Blog 10: Collective intelligence or cult of the amateur?

I have read Keen’s book ‘The Cult of the Amateur’ pretty interestingly. I have agreed with some of his ideas, but some of reasons he mentions make me to be hard to support his argument.

Keen complains that amateur cultural critics, artists and musicians are raising serious cultural and ethical questions and they are dangerous and scary. He also says that the real challenge in today’s Web 2.0 is finding and nurturing true talent in an online sea of amateurs.

I agree that some of amateur content online immature and fool, but amateur writers, amateur producers, amateur technicians and amateur audience are creative, genuine and new. It is also obvious that posting an opinion on blogs or YouTube does not require professional training or superior accreditation. However, some of information is from their personal experience and wisdom that never appears in books. Moreover, there are various cultural circumstances that scientific disciplines or punditry cannot perfectly explain.

Moreover, all conversation of the Internet is not a total waste of time and the utility of Wikipedia information seems hard to consider itself a full of trash. There is not just some isolated computer geeks who want make themselves famous in virtual world, there are actually more individuals who want to contribute online and share their wisdom.  The experts may claim that an professional journalism and their decades of education, experience and training in the field should be remunerated and I totally agree with it. Moreover, when people passively believe that opinions by expects are correct, reliability of the content can have author effects. Since author has a big name and special education, people simply assume that what he is saying is right.

I think it could be like religion. Once we get strong believes in something or someone, it is very hard to admit that it could be gone wrong. The internet gets rid of author effects. There is no name value or other conditions to make content look like valuable or reliable. There is purely content to be judged by numerous other people. Of course, the world without experts professional journalists is pretty alarming thoughts; however, I think, monopoly of knowledge circulation is more alarming thoughts.

Reference 

Keen, A (2007) ‘Truth and lies’ in The Cult of the Amateur, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, pp. 64-93.

Pre-existing multiple identities

Pre-existing multiple identities It is not only the Internet that offers us opportunities to have multiple identities. It is, of course, easier and quicker to experience different lives and communicate with virtual friends in virtual worlds on the Internet. The virtual identities on the Internet can be our fantasies or close representation of our real identities. There are also communities that are not necessarily built around face to face meetings. Some of these people know each other and some are unknown, but more often these groups will not have times to meet face to face. However, if we think about before the Internet era, people have already played role plays and constructed multiple identities in various ways. For instance, fans’ role plays of the characters in science fictions such as Star Trek have gone beyond their simple enthusiasm. They have dressed like the characters of the show and wanted to be part of that world or their own version of that world. Moreover, Cosplay can also be one of the popular forms to construct multiple identities. Cosplay fans wear detailed makeup and elaborate costumes to mimic the characters of their favorite anime, mange or video game characters. They learn signature poses, dialogue and transform themselves from real world identities into chosen fictional characters. They spend considerable part of their lives as completely different characters from their real identities. In real life, they are a lawyer, nurse, teacher, or housewife, but when they cosplay, they are a fairy, warrior or princess. The advent of the World Wide Web has given people more opportunities to experience multiple identities and multiple version of the world. The ability to self-publish world at an easily-accessible archive may support a democratic urge to allow more people to create and share their multiple personas which they can never do in the real world or which may be controversial if they reveal it to the world. Some people’s construction of multiple identities has already existed before the emergence of the Internet through various sub-cultural forms and it has been accelerated with an easier access to the people who share same interests. Bibliography Turkle, S. (1995) ‘Life on the screen: identity in the age of the Internet in Introduction: identity in the age of the Internet, New York, Simon&Schuster, pp.9-26. Baron, N.S (2008) ‘Always On: Language in an online and mobile world’ in My Best Day, Chaper 5, pp.71-98.

Cyborgs and the post-human future: our love/ hate relationship with machine

 

Cyborgs and the post-human future: our love/ hate relationship with machine

We all require technical assistance for the different needs of our bodies in some ways; for instance, some need a pair of glasses to see things more clearly and some need hearing aids to hear clearly. They have both biological and artificial bodies, but we do not say they are Cyborgs or have a body without soul. Technologies do not let a human body to be an entire animal; it makes our bodies to transform to machine. Bodies are constantly mutating and relying on technology.

I understand Haraway’s Cyborg Manifest in a way that the Cyborg is not a teleological singularity but it is communication and interaction between human and technology. Technologies are not just  tolls, but it is secondary actors that shape our life. She concentrates on biotechnology and biological networks and how those are constructing our bodies. The emergence of Cyborg in human culture has changed human behaviours. We are all Cyborgs and we are already assimilated with computers. She thinks that the terminology to define things is culturally constructed, so the definition of Cyborg ‘unnatural’ forces us to consider that our conceptions of humanity are arbitrary.

Cyborg may break down and resist the conceptions of dominant individualism as human being and humanity. However, what is so unnatural in our bodies and what are really problems with Cyborg and post-humanism? She claims that ‘production of a universal, totalizing theory is a major mistake. When technology seems to replace many places that only human being could have done, our horror always mingles with intense fascination. We should think about what humanity really means and Cyborg imagery can create different conceptions of humanity.

The network society: social aspects of computer networks

 

People are social animals. Social networking between individuals has gone on almost as long as societies have existed. People share their concerns, feeling and resources such as information at the cafe, local community centre or the cornet street in the 20^th century. And in the 21^st century, the Internet and new media replaced those physical spaces.  The advent of a new form of communication mediated by the computer technology has been studied to explore how people exchange information and construct their relationship online. New media and its impacts on communications are dependent on the type of a tie connecting individuals, so the theory of the informational strength of network ties between individuals are reanalysed for the impact of new media on the strength of the social network ties. Does the advent of computer technologies and new media change social communication and networking forms in society?   

 

With the advent of the Internet, online communities and social networking websites, their significance on the construction of new networks has increased. There are more numerous potential information holders online than our workplaces or neighbours. They may be connected each other through weak ties or they can be complete strangers; as a result, they have more probability to possess more useful and desirable resources. Granovetter’s theory of a strong and weak tie is popular in social network analysis. Information from heterophilous ties are more useful than those from homophilous ties since homophily is likely slow to reformulate communication links and that induces an invisible barrier to the effective flow of innovations.

The Internet enables people to maintain the relationship with others in a weak tie using bulletin board or sending group messages. Individuals construct multiple types of relationships sharing various kinds of social relationships and renegotiate their communication pathways through Internet-based communication technologies. For instance, websites such as Wikipedia, Youtube, ehow are the leading online destination for practical information advice and know-how. Although there are doubts of the usefulness and trust of the information, those websites provide the convenience of asynchronous communication and information flows. Constant, David et al conducted the research to examine why people answer the questions online for a total stranger. They found that information providers’ reasons for replying are personal benefits and organizational motivation; for instance, they enjoy helping others and they want to be a good company citizen. (Constant, David 1996, pp.129)

Moreover, the new media has become a new communication mechanism for strongly tied pairs as well. Some researchers also found that social networking sites such as Facebook help college students remain close to their high school friends when the mover away to college. Many of ties among Facebook users are derived from the past relationship and they do Facebook not to get new information but maintain their existing relationships by overcoming geographical limitation. It is true that the use of Internet technology has been often emphasized to examine a computer network weak tie environment. However, when social networking theory is applied to a web product, it may be very complex to distinguish all friendships and social interactions with respect to tie strength. Therefore, a network analysis and the usefulness of information flow based on the strength of a tie should be reassessed along with how people change the ways to exchange information and construct their relationship in this Web 2.0 era.

References

Constant, David Et Al (1996) ‘The Kindness of Strangers: The Usefulness of Electronic Weak Ties for Technical Advice’ in Organization Science.7.2, pp. 119-132.

Social Network War (video)

It’s not a blog entry, it is a fun video I think we all can agree with and laugh!

Hope you check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYoAwfh4QOU

Human-Technology Relationships and humanity? From Doctor Who to My Sister’s Keeper

 

It is more than half century ago. But were Doctor Who genesis episodes simply fanciful ideas? It seemed to explore the possibilities and potentials of technologies or some of these are in development now.   

The episode located some of the major issues on these intelligent machines and the questions of who controls them. There were fears for the impacts of human intelligent machines on the understanding of human being. Human beings’ emotional attachments and relationships with technologies have brought about great concerns.

The program consistently maps the uneasiness of the interaction of humans and the technology. Much of the episodes also focus on emotion and compassion that cybogs and human being are all the victims of the greediness for technologies. Moreover, many science fictions such as Terminators after Doctor Who represent current human-technology relationships and contemporary fears of cyborgs, the human-machine hybrid.  

 

People are getting generous about technologies; rational artifacts and the relationships with technologies Mcluhan clams that technologies are extensions of ourselves.(1967)  Technologies are extensions of our being; webcams and cameras are our remote eyes; mobile phones are our remote ears and the computers are our expanded memory. Furthermore, the Internet is probably extensions of our foot to reach people in distance relationships. Those structure change how we think of ourselves and the world. People wear technologies all the time. And I insist that people are changed to accompany with technologies instead of the other way around. That means technologies certainly change people in some extent. People’s emotional attachment with non-human being is not new at all and their fears for those artifacts getting smart enough to control us is also an ancient repertoire.  

 

We are developing technologies and designing relational artifacts to extend human cognitive power and perfect them. In this tendency, I think of Designer baby. ‘Designer baby is a baby whose genetic makeup has been artificially selected by genetic engineering combined with in vitro fertilization to ensure the presence or absence of particular genes or characteristics (Wikipedia)’. We already are getting closer to the future of the ultimate commodification of human being by such use of reprogenetics[1]

 We are getting close to breed super humans by developing techniques like germinal choice technology. So, which one is more scary, a designer baby for parents’ personal preference or relational artifacts that are programmed to access user’s emotional states? It seems that we dhave to define the meaning of the nature of humanity.

Bibliography

Designer Baby, Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designer_baby

Lanier, Jaron. (2010) You are not a gadget . New York : Alfred A.Knopf, pp.3-23.

McLuhan, M., & Fiore, Q. (1967). The medium is the massage . New York: Bantam. [excerpts]

Turkle, Sherry. (2004) ‘Witherpsychoanalysis in computer culture.’ In Kaplan, D.M. (ed.) Readings in the philosophy of technology . (2004) Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, pp.415-429.

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[1] Reprogenetics is a term referring to the merging of reproductive and genetic technologies expected to happen in the near future as techniques like germinal choice technology become more available and more powerful. (Wikipedia)

Remediation and Remix

 

What is remediation? Latin ‘Remederi’ is to heal or to restore to health.  Remediation is the representation of one medium in another. Remediation also means the new process of production based on old ones.

Bolter and Grusin claim that ‘remediation, change, media, mediation, new media, transition, dynamics …our culture’s contradicting imperatives for immediacy and hypermediacy… a double logic of remediation. Our culture wants both to multiply its media and to erase all traces of mediation: ideally, it wants to erase its media in the very act of multiplying them. They say there is no single medium and a single medium platform’ (pp. 53-62).

Do new kinds of media simply enrich the variety of old media?  Many people are quite optimists for the mixed forms of media with existing technologies. Remediation of different media forms is reshaping our popular culture, the media and the way people consume the media.

Earlier media have refashioned one another and photography remediated painting, film remediated a play, television remediated film and the Internet remediated news, radio and face to face meeting. Media theorists say that old media never die but what dies are the tools we use to access content. The flow of content across multiple platforms; films are reproduced into computer games; the TV series is reproduced into cinema and vice versa.

In film industry, traditional film-making has notably replaced by a digital technology and it is a significant turn in film industry. Photography, painting and film making have borrowed much concepts from the past and create new ones and different technologies, genre, aesthetic forms are mixed and recreated.. Henry Jenkins called this ‘media convergence’.

In this environment, do new kinds of media enrich the variety of old media and fill a lack or repair a fault of the forms of the media? It is hard to criticise or welcome the remediation of media until it is fully understood. However, it makes me think of Benjamin’s ideas in the presence of original and the aura of authenticity. The digitalization provide us with easy access to produce a piece of art. I could not help but wonder, do easiness of creating an artistic form and its aestheic aura can’t go together?

Referencesc

Benjamin, Walter (1935) ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in Benjamin, W. (1992) in Illuminations, London: Fontana Press, pp. 211-244.

Bolter, J. D., and Grusin, R. (1999) ‘Remediation: Understanding New Media’  Cambridge: MIT Press, pp.2-15, and 53-62.

Online relationships in networked society

 

With the diffusion of networked technology and computer technology, personal relationships is easily formed and maintained online. As computer mediated communication has become part of our life and replaced huge part of our social relationship, we often face interpersonal conflict online and need to learn how to handle it. It could be easier if we simply log out from online relationship as they walk away from the situation offline and create a new relationship using anonymous and multiple identities. Computer mediated communication was traditionally considered be more impersonal and more task-oriented; however, over time, in-depth conversations are exchanged in online relationships increases the degrees of personal closeness.

 

In addition, the recent results show that people who want to continue their online relationship are concerned for appropriate impression management and conflict management in online relationships. (Ishii, p.368) The current online users do not recognize any differences between CMC and face to face relationships and show same degree of concerns for those relationships.
Intimacy is now quite considerable in online relationships and is often achieved more easily than in offline relationships. Anonymity gives people self-disclosure that makes them less vulnerable and self-disclosure. The users expose their sensible issues that they never tell their significant others more feely to someone who may never know their identity. This in depth communication develops closer relationships more rapidly.

While some people develop meaningful relationships online, some online relationships are still very easy to be built and terminated without much concern for the negative outcomes. It is also arguable how anonymity and self-disclosure effect on the management in online relationships. Anonymity in cyberspace and online relationships is like wearing a mask or meeting a stranger on a train. I cannot help wonder; are we making a friend who is fully trustable and reliable without statues and power differences or are we making fake relationships?

Reference

Ishii, Kumi (2010) ‘Conflict Management in Online Relationships’ in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 13(4): 365-370.

The future of screen is mobile, less and invisible.

The future of screen is mobile, less and invisible.

The key immersion of the screens has been for bigger, flatter and proliferate external monitors as secondary reading devices. Over the last few decades, screens have been irreplaceable and irresistible in viewing devices including TV sets, movie theatres, computers, mobile phones and etc. Lager multi-touch screens, better gesture input and flawless voice recognition are already happening. Where are interfaces headed? Can the future of interface overcome the screen’s tradition of viewer immobility?

I expect curved monitors or flexible and rolled out displays will replace rectangular and hard monitors. HP’s flexible monitors which a thin film of transistors sandwiched with an E Ink film showed the positive future of unbreakable and multipurpose plastic display. This technology may promise cheap and colourful flexible screens for the screen market in the recent future.

In next five years, the widely available and malleable displays and the predictions about a future full of lighter, battery free, and ubiquitous connectivity already look pretty promising.
Virtual keyboards may eliminate physical keyboards entirely. I imagine the future in which I simply hold may hands in front of me and have a computer recognize the movements of our fingers or I do not even need typing in midair, if there is voice recognition. I will interface with computers through voice and mind control. This is going to be amazaing!

Some say this futuristic scenario can never become a reality. But the rapidly changing world of television and screen media and an interaction of technology and design give us a possitive perspective on this change. However, given the rate of technological advancements, they could not be  as fantastic as they sound. There are tons of ideas surrounding this futuristic scenario but it is sometimes too many to include in one story. What do you think? If the technology presented in these blueprints above becomes reality, would it have only positive effects on society?

Reference
Manovich, Lev (2001) ‘The screen and the user’ in The Language of New media, Cambridge, Mass, London, MIT Press, pp. 94-115.
Tyson, Mike ( 2010) ‘A Look at the Future of Screen Technology’, in http://www.unplgged.com, available at http://www.unplggd.com/unplggd/future-of-screen-technology-126385

Changes of social interaction in the age of the internet

In the readings of week 6, the authors suggest the perspectives of ideal network society. The emergence of the Internet brought about the rise of new patterns of social interaction. Physical distance is getting less important and pre-existing community is fragmented. We might be able to say endlessly about what we have been given from the advantages of the Internet.

However, some of the disadvantages of the Internet and virtual community such as social isolation, a breakdown of pre-social communication, abandonment of face to face interaction in real setting and alienation from the real world should not be underestimated. Castells says that ‘Role- playing and identity building as the basis of on-line interaction are a tiny proportion of Internet-based sociability, and this kind of practice seems to be heavily concentrated among teenagers.’

 

I think this is very arguable as there are plenty of cases that Internet role playing games or chatting rooms that badly affect people especially young people. It is certainly not uncommon in South Korea that teenagers commit crimes or sexual assaults because their virtual role playing directly affects their real life. Teenagers of this information age need the internet and computers since they go to school. They need this convenient technology to do research their assignments and it all leads computer dependency. Yes, it is a minority of teenagers that Internet role playing affects their everyday life, but it is also carefully examined since it is teenagers. Adolescent is on their way of negotiating their social identity and sexual identity. Role playing on the Internet can have huge influences on their construction of identity, social behaviour and morality.

As Castells claims that it might not just a fault of computer based technological changes, but the changes in society generally including economic changes, cultural changes and changes in the way of local people related. Thus, to understand this new form of social interaction, we should consider fundamental changes of society in the age of the Internet. However, when teenagers communicate with other people in online chat rooms without leaving their home or when they are addicted in one particular on-line role playing games, online sociability could generate new kind of online related issues ‘identity confusion’ after online bullying and internet addiction.

Reference
Castell, Manul (2001) ‘Virtual communities or network society?’ in The Internet Galaxy, Oxford: Orxford University Press, pp.116-136.