Response 2-CullenS

JenniCam:

I have always heard about JenniCam, but not until this class and the readings, did I really understand the amount of influence it had on today’s world. JenniCam, or Jennifer Ringley was a college student who set up her webcam to take a picture everyone 15 minutes, and then have them uploaded to her website. It grew and changed as the site grew in popularity. I think in terms of humanity, JenniCam started a very strange trend. Internet personalities are a huge part of society in this day and age. But with internet personalities, there have been many problems that have arisen, some of the same that you can see happening with Jennifer. The internet closes this massive gap that many people feel, it can make a complete stranger feel like your best friend. This is fascinating, just because people like Jennifer will allow others across the world to see what her daily life is like, it allows others to feel this personal connection, despite it really being one sided and not really being there.An example of this would be the sonnet for Jennifer that a fan of her’s made.

JenniCam itself set up the foundation to now popularly consumed media like, “vlogs”, “irl streamers,” and reality television. Previously, the world never really watched just a single person, they watched shows with intricate stories with written stories and planned out events. It opened the door for just for many people to just present themselves and their lives, and have people be able to be apart of it and almost live vicariously through them. It also made a lot of technology that was previously expensive, and hard to acquire, more readily available for the causal consumer. For instance, videocameras, microphones, webcams, and editing software was something usually reserved for companies and the rich. As time has progressed, all of these things have been refined, simplified, and been made easily purchasable for any average joe. The new technology that has been available to us has allowed us to broadcast ourselves across the world, and in whatever light we want. The ability to record our daily lives, edit them, or even livestream them, and put them on television has been an available and long standing ability of society. What’s interesting to me, is that it allows the user to freedom to only select certain parts and display them.

In terms of self, and what this means to be human, this allows almost a completely change of your life. The user has full control of what they are posting and sharing. They get to pick and choose what gets shown to others. This allows the user to change other’s perceptions of their self.  A slippery slope has been created where someone can having a real life persona, and a completely different online persona. Essentially giving people the option to live two completely different lives in the eyes of others.

Lastly, I think your race, age, class, and general physical characteristics greatly has a influence on your newly realized self. I think people’s background will give them the reasons behind their newly developed second life. For instance, if someone has dealt with bullying their whole lives, they would likely give the perception that they are strong, tough, and generally don’t ever have to deal with bullying. Almost as a short of wishful thinking, they get the opportunity to live the life they may have dreamed of. In terms of being poor, and having this effect your access to yourself, I certainly think it would. You may not have the opportunity to get this technology and be able to show yourself in this new light. You may also never even get the chance to consume others videos and streams like JenniCam’s.

Life Sharing:

Although the project, Life Sharing, didn’t have much content, I felt it was by far one of the most interesting projects. As mentioned above, the use of cameras, webcams, streaming software, etc, has allowed people to give a almost chosen view of themselves in video form. This felt different yet similar in a very interesting way. The mirror it created in how we see ourselves of human was a much more open one. Instead of getting to pick and chose what others see, it was more so, just let them see everything. Giving people constant access to your life and sensitive information seemed to be the theme for this project. It allowed users to have full access to their computer, as well as the ability to track them via GPS constantly. The self that these technologies allowed was a very open one, it basically was revealing yourself and your personal info at all times to complete strangers. The tech that allows this openness is the remote access of your desktop computer and the tracking of your location via GPS transmissions.

I think that this self is clearly hindered and affected according to your race, culture, gender, wealth and other factors. For instance, typical Chinese culture is very respectful and non-intrusive. I think because of this, you’d be hard pressed to find this project done by a citizen of China. It makes sense that two artists from New York, a city not known for it’s privacy and peace and quiet, would be the ones to conduct this art work/experiment. Along that line of thinking, it would also stand to reason that people who weren’t wealthy wouldn’t conduct this experiment. The amount of resources this would take would be hearty, and things like electricity, internet, servers, and other material would be hard to consistently make use of.

My biggest take away from both projects is what it both of these technologies are really allowing for, and that’s the idea of constantly updating others of your current life. Which was an interesting take away for me, because I realized that is just our social media. Our social media is basically, somewhat less intense, versions of both of these projects. Giving strangers constant updates about your current situation and location has basically been the backbone of all social media sites and apps for a long time. I believe this shows that our society is a very self absorbed society in some regards, and a very caring society in other regards. We are self absorbed because we have the notion that what’s going on in our lives is actually information that friends and complete strangers would want to know. On the other hand, there are many that DO care, and there are many that do check this consistent updates regarding other people.