Deus Ex Machina

Sherry Turkle’s book “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less from Each Other” is primarily concerned with the ways that technologies are becoming more and more ingrained in our society. She is especially interested, particularly in the first part of her book “The Robotic Moment: In Solitude, New Intimacies”, with the advancement of robots and the questions that arise from these advancements. Can robots think? Can they feel? Do we want them to?

All of these questions are very interesting, but one of the things I was most interested in is the difference between American and Japanese responses to robots. While I agree with Turkle that relying too much on robots is, simply put, sad, one of the more fascinating things to discuss in terms of the chapters is the different mindset between two cultures. First, Americans seem to be slightly put off by robots that are “as if” caretakers or programmed to perform as caretakers. (Caretaking is just one example. There are, of course, many uses planned for robots in the future.) In Japan, however, “enthusiasm for robots in uninhibited” (146). One wouldn’t expect, I imagine, religious differences to become so apparent in a book about technology or a chapter about robots, but I think that this is one interesting point that arose from Turkle’s discussion. Though she didn’t discuss religion in depth, she did mention it in passing (especially when discussing the “playing God” belief). Toward the end of the chapter, Turkle notes that the Japanese often imbue inanimate objects with humanlike qualities: “even worn-out sewing needles are buried with ceremony,” she explains (146). This, I think, is in stark contrast with an American view of life. Though I’m not well versed in Japanese religion, I imagine that their traditional religions are much more accepting to animism than the most popular religions in America. Christians, making up the largest part of the US population, would probably never attribute human characteristics on an inanimate object (except, perhaps, bread and wine). This, I think, is the reason that American’s are so disturbed by the idea of robots—because anthropomorphism isn’t a traditional part of our culture, at least after we’ve “grown up.” This, I think, is directly linked to Turkle’s notion that some people worry about creating too life-like robots because they would then be “playing God.”

The second most interesting argument that Turkle raised was the idea of performance. Having read (and at least partially understood) Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity,” I myself tend to agree with Turkle’s colleagues who say that “performance is the currency of all social relationships and that rather than a bad thing, this is simply how things are. People are always performing for other people” (121). This is certainly the case when it comes to gender, and gender can definitely be performed as we learned through reading Celia Pearce’s “Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds.” (Many of her subjects chosen to perform the “opposite” gender through their avatars.) Robots are, perhaps, even better at performing gender than people: a robot can be programmed to act in stylized ways that represent what one believes to be the essential qualities of a  male or female. Furthermore, though we attribute particular genders to sexes, because these genders are performed rather than essential, a robot (not having a sexed body) would not be inclined (would not be able to be inclined) to perform any way other than the way it’s been programmed. (It’s even more interesting to note the use of “programmed.” We use that word to describe people: “His brain was programmed that way.” Gender is programmed as well, though not through the brain but through social construction.)

Finally, I’m interested in the ways that robots can be compared to avatars. Turkle writes: “As most of these students see it, a next generation will become accustomed to a range of relationships: some with pets, others with people, some with avatars, some with computer agents on screens, and still others with robots” (119). If Pearce has anything to say about it, I’m sure she would say that we’re already accustomed to relationships with avatars—both as avatars and by having relationships with other people’s avatars. When playing a game or chatting online, it’s hard to determine where a person’s “real” personality ends and the “avatar personality” begins. I’m not sure there is a difference. What does that imply about robots? Trukle frequently mentions that this will be something to be dealt with in the future. Where  will a robot end and a person begin? Turkle noted that Parkensons’ can be treated by implanting a chip into a person. Are we already becoming more robotic? Going back to the religion thing: I’m a determinist. I don’t think people have free will. Everything that has happened since the beginning of time has worked toward shaping who we are today. In admitting this, I think that the line between human and robot becomes more blurred, and to me, Turkle has raised more questions than she has provided answers.

Questions:

In what ways can a robot perform better than a person?

On a more personal note, what kind of reaction did you have when first reading about the robots meant to be companions? Did you react in a way similar to Turkle or more like the inventors?

Are you as disturbed by the sex robots as I am? What does this say about our feelings/attitudes toward women?

That In Which She Uses the Obama Poster

Had Henry Jenkins written his chapter “Photoshop for Democracy: The New Relationship Between Politics and Political Culture” a few year later, his argument would have had a particularly strong appeal to anyone participating in the 2008 election. Since becoming more familiar with social media, games, and, yes, even politics while reading Jenkins, Ian Bogost, and James Paul Gee, I’m aware of the ways that media convergence and participatory culture have come together to create a unique new way of taking part in politics.

Jenkins begins his chapter by addressing the content of this chapter. He writes, “I am focusing here less on changes in institutions or laws, which are the focus of traditional political science, but more on changes in communications systems and cultural norms, which need to be understood through tools that have originated in the study of media and popular culture” (219). Jenkins was correct in noting that changes in laws and institutions have yet to take place due to this convergence culture as well as noting that media and popular culture would continue to play an important role in politics. The last election, which Jenkins missed by a few years, was marked by a number of interesting popular culture references that would have made this chapter of  “Convergence Culture” a more interesting read. I will discuss a few of these soon.

One of the things I found most interesting about Jenkins book is that he discussed the Howard Dean election at length, and, despite Jenkins interested in media and convergence culture, he didn’t mention the importance of games in this particular election. Ian Bogost’s book “Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames” discusses the role games had in this election extensively. Perhaps Jenkins wasn’t interested in games for this particular book, or perhaps Bogost was more informed (since he did take part in creating the Howard Dean game) than Jenkins. Either way, it’s interesting to look at the game in terms of convergence culture. One of the reasons I was confused that Jenkins didn’t include discussion of the Howard Dean for Iowa game is that both he and Bogost (as well as the other creators of the game) were/are interested in the importance of grassroots outreach. Furthermore, Bogost described games as “procedurally expressive; they embodied their commentary in their rules” (135). I would think that Jenkins would be interested in this because of his interest in the way our assimilation of knowledge seems to be changing.

Despite the fact that the Howard Dean game seemed to fail (he wasn’t elected), politics continues to be further intertwined with media and popular culture for that matter. The 2008 election campaign provided American with a potential Vice President that has become a pop culture icon: Sarah Palin. After she and McCain failed to win the election, Plain became a reality TV star. This, I think, is not that the kind of media convergence Jenkins imagined when he was writing this book. Rather than having a former Vice President candidate become a television spectacle, he imagined that politics would become interwoven with popular culture in a more productive way.

The Obama campaign was able to do this in a much more effective way, as is evidenced by his election. In fact, I would argue that the Obama “Hope” poster, designed by Shepard Fairey, is one of the best-known pieces of artwork of our time. This poster is interesting in a number of ways. First of all, it converges popular culture and politics. The poster’s popularity was aided by its widespread use on the Internet. Secondly, the Obama campaign  used this poster, created by someone outside the official Obama campaign, to its advantage. Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, Fairey was able to create this original screen print using a picture that he found through Google. I’m not sure whether the original photographer had rights to the photograph or whether it was available on Creative Commons or not. Either way, I think that this particular campaign poster is an interesting one to consider in light of Jenkins discussion, and is, perhaps, even the “poster child” of a chapter entitled “Photoshop for Democracy”.

It’s possible (and very likely) that Fairey used Photoshop to create his Obama “Hope” poster and others like it. Jenkins briefly discusses Photoshop in this chapter and rights that “John Kroll, one of Photoshop’s co-creators, told Salon that the software program had democratized media in two ways: by allowing smaller groups to have professional quality graphics at low cost, and by allowing the public to manipulate and recirculate powerful images to make political statements” (232). This was certainly the case in the last election, and I imagine that it will be the same in the upcoming one. Finally, Jenkins mentions that, at the time of writing, it was easy to make fun of the concept of “Photoshop for democracy” though I believe that we’re moving away from this idea. It’s especially interesting to note everything that has changed since Jenkins wrote this book only a few short years ago.

Questions:

How do you imagine Photoshop for Democracy will occur in the upcoming election?

How had convergence culture increased since the writing/publication of this book?

Do you think that the ideas presented in Photoshop for democracy actually allows people to make informed voting decisions, or are we only voting for who has the coolest pictures? 

Harry Loves Ron: What's So Bad About Fanfiction?

Though Henry Jenkins’s chapter entitled “Why Heather Can Write: Media Literacy and the Harry Potter Wars” is, on the surface, about media literacy and the value of “non-academic” writing, it is truly a study in censorship and property ownership. I was particularly interested in Harry Potter as an updated version of a transmedia story while I was reading Jenkins’s “Searching for the Origami Unicorn: The Matrix and Transmedia Storytelling” without realizing that Jenkins would address Harry Potter in the next few chapters. (To be honest, I wasn’t sure what time frame Harry Potter would fit—was the franchise popular during Jenkins’s writing or not? I now have my answer.)

Jenkins has discussed throughout his book the interest corporations have been taking in consumer participation, whether this interest has been through worrying about copyright infringement or something of which they can take advantage: “Corporations imagine participation as something they can start and stop, channel and reroute, commodify and market” (175). As Jenkins points out, this “problem” of ownership—including intellectual ownership—becomes even more convoluted when the argument involves a culture that is, at least in part, made up of children. In this chapter Jenkins is primarily interested in “the struggle over competing notions of media literacy and how it should be taught” (177) as well as the basic questions that have arisen regarding the Harry Potter books and subsequent franchise. As Jenkins mentions in “Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars? Grassroots Creativity Meets the Media Industry” fans are no longer willing to accept a story (whether from a book, a movie, etc.) at face value: they must be allowed to create their own piece of the story through fanfiction, parody, or simply playing with action figures.

I found that fans were using (and Jenkins saw ways in which fans could use) these types of media to learn and further their own understanding and empowerment. Jenkins mentions feminist arguments a few times throughout this chapter on Harry Potter, which I thought was very interesting. First he notes that some feminists feel that Hermione (one of the few females in the Harry Potter books) falls into traditional stereotypes, particularly those of dependency and nurturance. Having never read the books nor seen the movies, I can’t answer to whether or not the character does these things. Though I typically take the feminist side, I have to agree with Jenkins that the ability for young girls to use these characters to empower themselves is probably greater than we imagine. He also mentions that children have the power to identify across gender. I believe that this is an important way for children to come to terms with the social constructs of gender—much the same way that people are able to “play” other sexes in videogames through their avatars. (I won’t get into the fact that gender and sex are different things, as that is really beyond the scope of this blog.)

Jenkins also devoted a large portion of the chapter to learning and mentions James Paul Gee’s “affinity spaces” which are directly related to his notion of the “affinity group” defined as “a group of people associated with a given semiotic domain” (Gee 27). The “affinity group” to which Jenkins is applying is that of a learning culture. These learning cultures must recognize the importance of children’s interaction with media—despite the producers of such media attempting to combat this interaction. Jenkins further channels Gee when he mentions “scaffolding,” which relates to Gee’s “Incremental Principle.” Jenkins notes that, in participatory culture, the entire community helps the new person learn, which is, of course, completely different than the way schools—supposed institutions of learning—are fashioned.

One interesting aspect of this chapter (to which Jenkins devoted a large amount of thought) was that of the religious zealots’ attempt to ban the Harry Potter books. I thought this aspect belonged more to a chapter on censorship than one regarding learning, but I suppose it makes sense because the Harry Potter books and subsequent materials can be such a rich learning tool. I found this all very interesting, particularly in a discussion of knowledge. Once again, Gee’s work in What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy” is a useful tool to understanding my thought process on the subject. Gee points out throughout his work that violence in video games doesn’t lead to violence in the real world—those against Harry Potter should take note. Sorcery in a book isn’t going to lead to sorcery in real life—and if the kids try it, they’ll soon learn that it’s not going to work. I think that it’s unfortunate that these adults who have never read the books are trying to keep their children from reading them. As Jenkins ends his chapter, the Harry Potter franchise is “a space where children teach one another and where, if they would open their eyes, adults could learn a great deal” (216).

Questions (*not talking points in this case, but real questions I’d like to have answered):

*Are there any other religious groups (non-Christian groups) that are so against Harry Potter?

*Have any laws about fanfiction been created since Jenkins wrote this book?

How are action figures like avatars?

I Hate American Idol... But Clay Should Have Won

Jenkins’s chapters “Buying into American Idol: How We Are Being Sold on Reality Television” and “Searching for the Origami Unicorn: The Matrix and Transmedia Storytelling” are both primarily concerned with marketing, though in vastly different ways. The first chapter from this weeks reading, “Buying Into American Idol” focuses both on marketing ploys within the show (namely product placement) and the actual selling of the show to an audience. At the time of Jenkins’s writing, “reality television” was somewhat of a novel idea, though, of course, shows such as Survivor and American Idol were already beginning to proliferate in our society, as can be seen in the fact that Jenkins’s first two chapters focuses on these shows. These shows are the first shifts in television to fit into the newly emergent convergence culture. Jenkins writes that this shift is “one from real-time interaction toward asynchronous participation” (59). Much like fans of Survivor, American Idol watchers are interacting with the program in ways that, not long ago, weren’t even considered. Because fans began taking to the Internet, discussion shows online, texting about them, and generally creating a unique culture surrounding the shows, the old economic structures and marketing tools began to be less effective. With the advent of technology such as TiVo, advertisers had to create new ways of getting more “eyeballs” to see their ads. Out of this need for new kinds of advertising grew “affective economics,” which Jenkins describes as “a new configuration of marketing theory . . . which seeks to understand the emotional underpinnings of consumer decision-making as a driving force behind viewing and purchasing decisions” (62). If Jenkins first chapter “Spoiling Survivor: The Anatomy of a Knowledge Community” taught readers anything, it’s that consumers are most definitely invested in the programs they’re watching and, thus, can become invested in the products that those programs taut. In fact, Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, argues that “only a small number of customers make purchase decisions based purely on rational criteria” (70).

As a former fan of American Idol (though certainly less invested in the program than I could have been), I am well aware of the marketing strategies used by companies like Coca-Cola, Ford, and AT&T throughout the programming. As Jenkins explains, Coke products are prominently featured throughout the show. The one I best recall is the ever-present Coke cups that the judges drink from during the auditions, performances, and finale. I agree with Jenkins statement that “this emerging discourse of affective economics has both positive and negative implications” (63). Personally, I always wondered what they were drinking in those Coke cups—surely not always Coke products. Despite the fact that I watched American Idol (though never the entire season), I was never invested enough to go online and join the “American Idol community” and thus, never really got to experience (in this instance) what Coca-Cola president Steven J. Heyer called a shift “away from broadcast TV as the anchor medium” and toward “experience-based, access-driven marketing” (72).

Jenkins third chapter focused on The Maxtrix, which I always thought of as a film, but it turns out to be so much more than that—it’s a transmedia story, which Jenkins describes as “unfold[ing] across multiple media platforms, with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole” (97-98). Rather than focusing completely on The Matrix, which I will be the first to admit I didn’t get (but now I see why!) I’ll focus on the Harry Potter franchise. In his book Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, Ian Bogost writes that “we . .  . take solace in the relatively ‘high’ cultural value of Harry Potter, often ignoring the fact that the books in that series seem intricately crafted for screenplay optioning, cinematic release, and subsequent dispersal via toys, games, and endless other accessories” (174). I wonder now, however, if Bogost didn’t miss the point—perhaps J. K. Rowling was attempting to create a transmedia story for the younger viewer/reader/consumer. (Quidditch, for example, can best be experienced through a videogame.)  Jenkins continues on to discuss the importance of world-making. He says that “storytelling has become the art of world building, as artists create compelling environments that can not be fully explored or exhausted within a single work or a single medium” (116), and though I’ve never read Harry Potter or watched the movies, I imagine this is probably true in terms of that particularly body of work. The world that Harry Potter inhabits obviously has much more potential, as Emily has pointed in our discussions of RPG games. She’s noted that Harry Potter RPG games are by far the most popular, and I imagine that fanfiction devoted to him is just as popular.  

Though the marketing strategies of these types of entertainment (reality TV and transmedia stories, for example) may cause some level of discomfort to consumers, the fact is that it hasn’t bothered us enough to reverse our shit into convergent culture.

Questions:

Do you think Harry Potter is a transmedia story, or was Bogost right in saying that it was just a really good way for J. K. Rowling to make some cash?

People are always talking about how much they hate reality TV, but it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Why are people so ashamed to admit that they like it? (Even the Survivor Spoilers “hated” Survivor.)

What negative effects have you seen in our move toward affective economics?