Response 2 – Kaleb Traverso-Penn

Kaleb Traverso-Penn

NMD 206

If media shape us, then what shape do we see through the media? How do the vehicles/technology of many-to-many media shape what kinds of selves are possible?

The way we see media, is something that can be changed or context to be something or some technological device that can express how we feel through a click of a button. Vehicles shape media because we leave an imprint on how we want something to be a shape. A vehicle is apart of someone, the way you organize, customize, and identify its your car. The way you can personalize technology becomes your media.

What I assume and guess is that we have become cyborgs. And not in the way that the terminator is or any science fictional based story has perceived a cyborg.

The reason I think that we are cyborgs is we as a society are always using or have a piece of technology on us. Whether it be clothes, accessories, keys, beds. Anything that is made to self-serve a human being is a form of technology. As simple as producing fire is a form of technology.

So to identify what shape media is, the answer in my open is anything that human made, and can communicate to another something or something that is someone else is a form of media. Technology is a form of media, and what media(media is the plural term for medium) is, the intervening substance through which impressions are conveyed to the senses or a force acts on objects at a distance.

Pick 2 autobotography projects and review thoroughly. How does each create a new and strange mirror on what it means to be human? What kind of self is possible, or reflected, or satirized, or created via the new technologies? For each project explain what the new tech is, and then how it shapes what kind of self is possible. Do you think race, gender, class, culture, age or other factors influence these new selves? Do the very poor have access to these new selves?

What kind is society is created by the proliferation of these new selves?

1. Nobody Here

Nobody Here is a representation of how someone can have a virtual self. I don’t think that the program or series of questions that you run thing has to do with a culture, race or gender. It’s almost like running through a story border that has almost an infinite amount of possibilities. Where one who explores this page has something to create and find out which characteristic or action is best describe by the mood or curiosity of what the site has to offer. I would like to think that the very poor could have access to this possibility. It is as simple as going to use a library computer, but often people who are not poor but are in the medium to rich class would find this as amusing. Almost like having and creating another facebook platform.

2) JenniCam

Watching the JenniCam in class felt wrong but watching it was almost an eye opener. To the means and reasons people throughout the world are trying to create more of an autonomous self than anything else. Trying to leave there digital life permanent by not caring about whats happening in reality. However, I found this one, that we watched in class to be interesting. The reason I found it interesting was because, I thought what she did, tied into the book that we were assigned to read in NMD 102, “The Circle” by Dave Eggers. This book is similar to what this woman did. And that was having the whole world being 100% transparent. Meaning that anyone who lived anywhere in a city would be under surveillance and everyone would know what their life was like and so on.

They even recently came out with a movie based off the book with Emma Watson in it. Anyways, the form of technology that she used was simple and ultimately characterized her for having a virtual self because she left a digital imprint. I don’t think that this form of technology would be accessible to the very poor cause this would require constant surveillance so the technological aspect of it would be dumb down. But, in theory you could do it without technology, and be very open as a human being and do anything you want normal that you would do behind closed door publicly. Their is nothing that says you can’t, but you just might have a few consequences that went along with it, like how the JenniCam did. I think when JenniCam was a thing it was looked down on because people weren’t as comfortable as they are today. Which, the view and debate about technology and the general public is still lively, the way people interpret it now rather than in past years is different. So if someone was to do something like a JenniCam I think she’d be fine. The only problem was if she were to have sex on camera she may be labeled a porn star but after that I think she’d be fine the way society has shaped and conformed to technology within the last decade.