Rachel

NY TIMES-EVERGREEN ARTICLE

I got in an argument with a high school kid that works with me on Sunday. We were talking about how we both had homework to do. Somehow we got on the subject of grades and I explained to him the evaluation system at Evergreen. He implied in a very condescending tone that that seemed pretty dumb (something was said about real schools). Boy, did I let him have it. I told him how I'd attended a private school outside of Chicago ("I'm talking about colleges," said he. "Duh," said I), the type of college that gave pre-requisites for freshmen and finals and grades and all the things that make college unbearable. I told him getting an A is easy, but getting a perfect evaluation is hard. "YOU DIDN'T GO TO NORTHWESTERN," he screamed! No, I did not. I too, like this young fellow, once dreamed of the Ivy League. Of schools like Northwestern and Yale. But then, somewhere towards the end of my high school career, I started being a bad little girl and shot my chances (just kidding, sort of), I learned they were too expensive, they weren't for me, rumors of grade inflation were running rampant. Basically, I put the bar a little lower.
After hearing that it was easy to get an A my young co-worker exclaimed that his sister went to Northwestern and his brother went to Stanford and "Do you know how hard it is to do a final?!?" "Do you, high-school boy?" I thought. Yes, these things are difficult, but why go to a large lecture hall to take notes for 10 weeks just to take a test for three hours at the end of the quarter? I don't know about you, but I'd rather sit in my dorm for 10 weeks and guess my way through the final. I wish more students knew that its okay to choose the school that's right for them instead of what they think others will will appreciate. Maybe when my goody-two-shoes/never-did-anything-illegal co-worker gets into college, starts binge-drinking/ joins a frat/dabbles in drugs/ and fails his first final he'll think of me and say, "You know, Rachel was right, I shouldn't be so hung up on status, I should let my parents use this $200,000 a year tuition to retire. I want to go to Evergreen!"
That is, if that's right for him.

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"When people find that any particular gain from a new information technology makes up for the corallary loss, they claim it represents progress; when they feel loss more than gain, they experience the new information technology as cultural decline." -Page 29. EXACTLY.

I find it interesting that although Hypertext 3.0speaks of reading books online in a way that could make printmakers sweat his book is not available to read online. As a reader who never goes to the back of the book for footnotes I would have been very happy to have read this entire book on my laptop so that I could go to each reference as he suggested in seperate windows. Although I do enjoy reading online and find it a lot easier, nothing beats cuddling up with a paper book. I think that humans are too attached to this notion to get rid of them entirely, anyone who has read books like Farenheit 451 knows how scary this idea can be.

Vannevar Bush's "Memex" idea intrigued me quite a bit. I looked him up online and many of the sites were quick to say that he did NOT invent hypertext or the internet, but I did find a good site that included a biography and a link to his famous article. Check it out. I also went here and found "sites created and maintained by George Landow." He's a busy man.

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I see we are having a potluck this friday and I was wondering if anyone in the class is vegan. Because I would like to make a pie, but it has lotsa butta and eggs.

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I know that this is supposed to be a kind of rough draft for my seminar paper, but I am not quite ready for that yet.
Although I enjoyed this book, I am still sorting out some of the symbols in my mind. I need to read it again so that I can interpret them all. For example, I found it fitting that Geryon was a monster, I felt that way until I started college I think. But I want to look more into the color red, pennies, cameras, sex, Geryon's mother, and of course what it means to have a modern setting with greek characters.
Something I found very interesting is that writing a novel in verse makes the narrative move along very fast. There is no need for a lot of dialogue, because the actions and emotions of the characters can be put forth in one line. In a novel the disturbing scenes between Geryon and his brother would take several pages and the narrator would need to explain every part for the reader. But in verse the scene is laid out very quickly, making it even more dramatic and very haunting.

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The artwork showcased in this book made me yearn for more, so I went to a few of the websites listed in the back of the book.

First I went to rhizome to see what was there. They are celebrating their tenth anniversary. I was led to a link called Global Rich List that I found incredibly interesting. I was even allowed to copy the code for it so that I could put it into my website. I don't make very much money as a part-time grocery cashier, so I was surprised to find that I am pretty high up on the global rich list as the 773,071,647th richest person in the world! This is internet art that has a pretty deep meaning. I only make $12,000 a year if I don't include financial aid, yet I was on the far right side of the list. Someone in Ethiopa probably thinks I'm a rich jerk.
Next I went to Heath Buntin's site. It was very simple, or course, all black and white, and some of the links no longer worked. He did, however, have one link that said "visit the net.art--ghetto." I thought that was funny, especially after reading about it in the book. The link led to his technologies to the people project. In the middle of the page is a group of icons that lead to pages that have little to do with the pictures on the icons themselves. For example, if you click on the picture of the coffee cup you can calculate how much you consume of any given object (beer, coffee, waffles), and if you click on the picture of the bed a screen comes up that says, "This artist's product is shareware, If you like it please deposit your $10 shareware fee!"

I enjoyed this book, I have to admit that I didn't know anything about internet art and didn't even know what it was before reading this. It inspired me to learn how to do a lot more on the computer so that I can make my visual poems more interesting, although I'm still lost when it comes to what we are supposed to be doing for our digital poetry. I think I could spend hours looking at all of the websites Rachel Greene listed in the back of her book, and I'm glad she put them in there.

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Here is a game for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that functions like the command prompt. Its kind of fun to tinker around with it. Just find the serial number on the black screen and type it into the text box at the bottom of the screen to play.

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As I read Digital Poetics I realized that I am far more confused about the internet than I had previously thought. I am not so much confused as astounded by the infinite amount of possibilities that the World Wide Web holds. The internet is certainly like the Library of Babel to me now. Before starting this program I thought that I had a handle on the vastness of the net and technology, but now I find that the more I learn about it the more I want to find out. It is like a link that leads to more and more links. It seems one could click on links that go from one page to the next for days on end, and even if you found what you were looking for in the first place, you would end up finding even more things to look at you might not find a place to stop looking.
I found that Glazier’s tips on aesthetics and architecture of a home page will be very useful for my personal web page, and I learned a lot, yet I am still frustrated because there is so much to do online and I don’t have all the skills, nor do I know all of the HTML language to do what I want. Basically, I’m a little overwhelmed, and I need to find a way to put things in perspective. Maybe hitting the “I’m Feeling Lucky” icon on Google will make me feel better!

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This is a Lego version of Relativity, the M.C. Escher painting we discussed in our Library of Babel seminar.

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Interactive Realism

While reading Interactive Realism, a question frequently brought to mind involved the computer game “The Sims.” I began to ponder the meaning of “technological self,” and realized that a person can have an actual technological version of himself or herself online. This game is a good example of what technology can do to human life. In the game, the player creates a SIM, a person who has his or her own distinct personality traits, outfits, face-shape and hair color. The SIM lives out situations created randomly by computer algorithms, while still needing to complete everyday functions such as eating, using the bathroom, sleeping, and socializing with friends. If these functions are not done on a regular basis unfortunate events will occur. One can even play online. This game has often begged the question, “Why not just actually live your real life?” Why are people drawn to a game that makes them do things they would do anyway?
Computer users often ask this question. Dictionary.com replaces the dictionary, blogs replace journals, online games and chat rooms can even replace face-to-face social interaction if necessary. Daniels wrote about actions having an effect on the environment, and thus, your sense of self, and in games like these, the consequences are the same as in a real-life environment. A sense of self and of enjoyment on a game can somehow be quite comparable to real-life, even though there is a distance between the player and the simulated world. The draw to this type of game can be explained a little with what Daniels wrote on page 79,”If distance empties the self, a completely immersive world should solve the problem by creating a virtual environment where we can experience proximal relations with simulations.” A game like this or a comparable technological experience can create a space in which a person can be at their computer for hours, without the need to have normal human contact. “…The dream or fantasy becomes the ‘real,’ and we may court symptoms of psychosis by wanting to become like the technological Other that controls the images or by preferring the immersive world of the cinematic image over our own reality (p. 79).”
As Downes pointed out, humans have always had ways of escaping reality and making those escapes as real as possible. It is just interesting now to see how real those escapes have become.

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