(Do not read this unless you agree with "Hot Flesh" Disclaimer below)
I know very little about how the Internet operates. Like the girl in this video (http://technology.todaysbigthing.com/2008/11/20) and her assumed fictional audience, I am one of many who relegate my on-line experience to a mysterious structure, greater than I am, and amazingly complicated. Unlike the girl in the video, I am not trying to sell you my home Internet business. I am trying to orient my experience within a digital lifeworld that I inhabit daily, yet one in which I am not native. The ephemerality of its architecture makes the most sense to me in the context of B. Carpenter’s metaphor of a river in the on-line essay “Internet Architecture” (http://technology.todaysbigthing.com/2008/11/20. Originally published in Architectural Principles of the Internet, June, 1996). Because of its gigantic scale, the Internet “introduces new phenomena: the number of packets flowing through the switches on the backbone is so large that it exhibits the kind of complex non-linear patterns usually found in natural, analog systems like the flow of water…” Perhaps this is why water metaphors are used throughout the language of the Net in concepts such as “surfing” and “navigation”—because we phenomenologically experience this “stream” of data whether or not we can fully comprehend it.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
EYE SEE
(Do not read this unless you agree with "Hot Flesh" Disclaimer below)
Written words are seen and not (aurally) heard: vision rules the sensual field of reading and writing. This is especially true of on-line typography, which often incorporates graphics, animation and color into the copy. Though I acknowledge how my ears, arms, fingers, spine and tongue all collaborate in this communication mode (physically and/or psychically), I am most aware of my informant eyes. Without a determined cognizance of these non-visual inputs, I almost completely forget their contribution to the writing process.
According to Walter Ong, vision is the most highly regarded sense in Western literary cultures and is often used as a metaphor for knowledge (see “Visual Analogues for Knowledge and Understanding”). In his essay, “’I See What You Say’: Sense Analogues for Intellect,” Ong examines how this seeing/knowing parallel disregards our full capacity for understanding:
Sight or vision is a limited analogue for intelligence for one reason that can be readily discovered: our sight or vision presents us optimally with surfaces. Basically this is so because vision is geared to diffusely reflected light… Because sight is thus keyed to surfaces, when knowledge is likened to sight it becomes pretty exclusively a matter of explanation or explication, a laying out on a surface, perhaps in chartlike form, or an unfolding, to present maximum exteriority. (Ong, Interfaces of the Word, (Cornell University: 1977)
Ong refers to seeing a page in his book as an optical example of “diffuse reflection:” light from my kitchen window bounces off the print into my eyes and I register the yellowed paper, the black letters, the underscoring of important passages in blue ballpoint pen. Opposite these optics, he states, the “specular reflection” of a mirror registers enigmatically, as “visually deceptive: requiring correction. ” When I peer at a mirror, I look into it. I do not rest my gaze on the glass but on the subjects seemingly beyond the surface. In comparison, when I navigate the desktop of my computer I do not see the surface glass or the reflection, I see the arrangement of my icons, my desktop background photo, the time and status of my wireless Internet connection. Furthermore, when I log onto the Net, I “go” to “spaces” and “enter sites.” I experience neither “diffuse” nor “specular reflection” but instead a type of specular absorption in the light emanating from my screen.
Ong writes, “The addiction to visualism which marks our technological culture has a history. ” The “diffuse reflection” of traditional media technologies, such as writing and print, have always appealed to our eyes. Still, they do not dazzle us in the same way new media does. Given the “specular absorption” induced by the luminescence of the screen and the window-like design of my operating system, I am continuously drawn in to the hyper reality of my digital experience. I notice my assimilation most within the virtual illusionistic space of on-line worlds, such as Second Life (secondife.com).
In Second Life, the eye informs and directs action that would be impossible in off-line reality. If I want to visit that exotic island I spy rezzing in the middle of the computer-generated sea, I can do so instantly without bothering to consider the mechanics of maneuvering my physical body. Point is: whatever I see, I can approach and explore. The Second Life logo refers to both hand and eye, but it is the eye that ultimately navigates. Though I use the agency of my hands to execute the desires informed by my vision, tactility merely backgrounds my visionary experience. Later*, I examine how this affects on-line relationships.
* By “later” I am assuming you will not skip ahead. (See “Text and Temporality”).
Written words are seen and not (aurally) heard: vision rules the sensual field of reading and writing. This is especially true of on-line typography, which often incorporates graphics, animation and color into the copy. Though I acknowledge how my ears, arms, fingers, spine and tongue all collaborate in this communication mode (physically and/or psychically), I am most aware of my informant eyes. Without a determined cognizance of these non-visual inputs, I almost completely forget their contribution to the writing process.
According to Walter Ong, vision is the most highly regarded sense in Western literary cultures and is often used as a metaphor for knowledge (see “Visual Analogues for Knowledge and Understanding”). In his essay, “’I See What You Say’: Sense Analogues for Intellect,” Ong examines how this seeing/knowing parallel disregards our full capacity for understanding:
Sight or vision is a limited analogue for intelligence for one reason that can be readily discovered: our sight or vision presents us optimally with surfaces. Basically this is so because vision is geared to diffusely reflected light… Because sight is thus keyed to surfaces, when knowledge is likened to sight it becomes pretty exclusively a matter of explanation or explication, a laying out on a surface, perhaps in chartlike form, or an unfolding, to present maximum exteriority. (Ong, Interfaces of the Word, (Cornell University: 1977)
Ong refers to seeing a page in his book as an optical example of “diffuse reflection:” light from my kitchen window bounces off the print into my eyes and I register the yellowed paper, the black letters, the underscoring of important passages in blue ballpoint pen. Opposite these optics, he states, the “specular reflection” of a mirror registers enigmatically, as “visually deceptive: requiring correction. ” When I peer at a mirror, I look into it. I do not rest my gaze on the glass but on the subjects seemingly beyond the surface. In comparison, when I navigate the desktop of my computer I do not see the surface glass or the reflection, I see the arrangement of my icons, my desktop background photo, the time and status of my wireless Internet connection. Furthermore, when I log onto the Net, I “go” to “spaces” and “enter sites.” I experience neither “diffuse” nor “specular reflection” but instead a type of specular absorption in the light emanating from my screen.
Ong writes, “The addiction to visualism which marks our technological culture has a history. ” The “diffuse reflection” of traditional media technologies, such as writing and print, have always appealed to our eyes. Still, they do not dazzle us in the same way new media does. Given the “specular absorption” induced by the luminescence of the screen and the window-like design of my operating system, I am continuously drawn in to the hyper reality of my digital experience. I notice my assimilation most within the virtual illusionistic space of on-line worlds, such as Second Life (secondife.com).
In Second Life, the eye informs and directs action that would be impossible in off-line reality. If I want to visit that exotic island I spy rezzing in the middle of the computer-generated sea, I can do so instantly without bothering to consider the mechanics of maneuvering my physical body. Point is: whatever I see, I can approach and explore. The Second Life logo refers to both hand and eye, but it is the eye that ultimately navigates. Though I use the agency of my hands to execute the desires informed by my vision, tactility merely backgrounds my visionary experience. Later*, I examine how this affects on-line relationships.
* By “later” I am assuming you will not skip ahead. (See “Text and Temporality”).
Look, Don't Touch
(Do not read this unless you agree with "Hot Flesh" Disclaimer below)
While new technological advances continue to reinforce complete visual immersion, our sense of touch wanes from the digi-cultural experience, especially with the invention of flatter keyboards, smaller buttons and industrially slick “touch” screens. “Digital” no longer signifies the hand so much as computer calculations far removed from the counting of our fingers. I particularly notice this attenuation of digitality while driving my car and placing calls. Trying to maintain my eyes on the road, I struggle to dial* numbers on my new iPhone because I can no longer rely on my sense of touch: My iPhone’s smooth glass touch screen, made of simulated “push-button” controls, requires more focus, visually and mentally, and offers less actual “feel” than my old cell phone. Its operation consequently absorbs more of my faculties than I am accustomed and disengages my awareness from other simultaneous sensory experiences, like veering over the rumble strips on the side of the highway.
* Here to “dial” is an anachronism. It is derived from analog phones with actual dials mounted on them. To place a call on these phones, one had to insert a finger into a numbered hole on the dial and rotate it to a mechanical stop; a more tactile experience than even the modern “push button” phone.
While new technological advances continue to reinforce complete visual immersion, our sense of touch wanes from the digi-cultural experience, especially with the invention of flatter keyboards, smaller buttons and industrially slick “touch” screens. “Digital” no longer signifies the hand so much as computer calculations far removed from the counting of our fingers. I particularly notice this attenuation of digitality while driving my car and placing calls. Trying to maintain my eyes on the road, I struggle to dial* numbers on my new iPhone because I can no longer rely on my sense of touch: My iPhone’s smooth glass touch screen, made of simulated “push-button” controls, requires more focus, visually and mentally, and offers less actual “feel” than my old cell phone. Its operation consequently absorbs more of my faculties than I am accustomed and disengages my awareness from other simultaneous sensory experiences, like veering over the rumble strips on the side of the highway.
* Here to “dial” is an anachronism. It is derived from analog phones with actual dials mounted on them. To place a call on these phones, one had to insert a finger into a numbered hole on the dial and rotate it to a mechanical stop; a more tactile experience than even the modern “push button” phone.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Addressing the Audience or HEY YOU!!! READ THIS!!!
(Do not read this unless you agree with "Hot Flesh" Disclaimer below)
In William Ong’s Interfaces of the Word, Ong contends that every author assumes a mood for her fictionalized audience when addressing them remotely. To psychologically enter the work, the reader has to “put on the mood that you have fictionalized for him.” (Cornell University Press: 1977, p. 78). Internet advertising exemplifies this device with intimate second-person appeals.
FOR EXAMPLE:
On Astrology.com, a pop-up window tempts me with a “Free Sample Maya-Aztec Reading!” Inside the box, a CGI Meso-American god proffers, “The Mysterious Mayan Zodiac calls on you to rediscover yourself.” The author/god is assuming I’m a lost soul in the mood for metaphysical self-inquiry (after all, I’m searching for astrological guidance on the Internet.) He/she uses an indirect, but authoritative voice: I have been “called upon” and therefore must respond by clicking the big yellow “Click Here.” If I believed in kismet, I might ask myself, is this a typical pop-up… or is it a sign? If I don’t respond, will my “self” remain un-“rediscovered”? I resist and close the box but then I realize I should have captured the image for my example. When I try to find it again, I have no luck. It truly is mysterious! (See “The Internet is Magic”).
In William Ong’s Interfaces of the Word, Ong contends that every author assumes a mood for her fictionalized audience when addressing them remotely. To psychologically enter the work, the reader has to “put on the mood that you have fictionalized for him.” (Cornell University Press: 1977, p. 78). Internet advertising exemplifies this device with intimate second-person appeals.
FOR EXAMPLE:
On Astrology.com, a pop-up window tempts me with a “Free Sample Maya-Aztec Reading!” Inside the box, a CGI Meso-American god proffers, “The Mysterious Mayan Zodiac calls on you to rediscover yourself.” The author/god is assuming I’m a lost soul in the mood for metaphysical self-inquiry (after all, I’m searching for astrological guidance on the Internet.) He/she uses an indirect, but authoritative voice: I have been “called upon” and therefore must respond by clicking the big yellow “Click Here.” If I believed in kismet, I might ask myself, is this a typical pop-up… or is it a sign? If I don’t respond, will my “self” remain un-“rediscovered”? I resist and close the box but then I realize I should have captured the image for my example. When I try to find it again, I have no luck. It truly is mysterious! (See “The Internet is Magic”).
The Body/Mind Electric
(Do not read this unless you agree with "Hot Flesh" Disclaimer below)
As I begin this essay, I am acutely aware of the click-clack of my fingers on the percussion of small buttons. I am drumming out my ideas to you, dear reader (see “Addressing the Audience…” above). You cannot hear the tap-ta-tap-tap but maybe you can imagine the words sounding out in your head, your tongue articulating each phrase. With a brief moment of reflection, I note that to transcribe most effectively I must do this--sound out the words in my head--before I type them. The speed of this “mentalizing*” subsequently dictates the dexterity in my hands. If the wording is poorly conceptualized, my inner dialogue slows and my typing stalls. For instance, “phenomenology” proves difficult for me to say and thus to type and although I am a decent typist (40 wpm), I also cannot type as quickly as I speak. So, as mentally evoking the words delays my typing, the act of typing equivocally stalls my inner dialogue and effects how I think. By slowing my thinking, typing allows more time for reflection and grammatical construction. Upon re-reading, I find my writing voice even “sounds” more composed than when I speak: it is both more formal in the figurative sense—academic, contrived, and less organic than speech; and more formal in the literal sense—a crystallization of meaning with pre-conceived, digitally perfect letter-forms. In other (self-consciously constructed) words, my writing voice resonates with less idiosyncratic impulsivity than my speaking voice. In effort to invoke spontaneity into the work, I can organicize** my writing by eschewing formal literary conventions and fabricating my own words. I can also experiment with CAPITALization, abbrev., and pun<+u@+!0N. This organicization is a common phenomenon of Internet “chatting” where formal literary traditions fall short of conveying the audible fluency and expanse of the spoken word, especially slang.
Examples***:
OMG! = Oh my god!
WTF!!! = What the fuck!!!
lol = Laugh out loud.
brb = Be right back.
; ) = Wink, wink.
: ( = This makes me sad.
* “Mentalizing” is not a word according to Microsoft Word’s spell check and Dictionary.com. Searched on Google (4/6/09), “Mentalize” is currently the alias of a Youtube subscriber who uploads amateur Spanish videos of music concerts, family and friends to his personal channel. Google also links “Mentalize” to the article “What is Mentalizing and Why Do It?” published by the Menninger Clinic website, an on-line source of psychiatric information. Menninger psychologist Jon G. Allen, PhD. defines “mentalizing” as “when you’re aware of what’s going on in your mind or someone else’s.” This definition comes closest to what I mean. When I am “mentalizing,” I am aware of my own imaginary gestures (For more information see “The Internet as Word Generator” in my blog).
** By “organicize,” I mean—to make less artificial and more nuanced like conversational dialogue or the unschooled expressions of children who still speak their mother tongue. When I googled the word, it eventually led me to an essay on “Neo-Colonial Globalization” (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/boundary/v026/26.3cheah.html)
***To translate more Internet slang, go to http://www.noslang.com.
As I begin this essay, I am acutely aware of the click-clack of my fingers on the percussion of small buttons. I am drumming out my ideas to you, dear reader (see “Addressing the Audience…” above). You cannot hear the tap-ta-tap-tap but maybe you can imagine the words sounding out in your head, your tongue articulating each phrase. With a brief moment of reflection, I note that to transcribe most effectively I must do this--sound out the words in my head--before I type them. The speed of this “mentalizing*” subsequently dictates the dexterity in my hands. If the wording is poorly conceptualized, my inner dialogue slows and my typing stalls. For instance, “phenomenology” proves difficult for me to say and thus to type and although I am a decent typist (40 wpm), I also cannot type as quickly as I speak. So, as mentally evoking the words delays my typing, the act of typing equivocally stalls my inner dialogue and effects how I think. By slowing my thinking, typing allows more time for reflection and grammatical construction. Upon re-reading, I find my writing voice even “sounds” more composed than when I speak: it is both more formal in the figurative sense—academic, contrived, and less organic than speech; and more formal in the literal sense—a crystallization of meaning with pre-conceived, digitally perfect letter-forms. In other (self-consciously constructed) words, my writing voice resonates with less idiosyncratic impulsivity than my speaking voice. In effort to invoke spontaneity into the work, I can organicize** my writing by eschewing formal literary conventions and fabricating my own words. I can also experiment with CAPITALization, abbrev., and pun<+u@+!0N. This organicization is a common phenomenon of Internet “chatting” where formal literary traditions fall short of conveying the audible fluency and expanse of the spoken word, especially slang.
Examples***:
OMG! = Oh my god!
WTF!!! = What the fuck!!!
lol = Laugh out loud.
brb = Be right back.
; ) = Wink, wink.
: ( = This makes me sad.
* “Mentalizing” is not a word according to Microsoft Word’s spell check and Dictionary.com. Searched on Google (4/6/09), “Mentalize” is currently the alias of a Youtube subscriber who uploads amateur Spanish videos of music concerts, family and friends to his personal channel. Google also links “Mentalize” to the article “What is Mentalizing and Why Do It?” published by the Menninger Clinic website, an on-line source of psychiatric information. Menninger psychologist Jon G. Allen, PhD. defines “mentalizing” as “when you’re aware of what’s going on in your mind or someone else’s.” This definition comes closest to what I mean. When I am “mentalizing,” I am aware of my own imaginary gestures (For more information see “The Internet as Word Generator” in my blog).
** By “organicize,” I mean—to make less artificial and more nuanced like conversational dialogue or the unschooled expressions of children who still speak their mother tongue. When I googled the word, it eventually led me to an essay on “Neo-Colonial Globalization” (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/boundary/v026/26.3cheah.html)
***To translate more Internet slang, go to http://www.noslang.com.
Hot Flesh* (Corporeality, Identity and Participation in a Post-Wired World)
Disclaimer/Terms of Services:
The following (above) blogs are quasi-anthropological essays: I am more versed in creative writing than phenomena-based ethnography. Fortunately, ethnography consists of a type of creative writing, and phenomenology arises quite naturally from the study of the world through my bodily senses. These senses guide my auto-ethnographic research and in these essays I strive to be more aware of post-Internet (or “wired”) concepts of body, consciousness and culture by altering my own default sensory perceptions--senses acclimated to 20+ years of computer use. Through this methodology, I examine how digital literacy affects the lifeworld of the literate within the context posited by phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who argued that all knowledge radiates from the body’s direct reciprocity with the world.
Towards auto-ethnography, much of my research is self-reflective. I am a computer user (a Mac, not a PC) and I frequent the Internet daily through various websites and multiple personal accounts including: Facebook (1), Myspace (4), LinkedIn (1), Youtube (2), Second Life (1), Yahoo (1), Gmail (1), Twitter (1), Blogger (1) Flickr (1) and Gryphon Mail at SLC (1). I also recently acquired an iPhone. Off-line, I use my computer to write, make videos, take pictures, and compose music.
Supplementing the study of my own experience, I have conducted five intensive interviews (two in person, three over email) and more limited inquiries while exploring the virtual on-line world of Second Life. I have also familiarized myself with scholarship on traditional literacy, consciousness, corporeality and culture through the works of Walter Ong and David Abram.
Note: Digital literacy allows a near-instant feedback loop between author and audience--a nod back to the mode of oral traditions where philosophers would share their stories to a live, participatory audience. I welcome this aspect of the Internet interface and therefore I encourage you to leave comments on my blog.
>>>NOD YOUR HEAD IF YOU AGREE WITH THESE CONDITIONS<<<
* When “Googling” ideas for my title, I came across the erotic comic hero spoof “Flesh Gordon” (1974) whose mission is “to save the world from the Incredible Sex Ray.” Check out the “PG” rated trailer on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FilYgi_LZ_c).
The following (above) blogs are quasi-anthropological essays: I am more versed in creative writing than phenomena-based ethnography. Fortunately, ethnography consists of a type of creative writing, and phenomenology arises quite naturally from the study of the world through my bodily senses. These senses guide my auto-ethnographic research and in these essays I strive to be more aware of post-Internet (or “wired”) concepts of body, consciousness and culture by altering my own default sensory perceptions--senses acclimated to 20+ years of computer use. Through this methodology, I examine how digital literacy affects the lifeworld of the literate within the context posited by phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who argued that all knowledge radiates from the body’s direct reciprocity with the world.
Towards auto-ethnography, much of my research is self-reflective. I am a computer user (a Mac, not a PC) and I frequent the Internet daily through various websites and multiple personal accounts including: Facebook (1), Myspace (4), LinkedIn (1), Youtube (2), Second Life (1), Yahoo (1), Gmail (1), Twitter (1), Blogger (1) Flickr (1) and Gryphon Mail at SLC (1). I also recently acquired an iPhone. Off-line, I use my computer to write, make videos, take pictures, and compose music.
Supplementing the study of my own experience, I have conducted five intensive interviews (two in person, three over email) and more limited inquiries while exploring the virtual on-line world of Second Life. I have also familiarized myself with scholarship on traditional literacy, consciousness, corporeality and culture through the works of Walter Ong and David Abram.
Note: Digital literacy allows a near-instant feedback loop between author and audience--a nod back to the mode of oral traditions where philosophers would share their stories to a live, participatory audience. I welcome this aspect of the Internet interface and therefore I encourage you to leave comments on my blog.
>>>NOD YOUR HEAD IF YOU AGREE WITH THESE CONDITIONS<<<
* When “Googling” ideas for my title, I came across the erotic comic hero spoof “Flesh Gordon” (1974) whose mission is “to save the world from the Incredible Sex Ray.” Check out the “PG” rated trailer on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FilYgi_LZ_c).
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Hi
This is my blog. I am so excited you have come here. Testing testing 1 2 3. All captains ready for take-off.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
