Cyborg Imagination in the Age of Electronic Incunabula
In Hamlet on the Holodeck, Janet Murray argues that we live in an age of electronic incubabula. Noting that it took fifty years after the invention of the printing press to establish the conventions of the printed book, she writes, "The garish videogames and tangled Web sites of the current digital environment are part of a similar period of technical evolution, part of a similar struggle for the conventions of coherent communication" (28). Although I disagree in various ways with her vision of where electronic narrative is going, it does seem likely that in twenty years, or fifty, certain things will be obvious about electronic narrative that those of us who are working in the field today simply do not see. Alongside the obvious drawbacks--forget marble and gilded monuments, it would be nice for a work to outlast the average Yugo--are some advantages, not the least of which is what Michael Joyce calls "the momentary advantage of our awkwardness": we have an opportunity to see our interactions with electronic media before they become as transparent as our interactions with print media have become. The particular interaction I want to look at today is the interaction of technology and imagination. If computer media do nothing else, they surely offer the imagination new opportunities; indeed, the past ten years of electronic writing has been an era of extraordinary technical innovation. Yet this is also, again, an age of incubabula, of awkwardness. My question today is, what can we say about this awkwardness, insofar as it pertains to the interaction of technology and the imagination?
Let me begin with a confession: I'm a technodummy. By "dummy" I mean the kind of person targeted by books such as IDG Books' HTML for Dummies, Javascript for Dummies, and C++ for Dummies. I notice that the series has extended past the technical fields: there is now a Dieting for Dummies, an Entertaining for Dummies, and so forth. There is not only a Dating for Dummies but also an ABRIDGED version of Dating for Dummies, which I guess is for people who want to skip the movie. There is even a book put out by Alpha Books called The Complete Idiot's Guide to Enhancing Self-Esteem, which seems to me to be carrying the concept a bit far. Anyway, I confess that, although I've never bought a "for Dummies" book, I am one of the people such books are written for, a technodummy, which is to say someone who isn't exceptionally skilled in using computers.
Imagine having a grandparent in a nursing home. They have dementia, and not many other family members can make time to come visit often. Thus, loneliness ensues, so the head of the nursing home decides that it would be wise to use a robot pet to soothe their pain. Alarmingly, they believe the robotic companion is a real animal, and the nursing home workers have been advised not to tell them otherwise. Does this seem ethical? How would the loved one feel if they find out that the animal is, in fact, a computer inside of a furry robot exoskeleton coded to show love and attention? These computerized companions were invented purely for fun. Others are used to soothe the elderly. One of the first in the world of these pets, a robotic seal named Paro was created after over a decade of work and millions of dollars in investments. They are coded to show love and companionship, designed for kids and older people alike. Robotic pets are unwelcome because they don’t teach responsibility to children, can isolate others from human interaction, and can be unnerving to others.
... Cyberfiction: Teaching a Course on Reading and Writing Interactive Narrative,” in Contextual Media, ed. E. Barrett and M. Redmond, MIT Press, 1997.
Are technology and the media shedding the very fabric of the existence we have known? As technology and the media spread their influence, the debate over the inherent advantages and disadvantages intensifies. Although opinions vary widely on the subject, two writers offer similar views: Professor Sherry Turkle, director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, in her article “Can You Hear Me Now” and Naomi Rockler-Gladen, who formerly taught media studies at Colorado State University, with her article “Me Against the Media: From the Trenches of a Media Lit Class.” Turkle asserts that technology has changed how people develop and view themselves, while at the same time affecting their concepts of time management and focus (270). Similarly, Rockler-Gladen believes media and its inherent advertising have had a profound effect on the values and thinking of the public (284). I could not agree more with Professor Turkle and Ms. Rockler-Gladen; the effects technology and media have worried and annoyed me for quite so time. The benefits of technology and media are undeniable, but so then are the flaws. People are beginning to shift their focus away from the physical world to the virtual world as they find it easier and more comfortable. The intended purpose of technology and media was to be a tool to improve the quality of life, not shackles to tie people to their devices. I no longer recognize this changed world and long for the simple world of my youth.
William Powers is a New York Times bestselling author of the novel Hamlets Blackberry; a book that thoroughly expounds on the need for society to detach from technology. The inspiration for his novel blossomed during Powers’s research at Harvard University and his passion for the subject only grew from there. He developed into an esteemed author and won the Arthur Rowse Award for media and criticism twice. Powers’s passion for digital balance is very apparent in his life and in his writing. In Hamlets Blackberry he successfully uses many persuasion techniques to help establish and support his argument. In chapter thirteen, Powers utilizes many rhetorical modes such as narrative, Ethos, and Pathos to help support his
We live within an era of great technological achievement. As new devices and forms of communication are developed, our society evolves along side. Technological determinists argue that technology is bringing us into a dystopia. Social constructionists, however, argue that we are entering a utopia of communication; a world full of connections regardless of distance and self. In addition, there are those that argue we will remain within our syntopian world, one with a virtual equilibrium between man and machine. Despite the perception of the world we are moving into, there are evident symbiotic relationships that we have with our devices and their applications: both good and bad. For the purposes of this paper however, we will dissect how our relationships with our devices affects sociology. Specifically, we will be identifying and explaining a term that has become known as absent presence.
Sherry Turkle’s article in The New York Times “The Flight From Conversation”, she disputes that we need to put down the technology and rehabilitate our ability to converse with other human beings because we are replacing deep relationships with actual people for casual encounters on technology. Turkle tries to convince young and middle age individuals who are so enthralled by the technology that they are losing the ability to communicate in a public setting. Sherry Turkle unsuccessfully persuades her audience to put down the technology and engage with others in public through her strong logos appeal that overpowers her weak logos and doesn’t reliably represent herself and her research.
Turckle notes the change in the culture of literacy, “when I first began studying the computer culture, a small breed of highly trained technologists thought of themselves as ‘computer people.’ That is no longer the case” (606). Computer technologies and resources have become a normal part of everyday life. The availability of millions of sources and endless information has enabled a growth in knowledge and an enhancement of literacy. Turckle helps summarize the impact of technology by saying, “Today, starting in elementary school, students use e-mail, word processing computer simulations, virtual communities, and PowerPoint software. In the process, they are absorbing more than the content of what appears on their screens. They are learning new ways to think about what it means to know and understand” (601-602). This new way of thinking and the capability to use the internet enables students to be more proficient at gathering information. No longer does a person need to wait to borrow the book, drive to the library, find a bookstore; any person, at any time, can search out and discover the information he or she needs from a variety of sources that previously would not have been
People all around agree that technology is changing how we think, but is it changing us for the better? Clive Thompson definitely thinks so and this book is his collection of why that is. As an avid fiction reader I wasn’t sure this book would captivate me, but the 352 pages seemingly flew past me. The book is a whirlwind of interesting ideas, captivating people, and fascinating thoughts on how technology is changing how we work and think.
"The Heart of the Well" " Composing Cyberspace Edited by Rich Holeton, San Fransisco: McGraw Hill, 1998, 151-163
There have been many great books that have been based on the growing relationship of technology and human beings. Today, technology is continuously changing and evolving along with the way people adapt to these technological advances. Technology has completely changed our way of living, it has entwined with our humanity, by being able to replace limbs and organs that we once thought could not be replaced. One of the most crucial things that technology has changed is the way people in society interact with one another. A story written by William Gibson titled “Burning Chrome”, portrays that very idea. In his text, Gibson presents that the reader lives within a world where there is no boundaries or limitations between technology and humans. They become a part of each other and have evolved side by side into a society where a person can turn their conscious mind into data and upload it to non-physical, virtual world. In this research paper I will discuss how our society’s culture and interaction with one another has changed and adapted with the advancements of technology over the years.
Back in 2003 Henry Jenkins caused a massive stir in the media world when he introduced the idea of transmedia storytelling, Jenkins describes it as a process where elements of fiction are dispersed across multiple media platforms in order to serve the purpose of creating a coordinated entertainment experience. Jenkins goes on to say that preferably, each medium will contribute different aspects which will assist in the telling of a story and unveil new aspects. However a good transmedia text does not simply supply information, instead it allows the fans, or fandom, to interact with the world within the text (Jenkins, 2007). This essay will arue that transmedia storytelling impacts on how the audience interacts with the story, in order to
Virtual and digital technologies are rampant in American culture and thoroughly utilized in entertainment mediums like television, movies, magazines, and video games. Our capitalist economy creates a fertile environment for these mediums to prosper by feeding off the public's hunger for entertainment. Because these industries are in such high demand and accrue billion dollar revenues, new technologies are often conceived in and funded by these trades: "For, in essence, all socially relevant new image media, from classical antiquity to the revolution of digital images, have advanced to serve the interests of maintaining power and control or maximizing profits" (Grau 339). That being the case, new technologies "hardly ever…advanced solely for artistic purposes" (Grau 339). Because "power" and "profits" are the central means of motivation in our culture; art, in the classical sense, is often an afterthought. In an age where entertainment and art intertwine, however, distinctions between the two based upon their creation are impossible. With advances in technology and, in turn, art, our ideas and traditions of comparison should also develop to justly analyze new media: "Although art history and the history of the media have always stood in an interdependent relationship and art has commented on, taken up, or even promoted each new media development, the view of art history as media history…is still underdeveloped" (Grau 4). In order to embrace virtual art as a valid outlet of artistic expression, its relationship to media and unique position in the history of art must first be acknowledged.
“Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, allowing us to do things more quickly and efficiently. But too often it seems to make things harder, leaving us with fifty-button remote controls, digital cameras with hundreds of mysterious features.” (James Surowiecki) Whether or not is known, technology has become too heavily relied on. It is replacing important social factors such as, life skills and communication skills. While technology is created to be beneficial, there must be a point in time where we draw the line. Once face-to-face conversations begin to extinguish, this means that there is too much focus on the “screen culture”. In her writing, “Alone Together”, Sherry Turkle talks
... of the Internet and the Information Age in our lives. He writes, “Information is about to overflow and suffocate reality” (213). With the invention or development of new technological devices or advances every day, this suffocation seems imminent. With the Palm Pilot, the DVD player, with cellular phones that check e-mail and computers that play movies, with all the newer technologies with which I am not yet even familiar, the world seems almost scary. With all of these avenues for accessing, transmitting, and generating information, the pace and the amount of information sent will steadily increase until we, as mere humans, are overloaded. Borgmann makes me aware of the frightening possibility that these signs we rely on to orient and direct us in everyday life will soon become so many that they will begin to contradict one another. Where will that leave us?
This article addresses how children have mastered the art of technology from a very early age. The internet allows for faster learning than textbooks because it helps children choose an avenue of learning that suits them best. Research has proven that vocabulary expands at a quicker rate with the use of technology. This article provides information from a variety of news sources and a professional writer. Harsh Wardhan Dave is a media and communications specialist. Harsh Wardhan has a passion for finding the right blend of technology and creativity in his writings. This source is relevant to the thesis statement because it also validates that we need to make the most of technology and the internet while still providing a healthy balance as well as ensuring a safe environment so that we can provide our children the best of both worlds.