Online Essay

My online essay couldn't be posted as my blog refused to allow it and kept saying "Your HTML cannot be accepted: Tag is not allowed: META" I brought the blog back to the basics in a word document and it still did not let me submit my assignment. So I sent an email to Josh Nicholas with the assignment attached and explaining my reasons. Therefore, my assignment will most likely to be emailed to my tutor, Laura, from me as soon as I get her email address.

Overview of this Course =)

I can honestly say in this overview of this course that it has a slightly different approach and way of learning and dealing with assignments.

Within the lecture, there was only a short amount of time for the tutors to deliver all the information we needed to learn for this course. I found that I learnt many new things in this short period of time and some things I learnt were fascinating or sometimes boring. The tutors also didn't go too in depth within their theory work and they gave excellent samples to help students understand the concept of the lecture if they didn't get it. They used samples from movies, TV shows etc. The topics we learnt in each lecture was usually something I never heard of and this is what I found fascinating; learning something completely new within the lectures. Though, the topics of lecture slowly began moving towards the ideas with technology, cyberpunk and science fiction. This is where I kinda lost interest and found it difficult to understand some of the terms used.

The tutorials were really fun and I found that I could get alot of work and get help within that one tutorial. This is something I like. I like getting my work done and having help if I need it and the tutor was lovely and a great assistance. Especially helping out with any assignment or tut*spark questions. The assignments for this course was sometimes easy and then sometimes hard. For our assignments, we had to find information about things we didn't know which were hard but it helped me rely on other search engines to help research on the project. One thing I found differently about this course from other ones within the assignment area is we hand in blogs instead of regular papers, which is good for the environment of course. But I found cool even though I have a major dislike towards blogs.

Overall, I found this course pretty good and I enjoyed it as I learnt new things within technology, the history of the evolution of technology, cyberpunk etc. The one thing I think that would be better is having more hands-on and group work activities as it helps the students share ideas and talk about the lectures so everyone can understand what was said if any confusion arrived. Nevertheless, this blog evaluates the course overall. =)

Week 9 of New Com Tech (Tutorial Task)

For this week's tutorial task, we have to talk about our chosen essay topic, our thoughts on this particular topic and where we can begin searching for it.

I have decided to choose the topic of discussing the impact of two figures in history have effective the development of digital technologies and digital culture. The two figures I have chosen is Ada Lovelace, who is known as the world's first computer programmer and Ray Kurzweil, who is a well-known American author, inventor and futurist.

My thoughts on this topic is that I find it interesting looking back into history of how what we have today has come to be such as the development of the technology we have especially within music. Though, the two figures I haven chosen are unrelated to the development of technology within music. They both still have majorly effecting today's technology.

Within researching area for this assignment, I can start by learning the auto-biography for each of the two figures and what we're their major achievement and how it effected technology today. Also, I can find out what inspired them or who and how they inspiration effected their work.

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Week 9 of New Comm Tech (Lecture)

In our week 9 lecture, we learnt about the meaning and understanding of cyberpunk and the writer, William Gibson. Cyberpunk is the opposite to a fairytale scene, it has more of a gritty aesthetic and shows the shadows, decay, lust (as there is no love in cyberpunk; only lust) and capital of the scene. It also incorporates ideas that involve high technology such as human fused to machine etc. Furthermore, it also questions morality in the areas of opportunism, theft and murder.

Cyberpunk is based in the hybrid genre which includes hard-boiled detective fiction, film noir, science fictions and literary postmodernism. Hard-boiled detective fiction includes the topics anti-hero protagonists, crime, betrayal etc. Film noir is the lust, money, power, seduction, murder etc. Science fiction shows a world saturated by technology or post-apocalyptic or apocalypse never came or a giant anonymous multinational corporations. Lastly, literary postmodernism is a way of showing the story in short fragments or in quick descriptions.

In cyberpunk, there are many authors such as Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, John Shirley, Lewis Shiner, Rudy Rucker. One of the most famous cyberpunk writers is William Gibson. He was born on the 17th of March, 1948, in Conway, South Carolina, USA. He grew up in Wytheville, Virginia and then moved to Toronto, Canada later on in life. By 1977, he received his Bachelor of English from University of British Columbia. Over time, he was written many brilliant trilogies such as Sprawl (which includes the books Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive), Bridge (which includes Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tomorrow's Parties) and Blue Ant trilogy (which includes Pattern Recognition, Spook Country and Zero History.)

Overtime, cyberpunk has become a lingua franca of digital culture. It has a huge impact on imagining human - and - machine interconnections and fusions. (Hopefully, a feature will include creating music inside your head and recording it onto a chip that can be transferred to a computer and then posted to the world, HOW COOL WOULD THAT BE!!! )

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Week 8 of New Com Tech (Tutorial Task)

For this week's tutorial we are to write or re-write an article relating to a form of
cyberpunk. The category I have chosen is the "fusion of man and machine." Many movies have put forward this kind of movement in technology with movies such as I Robot, Terminator etc. A current news story that can relate back to this form of evolving technology is with the addiction of the game, Sims. The article has been inserted below.

EA Denies "Sims Addiction"- Lies to Congress – Ignores the Evolution of Man and Machine becoming one.

REDWOOD CITY, CA- Since its launch in November, The Sims Online has shot straight to the top of the top seller lists, leaving a trail of broken families and shattered lives in its path. The game where players control a number of virtual humans has ensnared thousands of real people in its mind-numbing web. All the while Electronic Arts, the game's maker, continues to maintain that the ceaseless, pixel-pushing drudgery of The Sims Online is nothing more than a fun escape from the very real drudgery of everyday life. Still, the Federal Trade Commission is looking into allegations that the game is "dangerous and addictive," and several consumer advocates have called for the title to be banned. Furthermore, the Sims games shows how technology is slowly moving towards the idea of man and machine coming together either in virtual or real reality. This movement will be the start of a massive addication that will greatly effect society and EA continues to ignore this fact and instead, they encourage it.

Last month Electronic Arts CEO Larry Probst testified before a Congressional committee that The Sims is not addictive and it doesn’t influence the thought of virtual reality and the becoming of what technology maybe and that such a notion is, in his words "dunder-headed." However, the story didn't end there. Last week, a leaked memo from deep within EA indicated that the company has known for years just how addictive the game really is and that it actually designed The Sims Online to enhance the addictive and influential nature of their product. Once this came to light, EA executives were again called before Congress and threatened with purgery charges. Probst denied that The Sims Online is habit-forming and then went on to deny his previous testimony. Committee members reminded the executive that we was under oath and not to be so defensive.

"I wouldn't characterize my statements as defensive, Mr. Congressman," Probst told the committee. "With all due respect, I submit that your behavior has been more than a little antagonistic."

As this debate over the addication of this virtual games rages on, the effects of the disorder can be seen everywhere. Some at the Centers for Disease Control are seriously thinking of classifying it as an epidemic. Todd Harpum, a counselor at an area behavioral rehabilitation center, says he has seen over a hundred patients in the past month, all suffering from this same addiction. "We had a similar event during the Tetris outbreak of the late 80's. This looks several times worse."

Though some may dismiss it, this addiction is as real as any other physical dependency. But this kind of addiction isn’t just about a “fun escape from the everyday lifestyle,” it is also pushing boundaries and technology into evoloving the ways of technology ruling our human lives. This can be related to the movie, Surrogates. This is movie is set in the future where humans control and interact through their surrogate robots. It puts forward an idea of safety of living and controling their robots in their perfect society. However, trouble comes knocking on there door when murders of surrogates start appearing in this faultless environment.

A trailer of the movie is below:

This movie shows what the technology could become. Man and machine becoming one and this addiction through the Sims Online game can be the starting point of this masked reality. A perfect and safe society can only last so long before it becomes unreal. Sims is that type of game. A virtual game that will never jump out from the computer screen, but the addictors tell a different story. Their own lives become slowly affected and taken over by their addiction.

The addictors start with periods of lost time and obsessive behaviors associated with problem Simming can affect work, home, and family life. Health experts point to statistics for the period immediately following the online game's release and predict a baby bust in the fall of 2003 owing to the fact that so many people have lost their interest in interaction with fleshy humans in favor of pixel-based ones. In short, people have stopped having sex.

"The issue of whether EA lied to Congress about Sims Addiction is nothing more than a distraction," argues consumer advocate Ralph Nader. "What we really need is a way to help people quit."

Quitting or decreasing the number of people addicated to this game would be better for society, but EA will try to win them back with newer and better products. However, several companies have offered to manufacture dongle devices to automatically quit the game after a predetermined amount of time: first three hours, then two, then one. Proponents of the system say that within a few weeks, a player could become completely free of Sims cravings.

Unfortunately, several Sims addicts in the test group simply went out and bought new computers. As if that weren't enough, Electronic Arts claimed that the after-market products violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and had the dongle makers hanged.

On Monday, GlaxoSmithKilne announced that a Sims cessation aid is in the pipeline and should be on store shelves by the fall. The product, which will likely come in the form of a skin-adhesive patch, will slowly release a feeling of belonging and God-like power throughout the day. However, officials at the FDA are concerned that the patch itself may become far more dangerous and addictive than the game itself. Cause a patch making you feel powerful will be so much better than living and becoming addicted to a virutal reality game, right?

The choice is up to you really, but society should be cautious in the steps they take with the evolution of the technology that they will or will be creating.

The article reflects on this issue greatly. My own editing is written in purple and the original article can be found through this website: http://www.ridiculopathy.com/news_detail.php?id=742

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Week 8 of New Com Tech (Lecture/Tut Spark)

During this week's lecture, we learnt about cyberpunk and how it has relations to society. Cyberpunk was created around 1983 through the Sprawl trilogy by Bruce Bethke. In the book, it had features of advanced science, such as information technology and cybernetics, which also included a breakdown in the social order. Cyberpunk started off as a novel genre but it has slowly pushed its way into society through films, television shows, manga and anime, games, music and literature. Features in cyberpunk usually include things like a electronic based society, futuristic gadgets and gizmos, is set in the near-future etc.

A film that can be related back to the cyberpunk genre is "Blade Runner." The movie is set in 2019 in a oppression future which is being manufactured by beings called 'replicants.' They are slaves used on space colonies and are legal prey on Earth to various bounty hunters who kill them. The overall tone of the film set a trend for many other cyberpunk movies such as "The Matrix," which uses a wide variety of cyberpunk elements. But these two films are only two of the many cyberpunk based films created so far today.

Cyberpunk has become a part of today's society through entertainment and is beginning to become a social impact. =)

Week 7 of New Com Tech (Lecture)

07/09/10
During this week's lecture, we learnt about free culture, free society, libre open source software and creative commons. Though, we mostly talk about creative commons and the copyrights the business has differently to other copyright companies. Creative Commons is different as it allows some rights and is a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting reasonable copyright.

We also given a task to complete in our lecture, which was finding a free software and using it for 10 days. The free software that I will be using is Photoscape 3.5 This is a free software application. It is an excellent photo editing tool that includes tools such as edit, print, optimize, view and having fun with all your photos, all for free. But this is just a reading overview of the program. So in 10 days, I will update the end of this blog with details of what I think of this software. =)

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17/09/10
Alrighty, it's been ten days since I started using the software, Photoscape 3.5 which is similar to Adobe Photoshop. I think the program is actually quite good, I mean it's not as well-known and popular as Adobe but it still supplies the basic qualities of a photoshop program such as cropping, editing, re-sizing etc. My review is positive. I like it and I'm gonna keep it =)