I Am Against Posting in the Facebook Group.

So I will post in here. I recently stumbled upon this infograph which depicts the computing power of machines. It predicts the demise of human hegemony over intelligence. I'm not sure if I can buy it but there is an attached article that you can read for yourself.

www.time.com/time/interactive/0%252C31813%252C2048601%252C00.html

We have discussed the issue in class, but basically the argument states that humans will be overcome by their creations, and computers will begin designing themselves, transforming society and the human experience completely. Apparently this change is only 35 years away.

Let me be the first to say ON RECORD that I have supported our computer overlords since before their rise to power.

Willing Slaves

Prior to today's class, I was a bit confused on whose side I was on concerning the Terranova/Anderson argument. After the discussion of the arguments, I have found that my opinion occupies a grey area somewhere either removed from or between the two arguments. I believe that Anderson is a bit too flippant about the importance of compensation for work, and that Terranova places too much emphasis on it, as well as loosely defining "work".

I'll elaborate on my problems with Terranova, because it is her argument that I found the most interesting. Terranova states that there are masses of digital "slaves" who do a majority of the work for the cloud lords. Services like Facebook, as well as email and blogs, rely on the input of their users in order to continue to be functional. While this is undoubtedly true, I think it is a stretch to call the use such services "labor". After all, these services are being provided, free of charge in most cases, for the consumer. They are tools of convenience, and therefore should not be referred to as tools of free labor.

An example of my argument is what I brought up in class: a suggestion box in the Saga dining hall. Filling out a suggestion form and putting it in the box is not "labor" in the traditional sense. The person filling out the paper does not expect a form of compensation for their work. Rather, they hope that their input, as well as the input of others will streamline their dining experience, and help tailor it to the desires of the consumers. In this sense, the "compensation" for the labor provided is hopefully a better experience, although that is not guaranteed.

I will admit that Professor Dean's example of the people who get to see an early version of a film is a bit more difficult to dissect. After all, the viewers are providing a service that could be accomplished by a paid, trained employee for free. However, after some thought I have come to the conclusion that the viewers compensation is an early screening of the film. To them, being involved with the film making process is a privilege, and not a chore or task. Their input will help other consumers enjoy the movie better, and in this sense it is "labor" from the initial viewers. However I do not think that this constitutes "slave labor" as Terranova puts it.

My Two Cents

In this blog post I will elaborate on some of my own thoughts concerning discussion in class from both today and past Tuesday. We covered a lot in both classes and got off of our original topic at times, so I'll focus only on the subjects that most interested me.

Although Professor Dean said that she believed the second chapter to be more interesting than the first, I found a few things in the first chapter quite intriguing. First and foremost, I found her dissection of information to be interesting (if a bit hard to decipher). I have in my notes that we discussed how we judge the merit of information based judged on it's content. While this is true in some mediums, I don't think it is true in all. For example, in the beginning of class today we talked about how we thought that Terranova was a bit long winded and it obscured her point. In this case, the transmission of information (Terranova's thoughts) is being obscured by noise (all the bs that we're too dumb to understand). Just an interesting point I wanted to make....

Another thing we talked about was how the representation of an object or ideal does it an injustice. While I believe this to be true, it may be a little over the top. As of this point in time, we have no way of communicating the intrinsic meaning of an object to another human being. As such, there is NO way in which we can do an object justice via communication. Also, this belief assumes that an object has some sort of unspoken and unrepresentable meaning behind it. Communicating the subjective truth that a book is pieces of paper bound together, with each page containing written communication is not doing the object an "injustice". Maybe I'm getting her point wrong, but as far as I'm concerned that was a passable representation of a book.

I found today's discussion in class to be very interesting. In particular I found it interesting because as we discussed theory and our opinions, I discovered that many of my own opinions were in line with those of Lainer. In my previous blogs I had trashed his book as hippie nonense, but in the context of the more technology-worshiping Tiziana Terranova, Lainer's rambling seem to make sense.

In particular, when Terranova said that technology is affecting the way that we see time/space/our social lives, I could not help but get offended. Like Lainer said, the internet is a HUMAN construction, and therefore it is based around our lives. It does not dictate it. Yes, there are people who may stay up all night and interact with people from across the globe via the internet, but the fact of the matter is that by doing that they are ostracizing themselves from their own non-virtual reality. Computers and the internet are ways of making our own lives easier, not to complicate them and to change our perceptions of time. The sun still rises and sets, our work days are from 9-5 in our own time. There is no universal clock based on the fact that the internet is timeless.

And that's all I got.

People Like Lainer Are Responsible for Skynet.

After concluding Jaron Lainer's book, I could not help but feel a little confused. It wasn't because of the non-linear, jagged ramblings, or even because of his strange references and technical jargon. No, it was because never in my life have I ever heard the thoughts of someone who understood the human experience in the way that Lainer does.

From what I can gather from his book, Lainer seems to think in terms of the human experience in terms of a quantitative function. To Lainer, the human brain and the functions it carries out are the most intrinsically "human" things about life. It hadn't occurred to me until the completion of the book, but Lainer is most definitely a positivist (it was very convenient that I just learned that term in my research methods class). Positivism is a paradigm in research that eliminates the "why" question. To positivists, humans are animals (or in Lainer's case, computers) who perform a specific function, and who are subject to the external forces around them. While this belief may be helpful when making observations about societies and large scale movements, I believe that in the context of the book and Lainer's theories, it is inappropriate.

Lainer pushes "realistic computationalism", an ideology which makes humans out to be functions of a much larger equation. I completely reject this ideology. Humans and computer programs/equations are two completely different birds. I can agree with Lainer in that our basic functions can be replicated through a computer system (ie. breathing, sight, sound, smell etc.). However, humans and computers differ in one small, but very important way: we are moody. Emotions, and the hormones that cause them are (to my knowledge) a strictly human experience. Computers do not feel emotion, and while it is tangible to think that someday we might reach the technological proficiency to make computers "feel", they would still lack the external societal/cultural stimuli to genuinely give them a true palette of emotions. To me, it seems like Lainer does not put this into his "equation". Lainer gets very excited when he talks about the fact that computers can now "smile" and recognize one, but they still cannot feel the emotion the causes one. Even if a hypothetical computer was able to track thousands of smiles, and recognize times when it was appropriate to, it would not be able to feel the rush of endorphins that causes smiles or good feelings in a human being.

Perhaps I am at fault for my rejection of Lainer's ideology. After all, I do not think like a mathematician or programmer. I am just a regular person with no aptitude for that sort of thing. However, if you look at the converse of Lainer's argument, you see that there are very tangible reasons why one can believe that humans and computers are intrinsically different. Computers are tools. Humans are biological creatures. A computer cannot become a human, and if you need any more evidence....

Questions

Do you think Lainer's beliefs are founded in a profound understanding of both human society and the internet? Or are his criticisms of both based on a misinterpretation of modern society and culture?

Concerning file sharing, are record labels at fault for not adopting a new buisiness model? Or is it a societal problem that allows individuals to feel it is permissible to steal/devalue art?

Come up with some thoughts on how to solve the issue of file sharing

Parts Two and Three

Part Two

Jason Lainer continues to ramble about how the internet is a horrid distortion of how he envisioned it 25 years ago. He still has many thoughts compiled together to form what he likes to call "chapters". Despite the difficultly of following Lainer's arguments, there were a few points that he made in part two that I found interesting. The first was his avid dislike of advertising on the internet. He says that back when the internet was still new, advertising was viewed as the most evil of crimes. Now, it is commonplace, and an integral part of the way that the internet works. If found this interesting because I don't understand why he (or any other internet pioneers) would think that it is a bad thing. Yes, it may skew the content on the webpage, but overall it funds the creators of the page, fueling continued work and improvements to attract more page viewers.

The second (and more interesting) point to me was his analysis of file-sharing. While I had shared some of the same thoughts as him in the past, they have never been articulated so well. In particular, I had never contemplated the impact it would have on record companies in such depth. The reason record companies were able to make money was because they controlled the amount of music available to the public. If you wanted music, you had to get it from them. Now, with the advent of file sharing, it is easy to make music and spread it, therefore flooding the market with music. While this impacts the record companies, it also impacts musicians who want to "make it big". From what Lainer said, and from my own personal thoughts on the matter, I believe it is increasingly difficult for unsigned bands to get a contract and achieve mainstream popularity. Record companies see that it is no longer profitable to invest heavily in new, fresh bands without a large fan base. Instead, they are focusing on the few assets they have left. This leaves very talented musicians out in the cold, with little hopes of ever making money off of their art.

I believe that the music industry is due for a massive overhaul in the coming years. Lainer agrees, although I have NO idea what he is talking about with his "Songles". I guess we will see what happens.

Part Three

I had one main problem with this section, and that was Lainer assumed that people believe mashups, funny youtube videos, and TV shows spliced with popular songs to be culturally relevant pieces of art. While yes, these things are funny and entertaining to a certain extent, anyone above the age of 14 wouldn't ever think to call it artwork (the only exception being extremely good and tasteful mashup artists). Youtube videos are certainly not art, unless they breach the threshold of artistic expression into short films.

I feel as if Lainer believes the mass population of the United States is, as a whole, very unintelligent and lacking culture. It is because of this that I believe some of his assertions to be a bit off.