This is actually a pretty old anime (2002) that talks about a person trapped in a VR sim. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_Sign

.hack//Sign is influenced by psychological and sociological subjects such as anxiety, escapism, and interpersonal relationships.^[6][7] The series focuses on a Wavemaster (magic user) named Tsukasa, a player character of a virtual-reality massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) called The World. Tsukasa wakes up to find himself in a dungeon in The World, but he has no recent recollections as he wonders where he is and how he got there. The situation gets worse when he discovers he is not able to log out and is trapped in the game. From then on, along with other players Tsukasa embarks on a quest to figure out the truth behind his abnormal situation.

Thought this would be interesting.  I think my paper may be about this. 

I found the explanation of immediacy correlating to modernism and hypermediacy correlating to postmodernism to be quite accurate.  Of course, who am I to judge.  

I can just feel the modernistic optimism of man as photography develops and it seems an exact replica of reality.  And then the "African" comes in.  The African finds the paper on which this "reality" is depicted as stark and strange.  Definitely not the transparency and immediacy its designers were hoping for and had thought they found.

In response then comes postmodernity that says, "It's not possible!  Perfect Immediacy and transparency are not attainable the medium will always be present and noticeable"  And in this mindset the hypermedia thrives, as the opacity of the medium is obvious and next celebrated in newer forms of media.

As I read the book this week.  I found it necessary to review my understanding of what modernism means and what postmodernism means.

 

In my understanding, modernism was a set of beliefs in the strength of human science.  Almost a thought that "everything can be solved", "everything can be discovered", "all problems can me resolved", "nothing is beyond man's mind and we can completely document reality".  And postmodernism is a direct reaction to this driven by discoveries of our limitations, the differences in perspectives from person to person, and the popularity of new ways of viewing or detailing life.

Anyway I looked up the definitions and realized my understanding was quite insufficient (to be nice).

Here's a cut and paste of the defintiions from the following sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_modernism 

http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/gengloss/postm-body.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism

 

I realized my definition of modernism was closer to what is termed American modernism...

American modernism like modernism in general is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation, and is thus in its essence both progressive and optimistic. 

Postmodernism: A general and wide-ranging term which is applied to literature, art, philosophy, architecture, fiction, and cultural and literary criticism, among others. Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality. In essence, it stems from a recognition that reality is not simply mirrored in human understanding of it, but rather, is constructed as the mind tries to understand its own particular and personal reality. For this reason, postmodernism is highly skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person. In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually. Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, knowing always that the outcome of one's own experience will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather than certain and universal.

Postmodernism is "post" because it is denies the existence of any ultimate principles, and it lacks the optimism of there being a scientific, philosophical, or religious truth which will explain everything for everybody - a characterisitic of the so-called "modern" mind. The paradox of the postmodern position is that, in placing all principles under the scrutiny of its skepticism, it must realize that even its own principles are not beyond questioning. As the philospher Richard Tarnas states, postmodernism "cannot on its own principles ultimately justify itself any more than can the various metaphysical overviews against which the postmodern mind has defined itself."

 

First, based on my understanding, a new medium is justified by its ability to fill a lack or repairing a fault in its predecessor. For instance, video conferencing and interactive television repair inadequacies in the mediums that they refresh. In this context, I understood mediation as the representation of an object. In this representation, the object is structured and presented by a medium.  

 

It seems that there are two ideas regarding to the new media. The first idea suggests that the new media based on digital technologies such as WWW, computer graphics, and virtual reality should establish new cultural principles by divorcing themselves from earlier media. In Remediation the authors challenge this idea because they propose a theory which suggests that the new (digital) media should borrow elements from old media while it is refreshing the old one. The authors call this process “remediation” and they give examples of how the earlier media refreshed older media. For instance, photography remediated painting and film remediated theatre.

 

The authors state that the process of remediation is based on two strategies: Immediacy and hypermediacy. Immediacy means that the style of visual representation. The goal of immediacy is simply to go beyond the medium to the objects of representation themselves. For instance, the traditional linear perspective painting and film keep the viewer distant from what he or she views. But, virtual reality places the viewer among the objects of representation. Hypermediacy is about our fascination about the medium, which is related to the desire for immediacy.

Finally, here is an intersting video relating to the ideas in this book from Studio IMC at the Museum of TV & Radio.

Well, for most of my input, please see today's relevant wiki pages (located @ http://conversation.cgu.edu/is347/page/Feb+26).

In preparing for today's discussion, I was having a difficult time focusing on any specific area since the authors pretty much cover 'all' types of digital media. Making it more difficult is the idea that immediacy and hypermedia are pervasive, again, in most all aspects of technology at present. 

The book begins with examples and/or references from a number of films in the 90s. The two mentioned Natural Born Killers and Strange Days (which was on FMC not two nights ago) helped to classify a genre along with other films such as Love and a .45 (which, funny enough, I watched just the other day). In each of these films media plays an integral part of the plot. Thus, the medium itself becomes an essential character. I just wished they focused more on a good story, rather than finding innovative ways in which to tell a bad one. But that's usually how bad films are. They rely more on trying to trick the viewers sense of a good movie by focusing on other aspects of a film that are not necessarily integral parts of the plot (violence, sex, special effects, etc). I mean, how many people went and saw King Kong.

Nevertheless (I think most of the above was tangential), the authors attempt to portray remediation as simply a representation of one media in another. But this in itself is impossible to do. If this transition is so simple (which the authors say is not necessarily the case) I wonder why it is so difficult for many people to watch a black and white film. I know people who just cannot do it. Why? I don't know for sure, but it's likely because it doesn't make sense not to have colors and therefore the movie is unappealing or "too fake" or whatever.

You're invited to join us for two public lectures at Harvey Mudd College next week:

Tuesday, Feb. 26

Walter and Leonore Annenberg Visiting Professors in Leadership and Management Series "Technology Leadership and Decision Making at Intel Corporation"

Justin R. Rattner (bio below)

V.P. and Senior Fellow

Director, Corporate Technology Group and Intel Chief Technology Officer

Wednesday, Feb. 27

Dr. Bruce J. Nelson Distinguished Speaker Series:

Spaces That Shape

"Work in Progress #136"

Thom Mayne (bio below)

Architect, Morphosis Architecture

Both lectures begin at 7 p.m. in Galileo Hall. A dessert reception will follow.

About Justin Rattner

Justin Rattner is responsible for leading Intel's microprocessor, communications and systems technology labs and Intel research. In 1989, Rattner was named Scientist of the Year by R&D Magazine for his leadership in parallel and distributed computer architecture. In December 1996, Rattner was featured as Person of the Week by ABC World News for his visionary work on the Department of Energy ASCI Red System, the first computer to sustain one trillion operations per second (one

teraFLOPS) and the fastest computer in the world between 1996 and 2000.

In 1997, Rattner was honored as one of the Computing 200, the 200 individuals having the greatest impact on the U.S. computer industry today, and subsequently profiled in the book Wizards and Their Wonders from ACM Press.

Rattner has received two Intel Achievement Awards for his work in high performance computing and advanced cluster communication architecture.

He is a longstanding member of Intel's Research Council and Academic Advisory Council. He currently serves as the Intel executive sponsor for Cornell University where he serves on the External Advisory Board for the School of Engineering. Rattner joined Intel in 1973. He was named its first principal engineer in 1979 and its fourth Intel fellow in 1988. Prior to joining Intel, Rattner held positions with Hewlett-Packard Company and Xerox Corporation. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Cornell University in electrical engineering and computer science in 1970 and 1972, respectively.

About Thom Mayne

Thom Mayne received his bachelor of architecture degree from the University of Southern California in 1968 and his master of architecture from Harvard University in 1978. He was a founder of the Southern California Institute of Architecture and has held teaching positions at Columbia University, Harvard University (Elliot Noyes Chair, 1998), Yale University (Eliel Saarinen Chair, 1991), the Berlage Institute in the Netherlands and the Bartlett School of Architecture in London.

Currently, he holds a tenured faculty position at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture.

His distinguished honors include the National Design Award for Architecture (2006), Pritzker Prize Laureate (2005), Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy of Design in Rome (1987), the Alumni of the Year Award from USC (1992), Member Elect from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1992), and the 2000 American Institute of Architects/Los Angeles Gold Medal in Architecture. With Morphosis, Mayne has been the recipient of 25 Progressive Architecture Awards, 60 AIA Awards and numerous other design recognitions. Under his direction, the firm has been the subject of extensive publications and exhibitions throughout the world.

- - - - -

Don Davidson > Director of Public Relations > Harvey Mudd College

301 Platt Blvd. > Claremont, CA 91711 > (909) 607-7924

Remediation

 

Bolter and Grusin impressed upon readers that remediation is a process of technology evolving around current technology that it improve itself as time progress along.

Film, television, photography and still image all morph into what we see today on the net the hypermediacy.  The split screen on the television for example is projection of image that first introduced through the internet, which now become  familiarize in the television medium.  The evolution or each of the medium upon one another creates hypermedia in a fascinating way that image becomes alive on the internet.  Now, people can decide to make the picture or fix the part into perfect picture.  Canvassing anything needs to be fix so it will look not only real but perfect.  Mechanical production of images on the internet is becoming an instantaneous process.  That people take granted for now a day. Of course, this should be taken in the proper direction because a picture worth a thousand words picture may give a wrong message or interpreted in the wrong way.   Images produce on the internet could send a message in a negative or positive direction.  Therefore, as media remediate upon itself we hope more positive outcome will out weigh the negative ones.

  

Medium is the Message: Message is “the change of scale or pace or pattern that a new invention or innovation into human affairs” What does this statement really mean when we consider it from today’s perspective such as the Internet, podcasting. McLuhan explains that a new invention has both anticipated and unanticipated consequences. The anticipated consequences include what it is intended to do. However, society and culture have influence on unanticipated consequences that we did not consider in our planning. In a way, this sounds similar to Theodor Nelson’s vision of Internet with Xanadu and how the current Internet differs from what he had thought. I think an important idea that McLuhan wants us to get from this paper is that we should focus on the change in inter-personal dynamics that an innovation brings rather than the content. For example, what is the message in a theoretical play? Is it the music or play? From McLuhan’s perspective, it is the change in the attitude of the audience. Thus, my understanding from this essay is that when we face an innovation we should look beyond the apparent advantages in order to see non-obvious effects of an innovation.

 

Constituents of a Theory of the Media: This article outlines seven characteristics that would constitute emancipatory media. These are decentralized program, each receiver a potential transmitter, mobilization of masses, collective production, interaction of those involved, feedback, social control by self organization, a political learning process. I guess we can criticize the extent to which the Internet meets these characteristics.  Based on Wikipedia (2008), Enzensberger is classic Marxist thinker. Although I do not understand Marxism, I found that the convergence of media idea fascinating considering that this article was written in 1970.  

 

Requiem for the Media: This article seems as a response to Enzensberger’s article because Baudrillard argues that making everyone a producer will not make things better. From this perspective, Baudrillard consider our very understanding of the communication as the problem rather than who transmits or how turn taking is arranged. Reading this essay made me consider the idea of reversibility of producer/consumer with mass newspaper and video networks. I think Baudrillard has a different point of view compared to Enzensberger in this perspective. However, I did not understand the Baudrillard’s transgressing idea.

 

From Computer Lib/ Dream Machines: Another essay written by Nelson. I think I like Nelson’s essays. Nelson has two perspectives. The first one is the current state of computer as a cultural tool and the second one is desired state for computers as a cultural tool. When reading this paper we should consider an era that was dominated by IBM. This essay talks about dreams about knowledge sharing networks and graphic interfaces. Professor Chaterjee showed us some very interesting work done in Xerox Labs regarding to graphical user interface. When I looked at Amazon for this book, I learned that this book computer culture classic.      

Enter Nelson’s article, the first For Dummies guide to computing. This article also reminds me of the Video Professor. I’m sure everyone has seen this guy (YouTube below if you haven’t). Anyway, this guy drives me crazy. Plus, he's probably crazy rich.

All kidding aside , while reading Nelson, I am attempting to teleport back over thirty years, before the invention of graphical user interfaces, even before the introduction of the mouse. I like Nelson. I like, although he is too arrogant to admit, that he envisioned the idea of hypertext and how his vision helped, to a modest degree, create today’s global internetwork of computers (for good or bad). However, I believe what Nelson was attempting in this article was incredibly idealistic (even for him).

When reading Nelson, we cannot disregard the historical context from which he is writing. To me, this is more important than his elaborate illustrations of what and how computer programs will be used within CAI.  A quick summary of most widely publicized home computer will look to put things into perspective.

1975 - Altair 8800 (provided by http://fusionanomaly.net/altair8800.html )

The January edition of Popular Electronics featured the Altair 8800 computer kit, based on Intel's 8080 microprocessor, on its cover. Within weeks of the computer's debut, customers inundated the manufacturing company, MITS, with orders. Bill Gates and Paul Allen licensed BASIC as the software language for the Altair. Ed Roberts invented the 8800 -- which sold for $297, or $395 with a case -- and coined the term "personal computer." The machine came with 256 bytes of memory (expandable to 64K) and an open 100-line bus structure that internal linkevolved into the S-100 standard. In 1977, MITS sold out to Pertec, which continued producing Altairs through 1978.

Good luck to the average computer buyer in 1975! Where the hell is the monitor & keyboard?

But hell, his Computer Lib / Dream Machines did inspire the creator of Lotus 1-2-3, dubbed the first “killer PC application”. Lotus 1-2-3 was a user-friendly spreadsheet that became a must have business application. Why? Because almost anybody could use it; a concept reverberated continuously across Nelson’s article.

See Nelson, while you were wasting your life away on Xanadu, people were out fulfilling your Dream Machine!

For those of you who are interesting in reading about the successful failure of Nelson's Xanudu, you can find the ful Wired article (written by Gary Wolf) at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/xanadu.html