8.1 Public Sphere

On first reading the term 'public sphere' in our reading and how this is changed dramatically by the internet, I couldn't help but think about a story that is repeatedly brought up by one of my professors. The name eludes me, but essentially a man comes across a magical ring that makes them invisible. They promptly kill the king, sleep with the queen, and cause general mayhem. This is what the internet provides for us; a way to become (essentially) anonymous so we can do all manner of dastardly things (also see The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory).

But in many cases we don't. Is it because of panoptic surveillance? Are we not really invisible? Are we ultimately the same when we establish our identity online?

It seems like we're not supposed to just be ourselves, we're supposed to be more than ourselves. Revolutionizing politics and smashing traditional media are all in a days work for the new virtual person. Well, except for the fact that the same people who avoided and ignored political debate before the internet are doing it just as loudly now, and in some cases traditional media doesn't need the help of anyone to destroy themselves.

It would be inaccurate to say that there have not been interesting political possibilities and influences on the media (like this), but currently for politics this seems to be the exception, not the rule. For media, there's plenty, including an online publication for professionals and academics interested purely in video games, just one example of the bright, shining deviations from traditional media. There are political debate forums online, and online campaigning has proven to be a hit, but the revolutionizing of democracy may not be quite there yet.

I found the idea for multiple "overlapping and interconnected public spheres" fascinating; in many ways it seems this has become the case through various forms of social media. I'm not sure what this means globally or politically, but it is a shift towards mixing more perspectives into a larger scale public sphere.

Reasoning through debate strengthens the public sphere. "Publicity that is staged for show or manipulation" greatly wounds the public sphere. To equate mass media to public relations would be quite a stretch, but to deny the bias of media organizations and the potential for manipulation inherent in the information media outlets choose to show or hide would be unwise. This isn't to say that your favorite news anchor is trying to brainwash you, but to at least accept the possibility that there are biases among individuals and groups. So, assume for a moment that the information with a 'spin' on it is debated to strengthen the public sphere. This sounds like spinning yarn into gold, and yet it feels to me like garbage in, garbage out. Or has our public debate been 'faked' since the inception of mass media and our public sphere been suffering ever since?

This, like several other assertions made by individuals in Boeder's article, seem to ultimately perceive only good or sinister effects on the public sphere. It isn't good or bad, but it sure isn't neutral. This seems to be the theme for the class.

7.1 Encoding/Decoding

Stuart Hall's writing in many ways makes me think of a shot of Saussure with a dash of Marx for flavor. The way the we come to understand signs translates to the media we create and present to each other, and the meaning is defined by how 'natural' the codes used to transmit the message are.

The first things that came to mind were smilies, particularly when trying to relate the material to new media. Wikipedia claims this idea belongs to a Carnegie Mellon professor who came up with smilies in 1982, but in truth the basic origin doesn't satisfy my curiosity as to how it was distributed. Scott E. Fahlman may be responsible for first creating the sign, but the repeated use of the symbol from person to person assigned meaning to it. Visually, it isn't like broadcast media with lines radiating from a central point. It's more of a chain reaction set off by a central point, generating more points of origin and spreading in more ways than a broadcast could. It's like comparing a shaped charge to a nuclear bomb, with relative devastating effectiveness to scale.

I started using AOL Instant Messenger after the interface had been modified to convert a colon, dash, and parentheses into a properly-oriented yellow orb, though I can't say when I was first exposed to this sign. The dominant meaning for :-) is quite clear in our culture, though perhaps it's a sign of change with new media that the perceived origin of the terms is not necessarily a person or company but an application or site like AIM or Twitter.

But this was written in 1973 (provided Wikipedia isn't leading me astray). The rate and process for determining meaning, whether it's denotation, connotation, or dominant meaning, has been altered through new media. With technology in general, new terms are coined and widely accepted in a shared culture and language (television) and dominant meaning is altered (tweeting). This process is prevalent with nearly any technological advance. New media increases the rate which new codes are distributed, but it also allows for a virtual culture to develop a dominant meaning between all members of this culture with no physical contact or relation.

From the means for identifying a goon from SomethingAwful to the connotation of the phrase "I'm on a boat", the meaning for signs can quickly change with material found online. While the SNL skit was produced by produced by multiple people, it is still one broadcasting to many. Meaning was encoded into the video, distributed through television and websites, and decoded by viewers. Through mass media we've improved symmetry between encoding and decoding, limiting room for misinterpretation in audiences that share a language and culture.

Then take sites like SomethingAwful. With members across the world, the physical culture in the region where the person lives and the codes used there can be completely different from the virtual cultures visited online. Not only can members develop new dominant meaning through the messages from others, they can directly encode and transmit messages on the same level as any other member of this culture and have it (potentially) distributed to all members.

While pondering encoding, decoding, and the messages itself I can't help but hear echoes of McLuhan rattling around. The "global telepathy" is slowly(ish) being achieved with each new means for personally encoding and distributing signs to the world, from text to images to sound to video, maybe eventually thought. It does still rely on equivalence, but with each level and sense that people can convey their message through the less is lost in the decoding.

It's somehow strange to think that the end result is ideas presented in a lossless format. Wonder how much bandwidth that will take.

6.1 Language of New Media

Perhaps it's the fact that the references Manovich makes are something I understand, or perhaps the previous readings are contributing to my understanding. Either way, it's a good sign that the points Manovich lays out make sense.

The parallel development of film and computing machines as Manovich describes early in the book is something fascinating I hadn't really considered. Zuse's computer in particular describes a relationship between the two media that doesn't really come into play until much later. It is strange to think that the artistic side of media feeds the behemoth that will become mass media through computer technology, but as Jacquard's loom demonstrates, there has been this back-and-forth between technology and art for quite some time. In many cases ideas or tools of artists inspire others to build on those concepts to develop new technology, which can in many cases can be used to move art into areas that before were impossible to conceive before that technology, as we discussed last week.

When describing what doesn't distinguish new media from it's predecessors, the mention of lossy formating raises and important point about how data size and format has changed in the last decade and reminded me of why I don't use JPEGs. In many cases online and offline original lossy formats are being replaced online by lossless Portable Network Graphics and Tagged Image File Format files. Image files now contain additional information, from alpha channels in certain files to layers that before could only be viewed by programs like Photoshop. My education in computers has followed this development somewhat, with my origins in programming in QBasic and C++ to Java, Photoshop, Maya, and others, each bringing media that at one point was too massive to encompass in one device into an icon on our desktop that allows us to edit film, photographs, and 3D models with the click of a mouse.

The thought of what this means for the future is baffling. We can move from lossy to lossless and perhaps on to something else. When computers are capable of reproducing anything flawlessly, what is the next step? Maybe it's possibilities such as Ventner's "Critter Creator" that seem absolutely fantastical, but may not be so far fetched. The thought of being able to create life in a lossless format is a concept worth mulling over, especially if this means using a computer to create a human with no biological link to any other human; an Adam of sorts. Brings new meaning to playing God (or not playing, as Ventner said).

Externalizing thoughts and ideas struck me as a particularly fascinating remark by Manovich that ties into more than just "drawings, photographs, and other visual forms"; even our textual thoughts and ideas are distributed through means such as Facebook and Twitter, on Blogs and forums. These, too, represent standardization of thoughts. It becomes numerical and modular, from number of posts and the time the post was made to the 140 characters in that Tweet. It is strange to think that giving individuals the capacity to express their thoughts through images and words also standardizes them, giving them free reign to be unique along with their billion closest friends.

Thinking that the GUI is similar for work and play is particularly true from what I've witnessed, but I've also taken a few classes that are specifically about video games. Not only do we keep cut and paste functionality, there's saving, menus, and other details. Second Life blends the recreational functionality with business in an environment that is very much a virtual space with avatars similar to those found in games, but many of the locations in the MMO represent serious businesses and organizations, providing information and advertising.

All throughout the book Manovich seems to remark on the tie-ins between work and play, media designed for calculations and media designed for entertainment and the convergence between the two. While I certainly wish work now felt more like play, there are many instances where the line is blurred, from "Chinese gold-farmers" to occupations that incorporate more goal-based activities and use them as tools to keep workers happy and motivated. If the next level is turning work into play, then I definitely like where this is going.

5.1 Reproduction

As a person who has been to see several impressive exhibits, I can somewhat testify to the presence of Benjamin's 'auras'. In some cases, though, these auras do more to dispel an air of superiority than present the viewer with a unique and worthwhile perspective on an original work.

The principle of 'auras' described by Benjamin seems strange when compared with art that is, in some cases, produced entirely in digital space where the 'original' can be viewed from anywhere in the world. Mechanical reproduction in this case is strange in many ways. The art essentially exists in a space that is viewable from any computer. It isn't removed from the viewer as a photograph or reproduction of the artwork would be; the presence of the object in space isn't limited to one location.

For the sake of argument, let's say that the authentic original possessing the 'aura' was the first existence of the completed artwork on the computer of the artist that created it. The original existed in a set space, but barring a computer that never shuts off and always has the art displayed, at some point the authentic was removed from the screen. Is that art considered moved or destroyed? Technically, the art holds a digital space as a file in the hard drive, but what if you move the file to another computer? The image may not look the same, but essentially in order to transfer the file that contained that art the data was copied from one location to another then erased in the original location; so is the authentic original destroyed? Does digital art possess an aura?

If the object is viewed from a browser-based perspective, one could say a copy is produced and destroyed whenever the browser is opened or closed. While there is no real destruction taking place, the copy of the image ceases to exist in the space that was originally provided for it on a monitor. In some ways, this makes me question the value of the copied object since the rarity of the art doesn't seem to directly influence how valuable it is. This raises little flags on how to determine the worth of a digital print or of art as a whole, but that is something I can mull over at another time.

Reading that photography was the first 'truly' revolutionary means of reproduction (p224) didn't sit well with me. As we read last week, the printing press dramatically altered the economics behind reproduction, making it less of a time-consuming art and more of a practical trade. It seems that photography allows for images that more accurately represent images we see with our own eyes, but this development did not call for a dramatic overhaul of the entire system of reproduction. Printing remained very much the same, and the science of reproducing through print remained largely the same. Reproducing artwork that wasn't photography also remained the same. Of course, perhaps my interpretation is off due to my particular connotation of 'revolution'.

4.1 The Printing Revolution

It would seem pretty obvious to me that the development of the printing press was important, but actually seeing examples of how it was important laid out before you is fascinating. Standardization to some extent I had realized and understood, though I particularly enjoyed the description of the misprinted bible excluding 'not' from one of the commandments. Standardization of scientific (or what was deemed scientific then) materials and the distribution of these printed documents to scholastic readers and others who had done similar research seems like it would have had a significant aspect on the scientific community.

Two aspects of the book struck a chord with me. First, the level of uncertainty on specifics of the era. While the results of the development are seen in every bookstore and library, the exact transition from scribes to printers is impossible to recall for a variety of reasons. Estimates on the number of texts printed can be made, but it can be difficult to gauge exactly how many and when documents were printed. Traditions, myths, maps, and documents of every type that were put into print could be compared, distributed, and redone with improved data or lost due to inconsistencies or other problems with the material. Perhaps tangentially related to the incomplete compilation of printed material from this period is the papal bull that effectively promoted the inquisition as well as the Reconquista that took place during this time, effectively erasing certain documents.

Which brings up the second point, that the history of printing is so utterly intertwined with so many aspects of life in that time period that it becomes difficult to pick apart and analyze sections of it without dissecting the topic in entirety. It wasn't just technology; it was a tool that gave researchers more time to pursue activities other than 'slavishly' copying their notes that they could not trust to scribes, it was a dramatic shift in the economic model for literature, and it would certainly influence a culture that until that point was semi-oral and semi-literate, something we cannot reproduce and analyze. It can be assumed that it took a considerable amount of time to implement this new technology just throughout Europe, much less the rest of the world, yet now it sometimes feels as though it happens overnight.

With the introduction of new media similar problems are presented, especially the overarching effects of this media on our lives. There are a few significant differences, however, namely the scale of history for recently developed media. In my lifetime alone, I have seen the development of the internet, cell phones, AOL, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and a variety of other tools or mediums. These seem easier to define their history and development, but we have a new issue now that didn't apply to the development of the printing press; it didn't come out at almost the same time as texting, email, Twitter, and have so much overlap with each of these mediums, whether it had this overlap initially or was eventually introduced to it. We don't just have a new medium that is affecting our society, we have multiple new mediums that are influencing each other and our society, such as the variety of mobile devices that can use Twitter.

The process feels almost like a sort of rapid reiteration, where as soon as a new medium is thrown into the mix other mediums are stripping it down to the essentials, keeping the good parts while trying to retain it's original purpose and redefining what exactly it can do. Take the evolution of Facebook; once upon a time updating your status involved going to your profile and typing in a box after "So-and-so is:", and recently it was updated to include name links directly taken from Twitter. With each new medium, we are getting better at dissecting it and stealing the good bits, which theoretically presents the possibility of a constantly, instantly evolving medium. Whats more, it might even work.

3.1 Remediation

I feel it would be somehow irresponsible of me to not begin with my perspective on the writing style present at the beginning of Remediation. Starting with an analogy to a movie I've never heard of is fine; in fact, it seems par for the course with most books I've read in college. Either I'm simply not versed in classical books and movies like I should be or the more obscure the reference, the less likely someone will object to the writer's interpretation of the material.

Regardless, it was the fourth paragraph that hit me like a freight train to the face. "Both new and old media are invoking the twin logics of immediacy and hypermediacy in their efforts to remake themselves and each other." For the remainder of the paragraph, the writers ignore the fact that they made up a word and continue describing immediacy, a term I'm pretty sure I understand.

But surely they'll get to this term in the next paragraph. Okay, the one after that. "Immediacy depends on hypermediacy." Nice to know, but still uninformative. It isn't until later in that paragraph that I got the first glimpse of a useful context clue: "The CNN site is hypermediated". It's still not as concrete as I'd like, so I assume that I must be missing some obvious and decide to check online for a definition of hypermediacy.

Wikipedia brings up nothing. Nothing. Wikipedia has a page for the past UT student regent, Ben Dower. It can bring up information on weapons used in WWII that I've never heard of. Thinking there might be some mistake, I check Dictionary.com. No found results. I begin to worry a little. But Google is my friend, and brings back plentiful rewards. The first one looks good, especially since the title is A Review of Remediation.

At last I see it:

Hypermediacy is a "style of visual representation whose goal is to remind the viewer of the medium" (Bolter and Grusin 272).

A little alarm goes off in my head. I know these names. In fact, I've just recently been reading a book with these names written on the cover. Remediation by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin.

So I flip to page 272, in the glossary, and low and behold the definition is there. And there was much celebration and rejoicing.

Now perhaps I'm missing the point of the term 'immediacy' here, but this entire debacle left me skeptical before I had started the first chapter. This book has links to direct readers immediately to other sections of the book but allows readers to struggle with defining a new term for the intro. Maybe I just missed some obvious hints or am a little slower than the average reader, but if people crave immediacy, why fail to define a key term that is prevalent throughout the entire book the first time it appears? Or why not use the links that are scattered randomly throughout the book to point to the glossary to define this conjured term?

But perhaps that was intentional. Maybe the writers knew exactly what they were doing. It took me only a few pages before I resorted to checking another source to get information on the current media I was looking at. Within minutes after a 404 error in the book I was redirected to Wikipedia and shortly after that was linked back to Remediation. I really do like my immediacy.

Or maybe it wasn't intentional and either I'm a little slow or the writers could have been more clear. Whatever.

Apart from my inadequate interpretations, I took great interest in the analysis of computer games since my undergraduate work involved considerable interest in the topic. That, and I enjoy playing games.

It is very interesting to see different perspectives on video games. I had never considered action games to be a matter of maintaining equilibrium; on the contrary, I was under the impression that the opposite is the goal through the destruction and destabilization of the 'enemy', whether it happens to be invading aliens or something more conventional.

The description of Myst brings back fond memories of scribbling in a journal little secrets about a strange island. It is interesting that the writers consider the game to be distinctly film-like, because the graphics aren't as photo-realistic and the island isn't entirely believable. One might think the interactivity would play a role in making the player feel as though they were on Myst island. And now we have games built with such tools as the Crysis engine which strive to make the world around the player appear quite real and offer a level of interaction not available through film. It would be interesting to see what Bolter and Grusin think of how games have developed in the past decade since they now no longer "rely ... on their special claim to immediacy through interaction."

Social interaction in games ties into an important concept with emerging media: user-generated content. Much like members of Twitter or people who post on Blogs, the creations of people who play games like Little Big Planet or Spore can forge their own creations within this space and share their designs with the world. The hypermediacy of the tools in the 'creator' parallel the transparency of the final creations once they come into existence in play, yet the two environments coexist in separate portions of the game. Now, if only there was a game that provided both without the distinct separation... perhaps something to look forward to.

3.0 Alternative Dispute Resolution

Was it absolutely necessary for the writers of Remediation to create the word hypermediacy?