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!