ARTS3091 - Wk4 - The way our brain has changed

EXPERIENCE

This lecture had a basic outline of about the big question about how our brains actually work in relation to the environment around us. The brain is quite an adaptive piece of machinery, its the cross attached to the strings of a puppet, with d-pads, control buttons and triggers from all sorts of video game controllers.

Brains are quite adaptive and experiential machines. They themselves act as a storage system for our internal memory, it records information and replays them back to us in a whole different language from how it actually happend, but even so we would still understand it because its an internal language that's distinctive to and unique to our internal systems.

There are many ways to describing the brain and its relationship with the things around us. Firstly many scholars have mentioned some long standing ideas about long term, short term memories as well as retention spans. These concepts have lived with us our entire life to the point where we don't appreciate the importance of these issues and we simply let our actions speak louder to project our mind into our environment.

We often have feedback in our environment after adopting certain forms of technology and its forms such as television, telephones and now a fusion of all these older machines.

Another concept I found quite interesting in the readings this week is this idea of an extended mind. An extended mind is that our mind could be visualised as a center piece of a jigsaw puzzle. This piece often could be connected with objects and technology that could extend our cognitive function. For example the many ideas I've noticed that scholars mention are stuff like smartphone technology. We also regularly use some tools like memopads, paper, scripted stuff.

The reason I wanted to point this out is that the core theme of this week's idea of the media and the mind is based on some old media ideas by Plato who disliked the use of such external technology and we should simply reinforce our internal memory. There is some truth in this - The loss of such valuable pieces of information which is all recorded in our phones could be easily lost, distributed and sold to others. We could as easily lose our sense of identity recorded in these mediums than gain it. We could easily lose such important details like contacts, messages and valuable personal information. We can delegate tasks to the objects around us, but it has no meaning and no autonomy - which might be what people fear.

We must question whether we're our lives are being governed by such technology or are our technology the ones who are living our lives for us? Is our phones living the life for us in the Matrix or should we pull out and really experience reality? These are important questions.

References

just.Luc 2008, digital photograph, accessed 13 April 2013,
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/9619972@N08/3044490806/>

ARTS3091 - Wk 3 - Media Equilibrium

Metacommunications

In response to my further brain storm of technological determinism and cultural materialism, after some reconsidering - I feel that these two schools although quite different, are both part of the same process. Both need each other, on one side are technology used to govern our lives whilst the other idea is convinced that technology, man-made technology is designed because there is a need for it. We've seen around us that both sorts of technology exists in our world, some scholars focus particularly on media technology when this term technology has co-existed with humanity since the stone age.

This term media ecology represents a sort of environment, a representation of many elements, complex processes and ideas. This sees the relationship of the media with different modes of information, technics and codes of communication. Simply put, decades ago the power of the media is much stronger than what it used to be, the media forms ideas to the public and there wasn't quite as many choice of media and communication as it is now. Media ecology sees the environment as a constant balance between all these elements and forms - now with the existence of social networking, Wikileaks and the world wide web, it tips the balance of the media ecology in an extraordinary way, a new age in which the public sphere has a form of defense and critical power over what is written in the press.

But is this perhaps a good thing or a bad thing? I feel it is a good thing that the public has some form of control over ourselves as opposed to having no voice in our daily lives. But this could also mean that this power could be easily misused. Take for example the kid and his POLICE BRUTALITY during this year's Sydney Mardi Gras. The footage is raw, the media easily manipulated the footage to place blame on the police officer when in actual fact, viewing the footage raw allows the audience to form their own opinion on the issue. We trace back a few years ago and we could see that such an incident may not have such mixed opinions as we're fixed to view the situation over a few specialised outlets.

ARTS3091 - Wk 2 - Media Change and Retrospectives

MACHINIC

The first week didn't quite cover as much as I'd expected so I'll just fuse the first two weeks together.

I can understand why media critics are so pessimistic and critical about the effects of technology on the society. Some argue that technology has no meaning, they are neutral, but it depends on the person using it to see whether it's beneficial or harmful. 

Think for example of a knife. Knives are ancient tools used by people to cut their prey as well as to fend off enemies. It's also one of the top most lethal things ever to have graced humankind. It's all perspectives, it really depends on the person. You could say it's technological determinism that brought this item into the world yet it's also materialism. Maybe the concept was natural but the creation and the label placed on the item is all human. You could say that most items of the ancient past were similar in this respect, civilizations were more work-driven than about entertainment.

Using this, we could see that the media has been known to have some impact on our lives. People use to gather around the television when it was first invented, it drew people into viewing the world through the broadcast's lens when the real is just outside their house. We used to glue our eyes on to the television back when computers weren't as prominent, but now? Look around. Smartphones is the new television in the long line of media technology. I've never been as frustrated taking the train as I have in the past, the level of fascination with handheld computers seems to go beyond a normal distraction but an intense obsession to be updated every second. 

I agree that technological change is an integral part of media, this idea that the media change happens after a long period of stability doesn't seem that plausible. It seems that the world has always been exposed to new technology every few decades, it seems like media change has always been a continuous process while a stable world, are short resting points for the new. 

The second reading with Parikka discusses this 'media archaelogy' heavily which I think is just a longer and less direct way to understand retrospectives. It's almost completely brought on by nostalgia, some would argue that retrospectives bring about nothing new into our world, but actually most ideas are always a synthesis of multiple interesting views. Perhaps people enjoy a simpler way of doing things to remind people that there is nothing to fear about the future. Understanding the old is a good way to understand the impact on the new, it's close to media historianism. 

Here's a link of an iphone with an NES controller case I came across a few months ago, I feel that this captures the idea of retro quite well in the age of smart phones (SvenS 2013)

References

SvenS 2012, Redbubble, accessed 13 April 2013,
<http://www.redbubble.com/people/svens/works/7891044-nes-controller?p=iphone-case&type=iphone5_deflector>