Tag: Block 1

Week 3 Summary

Block 1: Cybercultures, Comments on other blogs, Pocket, Weekly Summary

This week I made more time to comment on my classmates posts. My peers’ lifestreams brought me in new directions of thought around the themes for this block, and it good to remind myslef that I’m not alone, see post on cyborg feminism here.

Readings; Donna Haraway’s “A cyborg manifesto” -my understanding is that she speaks about the blurring and transgression of boundaries – as an opportunity. The cyborg stands on the verge of those boundaries, it is neither male or female, human or animal, it is not politically aligned, no insecurities, no prejudices.  Despite the fact that the cyborg is the offspring of militarism and a masculinist culture (Haraway calls it a white capitalist patriarchy), they can help us find a world where there is no boundaries between minds and body, animal and machine, idealism and materialism, – “the cyborg appears in myth precisely where the boundary between human and animal is transgressed”. (Haraway 2007).

 Cyborg feminism comes with its own set of phrases. I’ve to add ‘partial connections’, informatics of domination’,‘actor network theory’, ‘encounter value’ and ‘the origin myth’ to my terminology table. I like the idea of the metaphor of partial connections. We have many loyalties and relationships and many arenas of power, but there is no pure state, we should get comfortable with being always partial and always multiple. I think this reflects true life and true networks. The cyborg is comfortable with partial identity and contradictory standpoints and can help us cooperate in a way that ”witches, engineers, elders, perverts, Christians mothers and Leninists” can hold together “long enough to disarm the state”. (Haraway 2007)

partial connect

In Jonathan Sterne’s ‘Histiography of Cyberculture’ he points out that while visual design is very much at the center of cyberculture studies, the auditory dimension is almost always left out. I wrote about that in my post here. I wonder if we could apply binaural or 3D audio to a geography class to allow students to hear the natural sounds that would accompany pictures of the space being learnt about.

After attending the google hangouts tutorial on Wednesday I was told about the Chrome pocket extension and the RSS feeds. The pocket extension means that I don’t have to route all of my web browsing through Twitter which will add a little diversity to the blog.

To end the week three and the Cyber cultures block,  I added my visual artefact here; another learning curve on a new audio visual tool but worth it.

Sterne J, The Historiography of Cyberculture in Silver, D., & Massanari, A. (Eds.). (2006). Critical cyberculture studies. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com Created from ed on 2020-01-13 02:09:03.
Haraway, Donna, (2007) “A cyborg manifesto” from Bell, David; Kennedy, Barbara M (eds), The cybercultures reader pp.34-65, London: Routledge

Imitating GTA computer game in real life

Block 2: Community Cultures, Lifestream, Twitter, Youtube

Many of us spend hours inside our virtual worlds of bits, bytes and avatars that can be customised with fantastical hairdos and clothing, virtual selves that can respawn if we die in the game. We may think of our online self is an extension of our physical self but viewing this video inspires a different viewpoint. If our physical self bounced around in real life like we do in the virtual world, it would seem completely bizarre and out of context. Skip to 7.20 on the timeline.

 

Are Our Devices Turning Us Into A New Kind Of Human?

Block 1: Cybercultures, Lifestream, Pocket, Youtube

Anthropologist Amber Case studies Cyborg anthropology, and in the video linked below she describes the use of smartphones to extend not only our physical selves, but our mental selves, creating ‘mental wormholes’ connecting our network of people on the globe at anytime- this is called ‘ambient intimacy’.  Ambient intimacy poses a threat the ability of a person to ‘self reflect’ due to too much input, with not enough time for the ‘creation of self’ & long term planning.

Homo Sapiens, is also Homo Faber – the maker and user of objects (Miller 2011). Miller (2011) discusses how tool usage is an integral part of what humans do when they are being humans. Therefore technology doesn’t have to be viewed as ‘inhuman’ or set apart from the human body, but a “complex symbiosis between human bodies, tools and the social and physical environment”, (Miller 2011).  Amber Case extends the idea of humans as technologically embedded tool-users by presenting us with an image of the mapping of the internet.

It does not look technological, it looks very organic. The map of data connections looks more ‘human’ than ‘technological’ because we are co-creating with each other the whole time, using the tool of the internet to increase our humanness. so is the technology of internet turning us into a new form of human or emphasizing our ‘humanness’

I’m not sure if this could be seen as an element extropianism (the conversion of flesh into data) or technological embodiment (the conversion of data into flesh).(Miller 2011). I’m edging more towards technological embodiment.  An example of technological embodiment would be contact lenses, the user forgets they are wearing them but the lenses completely change the way the user interacts with the world. In the same way we can forget that we are using the internet when we use Google Street view to check out potential restaurants in a foreign city for our next tourist trip. We mentally ‘arrive’ at the location before we physically arrive.

Extropianism seeks to map human thought into a set of neural activity patterns (a set of informational channels) with the aim of creating a machine capable of similar or better, finally integrating our intelligent technology into ourselves in a posthuman synthesis. (ref Extropian principles article ). However I think Human thought patterns are too chaotic to be ‘mapped’ and ultimately duplicated by machines.

In any case I found the image of the Internet map fascinating because of its organic nature.

Article Complet : http://www.npr.org/2015/09/11/438944317/are-our-devices-turning-us-into-a-new-kind-of-human
via Pocket

References
Farr, W. et al, An introduction to embodiment and digital technology research: interdisciplinary themes and perspectives,  http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/2257/4/NCRM_workingpaper_0212.pdf, Accessed 10 Jan 2020

Lejuwaan, J. “The Extropian Principles”, https://highexistence.com/the-extropian-principles/,Accessed 10 Jan 2020


ref: Miller, Vincent, (2011) “9. The Body and Information Technology” from Miller, Vincent, Understanding digital culture pp.207-223, London: Sage ©

Embedding twitter into WP

Block 1: Cybercultures, Twitter

I’m not sure if my attempt at bringing in a twitter feed with #mscedc and via www.ifttt.com is having the desired effect. See the first two attempts below.  I don’t like the fact only the URL link displays without images.

Let’s try embedding it directly:

OK that worked!
I also had to go into the blog settings and ‘show full posts’.