The New Digital Divide

Catching up on my blogging:

The old digital divide was, of course, between affluent people who could afford the new technologies of personal/home computer and the internet and the ability and knowledge to actually use such technologies.  Of course when technologies are brand new they are going to be more expensive and less-widely accessible.  Now that this is not the case (anyone can buy a desktop computer for less than $200 and there are wi-fi hot spots everywhere), the divide has shifted.  People have the opportunity to be exposed to all sorts of information that they would not have easy access to even five years ago.  You can know what is happening in Egypt and Japan from the comfort of your living room.  People can explore different points of view and try to understand different opinions.  However, because of the technologies of such companies as Google, people are being fed information tailor-made specifically for them.

Based on search trends, Google produces sites that would seem pleasing to the user.  Other than the total creep factor, that Google software is essentially spying on our every Google move, some may argue that this type of filtering is hurting democracy.  People are not talking with each other.  Republicans are becoming more staunchly republican, and Democrats are entrenched in their ideals more than ever.  Of course, it is only natural to gravitate toward like-minded people as oneself.  Just like in high school, your clique or niche (online or offline) is going to be made up of the same type of people as you (same general socio-economic class, similar interests/hobbies, etc.).  So why would online politics be any different?  I have no idea.  And it is not just online either.  There are partisan television and radio shows as well.

If the discourse is not taking place in the chat rooms, where is it taking place?  I really don't think it is.  People feel uncomfortable talking about politics with those who are not like-minded.  They feel vulnerable and unsafe.  So they are more likely to stick with people they know won't shake their political foundation to the core.  Shows like Crossfire (though no longer on air) do very little to fix the issue.  If people are talking, it is most likely behind closed doors, one on one - an earnest discussion to discover their true political beliefs.  But I do think this is probably rare.  People don't want to question their beliefs.  It is too scary to take the Cartesian route and question everything.  So often times people do the exact opposite and question nothing.

Summary/Response #3: ExistenZ

The movie ExistenZ begins with a group of avid gamers gathering to test the new creation of game designer Allegra Geller.  The console is a flesh-colored blob that we later find out is made of animal parts and synthetic DNA, and its movements are like heartbeats.  To play the game, you must have a bio-port surgically implanted in your spine at the small of your back.  Allegra says that getting a bio-port is like “getting your ears pierced;” it is so common.  A man comes in while the group is plugged in to the game and shoots Allegra with a gun made from flesh and bone and teeth that act as bullets: “Death to the deamoness Allegra Geller,” he says.  We find out he is a realist, someone who hates video games and thinks they are a danger to humanity and to reality.  To escape the danger, Allegra is carried away by Ted Pikul, a marketing trainee who must now act as bodyguard.  They must plug into her console to ensure it was not damaged when the game was disrupted by the shooting.  Ted does not have a bio-port, however, fearing surgical modification of his body.  They find a gas station that will implant a bio-port in Ted only to find out that the gas station owner, Gas, wants to kill Allegra for a large bounty put on her head by a group of realists.  Ted kills Gas, and the two escape, though Ted’s new bio-port was intentionally infected by Gas.  Allegra is still worried about her console.  Ted’s bio-port is mended by a friend of Allegra’s, and they finally plug in.  Ted claims: “I feel just like me” inside the game.  The characters are constantly impressed by how real everything feels within the virtual world.  They arrive in a video game shop and get portable consoles to plug in further.  They are now two virtual worlds away from reality.  After pausing the game, Ted says his real life “feels completely unreal” and he is not sure “real life” is real at all.  So they plug back in and Ted notes that “freewill is not really a factor in this little world” to which Allegra replies, “just enough to make it interesting.”  Allegra then tries to plug in yet again, but the port is bad, and she gets very sick.  Ted brings her out of the game, but the couple is being shot at.  The last scene reveals characters taking off gaming headgear, revealing that the movie commenced inside a virtual reality.  They were no less than one step from reality for the entire movie.  The story closes with one of the gamers saying, “Tell me the truth, are we still in the game,” a question that persists and can never truly be answered.

The movie spends a lot of time focusing on the fusion of technology with flesh.  A prime example is Allegra’s gaming console at the beginning.  Not only does it look like it could be an enlarged human fetus, its movements are like heartbeats, and Allegra treats it like her child.  Another exhibit of this is the concept of the bio-port – you must literally let the game enter your body, though Allegra writes off that vulnerability by comparing the opening to a mouth.  Ted not having a bio-port at the beginning of the movie shows that he is less receptive to the new technology and hints at his realist leanings.  The gun also comes up multiple times in the film.  Advanced technology is used to build it, but the gun is made from flesh, bone, and teeth.  Allegra says in the movie, “there is some sort of bleed between game-life and real-life.”  This is the main point of displaying the dichotomy of flesh and technology.  When gamers are so immersed in their games that the line is blurred between virtual and actual realities, it can present a real problem.  This is especially apparent when the game must literally be allowed inside your body.  The cord that plugs into the bio-port looks like an umbilical cord, and the body provides the energy for the gaming console.  It is as though people are opting to replace their own human experiences, like have children perhaps, with virtual ones – like being shot at in virtual reality is better than anything that could happen in actual reality.  Although technology is a part of our reality in current times and cannot be separated from it, the movie warns us to constantly be skeptical and wary of the technologies and very aware of how they affect and play into our lives.

AR

We live in a society in which ever-changing technologies are almost necessary, for people get bored with the current ones in the blink of an eye.  Some of the aspects of augmented reality are kind of cool, but others just seem to encourage laziness on the part of the consumer.
For instance, it would be nice to point your phone at a building to see what shops or restaurants are held within, for such an act is only slightly quicker than searching your location on Google then finding nearby venues.  The same goes for real estate.  What an idea to find a building in which you want to live, and instantly know if that dream is even possible, without having to look through the classifieds or Apartment Finder magazine or contacting a realtor.
On the other hand, how difficult is it really to go to the post office and find the box that fits your package before shipping?  Not difficult at all.  Besides, you have to physically go to the post office anyway, so why bother spending the time downloading the app, situating your package in front of a camera, and waiting for it to process the image and its dimensions before spitting back the size of the box (no matter how "instantaneous" the creators say the app is)?
Creepy was exactly the word I thought of about half-way through this piece.  That, and "big brother."  One "might learn just where in a foreign ministry building a potential source's office is."  No matter how simple it is to locate someone's address or whereabouts on the internet, it does not need to be made easier by creating an app that will access just that information with minimal effort, especially in such an increasingly volatile world.  This merely seems to me to be a way of making journalists' jobs easier.  But the digging and getting your hands dirty has always been a part of the job.  So that when you uncover something really juicy, you can break the story and get both the recognition and personal satisfaction from the hard work.
I suppose overall, some of the stuff seems neat and useful, but most of it seems novelty and unnecessary.  While it won't necessarily narrow people's experiences, it will change them in a way that does not seem for the better.

Neuromancer part II

One prevalent theme in the story of Neuromancer is Gibson's playing with the idea of humanity.  He has some very interesting commentary on what it means to be human.  More often than not, though, he raises more questions than he answers.  One example is Case.  From the outside, he looks like a normal human, but once we learn more about his character, we find out that he has been greatly influenced by technology.  Both the mycotoxins that originally damaged him and the surgery to reverse the damage are technological alterations.  And it only gets more robotic, mechanical, and computerized from there.  For instance, Molly has the blade implants under her fingernails; even Ratz has a prosthetic arm.
From there, the idea of "human" becomes more skewed and blurry.  For instance, Dixie's ideas, knowledge, and memory are preserved in a ROM.  But he is unable to feel, create new memories, or gain any knowledge.  He is only able to organize and reorganize what he already knows.  Is he human?  His body is dead, but the memory of him carries on.  Further, he begs Case to destroy his ROM so he can, essentially, stop being trapped in a memory.  Therefore, he is able to feel.  It seems as though that is a truly human emotion, even if he is only a computerized shadow of himself.
Another human-bending concept is the idea of Wintermute and Neuromancer.  Both RAMs (random access memory), the two entities can create new ideas and memories themselves with the vast database they to which they have access.  This is very similar to the act of human thinking, though they do not have human bodies.
Further, the idea that Dixie and Case "flat-lined" (meaning their hearts stopped and they were dead) and then came back to life shows that humanity can come in different forms.  While Dixie is dead but preserved in a ROM (does that mean he's really dead?), Case is very much alive through the end of the story.  Is he less alive because he has once died?

S/R 2: William Gibson's Neuromancer

In Neuromancer, Gibson shows us the world of the matrix and how the advancing of technology is a dangerous game.  The main character, Case, is a former computer hacker, a cyberspace cowboy, who angered the wrong people and had his nervous system damaged by mycotoxins.  He is now unable to “jack in,” the term for logging into the matrix (37).  He resorts to making deals on the black market.  Meeting Molly, however, changes that.  She tells Case that her boss (Armitage) wants to fix his nervous system in order for him to complete a job within the matrix.  Though neither knows what his job will be.  Armitage, former Colonel Corto, informs Case that sacs of mycotoxins have been put in his body and will be removed upon timely completion of his tasks.  First, Case and Molly must steal the ROM (read-only memory) of his former mentor, Dixie Flatline.  Flatline is tired of being preserved in non-expanding memory and asks to be erased as soon as possible.  After traveling from Japan to the United States (the Sprawl), the team enters Istanbul to recruit a “certified psychopath name of Peter Riviera,” a drug addict who can create hallucinations with the use of implants in his brain (51).  We find out that Wintermute “is only a part of another, a, shall we say, potential entity,” that is, Neuromancer (120).  It was Wintermute who convinced Armitage of his alternate personality.  Riviera turns on Case and Molly in the matrix, trying to kill Case, but is run off by the bodyguard of 3Jane, the owner of the technology that is Wintermute and Neuromancer.  Something is built into Wintermute, “the compulsion that had driven the thing… to unite with" Neuromancer (269).  3Jane gives up the password to unite the two, creating a greater, stronger, smarter entity.  After having the mycotoxin bags removed from his bloodstream, Case destroys Flatline’s ROM (per his request).  Case talks to Neuromancer, who has found another AI like himself in another solar system with whom he can communicate.  Case finds a new home, new work, and a new girlfriend but never forgets his adventure or Neuromancer.

William Gibson spends much of the novel playing with the idea of humanity.  He forces us to look at the characters and ask ourselves what makes someone or something human.  There are countless examples of how answering such a conundrum is nearly impossible.  For instance, is Case truly human, inside or outside of the matrix?  Inside the matrix, he is mentally experiencing things, but he is physically in a lab or private room hooked up to trodes and a computer.  Outside the matrix, he, as well as Molly, Riviera, and even Ratz, have as a part of their anatomy some sort of technological advancement.  Does this fact mean that they are robots rather than humans?  Then, we are introduced to the concept of Dixie Flatline, whose memory is preserved in a ROM.  He is incapable of forming new thoughts or memories; he must rely on the information he had when he died in order to communicate with other characters.  Is he really dead? Is he still human?  He has the ability to request to be destroyed, to be able to move on, into the afterlife, seemingly.  That is a very human characteristic, to will, to desire.  The concept of the cloning that the Tessier-Ashpools have achieved also questions what it means to be human.  3Jane can think, feel, act; but she is the third clone of Marie-France.  She does not have a mother who bore her, but she has genes, thoughts, and a company to run.  Lastly, Gibson questions the humanity of such people as Wintermute and Neuromancer.  These personalities are not derivatives of actual humans, nor do they have tangible human bodies.  Case must be continually reminded that these personalities are “its” not “hes.”  This exemplifies Gibson’s opinion about what it means to be human.  In this world of technology a distinct line must be drawn between Molly and Case, actual humans, and the projection or memory of humans (such as Wintermute and Dixie).

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?