I am a "Blogger"....

I have to admit I am not what you would consider a very "technological person", I don't even own an iPod. But what this assignement has shown me is that i can be one. Technology is not just for those geeks that talk in their own technological language, it is also for the ordinary person. Technology can be incorporated into our lives not to confuse or control us, like some us thought, but rather to aid us and enhance our lives.

As I discussed in my earlier posts iPods are crossing the different spheres that make up our lives. We take our iPods from our private sphere, at home, to our public sphere, catching the tram. To many people, myself included, I saw this constant presence of technology as something to avoid. I viewed technology as a phenomenon that was introduced to control us and turn us into vegetables. All this time I chose to ignore technology rather than embrace it.

Through this blogging assignment I feel I have to some extent come to terms with the devoplements of new technology. I may not be one of those people who would rather communicate online, or sit on Mxit all day but I have become open to the infinite possibilities new technology provides. I do believe that a balance needs to be found for each individual, where they can use technology and all its advantages to aid them and enhance their lives but at the same time not let this technology control them. In this case iPods have opened many new doors but I think we need to be careful in becoming too dependent on them in that we feel "naked" if we don't have our iPod in our pocket and the earphones in our ears.

Everyone will approach technology in a different way and who are we to say what is right or wrong. The important thing is that we use technology to enhance our lives and improve our quality of life. I may not be the most technological person but I'm learning how I want to use technology to enhance my life and i can now officially call myself a BLOGGER!!!!!

faster than you can blink

Throughout this blogging process a bizarre new world has opened up to me. It is dynamic and full of mystery, intriguing yet at the same time indicative of controversy. It is not a phenomenon that is without cause for concern. The new media environment has an anomalous effect on humanity. The machine entity; the inert thing is somehow given life through virtual processing and technological malleability. Entropy seems to be becoming an inhabitable space; a new frontier. Being a cyborg is in a way inescapable because today our lives are so deeply interpenetrated with technology that it has become part of our human function that is in turn part of our cyborg system function. Does this mean we are losing physical presence and therefore suffering a depletion of autonomy and primary agency? It is a subtle subject at the moment but one that can not be ignored as we are faced with a rate of change that seems to happen faster than we can blink. In a photographic sense everything today can be automated. Skill can be debased down to simply pushing one button. Susan Sontag, an author and critic of photography said this: "Ours is a culture of excess, of over-production; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life- it's sheer overcrowdedness- conjoin to dull our sensory faculties." But we have machines to replace our normal sense things that make hyper sense. The world we live in is changing on a multitude of levels. So stay sharp. Stay alert. Stay alive. Thanks for reading if you did.

means & market

Pictures; the technology to take them and the ends they themselves serve are many. From family snaps to high art to top secret intelligence the photograph is more than just a social record. It is a cultural commodity, an art form, an extension of language, an interactive tool, a source of power and therefore has an active and important role in the discourse of the new media. As I said in my earlier posts the camera is an agent of virtuality. The author Susan Sontag said that it made 'everyone a tourist in other peoples reality and eventually in one's own.' This is true when one considers how common picture taking has become. We are surrounded by framed representations of our own and others' experiences. It helps construct our lives' story; support its ideology and we enjoy it. We pay money for it. We spend time consuming it. It has become a techno-imperialist blanket that society uses continually to cover time and space. An objective representation of humanity. It is good for the virtual collective as it allows communication that transcends linguistic limitations; through pictures it provides patches for the quilt. However, this lasts only as long as one remains tucked up under it in bed with the scientific method looking up at the mirror on the ceiling saying how much they enjoy not having to go outdoors. Outside the narcissistic box many people still live without the use of the quilt as a myriad patchwork of constructed symbolic interface. It maintains virtual communication. Nor the mirror, a metaphor for the screening/ lensing process that is much like a portal between the real and the represented worlds. They speak with their mouths, face to face. Though they may understand images subconsciously they do not rely on them for agency in a cultural consensus nor do they possess the means to utilize them. But nowadays such people are either labelled traditionalist freaks, savages or tramps. Once again we are faced with division; two modes of existence/ activity. The virtual agent suffers a loss of core experience as they engage with the new media. Then there is the human being, who doesn't get to experience the joys of split realities and virtual interface because of limited access. Developments in the traditional machinery however, through digitalisation, micro-circuitry and super plastics are succeeding in closing this gap. One only has to look at photography embedded in cellphone usage as a phenomenon that is fast expanding virtual practice thus connecting everyone with a phone to the digital image world. In some places cellphone ownership exceeds 100 percent making it very hard to escape the social and technological-cultural transformations heralded by such signs. We are all in a sense doomed to activate this process just by looking at a billboard. Virtuality relies on the image and in the new media visuality is at a premium. So what? So read my next post to find out.

Going The Distance....

iPods are undoubtably bringing us closer to our favourite songs and muscians but in retrospect they are distancing us from each other. iPods are filling the space where interpersonal relationships and communication used to be. The emotions we experiance can now be shared with a "piece" of technology we hold in our hands. If we are feeling sad who better to share it with than a song that gets to the depth to our saddness. If we are feeling happy there is nothing better than the latest pop song. And of course there are those moments when you literally could kill because you are so angry and who better to listen to then Metallica, they really understand what anger means! With all these understanding songs that don't judge why do you need to interact with other people?

This loss of interaction can also be seen in many day-to-day activities. In the past people would get together at the end of the day and enjoy their evening exercise with a festive group of runners, which made running more social and enjoyable. Nowadays people run with their iPod. People argue that running with their iPod gives them "me" time but infact it gives them time with their the new best friend. Why would anyone want to run with people and hear about their lives when they could run with their iPods and be totally focussed on themselves? iPodslisten and understand far better than an actual person and of course they will never tell you that you are wrong or judge you in any way.

This separation of people can also be seen when people travel on the tubes. Thousands of people a day are sitting in close proximity to each other and yet they know nothing about each other. They may catch eye contact but thats as far as it gets as they quickly turn their attention to their iPods put on their music and sit in their own world for the reaminder of the journey. iPods in this sense are distancing people not in literally but metaphorically.

Although iPods have transformed how we listen to music at the same time they also are affecting how we interact with each other, or should i say how we don't interact with each other!

so what

Since culture and communication began humans have expressed themselves through pictures. Whether it is on a cave wall or a computer screen an image is able to relay information in the most literal sense. The gift of sight allows people to observe space and the unfolding of time as a continuous whole. The photograph is able to dissect that continuity and preserve a section of it within a static frame. It is this characteristic that makes the photograph a perfect metaphor for the concept of virtuality. The term virtual implies existing in essence or effect though not in actual fact. A picture can only ever record, no matter how realistic and entire it seems, a proportional fraction of the real event via a process of chemical reaction. Thus a photographic subject is never more than a virtual representation of the actual object. It is like stealing time and locking it in a special chamber keeping it there to serve the needs of testament, communication and memory; of experience. This notion adds to the controversy surrounding the increasing digital application, hyper-reality and the concurrent media glut. Are we inadvertently stealing time from ourselves? Maybe we are by adopting more and more a culture of secondary technological mediation; by distancing ourselves from the level of primary engagement. Our realities become confused with the electric, the mechanical- becoming ever more synthetic. Perhaps human experience in this way, as a form of expendable energy isolating itself from reality within virtuality, is acting as an agent of entropy, evolving so that we may inhabit entropy. As time and space degrade virtual interface is normalized bringing us closer to an ultimate state of inert uniformity. This however, can only be quantified against an understanding of entropy and the role virtuality plays in its expansion. That is of yet uncertain though it continues to provoke questions. Like access and exclusion: if everybody on the in side of the digital divide is evolving to suit entropy what about those on the other side? Could the human race be experiencing sub division as a direct result of circumstantial transformation and evolution? Could all this be creating a platform for things we once considered science fiction i.e. a quantum leap? Science fiction, yes that’s more like media but perhaps the distinctions are no longer so clear between my ex- girlfriend’s quantum physics paper and my latest new media assignment. So what? So I don't know. There’s entropy and virtuality. What do you think?

culture vulture

As digitalization expounds itself with such terminal velocity into history it causes ripples in humanity's psycho-social space time continuum. Before long these ripples become waves - waves that are undoubtedly rocking the proverbial boat. Now the ocean can be called progress, the boat can be named culture and the only thing that is for certain in this new media whirlpool is that it is a long way away from the quiet coasts of tradition and conservatism. Digitalization is a radical force. To illustrate just how radical it is take the process of image capturing. Compare the early photographic techniques to the new. Once upon a time it took an eighteen wheel truck to carry a camera on an expedition to snap a few happy scenes of the local countryside. Today an entire fully edited feature length movie can be captured on a device no bigger than a matchbox. I hope the contrast in this image gives a clear enough indication of how radical the transformative power of the digital machine really is. Albeit that the two examples are situated more than a century apart they are nonetheless situated in a category of the new. Much like driving, flying and antiseptics photography is a modern phenomenon. Progress it seems waits for nothing as even the term modern is relegated to file named traditional relics as we move rapidly into the world of the post-post. Like the camera's ability to compress time and space into a single frame so too is digitalization shrinking context. In viewing photography as a cultural product from a new media perspective the implications are varied and the values ambiguous. Singularity can not hold fast its each man for himself.

iTunes Music Store to the rescue!

The idea is to sell songs in digital format for less than a dollar and let buyers play them whenever and wherever they like—as long as it's on an Apple iPod. This truly magnificent invention has found a middle ground between the foot-dragging record labels and the free-for-all digital pirates and for creating a bandwagon onto which its competitors have immediately jumped! iTunes software has become a gateway to the Music Store, where you can easily find and save music to your hard drive, CD or iPod music player—no subscription necessary, just 99¢ per song, or $9.99 for an album. The Windows crowd can get iTunes free, and it offers almost all the same functionality as the paid versions of MusicMatch and Real One, two PC-based rivals. But iTunes is the only music application that will work with the iPod, and it has features—like its powerful search function—that are unrivaled. This program is by far the most easiest and cheapest way to get music onto your ipod...The guilt of illegal downloads and pirating of cd's dissappear, and at 99c, nobody can complain about the price. It gives Apple iPod users unlimited access to all different types of music and works like a music store, but is virtual, where you search and buy tracks online. It truly is a plus to be the owner of an Apple iPod! It allows you the greatest access to all types of music, for a fraction of the price!