Robot Apocalypse

A few years ago, the computer science department at our university was holding a “computer science day” to recruit high school students. During this time, I was assisting a professor in the Computer Science department who had received a grant for five robots to develop a multi-agent system paradigm. My job was to help program these robots so that they could communicate with each other to avoid obstacles, navigate around a room autonomously, and be controlled remotely by an operator. These were simple tasks to accomplish, and were the early stages of a much larger project.

The robots look like the machines pictured in this post. Human appearance was not reflected in the design – just a machine that cruised around on wheels. Each robot contained six sonar sensors. With a little bit of programming, the sensors allowed the robots to determine the distance between them and an obstacles in their path. This helped the robots communicate with each another to avoid collisions when navigating autonomously. If a human wished to intervene, we designed a touch-screen tablet that an operator could use to control the robots remotely, and the human could see what they “see” through a webcam mounted on the robot. This allowed the operator to navigate the machines around even if he or she was not in the same room.

We gave this technology to high school students during computer science day, because the robots were fun to use and we thought students would find them entertaining. During the demonstration, sometimes the robots' sonar ping would travel through a wall and hit the studs, throwing off the distance the robots calculated between themselves and the wall. As a result, the robots sometimes rammed into walls at full speed and made a few (additional) holes in Faner Hall.

The emotional impact on everyone was different. High school students, and us, winced when the robots slammed the wall, but for different reasons. Unlike the high school students, we didn't want the robots damaged primarily because they were expensive. The robots also had value to us because we spent a lot of time working with them. Nothing more. The robots were simply machines. It wasn't the same “feeling” of being intensely connected with non-living objects, as many individuals described in Sherry Turkle's book Alone Together. The robot was programmed to conduct simple tasks, and it just needed to work at the end of the day.

The high school students in attendance felt a bit different. The ability to control the robots was exciting, and they didn't want to lose a source of entertainment. Some high school students probably saw a robot slamming against a wall as serious excitement, especially when it created a new hole. When our robots had a collision, the unintended disruption caused many high school students to want to take control of the robots. A connection developed between the people wanting to compete over who could operate the robots most effectively, and not necessarily the connection between humans and machines themselves. In this case, the technology helped facilitate bonding and built friendships in the form of competition. It was healthy. To the high school students, I suspect watching the robots accidentally slam into the walls was a healthy and safe way to relieve some aggression indirectly – similar to why people watch boxing or aggressive sports. I also suspect that if Sherry Turkle was reading this post, she would probably express her legitimate concern to me and disagree completely, claiming these actions are destructive to society.

Later, when the robots were navigating autonomously, we programmed them to avoid obstacles and each other. Students often took this as an opportunity to walk into a group of robots operating autonomously, curious how the machines would react. As expected, the robots tried to move quickly out the way and avoid the students and each other, but the students also had to move to avoid them in the chaos. Both the operator and the robot would manipulate each others actions in a response to a disturbance. The high school students seemed to enjoy this the most. Perhaps it was the mystery of the robot that they found intriguing. It makes me question if the “connection” that Sherry Turkle mentions between humans and robotics would remain once the novelty diminished. Much like a human relationship, it's likely to get boring if it remains predicable. As a programmer, I knew how the machine would react, so perhaps my perception of the robot was different than what the high school students felt.

We also programmed the robots to follow people that came within a certain distance. The robots provided attention to the high school students and responded to their behavior and interactions by following them. When the occasional pedestrian member passed by too close to our demonstration, the robots would stop following the high school students and would begin to follow the pedestrian instead. At first it was amusing because this was completely unexpected. Innocent bystanders were suddenly in control of our robots. Some bystanders were anxious because they accidentally influenced the demonstration. Others enjoyed being the center of attention. Realizing this, students began to compete for control over who could get the most robots to follow them. It was a competition, and connection, between people... not humans and machine.

This robot demonstration was on my mind when reading Sherry Turkle's book Alone Together. As programmers, when the robots hit a wall, sometimes we just felt bad because of the potential loss of value in the robot and the time put into it. It was like a car... we work hard to pay for our vehicles and feel terrible when they get rear ended in a parking lot. We felt the same when the robots had a collision, which is why I found it so difficult to relate to Turkle's stories. When students had the attention of the robot, there was a feeling of satisfaction because of the human interactions that took place. These interactions were facilitated by the use of technology, and it was healthy – even when things went wrong. When that attention was lost, there was disappointment. Communication, even with objects, can play with our emotions in many unexpected ways. The outcome isn't always terrible, either.

Our Life in Photographs: the Art of Remembering or Technological Distraction?

Flickr, a popular photo uploading and sharing website, receives over 4,800 images a day that are shot with Apple's iPhone 4. In fact, the iPhone 4 is currently topping the charts as the most popular camera among Flickr users (out-shooting Nikon's popular D90 DSLR.)

With the rise in popularity of cell phones with cameras and small, user-friendly digital cameras, it is no wonder that almost everywhere we go, we can witness someone taking a picture, or have our picture taken. Since cameras of all varieties can now fit in our purses and even our pockets, we can use them to capture any and every daily moment, and many of us do. I am interested in exploring here our desire to record our lives through our abundant and very present technological devices.

Sherry Turkle, author of the book Alone Together, refers to this phenomenon as "life capture." She writes, "These days, anyone with a smart phone (equipped with a camera and/or video recorder) is close to having a portable archivist. And indeed, many say that when they don't use their mobile phone to document their lives, they feel remiss, guilty for not doing so" (pp. 299-300).

The desire to record our life experiences (and the concerned response over this constant archiving) is nothing new. During my senior year of college, I embarked upon an adventure called "Europe Semester" with fifty other students and three professors from my university. In three and a half months we visited twelve countries with one suitcase, and little technology (compared to what we might have brought now in 2011.) With no laptops, a few iPods and digital cameras, and even fewer cell phones, many of us (including myself) furiously recorded our experiences in our handwritten journals and on our film cameras. Even without much technology, I often felt distracted by my own desire to record all of my experiences. (I have to admit, sometimes I would even visit a point of interest and imagine how the layout of photographs and ticket stubs would appear in my scrapbook.) However, even though I was often thinking of my scrapbook layouts, I don't believe that I experienced those moments and places any less, just simply through a different lens. To some, capturing and recording a place or event through technology allows them to experience the space more richly and with new artistic perspectives.

CS Lewis writes in The Great Divorce, "If you're interested in the country only for the sake of painting it, you'll never learn to see the country." Here he questions if we are truly experiencing the places, people, and events of our lives to the fullest if we are caught up in the business of recording it all. I appreciate this point and wonder about the distraction and possible burden that life recording may cause. I also know that I am very thankful for the photographs and journal entries that serve as the only tangible memories of this college experience.

I am drawn to the ways that photographs serve as a method, an art, of remembering. Several web-based photographic collaboration projects speak to the ways photographs preserve moments in time. "Dear Photograph" is a new tumblr that curates submissions of photographs that juxtapose older photographs, and the space and time in which they were taken, with that same space in a current context (see example below). Check out the tumblr to read the sweet/moving/nostalgic photo captions. Artist Jason Powell takes on a similar concept in his Flickr series titled, "Looking into the Past." However, instead of using personal photographs, he has chosen to use images from the Library of Congress as his subject matter. He has also created a group on Flickr, which allows others interested in a similar process of remembering to upload and share their photographs as well.

I love the way Frederick Buechner, in his compilation of essays titled A Room Called Remember, describes the process of remembering as an important and intentional practice:

"But there is a deeper need yet . . . —not all the time, surely, but from time to time—to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember—the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived." - Frederick Buechner

I know, without a doubt, that my own practice of remembering is aided by the photographs that I (or my friends and family) have taken. Photographs elicit memories of moments and experiences that vanished too quickly to be written down. For a short time at least, photographs can bring back emotions, people, or places as we once experienced them. Photographs are an important part of the art of remembering.

However, our drive to constantly archive our lives through our technological devices brings several issues into question. First, Sherry Turkle is concerned that through our "life capture," we might slowly lose the ability to remember. She writes, "If technology remembers for us, will we remember less? Will we approach our own lives from a greater distance?" (p. 300). If we only remember a person or experience when the photograph appears on our screen saver or Facebook wall, have we missed the work, the intentionality of remembering that Buechner writes about? What becomes lost, when we forget how to remember?

Turkle also suggests that our desire to keep up with our own life archive is not only an act of remembering, but also an act of seeking validation. Many of us might send our iPhone pictures straight to Twitter or Facebook, in order to immediately share our experiences with our friends. Turkle writes, "But these days, the photograph is not enough. Sending implies being" (p. 302). We wait with anticipation for a friend's vacation photos to appear on our Facebook feed. If they never appear, we wonder if our friend lost their phone, or maybe even that their trip plans got canceled. This might cause one to wonder, if we didn't photograph it, were we really there?

Others are concerned about the distraction that constant life capture through digital photography devices may cause. A recent article by the author of the popular blog Off Beat Bride describes how some couples are electing to have an "unplugged wedding," asking guests to not use their cameras or electronic devices for a certain portion of time during the day, or not at all. The author, Ariel, writes, "Welcome to the era of the over-documented wedding, where, even if you've hired someone to take photos, every guest has a camera and an iPhone and is tweeting the whole event. They're there with you, but are they really present?" Off Beat Bride also offers "copy 'n' paste" ideas for wording on programs and signs to inform guests politely of the unplugged policy.

Susan Sontag, author, director, and activist, wrote in her book On Photography: "Photography has become one of the principle devices for experiencing something, for giving an appearance of participation . . .Our very sense of situation is now articulated by the camera’s interventions. The omnipresence of cameras persuasively suggests that time consists of interesting events, events worth photographing" (p. 10-11). Turkle would probably agree with Sontag here, as she completes her book Alone Together on the last page by questioning if the archived life is truly living?

I end here with a couple of questions for us to think about: What drives our desire to archive our lives through technology? What might we gain or what might we miss as we capture experiences through our abundant and ever-present technological devices? And last, do you view this phenomenon as an art of remembering or a technological distraction, or somewhere in between?

Image Credits (in order of appearance):
1. Derren Raser
2. Leslie Kalbfleisch via Dear Photograph
3. Nora and Tony of Aurora Photography via Off Beat Bride

Works Cited:
Buechner, Frederick. A Room Called Remember: Uncollected Pieces. San Francisco: Harper, 1992. Print.
Lewis, C. S. The Great Divorce. New York: Macmillan, 1946. Print.
Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York : Farrer, Straus and Giroux, 1977. Print.
Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books, 2011. Print.

"Harmless Teasing" or Harmful Epidemic: You Decide

I'm not sure about you, but I don't know too many people who actually enjoyed being in middle school or high school. In fact, just about no one I know personally comes to mind. Sure, few of us may not remember much about it aside from the severe lack of recess and ridiculously harsh gym teachers, but it still remains somewhat of a memory. I'm sure many of us can remember at least one instance of being bullied by a classmate or peer. Whether it was one time or constant, you have to admit, it stands out. However, there isn't a chance kids have it easier today.

With the invention of popular social media sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc., there have been tremendous advances in communication. But with these advances comes a new element of social responsibility and the development of cyber-bullying. Teasing and bullying is no longer limited to school hallways, but the seemingly limitless boundaries of the Internet. Although cyber-bullying has been recently brought to the attention of teachers and family members, there continues to be the need for further advocacy for the prevention of such teasing.

Many of us have become quite familiar with Turkle's book Alone Together between out-of-class readings and in-class discussions. Although she mentions related terms "online bullying" and "cyber-bullying" frequently, the initial discussion in chapter 13 has added insight to the topic of cyber-bullying, in a new variation. Turkle introduces Zeke and describes that he has created "fake" MySpace identities in order to initiate critical discussions about, not others, but himself. He explains his reasoning as a way of finding out how his peers truly feel about him. Although many of us can truly deny our curiosity about the opinions of others in reference to ourselves, Turkle almost develops a sense of self-bullying from the example of Zeke. I'm certainly not arguing that this action happens, however, can it really be referenced as bullying? It is self-inflicted inclusion, not forced upon by others. The entire discussion about the "anxiety" we feel about social media sites and cell phone usage is legitimate. However, also arguable. Is this truly a universal anxiety and fear, or just another one of Turkle's dramatized scares? Especially since Turkle only references examples of this anxiety among teenagers?

A common misconception is that cyber-bullies and victims have a certain age demographic. Many who question the seriousness of cyber-bullying chalk it up to being simply, "just a phase" or "harmless teasing." A person of any age can be a victim of cyber-bullying and further efforts towards prevention are rapidly increasing need. Although any age can be at risk, the most common targets appear to be adolescents and, even, young adults. As social media sites are increasingly seeing younger and younger participants, the importance of teaching and emphasizing "netiquette" is becoming stronger. But whose responsibility should it be to teach and monitor online practices on social media websites? Should one individual or group be allowed to control what is visible on individual personal profiles?



I don't feel you have to have children to care about cyber-bullying and its frequency. I have to admit, I'm not aware of the actions taken to attempt to prevent the bullying. In doing some simple research I discovered how the frequency of "sexual cyber-bullying" is rising tremendously. I came across an article on www.northerndailyleader.com about the recent development of two Facebook sites that allow friends to rate each others' sexual experiences. These sites have been met with much resistance from local authorities who reported the two sites to Facebook. Apparently, these two sites violate Facebook terms of use. The terms state that no user will use the social media site to bully, intimidate, or harass any other user. This includes posting material that is harmful or pornographic.

To be honest, I'm not sure how to approach this dilemma. I mean it's not as if people are being forced to participate. The page editors declare a resistance to the negative comments and connotation associated with the topic of the page. Personally, I certainly wouldn't want to participate in the site. However, does that mean that one group (not associated with Facebook) should be able to have the right to remove sites or pages that some may find offensive? What do you all think?

Authorities claim the content of these two sites is "a vicious case of cyber-bullying." They say they are worried about how it will effect relations within schools and between family members. However, despite concerns and controversy, with over 1,250 "friends," Facebook has yet to take down either site. This is increasing the debate on what is "appropriate" to be put on the Internet. My question is, how many children are being exposed to these pages? And are some children subjected to being discussed within the site? In this case, I do not agree with the content of the pages. But if they're all adults, do we have a right to say what they do on the Internet?

To some, this may not be cyber-bullying, but to those who are unwillingly a part of the content, it is. Who is to say this isn't happening within other sites that children may be able to witness? I consider myself a very open-minded person, but I'm not sure I agree with the morality of these two sites. Many people claim that cyber-bullying is increasing in frequency and intensity. Who is to say what advancements will be made within this sort of relentless teasing and what problems it will create in the future?

I suppose I'm curious of your opinions. Do you feel cyber-bullying is increasing in intensity? What problems do you think this may or may not cause for our future children? Are we making too big of a deal about cyber-bullying? I've given my thoughts. What are yours?

Sites of Interest:
http://www.northerndailyleader.com.au/news/local/news/general/facebook-sex-rate-site-cyber-bullying/2195205.aspx?src=rss">

http://www.wtnh.com/dpp/news/hartford_cty/anti-bullying-law-targets-cyber-world">

http://www.news.com.au/victim-pleas-with-police-to-catch-cyber-bullies/story-fn7x8me2-1226068292915">

Are You the Dreamer...?

"I am real!" said Alice, and began to cry.

"You won't make yourself a bit realer by crying," Tweedledee remarked: "there's nothing to cry about."
"If I wasn't real," Alice said--half-laughing through her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous--"I shouldn't be able to cry."
"I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?" Tweedledum interrupted in a tone of great contempt.
--Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

I find myself struggling with the ideas surrounding on-line identity. More specifically, how what we do/say on-line, pages we visit, and how the things we "like" inform the perceptions of our respective identities. Even more important, to me, is how all of this on-line activity informs and/or transforms an individual's identity in "real" life. which has brought me to a place of questioning and attempting to understand the supposed "reality" of each realm. Is on-line any less "real" than off-line? The idea of what is real is not a new philosophical debate. From Plato's Allegory of the Cave to Descartes' Meditations, humans have questioned the validity of their respective realities throughout the ages.

In Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, Lewis Carroll presents the Tweedles in a manner which shows how they are resigned to understanding that the idea of "real" is not a big deal, and getting upset about being real or not-real is not necessarily a productive line of thought. Alice believes she is real - after all, her tears stem from emotions which make her feel real. But as the Tweedles point out, are the tears real? Does the act of crying make Alice "realer"? Alice represents a particular, fixed logic as she attempts to understand the chaos of Wonderland, and one of the results of her adventures is the validity of her own existence being called into question when her real-ness is challenged.

Illustration by Sir John Tenniel (1820- 1914)

For me, all of this stems from the statement put forth in Sherry Turkle's Alone Together when, in Chapter 8, she states, "When part of your life is lived in virtual places...a vexed relationship develops between what is true and what is 'true here,' true in simulation." However, Turkle represents an opinion that seems to graze over the fact that experiences in virtual/simulated forums still produce emotions and reactions which carry over and affect our corporeal existence. If these experiences make us happy (or sad), if there is physiological dopamine release (or withhold) that comes from our on-line interactions which affects our physical bodies, how "simulated" and/or "virtual" are the experiences themselves?

How real are we or how real can we be when we are on-line? How does a status update, a new blog post or a Tweet shift the perceptions of our on-line identity? For that matter, how does a comment made to a friend in a face-to-face interaction or a statement made in class shift how we are perceived by others, and does this affect the way we see ourselves?

"There's a city in my mind
Come along and take that ride
And it's all right, baby, it's all right.

And it's very far away
But it's growing day by day
And it's all right, baby, it's all right.

Would you like to come along?
You could help me sing this song.
And it's all right, baby, it's all right.

They can tell you what to do
But they'll make a fool of you.
And it's all right, baby, it's all right."
--Talking Heads, Road to Nowhere

Growing up, technological advancements in entertainment became increasingly accessible to me and in my social interactions (ATARI gave way to Nintendo followed by SEGA, Super Nintendo and so on). We got our first computer (a pre-color screen Macintosh) when I was eleven and we had internet (dial-up) by the time I was in high-school. Although these innovations were fun to play with, and I can still remember the code to get extra lives for NES's Contra, computers and tech-gaming were not all-that attractive to me. As a child, I was much more interested in playing with action figures, reading comic-books, and pretty much living in my own fantastic world of make-believe. But how was/is taking an action figure, constructing a situation, and playing it out any different than creating avatars and exploring a world connected through the internet? How were my explorations better or worse than Second Life or World of Warcraft? Better because my version of play happened in the "real" world? Worse because my play-land did not typically engage/involve others?

example of the first computer to enter our house

Many have already called attention to the problems with Turkle's Alone Together, and I have the same issues with some of her methods, the presentation of her arguments, and the general "Aw hell, whaterwegonnado!!!" mentality she tends to generate. That being said, I do agree with her call for evaluation and reflection. I see no harm in pausing to examine our on/off-line relationship, especially as we move forward into an increasing synthesized relationship with technology. We grow through learning, trying, failing, and trying again, however, sometimes understanding comes from not just examining what we are doing, but also why we are doing it.

We are moving to more of a symbiotic relationship with technology as opposed to isolated entities orbiting each other. On/off-line experiences are not isolated experiences, and the relationship an individual experiences with technology is not independent of thought or feeling. I see this on/off-line relationship sharing the same traits as any other relationship: balancing, understanding, navigating, negotiating, desiring, sharing, etc. So it seems problematic to place on-line interactions, experiences, and identities into a second-class status by labeling them as "virtual" and/or not "real." The oft-heard concern that the "virtual"world is a place to escape the "real" world, impairing an individual's inability to connect (emotionally, mentally, spiritually) simply does not ring true for me.

I drew this, scanned it, and uploaded it here - so is this digital version a less "real" copy?

My problem, and my disconnect, is that this line of thinking represents the idea that "real" is specific to a corporeal experience and does not take into account that an experience exists in spite of where it takes place. Even an unexpressed, individual thought still exists - the thought itself is a thing. We do not completely disconnect from our emotions based on the environment we inhabit - we can compartmentalize our emotions, momentarily push-through and ignore our feelings, but the feelings are still present.

The "real" does not come from the space where the experience occurs, but rather in our comprehension and understanding that an experience has occurred. Instead of diminishing the value of a particular environment, we should stay aware that what happens in one place is going to affect emotions and perceptions in another place.

"Life is a journey, not a destination." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
(although when I hear this quote in my head, it is actually being sung by Steven Tyler - click here and cue to 1:59 to share this phenomenon with me)

Sources:
Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004. Print.

Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books, 2011. Print.

A future of isolation? I think not.

 The other day in class we were asked to write down the ways that we use technology to communicate with others and when we would use them in the interest of time, person and/or context. This exercise became particularly interesting to me when we were asked to think of this in terms of our relationships and who is "allowed" to contact us in certain ways. Also, what does the way in which people contact us say about the intimacy of our relationships. I then began to think of this in terms of how we are using these devices as a medium to fill our time, our loneliness with companionship.


I would first like to clarify where I stand in the world of communication via technological devices. There are three primary ways in which I participate in a mediated way of communication and that is by phone (my cell phone for about 95% of phone interactions), e-mail and Facebook. I do not have twitter, or a blog that I keep up with, I am not a member of second life,and I have never created an avatar. My life (in terms of technology) is very simple.

I must confess that I do find technology intimidating and often times frustrating and do create a hierarchy of communication. I always most highly value face-to-face interaction over any sort of mediated form of communication and I do gauge the intimacy of my interpersonal relationships based on the ways in which we are sort of "allowed" to reach each other. I wanted to explore where this hierarchy comes from and why.

My "good friend" Pat and I talking.

As I already said, I put face-face interactions at the top of my list. Personally, I feel that if I "can't" spend time with a person in the same "real" space then I don't consider that person to be a "good friend". "Can't" meaning that it would be a violation of some sort of unspoken rule. I define a good friend as someone with which there is little to no communication barrier and taboo topics and/or practices are minimal. This can be independent of how much I actually like that person. Meaning I can like someone a lot and enjoy their company and ideas and conversation, but if I don't feel "allowed" to contact that person via any line possible then I wouldn't say we have a great relationship.

On page 188 of Sherry Turkle's Alone Together, she say something interesting: "... a telephone call can seem fearsome because it reveals too much." After much thought, I suspect my hierarchy has a lot to do with how much non-verbal communication is allowed and how accessible the contact information is. Obviously, face-to-face interaction allows the most non-verbal communication. I can use all of my senses during these interactions, making them the most valuable to me. However, contrary to what Turkle believes, when face to face interaction is not possible I find immediate comfort in my cell phone, it fills that relational void for me.

In terms of mediated communication I put the most privilege in an "unscheduled" phone call. Followed by texts then the scheduled phone call. E-mail and Facebook carry the least amount of weight for me personally but does have unspoken rules. I expect certain people to comment on statuses, like pictures or write on my wall. However, anybody can message me and it's not weird. On the other hand if anyone chats me I'm immediately alarmed, perhaps caught off guard is a better descriptor.

Engaging in self-reflexivity about my reactions and expectations to certain forms of communication has been very interesting to me in terms of thinking about what my reactions say about my relationship with technology. Obviously, I have a somewhat detached relationship with technology in general and I think that is interesting considering the fears expressed by Turkle about us being constantly connected to today's gadgets. I think that there are many people in the world who are not shifting the value for face to face interaction to a mediated form of communication. In that sense, I would advise Turkle to take a moment and relax.

As someone who strongly values both face to face and phone communication I am inclined to disagree with Turkle about the ways in which technology will affect our future relationships. One criticism I have regarding Turkles ideas about our relational future is that I feel she is disregarding our individual agency and preferences. Society as a whole is made up of countless individuals who all have personal ideas, preferences, and access to these communication tools.

It is my belief that I am not in the minority when it comes to preference to face to face interaction as the most intimate form of communication. How often to people try to meet up with someone they have been chatting with online either in a  platonic sense or romantically? (Isn't it interesting that there are rules and expectations about these meetings? If face to face interaction was considered so easily replaceable, then translating from the screen to in-person would be much simpler.) Or even before meeting up we share phone numbers and exchange calls and texts that ultimately lead to meeting in person. If we didn't value physical interaction in some sort of higher way, then these relationships and exchanges would remain limited to online spaces and that would be completely fulfilling.

Based on these practices, I do not think that increased communication via technology will lead us to self-induced isolation. Rather, I believe that increased interactions will lead to more diverse social circles and consequently, more traveling and exposure to new people and ideas. Whether these changes in our practices of social interactions are for better or worse I think is a personal judgment call. Personally, I think these developments, while granted are intimidating and new, are very exciting and promising.

How To Avoid Becoming a Turktistic

How to Avoid Becoming a Turktistic(1)

by Rick Jones

[People in a Cafe, talking. Not Turktistics.]

As legend has it, somewhere around 1988-1989, aspiring auteur and USC film student John Singleton approached rapper Ice Cube and said he had written a movie and wanted Cube as one of the leads. The movie was a semi-autobiographical account of his time growing up in South Central Los Angeles at the height of the gang wars. Cube laughed and said sure, call when it gets green lit. Two years later, Cube made his big screen debut as troubled gang banger “Doughboy”. The movie was a commercial and critical success making over 57 million dollars on a 6.5 million dollar budget earning Singleton a best director Academy Award nomination (first for an African-American director, also the youngest ever nominated), won the NAACP Image award, and was named by Chanel 4 television as one of the 50 movies you need to see befor you die.

[Ice Cube, the wrong Coors Light Spokesperson to **** with.]

Cashing in on this new “fad” Oliver Stone produced a movie based off the novel “South Central” written by LA school teacher Donald Baker, and directed by Stephen Milburn Anderson. The movie was a commercial failure grossing 56 million dollars less than “Boyz”. Not quite the gold mine. The film was lacking. Despite their research, a presumably decent novel, and a bunch of actors they surely figured were from “the hood”, it is incredibly difficult to accurately portray such a nuanced and particular place and perspective if you haven't lived there. Just because I can recite Wu-Tang Clan’s Enter the 36 Chambers(2) doesn’t mean I understand the Brooklyn projects. In short, Singleton’s movie had a soul, his. Stone & Anderson had a book they didn’t even write. “South Central” didn’t work, because no matter how much research they did, how many interviews they conducted, or how many “authentic” actors they cast from the Hollywood streets, they simply could not fundamentally understand a place they have never lived.

[Pictured, Boyz Not From the Hood]

This bring’s me to Sherry Turkle. “Alone Together” strikes me as a “South Central” type report of teh interwebz (3)(4). I want to be clear that I don’t doubt the validity of her research, take away from the time she spent, nor do I feel like she’s making false claims. I do think she’s missing the soul. The “we” she constantly refers to in the book seem to be drawn from a pool I am not from nor have ever really come across. In my Twenty plus years of surfing, the type of addicts (5) Turkle describes have been the exception rather than the rule.

She is 27 years my senior, and I will concede that she has spent a lot of time online. I do question whether or not she has lived her or just looked at it with though a researchers lens. I grew up with the internet. In fact, I grew up in the shift from letters to email. When I was 8 I had a pen pal, Mandi, I met through the “pen pals” section of (I think) Muppet Magazine.

[Her name is Mandi. Mebbe I shoulda kept in touch]

I have sent letters, emails, traded wrestling video tapes then dvds, spent thousands of dollars over the years exploring the technologies (6), have written for websites (7), had virtual sex with a virtual hooker (8), dated someone I met online (9), have posted on various message boards, and have logged countless hours in AIM, Yahoo, Skype, and other chat type places. So, with that as my resume, I offer you a suggestion on how not to become a Turkitistic.

Stop, You Probably Aren’t One!

Walking away from her book, I get the impression that the average internet user gets in constant fights on Facebook before logging on to Quake for a fifteen hour stint, then off to dinner where your soulless mother ignores you whilst playing Angry Birds while dad is getting married to his fourth Second Life wife, then it’s off to check your 500 emails before crying yourself to sleep (10).

[Dad, can I have the gravy... Mom... Don't make me get all Emo over your iPhone!]

In response, I conducted a fairly unscientific online poll. Through Facebook and two message boards I frequent, I asked people about their online habits. I received 24 responses. Fairly equal distribution of men and women, ages ranging from 22-37, with an outlier being my mom who’s age I won’t mention. Most people were students or people with “regular jobs”. Teachers, accountants, one unemployed, etc...

Given that the message boards were filled with internet obsessive wrestling fans, I expected to get at least one or two people who mentioned online gaming or Second Life. Turns out, not a single one played anything with regularity. Most people went to around 5-10 websites a day, spent a few hours shopping, reading goofy sites, answering emails, and then went about their day. The constant was Facebook. Most people acknowledged spending what they called “too much time” there. Some called it “wasting” time. Two people admitted it was was stressful. Although in both cases it wasn’t about being too connected, it was about keeping up with the technology. One male said, “I guess if it’s stressful at all, it’s because I don’t get Facebook. I feel like I’m missing something.” None felt as though it was a burden. In fact as one person responded, “Does the internet cause me stress? Quite the opposite.”

[

[Also a great song by A Tribe Called Quest]

In regards to friends, most felt that it brought them closer to those they knew and the casual friends weren’t that big of an issue. They acknowledge that it is a way of keeping in touch - or adding to- not a replacement for friendship. One girl wrote, “It really helps bring close people, closer..” Not surprisingly, rationale adults don’t use Facebook to call each other names or lie about who they are. They use it waste time when they want to avoid homework for a bit, tell their friends happy birthday, or if you're my mother, get to level 137 in the restaurant building game, then start over because there's nothing else to accomplish. And even in her case, she notes that it gives her a welcome distraction from her various illnesses, especially when she can't sleep.

Lastly, communication is key. In nearly every example in Turkle’s book, a simple face to face conversation would have improved the situation tenfold. It should come as no shock then that most people noted that they called and texted their closest friends the most. One old college friend observed that texting can maker her miss a the physical presence of an absent friend, but then noted that she then just usually called them and that made her happy.

I want to once again note that I am not trying to completely invalidate Turkle’s research. That’s ludicrous. I don't agree with the conclusions she came to, but she clearly did work. However, I do want to suggest that perhaps there is an alternate user than the ones Turkle monitored. The fact is of Second Life’s 21.3 million registered users only 54,000 play concurrently. Or, .0025% And these guys say that there’s this many 1,542,769,457 worldwide who go online. I was going to post a chart, but there was literally no graphic representation for the difference of how many people regularly play vs. what the rest of the net is doing. On a worldwide scale and in perspective no one is playing this game.

[When did a chart ever help anyway?]

I don’t claim to have all the answers, and I don’t doubt that some people take things too far. Television, PokeMon, drinking, and even the internet. When analyzing the choices we make on the web, it is important to keep it all in perspective. And old high school friend who’s gone through a number of tribulations over the years responded this way when asked about whether or not she felt isolation from people on Facebook, “FB both connects you and disconnects you. I've been isolated, FB definitely doesn't isolate.”

She may not be a Luddite, but Turkle certainly doesn’t appear to embrace technology. In the end, she reverts to old technology. Why? To share as feeling with her daughter she had as a child. How did this come about? By talking to her daughter. We have choices in life. What we really need to remember is that the choice is ultimately our own.

FOOTNOTES

(1) I define this as someone who is an internet addict, gets hundreds of emails a day, and goes to cafes but doesn’t talk. (See Turkle 155)

(2) And I can.

⁽³⁾ I’m disappointed she never used this phrase.

(4) Also, she never makes bad jokes, puns, or sarcastic comments. That’s like, 84.6% of the content on teh interwebz.

(5) She could have saved a lot of criticism addressing this more directly. Not everyone who drinks a beer is an alcoholic, not everyone who plays World of Warcraft has lost touch with reality.

(6) Well, mine and my moms.

(7) Wrestlingsucks.com. It doesn't exist anymore.

(8) Sorta

(9) She dumped me in Paris.

(10) Perhaps that's broad. But if Turkle can say, "We have moved from multi-tasking to multi-lifing" (160) then I can make my claim.

Zen and the Art of Technological Engagement

"Vegetarians all say the same thing . . . 'I don't watch TV.'"

-- Adam Carolla

I heard this quote while I was road-tripping down the coast of California. I don't even know if Adam Carolla really said it, but I immediately loved it. I found it hilarious. I was a vegetarian. I definitely didn't watch TV. My pals and I were what you might consider neo-hippies: we wore bright crazy clothes, we traveled great distances to see our favorite bands, we slept in parks. We ate a lot of granola.

Most importantly (for this blog), we distanced ourselves from technology. There would be absolutely no texting, TV watching, or email checking on this road trip. We placed our faith in deep ecology. I mean anyone who's ever expanded their mind has seen that we're all connected, man. The bird is the same as the leaf or the cloud. We are made of the same stuff that the stars are made of.

http://iasos.com/artists/alexgrey/

So why were we so afraid of technology? Because we automatically associated it with all the bad juju we were trying to escape from: capitalism, industry, horrific pollution. We saw technoculture as the opposite of the natural world. We saw technology as opposite us.

But one has to ask: if we’re all connected and we’re all made of the same elements, couldn’t the computer be a part of this compassionate, Utopian ecosystem?

http://technabob.com/blog/2009/01/04/

strenco-st-2-steambot-steam-robot/

During my first semester of graduate school, I came across the notion of posthumanism. When I was assigned to read Nicolas Gane’s article (simply titled “Posthuman”), I was delighted to find that “I have been a posthumanist all along, and I didn’t even know it” (quoted from my own handwritten notes in the margin of his article). So what made me an unidentified posthumanist? I suppose it was my personal belief in equality among all creatures and things. It was wrapped up in my love of inanimate objects, fruits and flowers, sunsets and stars. And it was intertwined in an innate desire to see dominant ideologies shift into something better, something far more nuanced, just, and beautifully diverse.

Posthumanism is a contemporary philosophical movement that tries to resist humanism, or the idea that humans are the smartest, the best, and the most valuable creatures on the earth. You may have heard that humans are the only beings that have souls, or that “man is the measure of all things”? Yep, that’s humanism right there. While humanism heralds itself as the bastion of human rights and sometimes does a lot of good things, (the American Humanist Association or ASA often advocates for fair treatment of workers, same-sex marriage, things of that nature) it is this elevation of the human above all that promotes horrendous treatment of animals, endless corporate greed, and the annihilation of delicate ecosystems. Not to mention the disavowal of the consciousness inherent in both our carbon and silicon-based, nonhuman friends.

So posthumanism is a response to humanism. It’s an augmentation of deep ecology. It seeks to extend the compassion and equality of humanism to all beings. Deep ecology brings in water, soil, mountains, and air. Posthumanism says, “What about our laptops? What about our robot friends?”

http://anamsh13.blogspot.com/2010/11/
nature-versus-technology.html

Alright, alright so my cellphone is not exactly the same as my aloe plant. I can see that. But the codes that govern our digital devises are not nearly as “inanimate” as we would sometimes like to believe. Code degrades. It evolves. It mutates in unforeseen and unforeseeable ways. Much like our own DNA, computer code is simply not static, and I would wager to say that sometimes, those devises have an agenda all their own.

In this posthuman era, people have begun to open their hearts to encounters with the surreal, and synchronicity shows us that we are not always in control of meaning. Exposure to chaos teaches us not to be afraid of it. Our understanding of the ways that animals and plants communicate is being revolutionized. Personal relationships to machines have never before been so prevalent, individual dependence on technology has never been so widely accepted, and technological advancement has placed the means of digital art production into the hands of consumers.

I seem to have adopted a more Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance approach to technology. In Robert M. Pirsig’s delightful fiction novel, the narrator (who studies Eastern philosophy and could easily be categorized as a kind of biker hippie) critiques “romantics” who shy away from technology the way my friends and I did. Pirsig’s narrator explains that, "The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of the mountain, or in the petals of a flower." The ability to bond with, understand, and repair one’s own technological apparatuses (be they ICUs, motorcycles, or kitchen sinks) is seen as a locus of Zen in this book. When we refuse to learn how to use the technology available to us, we place even more power in the hands of the elite. (Donna J. Haraway would agree.)

Now I certainly can’t wave a magic wand and use my compassion to dissolve all the ethical conundrums circling around technology. It simply shows that we can’t throw the robot out with the transmission fluid.

In some ways, maybe my young hippie friends and I have sold out. Some of us got the kind of jobs we said we’d never get, wear the kinds of clothes we said we would never wear, and made commitments we said we would always resist. We’ve climbed down off the safe pedestals we thought we could teeter on. We got a little more digital and a lot more real.

http://mat3i.tumblr.com/post/
217199331

This is not to say that we are completely different people. I’m talking about shaving our armpits and getting cellphones, not joining the Republican party. And though I ascribe some nostalgia to the kids we used to be, I feel very content with the ways we’ve gone.

And of course we still go on road trips, trading in the back woods Rainbow Gatherings for the deeply cyborgian Burning Man Festival, where posthumanism is alive and well. I get the feeling that it is beginning to thrive everywhere: in farmers’ markets and local art shows, in letters to congress and digital music sharing, in our dreams, in our fantasies, and in our plays. It is a good time to be conscious matter.

References:

Gane, Nicholas. “Posthuman.” Theory, Culture & Society 23 (2006): 431-34. Pdf.

Haraway, Donna J. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist‐Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century." Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. 149‐81. Print.