HU2642 Baudrillard Continued

**EDIT**
Could the timing of this comic strip be any more perfect?


While I already responded to z4ndyr’s comment verbally, I’m also posting a written version for the sake of future reference. Furthermore, this post is an expansion on my original response, and is less focused on Baudrillard’s application to digital media, but rather how it applies to life in general (ironic considering I made it a goal not to cover my musing like that on this blog).

The Short Version

Using Baudrillard’s example, if a person is sick or simulating being sick doesn’t matter if the results/outcome are the same (e.g. fever, coughing, death, etc.). The same with the bank heist. Essentially, the same as a placebo effect.

My Thought Process for the Response

HU2642 Artifact Analysis Draft

Flickriver claims to deliver “A new way to view Flickr photos and more…” (Flickriver). After analyzing the site, I think its tagline is fitting, and even an understatement, as Flickriver not only changes the way users “view Flickr photos”, but the way they interpret and interact with Flickr as a whole (Flickriver). At the same time, it also creates a simulation of Flickr by purposefully showing some content by default in a manner different from Flickr.

Flickriver: A Digital Artifact

HU2642 Reading Response: McLuhan

Woohoo, this book has pictures! Not that I didn’t enjoy Baudrillard, since it managed to temporarily confuse me and challenged/expanded my reading abilities, but this book had comics. I’ve learned a little about McLuhan’s “the medium is the message” in other classes. Translating this to the “massage” wasn’t a far stretch given my previous understanding. The media is “massaging” me/my reality (insert “In Soviet Russia” joke here). Of course, McLuhan also makes the technologically deterministic argument (in this case it’s more media determinism) that “Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication” (8). I’ll do my best to overlook the narrowness of that argument for now.

HU2642 Reading Response: Baudrillard

After reading this piece twice, taking notes, and revising my previous notes, I think I roughly understand Baudrillard’s concept of what a simulation is. However, I’m not entirely sure my interpretation is entirely accurate, as there seem to be some inconsistencies with the author's argument regarding representations of reality versus reality (i.e. simulations in the sense of Disneyland versus the bank robbery example, as one is imperfect and the other is reality by being a perfect simulation of reality. Does a simulation have to be convincing that it is a new reality in order to be a simulation, or does it simply need to meet Baudrillard's criteria?).

HU2642 Reading Response: Gitelman

In Chapter 4 of Always Already New, Lisa Gitelman argues broadly that the web is a "temporal" medium. This probably isn't a groundbreaking idea for people who have ever encountered a 404 error when clicking a bookmark they created months earlier, however it is critical to analyzing and understanding the web. Web pages are primarily space-biased (using Innis’ model), meaning that they are biased toward spreading information rather than preserving it over time. Obviously, some web pages are meant to preserve historical records, photos, etc. but generally, web pages as a medium are more similar to newspapers or magazines in that they can change and spread rapidly.

However, Gitelman contends that the web pages themselves are not conducive to historic preservation (unlike back issues of newspapers and magazines), as they are easily editable almost instantaneously and often contain no record of updates, date of publication, etc. Thus, she is concerned about future studies involving the history/development of the internet/web because researchers will often not be able to view the various versions of web pages. This is also a major problem for anyone who cites web documents regularly, as domain names expire, articles/videos/images are removed, ownership changes, etc. In this event, archived versions in various formats (pdf, cached, downloaded html, etc.) may be the only reference, but they are not contextually the same as viewing the original file.

I wasn’t entirely convinced by Gitelman’s argument about preserving context though. She gave an example of using the search function of a cached search engine, which would yield current results. While this is a definite shortcoming of the web as a medium, it seems analogous to reading a magazine from the 1940s and trying to write a letter to the editor or buy an advertised product; it just doesn’t work. The primary difference is that web pages can change at a much greater speed, and archived versions may be months behind if they even exist. However, I do understand that she is essentially saying that a picture of a moose is not the same as a moose, and that a picture of a web page is not fully representative of a web page in its original context.

HU2642 Reading Response: Bush/Manovich

While neither Bush’s or Manovich’s piece was extremely interesting to me, the articles did have a few points that made me challenge my thinking. At first, I was confused by Bush’s description of the Memex, but eventually figured out that he was discussing a hypothetical invention similar to a modern computer with an internet connection. However, I wasn’t overly surprised by the relative accuracy of Bush’s description, as theories and algorithms commonly used in computer science were invented long before they had practical applications in computing. For example, Dijkstra’s algorithm in the 1950s, or the related Prim’s algorithm dating back to 1930.

Overall, I didn’t disagree with Manovich’s argument either, but I was interested in the second-to-last paragraph of the piece. In this section, Manovich describes how hyperlinking “[asks users] to mistake the structure of somebody’s else [sic] mind for our own.” Essentially, he’s arguing that in using hyperlinks, authors limit the associations that readers can make with external pieces by prescribing a text, image, etc. While this makes sense, and now seems obvious in retrospect, I hadn’t thought about the connection between citation/hyperlinking and argument in that way. Of course, readers are still able to make independent associations of their own, but may be entrenched in a line of thinking created by the rhetor that they cannot easily break or even recognize. This idea is also not entirely new to digital media, as the same can be said for past citation styles. However, by decreasing the barriers to reaching the suggested/referenced pieces, readers have less time to think of other possible references and create their own associations before going straight to the source.

**EDIT**On rethinking the idea of hyperlinking, I was interpreting it primarily as a way of referencing texts, videos, images, etc. However, in the broader context of hyperlinking as a way of creating web sites by linking to specific pages (i.e. navigational structure), the idea of structuring the way users view information is very obvious. By linking to an "about" page on the home page for this blog, as well as every post, I'm encouraging an association with a description of the site and myself that might not otherwise be made. But, my previous interpretation still stands as well.

Biotic Games and Unanswered Questions

While I haven't had time to fully analyze the implications of this news about biotic games at Stanford, it raised some immediate ethical questions for me as a gamer. If the ball in Pong was a living organism, would I play the game in the same way? Would I play at all? While the games in question are a far stretch from dystopian horrors of movies like Gamer, it still seems like a quasi-digital version of controlling slugs' movement with salt on a sidewalk.

Personally, I don't picture myself playing games with living characters, as it takes some of the fun out of gaming. Watching my character explode because I misplaced a grenade is hilarious specifically because it isn't reality. I seriously doubt Worms Armageddon would be as much fun with real worms. Of course, I'm not hyper sensitive to the feelings of worms either, as I can recall staging worm wrestling matches during the 5th grade when we had to keep worms alive for several days for a science project.

The original journal article on the biotic games project can be found here. At this point, I'm still formulating questions about this research, but I'll likely add to this post later. I'm not entirely sure playing games with organisms will have the educational benefits the researchers are hoping for, but it is an interesting new twist on educational games. Or is this just a new version of Bogost's description of skinning (changing the graphics but not game mechanics, such as this example) as an attempt to tack on an argument or educational element to games?

Welcome, HU2642 Intro to Digital Media readers

This is a new welcome to this blog for the class of HU2642: Intro to Digital Media. A few of you may have already read some of my posts, but for those of you who have not, here is the "original" welcome message to this blog. Obviously the posting schedule, and some of the content will be changing to adapt to the purposes of this course, but I'm still the same author.

Please read, comment on, link to, or critique any existing posts you find interesting, horrible, amazing, etc. as I don't fear opinions and welcome feedback.

For the 3-4 regular readers, you'll be getting more content regularly, though it will likely apply more directly to digital media.