In much the same way that the people pictured were augmenting their bodies your visual artefact is augmented by sound.
May I suggest an experiment just for amusement? Change the soundtrack to see the change in emotional tone. Maybe this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5rEMQ5a8YQ
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This is an interesting post (and wider conversation) Stuart.
I wondered whether you felt any of these ideas – those in the New Scientist and your own – resonated with the course readings we’ve been looking at in block one? I thought there were a few points of interesting crossover. In fact if this is a subject of interest, it might be interesting to revisit this theme when we move on to talk about algorithmic culture in block 3.
Meanwhile, as a light-hearted aside I’ve just finished reading The Restaurant at the end of the Universe therefore I might disagree with C.S. Lewis’ position on two heads 😉 :-/
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Thanks for this weekly summary, Stuart.
‘Looking back on my blogging activity over the last three weeks it’s incredible to consider what I have learned from the readings, tutorial sessions, Togethertube sessions and interacting with the blogs of others.’
I know that it’s hard to say very much in 250 words, but I would be interested to know what the main ideas are that you’ve pulled out from this block? Even better, you could perhaps link the main ideas to content from the preceding week’s lifestream, if that worked.
‘I had been reluctant to consider the possibility of technology penetrating the mind. But as we slowly turn into human/machine hybrids then perhaps we may start to behave more machine like – networked and efficient.’
At the danger of sounding mischievous, it does assume of course that machines are necessarily efficient! I wonder whether we have a tendency to conflate machines with efficiency and to place humans in opposition as distracted and flawed? And if so, to what extent does this kind of framing come from the depictions we find in popular culture (and particularly science fiction, as we saw in the film festival)?
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Thanks for your thoughts here, Stuart. I’m intrigued by this idea that we might be able to use songs as a way of working through some really quite challenging ideas in the literature around cyberculture.
Something that might work really well in the future in your blog is to juxtapose the song lyrics against the words taken from the journal article or book chapter, and them to come in with your own thoughts on how they sit together, or why you selected them.
Depending on how the cybercultures playlist is received we might attempt one for community cultures – I’ll keep you posted in case you find it a useful way or thinking about some of concepts we’re touching on during the course.
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Nicely done sir. I loved the audio, it has a Hitchcock esque feel to it. Listening to the soundtrack I had the feeling of the soundbites emanating from an old TV somewhere off camera and this gave the piece an almost vintage quality. I liked it a lot!
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Great theme, powerful message and very well executed. Each element is carefully outlined. This reminds me somewhat of a trip through a gallery, or in one of the “multimedia” type installations. I’d love to see more this through a VR head mounted display, or indeed, in reality as an exhibit somewhere.
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Loving this Stuart. The very quiet music throughout give an eery, slightly scary background while the images and sounds build a great picture.
Really well thought out, that dithering was worthwhile.
Gotta love Adobe spark 🙂
Eli
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Stuart, I really like the interaction of visuals and sound; the reworking of the familiar (e.g. Six Million Dollar Man intro) with new visuals; and the overlay of symbols on pictures. A rich mix, befitting the theme. Thank you!
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Like you, I spent much of this week dithering: your dithering has paid off: this is great! I really liked the last message about technology having the power to change evolution and the responsibility that brings. I echo Cathy’s comments on the high production quality here too!
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Hi Stuart,
I really admire the professional quality of your visual artefact. I like its clarity and the way that the message builds from technology as enabling the body to be medically restored to a suggestion of facilitating something more sinister. I still seem to talk about technology as “enabling” or “facilitating” when really what I’ve learned is that it is the human/technology assemblage that has the agency.
Cathy
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This is a fascinating post and comment, thanks Stuart and Helen. George Orwell’s dystopian “thought police” immediately spring to mind. Regarding your points, Helen,
– I like to think that disclosing our feelings is the “natural” position as I like to think being truthful is the norm, but as we are social beings and therefore the “natural” is the social, we must have learned that withholding the truth and failing to disclose is sometimes in our best interest.
– It isn’t often that I have thoughts which aren’t common to most people, but they have been mediated through my brain and body and experience which does in that sense make them unique.
Cathy
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This is a really interesting evaluation of a very very complex topic. I agree that losing the ability to conceal our thoughts if we choose would lead to a very different situation than we’re in now. Though I wonder if we’re already on that road? There are definite issues surrounding privacy and surveillance and our ability to conceal what we think. However, I have two follow up questions:
– do you think that our ability to disclose (roughly) what we choose is actually connected to our mind and soul (which makes us unique)? is it innate, or a social construct? (I’m in two minds – no pun intended!)
– do you think that ‘thought’ in its natural form would make much sense to an onlooker? or is it our interpretation of that thought that makes it intelligible? I strongly suspect that if a robot were able to read my mind right now it would very quickly go into shutdown… 🙂
-Helen
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Thanks for this interesting post Stuart – I really like the way it pinpoints the tension between whether technology is working for or against us. I love the line “while our bodies sit in chairs, waiting for our minds to come back”. Where are our minds when we let technology take over?
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Hello Stuart, thanks for a very clear weekly summary. And well done this week for tackling the course readings and weaving the ideas into your blog.
‘I’ve been considering old ways of life and how they have been modernised by use of technology.’
My eye was caught by your reference to ‘old ways of life’ and wondered whether you needed to unpick this a bit. I’m not immediately disagreeing but if you could perhaps link it to a particular bit of content from your blog I’ll follow it up there. I’ve been enjoying reading (and commenting) on different parts of your blog just now so perhaps I’ll find the connection (as I did with your references to Sterne and also to digital inequality). However if you could do a bit of ‘signposting’ that would help a little bit (and means I don’t miss out on reading something you’ve been working in).
Again, thanks for the weekly summary which looks like a good record of what’s been happening in your lifestream this week.
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Hello Stuart, Daniel – I’ve enjoyed reading your conversation here.
I’m glad that Sterne is including in the reading for the EDC course because I do think that sound is often under-considered, particularly in comparison to the visual. In fact I think this is reflected in what you have both said here, the sense that sound isn’t always fully attended to or investigated or though-through. Possibly of interest, you might have seen from Jeremy’s video introduction at the beginning of week 3 that we are keen to invite pieces of music in response to some of the ideas we are exploring here: perhaps you might suggest a song in response to Sterne, for instance?
‘I have also been considering the histiography of cyberculture that Sterne proceeds to investigate. He mentions transition from analogue to digital – To that I’d add digital immigrants to digital natives, human to cyborg, offline to online and physical to virtual.’
I don’t always think that talking in terms of transitions around technology is always very helpful. I can see why it’s convenient or helpful to do this in order to recognise change, however I think there’s the danger of suggesting clear cut binaries, whereas in reality I think we see a more complicated (and maybe untidy) co-existence of digital and analogue, online and offline, and so on. That said, I recently read that Norway was about to switch off FM radio in favour of digital so maybe things are a little more clear cut in some places after all!
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Thanks for this thoughtful post, Stuart. And well done also for weaving-in ideas from the reading by Hand.
Something I particularly like about your work here is the recognition of the complexity surrounding the digital and education and society. As we’ve touched on during the film festival, technology so often seems to be framed in a utopian/dystopian binary: in contrast you expressed your own enthusiasm for the digital whilst recognising that it also has its darker side. At the same time you’ve made the point (by drawing on Hand) that we need to see digital technologies as enmeshed with society and human, rather than imagine that they exist in some form of vacuum.
I was also intrigued by your point about inequality and I imagine this idea might resurface in the other blocks within the course. Your anecdote reminds us that we need to be really careful in making sweeping judgements about access to technology within education. We so often hear a technological determinist position which argues that education needs to adapt in order to keep up with the technical interests and abilities of learners: but in this clamour to embrace the digital, who gets left behind? I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to see Dirk’s blog however like you he has been exploring ideas around inequality and society and seems to be making the point that the effects of transhumanism might not be felt equally across society.
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Hi Daniel,
Thanks for taking the time to comment on my post.
That’s a good point about the 3D radio – thinking back it was odd that it was showcased at an accessibility event. However it was a good example of the point I was trying to make in how our senses can be manipulated to become more virtual.
I also didn’t mean to make any reference whatsoever to religion. I meant spiritual as in the mind and soul as apposed to physical attributes – but I guess I could have used a different word.
Thanks for the suggested reading too – I’ll be sure to read it.
Stuart
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Slightly ironic that in an accessibility conference they were showcasing a technology that is inaccessible to me due my monoaural hearing problems. Still, I don’t begrudge people their new toys.
What I found interesting was the idea of how usage is making this a viable technology. Binaural recording has been available for quite some time now, I remember learning about it 12 years ago in music college. What’s perhaps making this more viable for the BBC is mobile technologies and people listening through headphones rather than off single speaker radios. There would have been no point to binaural sound if most people were still listening off old transistor radios.
Anyway.
I think spiritual is a very loaded term to use. It risks attributing virtual reality technologies with a quasi-religious dimension. Possibly implying transcendence and the erasure of the body. Something that Hayles argues against in How We Became Posthuman (another of the extra readings for this block). Totally fine to use the word spiritual if that is what you intend to imply. An alternative without the religious overtones would be subjective, maybe.
The list of transitions can also be interpreted in a problematic way. Transition implies that we go from one state to another whilst with all the pairs you give the two examples continue to exist and interact together.
I also have a bee in my bonnet about the idea of digital natives and immigrants. Check out The ‘digital native’ in context: tensions
associated with importing Web 2.0 practices into the school setting, Vol. 38, No. 1, February 2012, pp. 63–80 , Oxford review of education by Charles Crook
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