Final - Part 4 - Bonus Work

Creative Endeavor

As a creative part of my final I went a day without physical human communication and the day after that I went the day with only electronic means of communication. What I hoped to experience was the full limits of the human connection in both its different forms.

On the first day I had to hide myself in my room in order to avoid my roommates. I stocked up on food so I wouldn't have any reason to leave my room, a vital part of my plan to minimize contact with people. When I eventually had to leave my confines to go to the bathroom and had to ignore their greetings I made sure to explain my seemingly rude actions in an email when I was able to. To simulate what any normal day would be like, I made it a point to try and not reveal my experiment. While in my room I did things like text my mom, blog, plurk, check facebook, and updated twitter; in my opinion the whole shebang plus a small boom or two. It was a pretty relaxing day, although I did miss out on a party. My friends sent pictures of it though. It was... kind of the same. If by 'the same' I mean 'really fucking lame' of course.

Preparation and execution of electronic silence the next day was a little harder. Pulling the battery from my phone was like losing a limb, like the loss of Perceval’s wings in Dust. Every couple of hours I would feel phantom vibrations and think I had a text message, but my phone was dead in the other room. I continuously felt the desire to grab my laptop and check my email, my myspace status, anything! Those were all on my self-imposed ban list though. Finally I decided to see a movie with friends as a distraction; my roommates had to make the plans though because I had no means by which to contact anyone.

What stood out for me in this experiment was how much of an ass a person seemed if they didn’t interact with physical communication. I couldn’t speak to the people around me when I went for a glass of water (Water happened to be the one thing lacking from my horde of tasties) I couldn’t gesture at people who were kind to me on the road. The least I could do was twitter about them, not while driving of course. I also realized how impossible it is to stay in contact with a large amount of people without electronic devices. Those who are too far to drive to for a convenient visit are left to fade into past memories of the good ol’ days. Over those two days I came to a major realization though. I need both types of communication to keep on functioning the way I’m used to. Without the internet I’ll lose a great deal of my friends in other schools. The internet is an essential part of my life now anyways. It keeps me connected with my classmates and teachers; it makes me feel a part of something larger. As demonstrated on plurk, everyone’s thoughts mesh together and seemingly make a larger world of interaction. Those of us who continue to be on plurk after this class ends will become pieces of the next one. Internet connection through all these different web sites should be accepted, not looked down at like it is less genuine. Each new generation has evolved internet speak to more closely resemble and maybe even surpass the kind of speech you find in non-electronic conversations. Emoticons can be used to express emotions, as can abbreviated words such as 'lol' and 'jk'.

I recommend this experiment to everyone. It's a great way to learn more about yourself and your priorities. It also can give you a greater respect for the internet and the way it is changing relationships and connectivity.

Final - Part 3 - Limits

Topic: Limits

I always thought that the more you wrote in an essay the more impressive it was. What were 2 pages compared to 7? If you could say something in more words it could only strengthen the paper. The more details the better. These were the impressions I got growing up anyways. That’s what kids learn in elementary school, that’s what teens learn in high school. The limits put on me in college have begun to alter those beliefs ingrained into me from childhood though.

With language as much can be said in one word as can be said in a sentence. I can greet a person with “Hey Dr Nanhole, what’s up?” or I can say exactly the same thing by instead saying the monosyllable, “Hey.” Nothing is lost with the shortening, besides the common pleasantries. Who needs those among friends though? By using plurk I learned to cut out what was unnecessary from my posts or use shorthand so as to fit everything within the 140 character parameters. A harder task then it first appears. What I wonder most about language now is how in speech we often use many words for a small meaning. Let us return to the previously mentioned greetings. In the longer one I first acknowledged The Prich’s presence and then asked how he was, all that had nothing to do with what I want from Professor 9 though. I asked how he was, but what I really meant was “Tell me how you are so I can tell you how I am.” If I had only said “hey” as an opener then it probably would have been 'that one' who first asked me “what’s up?” and then I would have skipped a whole step in reaching my goal. The limits put on by plurk actually serve to focus a conversation and remove the fluff. The important stuff is under all the layers anyways right? I was very amused by what everything boiled down to when stripped of its length. I'm pretty confident that CalvinLawrence was able to sum it up quite nicely in a plurk of his, “the most popular plurks are, things people did today "mmm waffles", inspirational quotes, and cute pictures - this is what we are”(3/2/09). I’t's so very entertaining to find out that our favorite parts of the day to share with each other are the small parts. In fact, the first plurk I made was about how I’d made bacon or some other food.

Maybe it’s because the small is that which we most want recognition for. Eating, sleeping, shelter from the elements; all of these are basic needs and yet when lacking or in the act of fulfilling one we send it out into the plurk universe to line up beside other people’s posts of the same nature. Language and plurk serve as a way to keep a record of mine and my classmate’s fulfillment of our must basic needs. Once taken care of we can then move on to fulfill our companionship or intellectual needs. We can work on these only until we are again distracted by wants of the bathroom and more food. A cycle that has us moving towards the top where thought resides and dropping down when basic needs make themselves known again.

I’d like to think that I am more confident in my writing now that I can appreciate the value of not stretching for length, quality not quantity as they say. There is much more effort put into downsizing a piece of work then making it larger. At what point have you taken too much and damaged context and understanding? Where is the line between simplest form and loss of intended meaning? These are much more complicated questions then trying to decide where you can add in another sentence that basically says the same as the one before it, just rearranged in a new way.

I've also learned new ways to think about writing. In our plurks we experimented with using song titles as sentences. Doing this was interesting because we were taking a different medium, songs, and making them into language. It reminds me of how we took mundane thoughts and threw them into plurk to create a master collection of all those thoughts. A master collection that is read in a different way then one would read a book. New plurks are influenced by previous ones, old plurks can continue to extend with the attention of present responses. Plurk became a growing thing that the class nourished and still nourishes. A journal of our experience this quarter that can only be understood by those who have learned the language we inadvertently constructed. This was proven obvious by those few people outside the class that left confused comments about many of our plurks that they didn't understand. Didn't understand becuase they weren't there during class and hadn't read the texts we had, all of which contributed to the language that was our collaborative plurk.

Final - Part 2 - Filth/Censorship/Mores/Sex and Tech

Topic: Filth/Censorship/Mores/Sexuality and Technology

When talking in class about The Filth or The Ticket That Exploded it’s hard to be that person who thought reading it was fun. With the rest of the students only voicing disgust the closest some people got to saying they enjoyed The Ticket That Exploded is saying that they found it interesting. Reading the book could have been disturbing to some because it makes you aware of carefully hidden and ignored perversions within yourself. It has the ability to provoke uncomfortable sexual feelings with its pornographic scenes of fish-boys and bodily fluid. When reading The Filth in public places many of us found ourselves hyper aware of people around us due to the fact that the pictures were blatant proof that what we were reading included sex, giant killing sperm, old men jacking off, ect. The Ticket That Exploded and The Filth present sex and the things that go with it as no big deal while in contrast our own society says the exact opposite, that it is something to be ashamed of. As a result, it’s not a surprise that most the class could only respond to the books with comments like, “I didn’t like reading it”. The easiest way to deal with these uncomfortable realizations is to deny them, a basic defense that requires little effort.

The blogs held restrictions much like that of the classroom. Writing what you felt about the book wouldn’t immediately bring the rest of the classroom’s judgment down on you, but it would serve as an archive for whatever you said. Anybody could look and see and have proof of what you wrote. At first a lot of our posts consisted of us trying to distance ourselves from what we were reading just like how class discussions had begun. A blog post by Jonishere55 said this, “As I get into the book more though there is weird alien sex describing texts that are just way out there and I am pretty much starting to hate the book. I start to wonder, "Is this author gay or something"? Large portions of this book seem to be about Alien gay sex, I mean really I don't want to read this!”(01/23/09). As shown by Jonishere55, some students were trying to take what they were uneasy about and had negative feelings towards and justify it by applying it to who the author was as a person. Over time though people relaxed and became comfortable with themselves. This helped to calm those who were having trouble dealing with their inner turmoil. They were able to let go of that animosity so as to focus more on what was going on in the plot. The Ticket That Exploded was a tough read for me and I’m still not sure I understand it, but I did my best to point out the things I thought were important or at least curious occurrences. Prichard took control of the discussions in class and led us from how it made us feel to thinking about questions like whether language was a virus or not and why we found it important to find a meaning in the book. Having a theme to focus on especially helped us in reading the book since it was frustrating enough trying to figure out the best way to read the cut-up style, much less battle our squeamishness. The Filth was much more appealing because of its pictures, even if they did occasionally put us in awkward situations. A comic made for a more straight forward read after the complexity of the cut-up. I think many of us found it much less difficult to endure compared to The Ticket That Exploded and a welcome relief as well.

What I noticed about reading The Filth and its similarities to real life porn consumption was that we approached it the way we approached our sexual nature, in private. When able to we much rather preferred cracking open the graphic pages of this book in a secluded room then in a public place like a library. Our embarrassment at potentially being caught reading something that casually threw around sex overwhelmed us. Any cliché porn video has its base in the normalization of taboo acts in places where anyone could see. A task as simple as making a photocopy or delivering a report in the office place can blow up into a full out orgy. Porn taps into the type of society our discomfort has shoved way from our thoughts and to the dark recesses of our minds. That’s why porn works. With it we can tap into the need that has been growing in the sheltered depths of ourselves and best of all, we can do it in private. I’m not surprised that in more conservative states the porn rates are higher. Like stated in the article Red States Consume More Porn, “if you're told you can't have this, then you want it more.” As society continues to tell you that your sexual desires are scandalous and something to be concealed you become more frustrated. You can’t hide from them, you can’t get rid of them, soon you’ll feel the need to act on them. What else can you turn to but porn? It’s the perfect outlet because it can be watched behind a locked door and on mute if need be. Reading The Filth was much like that, you wanted to be hidden away somewhere so no one could speculate about you and your porn comic.

Final - Part 1 - Book Groups

Arenas/Areas of Activity: Book Groups

Discussion groups had a much different flow then that of the plurks and blogs. In the plurks you could take what you had been reading and embody it. A person could become Dimitri-9 and spout things the character actually said in “The Filth” or things that the character might have been prone to saying. Although taking on a persona nulled your ability to go back to your previous identity without revealing who you were before the transformation (unless of course you created a separate identity independent of your original instead of morphing your previous one into the new one) because when you took on a persona without a backup you risked revealing yourself if you slipped out of it to reclaim your original name for a plurk or two. Isn’t this what Greg Feely found out? He couldn't be both Slade and Greg. His 'original' persona was ruined when he let someone else take care of it. There were rewards to taking on the parapersona challenge that went alongside with the negatives though. What the class gains through the absorption of being introduced to another persona is actual interaction with the book. The person takes the book into them when they read it and then grant it life and share what they created on plurk. Suddenly the character isn’t bound by what is written, read, and discussed. There is another realm to be found here.

Blogs were a more personal endeavor then the plurks. Resembling a log or journal of all our thoughts about the class and the newest ideas presented to us, little interaction happened within them. When reading “The Ticket That Exploded” or “The Invention of Morel” it served as a place to put out your theories and confusions, a record of how your perception of the plot progressed. If you were lucky or actually put effort into making a theory or connection to something else in the class you got a lengthy comment from Prichard, if not then oh well. The blogs were sort of like Thuy’s metanovel in “Ribofunk”. Thuy saved it to a secure site and shared it when she wanted. Other’s input about it was welcome, but unnecessary to its continued growth. The work relied on the writer; the person scribbling in the margins was more of an accessory.

The discussion groups were 100% electronic. We only met once in class and only a handful were actually there for it. Without meeting face-to-face conversations were slow. After posting you had to wait almost a full day or longer for a reply. Input was also scattered. Some posts were repeats and the topics changed without transition. This contrasted the class room setting where it was fairly easy to follow along and the professor nudged the direction of it when necessary. The professor guided the class so that we were talking about why it was we felt a certain way toward some of the book’s uncomfortable themes and made us think on whether we should alter our viewpoint. In the online discussion groups we were without that guidance. When we thought we saw something important we attempted to lead the conversation towards it, but often we found ourselves unsure if what we were digging at had any significance at all.

The discussion groups had something on the class meetings though. In class few people actually spoke and of the many who didn’t speak only a small percentage used plurk in class or blogs outside of class to say what they were too shy to actually voice. With the discussion groups everyone had to say something so it forced people to open up. Even though what was said lacked substance most the time at least everyone was contributing and making an effort. I think the person who put it best was Trever Schy who posted, “Even though I do not think that the discussion board came very close to classroom discussions in the sense of bringing new ideas to light I feel like it was helpful for my comprehension with the story line. After reading the chapters, looking through what people had written in the discussion board usually filled the gaps in the story that I was missing, which made understanding the book much easier” (Dust discussion board thread GRADING, 3/14/09).

Between the three tools used in this class I would have to say that plurk was by far the best. The more casual feel took the pressure off trying to not look dumb. Within the realm of the discussion board there was no place for what dreams you had while reading your book or which music video best represented the book. In that way, the discussions were limited. Though without the personal noise, the discussion groups were more open to touching on things more in depth. Only a few actually took advantage of this, but the potential was still there for everyone. There was always the option to stay focused, on task, to pick about the book in the more traditional of ways. Going about this same route on plurk had its difficulties due to the character restraints and the fact that some messages were lost in the dark realms of “mark all as read”.

Another Prichard Theory

I think we were talking about how you can only ever find one sock in a matching pair. Not really sure, but this is what came out of Prichard's mouth:

"I have a theory about that actually. In the future they have invented time travel and the pastime is to go into the past and steal socks."

Only Prichard would have a theory explaining missing socks as the work of time ninjas ! I wonder what the they want with my socks though? I haven't done anything interesting in them, mostly just walked places. Nor is my frustration over having them missing the thing of legends or even amusement. I just buy more socks. If I could be a time ninja I would take some of Napoleon's socks or stockings or whatever it is he wore.

Time ninjas kind of remind me of the Hibraners from 'Postsingular'. Their theft of the cuttlefish is like the theft of socks. The loss of the fish didn't really pose as a concern or even get much of a reaction from people. Craigor spoke of it as a kind of unimportant common occurance. The only person to investigate was Chu.

Postsinguler Part 2

I'm guessing that Chu and his father ended up getting caught by Gladax and her mad hop skills. I'm not sure I understand why she doesn't want them in the Hibrane. What damage could they be doing that she wouldn't also be doing in the Lobrane?
I'm really enjoying the kiqqie's story. Jayjay and Kitty's fight over Thuy is entertaining and I think its cool that the orphnids make it easier to live unconnected from 'normal' society. The orphnids united everyone, even those who live on the outskirts. The Big Pig high is strange to think about. It's an addiction that has no direct affects on your health unless you actually neglect your health. Much different then smoking which causes lung cancer or drinking which ruins your liver. It speaks to the harmfulness of just being addicted to something. I think its interesting that jayjay can recognize that hitting the Big Pig makes it harder for Thuy to complete her art, but doesn't try very hard at all to support her decision to quit or even quit himself.
It sounds to me like Thuy is on her way to creating the jump-code with her metanovel. She mentioned how it would resemble a sort of knot which reminded me of the knot Chu made. How long will it be till Gladax catches on? Could it be that she is too busy with Chu to notice or maybe she doesn't think Thuy can actually do it?

Postsingular

Chu was made for the all connectedness of the orphid world. Before it he could barely function in society. His tantrums and hate for disorder made people uncomfortable to be around him. His own mother questioned whether the trouble to take care of him outweighed her love for him. Then with the introduction of the nants Chu's abilities proved vital to returning Earth to what it was before.

After the nants came the orphids. They have so far proven themselves to be a much safer version on nanites. Instead of breaking down all of earth's material and replacing life with virtual life the orphids connect all life with life. Its like the earth has it's own consciousness now that can see all and that everyone is linked up to.

The world of the orphids is much more suited for Chu. Instead of trying to fit into society, the world has changed to fit society to him. Chu has no problems getting used to the change. He even discovered the "angels" that where taking the cuttlefish.

I guess it just fascinates me to think of all the people we prescribe drugs to and feel sorry for could actually be evolutions first steps toward singularity. In the future it could be the people without autism that are pitied.

Ribofunk: Splices

Little Worker seems very human. Her obsession over Mister Micheal could be likened to that of a stalker. She does her best to find her own solutions to what she believes his problems to be. She dispenses of the andromorph and gynomorph very cleverly. The destruction of the gynomorph seemed to be more for her benefit though. Then there was the death of Mister Micheal's wife. Little Worker clearly planned that out. The intruders could have been killed at anytime, but she waited for her ideal moment. Jealousy and devotion. Qualities any human could have. What makes a person a person if not emotions?

Hamster and the PI have an amusing relationship. The splice's mellow attitude and literal interpretations of what his partner says are very entertaining. The PI doesn't seem to care for Hamster, but his death obviously hits him hard. I think the PI was as surprised as anyone to find that it affected him so much.

These two splices have likes and dislikes and different personalities. They can react to situations in ways that serve themselves. What more do you need to be human and not property. Has humanity really been reduced to numbers and percentages? If you are 51% human then why are you not also 49% property. Kat didn't value all life, but I think he made an important point about splice life. They should have equality. They shouldn't have to rely on humans to keep them alive.

The Filth chaps 8-11

Tony's death was rather upsetting, but not surprising. The comic was definitely building towards it. I was glad for the death of the Greg para persona, he was a real douche. Every time he mistreated Tony I hoped the cat would become feral and pull a Cujo on him.
Just as upsetting as Tony's death was the revelation that Tony was merely a copy. Who am I to mourn? The real... no, original Tony or the Tony that I have an actual connection too? The original's death is felt with nothing more than second-hand-sadness, something akin to how I feel when reading about a murder in a newspaper. The death of the copy I feel with more remorse though. Does that make the copy the 'real' Tony? Is it possible to have two 'real Tony's? I guess the situation is not unlike that of parallel universes. Should someone from a neighboring universe be thrown into ours they would be considered the unreal double of their copy here. In the parallel universe though, they would see the situation as one of their own being thrown into an 'unreal' universe.
I think this problem of 'real' and 'unreal' is very important to our future. With cloning technology, laws should be made for the rights of clones. Being a copy doesn't make you lesser then the original. At least it shouldn't. It would be silly to say that a clone is the same as the original in every way except in worth, that actually defeats the purpose of calling them a clone.
I'm really interested in talking about this book in class and hashing out the themes in it. I have a lot of curiosity regarding the book's mentionings of love and the twist where Slade is the one who holds the pen that The Hand harvests ink from.