CALIFORNIA

Wow, I totally missed that we were supposed to do an open post for today. I think all this spring break madness has gone to my head! Whoops. So I am posting now. I am taking the bus at 5 o'clock tomorrow morning to the Chicago airport!! I called the badger cab tonight and asked for a cab for 4:30am and the guy said the latest they could pick me up was 4:15 if my bus was at 5. I think that is excessive. I mean I already bought my ticket....I am just going to be sitting outside mem. union waiting to get on the bus for 40 minutes. but I didn't want to argue with the guy. urg. I am going to bed pretty soon....its almost 10 o'clock!! geez, I haven't gone to bed this early since highschool. I am all packed and ready to roll. My dad bought me this awesome new rolling duffle suitcase a couple weeks ago when he was here and I absolutely love it! It has more pockets than I know what to do with and its the perfect size. Anyways, about the trip. Jack is flying in to LA from Kansas and his flight gets in about 1.5 hrs after mine. His friend who lives in Santa Barbara is flying into LA from Switzerland that same day so we are getting a ride with her and staying in her apt. for the weekend. Then we are taking the train to visit my Cousin, Rachel, in San Luis Obispo for a couple days. Then we are taking the bus or train up to Santa Cruz where we will meet up with my sister and my mom. We are going to take a day trip up to San Francisco with them one day. Then on the saturday before we leave we are going to visit my aunt and uncle and 2 more of my cousins for the day. It is going to be really fun! I need to go to bed.....I hope everyone has safe travels and a fun-filled spring break.

Am I a cyborg??

After reading the excerpt from Andy Clark's "Natural Born Cyborgs", I found myself debating as to whether or not I agreed with his arguments. He believes that we are all natural born cyborgs because of the fact that humans have the ability to use constructs, props, and aids. He claims that we become one with our best and most reliable tools. He feels that it is becoming increasingly hard to distinguish where the world stops and where the person begins. Does this really mean that all humans are "cyborgs" though?

I found a definition for the word cyborg that states, "The term cyborg, a portmanteau of cybernetic organism, is used to designate a creature which is a mixture of organic and mechanical parts. Generally, the aim is to add to or enhance the abilities of an organism by using technology." I think the second half of this definition agrees with Clark in that we use technology to enhance our abilities, however, its not as though we have computers embedded into the palm of our hands. Is the fact that we use technology on occasion enough to constitute us as cyborgs. I think that the term cyborg is a little too extreme especially because of the mental images people already have when they hear that term. I thought that his term "mind-ware upgrades" was also very interesting. Does he mean that we really are increasing our mental capabilities, or are we just being able to use our preexisting abilities more effectively. I would agree with the latter. Another quote from the reading is that, "The mind is less and less in the head." I don't necessarily agree with that statement either. I mean, sure we use calculators to do long division, but that doesn't mean we are any less intelligent. We are simply being more efficient. The mind is still doing work to figure out problems.

I think that Clark's idea is one that is worth thinking about. Our world today is becoming very dependent on technology. However, humans have been using tools and aids to carry out everyday functions for thousands of years. Were we "cyborgs" then, or does it only apply to recent advances in technology? I think he has a good point when describing how different human beings are from other animals and what separates us from them, but I do not know if coining human beings with the term "cyborg" is necessarily accurate.

online lovers....please

This past week we read an excerpt from Sherry Turkle’s book “Life on the Screen”. The chapter we read was titled identity crisis. It talks about how life in virtual communities can help introduce people to the many different lives within themselves. She explains that there is no longer individual notions of self and that we are actually multiple personalities. I personally disagree with pretty much everything that this article argues.

I can sort of see her point that, as she states, “you can have a sense of self without being one self.” I understand that people have different personalities when they are around different people and placed in various situations. However, I feel that if you get involved in some online community and make up five different personalities for yourself, no one you meet online will really know your true personality. I just don't see how creating random characters can help you figure out who you really are. Also, I think that people often get much too involved in the online personae because they view it as an escape from the real world where maybe they don’t have many good relationships. Rather than working on improving their REAL life, they are spending time in a made up life so they can ignore their real problems. I think many people involved in MUDS and WELLS are insecure and have trouble with social interactions so they make new personae whom they like and where they don’t have to physically interact with people.

Later in the chapter Shelly describes a young woman named Ava who lost her leg in a car accident. She made a character on a MUD who, like her, had one leg. It then goes on to tell how Ava had sexual relations online with her virtual lover. This, in turn, helped her to accept her own body. I think that if Ava had just found a real person who accepted her just like her virtual lover had, then she would have found that having sexual relations with that real person would have led her to self acceptance in the same way. I really don’t think that the fact that it was in a MUD had anything to do with her self-acceptance. I think that people need to just spend more time working on real-life relationships and their personal development in the real world rather than using the internet as a safety net.

DREAMWEAVER 1 CLASS

Today I went to the dreamweaver 1 class. It was pretty helpful just to go over some of the main points again that were covered quickly in class. I started to get a little confused when he was talking about CSS but then the class ended so I didn't have to rattle my brain too much. I am having issues with fireworks and our current website project so I tried to have the instructor help me out. Unfortunately, he had never used fireworks and so I just ended up more confused. I thought it was strange he had never used fireworks and was teaching a dreamweaver class. The two instructors were really friendly though. At least they tried to help out......

Reading notas!

Last week we read an excerpt titled “Viruses and Fads” written by Albert Barabas. I had an idea of how viruses may act similarly to fads from our previous reading by Duncan Watts. The main idea was that we are all connected to one another, and for this reason, real disease epidemics and things such as computer viruses spread so quickly. In Barabas’s writing he related the spread of fads and ideas to viruses.

The first example that Barabas used was the spread of AIDS to North America. The disease was largely influenced by one man named Gaetan Dugas. This one man had sexual contact with at least 2,500 people while infected with AIDS. Barabas then goes on to describe a cartoon by Mike Collins regarding the 2000 presidential election and its almost instantaneous popularity. In the excerpt, Barabas states that, “they are both examples of diffusion in a complex network”. At first you may think they are different because one spread very slowly and one had spread around the globe overnight, but in reality, the networks used are in essence the same. AIDS spread through a sexual network spanning many years and the cartoon spread through the huge network of computers. Another thing that the spread of viruses and fads have in common is a small group of people termed as innovators. These people are not afraid to take risks and they jump on the bandwagon of new ideas right away. They don’t wait for something to become popular and then just join in with the masses. Another group found in both cases is a group called the “hub”. This group consists of one or more people that interact/communicate with more people than does the average person. In the AIDS example, Dugas was considered a hub because he had much more promiscuous sexual relations than the average person.

In class we discussed the slogan “Keep Austin Weird”. It started off very small and then got into the hands of someone who decided to really get it off the ground. Today, other cities besides Austin are using the same slogan. The funny part of this fad is that Cingular used that slogan in an advertisement in Austin even though the whole point of the idea was to rebel against big corporations. It was a fad against the fad of big businesses like wal-mart. If plotted, it can be seen that the spread of a fad overtime takes the shape of a bell curve. However, as later described in the reading, computer viruses do not follow normal predictions from epidemic models. The Love Bug computer virus was the most damaging computer virus ever. It destroyed about 45 million computers worldwide and although there is now an antidote, it still exists today. The reason computer viruses behave unlike normal viruses/fads, is because computer viruses are not connected randomly. The AIDS epidemic is more related to the spread of a computer virus because people are not connected randomly and some people will be larger hubs than other people. In the case of “Keep Austin Weird” there was one main hub at the beginning that got it going and then everyone just followed.

Understanding the spread of ideas and fads can help us to understand the spread of diseases like AIDS. In this day in age, we are more connected to one another than any other time in history. For this reason, it is important to study how this new connective ness affects the laws of diffusion and the spread of things such as fads and viruses.

The hunt.........

So for my coolhunt I decided to head to Starbucks mainly because I was meeting up with some friends before gospel choir. We have coffee there every Wednesday before practice and yes I feel cool sitting on the second floor by the fireplace. I asked the girls for some help because, honestly, I don't think I am a really "cool" person and according to our reading, if you are not cool, you can't spot cool things. I tried to observe some of the people sitting there, but then I realized the second floor is mostly for studiers and, well, maybe they weren't the coolest people. In regards to clothes, I found that almost everyone was wearing jeans. I think that jeans are a cool clothing item and they are one clothing item that will always be cool. Recently, I think that skinny jeans are becoming "cool". Walking to Starbucks I obviously ran into a coastie or two with the north face jacket, spandex black pants, and the ugg boots. This is where I am a little confused. From our readings it sounds like cool is new, different and rebellious. However, I have been seeing the SAME coastie style for three years. Does that mean its not cool anymore....they are all the same and its definitely not new anymore. I think it was also hard to pick out cool because now that it is winter, everyone is mostly concerned with staying warm and not their style choices.

When does something stop being cool.....after it becomes super popular? If something that is cool is "rebellious", then after everyone starts to do it, then it wouldn't be cool anymore. For example, when a band becomes popular you are bound to get the people who say, "I liked them before they were big" so, therefore, they think they are cool. Then, as soon as everyone else likes them they claim they aren't really into them anymore. I think that the difference between something being cool and something being a fad is that a fad is a certain item or a style that people really like for a short period of time. On the other hand cool is more of a personality trait. Things aren't necessarily cool themselves but when cool people try something different and take a chance, they are what makes something cool. Someone who is a risk taker and doesn't necessarily care what people think or who are very confident in themselves and cool people. In the reading it says that big fashion designers don't invent what is cool, it is the people who wear them that make it cool.

This week we read an excerpt from a book called Six Degrees written by Duncan Watts. I really enjoyed his writing style and how he presented his ideas. The excerpt was called "The Connected Age" in which Duncan describes ideas such as emergence and the six degrees of separation. He also talks about a new kind of science that is growing called the science of networks. Reading this article made me think about how "small" our world really is and how we are all connected either through connections with people or through technology.

In Bobby's blog post from last week, he described how many of the things that supposedly make our lives "easier" really end up making our lives more stressful. I agree with this in some ways, but I think that if used in the correct way, most inventions really do provide convenience and less stress. If people get too caught up in technology or computers and have their whole entire life depend on it, if one little thing goes wrong, they are out of luck. However, I don't think that anyone can argue that electricity or computers make our lives more stressful. Duncan writes about a couple electricity failures on the east and west coast and how horrible it was for the cities to be out of power for a day or so. Yes, I am sure this was a very stressful couple of days, but I think that anyone would rather end up having a day of stress once in a blue moon, than not having electricity almost everyday of their lives. This example sort of leads into Duncan's description of emergence.

Emergence is when many different things interact and hence become something new. A tiny bit of electrical energy is not really anything, but if you combine a lot of energy together you can end up with a huge city. I think that another great example of emergence is a developing fetus. Each cell in and of itself doesn't look like anything, but after nine months all of these cells create a human being! The hard thing about emergence Duncan says, is that, "the parts making up the whole don't sum up in any simple fashion. Rather they interact with each other, and in interacting, even quite simple components can generate bewildering behavior." To understand emergence, a new science is emerging called the "science of networks". Scientists from all different specialties must come together in order to solve problems. I think this type of science sounds very difficult because so many different types of people are going to have to work together. This is probably why people view "interdisciplinary" scholars as so valuable.

The last part of this reading was about the six degrees of separation. This theory says that everyone is connected to everyone else by just six people. I think this idea is very thought provoking but is also a little hard to believe. I can understand how you are probably connected to anyone in the US by six degrees, but a tribal person in the mountains of South America? What if that tribe has not even had other human contact? Or think about all the people in China....I feel like you would have to go through a lot of people to get to some random person. Have they actually tested this? Like drawn two random peoples names and tried it out, or is it just a theory based on numbers? It is something to think about though.