Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is a shocking glimpse into our possible future. Our country has become an almost post-nuclear war seeming disaster area, and the only refuge one has is to join with part of a franchise, such as the Mafia or with Mr. Lee’s greater Hong Kong. Each one of these promises somewhere to live and protection from whatever goes on outside of these walls.
Hiro has found employment with the Mafia, working as a pizza delivery guy, and if he does not make his delivery in time, the Mafia will “take care of him” in a certain way. On the side, he is a hacker, and a star in his digital metaverse, which he had a hand in creating. The Black Sun is his escape from everything. In this area, he can talk to fellow hackers, and rule over his own universe.
The metaverse can be described as such: According to Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins, P. 9, “A process called “the convergence of modes” is blurring the lines between media, even point to point communications, such as the post, telephone and telegraph, and mass communications, such as the press, radio, and television. A single physical means- be it wires, cables or airwaves- may carry services that in the past were provided for by separate means.” The way to get into the metaverse is to put on a pair of goggles and “jack in” meaning get in via airwaves or through a localized land line- much like our infrastructures we have today. While in the metaverse, one can use all things as one- telegraphs, radios, televisions, and papers. It is much like going online with PS3 or Xbox360, where one can get into a room with many people in it and play games, talk to them, watch TV with them, and go to an apartment set aside for them. In NG’s case, he has himself a whole setup going on inside the metaverse- people working in rice fields, a geisha rubbing his shoulders, the whole nine yards. What if one day, we could have the same thing happening in a universe? I believe it is not far away from what we have now with the previously mentioned PS3 and Xbox360.
I believe that the term “snow crash” can apply to modern day also. The snow crash is a virus that one’s computer catches, and then it enters the hacker’s mind and makes him very sick. The way the snow crash entered was simple enough, and it was almost comical. It reminded me of a “Trojan horse” virus- it comes in simple enough, innocently, and comical, and has devastating effects on the system itself. A virus (through binary) that hurts people, however, is one that is yet to be seen. I believe it could be possible somehow though.
The tracing of the virus all the way back to ancient Sumeria was interesting. Does this mean that the bible actually nods its head towards the age we are in now of development? Has culture actually been infusing technology in it for thousands of years before now? I think it has. There have been machines found in the ocean that have copper spooled around the inside of them that create an electrical force, making electricity. Not saying that there were cell phones back in ancient Egypt, but maybe there was more to it then we think.
The story tells us basically that the future may be a grim one if we do not pay attention to what direction we go with our technology. The way that it ends up this way is not made evident, but we must just learn to be more careful with technology, or it can become something out of control.
Works Cited:
Lessig, Lawrence. Remix: Making Art And Commerce Thrive In The Hybrid Economy. New York: The Penguin Press, 2008.
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old And New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006.
Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash. New York: Bantam Books, 1992.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Remixing Copyright Drama
When Stephanie Lenz's eighteen month old son started singing and dacing to a Prince song, the family thought it was too cute. After recording him singing the song, she posted it on Youtube, innocently, for friends and family to share and watch, because the video itself was far too many bytes of information to send. Little did she know that the media gods would descend upon her and try to get her for copyright infringement.
At one time, I remember Youtube being completely free from things like this. Laying down tracks of music you like on top of a video of you doing something crazy. Whatever you want. I think after a while, Youtube got too big for its own britches. According to page 1954 of Remix, " By the summer of 2006, Youtube was the world's fastest growing Website. Nielsen ratings insisted that the traffic was growing 75% per week in July 2006. 100 million clips were viewed daily; 65,000 were uploaded hourly. "
Now, Youtube has become something more of a Nazi regime, always controlling and censoring every video you watch it seems. No longer can one embed videos onto websites, blogs, or whatever that are of a certain artist. No mainstream bands will have their music or music videos reposted anywhere. And they make sure of it. At the same time, however, I think that it is also to blame on the "tattletales" of the youtube viewers. While having some control is good over something of an idea like this, but at the same time, there are a few who go overboard and report everything they see. According to P. 195 of Remix, "But some do more than simply consume content. As with Craigslist, the community of Youtube users helps police the content. Inappropriate content gets flagged. Content violating the rules gets reported." I think that some people go a little too overboard, as I will point out in my next example.
A few months ago, my friends and I made a video of a contest of chainsaws. I had a Stihl saw and my friend had a Husqvarna saw. We got equal pieces of wood and tried to see who could cut through the fastest. (dumb, I know, but it was something to do.) Anyway, we posted the video on Youtube, just to see it get taken down because someone reported the video for wrongly using the Stihl and Husqvarna names. After browsing other videos a while, I noticed they did not get taken down, so I did not understand what the problem was. After that little aggrivation, I decided to boycott youtube and stick to other sites that are less patrolled, but show videos.
RO culture Vs. Rw.
RW culture is defined, according to Remix, by Read/Write culture. "All ordinary citizens read and their culture by listening to it or by taking it in through representations of it (musical scores.) This, however, is not enough. Young people of the day add to the culture around them by re-creating the same tools the professionals use. The pianos, guitars, mandolins, and violins, and vocal cords." The fear was that this would disappear, and be taken over by an RO culture, that is, Read Only. "A culture less practiced in performance, and more comfortable with simple consumption."Are we all doomed to be Youtube zombies, where the government controls what we view? Maybe not that overboard, but that would be wild.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
New and Old Media Colliding
According to p.61 of "Convergence Culture," American Idol was not a dumb summer fling, but a conniving multimedia monster. Shameless product placement. Bloodless nostalgia. Incestuous corporoate hype. Like the show's Stepfrod divas-who dutifully parroted every shriek, quiver and growl from the Mariah Carey catalog- American Idol has absorbed the sins of our debauched culture and spit them out in a lump of reconstitued evil. And because we were so dazzled by its brazen lack of redeeming qualities, we stepped over the mess and happily followed it over the abyss."
I think that there is some shameless product placement of shows like American Idol. This phrase says that people follow this show to the and are zombies created by the media. The people who are on American Idol and other knock off shows are the same as usual- hence, the "Mariah Carey" catalog. Media has created stamped out shows that do not differ from one another.
Another point that hit me was on p.64, the section called "impress me." Apparently, the young male channel surfer decides if he wants to watch a channel or not in three seconds flat. Throw some ADHD in there, and the time count goes down even more.
I think that there is some shameless product placement of shows like American Idol. This phrase says that people follow this show to the and are zombies created by the media. The people who are on American Idol and other knock off shows are the same as usual- hence, the "Mariah Carey" catalog. Media has created stamped out shows that do not differ from one another.
Another point that hit me was on p.64, the section called "impress me." Apparently, the young male channel surfer decides if he wants to watch a channel or not in three seconds flat. Throw some ADHD in there, and the time count goes down even more.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Hamlet Meets Star Trek
When first reading this book, I started wondering why Star Trek had to do with anything. Murray has an apparent liking to Star Trek. At the same time, however, she also quoted other books, like Brave New World, and The Garden of Forking Paths, which brought me around to be a little less skeptical about the intelligence of the writer.
A passage that brought around a moral question to me was on P. 17, when Murray writes, "Do we believe that kissing a hologram (or engaging in cybersex) is an act of infidelity to a flesh-and-blood partner? If we could someday make holographic adventures as compelling as Lucy Davenport, would the power of such a vividly realized fantasy world destroy our grip on the actual world? Will the increasingly alluring narratives spun out for us by the new digital technologies be as benign and responsible as a nineteenth-century novel or as dangerous and debilitating as a hullucinogenic drug?"
So, is it an act of infedelity to engage in cybersex and holographic images? I think it is. The internet and these holographic images are extensions of people in real life, and it would almost be the same as actually engaging in infidelity, except for it is not happening in flesh and blood. I believe that also, our views on the world would get warped if we spent too much time in something like a holodeck. We would come to get used to the fact that, in a holodeck, you can turn it off once something starts to go wrong, and then in real life one would not know how to deal with a bad situation because you could not just tell it to turn off. Is it dangerous and debilitating? I believe it can be, but only if you let it be as dangerous. A car can be dangerous if you drive crazy. So can the alluring narratives Murray talks about.
Murray writes on page 251, " Though the technology of the Star Trek holodeck remains improbably distant and he puzzle mazes, shooting games, and tangled Web sites of the mid-1990's have only begun to tap the expressive potential of the new medium, these first experiments in digital storytelling have aroused appetites, particularly among the young, for participatory stories that offer more complete immersion, more satisfying agency, and a more sustained involvement with a kaleidoscopic world. ....It has become increasingly easy for interactors to construct their own worlds on the MUDs or to build custom game levels for open-architecture fighting games."
People have already built many worlds that they can get into on the internet, such as World of Warcraft, Diablo, and other MMORPGs, or Massively Multiplater Online Role Playing Games. The people who participate in these worlds often times lose touch with reality, and even when they are tring to converse with regular people, have a hard time doing so. I have a friend who plays these games, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to talk to him because he is so much in touch with the online world versus the world of reality.
Is all this evolution evil? I think not. Change is a good thing, but Murray warns us basically to keep in touch with the real world, while still being able to participate in the other online worlds as well.
A passage that brought around a moral question to me was on P. 17, when Murray writes, "Do we believe that kissing a hologram (or engaging in cybersex) is an act of infidelity to a flesh-and-blood partner? If we could someday make holographic adventures as compelling as Lucy Davenport, would the power of such a vividly realized fantasy world destroy our grip on the actual world? Will the increasingly alluring narratives spun out for us by the new digital technologies be as benign and responsible as a nineteenth-century novel or as dangerous and debilitating as a hullucinogenic drug?"
So, is it an act of infedelity to engage in cybersex and holographic images? I think it is. The internet and these holographic images are extensions of people in real life, and it would almost be the same as actually engaging in infidelity, except for it is not happening in flesh and blood. I believe that also, our views on the world would get warped if we spent too much time in something like a holodeck. We would come to get used to the fact that, in a holodeck, you can turn it off once something starts to go wrong, and then in real life one would not know how to deal with a bad situation because you could not just tell it to turn off. Is it dangerous and debilitating? I believe it can be, but only if you let it be as dangerous. A car can be dangerous if you drive crazy. So can the alluring narratives Murray talks about.
Murray writes on page 251, " Though the technology of the Star Trek holodeck remains improbably distant and he puzzle mazes, shooting games, and tangled Web sites of the mid-1990's have only begun to tap the expressive potential of the new medium, these first experiments in digital storytelling have aroused appetites, particularly among the young, for participatory stories that offer more complete immersion, more satisfying agency, and a more sustained involvement with a kaleidoscopic world. ....It has become increasingly easy for interactors to construct their own worlds on the MUDs or to build custom game levels for open-architecture fighting games."
People have already built many worlds that they can get into on the internet, such as World of Warcraft, Diablo, and other MMORPGs, or Massively Multiplater Online Role Playing Games. The people who participate in these worlds often times lose touch with reality, and even when they are tring to converse with regular people, have a hard time doing so. I have a friend who plays these games, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to talk to him because he is so much in touch with the online world versus the world of reality.
Is all this evolution evil? I think not. Change is a good thing, but Murray warns us basically to keep in touch with the real world, while still being able to participate in the other online worlds as well.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Hello
Hello class. My name is Dauphin Childs. I have taken a few classes with some of you before. I work in Gray as a mechanic and I go to school full time during the regular school year. Anyway, I am just a regular guy who is just trying to make it through school. I love all animals, especially dogs. Every dog we have ever had has been a stray. I hope to have a good learning experience in this class. Thanks!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
