Human Beings Are Not Gadgets

          Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not A Gadget released in 2010 does a remarkable job connecting with our in-class ideas of Self and Community in accordance to technology. Lanier expresses a “locked-in” idea in which humans now have the openness and freedom to permanently explore the unstructured vast array of knowledge laid out throughout the World Wide Web. He speaks of the development of the designs of things like web 2.0, MIDI, and Facebook in which he relates back to the experience of what it ultimately means to be a person.  Lanier’s “You Are Not a Gadget” emphasizes why the most important thing to ask about any technology is how it changes people. Overall, through the self, technology has the ability to both restrict and augment circles of empathy that create a sense of community in the world in which we live.

Picture: Jaron Lanier's book, You Are Not a Gadget

 

             Circles of empathy Lanier describes as imaginary circles drawn by each person, “circumscribing the person at some distance and corresponding to those things in the world that deserve empathy” (36).  His use of the tone of empathy is overall used in purpose to show that some relationships between humans and person to person cannot be solely understood or completely represented by a digital database alone. Rather, these circles of empathy involve a larger controversy in determining who will make the cut to lie just inside the circle versus those who  furthermore remain left outside of that rounding community of empathy. The overall contents the person holds within the circle represent the self as a whole and determine who one is by what they hold most important to themselves indefinitely.  Ultimately, Lanier expresses that once the contents of the circle are changed, it is then when the perception of the self must too change as well. Lanier expresses, “ The center of the circle shifts as its perimeter is changed. The liberal impulse is to expand the circle, while conservatives tend to want to restrain or contract the circle” (37).

          Lanier's "locked-in" analogy regarding the self and the community is quite evident today in explaining what happens when circles tend to become restricted. Many of those around us, including myself have had a high level of lock-in with Facebook itself. Facebook, the mere epitome of a container of the self, has the utmost profound ability to suck a person into a world of procrastination and lock them into the nature of the like-minded social networking beast itself. Crowds and data are overall becoming greater than individual beings and the true actual philosophical meaning of knowledge solely because of digital databases.  While these digital databases may be doing a great job of forming lifestyle enclaves of like-minded people able to reconnect forming larger communal crowds all over the world, the individual and the self are ultimately being forgotten as too much time is being wasted behind a screen versus maintaining contact with one another via phone calls, face to face interaction, and ways of communication before the time of the World Wide Web that once promoted the well-being of our world. Lanier is ultimately underestimating the ability of a person to self correct and go back to old forms of communication once he or she becomes locked in to a specific data base. While technology and digital databases can truly help augment the self in terms of reconnecting with old friends in the past and aid in the efforts to connect with new people, Lanier emphasizes one must not become restricted within these circles, getting stuck in a digital platform in which they forget the original items that they once used in life to get by in the world.

Jaron Lanier author of: You Are Not a Gadget

To learn more about Jaron Lanier and his new book to be released on March 7th, 2013 visit his homepage below: http://www.jaronlanier.com
 

Time: A Catalyst for Change in the Religious World of the Human Individual

Exploring the role of religion in America from the 1800’s through today’s day in age surely highlights a dramatic change in organized religion and tradition within the church. A once focused structural core of religion centered around uniform expectations and specific beliefs in a Christian upbringing has surely delved into a liberating freedom in which the individual has the ability to break away from the uniform upbringing passed down from generation to generation to explore new philosophies in which the amount of possibilities are limitless. Ultimately, religion has progressed from a limited utilitarian individualistic perspective breaking away from tradition instead moving towards an expressive individualistic standpoint in life today.

            From 1964 onward, after the promotion of civic rights and the push for equal opportunities for all, a massive movement was seen throughout American society pushing for the need to find oneself. A hippie sub-movement emerged in which the art of love was drastically being pushed for versus the dangerous world of war surrounding the individual. America was entering a phase in which the need to find the independent, autonomous self was greatly being explored. Americans born into the traditional organized groups of religion and moral uniform expectations were branching out and going on their own way delving into the dangerous and competitive world around. Americans would  learn who they truly were and what they indeed wanted to do with their life choosing which of the mores they would continue to carry and withhold or drastically avoid from the family values they once grew up with. As Robert Bellah once described, the traditional art of religion was not being withheld as seen in the changing world around the hippie movement: “For religion to have emphasized the public order in the old sense of deference and obedience to external authorities would no longer have made sense. Religion did not cease to be concerned with moral order, but it operated with a new emphasis on the individual and the voluntary association. Moral teaching came to emphasize self-control rather than deference. It prepared the individual to maintain self-respect and establish ethical commitments in a dangerous and competitive world, not to fit into the stable harmony of an organic community” (222). Instead, religion in the 1900’s was changing with the individual and the perspective outlook on that time period in which they now lived varying greatly from the days of Tocqueville in the 1800’s.

Picture: A picture from the Hippie Movement of the 1960's representing the important individualistic perspectives of Americans at the time to live a life full of love versus the war in the world around them.

            Tocqueville’s chronicles analyzing observations through religion and politics expressed a major difference in religion from the 1800’s to what now exists today. According to Bellah,“Tocqueville saw religion primarily as a powerful influence on individual character and action. Religions political function was not direct intervention but instead rather support of the mores that make democracy possible. In particular, it had the role of placing limits on utilitarian individualism, hedging in self-interest with proper concern for others. The “main business” of religion, Tocqueville said, “is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being” so common among Americans” (223). Tocqueville expressed religion to be based upon a limited utilitarian individualistic perspective in which one would do the best they could on their own to do what was in the best interest of themself and their family, while simultaneously following the “Golden Rule” in which they would treat others how they would want to be treated in return. Americans were focusing on being pure and moral within their actions versus upholding doctrines expressed by the Pope and bishops in the world around them. Instead the people were focusing on their families and the support groups of local organized church communities in which they could express morality and show themselves living a pure lifestyle within the community. Emerging into the 1900’s the rational following of doctrines within these church communities was being converted into a new evangelical perspective in which people were focusing on their beliefs on their own and branching away from the traditional church towards like-minded support groups in which one could show their own expressive individualistic thoughts.

          Expressive individualistic perspectives most commonly seen today have resulted in accordance to the individual’s needs. The individual has always needed care and a sympathy or support group from others emphasizing the need for self-control, self-respect, and morals one needs to live by to ultimately be happy. However, when those organic communities of traditional religion no longer offered the warm and fuzzy feelings of empathy and support the individual needed, breaking away from the church soon resulted. These breakaways ultimately lead to the commonality of expressive individualism we have today and the formation of the new lifestyle-enclaves. These enclaves are full of people branching away from organized religion who have like-minded thoughts and want to establish ethical commitments in which they do not have to belong to a certain denomination and follow the doctrinal beliefs traditionally bestowed upon them. Instead, the human being today has become much happier attending non-denominational church groups in which they can believe what they want freely and do as they please in a support group of like-minded people centered around no expectations other than an overall self-governing belief in God.

Picture: An example of a non-denominational church now existing today in which many people have turned to. 

The Use of Social Networking Such as Blogging as a Means to Inform the Public

     Most blogs we have encountered thus far in Apple, Google, Facebook have consisted of our fellow classmates whose personal writing styles reflect the multitude of topics and sites we have been introduced to during class in correspondence to reflect technology’s impact on society. However, when branching out further to a more international level in regards to blogging, some might be surprised at the content in which they will be introduced to. An example of this consists of the "Egyptian Chronicles", which portrays a much different approach in association to social networking and overall blogging than what we have previously been familiarized with in class. The "Egyptian Chronicles" is the epitome of what a social activist’s blog might look like, or, rather merely consists of a blog in which one is trying to inform the general public about a strong issue going on throughout the world around them. An issue mainly focusing on the fact that the behind the scenes knowledge and true background information of the actions going on in daily life are not being revealed to the public eye properly or honestly.  Overall, the "Egyptian Chronicles" is a completely different use of a social media site than what I have been previously used to in regards to the social networking that has comprised of my life thus far.

 

 

Picture: The main target photo seen on display in capturing the central focus of the "Egyptian Chronicles" as seen on the site itself at http://egyptianchronicles.blogspot.com/2013/02/portsaid-day3-in-civil-disobedience.html#more

 

The “Egyptian Chronicles” may take on the same format and overall structural paragraph and graphical display that many of our blogs have exhibited throughout class, but an overarching difference can directly be portrayed within viewing the content of the “Egyptian Chronicles” for the very first time. Upon just entering the site, the first sentence one sees consists of the following statement: “Egypt that you don’t know.” After seeing this quote and later on being introduced to video detailing the life of a local townsman who was murdered, I quickly realized this blog wasn’t the warm and fuzzy inspirational blog about the impact of society that I was previously used to. The above statement merely implies that the general public is being lied to and the author’s blog would indeed go on to tell the people exactly how and when they have indeed been lied to by the government and reining authority figures surrounding the nearby area of Alexandria. Each and every blog has a purpose and takes on a specific perspective that the author wants to stress and truly highlight to their public audience across the inter-webs. Ultimately, the “Egyptian Chronicles” serves to be a catalyst for change in which the author is merely trying to educate the public to know and understand the rigorous circumstances and hazardous actions taking place all around them. She wants to inform people in hopes by doing so to initiate a physical means for everyone to stand up; if not for themself, to then make use of their civic duty and do so in standing up for someone else.

 

Picture: Zeinobia, the author of the "Egyptian Chronicles" herself.

 

Overall, just like each and every one of us, the author of “Egyptian Chronicles,” Zeinobia, is just a girl living with a goal she wants to work her hardest to accomplish and achieve. She states, “I am just and Egyptian girl who lives in the present with the glories of the past and hopes in a better future for herself and for her country.” Although the ultimate content of our blogs may infer a completely different perspective and serve a much different purpose, both Zeinobia as well as our classmates in the end are seeking to inform the general public about a key point they would like to be addressed and better understood overall. Although her content might be much more critical for public knowledge in dealing with life or death situations and sometimes hard to take in completely due to the severity of its nature, the same goal of informing the public results within both of our blogs.

Life Behind a Screen: The Hindering of Relationships in the Common World

                “If the only way one makes a contribution to the community’s good is through specialized application of a professional skill, one gets lonely. The company of family and friends remains important. While mobile professionals in the United States do indeed engage themselves in complicated networks of intimate relationships, these networks are often not tied to a particular place. One may maintain close friendships with a host of people scattered all across the country.”

                In the above quote from  Bellah’s  Habits of the Heart, Bellah’s seen reflecting on the mobile lifestyle of humans today in which small town lifestyle enclaves have transformed into finding virtue and acceptance by obtaining different values and styles of life as friends. When taking Bellah’s perspective into consideration and reflecting upon Facebook, one can see directly the social changes of our modern world via technology, directly influencing the world in which we live.  The art of solitude and relationship building amongst the common social good has unswervingly altered as a result of Facebook and other modern technological networks and devices from Twitter to the iphone.

                Sherry Turkle’s, “Connected but Alone” video portrays how  living a Facebook life, or a life behind a screen, has changed the social mentalities and tendencies amongst many human beings today as seen within the clip below.

                As human beings, she pointed out one of the key things we need consists of a feeling of a sense of control over where we focus our attention. But often times one has a hard time with this, because he or she only wants to pay attention to the things that interest them and that they can maintain. This often times affects one’s ability to communicate with another person face to face. Facebook allows the average human being to surf the web, search for a new friend they danced with at a party last night, and then proceed to discover where that person is from, what their religion preference is, find out whether or not they are single, and to potentially even obtain their phone number if he or she has it listed and readily available before they even have a physical conversation. Why talk to one of the people below face to face, when you could be a click away from knowing anything you might have ever needed to discover about them?

 

Picture: Taken from http://www.danpontefract.com/i-unfriended-you-on-facebook-are-we-still-friends/ a blog on the effects of what it means when you defriend someone on Facebook.

                Today, the art of relationship building has been especially lost as people do not know how to have a direct conversation with one another. Our capacity for self-reflection is being destroyed as today humans would rather text versus talk to each other face to face. Why has the world become so lonely and afraid of intimacy with each other?

                Humans use mobile devices to send a text or an inbox message because they feel the need to have complete control over what they can say, versus the possibility of saying something they might regret or can’t take back when someone is there in the flesh, face to face right in front of them. Humans seek the attention of people to be there to listen to them or show empathy towards them as they lose confidence believing they are alone when no one is paying attention to their life.

                Surfing the web and perusing the Facebooks of others allows one to experience the lives of their so called friends, who are seen to provide the empathy and support fort he or she is looking for as a whole.  These items of technology like Facebook and other social networks or even the iPhone, destruct the art of solitude which helps a person reflect upon who they are as an individual, disallowing them to learn from his or her mistakes, and above all to know how to think for themselves. Facebook connects one to the outside world virtually, leading one to believe they are physically never alone. It takes away one’s anxiety, and causes them to believe they are connected with those around them without even leaving the room.

                 However this does not solve the walls and barriers human beings are creating all around themselves on Facebook and in daily life. By continually sharing how we feel and what our constant thoughts are we grow to need to have the empathy and attention of others around us to prove that we are indeed not alone. This is awful because today, humans are finding virtue and acceptance via online comments and conversations they have with another person. Satisfaction is coming from having a talk with someone over the internet in short remarks that eventually accumulate into a rather large chat versus from an actual face to face conversation of speaking to one another. Ten minutes after a Facebook chat, two people could be in the same room and fail to speak one word to each other as the social, physical barrier has not yet been broken between them although they might know each other’s life story and interests by the glance over of a page.

                I find it rather ridiculous and pathetic that a child these days may grow up without the ability to have the necessary communication and personable skills needed to talk to a human being face to face because they rely on having the professional skills and overarching control of technology to utilize the ability to hide behind a screen with editing possibility to make sure each conversation states exactly what they want to say; versus, potentially saying something that they could be judged upon or that could be taken the wrong way. As humans if we hide behind a screen or take value in a conversation not face to face with another person, we lose the possibility of permanent happiness with the physical real life relationship with another human; rather we take comfort in the short term satisfaction granted from text messages and conversations online that merely show another person might be thinking about you or checked out your Facebook page.

              Although life feelings and emotions have the potential to be controlled from behind a computer screen, these social networks will never build the personal satisfaction that a real life physical relationship could from the small town lifestyle enclaves humans used to have in the past.

The Social Network

     When asked what the primary unit of Facebook might be, what would be your first answer? Some might say pictures, status updates, a source of communication and social networking, etc. Others however, might describe the primary unit of Facebook to be the self. With a personal page, a profile picture, and a town representing where you are from and where your story began, Facebook wholeheartedly tries to give value and meaning to you, the individual, personally. In correspondence with the self, Facebook addresses an on-going dilemma in deciding where one’s attention should be focused while perusing this worldwide social network.

     In the ever popular film, “The Social Network” itself, Mark Zuckerburg’s story of pure genis and his journey in developing the creation of Facebook, directly shows the transformation society and the individual self has grown into and held on tightly to today. In the clip below one can see Zuckerburg’s character being questioned about the focal point of where he pays his own personal attention.




    Video: "The Social Network-FACEBOOK-the BEST SCENE" as taken from a portion of the movie "The Social Network."

     Stating the most minimal amount of his attention was being given to the lawyer, Zuckerburg expressed the majority of his personal attention and overall focus, was back at the office of facebook where his clients were creating something none of the lawyers men were capable of. Thus leading to what we know and love today to be Facebook timeline.

 

     Picture: An example of a Facebook timeline page itself.

     In today’s day and age Facebook’s creative and intuitive introduction of timeline directly calls attention to one’s self. With a plethora of options to display who one is and how to express details proving so, facebook is limitless when it comes to sharing the story of one’s self. Personal pages and timelines dating from birth to graduation all the way up through one’s 50th wedding anniversary are the memories and attention grabbers that are truly focused on throughout facebook that give value and meaning to who the individual is a whole and what life they are living. Through the building of life stories, the self tries to join different groups based upon their likes, dislikes, and separating the grey areas few and far in between.

    Just as these personal experiences of joy and celebration can be virtually experienced via the impeccable technology capabiliites of the “book” itself these days, it’s important to distinguish and realize just where all the attention might be truly directly focused. While the birth of new babies, weddings, and terrific vacations one might have embarked on might be highlighted throughout the social network timeline amongst friends, attention must also be focused on what is and is not appropriate for public viewing. The purpose of writing one’s own lifestory may indeed be to convey the meaning and value of life surely expressed by pictures displaying a thousand words to the public eye. Extreme caution must be regarded when venturing through this world of social networking as one picture accidentally misinterpreted by interviewers, coaches, or professors these days might indeed call attention to punishments and grave circumstances to be endured as a result of the misunderstanding behind one’s friendly dorm room party last night.

A History, A Theory, A Religion: Information Seen as a Paradox in the World Today

James Gleick’s “The Information’s”  focus on Alan Turing’s perspective on logic and symbolism directly correlates with much of the religious background I grew up with as a child. Growing up in a pre-dominant Roman Catholic upbringing from kindergarten through 7^th grade, my elementary school’s focus revolved around a major theme in the Catholic Archdiocese in which Catholic schools  were “An education you could have faith in.” Entering the public school system in 8^th grade, I was quickly introduced to the vast array of opportunities and overall differences that existed between public versus private schooling; however, one of the things that continued to stick with me and my faith filled life, consisted of the core values and symbolism my faith revolved around. Turing’s symbolic reasoning and perspective truths through the use of numbers and “machines” created a paradox much like that viewed by the outside world on faith and religion today.

On Steve Paikins, "The Agenda," James Gleick was interviewed to talk about his newest book The Information and a clip from that video below, (section 8:00-9:32) shows some of the paradoxical controversies going on between the world and religion today in regards to knowing what truths truly are these days.

It's indeed always been a struggle for religions to define things as truth or factual, but at the limits of providing proof comes the importance and emphasis of faith and believing and following what one wants to choose to be true on their own merits.

Faith as defined first on the Google homepage, consists of : “A strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.” Growing up as a child, often times faith was a paradox to me because I needed to see things in order to believe them to be true. However, when it comes down to religion, I grew to take a new approach in regards to what I believed and the symbolism I grew to know and understand as taught to me by my family and teachers genuinely strengthened my faith to become what it’s grown to be today. Without much of that symbolism like the lessons I've learned from the Bible, weekly Sunday's of going to church, and overall religiously influenced teachings throughout my upbringing, who knows where my faith would lie today.

An example of this symbolism can be seen as a comparison between Turing’s machine trilogy in terms of analyzing numbers and their outcomes, as outlined in the quote below, correlating with the religious symbolism of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit also known as the “sign of the cross” or the triology, that is a profound symbol within the Catholic church from birth.

  Picture: A Catholic baptism in which the priest is blessing the child with the sign of the cross.
 

“The Turing machine sets about examining every number to see whether it corresponds to a computable algorithm. Some will prove computable. Some might prove un-computable. And there is a third possibility, the one that most interested Turing. Some algorithms might defy the inspector, causing the machine to march along, performing its inscrutable business, never coming to a halt, never obviously repeating itself, and leaving the logical observer forever in the dark about whether it would halt” (211).

In Turing's analogy, or algorithm of the machine, either something will be proved computable, un-computable, or ultimately inconclusive potentially repeating on forever. As described be Gleick, "Turing encoded instructions as numbers mapping one set of objects onto another...using the play of symbols and the idea of mapping in the sense of finding a rigorous correspondence between two sets." Going on further to express that the machine in itself is paradoxical, but proved some numbers are un-computable.  Ultimately stating that, "An un-computable number is in effect, an un-decidable proposition. Any formal system, therefore, must have un-decidable propositions. Mathematics is not decidable. Incompleteness follows from un-computability" (212).

Therefore although religion may appear to be a paradox to some people today, the play of symbols like that of the sign of the cross and the idea of mapping serve to be a tremendous influence on one's beliefs and the correspondence between faith as a formal system. Since the Catholic faith, or any faith for the matter is seen as a formal belief system, followed by a multitude of different people, there must be some un-decidable propositions. The symbolism much of the faith revolves around thus helps keep many of these formal belief systems going strong from generation to generation.
 

Google Search Interface's Impact on Society Today

     Google's  recent addition of the new image search interface truly intrigued me as an active member of the inter-webs. Being the photo enthusiast that I am, I couldn't help but awe at the remarkable new abilities Google Images has allowed to it's audience members when they would like to look up a specific picture.

Picture: Google's new image search interface.

     However, along the same lines of looking up images, one thing that intrigued me the most includes the Google search engine's ability to determine how many people search for one thing in particular. On January 8th, 2009 during the BCS National Championship football game between the Florida Gators and Oklahoma, the sole act of one quarterback, wearing one specific scripture verse, led to the national "googling" of John 16:3 more than 90 million times in one night alone.

     "Tim Tebow’s passing yardage — the Christian quarterback threw 316 yards — sent commentators over the edge. The Associated Press reported that he also averaged 31.6 yards per completion. The religious connotations to John 3:16, a famous Bible verse, were too much for many to chalk up to chance.....The Bible verse quickly became the most searched Google term Monday. "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/tim-tebow-and-his-faith/2011/11/29/gIQA6GMIHO_gallery.html#photo=36

 

Picture: Tim Tebow after the BCS National Championship game seen with the ever popular scripture verse John 3:16 painted on his eye black. 

     American technology today has lead humans to have the profound ability to look up anything and everything they have ever questioned or wanted to know, receiving the answer in milliseconds by the efforts of the Google search engine alone. Google's incredible ability to determine the amount of "hits" each site or topic is looked up goes without saying beyond belief. However, after starting off the hit novel Google in the Plex some people indeed should be wary or take into respect Google's search tracking abilities these days. Everything and anything one looks up, posts, or tweets about, may very well come back to haunt them someday as the record is never lost.