Class #6 pt. 3 Chapter 34

New Media Reader- Chapter 34- Introduction- VIDEO GAMES AND COMPUTER HOLDING POWER

• Sherry Turkle in 1980s- video games play social and psychological role, allowing people to act out persona they did not express in real life. She wrote the book The Second Self.
• Contrasting a game like Asteroids with a more complex computer games that engage players in a different way.
• People who don't like video games don't like computers in general because of generational disconnect
• Video games are prime example of new human relation with machines, and are key to understanding computer culture
• Video game differ from TV because video games are interactive. They are not simply "mindless", they require skill and thought and concentration.
• Video games not constricted by physical limitations, unlike pinball. This allows designer freedom.
• Arcade game has memory of high scores while pinball you start fresh every time.
• Case study of gamer Jarish. He is used to show how kids really invest in and care about video game stories. Also used as example of how interest in video games transfers to interest in computers and programming.
• Video games, as opposed to a passive Disney ride or pinball game, involves active participation.
• First video game invented in 1960 called Space War at MIT Pong invented by MIT grad who made video games accessible to a lot of people. But Space Invaders started video game culture.
• Newer games will allow greater personalities to emerge from video games, causing better human connection to the game
• Games in which player takes role of character (crossing the line between playing games and being in a movie)
• Will gamers of the future be users of someone else's program, or programmers themselves?
• Rule-driven video games require consistency, "everything is possible but nothing is arbitrary"
• Role playing games, dungeons and dragons, Adventure computer game
• To play video game, you enter an altered state to identify with what's on the screen. Video games require serious concentration, and can help people relax because they don't have to think about anything else. "meditation with macho"
• Video game could go on forever. They are potentially infinite.
• Case study Jimmy wants to play video gams to achieve "perfection" that he cannot achieve in his own life due to birth defect
• Computers make you feel bad about being imperfect
• Video games come with sense of urgency not provided in everyone's daily life. It's a pure test with consequences.
• Children who program their own games experience a second self.

Class #6 pt. 2 "Occupy Wall Street Readings"

a. Occupy Wall Street History

1. Wikipedia- ongoing demonstrations started by Adbusters protesting social and economic inequality, corporate greed, and influence of corporations.

2. Mashable- OWS inspired by Arab Spring movement. Goal is to maintain sustained occupation of Wall Street in order to draw attention to economic structure and Wall Street misdeeds.

3. Protests grow- Support for OWS exploded after September 17. Unions joined, Anonymous shut down NYSE.com, We Are the 99 Percent blog started.

b. 928 Offshoots on Meetup.com

1. Overnight- Movement grows to include 200 cities across the U.S. Meetup.com helps people involved in OWS connect and start related events nationwide. Meetup is designed for grass-roots organizing.

c. Occupy Wall Street Hackathons

1. Mashable- Groups build digital tools for OWS movement. Some ideas help OWS articulate its goals, make decisions and cast votes.

2. Another Mashable- Hackathons for OWS have started independently in several U.S. cities.

3. Occupy Together- a website hosted through Meetup unites computer whizzes who want to help the movement spread through new online tools.

4. FreedomBox- a new project helps people develop personal servers for increased privacy, described on Wikipedia.

d. Twitter Buzz Builds for OWS

1. Social Media Buzz Builds- A study of Twitter shows that online buzz around OWS reached a peak on October 6. Greatest single day of boost to the movement occurred when hundreds were arrested on Brooklyn Bridge.

2. Twitter- Collects all posts on Twitter tagged with #OccupyWallStreet. This list grows every second.

3. Call to action by Adbusters- "Tahrir succeeded in large part because the people of Egypt made a straightforward ultimatum – that Mubarak must go – over and over again until they won. Following this model, what is our equally uncomplicated demand? ...We demand that Barack Obama ordain a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence money has over our representatives in Washington." I think if OWS protestors articulated this founding demand then there would be fewer people in politics asking what OWS really wants....

e. NYPD arrests in WSP

1. The video - Protestors in WSP are given the opportunity to leave peacefully. They refuse, sing songs, and taunt officers and are arrested. I support the movement but I think this was unnecessary.

f. OWS gaining momentum in social media

1. Nmincite- The original study conducted by NM Incite which points at October 6 as peak for OWS interest.

2. Occupy Together- An informal home based for OWS worldwide, providing resources and news for protestors.

3. Mashable- Photos and video of the Brooklyn Bridge arrests that brought interest in the movement to a high point.

4. Reuters- Reporter covers OWS events around the world in what looks like a live-stream format, including short information bursts and photos.

g. Birds-Eye View

1. Maps- shows the reach of the "Occupy" movement using map, which relies on social media data for conclusions about hotspots.

2. Another map- map hosted on Cravify shows OWS activity worldwide.

3. The Guardian- Adds to the maps of OWS online. They say the listings they've created are drawn from all "verified news reports" of activity.

h. Does 1st amendment grant absolute right to protest?

1. Boing Boing- Link to Pro Publica article on state restriction of protest.

2. Pro Publica- 1st amendment is not absolute. Time, place, and manner restrictions apply when it comes to public spaces. This goes for any protest, regardless of content. The rules are different with a private space such as Zucotti Park. Private owners can ask police to evict demonstrators. Some readers say the Park is in a legal grey area because it is a privately owned public space, which makes no sense to me.

i. Occupy Wall Street Newspaper

1. Mashable- Article about The Occupied Wall Street Journal, newspaper about and for OWS community. Funded by online donors.

j. George and Luke

1. Occupy George- Website with tips on how to apply graphics to American currency that spreads message of OWS. Looks like data visualization gone viral!

1. Luke- funny web graphic depicts Star Wars' Luke Skywalker as member of OWS 99% because he was raised poor and joined a rebel group.

k. Protest Posters

1. Boing Boing 1 and 2- studio portraits of protestors puts human face to OWS.

l. OWS Propoganda

1. Boing Boing- Atlantic columnist's words end up on a OWS poster.

2. Boing Boing Octopus- Clever OWS play on words to describe old cartoon about the FED.

3. Pittsburgh- Photos of OWS in Pittsburgh focuses on signage.

m. Role of Anonymous

1. Fast Company- argues that Anonymous serves to promote and publicize the OWS movement.

2. Boing Boing- Link to government press release that calls Anonymous a domestic terrorism organization.

3. Wired- article describes how Anonymous has expressed it wants to take down American infrastructure. DHS thinks it's unlikely that the group has the capacity but is issuing the release anyway.

4. Public Intelligence- Link to PDF of the DHS bulletin, which highlights past actions of Anonymous, which are of concern.

n. Ice cream

1. Ben & Jerry's- gets behind OWS. We all scream for ice cream.

Class #6 pt. 1

Ken Perlin's Lecture

The most profound moment of the Ken's lecture for me was when he said that math is art and art is math. I think that's true, and particularly so considering the content of our class.

Surely Ken demonstrated that when he showed us the work that he's been doing in his laboratory. Using physics, numbers, and code, he brought animated characters to life — as complex as a fish interacting with two bouncing balls, or as simple as a 3-D shape. Ken's computer skills bring objects to life.

Another part of his work is integrating education with gaming. I thought his color mixing game and dot candy music machine were not only powerful learning tools but fun programs that could make knowledge accessible for a new, distracted generation. As Ken said, technological literacy is more important than ever.

Finally, Ken's greatest mission seems to be to better integrate technology into natural human existence and daily life. The demo he showed us, in which a professor could theoretically make notes appear with his hands, is evidence that he is on his way to achieving that goal.

THINK Exhibit

Some other people hoping to make technology into art are the fine folks at IBM.

I had excellent intentions to see the THINK exhibit Sunday and see all that this company envisioned for this happy marriage but alas things didn't go as planned. Tours were sold out for the rest of the day so I couldn't make it inside.

I didn't leave empty-handed though. The information made available to everyone outside was limited but compelling and I got to learn a bit about data visualization. Classmate Pearl met me there and took a photo as evidence.

As it turns out data visualization's usages are wide. From keeping track of checked baggage at the airport to monitoring crime, data visualization can help us understand and manage information through simplified visual representations.

Today's technology allows us to collect more information than ever before. Data visualization, then, lets us organize all of it more easily without relying too heavily on text.

Some particularly good applications I read about were for reducing traffic congestion and making mass transit more reliable. Any New York City resident can tell you that transportation is a great issue, and that increased communication would be of great service in fixing jams and keeping trains and buses moving.

My fault with what I saw was this: the displays did more to show us what kind of technology was being used to collect information than what visual strategies were being implemented to share the information in new and innovate ways.

Perhaps more awaited indoors, and I'm sorry that I missed it.

Huffington Post

In other unfortunate news, I'll be missing most of Thursday's class in order to attend a networking event/ tour at the Huffington Post.

I can't such much about it more because I haven't received too much information on it but I know that I'll be hearing from representatives from several of the "verticals", including international, business, college, and front page.

I like the Huffington Post because it really is a vanguard in exclusively online media. It also grew to a size that few blogs have been able to replicate. It is a moneymaker without charging for subscriptions. It's so valuable, AOL couldn't resist it.

I'm also impressed by the size of the Huffington Post's commenting community and the scope of its contributors, from star journalists to celebrities.

Class #5

Chapter 48

You Say You Want A Revolution? Hypertext and the Laws of Media by Stuart Moulthrop

• Vannevar Bush Memex machine helps researchers organize knowledge, designed in 1940s
• artificial intelligence researchers created the first hypertextual narrative narrative-- computer game Adenture, 1960s
• Theodor Holm Neson coins hypertext, imagines Xanadu would centralize worldwide information network
• Nelson envisioned a system that could cause social change. Douglas Engelbart and Nelson develop FRESS hypertext system in early 1970s
• 1987 Apple Computer develops HyperCard, object-oriented hypertext system
• Moulthrop argues hypertext has not caused digital revolution because other concepts like cyberspace and virtual reality stole the spotlight, enabled by a generation that always wants new things
• Page 694 discusses hyperreality, critics say it takes away social critique and clear agenda
• If the whole world is simulation then humans are simply subjects incapable of opposition
• Others disagree, contending that postmodern communication destabilizes social hierarchies
• hypertext definition, page 695: reconstructs text not as fixed series of symbols but as a variable-acccess database in which any discursive unit may possess multiple vectors of association
• Xanadu is a hypertext system
• Moulthrop says Nelson's hypertext of the future really is a longing for the past, a return to literacy and ideas, as opposed to the television stupor
• Nelson's vision turns "work" into "text" that can be shared and used as reference. Less ownership.
• Populitism- coined by Nelson, means making the deep understanding of a few available to many
• Clifford Stoll's memoir The Cuckoo's Egg highlights some of the problems with populitism-- who decides what info belongs to whom?
• Moulthrop wonders how Nelson's hypertext manifesto can translate into real world social processes on page 697
• Applying Marshall McLuhan's four Laws of Media to Hypertext
• 1) What does hypertext enhance or intensify? It enhances the capacity of pattern recognition
• 2) What does hypertext displace or render obsolete? It does not, as some may suspect, kill the book. The author contends that the television threatens the book more than the "smart machine"
• 3) What does hypertext retrieve that was previously obsolete? It could make people reacquainted with the cultural power of typographic literacy. Hypertext envisions an extension of amateur literary production. Secondary literacy and neo-chaos are also discussed as by-products of hypertext.
• 4) What does hypertext become when taken to its limit?
• Hypertext is a cool medium and when taken to the limit will become as institutionalize and conservative as broadcast media.
• Moulthrop says that the age of"post-hierarchical" information has past. The garage-born computer messiah is replaced by institutions with heavy capital and expertise
• Moulthrop also contends that we don't really need a revolution like Neslon imagines and that Nelson's utopian vision for the future is not really achievable.

Chapter 49

The End of Books by Robert Coover, 1992

• From intro: this essay says that the Golden Age of literary hypertext has ended and that it has now given way to the world wide web.
• People say that the modern age makes books obsolete
• Following this line of thought, the novel must also be obsolete
• Hypertext represents a freedom from the "tyranny of the line" in books
• Hypertext makes readers and writer co-learners or co-writers
• Fiction writers were drawn to hyperspace starting in the mid-1980s
• Hypertext proponents says books are arrogant and that hypertext is the new new thing
• Mihael Joyce published full-length hypertext fiction called Afternoon in 1987 for floppy disk
• Coover taught the Brown University Hypertext Fiction Workshop
• Writers must think as much about form as prose when writing hypertext fiction
• Coover says the results of the class have been better than ordinary undergraduate writing workshops
• Group fiction space called Hotel that anyone can add to or edit
• Coover says basic hypertext technology will stay, but the specific hardware and software will change rapidly
• These are good questions/ thoughts:
• 1) How does one judge, analyze, write about a work that never reads the same twice?
• 2) How does one resolve the conflict between reader's desire for coherence and the text's desire to evolve?
• 3) Print can be read in hyperspace, but hypertext does not translate into print

Other notes

• On "10 Ways Jobs Changed the World": Isn't it interesting that the Hypercard isn't mentioned as one of Jobs' greatest inventions? In our textbook, it seems to have radically altered computing.
• Data visualization is the study of the visual representation of data, meaning "information which has been abstracted in some schematic form, including attributes or variables for the units of information.” Data visualization took off in art in 2008.
• Regarding "5 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year" I'd also like to nominate http://www.xtranormal.com/ which allows anyone to express ideas through video animation very simply and easily. I see videos like this all the time now on YouTube. The technology is simple but it just goes to show how much visual information sharing is in demand.

Class #4

Chapter 12

Intro

• The Oulipo, founded in the 60s in France by Francois Le Lionnais, produced potential literature-- potential literature is "the search for new forms and structures athat may be used by writers in any way they see fit."
• techniques of "constrained writing"-- or writing that is bound by certain conditions-- in potential literature include:
• lipogram- a certain letter of the alphabet may not be used
• palindrome- word that can be read in either direction
• Cent Mille Millards de poemes is the founding text of the group
• In A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems, the lines are interchangeable.
• The system produces custom poems that give the reader an enhanced role in the process of literary creation.
• The Burning of the Abominable House, Calvino's computer narrows a large space of possible stories and narrows it to one.
• But he says the "clinamen" or the error in the system, is the only entity responsible for creating literature.

Brief History of the Oulipo by Jean Lescure

• Like mathematics, literature can be explored
• Two Lipos:
• 1. Analytic lipo- seeks possibilities existing in the work of certain authors unbeknownst to them.
• 2. Synthetic lip- opening new possibilities previously unknown to authors.

Prose and Anticombinatorics by Italo Calvino

• The story appears as an outline of a story that does not exist yet, and uses science/math to explore potential outcomes
• It introduces a story about a house burning down, and presents us with a notebook outside the house filled with "horrible acts" that occurred inside. The possibilities are then mixed and matched and weighed according to math.
• The conclusion of this story tell us why this technique of storytelling permits an artist to be more creative and discover the "clinamen," causing a great work of art to be born.

3 Class Demos

1. http://vimeo.com/18888136

I decided to find out how video projection mapping actually works.

Here is what I found. First, from this Tumblr:

"Video Projection Mapping is an exciting new projection technique that can turn almost any surface into a dynamic video display. Specialized software is used to warp and mask the projected image to make it fit perfectly on irregularly shaped screens. "

I found further info here:

The principal behind video mapping is fairly simple. A number of computer controlled video projector effects are used to project an image on to a desired surface. The projection surface is then mapped into the computer. We can then define various points from the surface and store these into the computer, giving us a selection of ‘maps’. These maps can then be layered with video content, still images, live video feeds, logos, branding etc, to create an ‘interactive’ surface.

Any surface can be mapped and projected on, bringing it to life. The flexibility of the projectors means that any size object or surface can be used.

While I still feel like I am in the dark about the specifics, I think I have a better understanding of the underlying concept behind video projection mapping. I think what it boils down to is a projector guided by computers to have a more intimate understanding of the surface upon which the images are being projected. This is a more precise projection and allows for more creative opportunities.

2. http://www.psfk.com/2011/05/how-the-web-allows-stories-to-be-spun-in-new-ways.html

As an aspiring multimedia journalist I found this article fascinating. First of all, the statistics provided about the increase in literacy and the booming book business came as a shock. It's almost counterintuitive to think that an age defined by a surge in visual media could also be known as a "golden age of reading and writing."

I was also encouraged by reports that the art of narrative is helped, not hindered, by the Internet. Indeed, the Internet is "the first medium that can act like all media," making it the ultimate storytelling device. "Deep media" is a new term for me but it seems apt for a methodology that is immersive, participatory, and non-linear, as the article describes it. I know this article refers mostly to fiction, but there has also been a great deal of success in multimedia journalism. However, it is important to be wary of what David Shields proposes as a by-product of deep media: "“a blurring to the point of invisibility of any distinction between fiction and nonfiction: the lure and blur of the real." Of course, there can be no "blurring" of truth in journalism. Or at least there shouldn't be any.

3. http://www.esquire.com/the-side/augmented-reality

I understand and appreciate what Esquire is trying to do with its augmented reality issue. I say any innovation that brings readers to the information they need is positive.

Is this really augmented reality, though? I thought we defined augmented reality as a view of physical world altered by computer imagery.

Here, it seems, the opposite is happening-- computer imagery is being altered by the physical world (i.e. holding the magazine up to the computer causes the computer image to change). Does augmented reality, then, work both ways?