Neuromancer

Gibson does quite a job of using adjectives that relate to technology rather than nature.  This is very fitting for a book about cyberspace and matrices.  I notice this at the very beginning of the story.  Gibson's opening line is "the sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel" (1).  The use of this image rather than saying it was foggy, drab, or grey, shows Case's jaded opinion about technology and the real world.  At another point, the narrator describes a suit as being the color of gun-metal.  I thought to myself that he could have just as easily called it a suit of charcoal, one of the most fundamentally natural and earthy things.  Even when talking about Molly, Gibson always refers to her burgundy nails, which "looked artificial," alluding to the technology of acrylics (24).  It is as though her nails amaze or enthrall Case in some way.  The mere mention of nature, as in chapter six, is immediately followed up by an unnaturalness: "dead grass tuft[ed] the cracks in a canted slab of freeway concrete" (85).  This image argues for the superiority of advancement, development, and technology over the natural world.  Another thing that the story does is truly date technologies and support how quickly new technologies can become old technologies.  For instance, when discussing Ratz prosthetic arm, it was described as antique and cased in ruddy pink plastic (4).  But at one time, such a prosthesis was the best there was or all that was available.

Cybersubculture Comparison

I really enjoyed doing this paper.  It was fun immersing myself in two worlds that I never necessarily would have been involved in otherwise.  My biggest problem getting a sound idea of the two sites was my socializing skills.  My friends do not use MySpace anymore, having replaced it with Facebook many years ago.  And I am a textbook introvert, so I was unlikely to befriend new cyber-pals just for the heck of it.  (I, in fact, did not befriends new cyber-pals just for the heck of it.)  Long story short, my descriptions of the social aspect of MySpace were more from personal experience and my memory of actively using the site three+ years ago.  From what I can tell, though, the main features are unchanged.  Likewise, with foursquare, I have only been able to acquire a handful (six to be exact) of friends with whom to socialize.  I'm using the term socialize loosely here, as I do not really see the merit in foursquare being called a social networking system/site.  It seems as though the creators made it purposefully difficult to communicate over the foursquare waves.

My favorite aspect of the project was learning the technical things that made the paper so interesting.  I never knew about text-wrapping, inserting hyperlinks to pictures, or creating thumbnails before formatting my paper.  Adding the visuals was fun and helped make my paper's points better.

I was disappointed, though, that when I uploaded my paper to GoogleDocs it broke my hyperlinks and would not let me reestablish them, even though the images I wanted to link were in my GoogleDocs folder.  Does anyone know why this happened or have a solution?

Hermeneutics

Pierre Lévy’s dream of an achievable utopia seems more and more out of reach the more we read commentary on the subject.  Like with the Bert Laden episode, there will be people on either side of any debate.  On the one hand, people take it for what it is, a comedic attempt by a guy with PhotoShop and too much time on his hands.  On the other, though, there are the people who are highly offended by the image.  The problem with our convergence culture, now, is the fact that the people who are insulted and offended by an image such as this one have full and easy access to it.  Staunch conservatives and extreme liberals find themselves in the same communities, which can create a very volatile space.

My argument, then, is that, just as with TV, we are able to edit and refine what we watch, surf, and explore to fit our beliefs.  So, why aren’t people doing that?  If seeing a cut-out of a beloved children’s character next to a terrorist who is unidentifiable to most small children is so awful, change the channel, go to a different website, visit a different forum.

Further, I appreciate Mark Poster’s defense that cultures who find other cultures blatantly insulting are, in most cases, merely ignorant of the latter’s motivation.  True, in some cases, individuals are trying to make a point against another (the only thing that comes to mind is actually intracultural: Natalie Maines’ insult of George Bush’s being from Texas, given his involvement in the Iraq War).  In many cases, however, misunderstandings stem from the fact that a cultural or religious difference cannot be placed in a single cognitive compartment in our brains.  Sometimes things just do not make sense, and it is possible they never will.

How can different frames of reference affect communication?  Can you say someone's interpretation of something you say, do, or blog is wrong?  Merely because their interpretation differs from or clashes with your own?

S/R 1: Jenkins' Convergence Culture

Henry Jenkins has two main focuses in his book  Collective Culture– collective intelligence and its relationship with and pathway to an achievable utopia and the relationship between capitalism and commodification and trans-media marketing. For the first, he relies on an example with the TV show Survivor, which was the first major series that people tried to spoil. The fact that not everyone could know everything invoked the need for the collective intelligence that was found in spoiler blogs and chat rooms. “A collective intelligence… assumes that each person has something to contribute” and “people work together, put their heads together” to discover something that no single person could know by himself (53). Author Pierre Lévy believes that this continued conversing and sharing of information will result in an “’achievable utopia’… when the sharing of knowledge and the exercise of grassroots power become normative” (246). The evidence for Jenkins’ other main focus comes from such brands as Harry Potter, The Matrix, and American Idol, as well as in political campaigns. Jenkins says the success of Harry Potter came from its use of various media – literature, film, toys, and merchandise; but the brand is also making it possible for people to fully participate in convergence culture by pooling knowledge with others, sharing and comparing value systems, and circulating what is created via the internet (185). Political campaigns also take advantage of trans-media marketing. Before the “Dean Scream” went viral, Howard Dean used new media (namely the internet) in ways never used before the 2004 Presidential campaign season, which was important, Jenkins says, because he got young voters excited. Both The Matrix and American Idol linked trans-media marketing to capitalism and commodification. According to Jenkins, the Wachowskis “integrat[ed] multiple texts to create a narrative so large that it cannot be contained within a single medium” (97). Fans had to play the video games, talk with their friends, and read blogs or they would miss much of the point.  Jenkins also gives various examples of how the “layers upon layers of references… may require you to move through the film frame by frame on your DVD player” (100-101). American Idol did the same thing with brand recognition. Many times, viewers would have to text votes in on their AT&T phones; otherwise their vote would not go through.

The most prominent aspect that Jenkins discusses is his concept of collective intelligence. Each chapter has its own interpretation of what the collective intelligence means for convergence culture and how it plays in to each medium. For instance, in the chapter “Spoiling Survivor,” Jenkins quotes Lévy: “’No one knows everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity’” (26-27). However, Lévy believes that eventually this collective knowledge will result in an autonomous culture. Neither Jenkins nor I truly believe that. There are people that will argue merely to argue. And there are people so entrenched in their beliefs that no amount of collective intelligence will yield a consensus. Another example comes from Keanu Reeves telling TV Guide: “’What audiences make of Revolutions will depend on the amount of energy they put into it’” (97). And Jenkins interprets that “viewers get even more out of the experience if they compare notes and share resources than if they try to go it alone” (97). Jenkins further stresses the importance of collective intelligence in regards to such stories as The Matrix, stating that “’Joe Popcorn’ can pool his knowledge with other fans and build a collective concordance on the internet” because although the film is difficult to just get, “the emergence of knowledge cultures made it possible for the community as a whole to dig deeper into this bottomless text. Harry Potter also provides a good example of collective intelligence. When discussing the fanfic sites, Jenkins introduces the beta-reading, which not only improves children’s writing skills, it also takes unnecessary focus away from “what can be counted on a standardized test,” which, I feel is not the best way to gauge a child’s intelligence nor scholastic success.  An example from class is the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.  People fear that, because people can post whatever they like, it will be unreliable.  However, because so many people post to the site, it is a sort of self-correcting machine. The collective intelligence of the millions of users weeds out the fallacies and leaves almost as much accuracy as Encyclopedia-Britannica.  Now that is collective intelligence at work.

All about the politics

For as long as I can remember, political debates have not been about the issues, or even debating.  It's all about the politics.  This is, like Jenkins says, why the Republican candidates for the 2008 presidential election refused to participate in an unedited debate show with Anderson Cooper.  Politicians "like to control the environment" (Jenkins 276).  This is why they agree upon a select number of questions to prepare before debates.

And if you notice, even with the predetermined questions in their arsenal, most of the time responses in debates end up being more like word vomit - trying to see which candidate can say the most bipartisan, patriotic, and relevant things in the time allotted.

I am reminded of the show Crossfire.  Two very partisan gentlemen argue over a minute issue until they are blue in the face, and yet no one is any closer to a consensus nor agreement than before the "debate."  Thank goodness Jon Stewart chose to go on the show to call out Tucker Carlson for the artificial debates CNN set up for him and his counterpart.

It is due to examples like these that I am so impressed that the Democratic candidates agreed to participate in the "experimental" show with Anderson Cooper.  Though I do feel that it backfired.  While some racy issues made it onto the air, many (maybe even thousands) more got thrown out for being too controversial or not right for television.

Is it right for television programs to edit what content (within censorship limits) politicians and the public are exposed to?  Should Americans not be able to ask politicians their true stances on controversial and off-the-cuff issues?  Should politicians be given time to prepare answers?  Personally, I would rather hear what a presidential candidate has to say on an issue on the fly, perhaps over dinner?