Au revoir.

Well, the course has now ended and I am finishg up on my essay, titled "The Fabric of our World – A Symbiosis between Science Fiction and Reality". I have enjoyed the materials we have read during this course very much, as well as the discussions we have had during classes. It's nice to have such enjoyable courses that inspire creativity and thoughtfulness in midst of other, heavier and more technical courses. I want to thank the teachers for making every lecture a fun experience and for making me come to class with joy.

- Eve.

Wikitannica

For the purpose of this assignment I looked up the term "Snow Crash" in both Wikipedia and Encylopaedia Britannica, hoping that I would find some information about the book by Neil Stephenson which we had to read for this course. I searched for this keeping in mind that "Snow Crash" is a science fiction book that has influenced our culture in a significant way, spawning many other books and games that would not exist had it not been for this piece of literature. So all in all, it's a pretty important book. And while Wikipedia presented me with an extensive article that covered the plot, the characters, ideas behind the book, philosophy and even some of the technology used in it, Britannica only had to offer a small stump where "Snow Crash" is briefly mentioned in the final lines of the article.

It seems to me that Wikipedia is far more reflective upon our modern age than Encylopaedia Britannica in the sense that it puts its focus on more contemporary topics rather than covering the traditional themes. The entertainment industry makes up for a lot of articles in Wikipedia whereas in EB they are briefly mentioned, if at all, since they are not considered academic matters and are therefore irrelevant. The great difference between these two encylopaedias then is that EB seeks out the most academic topics whereas Wikipedia tries to encompass it all. It is also constantly growing every single day unlike EB, so Wikipedia seems to be the place to go for the most up-to-date information in any matter.

Wikipedia might not have the most accurate or academic information, but what it lacks in traditionalism, it makes up for in diversity and magnitude. These are two crucial key words in our modern times, where the world is coming together and everywhere you look you can almost see changes taking place in front of your eyes all the time, every day. Wikipedia is almost like a living organism, for its eyes, ears and hands are the people who build it and make it grow. It evolves together with us, taking in everything that happens and reflecting it back into our lives. Is it an encylopaedia? Yes. But it's far more than that. Essentially it is a mirror reflecting back at each and every one of us. It is a contemporary cultural phenomenon more than anything else, and therefore its value lies in more than just the information it contains - its importance comes from the way it is constructed and the people that shape it - us.

It's a splendid example of a product of the age of information and connectivity, or Web 2.0 as some might like to call it. This phenomenon of internet, of digital information and constant evolvment is our shadow - if we pick up the pace and start running faster, it will be right at our heels. But are we still the ones who determine the pace of our evolution? Have we ever been able to do it in the first place? These are interesting questions I think. If we're sitting in a car that's going down the information highway, are we sure that we're the ones at the wheel? Are we ready for whatever is out there, waiting for us? Only time will tell. And time, in today's society, is everything and simultaneously absolutely nothing.

- Eve.

Johnny Mnemonic

I found the story to be quite confusing and didn't understand that much of it. However, I could recognize William Gibson's style and I know that the story will make more sense once I read it a few more times. I recognized the female character Molly from his novel Neuromancer, since she also features there. I read Neuromancer a few years ago and should read it again because I found it very interesting and again, I'm sure it would make more sense if I read it once more. William Gibson's writing is very scientific, complex and cyberpunkish, with many lapses in time and non-linear jumps from one thing to another, which makes it difficult to understand the first time around - or even the first few times. The world he paints up in his novels and short stories is very high-tech and all the characters in it take many of these technological things for granted, which means that there are few explanations of what exactly is happening.

The main character Johnny basically seems to be a sort of cyborg who stores information in his head and other people pay for memory space in his brain. The gist of the story seems to be that one of Johnny's clients stored something in his brain and then did not seek him out to retrieve the information. When Johnny seeks out this client to find out why he hasn't collected his info, he gets into trouble and realizes that the information in his brain is dangerous and that someone has stolen it from the Yakuza and his client put it in Johnny's head and then, after realizing that the information is dangerous, sought out some people to kill off Johnny and get rid of the problem. Johnny manages to stay alive with the help of Molly who knows people, Johnny's client is killed by the maffia, and Johnny is dragged away by Molly to figure out what's inside his brain and how to make a deal with the Yakuza and manage to stay alive for a little bit longer.

All ends well, the maffia ends up leaving him alone and Johnny manages to hide away and change his appearance through extensive surgery and memory alterations. Not your traditional happy ending, but that's as good as it gets in a William Gibson story.

- Eve.

Jailed influenced judge

Dismembered corpse in Sainsbury

Arrests men between yesterday

Terrorist understood himself

Death reported radical Scotland

Buried manager Tim

Guilty feet

November chloroform sold

Date-rape speeches worked

Money denied speculation

Digital Works

Whitney Airport: About.

The about page of Whitney Airport doesn't really say what kind of artwork it supports; instead it describes the different services it provides for artists and the various ways they can exhibit their artwork on the website.

Rhizome.org: General Information.

Rhizome seems to have a much more advanced support system, with an online newspaper, exhibitions, web hosting and many other offered services. It seems to mainly focus on contemporary art, such as photography, websites, Flash animations.

Wikipedia - Digital Art, Internet Art, New Media Art

The definition of digital art seems to be art that has been created or altered by the computer, it doesn't necessarily have to be entirely computer-generated, it can also be a scanned photograph or something similar. Internet art focuses on art that mainly uses the Internet as its source of destribution, and New Media Art by definition is art that can be created by any new technologies and software, such as graphics, animation, the Internet, robotics or even bio-technologies (the last I found pretty interesting and would like to know more about).

I Love Bees.. Or Do I?

I would hardly call this a game, it seems to be more of a non-linear narrative story experience. It's dependant on interaction and unpredictability, as well as some amount of chaos and confusion. Game is one of those words that seems very obsolete when put into such a contemporary context as this story. Seems to be a pretty good example of Internet art since the manner of distribution, its medium, seems very important to this work.

Implementation

I remember that we looked at this work during our Digital Poetry class. If we have to peg it down into a box, I would like to call it New Media Art, since it uses a different, post-modern and non-linear way to tell a story on a grand scale from seemingly scattered bits and pieces of paper. I'm quite fond of this idea and think that I would enjoy stumbling upon these snippets of information here and there wherever I walked. The important thing in such a work is to make sure that every piece of information tells something about the most important goal of the project, to ensure that even if one would only come across a small slice of this story, they would understand what it's trying to do. There has to be a red thread throughout the narrative that ties it all together, if not then the story falls apart and disintegrates. But I think Implementation has succeeded with keeping this read thread in all the installments. As far as I could see, they tried to include some information about Iraq, soldiers or war in every snippet.

- Eve.

Essay

My current idea about my essay is the symbiosis of science fiction and reality, and how both influence each other. Basically, I want to contemplate on how much science fiction films and books draw from reality and how reality is respectively affected by this genre of films and literature. I might however change my mind or make additions to this essay idea on Wednesday, when we'll be going through digital art and literature.

Update: I'm thinking about using Snow Crash and Blade Runner as reference and for comparisons, and perhaps also to incorporate the book I'm currently reading, The Lathe of Heaven.

- Eve.

Crashing into the Matrix

What can I say about The Matrix? So much has already been said and analyzed when it comes to the film, even by me. When it was released, it took everyone by surprise. No one could imagine this bizarre combination of action, fighting and philosophy, all in this cyberpunkish-enviroment. It was a new and different way of presenting ideas and thoughts, it was literally explosive and blew everyone's mind. Few could understand it, yet everyone loved it. They made a safe bet creating this film I think, because they knew that even though the masses might not understand the philosophy behind the film, they would love the film itself for all its innovative action sequences. So it's a win-win in either case, and a very profitable situation indeed. But it has been discussed plentifully from every possible angle, so I think I will draw comparisons between The Matix and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash instead.

I didn't really think about The Matrix while I was reading Snow Crash, but it seems to me what both Metaverses have in common is a sense of predictability. By using the code provided by the Construct and specific googles and software, the characters in both enviroments can use these elements to adpot a heightened awareness of their surroundings and get the ability to dodge bullets, know where to go to be safe, how to move to avoid getting killed. The obvious difference, however, is that in The Matrix this can only help you in the simulated reality, whereas in Snow Crash these tools are used in the real world. It seems to me that the world in Snow Crash is a bit closer to what Jean Baudrillard calls hyperreality and third-order simulacra. There's a very tight relationship between The Metaverse and The Reality in Neal Stephenson's book, they complete each other and heighten the users experience of both. Whereas in The Matrix, The Metaverse and The Reality are each other's enemies, where the first is used to control people's minds and the latter is a plateau for a broken fight for freedom.

What also struck me as interesting in both the film and the book, is the broken sense of time. Snow Crash seems to be a straightforward story of chained events where all the characters are busy doing something all the time. Right? Wrong. At some point, towards the end of the book, Hiro suddenly thinks about the many times he and Y.T. have eaten junk food together. But the book leaves no account of such a thing happening, so when exactly did it happen? We can never know, but this just shows that we're not left a complete account of the supposed events. And in The Matrix, Morpheus just tells Neo that he thinks it's the year 2199. He can't be sure, he might be completely wrong. There's more about time in the following Matrix films, but I won't go there now. But these things also tie into Baudrillard's idea of an era where time no longer exists.

The Metaverse of Snow Crash visualizes that which Second Life is a step towards - an enviroment used for business as much as entertainment, and where people can interact with each other when they cannot do so in the real world. Need a quick business meeting to discuss urgent matters? You don't have to fly half across the world to meet your partners, you can just plug into The Metaverse and voilá, they're all there. Need a tight security system to protect your property? Get a Thing, a semi robot-dog killing machine that knows everything that's going on around your land and will act faster than you can say "Woof". Are you immobilized after a horrible accident that has robbed you of any chance to move around properly? Create a realistic enviroment in The Metaverse where you can spend your days peacefully observing your real world self and countless events and other people. The possibilities are endless.

It's a fascinating vision, and as it would seem, we are definitely headed in that direction. One can only hope that we will learn how to use this technology for good and not become arrogant idiots which will eventually lead us to our doom. Unfortunately it doesn't look like the vision of The Matrix is far off either. We do have a tendency to really screw things up and think that we're gods or something. Take Babel, for example. Or Atlantis. Or even, heh, USA.

- Eve.

Virtual Worlds

I suppose I started speaking about this subject in one of my first entries where I talked about The Metaverse. But the interesting development about virtual worlds is that today, in our modern world, it is difficult, if not even completely impossible, to distance and build a wall between the real world and the virtual world. What is a simulated experience to you? Is sending an SMS on your phone not an alternative, simulated form of communication between two people? Or looking at the world through the lens of a camera, is that not a enhanced, different way of looking at things? Does the experience of a lens seem virtual to you, and what about those staged, simulated news events we see on the television every single day? Once you stop and think about it, it is very difficult to separate that which is simulated and that which is real, and one starts wondering where the one ends and the other begins, and whether the criteria that set the two apart are actually still valid.

Jean Baudrillard has an allegory where he speaks of a time where a map just covered a small part of the world and was obviously fake, it hardly had any resemblance to the real thing. It was just seen as bits and pieces of simulation, scattered over the plains of reality. Now, he says, we live in a world where the map covers the entire universe and has become so realistic that it has actually become a substitute for reality. And that it is now reality that is instead scattered over the plains of simulation, barely recognizable for what it is, paraphernalia of a time and a view of the world that no longer exists and has no reference to the present. The desert of the real. I remember reading his ideas for the first time, and just how far it all went over my head. But on a second take, things actually started making sense, as much as they possibly can. And when I look at our world and the way we live it, it becomes clear to me that the virtual actually is the real and this is the way we have been living for so long, we are so immersed in our experiences and illusions, that we have lost all points of reference to a time where simulation did not exist. It's like a ghost, a curtain pulled over our eyes, and it's all that we can see.

Real? The word has lots its meaning. But we do not live in illusions, no, it has become so much more than that. When illusion is accepted as reality, it is no longer a dream, no longer a simulation. It is simulacra, it is hyperreality, it is a new and different form of life and existence. It is a merging and transformation, evaluation and destruction of all the terms we hold dear and think we know so well. It's in everything we do, however we do it. It is new, it is old, it is here, it has always been here. It is change, it is permament. In a hyperreal world, the past and the future do not exist. It is simply an everchanging and immersive present.

- Eve.

QotD

"To make mistakes is human but to really fuck things up you need a computer."

- Cyber City Oedo 808.

Folksonomies

I have to start by saying that I have never been particularly fond of these folksonomies, or so called social networks. Here I have in mind sites like MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, and the countless others that are out there. Because there certainly are many of them. And I find that interesting in a way, that people are so eager to create these ever-expanding social networks and to 'put themselves on the map', so to speak, in this conformist enviroment. This is one of the reasons I don't like these networks - I don't like following in the footsteps of others, or being found by all these strange and unknown people that all of a sudden want to become my friend just because they've seen a picture of me, decided that I'm not too bad looking, and seen that I live in Sweden. Secondly, most of the people that join these communities seem to be rather self-obsessed, they easily develop an addiction to these networks, and eventually come to believe that if they won't get a certain amount of new friends and comments every week, they'll be unwanted and uncool. It's different than blogs. With an online journal, I have a choice to lock it, keep it only to myself or to a close group of friends, I have the possibility to keep it completely private, I don't have to communicate with anyone. But these MySpace-ish sites are created specifically for the purpose of social exchanges, there is no sense of privacy. Thirdly, I have an underlying sense of paranoia that most of these sites are far more used as easy spyware access points into my computer than friendship networks. Programs that record information about everything I do in order to later send it over to a commercial third party so that they can make more money and create new spyware.

Take WAYN, for example. I was invited to this site by someone a long time ago, and feeling bored as I was, I decided to join. That was several years ago and since that time I have had absolutely no interest in it whatsoever. A little while ago, I changed my email adress, and it would follow that now I should not be receiving any annoying newsletters from them anymore. Correct? Wrong. With the help of spyware, WAYN has figured out that I have a new email adress, and so they have begun sending me emails to that one instead. Why don't I just leave then? Believe me, I have tried. But these sites only intend people to join them, not leave. So when you actually attempt to do the latter, finding the LEAVE option is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Virtually impossible. Instead, I decided to classify the emails as junk, but that has not helped either, because they apparently send these emails from new adresses everytime. I like to call this type of websites vermin, and I'm sure you can understand why. Therefore it's rather difficult for me to find anything good about them, but I guess they're alright for people who don't mind having their computer cluttered up with spyware and third-party software. If you don't mind, then these sites are excellent for keeping in touch with friends all over the world and meeting new people every day.

...

- Eve.

Virtual April

I woke up today and signed on to my Livejournal account to check my Friends page. There I was presented with these news. I was immediately tricked into it and was already thinking about the upcoming changes that would be happening to the service ("Fäke. Give us money.") when I checked the comments. Lol. I think it's a pretty good one, so check it out. Happy April Fools Day :)

- Eve.

Second Life Crashed My Computer.. Twice.

Yup. And let me tell you, that was not fun. Right now I'm scared to even start the game, so I'm leaving it alone for now. It happened twice, on start-up of the game, when during the loading process the screen just froze up and after a while I got a Blue Screen of Death that informed me that Windows had shut down to protect the system. Great. Thank you, SecondLife!

It all started off well. Well, reasonably well. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to change the appearance of my gothic chick and change her make-up, so I ended up creating another character. Sorry guys, I'll friend your characters as soon as I can. My new name is Kolibri Yoshikawa, and she at least looks the way I want her to look, which is major progress in my book. I was enjoying myself for a while even. I visited several places, like Second Sweden, Little Stockholm, and I even found Knightsbridge, London, that looked very ellaborate and even had its little tube station with an underground club. I also ended up going to Osaka, Japan and Rome, Italy! That fountain in Rome really impressed me and I ended up sitting down on the edge there and meditating for a while. So it's all good and fun, but now I'm scared to play! I'm not quite sure what to do about this error and how to fix it.. How very very annoying.

Anyway, hope you like the screenshots. Technology hates me today.

- Eve.

The Blogosphere

Some blogs that might be interesting sprung to my mind as I thought about this assignment.

Wiliam Gibson keeps a blog. http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/blog.asp

So does Neil Gaiman - http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/

And Stephen King!

And this might not interest many, but I'm a fan of Ragnar Tornquist and his games (The Longest Journey, Dreamfall) and he keeps a very interesting blog and has a fascinating writing style: http://ragnartornquist.com/

All of these blogs above are updated often (except for Stephen King, lazy bugger. Proabably spends all his time time roamings the woods of Maine) and I like that. I guess I like reading about authors whose books I've read, to see what their interests are and what they do in their day-to-day lives. And people with other interests can find blogs from famous people in whatever field, anything from music stars to nuclear scientists.

This is another blog I used in our previous course, Information Architecture. It's about a guy who is addicted to World of Warcraft. http://worldofwarcraft.areblogs.com/

That's it for now!

- Eve.

Digital Cultures

As I embark on attempting to describe what the term digital cultures means to me, I first want to reflect on a few things from the articles we were supposed to read for this week. In the first article by Elizabeth Reid, "Virtual Worlds: Culture and Imagination", it was interesting for me to read the descriptions and analysis of the MUD universe. Though I guess MUDs are an outdated concept, their essence lives on in more ellaborate games today, those famous MMORPGs. There were many things that I recognized and had encountered myself during roleplaying and gaming experiences, especially the mentioned gender issue. Even though in "World of Warcraft" almost all of my characters have been female, I have very often been referred to as a male in social encounters, quests and party chat. I even remember one time when I was playing my female night elf rogue and someone said to me "It's nice to meet a female night elf rogue that's actually female". I was taken aback by this comment at first, but then I thought about it and considered the appearance of the night elf females, which are undoubtedly appealing to the male gaze and are often used in promotional posters to attract teenage boys to the game. No wonder they end up playing them! I even once saw a video where they had removed the character's clothes and made them dance. Can that be called digital discrimination in any way? Doesn't seem so to me, since the conceptual appearance of the character has been created by Blizzard, and they are very well aware of the things a player can do with it. They probably even encourage it.

The second article, "Teaching An Old Genre New Tricks: The Diary on the Internet" seemed more argumentative to me and so I suddenly found myself arguing with the article, making little notes and comments here and there on the sheets of paper. I guess what struck me as surpising was the author's notion that most blogs were used as full disclosures of the writer's thoughts and feelings. Though this might be true in some cases, I don't really think that the majority of people do that kind of thing, at least not for a long time. My usage of blogging has changed over the years as well. I remember setting up my first online diary and one of the comments I received about it. It was a guy who started avidly reading my journal and complementing me for my honesty and exposure. He said he rarely encountered blogs that held as much emotion and truthfulness as mine. That made me think about the way I write and to whom. One of the arguments in the article was that authors of online journals write for a specific audience and want to invite people to read their entries, encouraging growth in the reciprocal exchange of thoughts and ideas. But I think that a large part of bloggers don't really spend much time thinking about it. We're aware of the fact that there are thousands, millions, billions of blogs out there, and there are so many people writing so many entries at the same time. The massive amount of text diminishes the possibility of a large audience. Many of the blogs are just like regular people, lost in the crowd of multitude. And so when I write, I'm aware of this, and my expectations of audience are low and the audience itself is controlled, often reduced to the people I want to read my blog. So perhaps the narcissism factor of online diaries might not be as big as one might think. The vast space of internet gives the user a sense of privacy, even though his thoughts are theoretically available for anyone to read. Just like the vast space of Earth, or even the Universe, can makes us feel alone even in a densely populated area.

So what do digital cultures mean to me? A new state of consciousness and connectivity, on one hand. An expression of loneliness on the other hand. The ability to freely expess myself and send my thoughts out into the void for anybody to see, hear and feel.. whatever they wish. And if the void talks back to me and echoes the thoughts of someone else instead of my own, then it is still my choice to respond to it or not, to let it affect me or not. But the OFF button isn't always as affective as one might think. Emotions expressed on the internet can be just as powerful and haunting as the ones experienced in real life. 'Real life'. I think this term is becoming outdated. If people meet, build relationships and express themselves on the internet and these experiences affect their lives and their personality, why shouldn't they be able to call them real? In the future, I envision no distinctions between digital and real cultures. A merge of the two, where both are equal partners in the life-long process of developing characters and stories. Where one cannot exist without the other.

Hmm. Did I say 'in the future'? I meant.. Now. Today.

- Eve.

The Metaverse

So I came home and tried out "Second Life". It was mildly interesting, if not a bit unusual, since I'm far too used to the movement methods of "World of Warcraft" by now. I didn't say anything about playing that game to my teachers today since I've cancelled my subscription. It's still going to be active for another month or so, but I doubt I'll play since there's no time in my life to do it right now, and no interest. I am very familiar with it though, I've created many characters in it and I still have my lvl70 dwarf priest, my lvl62 night elf rogue, a lvl41 human warlock and a lvl24 blood elf mage. I've deleted the rest. Maybe I'll play again sometime, who knows. But not right now. So anyway, "Second Life". One of the tutorials seemed particularly interesting to me, the one about the search engine and maps. It said that every piece of land in the game was owned by a player, a resident, and that a lot of people enjoyed owning property in the "Metaverse".

This term made me think of Stephenson's "Snow Crash," the required book we have for this course, and which I'm reading right now. It made me think of Hiro Protagonist's journey into the Metaverse, the long High Street of cyberspace, the many avatars wandering down along it, their ghost-like forms never colliding with anyone else, since the street was programmed that way. The Metaverse in the book seems to work just like the universe of "Second Life", and I'm sure the creators of this game are familiar with "Snow Crash". Is it a way to pay homage to the book, or a sign that the inevitable is happening? Who knows, with technology developing as quickly as it is at the moment, soon we will be immersed in these virtual realms just like Hiro Protagonist, living out our lives, dreams, ambitions, making money and creating relationships. One could even argue that in a sense, we are already there.

I also enjoyed viewing the "Second Life" video in one of the tutorial places, about mixed reality experiences. Made me think of Jay Bolter's lecture yesterday in Växjö, about augmented realities. "Second Life" seems to be a step down that road, not only trying to duplicate real life enviroments, but trying to merge the digital and the real into one, into.. something else. Something different. I guess games are often associated with unrealistic experiences, allowing us to do things and go to places we could never actually go. And while yes, there are things you can do in "Second Life" that are very unrealistic, such as flying around, at the same time.. So much of it is a reflection on our real world and our everyday lives. A very strange and fascinating phenomenon indeed. But if I'm going to continue playing, I really have to do something about the appearance of my character. I can live with the name, but I can't live with the ugliness.
That's it for now, I think. Later on I will write my thoughts about digital cultures.

- Eve.

Homework for next time:

Write about 'digital cultures', the experiences and thoughts about this concept and what it means to you. You will do this once more at the end of this course. Do this before Wednesday the 28th!

My Twitter account:
http://twitter.com/digculteve

My SecondLife character:
Kolibri Beaumont

- Eve.

Ohayoo!

This is going to be my course blog for the Digital Cultures class. More interesting posts than this one will come soon, I am sure. But for now - au revoir!

- Eve.