoke, and I was calm. I closed my eyes and drifted.

She interrupted the silence. "So you think my face is beautiful?....."
I smiled, my eyes still closed. Maybe it was worth it after all.

I am a Guitar Hero

Red, Green, Yellow, Blue, Orange - quick repetitive movements, more like muscle memory than anything else, really.
I don't know why I still do this.
Everyday, grinding out precious hours, burning my eyes out until my visions swims and wearing thin the cartilage that once kept my fingers so nimble, but now barely allows me to round out "Through the Fire and Flames."

Imagine how detrimental that must feel, deep down.
To be a great metal band, recognized by millions - but only because you were lucky enough to have found your way onto a videogame playlist.
Sometimes suicide is forgivable, I suppose. Hey there, Kurt.

I am a slave to the new age. All we've done is upgrade our shackles. Instead of a ball and chain, these new ones come compact and wireless. Hammering away at color-coordinated buttons and triggers to trump my peers in points.
These things, our Gamerscore, our games, are they essential to our survival, in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word?
No.

Oh you filthy whore, at least use your own words! Can you not choke out a meaningful piece of work without resorting to cheap lines taken from film sources?

Genocide: –noun. the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.
2. The eradication of the culture of a group of individuals by means of destroying the populace or removal of cultural representations.

We are the teenage SS, Hutus? You've got nothing on us. We have no time for art or music, save for the moving pictures we interact with and the audio that accompanies them.

We blindly trample over the works of men and women who create beauty from nothing, and applaud those who keep us sheltered from the outside world, inside, alone, our only friend a glowing little rectangle that feeds on our wallets and quite frankly, our souls.

Oh yessir, our souls. Or lack thereof.

----

I see this art as a mirror, demonstrating the worthless time and effort we pour into playing videogames, the mindless hours driven away by isolation and the glow of LED screens. Even time we don't spend playing games, our conversations work to fit them in. It's a bad system to constantly revolve around.

I guess with this piece in particular, I feel a little empty, that I am as much a part of this infinite machine, and I whittle away hours meaninglessly.

Roughly Drafted Rough Draft

As we live and grow as human beings, as a species on Earth, we continually develop tools, systems to advance our convenience of living. We infinitely pursue increased ease of living, and absorb more into the fold of electronic connection. With our absorption, we continually maintain separate identities; our very physical existence in real, breathing life, and our mostly mental injection into the void of “interactive media”. As we grow more and more connected to digitalization, we find ourselves with less interpersonal communication. With the influx of online social settings, we reinvent our personalities to account for the growing faceless factor; our masks in real life get removed and replaced with shiner, different ones online.
Many people are instantly connected to one another via the chat system AIM, for AoL instant Messager. Being able to take the software with you on your phone means the ability to avoid needless cell phone charges from texting and calling, instead being able to communicate over AIM. From personal experience, I can understand that AIM conversations can vary greatly between shallow and deep, mostly based on the persons involved. AIM connects people whenever, wherever. We subscribe ourselves to it, creating quirky new selves in the form of screen names, internet handles that often mean more to us than others. Few people will keep their own name; the risk of releasing personal information is too great. Therefore we have creative little monikers to refer ourselves by. For example, mine is sonofatreides34. Ideally, I was trying for it to be merely “atreides”, but that clearly didn’t prove original enough, so I added the largely unnecessary “son of” so that the idea still got across. I tried other subtle variations but eventually had to settle for my favorite over-20 number, 34. All my emails have 34 in the name, so the trend is familiar, easy to use. It almost saddens me that no one has ever gotten the meaning of my account name. Effort invested for no one but myself. I wonder whether it is indicative of my peers or myself that this name goes unrecognized. One of the greatest books ever written receives no recognition among my personal flock of friends.
As we communicate through AIM, our shorthand suffers the consequence. We have a fresh influx of acronyms to stand for real phrases, and for phrases that didn’t exist, that weren’t necessary before virtual chatting.

Big Paper Outline

Digitalization of the Body and Mind

Working Thesis: As we grow more and more connected to digitalization, we find ourselves with less interpersonal communication. With the influx of online social settings, we reinvent our personalities to account for the growing faceless factor; our masks in real life get removed and replaced with shiner, different ones online.

Umbrella Argument 1: AIM
- Screennames: What we pick as a handle online can demonstrate who we aspire to be, or ground us in reality
- Manipulating: Language is changed, rewritten everyday for the sake of shorthand communication, changing the role of language in talking with one another.
- Veiled bubbles: Without the intimidating aura of actual face-to-face talking, we drop some defenses, feeling safe in our exclusive aim bubbles.

Umbrella Argument 2: Depersonalization through Re-personalization
- Video Project: after examining so many people as they use DMDs, it can be gathered that we inject all of our normal emotions into typeface, losing our expressionable humanity.
- Wall - e argument: With so many Ads able to hit us in the same place, we begin to look, dress oh so similar as groups (Branding)
- While so easy to reinvent online, how does that transfer over to real life?

Umbrella Argument 3: Bright Side
-EBIGFY arguments: Pros and cons to digital media; where does the scale really tip?
- On-hand medical data, less paper product, simpler interfacing, does it help make us less human, and more neo-sapien?

HW 14

Bad Good Tv Excerpt.

From the initial pre-read of this 13-page excerpt, I gathered that the Author's point was centered around the growing possibility for cognitive interaction with the shows we watch on TV. The author catalogs the incremental growth of cognitive themes in TV media, citing examples from Starsky and Hutch to The Sopranos. The excerpt debunks how it seems that so often in modern media, we as an audience are basically handed plotlines like children, with movies often leaving terribly apparent "signposts" for us to better get the movie. Their seems to be a sort of disconnect with the argument, implying that many TV shows do not offer this sense of total clarity, while most movies do. The text also describes the necessity for at least some "signposts" so that the viewer isn't completely at a loss. The principle example used is the show ER, in which Medical Jargon is thrown around so casually that without explanation, the viewer wouldn't make head or tails of the show. The excerpt finishes with the supposition that the increase in cognitive media is due to an increase in cognitive ability in people.


Bad/Good Games Excerpt

Reading this thoroughly, (at 8 words a glance) I not only get a very rich understanding of the piece, but I also see the author come out from between the lines to demonstrate his ideas to me. The arguments presented are rich and strong, incorporating excellent real-life examples to provide support for an incredibly well-reasoned thesis. Perhaps most brilliant is the author's choice to demonstrate a thought experiment argument from a timeline swapped for our own; the example of the creation of gaming before reading seems so well reasoned that it seems almost that life followed this circuit in reality. Moreover, the author reveals his point twofold; by demonstrating the common, shallow argument of the perception of videogames and countering with his own insight, all of which he conveys literarily, hitting home the idea, the significance to his earlier point of reading.

It does get slightly confused, however, when he discusses the level of enjoyment present in the games. He made his point clearly that games are often difficult, as mentally challenging as a book can be (albeit a different mental state), but he doesn't acknowledge what is ultimately a hollow reward; you still end up playing the game for hours, growing frustrated, tired, annoyed, and you eventually get the reward for your countless hours- but does this reward truly outweigh the effort? The example of Troy Stolle demonstrates this; he spent all this time to become a Grandmaster Blacksmith in order to simply continue a monotonous action to buy a bigger plot of virtual land. For what, we ask? Having a virtual mansion vs. a virtual shack equates to essentially the same thing, no? A virtual place to sleep for your virtual self. Perhaps this is best explained for the reward we seek in real life, the house we want in reality; our virtual avatars do not tire as we do, and takes less time to earn the spoils we all strive for. Whatever months you spend to upgrade your home on Everquest doesn't come close to the time and effort put into a real life job to do the same thing, which takes years and years. Blacksmiths online face a simpler life, they are never out of work, and can always count on steady pay, requiring nothing of what we as flesh humans need. Videogames remain an escape, albeit a challenging, more difficult one than we may imagine.

As for these two texts' connection to Feed, the author here describes the potential intellectual benefits to digital media, taking into account the external accessibility of such things, as opposed to the onboard access presented in Feed. In Feed, the characters are forever synced to the digital world, never having to sit down and watch or play, always doing so on the go. With Feed TV shows, they don't necessarily need to concern themselves with cognitive advancement, only with pulp entertainment, as everthing is instant gratification. There is none of the delayed gratification that the author of Everything Bad is Good For You speaks of. The users all want everything now, there is no other way to do it.

Feed B - 13 Draft

Feed is certainly a revelatory text, and Anderson makes his points very well when it comes to demonstrating the empty, mindless interactions of most teenagers, and almost a many adults. Logically speaking the world could probably not come to literal 'feeds' per say, because of the anatomical risks and other such issues. However, the polluted oceans and fabricated realities are always just lurking around the corner, and one day we will find ourselves living in bubbles, looking out over a desolated landscape. I feel that this is almost unavoidable at this point, that even if we were to change drastically, we couldn't save all of the future. Society is doomed for a collapse, that's inevitable. The best we could do for that is prepare and prolong it as long as possible. This book is demonstrating that, but perhaps not highlighting the inevitable nature of things quite enough. Yes, nothing got resolved, and in the end, there was just one girl slipping quietly into the void, and one boy simply overloaded with new pairs of jeans. And such brilliant imagery that was- even the feeling of emptiness is warped when hooked up to the feed, that Titus didn't feel totally drained until he had washed away all his funds on products.

Feed As an Allegory of Our Current Machine FAaAoOCM - Assignment 12 -Draft-

Feed is an allegory of our current state. The slang may be rewritten and we might be hanging out on the moon as opposed to union square, but all the pieces are there. We are all Titus in some respects, and we are all heading down that slope. I have had my share of moments where I wished for things to be similar to feed, everything instantly available for the simple sake of luxury, for things to be just effortless. I had, for a while, lost sight of what a little added effort can do for something. Just knowing you struggled for something makes everything all that much more rewarding when it all pays off. When you put your own hard work into something instead of being handed it on a silver platter, the experience is much more fruitful.

Case in point would be the skateboard I made, as I described in post 11. By not choosing to have it all put together for me and receiving a finished copy, I made it so that I collected every part individually and assembled them all by myself. I got as close to making the whole thing as I could without gathering the wood in the deck and forging the steel in the trucks. Feed demonstrates how, with instant satisfaction, people are no longer encouraged about doing things themselves, they only want to be waited on. This instant gratification robs the people of their drive, not only ruining their drive for a deeper happiness, but also furthering their growing depression based in consumer products.

Feed is a tragedy for a handful of reasons. Besides the obvious, surface-level observations, such as Violet's 'death' and the undying commitment to the feed. If we take this latter concept and push it deeper, we see how the commitment to the feed and what it does to people led to the ending being a hollow experience for Titus, where he felt deep regret for Violet's passing, but nothing more. There was nothing accomplished, which is what makes this such an excellent allegory of current times. There was no conclusion, the book just left the ominous taste of "everything must go" in our mouths. This feeling of inconclusiveness reflects incredibly well on the average person, who can grow to feel apprehensive of "the system", a general paranoia that they can't place. Some may go further and identify what makes them feel so, but ultimately, we don't act on it, so beaten down by the machine that we give in before we start, insisting that our struggle would be fruitless and nowhere near worth it.

I think Feed addresses the point rather well,depicting to us an exaggerated (but not by much) version of our current state, our lives as they exist, plugged into the computer, forever accepting the corruption of the digital wave. These teenagers are living totally empty lives, emphasized by Titus in the early pages of the book when he says "you need the noise of your friends, in space." Titus acknowledges discreetly how life is as empty as space, and without these flashy noisy products and commercials, you'd go insane, you'd fall apart. You need the noise of your friends, in space. You need to be distracted to survive.

HW 11 - This is my digital ramadan.

For this experiment, I decided to go the fasting route, to starve myself of digitalization.

It started more or less by accident, when my phone died, taking my music with it as well. I was left without ties to my friends, it being around midnight, and I was in the middle of manhattan, not yet heading home. I just walked around, listening to the silence of a city that supposedly never sleeps. I eventually got cold and decided to head away home, deciding to take the bus so that I could see the city on my way back. I made change and got on the M4.

On the bus, i found myself with less distraction in the form of music, which normally lifts me away from my surroundings and deeper into myself by shutting off the outside and the other people around me. Without this, I was very much aware of the people on the bus, and I was doing my self-assigned task of depicting their lives based off of what they presented. I came to several conclusions, which I will expand out to sort of generalize.

1.) Based on the lines in people's faces, particularly older people, you might see who has lived a certain life. I noticed one woman who had very deep scowl lines, a woman who seemed very bitter and scornful of the others. I decided that she must have had some issues in her life to get her to the point where she views most things with hate or misery, or that her life was sheltered and she was raised under the guise that the world owed her something, and that she alone rides the high horse while the rest of us are lowly peasants.

2.) When you leave the country with your friends on a trip or vacation, you leave whatever worries at home. Like with the new land, sights, sounds, and people, you can lose sight of whatever it was that brought you down originally. You have a breath of fresh, new foreign air, and it refills your tank, getting some physical distance between you and your issues. Plus you might be able to make fun of people in your native tongue, because of the language barrier. and you can pretend you don't know how to tip. Pricks.

3.) Black people are happier than white people.

After my interpersonal bus ride, I got home, where my mother and sister were still awake, albeit my mother only to greet me. I said my hellos and decided to head downstairs to the workshop in the handyman's room to build my skateboard. I have collected all the components individually, deck, trucks, grip tape, wheels, bearings, and hardware, and I was pretty excited to put it all together. First, you should know that I am entirely ham-handed. I just don't have the natural ease with tools and construction that my father and brother have. That being said, I headed downstairs with the components to put together my board. I started by putting the grip tape on, sticking the large sheet against the deck and cutting away the extra. I'm not sure what it was about it, maybe the isolation and the simplicity of the task, but i was genuinely happy to do it, to stand there by myself and carve away any extra material from the grip. From there, I assembled the rest of the board, finding, to my dismay, that my screws are too short for me to put on riser pads which would make it easier to have bigger wheels. All the same, the board came out looking pretty good, and more importantly, mine. My work (and a little blood) went into making that board, and I am proud to have done it. I finished at around 2 am, feeling damn good about myself, then went out for a quick jaunt to try it out. Yeah, the trucks are still a little loose for my taste, and I'll need to take a ratchet to it when I can find one, but I felt a special connection to it, that it was something I made, and I felt free.

I felt free.

Digital Research Draft

Research for the PSP Go

Review links:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/28/psp-go-review/

This link has a good blend of hardware to software reviews, though I would highlight the software in particular, and the way that it manages to relate the new media to the old device. If stretched for time, there is a useful wrap up section at the bottom of the page that serves to adequately address the article's main points.

I had linked to a PC world review, but after reading further, I found it largely indecisive, mostly commenting on popular reception.

This link is more interesting, as it demonstrates the possibility of a new mobile gaming possibility as presented by the apple iPhone. No, having both an iPhone and a PSP Go, I feel that for at least the forseeable future, the PSP will win out over the iPhone as a gaming system. PSPs are, despite other media options, for games. iPhones just add gaming to a list of other things it dabbles in, almost masking its purpose as a phone and MP3 player.

PlayStation links:

GHIJ why are doing this?

Thanks for the comments, much appreciated, even if it's an assignment. I can see that you took your time with your thoughts, and that means a lot. Thank you, Andy, for demonstrating how I got owned. Over and over again.

Now, John, I said that because I beleive that the more the consumer knows that they're getting up and quasi-exercising, the less they see it as a game, which is, by definition, something fun. Most people, particularly those who buy videogames, associate exercise with discomfort and ultimately not enjoyable. I feel that if the Wii shows us too much that it helps us get fit, it will lose some of it's "game" aspect.

I know, my written segment had a bit less than it likely should have, but I also felt that by leaving it open ended, I was able to better provide material for comments from you two. Thus, it served it's purpose. Nonetheless, I will flesh out the next written segment further.

Andy, I totally agree with you in that the "okay" has become a pre-programmed response, that we automatically churn it out when something is put forth to us, as we see that people accept it easily. Plus, it's fairly simple to say. Even zombies could probably squeeze it out. OOOooookkkkkkkkaaaaaayyyyyuuugghghuhg.

Ooh, that's actually an interesting question. I think that there might be a mix between not havign the happy emotion and not expressing it. Because we are essentially talking to the screen, we have less need for expression, because we don't need to add any real visualization to our words, as they are only being read. (Ironically, this should logically be a better way to boost our writing skills, how to better conve ya message through writing) So we don't express it as much online. I do think, however, that there are certain times where we are so zoned into the media that we are past reasonable emotion, and we are just part of the electric current of the machine. -.-

but anyway, if you played me, I'd OWN YOU!

Commenty

AHHHHDEEEEEE! Que paso, brother?

I Really dig this video, regardless of the unorthodox fashion it was done.

It made me think, being as I was so focused on your game of tetris that I forgot to notice the background, and I missed some things, almost missed the Astro-Boy Cosplayer. I also thought it was really cool that you were able to screen the footage of you playing the game over you walking ith the camera in hand.

=To Andy

ABCDEF whore comment time.

Hey John, I've already expressed to you that I think this was a good video, that it was interesting and yet still made me think, about how even something that should be beautiful. like a walk on the boardwalk, turns into something terrible when distracted by digital media.

Basically to restate this video's point is to say that we get so absorbed in the details of digimedia that we lose out on some of the beauty of being in a physical reality.

To shamelessly connect this to my own video, my perspective, I understand how connected people can get to videogames, like the way you talked about moving as the character in the game moves, reacting in time to the game. I do the same thing, getting very involved in what I am doing, excited over in-game victories.

To develop your ideas, I would say that you could have done with a bit less of the screen views when you do hw/AIM.

E.......

Farewell.

-To John Li

Video is finally here.

Your Life on Screen from Tom O'Brien on Vimeo.

What are some thoughts and feelings you have when watching your own video?

That this video is drastically different than the one we did last year. Without being able to provide a soundtrack or other tidits, I felt like it was less capable of entertaining people, of keeping their attention. I did what I could. Retrospectively, after seeing Hannah's and John's, I feel that I could have done more.

When you think about living your physical experience being largely what is shown on the video, how does that seem to you?

The thing is, this is not really quite so much of what I do. It is a small piece of my life. I didn't video myself reading or exercising, or just taking a walk, or socializing offline. This is just the relevant information that regards digital things.

Would you want your little sister (or future son) to spend a lot of time doing this stuff?

Heavens, no. I didn't look quite happy, I'd prefer she never do it ever.

What do you think of the contrast between what's happening ON the digital representation device and what you look like interacting with the DRD?


What do you think of ideas like the Wii that are supposed to make this contrast less stark?

I like that things are being take in a new direction, but if it is marketed as a deliberate move that way, it will lose popularity.

Okay, so it's late, I know, crucify me. It's actually in the process of uploading and converting and such on vimeo, I like the quality the best so I'm willing to wait.

In the video, you'll notice me playing my 360. Like John Li, I told myself to ignore the presence of the camera, and for the most part, I did. I did look over every once in a while to make sure it was still recording. Also, for when you see only my face as I'm using the computer, the video seems skippy and editted, that's because photobooth on my laptop wouldn't stay open and recording as I paroused other sites, so I had to load a page and look at it in the background so it could record. Lastly are clips of me using my home computer, and a little video of me watching stupid TV. This should all be done around tomorrow, 5-6pm.

What has been altered by digitalization?

Dad- In general, all this new, digital stuff is pretty arbitrary. It's what the kids do now, we had our thing, now you have yours. I'm not saying I like it, I always think a kid should be out an active instead of in and idle. But, things have gotten better, like the technology in hospitals, in that people have instant access to old records and can transfer things instantly.

At the same time, things have become much worse. (We were talking about love here) When you love a girl now, and she rejects you, or you get dumped, or you break up, there's no real space between you to clear your head. Back in Ireland, when I fell out of a relationship, we could go our separate ways. No one had a phone so the only times we'd see each other was a hello here and there, so there was a way to get it out of your head, to cope. Now, they're always there. If not in person, then on the texting ,on the internet. You can never get away, never really clear you're head. It sucks.

Eileen- I see how texting and websurfing has done terrible things to kids' language. I mean, I teach comparative literature, so I get a lot of papers. You wouldn't imagine how many kids hand in papers they typed up on their phones in class, sometimes forgetting to not use shorthand messaging for words. I have read some papers with a couple of LOLs and U's. I can't imagine what it'll get like from here.

Thoughtty wotts. (HW 3)

In regards to digitalization, I'm sort of straddling the fence. I see how it is completely altering how we talk, how we see people, the way we interact. That being said, I also believe that there are both positives and negatives to that. One one hand, it sort of draws people closer, having them open up more often to their friends online, connecting. Unfortunately, this attitude changes in person, once you can see a person, have them react in real time to your words, have them feel the emotion more than any typing could do. Facebook helps to unite long lost friends, but also invites a certain amount of disconnect in person. It's always much easier to talk to a screen as opposed to a face.

I prefer texting (the computer tells me texting is technically not a word, and I was taken aback, before I realized how that was further proof of how digitalization is affecting us. OMG LOL) to phone calls. This, I imagine, is a result of impatience for patchy calls and strained hearing through crappy earpieces. Texting, while still not a real substitute for person-to-person talks, makes communications easier and at least slightly more fluid.

I want to reread some of my favorite books. First being A Clockwork Orange, hence the titley witle.

Update - I was just upstate this weekend, with no phone and no internet, no cable TV. I felt perfectly fine, maybe a little lighter, save for the anxiety of anticipating an email response from a couple of people that I wasn't able to get to until today. Turns out I missed a potential movie date with friends and a couple people needed to talk to me. I'm not sure how to feel about it. It's deeply personal and not something to blast on the internet, lest some unseemly types get to it.

I guess I'll just update these thughts as I go, putting in new things every once in a while. Yesterday were the MTV VMAs, or the Video Music Awards. The internet was buzzing with talk of the event, particularly when Kanye West disrespected Taylor Swift by leaping onstage in the middle of her acceptance speech and snatching the mic from her, announcing that Beyonce should have rightfully won the award and that her video was the best of all time. Kanye then left in a bit of a huff, as MTV scrambled to cut to a commercial. They did a recap of the show, demonstrating how the website Twitter had over 10,000 tweets about the VMAs, Kanye in particular, next being Taylor Swift.

Now, I certainly see the impact this has on our concept of digitalization, with millions of people able to share their opinions instantly over the internet to people who really don't care past sharing their own. The thing about the internet is that it gives you a voice, it makes you willing and able to share anything at any time, as you are essentially talking to a screen and not the real person. I could tell you right here and now that I love you, that I have always loved you, from the day we met, but it amounts to very little in this 12 point Times New Roman.

The very fact that we are doing this class on computers tells us how connected we are to the electronics we claim to use. Turns out, IT uses US. Okay, perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeraty wation, but regardless, the point is evident - we are leaning more and more into the digital void, and boy, it looks deep.

Hell, even our music is changing. It's all auto-tuning, so that artists no longer need to have any actual talent, a machine can make them sound nice. Disney is making that concept it's personal motto, making any young actress they hire an instant hit with their filtered, technological sound.