Real Life (Media Studies for a Life in Media 04)
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Fourth of an 8-part series of slidepacks for a course and book about the role, insights, and possible future of media studies for a life in media. Feel free to use, please cite, and share your comments!
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Real Life (Media Studies for a Life in Media 04)
- 1. Media Studies for a Life in Media 04 Real Life
- 4. when we live in media… • we can wage war against the machines • we can surrender to multimediated reality • we can ‘become’ media • lived experience is uncanny • shared narratives are plastic • and media are imperfect
- 5. three options for a life in media? ① war against the machines ② accept a multimediated existence ③ becoming media
- 6. three options for a life in media? ① war against the machines ② accept a multimediated existence ③ becoming media
- 7. “The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants”
- 8. “Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed…”
- 9. Samuel Butler in 1863 “Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed…”
- 13. “Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information”
- 19. Vilém Flusser (1920- 1991) “A person will no longer be a worker (homo faber) but rather an information processor, a player with information (homo ludens).”
- 20. three options ① war against the machines ② give in to mediated reality ③ we become media
- 21. “divine machine or natural automaton”
- 23. INTERVIEWER Why do you feel that Truman’s never come close to discovering the true nature of his world? CHRISTOF We accept the reality of the world with which we’re presented.
- 28. “It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of Empire, but of ours. The desert of the real itself.”
- 29. “...In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the Study of Cartography, succeeding Generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and, not without Irreverence, they abandoned it to the Rigors of sun and Rain. In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar; in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography.” Jorge Luis Borges (1946)
- 38. three options ① war against the machines ② give in to mediated reality ③ we become media
- 39. “Technology is not the nameless other. Technology 'R' Us: to embrace technology is to embrace, and face, ourselves. This we must do, and fearlessly” David Cronenberg in 1997
- 40. artefacts
- 46. 1839
- 49. activities
- 50. “Our whole trend is toward ever more intimate interactions with machines [...] and with each phase, machines are doing something ever more central to our lives.”
- 54. arrangements
- 72. 1816
- 79. "I think that the question that we human beings must face is that of what do we want to happen to us, not a question of knowledge or progress.The question that we must face is not about the relation of biology with technology [...] nor about the relation between knowledge and reality [...] I think that the question that we must face at this moment of our history is about our desires and about whether we want or not to be responsible of our desires.” Humberto Maturana
Editor's Notes
- Next up: how a life in media permanently unsettles conventions/ideas/consensus about what is real/true
- the growing interdependence and intimacy between humans and machines/tech/media tends to be met with concern in pop culture/public sphere
- the key ideas for this presentation…
- With each option in thinking about/giving meaning to our reltionship with reality the historical grounding response in policy/pop culture possible ways forward to be covered here: media life/living information blur the boundaries between media and life, between machines and humans (and nature), between online and offline, between real and virtual. how do we cope with this increasing realization that what we think is real and what is not? first option: we become increasingly anti-media, mediawise, critical of media (and each other); remember Mattelart’s suspicion society. Think of Samual Butler’s original call to wage war on our machines. A more positive spin on this is Flusser’s idea of homo ludens (compare to Illich’s tools of conviviality). See also Poe’s The Man That Was Used Up. second option: we surrender, give in – we become like Neo in the Matrix, surfing the seas of media, being swallowed whole. Consider ‘fact-free politics’. A more positive spin: we become hackers, like in Snow Crash. third option: we embrace the boundaryblurring, we recognize the uncanniness of media life. Consider Ceylon/Borg. Negative view: Hoffman’s The Sandman. Positive notion: trust ourselves to technology (Verbeek), the OnLife Manifesto.
- war against the machines is a VERY OLD perspective
- Butler writing under the name CELLARIUS: cellar master in an abbey. in response to Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species
- Darwin – Butler connection
- a contemporary rendition of ‘war against the machine’ is the reification of nature
- change4life literacy commercial UK, co sponsored by supermarket and food chains…
- another iteration of the war against machines is blaming (social) media for fake news and disinformation. DOWNSIDE: fake news/conspiracy theory, disinformation UPSIDE: co-creating, co-constructing, collective intelligence example 2018 MIT fake news study in Science: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146 We investigated the differential diffusion of all of the verified true and false news stories distributed on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. The data comprise ~126,000 stories tweeted by ~3 million people more than 4.5 million times. We classified news as true or false using information from six independent fact-checking organizations that exhibited 95 to 98% agreement on the classifications. Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information, and the effects were more pronounced for false political news than for false news about terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, or financial information. We found that false news was more novel than true news, which suggests that people were more likely to share novel information. Whereas false stories inspired fear, disgust, and surprise in replies, true stories inspired anticipation, sadness, joy, and trust. Contrary to conventional wisdom, robots accelerated the spread of true and false news at the same rate, implying that false news spreads more than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it.
- DOWNSIDE: fake news/conspiracy theory, disinformation UPSIDE: co-creating, co-constructing, collective intelligence example 2018 MIT fake news study in Science: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146 We investigated the differential diffusion of all of the verified true and false news stories distributed on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. The data comprise ~126,000 stories tweeted by ~3 million people more than 4.5 million times. We classified news as true or false using information from six independent fact-checking organizations that exhibited 95 to 98% agreement on the classifications. Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information, and the effects were more pronounced for false political news than for false news about terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, or financial information. We found that false news was more novel than true news, which suggests that people were more likely to share novel information. Whereas false stories inspired fear, disgust, and surprise in replies, true stories inspired anticipation, sadness, joy, and trust. Contrary to conventional wisdom, robots accelerated the spread of true and false news at the same rate, implying that false news spreads more than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it. Disinformation seem to be less the result of message manipulation by elite media owners, and more of a byproduct of harvesting (via social media) and directly reporting (to the detriment of the job of the journalist) the opinions of ‘the people’. In this way, states can rely on citizens’ do-it-yourself disinformation campaigns to maintain the status quo. Worryingly, these media practices are not just a feature of autocratic regimes, but an emerging characteristic in democracies as well.
- concern about disinformation 2018 Six Key Points from the EU Commission’s New Report on Disinformation A clear and unequivocal abandonment of the term “fake news,” which the European Commission was originally using. This is important because it is inadequate in explaining the complexity of the situation, and leads to confusion in the way researchers discuss the issue, it is reported on in the media, and discussed by policy-makers. Clearly calls for significant financial support for independent news media, fact- and source-checking, and media and information literacy, with an emphasis on independent initiatives, free from potential interference from public authorities or from technology companies who might be tempted to use such projects as public relations exercises. Calls for platforms to share data are included throughout the text. While the fact-checking and verification community has been calling for greater data-sharing for years, this instance is particularly significant because it has been signed by Google, Facebook and Twitter. They have now taken a public commitment to work with researchers who can independently assess the spread and impact of disinformation. The report specifically calls on major technology companies to provide data that would allow the independent assessment of efforts like Google’s fact-check tags, Facebook’s use of fact-checks as Related Articles or the downgrading of disinformation in the News Feed. Calls for public authorities at all EU levels to share data promptly and efficiently when it is requested by trustworthy fact-checking organisations — and correct promptly when appropriate. This recognizes that political actors and institutions have a crucial role to play in improving the accuracy of our information ecosystem. The creation of a network of Research Centers focused on studying disinformation across the EU. Our current knowledge base is almost entirely focused on the United States data and it’s vital that the EU have more data from cross-border studies to understand the differences and nuances in the scope, scale and impact of disinformation across the 28 Member States. The insistence on a collaborative approach involving all relevant stakeholders, with a structured process ahead that will document progress made and expose anyone not taking their responsibilities seriously.
- an entire mediawisdom industry has emerged “Media Literacy … provides a framework to access, analyze, evaluate, create and participate with messages in a variety of forms — from print to video to the Internet. Media literacy builds an understanding of the role of media in society as well as essential skills of inquiry and self-expression necessary for citizens of a democracy.” (Center for Media Literacy)
- UNESCO world media literacy week option 1 literacy: instrumental, fear-based, switching off.
- Another perspective on a war with media and information would be Vilem Flusser’s take on the possible future of the human condition in the advent of electronic memory; “A person will no longer be a worker (homo faber) but rather an information processor, a player with information (homo ludens).” (1990: 399). Flusser foresaw a future where intersubjectivity, ‘relational networks’ would become the basis for knowledge and understanding, rather than a society made up of singular individuals that are somehow separated from each other and nature. He also saw electronics as something outside of humanity, but considered that not a threat but rather a liberation - setting us free totruly connect with each other and nature.
- 1714: monadology: windowless monad: every organic body is a “divine machine or natural automaton” Leibniz we are all interconnected, indivisible, no distinction between us and technologies (or the cosmos) based on the idea that the world we see is not (necessarily) real – it is made up out of parts we cannot witness. pixels/bits & bytes or monads? Before that: Thomas Hobbes, who in 1651 asked "why may we not say, that all Automata [...] have an artificial life? For what is the Heart, but a Spring? and the Nerves, but so many Strings?" René Descartes' famous proof of existence "I think therefore I am" (originally published in 1637) as a response to an emerging mechanistic (secular) worldview Leibniz' aim was to take issue with Descartes' division between mind and matter, instead suggesting that each and every entity in the universe is made up out of monads, which (unlike atoms) have no substance but are all interconnected. He saw every organic body as a "divine machine or natural automaton" and considered the way such machines worked - how all the parts interacted internally as well as externally - as the basis of his theory of monads. For Leibniz, the relations between monads gives rise to the substance of all life (including nature, humanity, and machines).
- truman show: christoff interview
- http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/the-truman-show_shooting.html
- Plato’s cave in the republic
- plato’s cave was a key inspiration for The Matrix (hence the location of the resistance to the machines: in a cave)
- Baudrillard’s ideas a key inspiration for the Matrix, and his ideas about hyperreality in/through media and the disconnect from the real are profound for media studies
- 27
- 28
- Everything is a copy of a copy. Everything is a code, or a model, or a representation. In today’s society, people even create model’s of themselves, using programs such as Second Life. Even with technology, such as Instant Messaging, people are modeling real conversation with people. In a sense, everything in the world is no longer real because everything has already happened. All things that happen, for example demonstrations are just simulations of ones that have happened before. At this point, there is just an indefinite number of simulations constantly occurring, even if people think they are “real.” This story emphasizes the idea of “no reality” in a chilling story of a world literally taken over by the model. source: http://english149-w2008.pbworks.com/Jayne+Goldsmith,+%22Borges%27+On+Exactitude+in+Science%22:+Modeling+the+Model ORIGINAL: http://www.kyb.tuebingen.mpg.de/bu/people/bs/borges.html
- living in maps; augmented reality; contemporary example of media/life fusion/integration
- Case in point: Google Street View's German debacle. Launched in the US in 2007, Google Street View's mapping of interactive roadside panoramas has since expanded to cover most of the world. In June 2012, it had mapped 5 million miles of roads in 39 countries; by its 10th anniversary in May 2017, the total was 10 million miles in 83 countries. Street View features places as far off the beaten path as the International Space Station, gas extraction platforms in the North Sea and the coral reefs of West Nusa Tenggara in Indonesia. But not the Weimarer Strasse in Fulda, or most other normal streets in Germany, or Austria for that matter. Not for lack of trying. In August 2010, Google announced that it would map the streets of Germany's 20 biggest cities by the end of that year. The outrage was huge. Some of Google's camera cars were vandalised. A 70-year-old Austrian who didn't want his picture taken threatened the driver of one with a garden pick. Ilse Aigner, Germany's minister for Consumer Protection at the time, called Google's "comprehensive photo offensive" a "million-fold violation of the private sphere (…) There is not a secret service in existence that would collect photos so unabashedly." https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/germany-street-view?rebelltitem=7#rebelltitem7
- pokemon Go, started in 2016 user loyalty and engagement approach as a service rather than a product location-based information and storytelling experiences plus premediation "normalizing the linkage between digital and physical.” https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/06/30/483857216/in-pokemon-go-an-app-to-become-the-very-best?t=1538388927479
- XR: mixed reality and COVID
- surrendering to media: either theoretical violence is our only option, or we must learn how to hack Think different is an advertising slogan used from 1997 to 2002 by Apple Computer, Inc., now named Apple Inc. The campaign was created by the Los Angeles office of advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day. The slogan has been widely taken as a response to IBM's slogan "Think.” It was used in a television advertisement, several print advertisements, and several TV promos for Apple products. As of 2020, "Think different" was still printed on the back of the box of the iMac, and possibly elsewhere example of corporate appropriation of a radical/countercultural idea
- Snow Crash introduced the Metaverse, influenced Google Earth, and suggests learning how to hack and manipulate information is the key to survival/success.
- hackathons
- "[t]echnology is not the name-less other. Technology 'R' Us: to embrace technology is to embrace, and face, ourselves. This we must do, and fearlessly." https://www.wired.com/1997/05/ff-cronenberg/
- how are we already becoming media? artefacts: fusion of bodies and technologies activities: we love media and media become inseparable of our feelings and the ties that bind arrangements: we have become used to the end of the distinction between real and fake. everything is or seems to be open, fluid. this is not the postmodern condition because IT MATTERS what reality you choose! A case for ethics! (see Media Ethics course of communication science: http://www.uva.nl/en/shared-content/faculteiten/en/faculteit-der-maatschappij-en-gedragswetenschappen/news/2017/09/mooc-media-ethics-and-governance.html?origin=kUP%2Byx6UTZqvuJiCJKnnEQ
- HAL 1968
- blade runner: 1982
- Replicants in Blade Runner
- Terminator: Ceylon: Borg:
- The Poe story explores what happens when we are made of media (hinting at perfection), the Data emotion chip explores what is human about humanity (hinting at imperfection). These examples also suggest that we associate ‘perfection’ with technologies and machines. Is this why expect them to (always) work? Do we copy/paste these expectations onto each other and the world we live (think about: nanotechnologies, bio-engineering)?
- http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/POE/used_up.html the POINT being: media/life fusion creates multiple responses and options war against the machines, give in to mediated reality, become media ultimately, this makes our lived experience UNCANNY (parallax view = productive) and it makes everything PLASTIC (stretchable, debatable, never based on consensus) forget the ‘perfection’ ‘objectivity’ of media/machines! media are CHARISMATIC
- how are we already becoming media? artefacts: fusion of bodies and technologies activities: we love media and media become inseparable of our feelings and the ties that bind arrangements: we have become used to the end of the distinction between real and fake. everything is or seems to be open, fluid. this is not the postmodern condition because IT MATTERS what reality you choose! A case for ethics! (see Media Ethics course of communication science: http://www.uva.nl/en/shared-content/faculteiten/en/faculteit-der-maatschappij-en-gedragswetenschappen/news/2017/09/mooc-media-ethics-and-governance
- majority of interactions with Siri were intimate/personal
- https://9to5mac.com/2019/01/05/apple-privacy-billboard-vegas-ces/ January 2019 apple billboard Las Vegas
- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-contractors-regularly-hear-confidential-details-on-siri-recordings Apple is not alone in employing human oversight of its automatic voice assistants. In April, Amazon was revealed to employ staff to listen to some Alexa recordings, and earlier this month, Google workers were found to be doing the same with Google Assistant.
- how are we already becoming media? artefacts: fusion of bodies and technologies activities: we love media and media become inseparable of our feelings and the ties that bind arrangements: we have become used to the end of the distinction between real and fake. everything is or seems to be open, fluid. this is not the postmodern condition because IT MATTERS what reality you choose! A case for ethics!
- 2007/8: first digital personas in magazines
- http://edition.cnn.com/2015/02/14/living/feat-cindy-crawford-body/ Cindy Crawford body 2015
- http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/cindy-crawford-condemns-leaked-photos-from-marie-claire-shoot-as-stolen-and-malicious-10482305.html Russo released a statement after the picture went viral claiming the photograph was not an unretouched image of Crawford, telling ABC News it was a “fraudulent altered version" of his photograph. Crawford refused to comment publicly on the image after it was released, a decision affected by the positive reaction it garnered from women across the globe. “It was stolen and it was malicious,” said Crawford, “but there was so much positive reaction [to the image]. Sometimes, the images that women see in magazines make them feel inferior—even though the intention is never to make anyone feel less. So somehow seeing a picture of me was like seeing a chink in the armour. “Whether it was real or not isn’t relevant, although it’s relevant to me. I don’t try to present myself as perfect. It put me in a tough spot: I couldn’t come out against it because I’m rejecting all these people who felt good about it, but I also didn’t embrace it because it wasn’t real—and even if it were real, I wouldn’t have wanted it out there. I felt really manipulated and conflicted, so I kept my mouth shut.”
- https://www.inverse.com/article/43342-star-wars-digital-leia-flying-last-jedi-vfx-episode-ix
- https://www.wmagazine.com/story/bella-hadid-lil-miquela-calvin-klein-campaign https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2jdb3o2UtE# In the post-social media era, the landscape of fashion has changed with the rest of the world—and the latest Calvin Klein campaign, starring Bella Hadid and CGI influencer Lil Miquela, aka Miquela Sousa, is further proof of that. Good luck telling what's real and what's fake in the newest video clip for the brand's "I Speak My Turth" campaign, which has so far featured the likes of Billie Eilish, Chika Oranika, Noah Centineo, Shawn Mendes, Kendall Jenner, A$AP Rocky and more.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku also in manga, games, guitar effects, arcade games, card games, camera, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbFxHdszYvA HATSUNE MIKU EXPO VRIJDAG 24 JANUARI 2020 ZIGGO DOME, AMSTERDAM
- http://pageantphotoretouching.homestead.com/index.html
- Milo (2009): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDvHlwNvXaM (VANAF 1:05)
- SOPHIA robot 2018
- https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/05/the-truth-about-sex-robots/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJFamy1OC1cnS7yV8yIjssAoYP7uf9ynoA1X3il5PQsbkCIHcZSbWs5zbVv9QwBEJwl246ANmFuc5lmVRPMnP5pxb7BlMV8Dmy_WZPxQBqDK5QOm5EOmKPrwU6lzdDzQOss57EFNs9MZHLJl0nOBUp-wlgzZym2idp89eR2lZqUE
- China continues to make remarkable strides in making human journalists obsolete. 2019 State news outlet Xinhua announced yesterday (Feb. 19, link in Chinese) that it had, in collaboration with search engine Sogou, created the world’s first female AI news anchor, known as Xin Xiaomeng. The anchor will make “her” debut during the upcoming Two Sessions political meetings at the start of March. https://twitter.com/PDChina/status/1098036101921402880 The announcement comes after Xinhua debuted the world’s first male AI news anchor, Qiu Hao, during China’s annual World Internet Conference held in November in the town of Wuzhen. Xinhua and Sogou said that they also developed an improved male anchor called Xin Xiaohao, who is also able to stand up and gesticulate and has more natural mouth movements. Xinhua has been experimenting with AI-driven journalism in recent years, including a robot reporter whose attempt to imitate a human went slightly awry. Jia Jia, a Chinese-manufactured robot who resembles a young woman dressed in historical clothing, interviewed AI expert and Wired magazine co-founder Kevin Kelly at an event in Hefei in 2017. Xinhua, which broadcast the chat live, billed Jia Jia as a special reporter. Jia Jia, however, clearly had hard time responding naturally to many of the questions posed by Kelly, sometimes taking up to 10 seconds to answer and restricting herself to one- or two-word answers that didn’t always make sense. Earlier in 2017, a 1.2-meter tall robot called “Inspire” served as an intern reporter for Xinhua during that year’s Two Sessions meetings. Xinhua said that its robotic “new employees” have taken to their roles with enthusiasm, and since launching in November have published some 3,400 reports totaling over 10,000 minutes in length.
- gatebox companion
- the evolution of man-machine boundaryblurring: have we come full circle? from a robot we can fall in love with and who is too good to be true (Hoffman’s Olympia) to … Ava in Ex Machina?
- 24 January 1776 – 25 June 1822 Grave of E.T.A. Hoffmann, a famous German romantic author and composer. The inscription actually reads E.T.W. Hoffmann, because E.T.A. was just his pen name. The Sandman story (and specifically Freud’s interpretation of it) underscores the productive nature of the uncanny, of looking awry. Trying to see or be media is pointless – we just have to look to the side of media, to see what is really going on. Trying to determine whether something is REAL or UNREAL is pointless – it rather should be what can we do to reality to make it what I want it to be, in a way that is both ethical and aesthetical…
- Freud’s take on Hoffman: The Uncanny remark: the PLASTICITY of REALITY under the influence of pervasive/ubiquitous media link met ‘AUDIENCING’: to make sense of the world now always involves to make sense of media(ted representation of that world) – which is ALWAYS an artifice, a contruct.
- Fans of a popular Chinese video blogger who called herself "Your Highness Qiao Biluo" have been left stunned after a technical glitch during one of her live-streams revealed her to be a middle-aged woman and not the young glamorous girl they thought her to be. The revelation has led to discussions about standards of beauty across the country's social media platforms. The blogger, who initially boasted a follower count of more than 100,000 on Douyu, is believed to have used a filter on her face during her appearances, and had been renowned for her "sweet and healing voice". China's Global Times said she had been "worshipped" as a "cute goddess" by some members of her loyal audience with some fans even giving her more than 100,000 yuan ($14,533, £11,950). However, live-streaming platform Lychee News says the incident happened on 25 July, during a joint live-stream with another user, Qingzi on the Douyu platform.
- real/fake disruption and unrest about this has produced a lively industry (in academia, among pundits and thinktanks, governments, NGOs, and so on)
- option 1: become the machines; merge with tech – quite literally
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuralink Neuralink develops high bandwidth and safe brain-machine interfaces. https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10103661167577621/ Facebook brain/computer interface…
- option 2: What if we should not take this fusion of human and machine literally, but ontologically? media studies and posthumanism post-anthropocentric point of view ‘naturecultures’ and the material turn a post-dualistic approach posthumanist thinking is searching for alternative, non-essentialist and non-hierarchical ways of understanding the features of different beings and their inter-related relations Planned obsolescence of media devices and the mining of minerals are very much connected to a capitalist logic important: theorizing internet of things and media acting without any human intervention, considering media as infrastructures, the geospatial configuration of media (awhereness), as well as an awareness of the body when using media (lean forward, RSI, affective publics, et cetera)
- http://www.inteco.cl/articulos/006/texto_ing.htm Human beings versus machines, or machines as instruments of human designs? remember Ilich’s notion of tools of conviviality 1997 option 2: embrace the uncanny