Digital Divide
October 19, 2009
According to the Australian Parliament the definition of Digital Divide is:
‘The lack of access to information and communications technologies by segments of the community. The digital divide is a generic term used to describe this lack of access due to linguistic, economic, educational, social and geographic reasons.’ – http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/
Feenberg first states that the internet is not a fully developed technology and that it was only ARPANET that would fund the project in the start as it was lavish and speculative. The outcome was not guaranteed and no-one could predict what the technology would bring. Ironically, this issue of being unfunded and no-one would invest is exactly what the people affected by the Digital Divide have to deal with. The government struggle to invest money into the lower classes as the output that they get from them is low.
In the paper, there are a few issues which Feenberg describes, in his conclusion he lists a few example of areas which the internet has played a vital role. When considering the digital divide in medical terms you can clearly see the benefit, especially for those seeking medical advice but can afford the fees. This is not usually the case in the UK but if there is a problem one can Google a query and find at least a good estimation if not the answer they were looking for. Sites like Wikipedia provide a vast amount of information which can be read by anyone, there are no registration fees or limits to the amount of information available. This in turn provides a cheaper alternative for those seeking advice. Social communities have been set up. From experience migraine sufferers have their own space where they talk about remedies and what works for them as well as other options which they might not have heard of before.
Music sharing has had an incredible rise since the start of the decade. Feenberg writes that “between an $18 album with one good song and a free or 99 cent download of that same song, there is no competition.” In my opinion this is very true, everyone has bought an album before where only half if not less is worth listening to. Some term these poorer tracks as filler tracks, just to make up for the rest of the album. iTunes is at the top of this unsteady market, it tackles the money issue as well as provide users with a cheaper alternative. Some listeners enjoy the thought of physically holding and album where as others are just interested in listening to it. Ultimately it comes down to buying something. With the music market spanning thousands of different artists it would be almost impossible to buy every album that you liked, some people just cannot justify it. Now with the availability of the sites like Rapidshare and of course Napster which really kicked off this shift in the music industry, it has been at the top of the record labels agenda to combat music piracy.
The list that Feenberg has listed is all about money or the lack of in some cases. The digital divide was first used by the U.S. administration and U.S. journalists to describe the social gap between those involved with technology, particularly between children and their schools. Speaking of a mobile computer lab in a truck, Al Gore said, “It’s rolling into communities, connecting schools in our poorest neighborhoods and paving over the digital divide.” In the paper it is clear that people were very skeptical in using the internet for any sort of education. With the internet being so vast no-one could predict how deep it would integrate into everyone’s lives. School computer access was always going to be an issue. Rich schools were much more likely to provide their students with internet access so ultimately even though the internet is a free resource but the equipment needed to have the internet was not. There are a few projects which try to tackle the global digital divide where poverty is refine in poor underdeveloped countries. However, One laptop per child and 50×15 rely heavily on open source software. The projects were developed to bridge the gap in the digital divide and also a term called the knowledge divide. The Knowledge Divide is where a lack of technology causes the lack of useful information and knowledge.
David Noble wrote:
“Visions of democratization and popular empowerment via the net are dangerous delusions; whatever the gains, they are overwhelmingly overshadowed and more than nullified by the losses. As the computer screens brighten with promise for the few, the light at the end of the tunnel grows dimmer for the many.” (Noble, consulted Nov. 11, 2006: 12).
I think Noble was making the point that where there are profits there will equally be losses, and in most cases where someone gains someone else losses out. Feenberg also points out that:
“some argue that the digital divide excludes the poor from participation while enhancing the well to-do people. others complain that the internet people are able to segregate themselves and other argue that the internet is so thoroughly colonized by business that it is little more that an electronic mall. without face-to-face contact, it is said, people cannot take each other seriously enough to form a community.”
IDAT 307: 4D Proposal
October 9, 2009
4D: Project Proposal.
1: Title
The Philosophy of Time
2: Project Summary:
The Philosophy of Time Travel is a fascinating fictional accompaniment to the film Donnie Darko. It is entirely fictional but underpins terminology and ideas which people think time travel constraints to.
The idea of space and time travel is fascinating. There is a scene in Donnie Darko where a trail (Liquid Worms) of the subjects’ future protrudes from their body in front of them. The protrusion is the subjects’ future and in this case it’s the main character Donnie who finds out where he is going to go. He can potentially see his path and where he will be going. So his choices are already predefined even though he is blissfully unaware and obtains what he thinks is free will. Heroes season 3 also had this style of trail (Watery Ooze), where Daphne was so fast that she left this trail behind her indicating that this in some way is her past as technically her physical body was ahead of herself.
“Donnie becomes able to see time lines in front of his family–semi-transparent liquid arrows that seem to lead them into the future. He becomes fascinated by the theory of worm holes, and discovers that a key book, The Philosophy of Time Travel, was written by a neighbor, Roberta Sparrow” – http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20011026/REVIEWS/110260302/1023
Upon reading about the philosophy of time travel I came across a project of the same title. The project was hyped up by this… ‘The past and future flow through a monumental collaborative installation at The Studio Museum in Harlem’
I was also watching The Mothman Prophecy and there is a scene where there is a Psycologist explaining what these visions are and he paints a picture to the main character, Richard Gere, that if there is a car crash a few blocks down the road which you cant see, but if someone is up high they can see further down the road. In other words just because you cant see it doesnt mean its not happening or there.
Its a great idea to blend together with Space and Time.
Theoretical Research:
I came across some theorys’ related to space and time. Metaphysics is a fascinating subject to study and one could get lost for hours thinking about different possibilities and outcomes. Common-sense tells us that objects persist across time, that there is some sense in which you are the same person you were yesterday, in which the oak is the same as the acorn, in which you perhaps even can step into the same river twice. Philosophers have developed two rival theories for how this happens, called “endurantism” and “perdurantism”. Broadly speaking, endurantists hold that a whole object exists at each moment of its history, and the same object exists at each moment. Perdurantists believe that objects are four-dimensional entities made up of a series of temporal parts like the frames of a movie.
Perdurantism or perdurance theory is a philosophical theory of persistence and identity. The perdurantist view is often defined as being the claim that objects have distinct temporal parts as opposed to endurantism (endurantism is the view that an individual is wholly present at every moment of its existence). The use of “endure” and “perdure” to distinguish two ways in which an object can be thought to persist can be traced to David Kellogg Lewis (1986). However, contemporary debate has demonstrated the difficulties in defining perdurantism (and also endurantism).
For instance, the work of Ted Sider (2001) has suggested that even enduring objects can have temporal parts, and it is more accurate to define perdurantism as being the claim that objects have a temporal part at every instant that they exist. Zimmerman (1996) has said that this won’t work, as there have been many self-professed perdurantists who believe that time is ‘gunky’ and that for every interval of time, there is a sub-interval. Consequently there are no instants,[dubious – discuss] and Sider’s definition must be altered to admit of this fact. Currently there is no universally acknowledged definition of perdurantism (see also McKinnon (2002) and Merricks (1999)).
John McTaggart acknowledged that events seem to be ordered in time and that time’s passage can be understood in terms of events moving from the future to the present to the past. He then set out to demonstrate the unreality of time by discussing two conceptions of time:
1. A:One where events find their ordering in time in virtue of instantiating different temporal properties at different times and,
2. B:One where events bear an unchanging (static) temporal relation to all other events (e.g. if event M is earlier than event N at any time, it will always be earlier than N.)
McTaggart set out to demonstrate that time is an illusion by first showing that (B) alone (without A) will not guarantee the passage of time. He then shows how (A) (and its combination with (2)) lead to contradiction. Any attempt to avoid this contradiction leads to an infinite regress. He concluded that time was not a real part of our physical world.
The A-, B-, and C-series
John McTaggart proposed that time could be described by three series, the A-series, the B-series, and the C-series. The A-series corresponds to conception (1) above, while the B-series corresponds to (2). He defined these as follows:
The A-series: “..the series of positions running from the far past through the near past to the present, and then from the present to the near future and the far future..” McTaggart further declared that “the distinctions of past, present and future are essential to time and that, if the distinctions are never true of reality, then no reality is in time.” He considered the A series to be ‘temporal’, a true time series because it embodies these distinctions and embodies change.
The B-series: “The series of positions which runs from earlier to later..” The B series is temporal in that it embodies direction of change. However, McTaggart argues that the B series on its own does not embody change.
The C-series: “..this other series — let us call it the C series — is not temporal, for it involves no change, but only an order. Events have an order. They are, let us say, in the order M, N, O, P. And they are therefore not in the order M, O, N, P, or O, N, M, P, or in any other possible order. But that they have this order no more implies that there is any change than the order of the letters of the alphabet…” According to McTaggart the C-series is not temporal because it is fixed forever.
Just as a quick NOTE:
Water and metal are two key components in Donnie Darko. Water is the key to allow travel between the Primary and Tangent (worm holes or Time Portals, or the tunnels created of liquid in the movie). Metal is the substance of the item that created the time rip to begin. These are known as “Artifacts” (the jet engine). Donnie can see the tunnels of water coming out of people’s bodies throughout the movie, predicting what they are going to do next. While typing this up I also thought that in the movie Constantine, the main character uses Water as a gateway to hell. There are many groups in real life that believe in these portals
3: Development:
I will be looking for inspiration from movies, papers and books. My initial thoughts were to create an installation but I want to explore as much of the subject as possible. I will explore and innovate the field of digital time-based audio/visual media with consideration of:
• the historical conventions of film and television production
• experimental innovative approaches to these forms by artists/producers over the century
• the opportunities offered by new media forms, synchronous/asynchronous media, multi-location, telematics, etc.
4: Plan of Work:
Gather research while the lectures are going on. Once the workshops start, I will start to think about the outcome.
5: Output:
Seminars will be to explore concepts behind 4D/timebased work, historical perspectives, and design strategies. I shall be using the seminars as a good reference points which will enable me to further think about my output from these references. I will be taking my own view of the project, I dont want to re-invent the wheel but I need to keep it realistic with the time I have to complete the project.
6: Criteria:
My research shall be as concise as possible. Only when I am comfortable with my research I shall procede further with my final outcome. I will be in contact with my peers and the module leader to ask for assistance to ensure i’m keeping on the right track of ticking all the boxes for the module criteria.
7: References:
I have a few references already:
McTaggart, John Ellis, 1908, “The Unreality of Time,” Mind: A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy 17: 456-73.
Donnie Darko – Movie
The Philosophy of Time Travel (Fake Publication)
The Mothman Prophecies – Movie
The Butterfly Effect – Movie
Memento – Movie
Heroes: Season 3 – Series
The Studio Museum in Harlem – 144 West 125th Street, New York, New York.
8: Visual Material:
Predator! Adrien Brody
October 7, 2009
from wired.com…
Skinny Oscar-winner Adrien Brody will break type to play an alien-fighting action hero in Predators. The latest installment of the sci-fi franchise, which is being executive-produced by Robert Rodriguez (Sin City), casts Brody as a mercenary hired to fight creepy monsters.
Variety reports that Brody soon begins shooting Predators in Hawaii and at Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas. 20th Century Fox plans to release the flick on July 9, 2010.
Given that Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in the original 1987 Predator, this gig marks a major re-invention for Brody, who picked up an Academy Award for The Pianist and starred in Peter Jackson’s King Kong. Nimród Antal (Kontroll) directs.
Sweet
Non Serviam!
October 7, 2009
…is a motto by a number of political, cultural, and religious groups to express their wish not to conform; it may be used to express a radical view against established common beliefs and organisational structures accepted by the majority.
Can this be said by all aspect of Art?
Unexplored 4D ideas
October 7, 2009
Derren Brown style twist:
In the recent advert with Derren Brown, he is moving forward (as in time) with some objects and some are in reverse. This would be great to manipulate space in a more practical or clever way.
Degradation:
“Those photos always get damp, though, even when they’re in plastic. They rot or they fade, like thoughts and memories – and people in the ground.” – Ian Rankin, A Cool Head
Technology now is not letting this happen, photos aren’t fading they are only been erased. Memories are being stored on hard drives and thoughts are kept on a blog. The degradation process has changed.
4D Ideas
October 6, 2009
Seeing the future in physical form:
The Philosophy of Time Travel is a fascinating accompaniment to the film Donnie Darko. It is entirely fictional but underpins terminology and ideas which people think time travel constraints to.
The idea of space and time travel is fascinating. There is a scene in Donnie Darko where a trail (Watery Ooze) of the subjects’ future protrudes from their body in front of them. The protrusion is the subjects’ future and in this case it’s the main character Donnie who finds out where he is going to go. He can potentially see his path and where he will be going. So his choices are already predefined even though he is blissfully unaware and obtains what he thinks is free will.
Upon reading about the philosophy of time travel I came across a project of the same title. The project was hyped up by this… ‘The past and future flow through a monumental collaborative installation at The Studio Museum in Harlem’
Here is an Excerpt which describes the project better:
NEW YORK, NY, March 15, 2007 – What if history had a mind of its own, moving from the past, through the present and into the future? A team of five artists is exploring this idea with a large-scale installation, Philosophy of Time Travel, opening April 11, 2007, at The Studio Museum in Harlem. The installation evokes the work of modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), forcefully and dynamically pushing his massive 1938 work, Endless Column, through the Studio Museum’s gallery space. The result is a fictional world in which history comes to life, crashes through the exhibition space, and traverses through histories of art and museums.
Philosophy of Time Travel harnesses Brancusi’s seminal, classic modernist work to challenge the contemporary, as if the sculpture grew beyond its bounds and appeared, by magic or some cryptic science, in the Studio Museum,” says Christine Y. Kim, Associate Curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem. “By being installed here, at a culturally specific art institution, its commentaries on the nature of history and time are also variously applied to the histories and structures of Harlem and African Americans.”
Brancusi’s Endless Column, an outdoor sculpture in Târgu Jiu, Romania, is a 100-foot tall series of cast-iron
rhombus shapes, resembling a stylized version of a traditional Romanian funerary pillar. In angling the vertical
modules through the Studio Museum’s galleries—four of them penetrate through from floor to ceiling—the artists also recall the imagined flight of Brancusi’s classic Bird in Space series, one of modernism’s great evocations of movement and grace. The installation brings the outside in, the past into the future, and the still into sinuous movement, shattering the walls of the museum space and the present alike. The installation will also include an introductory video with the innovative music of Sun Ra, who had a “cosmic philosophy” of his own.
The five artists involved in the project, Edgar Arceneaux, Vincent Galen Johnson, Olga Koumoundouros, Rodney McMillian and Matthew Sloly, studied together at CalArts and have been involved in a wide range of solo and group exhibitions around the world. They work in different media, from sculpture to photography to digital technology, but often find common ground. In this case, the 2001 cult film Donnie Darko, which features an imaginary book called The Philosophy of Time Travel inspired them to think about how art history bends back on itself.
I’ve never really thought of creating an installation but after reading a bit more in-depth of the term Philosophy of Time Travel has really spurred on a few ideas. Lets run this past a few people first and see what happens.
Here is a picture of the Studio Museum installation:
Philosophy of Time Travel
Note: Heroes season 3 also had this style of trail (Watery Ooze), where Daphne was so fast that she left this trail behind her indicating that this in some way is her past as technically her physical body was ahead of herself.
Donnie Darko Links:
http://www.mjyoung.net/time/darko.html
Heroes Links
Youtube clip briefly showing the watery ooze from Daphne from Heroes Season 3.
Notes about Dissertation
October 6, 2009
I’d just like to add incase anyone is wondering where my dissertation research is. I will be posting my research when I finalize my ideas. I have been doing research its just not on wordpress. I dont like the idea of people being able to have a wee peek. Its down to a select few but that cant be helped and im not risking it. Once the proposal has been verified and an idea is fairly solid I shall start posting my thoughts.
Cyber Addiction
October 4, 2009
Cyber Addiction:
In 1995, New York, a psychiatrist called Ivan Goldberg declared in an online post that he had discovered a new addiction. People were abandoning their familial and societal obligations in favour of sitting glassy-eyed in front of a computer screen, endlessly surfing the net and playing online games. He dubbed the condition Internet Addiction Disorder. The idea took hold, particularly online where habitual internet users recognized aspects of their own behaviour. However, Goldberg’s post was a spoof intended to satirize our obsession with addictive behaviours, and our tendency to classify and behavioural abnormality as an addiction. He had simply taken the description of pathological gambling from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and applied it to internet users. Many scientists and behavioural researchers believe that Goldberg had hit on something. Symptoms include patients thinking obsessively about being online, or getting that hourly Facebook fix for fear of feeling disconnected from the world. In extreme cases, relationships, work and personal hygiene can be neglected, even leading to unpleasant physical responses when internet access in disabled.
Note: ‘Cyber Addiction’ BBC Focus Magazine – 204 July 2009 – p65 “How to live forever”
Most important website
October 4, 2009
What is the most important website?
Initially I thought Wikipedia or a site which actually stores a vast amount of information. However I then thought that these sites would never be found unless the option of searching the site was there beforehand. Google’s caching technology has defined how we search for keywords and websites for the past decade. So the website I would choose as most important is www.google.co.uk/.com. It has become the hub, the first port of call when searching the internet and without it we/I would struggle of things to think of to look for. Granted there were already millions of websites already available way before Google had started. It is just the culmination of hours worth of searching can be done in less time. The internet has to have the tools which make it fast and easy to use; Google is one of these tools. They provide a simple but complex service which cuts hours of endless searching in no time at all.
Back at Uni
October 4, 2009
Well i’m back at University for my Final Year. I need to start getting used to blogging sensibly again.
