Sam Griswold
Tony Prichard
English 203
4/30/10

Direct in Colorvision
Welcome to the evening news, this is Tom Tucker, today we see an outbreak of a new kind of parasite: technology, here’s Jim Whistler with the scoop.
Thanks Tom, as the years have gone by there have been astounding developments to this pastime we call “living” namely the addition of technology, screens appearing everywhere displaying information that we use or abuse constantly. After the certainty of human survival and dominance is achieved then technology really has two alternative purposes, luxury and communication between people. However, this new communication can cause people to act differently then they usually do, living out fantasies as they do not have to connect to social authority when texting or using Facebook. This communication can allow people to talk more, even over great distances at their convenience and in the way they choose, but as we can see by little Jimmy here, who plays World of Warcraft eight hours a day, this can backfire as well. Since we are social creatures, we can say that one of our base wants or even needs is this connection to others, so I would say the internet is almost like the parasites in the classic movie Shivers by David Cronenberg. The parasites there forced people to act on their primitive desires of reproducing, as does the internet almost force you to communicate something you think of value, so the freedom/chaos of the scenario is noticeable. So the real question is can communication technology and an almost fantasy lifestyle be both good and evil? To answer that-FLIP
Billy Mays here with another FANtastic product, tired of being yourself all the time? Consider any part of your life boring at all? Well I have the solution for you, try using the internet. I know what you’re thinking, “The internet, what’s that?” but relax, it’s very simple. All you need to do is to comment on information provided by other people or create an online persona that shares what you want to share about yourself, and you can choose what to leave out! Now there are a lot of reasons people would do this, because they are bored, they want to live as someone else, they want to experience as much information as possible, and NOW YOU CAN! Why think of your life as ordinary when you can behave like the Tomcat Murr from the book by Hoffmann? Why not be like Murr and regard your everyday achievements as that of epic literature, after all that is what they are worth to you! After all, the other way to go is to having an ordinary boring biography like the character Kreisler, with information simply what you did and none of the flavor of what it mattered and what it connected to. Now how do I know that this kind of activity is really living in the sense that we define it, well- FLIP
Welcome back to Cooking with Intangibility, once again I’m your host, Bret Summers and today we’re going to cook up some Living. Now how do we make a complete sense of living? Well first I’m going to start with a nice omelet of the normal experiences you have, hanging out with friends, watching television, observing a beautiful sunset, the works. Next, we’re going to add some sauce of technology, which you may ask, is it really living if you are on a computer? To answer simply, yes, you are still interacting with people and it is still a different experience then the rest of reality thus it does impact your existence and should. Now this is a very complex sauce as it provides a lot of experiences that you would not have otherwise experienced, but is hampered by the fact that it is not real, nor even similar to reality, you can see other peoples realities, but you are not there to witness them yourself so they do not create as much of an impact. Even if Lisa on Facebook has enjoyed the Muse concert, you were not there, but you can still think it’s awesome that she went and be jealous, thus is the duality of this special ingredient: it adds another layer to life and human communication. And despite the games, Facebook friends (different then real friends), and youtube videos, real life is still real eggs. However, what will happen when the carton eggs get as good or even better than those produced by chickens? But onto the next-FLIP
“You’re not going to get away with this Cobra! The world leaders and the Joes will never go along with your plotting!”
“Ah-ha, but you have to, G.I. Jerks you see my top engineers have designed a phone that is so small that you can bring it with you everywhere you go! This will cause developers to fantasize about having even smaller and better phones, which can be their own computers, and the designs will make me millions!”
“Bad news Cobra, your plan isn’t perfect, you forgot that the Joes have access to third party developers who can make phones and computers as good as yours.”
“Forgot? I counted on it, now none of humanity will be argue with the progression and advancement of technology, it will happen exponentially as a parasite attaching to the community, and soon everyone will not be able to survive without the phones, and then not be able to survive without the computers, until finally everyone is living inside a false world and I can take control of the real one.”
“Well you’re right about one thing, we cannot argue with technology, the fantasy of wanting more that is not real in life is tempting enough for any scholar or writer, but we have a secret weapon. But this fake world does not have to be a false paradise for humanity to dwell in, it can be a realm for the human spirit to grow and express. We called upon our resources to get the famous Tony Prichard to give us consult, and he told us about how we blindly pay attention to authority (he did not speak to us for an entire class once and we still paid attention), and maybe people will notice how addictive and commanding this communication structure can be and know how to moderate. He brought up the idea of the period in a movie/game where a person has been bitten by a zombie but have not been turned yet. Perhaps this period is now, in technology, as we can still tell the difference between reality and fantasy, but we can see that on the horizon there is virtual reality or augmented reality out there that is better in some ways visually then what we see normally. So the value people put on what is “real” is what is going to defeat you Cobra.”
“COBRA SHALL PREVAIL!”
“At least now we know that our intrinsic value of reality is what is keeping us from completely worshipping the authority of technology, and knowing is half the battle. And the other half of the battle is-“ -FLIP
Now back to Planet Plurk, where we examine the extraordinary amounts of life that lurk in parts of the internet where we do not expect it, especially considering Plurk is intangible. Now unlike the jungles of youtube we discussed earlier, there are no predators or “trollers”, or at least few of consequence. Sites like Plurk and Facebook benefit from the idea that you can add only the people you want to add, which means there is very little disagreeing or if there is it is friendly. Now considering that there are people sharing art, whether made by themselves are not, sharing references, sharing ideas, how can this place not be considered reality? Is it not the same as sitting in a room with a lot of people talking to each other, or at least somewhat similar? Well as we examine the geography of Plurk we can see that that is not the case, multiple conversations of human interaction are going on, with WRITTEN word. The written word on Plurk is like an ever-changing landscape, with contexts changing shape, plurks (words posted by a user, or plurker) being forgotten in the vast time-line, plurks commented on a few times and the forgotten or ones carried to over two hundred comments. Perhaps now we can define reality more clearly, as in real life people can only do or say one thing at once, while in plurk they can switch between different ideas quickly and add what they want when they want. However, both are connected by the reality of thought, what people/plurkers are thinking is still done by the same method in real life and in Plurk, the scenario has changed but the ideas behind it have not. Organisms flourish differently in these scenarios, some plurk more than talking others talk more than plurking, this ratio defines what type of communication they are good at or have adapted to. Now, a freestyle plurk is intruiging, after all in Plurk you can add in colored verbs before a statement (username thinks, feels, wonders, etc.) or you can choose to leave this out. The impacts of this is you are saying something more personal or concrete, as the verbs show that a plurker could be plurking simply to plurk. Perhaps in another context real life is just one freestyle plurk at a time.
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I would like to think that reality is more than channel flips of what I see and what I want to see, I really would, but where else can I search for meaning? It is easier to say that we have a choice of whether or not to accept technology than to lay down how difficult the choice is to deny it when virtual reality comes up. My roommate Noah’s computer broke, so he started spending a lot of time outside or playing video games, and I wondered what that would feel like, to be severed from my symbiotic relationship, would I find more meaning or less? I think that in the end, the amount of meaning I find in anything is determined by me (obviously), and that both technology and real life are not better than one another (as I have been going back and forth with) but are just two parts of a whole, one based off the other and visa versa. I know facebook is bad because it distracts me, but I also know it is good because I can be in contact with friends who live in Tacoma. I think that I am content to be both a zombie and a human my entire life (at least for now), because brains sound delicious, but so does other food too. Maybe if I am lucky, it means more ways to find whatever the fuck meaning is, more ways to read equals more ways to learn. After all, reality is not always real life.