Emergence!

Steven Johnson speaks intently on the importance of emergence and how developing this system is very efficient and self sustaining. In chapter 3 he sets the example of the silk weavers in Florence and how over thousands of years the same market can still be found on the same strip. How does this happen and what are the essential elements that allow the sustenance and the success of such a market.
One of the important notions that Johnson made was that this market had built a sort of consciousness and that the city through out the years had created a self learned system through the information that it shared through out the market. This learning is not something that happened with the success of information that was being provided but also the importance of being able to recognize and respond to changing patterns. The ant hill was a very good example of the efficiency of recognizing and responding to changes. For example, if a branch happened to fall in the middle of their path they would just climb right over it and keep on track. This is a bit different then the silk weavers but the area had gone through wars and plenty of other obstacles and it still stands in the same area.
Location can be very essential to the success of any network no matter where you are. Johnson discusses how the structures can be very important to maintain the emergence of network. One of the problems with this theory is that it does not always apply and the larger the network, the harder it is to maintain a self sustaining emergent system. A successful one is the result of thousands of local interactions which can apply to a small town, city, or even a website but when it comes to applying it to a huge city like Manhattan it doesn’t really interact in the same way and what you tend to get is a form of clustering. Johnson points out that this is the reason the internet, although many technological advances, is not a real good example of emergence.
That clustering becomes a self-perpetuating cycle: potential consumers and employees have an easier time finding the goods and jobs they’re looking for, the shares information makes the clustered businesses more competitive than the isolated ones. Information management is crucial to the advancement of the web and there have been many improvements on it but there is this term that I brought up earlier about learning. The internet, according to Johnson, just reads numbers and that it can even group commonalities in patterns on how people surf the internet. Alexa was a close example of a successful emergent image of the Web but it applied to things like book lovers and “potential mates.” This is a scary topic which includes the topic of artificial intelligence. What is fruitful to take out of this learning aspect of the web is that it will have more of an emergent image once it changes from a complex system into a complex adaptive system. If we, as people, can’t create such a system within our cities I’m not sure how we think we can tame the internet and mold it into an emergent one.

place/nonplace

Auge, in “From Places to Non-Places”, breaks down on what he sees as a non-place. One of the ways in which he defines a non-space is, “ If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place.” This may seem like a hard concept to grasp an in certain ways it’s hard to accept a space that does not entail any of the elements in his definition. He makes sure to let us know that places and non-places are like opposed polarities, where neither one nor the other are completely erased. There is an overlap with both and sometimes some non-places can be turned into a place with something as simple as movement which he also mentions in his article. If I was walking down the street and all of a sudden on an intersection where I would just be waiting, in what can be considered a non place, there appears a man painted in silver and making robotic movements with techno music coming out of his little stereo. If this were to occur the gaze of the people waiting with me at the intersection would most likely focus on this man and create a place. Gaze is something that Auge points out as important and I didn’t really think about it. I chose the lobby in college library as a non-place but if someone were to be yelling at the information desk clerk because they didn’t keep her book reserved, I’m pretty sure there are going to be a couple of gazes in his/her direction and then for that brief moment it could have created a place because of the attention and the gaze the situation is creating. So can someone creating a scene be enough to change a non-place to a place? One of the things that Auge mentions is that a non-place distances the spectator from the spectacle There are constant distractions that can be present like a billboard but there is a certain distance from the spectator where there isn’t anything really engaging the spectator.
In Lost In Translation the characters Charlotte and Bob Harris are both in a place where they do not understand their surroundings and everything is just noise and lights. When they both are at the bar they both experience an empty experience but it’s not until they interact that where they are actually feels like a place. Sounds to me a little simplistic, but it has some sustenance where supposedly,” non-places create solitary contractuality.” If one goes to another country and you don’t understand the language are you more likely to be in a non-place than a place? I’m not sure if the experience of one person would be enough to determine it as a non-place or a place. In end I find non-places pretty fascinating and I’m not sure if I’m the only one that does this but I enjoy to people gaze in these non-places.

Rhetoric

I can’t say that I have thought too much about what rhetoric really meant. I thought it was a way of relaying the information given efficiently. When it comes to the business world that I am about to enter in a few months, this is a bigger word in my world than I thought.
Herrick further supported of what I thought rhetoric was and really broke down the dynamic that revolves around what rhetoric is. “The study of how we organize and employ language effectively..” Rhetoric, he is defending, is a huge factor in which we use in our everyday life and is simply just a part of who we are as human beings. The way we communicate and take part in his terminology of response making and response inviting is essential in today’s society. We respond to an already existing rhetoric, which could be a conflict between dissimilar interests but that we shouldn’t only apply rhetoric in this scenario but that we should also invite discussion towards a topic or issue as well.
Herrick mentioned that there are disagreements with what rhetoric entails and I didn’t like that he didn’t include a strong point from the opposing side. The biggest issue that he stated was using rhetoric with its association with persuasion. This could be contradictory if the motives of ones rhetoric is elusive or clearly evident, “hidden or openly admitted”. Persuasion is recognized as being an powerful tool and its misuse can string along academic stipulation but I think this can apply to many things.
Silva Rhetoricae layed a different issue on rhetoric which brought up another dynamic not discussed to much in Herrick’s article. She puts on the table the issue of how through rhetorical examination the methods can be discounted as something concerned more with style and appearance and not with the “quality or content of communication.” This is how she breaks rhetoric down into content and form. The form or delivery is a huge part of how the content or information given is absorbed by the audience at hand. The delivery is crucial and these two factors to overlap but which one is more important? The issue that she sees with this is that sometimes thoughts and ideas have been prioritized over language and the importance of the actual content can be overlooked.
Both Herrick and Silva made great points and what I got out of it is that you have to be careful when using rhetoric to its full potential that one has to keep track of ones motives and that there is much more that one should keep in mind like, your audience, your content, and your delivery when dealing with rhetoric.

NON-PLACE

College library is a really busy library and you can say that they are going to a certain place to study. A section of the library that I would call a non place would be the first floor/lobby of the library. People don't really stay in that area but they are deciding where they need to go or wish that they can find a space to study in the library. At night time it is especially hard to find a place to study. It's almost impossible to find it in the common areas and it's still hard to find a table in the quiet areas at times.
In the first floor there are many people coming in with a sort of music device wether it be an ipod or other MP3 players. The students are coming in with their back packs full but who knows how many books they will actually get through. You can tell when some students have had a long day or are planning for a long night because it is the constant starbucks, sodas, or anything with caffeine. Those that have learned their lesson a little better are dragging along some water bottles as well which will keep them hydrated throughout the night.
People head in many directions in this first floor. They choose one of the three study areas, the computers behind the front dest are rarely approached, the computers up front are quickly approached and 3 out of the four people i saw signed into Facebook. The other choises are the elevator, the information desk or one of the two stairways. This little first floor area is almost like a terminal where people decide where they need to head to and people don't hang out in this area unless they are speaking on their cell phones or chatting with a freind they ran into.
Another thing that I observed is the look in certain people. You can see how some students are looking up or to the side and even mumbling to themselves of what they need to get done. You can tell that they are trying to figure out what they need to do first. The message board that is by the east wing doors also serves as a directory to let each other know where they are in the library which I can't say that I have used myself.
The quick pace of college life can be observed in this lobby and my roomates passed me coming into this library and didnt' even notice me and I think this shows on how quick paced this little area really is. This non-space will hopefully lead them to an area where they can study but as many of us know after a few years of going to college--it doesn't usually happen.

What is our world coming to?

What is our world coming to? It is really hard to keep up to pace with the ever speeding rate the technology has taken. I would say that this change is the beginning of a new era where it is affecting our interactions and the technology that we use today is an extension of ourselves but is this a good thing or a bad thing? Turkle points out that what matters now is the ability to adapt and change whether it be new jobs, directions, or technology. I’d say that Turkle is saying that there is no real control over the change whether it be bad or good and brings out several points.
This technology is allowing us to recreate ourselves in a virtual world and several examples in the article describe how it allows people a chance to wear a “mask” that they can’t wear in society so it’s a form of escape and self expression. There is a positive side to this notion but Turkle also throws out a red flag saying that through virtual communities you can become saturated in isolation. This is where I see the problem with these communities. Although many people will be shy and more of an indoor hobbit, it really makes me question if this technology and these virtual communities would increase this community of people indoors.
There is a notion that people who use this technology is related in a sense to having multiple personality disorder. I would say this was a bad use of this disorder when related to how we seem to change persona when we are in the virtual communities. The different personalities usually occur spontaneously and involuntarily, and function more or less independently of each other which is not the same as to a person in front of a screen but I can see how that can be debatable. So we are all flexible and permeable and this is supposedly allowing us to have a greater capacity for acknowledging diversity through this new technology. Is that really true? The article points out that the Hindu culture,” is rooted in the “many” as the root of spiritual experience.” I think in many ways this technology if anything isolates and tries to find people who are more like us. In this country we stay pretty monotone as far as our education of other cultures and other languages, when, if you go to Europe it is not rare to find someone who knows more than two languages and know political figures in our country and we can’t say that we would know the same about theirs. We could just be making our social and patriotic bubble stronger. This is not a technology that gives us a simple escape or serves as a meaningless diversion.
Clark would say that we are a type of cyborg already and uses the extension of the cell phone as an extension of ourselves and text messaging. Text messaging takes away from the interaction that you are having with the people around you. He does make a valid point though saying that, “ It is our natural proclivity for tool-based extensions, and profound and repeated self-transformation, that explains how we humans can be so very special .” I completely agree with him and since our human existence the extremes will always exist and especially with technology and the only thing that we can do is to keep educating and informing ourselves to the best of our ability and getting it out to the general public.
Stelarc I would say is on the extreme and I’m not sure if he would be on the positive or negative side. I think a lot of the things he is doing is really genius yet ridiculous like growing an ear on your forearm. He sees the body as obsolete and takes this cyborg notion that Clark has into a new direction saying,” If the body can be redesigned in a modular fashion to facilitate the replacement of malfunctioning parts, then TECHNICALLY THERE WOULD BE NO REASON FOR DEATH - given the accessibility of replacements.” I’m not sure if I’m completely at his level yet and it might be a little too extreme for me but thinking about all the genetic manipulation and being able to clone now-a-days doesn’t make it too out of the ordinary. We really are going to need a new practical philosophy of the self knowledge we are obtaining and what morals we will hold as we are struggling to keep pace with today’s world.

Sampling

The topic of sampling is something that can build some controversy and Steven Shaviro explains in his article on how sampling works. It is true that we are surrounded by the electronic media and that it is now a huge source as far as referencing. It becomes hard to tell what line to draw and especially now with copyright protection, plagiarism, law suits, etc., plays a role in today’s society on what kind of sampling is “legal”. He points out that Shakespeare would not have been able to create his plays if the copyright protection was in effect.
It’s easy to argue that when you create an “original” piece of work that you would not want someone else to claim it as their own. What if they only use a sample of your work and recreate another piece of work? Would that work? If it didn’t work then replication icons would be the “very fabric of our lives”. Shaviro states that when these pieces of work are put into private hands that “creativity dries up altogether”. People would have to worry about law suits and fines and all because they only have one thing in mind which is to maximize their economic incentive.
Now, it really depends too who is the one sampling. I feel that Beck and Missy Elliot who are part of large markets and use a lot samples. (More justified for Beck because he buys his samples) With the right person behind them and describing their work as, “mimicry, without any of parody’s ulterior motives, amputated of the satiric impulse.” Good sophisticated wording can get many out of trouble for a good price I guess. I’ve seen paintings where there are two orange lines on a black canvass and it’s considered art. So it comes to who can word their defense the best and I think bigger markets have more opportunities to defend their work then others.
Grandmaster Flash also uses sampling but his innovation and creation of double vinyl turn tables was a tool that he used to alter the sounds that couldn’t be done in that day. His technique, although sampling, had to be unique to be one of the first to break out of the local and into a successful international scene. I find it also easier to support him with the fact that created a lot of the terminology like “needle drops”, “scratching/cutting”, and his infamous “Clock Theory”. Do perfect these things seamlessly while he is playing music is a very hard skill. Like any innovator, only through lots of trial and error and finding the right needles, mixers, and mechanical parts that would make the sound he wanted did he get his end result.

Barabasi+Gladwell

"Viruses and Fads" was an article that was pretty similar to another article we've read. I can see the validity at analyizing the validity of the network of how a virus like AIDS would spread throughout a given population and it's staggering to acknowledge the spread rate. One of the thigns that stood out on this topic as well was the number of sexual partners that some of these people had. To think of someone having 20,000 partners is a little too much for me to imagine. Even if this number was half, or even less, it still amounts to a crazy amount. One of the things that many sociogists do in analyzing certain trends is trying to draw a map of the network but according to the article, there is so much ambiguity and trying to have a sex map would basically be impossible. This little fact to me is frightening, especially where there are so many other suxually transmitted diseases that are not as fatal as aids and most just produce unwanted discomfort but not to be able to map the network would be a good example of a chaotic network where there really is no order.
The fad system had a pretty basic structure called the "threshhold model". This model explains how you have an innovator and that the idea or product has a certain "spreading rate" and until it surpasses the "critical threshold" the fad won't really be successful. There are the stragglers on the end that finally jump in on the fad but they're not really the ones that set the whole fad in motion. This basic structure is given a more complex light with the "The Coolhunt" article.
I couldn't help but get an image of a person who was not too inept with what is "cool" when I read this article. http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&sa=N&resnum=0&q=malcolm%20gladwell&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&tab=wi Try this link and check out the amazing Malcolm Gladwell. This man deserves regognition though because he has had several best sellers and sociological topics are only a fraction of the ones that he researches. Baysie and Dee Dee are the two main figures that he follows around to see what it is that they do to research on what is "cool" and what is in style. One of the main things that they do is they observe the younger teenage crowd and even go as far as asking theor opinions on new products and that's how they make their decision. The intuition on observing the crowd and determiining what is independant taste and what is a fad that could possibly be sold by the thousands is something that he gives credit to. I'm not sure if this system has much order if it lies on some intuition on the consumer network. There have been other similar systems where they do surveys and they have the system where they hire you to take a machine and type in everything you buy so that companies get a good idea on what is being purchased. I'm sure Baysie and Dee Dee make good money at what they do and there is definately a demand for innovation and I think this hunger for innovation could lie on the borderline of a chaotic and orderly network, which allows for progress and innovation.