Month: September 2014

Wk 6 Reading

Angus Strachan

Can we stop with the book bashing!

“the end of Books” – really? Just like the telephone killed face to face conversation I guess.

“[A] possession that has lost so much of its utility that only the well-to-do can afford to have one around anymore” – umm what ? I live in a small town, in this small town is a thing called a library, in this library there are books which I can read for free! Whilst on the internet reading this weeks reading about hypertext once again degrading the use of books, I’m spending money on power keeping my computer on, paying the phone bill so I can have access to the internet to read this, so although the page in particular didn’t cost anything to get access it still costs on other ways. I’m not saying that the books in the library didn’t cost anything to begin with but it is all relative. I know we touched on the fact that the internet is not the ideal hypertext and is only a primitive form but still, are there going to be absolutely no costs whatsoever to this all powerful hypertext in the future? Of course there is, because although it is a communistic dream we live in a capitalist world.

It is stated briefly in this reading but I think a big factor to this argument, they are two different things and are not fighting for the one position.

I understand that being able to chose where you go in terms of hypertext and having that liberty is good in certain ways. but it is far too shallow a thought to encompass every notion that goes towards information and story telling in particular. Why do we have stories? Where did they come from? Lets take the example of Oedipus, for those of you who don’t know Oedipus is a Greek tragedy. Oedipus is given the prophecy that he will kill his father and will wed his mother, Long story short; he attempts to change his destiny but in doing so actually fulfils it. If you know the whole story you’ll understand my point much better. If we chose Oedipus’ fate in a hypertext type state then how are we to get the essence of the story, how can we get the moral of the story and learn from it if we go by what we chose. I guess what i’m trying to say is, stories are a way we can learn, by hearing other peoples stories we take on their knowledge. If we create it all ourselves won’t that stunt our learning capabilities? It may not turn out that severe but worth thinking about in the hypothetical.

And sometimes its good to have a beginning middle and end.

 

 

Wk 6 Lecture

Angus Strachan

In the hype of looking forward to the mid-semester break and handing in all the assignments my notes on the week 6 lecture aren’t as extensive as I hoped they would be now that i’m righting this, nevertheless I shall push on with a few key ideas that I was interested enough in to note down.

I believe the history of technology, or more why it came into being, was a topic up for discussion. The simple answer to why it came to being is that technology comes out of our(humans) desires which can derive from culture. So for instance the reason that we needed a telephone is because we needed a fast and easy way to communicate with connections that were too far to speak to normally – a very broad topic I know but you het the gist. Maybe a better idea is the toaster. We wanted to toast our bread but whenever we put it over the caveman fire it would always taste like whatever we were using to fuel the fire, wood, coal, kerosine etc, so in order to fix this problem we cam up with a technological solution: the toaster. Please don’t quote me on any historical facts as these are all hypothetical and almost definitely too simple.

One question that I can now recall from the lecture: is there art without technology. I forget which teacher said it but one said that they can’t think of an art that isn’t derived from technology, or something like that. An interesting point, but wrong. Art can exist without technology, at least in its most primitive form. And think thats the idea that we’re meant to be getting at. I don’t think technology has created who we are today, it has just increased our ability to do so. Lets use an example: history lesson! The Iliad and the Odyssey are epic poems that were created by homer (none knows if homer is a person or many people, not a lot is known about him personally but I digress). These epic poems, which if you have read them you realise how big they actually are were not recorded in stone or paper as you might think, but memorised by story tellers. I would argue that no technology is used in this instance to produce a form of art. These storytellers would go from town to town reciting these poems as art and lessons, using nothing but their memory and their voice. As these stories grew more popular and more people wanted to learn them then it became necessary to introduce technology in order to meet that cultural need. I believe that Technologies are the stepping stones for art, something that art can use to grow greater, I think that it would be naive to say that technology creates art.

A little off topic but I feel strongly for that sort of thing.

One last idea to finish off. There was a lot of talk about Ted Nelson, the man who coined the term hypertext. The main point is that the internet as we see it today is not his ideal hypertext situation. It seems that his notions were more communistic in the sense that we all know how to create hypertext and we all have our own servers and what not. An interesting theory but in a world dominated by capitalist societies it was always going to be hard to realise such a dream.