Found a couple more articles on the Guardian website, the first http://www.guardian.co.uk/drugs/Story/0,,2207210,00.html is about brain enhancing drugs, which is an area i neglected when considering my genetically engineered Superhuman concept. These drugs are much like Ritalin (subsequently known as "kiddie coke" a nick-name which both worries and amuses me) but they are for aimed at students and young professionals working in highly stressful and pressured environments, people who could benefit from mentle agility, hightened alertness and short term memory enhancers.
This second article http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/nov/05/mondaymediasection.comment is in relation to the Wikinomics theme we have been discussing recently, the short feature mainly focusses on advertising revenue in the media, which is apparently going to run out sooner rather than later. Thanks to the rise of the amateur and the availablility of free information in blogs, wikipedia and citizen jouranlism, the media are getting paid for their content less and less and are therefore relying more heavily from the cash money advertising brings in.
On the whole Wikinomics tip, as ive already mentioned more than enough, check out Andrew Keen's book The Cult of the Amateur. This book assaults the whole Web 2.0 user created content ethos, arguing that it is destroying our culture and economy. It directly attacks all websites involved in this second Web-revolution. Now this guys opinions are pretty extreme and although he raises some good points i don't agree with a lot he has to say. What did make me laugh out loud is when i checked his website, notice the links to Amazon.com to buy his book, a site that he directly critisized in the very same book.
Thursday, 8 November 2007
Wednesday, 7 November 2007
Hype, hype, gimme the funk, gimme the funk!
Below is my first dissertation proposal i wrote as part of our critical and cultural studies in May 2007. It's a bit of a rant but you get the gist.
TO WHAT EXTENT HAS GLOBAL CAPITALISM SUPPORTED/CONFIRMED BAUDRILLARDS THEORY OF SIMULACRA AND SIMULATION? HOW MUCH RESPONSIBILITY SHOULD THE MEDIA ACCEPT IN THE CREATION OF MEANING?
In our current world of hyper-reality, if the real no longer exists, are we (as a New Media society) living a lie? When direct meaning has been replaced by signs, codes, metaphors etc how do we define the real? It's almost as if we have to frequently prove and reaffirm our existence with imagery, photographs and short films of family and friends and the great times we all shared. Now these can constantly be displayed on Web 2.0 sites such as FaceBook. We can regularly upload documentation of our memories and exhibit them to the entire online community. Rather than simply living we must record our existence to repeatedly remind ourselves and others that we are in fact, alive.
Postmodernism has perverted basic reality. Existentialism is dead. Commercial advertising and communication media now dictate reality with hyper-mediation. We are no longer free agents, we have become walking, talking billboards. Individualism is impossible, our responsibility is not to ourselves, but to TopShop and H&M. Human existence is not defined by personal experience but by which stereotype we best fit. We are categorised and regergitated into another commodity. In a recent Argus i had a look through the personal ads, one read as such. "Arctic Monkey loving Vegan female looking for a non-smoking mid-twenties male to share world-cinema and soya milk with." Is pigeon-holing people now completely inescapable?
In an authentic-fake world how do we distinguish the real? If there's no need to refer to an original but just reproductions and representations of the real, then what is really true and what is false? And more importantly, how do we define true and false in contemporary society? The simulated copy has superseded the original object by the signs of its existence rather than its actual physical presence. How can we trust copies? Are we the donkey, instinctively following the digital carrot of invented meaning, dangled before our eyes by the all powerful Media?
Adverts and design in general manipulate meaning and mold the publics perception of the world. Traditional moral values are brought under the microscope by contemporary media. Ethics are being reshaped by modern technology. In a hyper-real society people no longer have to think for themselves, their opinions are governed by headlines.
Much of modern design and architecture is illogical. Should not every new Postmodern apartment block have solar panel roofs? New media isn't just working in conflict with the natural environment, it's striving to provide an alternative hyper-real environment - virtual reality.
TO WHAT EXTENT HAS GLOBAL CAPITALISM SUPPORTED/CONFIRMED BAUDRILLARDS THEORY OF SIMULACRA AND SIMULATION? HOW MUCH RESPONSIBILITY SHOULD THE MEDIA ACCEPT IN THE CREATION OF MEANING?
In our current world of hyper-reality, if the real no longer exists, are we (as a New Media society) living a lie? When direct meaning has been replaced by signs, codes, metaphors etc how do we define the real? It's almost as if we have to frequently prove and reaffirm our existence with imagery, photographs and short films of family and friends and the great times we all shared. Now these can constantly be displayed on Web 2.0 sites such as FaceBook. We can regularly upload documentation of our memories and exhibit them to the entire online community. Rather than simply living we must record our existence to repeatedly remind ourselves and others that we are in fact, alive.
Postmodernism has perverted basic reality. Existentialism is dead. Commercial advertising and communication media now dictate reality with hyper-mediation. We are no longer free agents, we have become walking, talking billboards. Individualism is impossible, our responsibility is not to ourselves, but to TopShop and H&M. Human existence is not defined by personal experience but by which stereotype we best fit. We are categorised and regergitated into another commodity. In a recent Argus i had a look through the personal ads, one read as such. "Arctic Monkey loving Vegan female looking for a non-smoking mid-twenties male to share world-cinema and soya milk with." Is pigeon-holing people now completely inescapable?
In an authentic-fake world how do we distinguish the real? If there's no need to refer to an original but just reproductions and representations of the real, then what is really true and what is false? And more importantly, how do we define true and false in contemporary society? The simulated copy has superseded the original object by the signs of its existence rather than its actual physical presence. How can we trust copies? Are we the donkey, instinctively following the digital carrot of invented meaning, dangled before our eyes by the all powerful Media?
Adverts and design in general manipulate meaning and mold the publics perception of the world. Traditional moral values are brought under the microscope by contemporary media. Ethics are being reshaped by modern technology. In a hyper-real society people no longer have to think for themselves, their opinions are governed by headlines.
Much of modern design and architecture is illogical. Should not every new Postmodern apartment block have solar panel roofs? New media isn't just working in conflict with the natural environment, it's striving to provide an alternative hyper-real environment - virtual reality.
Monday, 5 November 2007
Death of the Author, Birth of the Amateur
Yes ok ok i admit i have neglected my documentation duties over the last couple of weeks and must get stuck in again. However in my defence i blame our theorizing. I have delved deep into the dark realms of the dissertation. After our Wikinomics article last week i did a bit of research and found an anti-Web 2.0 manifesto called "The Cult of the Amateur" by a bitter ex-Silicon Valley rep Andrew Keen. He claims we are sacrificing trustworthy information for a quick-fix of cheap empowerment. Now i don't agree with everything he has to say as his arguments are quite extreme at times, but it was certainly a good book to read at present, when everyone seems so blindly besotted with this user-created content movement. I have also been dabbling in some further reading of Marshall McLuhan's "The Medium is the Messege" and "The Rebel Sell" by Andrew Heath and Joseph Potter, which critiques culture jamming activists such as AdBusters magazine and analyses the hipocrisy of such texts and how they simply fuel the fires of capitalism they are fighting so avidly against. So lots of diligent dissertation reading going on but the deadline is creeping up from behind like a paedo in speedo's so i must fix up and look sharp.
Anyhoo, stop living in the past. Now i need to focus, i need to do some industrial cutting and pasting in my sketchbook and i need to prepare my final presentation and figure out the best medium and method for demonstrating my ideas. I plan to produce an After Effects animation of the Netvision menu and applications, to which i will carefully choreograph a set of movements that sync with the actions of the Netvision menu on the screen resulting in what appears to be a movement-sensitive interface - much like the Wii controller and the overly referenced Minority Report. Sounds a bit too ambitious ey? Well, it probably is but i believe it to be the best way of displaying my future-of-TV-meets-the-internet concept.
Anyhoo, stop living in the past. Now i need to focus, i need to do some industrial cutting and pasting in my sketchbook and i need to prepare my final presentation and figure out the best medium and method for demonstrating my ideas. I plan to produce an After Effects animation of the Netvision menu and applications, to which i will carefully choreograph a set of movements that sync with the actions of the Netvision menu on the screen resulting in what appears to be a movement-sensitive interface - much like the Wii controller and the overly referenced Minority Report. Sounds a bit too ambitious ey? Well, it probably is but i believe it to be the best way of displaying my future-of-TV-meets-the-internet concept.
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