Final: Animals, Machines & Humans

            Nearly all of our texts contributed to my thoughts on the line between human, animal and machine. The Invention of Morel made me think about the difference between the fugitive before and after he went into the machine. How was that real person different from that person who was captured by the machine? Maybe if he didn’t know the difference, then there was no real difference.

In Postsingular the lines between animal and machine were very blurred with the creation of the orhidnet and the beezies. Towards the end, the Big Pig takes on a life of her own and starts trying to control the events of the real world. She is supposed to be a machine, but is taking on the qualities of a living being. I started to think of her as a living character in the book: part living animal, part machine. Queen City Jazz also made me really think about the difference between animals, machines and humans. The Bees are similar to the Big Pig in that they are part human, part animal and part machine. When Verity became a Bee she had access to information the way a machine would, but also had the Hive and communications of a bee. And through all of that she must have maintained her humanity. Even the City itself was an entity of its own and could know and understand. How does a machine have that much life?

Technocalyps made me think about how we are making machines more and more realistic and life-like and how close they will get to being alive without actually crossing the line. Robots are getting close to making just as good a pet, if not a better one, than a cat or dog. At one point it mentioned that the Japanese animalist spirituality makes giving machines life less taboo there. Does this mean that once we give machines a certain amount of life they can be on the same level as spirits, or animals? I think that there’s always going to be a distinction between animal and machine and human. Even in Ribofunk, where all levels and mixtures of these three have been created, there are still separate categories.

The splices in Ribofunk clearly have some human emotions. Little Worker felt human emotions like loyalty and jealousy. The rabbit that went to free his fellow splices from the farm had clear, human-like objectives and motivations to free his companions. Krazy Kat may have been the splice that was the most human-like, in that he organized and rebelled in a way that animals and machines don’t. Once again, there is this fine line about how much life and thought a machine can have before it crosses over to alive, and then how much more thought it can have before it crosses over to human.

All of these texts blurred the line between animal, machine and human, or at least questioned the lines that do exist. Maybe we should create a fourth category that’s in between machine and living being; some sort of living machine. Perhaps, like in Ribofunk there will be various levels of these categories in which beings are certain percentages of different animals or humans. That would be decided on DNA percentages though, and I’m not sure that DNA is really a fair indicator. There is more to a person than physical biology.  What about their mental capacity, or emotional capacity? I keep thinking about the hibrane in Postsingular where all objects have a voice due to telepathy. What if all things have life, but we just can’t connect with them in any way because we aren’t communicating on the same level? I don’t think there’s really a true way to judge the difference between animal, human and machine. And the further technology progresses, the more difficult it’s going to get.

Final: The Small

            I hadn’t thought too much about the small before this class, but after connecting everything we talked about in class to the small, or the nano, I think I have a better idea now. We started out this class reading Feynman’s talk, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom” which talks about the crazy idea of encoding an entire encyclopedia on the head of a pin. After going through this class, that idea doesn’t sound so crazy any more. Everything in our world is heading toward the small. Our tools and resources are all getting smaller—cars, engines, computers, phones—our entire world is shrinking due to globalization and the increasing interconnectedness. All the texts we read showed the progression of this movement toward the small: the word virus, the Hand, tiny vials that provide mental and physical alterations, nano plagues, metapheromones and pollen that contains stories, nants, orphids and Chu’s knot code to another reality. These may be science fiction books, but they are merely taking the patterns of the past and present and projecting them into the future. There is clearly something alluring and efficient about the small and we are undoubtedly moving toward it.

I was kind of glad when someone brought up the butterfly affect the last week of class because that really put a label on the way I’ve been feeling about the small: the tiniest variations early on create large variations later on. I wasn’t thinking so much about the variations though, but more just about how the small affects things on a larger scale. The tiny neurons firing in our brain create our thoughts, actions and entire lives; tiny animals like bugs are the beginning of an entire food chain that keeps us alive; things as tiny as pronouns and letters at the end of a word tint an entire language with gender. I see the small as something much more significant now than I did before. The small effects all the big things in our world, but also many of the big things in our world are becoming smaller. It seems like the small is at both the beginning and the end of a lot of things.

One of the texts that particularly made me think about the small was The Filth because it was all about this absurdly small organization that had more power than anyone in the real-sized world. It was difficult to think about an entire society all occurring in a puddle of garbage on the floor of some man’s house. That was one of my favorite parts of the book: the image of Feely collapsed on the floor, his eye level with the ground, with the Hand headquarters in that murky puddle, infinitely small compared to even the tip of the pen in his hand. The Filth really put things in perspective and a lot of this class, and my thoughts on the small, have been about perspective.

One of our discussions from class stands out to me in the way I think about the small. We were talking at some point about how we measure things. By how big they are? How long they exist? How much they change over time? How much they change the things around them? It seems like those first two are how we tend to measure things, but maybe the last one should be how we really measure things. The small doesn’t get enough credit, but if we measured by that last standard, that wouldn’t be so.  This course has really made me think about the finer details in life and get down to the root cause of things. Which is more often than not, something much smaller than expected. I had better start paying more attention to the small though because it looks like it is an up and coming star of the future.

Final: The Other

I felt pretty darn lost for the first couple weeks of our class and a lot of it was because we started out with Radical Alterity, and I couldn’t wrap my head around the concept of the Other. I wanted a more detailed definition, a list of examples, an explanation of what exactly this “Other” was. It took me awhile to get out of the mode of learning in which someone just tells me what to learn. Now that I’ve gotten over that, I realize that the other is whatever I think of it as and that it’s not the exact same thing for everyone. Which is really an essential part of the other; it is whatever you think of as not yourself, not familiar, not relatable, uncertain, etc. From the other’s perspective, I am the other.

            A couple things that stuck out for me from Radical Alterity were the ideas about spectral communication, and some things about traveling and exoticism. Because spectral communication can strip us of things like body language, context, our name, etc, it allows us to communicate without those things affecting us. Without all these identifying factors it seems that who the other is will be less easily determined. All of us communicating on the Internet or through other technological means have something in common and have less ways of sorting people into “us” and “them”.  It was also said in Radical Alterity that anonymity liberates imagination and distances oneself from oneself. So not only are we getting closer to others, we are getting farther from ourselves and farther from those factors and rules that define us and trap us within ourselves.

            Another part of Radical Alterity that helped me understand the Other was about the draw towards the exotic. On page 85 it says, “That may be the secret pleasure of the voyage, not in enrichment from others but simply shedding your self, sloughing off a truly heavy weight.” I really liked the idea of travelling as more of a way to escape your own surroundings than to be in someone else’s surroundings. I hadn’t thought of it like that before, but it makes a lot of sense that part of the seduction of exoticism is to be free of the weights that are upon you in your normal life. We are drawn to the other not only because it is different from us, but also simply because it is not us and we can be free of ourselves while exploring the other.

            A couple more things I want to tie into my thoughts about the other are the Disney films we watched about vaccinations and malaria, and our discussion about politics versus culture. I think of these things together because although those films were clearly political, it could also be argued that the themes they were presenting were just as much influenced by culture. In our discussion we also talked about how genetics and how we are raised affect us and these ideas also connect to the Disney films because these films were used as propaganda and I wonder how much they affected the young viewers. These both relate to the other because the films clearly had an “us” versus “them” theme and the other was something to be exterminated. The film about the vaccine was creepy in the way that getting the vaccine was like an insinuation to conformity in general, not just conforming to getting the vaccine. This concept of “us” being good and “them”, or the other, being bad is both a political and cultural trend in the US I feel, as shown by these films. The existence of the other is never going to go away, but I would hope that in our explorations of the other, we don’t label it as evil or bad.

Final: Blog Comparison

I read through all of Cam’s blogs for the quarter and then went back and read through mine and was surprised at some of the similarities. We still had our own experiences of the class, but I was glad to read about someone else having similar struggles with some of the more confusing aspects of the class. We both discussed some major themes such as identity, anonymity, communication, technological advances, etc. We both also used some quotes from the readings and connected the class with other experiences and events in our lives and the world. We also both talked about the value of life and how that would change if we changed into robots or were put into a machine such as Morel’s invention. She seemed to have similar thoughts as me about many values of life being in the small things and in the ability to think and live in our own bodies. We both addressed aspects of the futures such as what the next step in evolution might be. She wrote about how she didn’t think robots would be the next step and I wrote about how I didn’t think a uniform superorganism would be the next step. So even in our similarities we had our differences.

            Some differences between our blogs were that I tended to write out a thought process by posing a series of questions, most of which I couldn’t or didn’t actually answer. Cam seemed to have more simplified and focused blogs. I also commented on the text a lot more than she did. I tended to get lost during class discussions so I would write a lot about the books; Cam seemed to connect with the discussion topics better than me. She also came out and talked about when she was confused or didn’t understand things, and although I felt the same way a lot of times, I tended to just ignore that and only talk about things I did have a better understanding of. I liked that she argued against some of the things talked about in class, whereas I just commented on the parts I agreed with and could relate to.

            In this process of reading all our blogs, I came across a pattern in my blogs that I hadn’t noticed before. In almost all my blogs I ended up questioning or thinking about what is natural or intrinsic to humanity. In a lot of my blogs I ended up saying things about the inevitability and inherency of certain behaviors, tendencies and patterns of humanity. So apparently a big theme on my mind was what is natural to us as human and what is synthetic or at least more flexible about us. Another theme from my blogs was that I identified patterns in society and culture relating to the ideas from class. I would recognize a pattern and then comment on why the pattern is there, what we can do to change it, or if we should even change it.

The closest topic I could find to a major theme in Cam’s blogs was technology and it’s affects on the classroom learning experience and on communication. I think a big part of her experience of this class was the format of the class itself. She wrote frequently about technology and the way it was used in this class to add to our understanding rather than being looked down on as a distraction or an unreliable resource. She seemed to gain a lot from this class from the way it was set up to allow us to freely explore our thoughts on the texts through a variety of mediums. I also gained from this experience, but I feel like I gained more from the books themselves and the social, political and personal issues they brought up. My experience with this class focused more on how I think about things and figuring out what things I could benefit from thinking about more.

Final: Plurk

At first I didn’t really understand how Plurk was supposed to connect to class, but now that I’m looking back at this class from where I stand now, I recall what Tony told us on one of the first days of class: that this class is a superorganism. Plurk is a way for our superorganism to communicate, explore, teach, learn, share, and think together. It is a place where all our thoughts are intertwined and the combination of them adds up to something more. It brings to mind the word Gestalt, in which the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Plurk has become a tool in this class in which we can explore not only our own thoughts and feelings, but also others’ thoughts, and we can then piece together how technology is making that possible.

 

When reading Radical Alterity I connected a lot of what it was saying about communication to Plurk. Radical Alterity touched on some ideas such as going incognito as a common privilege, a disconnect between social reality and social roles, the lack of need for identification, and a paradox of communication in which the more we communicate the more we destroy the need for communication. All these ideas from Radical Alterity were easily connected to real life for me, and a big reason for that was the use of technological mediums in class. Plurk allowed me to directly see how a lack of identification allowed for relationships to grow and change in a way that they might not have in the strict social roles of face-to-face communication. This spectral communication that was referred to in Radical Alterity wasn’t just a phrase in a book, it was something I was experiencing for myself. At first I thought the paradox of communication didn’t really make much sense, but as the quarter went on I could see how communicating on Plurk made it a lot less necessary to communicate with my classmates during actual class. Thinking ahead to the forms of even more instantaneous communications that we read about in our texts, I can now see how things like the orphidnet and telepathy and a Hive mind like in Queen City Jazz, are just further progressions of things like Plurk. These also fit into the paradox of communication because with instant access to all the information in the world, communications shrinks.

 

Another recently discussed topic in class that reminds me of Plurk is this 4^th dimensional image of ourselves that we are constantly recreating and reforming. Plurk and blogs and Facebook allow us to be in control of part of this image of ourselves. Other parts of this image such as medical records, bank statements, etc aren’t so much in our control, but they are still part of this composite presentation of self that we are infatuated with. What it means to be human is perhaps changing with these new advancements in ways that we can present and express ourselves. The need to record and save isn’t seen in any other species and technology is making it more and more possible to do those things. Plurk is like a simpler form of Thuy’s metanovel in Postsingular. We can add together words, images, videos, voice recordings, etc to create and preserve a multi-media version of ourselves. Everything that formerly lived only in our imagination is getting closer and closer to reality. Humans are eager to finally be able to capture these parts of ourselves that were formerly intangible. We now have the capability to piece together parts of ourselves that we want to present to others and make those things physical and moldable at the touch of our hands. Or rather, the click of our mouse.

some thoughts on identity

There's a few places I want to take this blog, but I think essentially I want to talk about identity and how well we can really know ourselves and what kind of things can change our identity. Personally, I really don't like people thinking things about me that aren't true. If someone gets the wrong impression of me or something, it upsets me. When I was just spewing out a handful of completely untrue facts about myself on plurk, even though I clearly stated that they were lies, it still made me feel just a bit uncomfortable. Why? Why does it really matter if people know the real me or not? Who even is the real me? I don't even fully know myself, so why do I have this drive to make sure people are getting an accurate picture of me? Technology especially, allows us to be whoever we want, but somehow I still don't like being someone I'm not.

This kind of leads into the 4th dimensional image of ourselves we were talking about today. We've created this whole other level of ourselves for the world to see and to get to know us through. We've discovered and taken full advantage of this new level of self expression and presentation of image. Why? Why do we create all these images of ourselves, and not only create them, but save them? Maybe we're doing it for posterity's sake. So that we can feel like we left a physical impact on the world when our physical selves are gone. Maybe it's because we all like having these things that identify us, but we've never really been able to make those things as tangible and physical as we can now, so now we're obsessed with saving them. Maybe this pack rat behavior is just an intrinsic piece of humanity, as was suggested in class. Maybe we collect and save things about ourselves because we like the idea of having more intelligent and accurate knowledge--our own memory really isn't that great and technology can expand our abilities to be able to hold a LOT more information. Maybe we're just information whores like the characters in QCJ with their access to the Hive mind or in Postsingular with access to the orphidnet.

So then if we have this so called identity and we like to keep an accurate representation of it, what happens to that identity when we engage in fiction? Or when we go back in time like in Primer? The time travel clearly changed Abe and Aaron to the point where their friendship was destroyed and they were attacking their former/present selves and taking risks they wouldn't have taken before. Which version of themself is more true? Which deserves to live? Which one is the real identity? Is there 2+ identities now? Or is there exact duplicates of the same identity? It seems to me that the more times they travelled in the box, the more crazy and desperate they got. It changed them. And not surprisingly since our brains would probably have a difficult time adjusting to that kind of leap through reality.

Do we also change when we engage in fiction? Or how about when we're dreaming? We do all kinds of things when we're playing a video game, or dreaming that we would never do in real life. But who's to say which one is "real" life? Why doesn't something you do in a game or write in a fictional story, or do in a dream count towards this image of yourself that gets projected to others? When in fiction we get this pass, this excuse, to do things we wouldn't "normally" do. But engaging in fiction is a pretty normal and frequent thing. The things we think and do in fiction are just as "real" as the things we do in real life. Maybe even more so since we're free to feel and think things without any social expectations or rules, since we have escaped to this fictional realm.

The system--good or bad?

Here's something Miami says in the Filth, " You were all gonna destroy the foundation stone of the world. The system is perfect, Ned. It has to be perfect; it’s all there is. Attacking the Hand is like fighting your own immune system." and on the next page, "Nobody’s special. We occupy our roles in the system until it’s time to go and the next one just like us steps right up to do what we did."

How solid is this system? Is the system really all there is, like she says? Throughout the Filth I was unsure about whether the Hand was good or bad. As a reader I obviously identified with Feely/Slade, so when he realized he used to be one of the rebels and then started questioning the Hand, so did I. But now it's all unclear. Is the Hand a necessity that fairly regulates good and bad, clean and dirty? Or was Feely and his gang onto something by trying to undermine the Hand? What would have happened if they succeeded?

I feel like this connects to real life in a lot of ways. There are a lot of "systems" that are "necessary" and that we are oftentimes forced to adhere to, even if that means changing ourselves. There are also rebel groups that oppose these systems. So I suppose the question is, is the system just the way it is and we just have to make the best of it, or should we be shaking things up more and breaking free of the system? The plot line about the Libertania makes me think that even if we did upset the system, a new system would just end up forming out of the dust and we'd be right back where we started. So maybe Miami had a point about the inevitability of the system. We're all just doing our part in the system and when we're done someone else exactly like us will just take our place, so it's pointless to resist. 

This is no way to look at life though. Most of us don't really want our life to add up to being a blind sheep just working as a part in the machine. But making everyone into "a world of Buddhas" or "self-made super heroes set loose on the world's problems" like Max Thunderstone's ideas doesn't seem like the best way to go about changing the system. Maybe we need to start with smaller things to break down the system a bit. We were talking in class about how gender-specific language is and how trapped we are in a 2 gender system because of this. I hadn't really thought in detail about this until then. From a very young age we are taught to think in terms of 2 genders, and that the male gender is the normative (due to all the words that label generalized groups as male: mankind, etc). This is one of the many systems we are stuck in. Breaking down this system by refraining from using so many pronouns, or coming up with gender-neutral terms might be a start.

Another interesting part from the quote from the Filth is that "attacking the Hand is like fighting your own immune system." If the Hand is like our 'immune system', it probably shouldn't be drugging it's 'body parts' with para personalities and misleading and using those body parts. But when I think about it... This is kind of what an immune system does. It labels the anti-person, or the virus or bacteria or whatever that doesn't belong in the body and then it attacks those bad cells and converts them into just another normal part of the body. Which is kind of like how the Hand recycles people. The Hand is sort of like a massive immune system for all of humanity, but when we think of each cell as a person, a character in this book, we see both sides of things and we see the sacrifices that sometimes have to be made. When our body is fighting off a sickness, we ourselves have to suffer and feel sick in order for our body to fight it off and win. Feely was a sacrifice in order for the Hand to do it's job and keep it's body (humanity) healthy and that's just the way it is from their perspective.

So is the system good or bad? I suppose it's all about which side you look at it from.