It didn’t take much to impress me in my meme phase … I often look back on that time of my life, the cringeworthy folder on my computer, my unironic use of the word ‘epic’ (what a fail amiright? was I trollin’?) and feel a little nauseous. I mean it’s not even as though I was that young, I would have been at least 16, definitely old enough to know better.

To think that at the age when I was reading ‘y u no’ guy comics, thinking they were examples of nuanced, insightful commentary, people like Taylor Ruth Baldwin were actually publishing pieces of nuanced, insightful commentary is enough to make me want to throw my laptop through a wall.

As a high school junior, Indiana teen Baldwin created  tumblr account, ‘Hanging Rock Comics’ (click a picture to visit the site) as a place to post the drawings and playlists which had been collecting in her exercise and sketchbooks. Within months the site had tens of thousands of regular subscribers seeing several posts topping 50,000 notes (‘likes’ and ‘reblogs’). This in turn would lead to collaborations with internationally notable projects such as Rookie magazine and the Station to Station artist transfer.My biographical knowledge of Baldwin doesn’t stretch much further than this, but in many ways this could be considered an interesting indicator of the nature of her work, as in  many ways Baldwin’s personal situation is immaterial to her work …

See, while some of the comics she posts seem acutely personal:

They are also a) uncannily, creepily relatable and b) balanced with others which make blisteringly perceptive comment on situations and emotions shared by a lot of people:

Others are fascinating artifacts of American culture…

some are hilarious:

they ALL look amazing:

Wow, there’s more of Taylor Ruth’s stuff on there than there is of anything that I have written, needless to say I LOVE her work …

In order to up my word-count, one could note an interesting cultivation of internet presence on Baldwin’s part. While her work has a distinctly organic aesthetic, an active profile across various online media sharing platforms grants Baldwin the means by which to expand her audience, forging invaluable professional connections in the process. While indeed the effective digitalisation of her work would seem contradictory to the persona Baldwin projects (often making it clear that she does NOT have Facebook), it is an absolutely essential tool in the pragmatic realisation of a career as an independent artist, particularly at so young an age.

Being somewhere between disturbed and fascinated, I have often wondered about the pervasive nature of interaction which the internet has facilitated between individuals and institutions. When I say this, I’m not talking about the indelibility of the content one chooses to publish (I’ll save that one for another post), but the slippery slope between discourse and surveillance which could be considered the bi-product of hypertext getting ahead of itself.

Such a notion seems to have piqued many people’s interest, however, being ambiguous by it’s very nature, it becomes somewhat difficult to effectively describe, I’ll try to use an example … Last night I watched an episode of ‘Four Corners’  called in ‘Google we Trust,’ there was nothing particularly groundbreaking about it, it was one of many pieces which explore what the individual might divulge, voluntarily or otherwise, throughout the course of their internet activity.

The program tracked the activity of an Australian family, hoping to retrieve as much personal information as possible based on their use of various electronic devices. It was discovered that a number of Westfield shopping centres now have the capacity to track the model and position of smartphones with the intention of profiling shoppers and identifying high traffic areas. In a similar manner, transactional information(attained using programs such as FlyBuys) is moved through major supermarket chains into servers in the US in order to create personalised email advertising for customers.

(It is here that such developments might be compared to hypertext, while hypertext responds to requests by the user, new technologies such as these move further, preempting and fulfilling requests which are yet to be made.)

The program expresses concerns regarding information passing through the United States, describing routine government surveillance to which content might be subject. Indeed, the portrait which is painted is on the whole pretty sinister, without truly explaining why such developments ought to be viewed warily.

I’ll admit that the idea of non-consentual surveillance does not necessarily sit well with me, surely however, the information that one might now be sharing is really no more worrying than that which is recorded through more traditional means. Customer movement is  tracked endlessly on CCTV, buyer habits in store records …  personal information is divulged in any transaction from renting a DVD to ordering a pizza. I certainly don’t see how supermarket promotions would be of any interest to the US government.

With no immediate cause for concern that I can see, developments might perhaps be viewed in one of two ways, being seen either as the natural progression of technology in order to tailor the most convenient experience possible for the individual consumer, or a disturbing capacity being granted to governments and consumer giants which will over time only prove to be abused.

WATCH EPISODE HERE:

“In Google We Trust”

Google…

“Who is William Gibson?” …. “The Noir Prophet”

“What’s a Noir Prophet?”…. “William Gibson” …

That was me two weeks ago, having just been assigned my first Niki entry. I have to admit, I wasn’t impressed, let me tell you, it didn’t help that the more I read, the less I understood about the guy …

 By the end of the first paragraph of his Wikipedia, my group had so many questions, we were like Destiny’s Child in Independent Women …

Perhaps it’s the nature of his profession, maybe it’s his readers, or Gibson himself, but it’s easy to be caught up in the language surrounding his name, highly specific, intimidating words like ‘cyberpunk,’ ‘speculative,’ ‘iconography’ (and then there was ‘Noir Prophet’ on EVERY PARAGRAPH OF EVERY PAGE).

If one doesn’t understand the vocabulary which defines a subject or its context, it goes without out saying that content remains out of grasp. I am currently grappling with this as ‘Hypertext’ is thrown around the readings and symposiums, but that’s another question for another post, or maybe it’s not … see, this time two weeks ago I was having similar trouble with yesterday’s buzzword: ‘speculative’ or ‘design’ fiction … I couldn’t understand why this was somehow granted a higher degree of consideration than science fiction as they seemed to be a) exactly the same and b) equally ambiguous.  Take Gibson … from what I could gather he seemed to be writing about the same old stupid dystopian stuff, I imagined his novels in discount bins in airports, full of hackers and super computers and running down the ruined streets of New York City wearing tiny mirrored shades to protect your eyes from the glare of the eclipsed sun …

And yet, not only has he been credited with the definition of ‘Cyberspace’ and the prediction of reality television, people seemed to be implying that his writing had some sort of measurable impact on communication technology as we know it today. Well, let’s skip the part where I thought this was stupid and put off doing my assignment for the week, and jump straight to me realising what Gibson’s hype was about and how it pulled everything together for me.

I’ll admit that when my group and I finally did get around to the entry, I thought I would write three sentences pulled straight from the internet thesaurus. What ought to have taken me 15 minutes ended up eating up the better part of my day, the more I read about William Gibson, the worse I felt … the poor guy didn’t actually call himself the ‘noir prophet,’ plus, he kept on doing these things I think they call ‘cute jokes’ in the cyberpunk sub genre? Anyway, that’s when I decided to have a crack at it … it was only really when I attempted to write as Gibson that I realised I understood what everyone was going on about.

In short … here is what I gleaned:

• science fiction is about machines, ‘technological fetishisation’ : machines are frothed over for their incredible and currently unattainable capacity.
• while speculative fiction also concerns itself with technology, it has a distinctly human focus, technological advances and uses are largely employed as a lens through which to observe society ( ie. The way a society approaches technology is an invaluable indicator of the way it approaches humanity)
• critics and fans called Gibson a ‘prophet’ because his thinking was hugely innovative, he was writing about social media and reality television in the 1970s and 80s, incredible! (they called him the ‘noir prophet’ cos his stuff was also mega-depressing)
• Gibson created the language (iconography) for what is today a reality, the description and the development of technology are not separate, Gibson and his contemporaries gave those who deal in the actualised aspect of this the tools to articulate, consider and realise their objectives
• Who even knows what cyberpunk is?

source: www.tumblr.com

A few things struck me upon reading Vannevar Bush’s 1945 article ‘As we may think.’ Partly this had to do with the topics covered by Adrian and the tutors in yesterday’s symposium, re: the value of Design Fiction, added to this though, the piece could be considered something of a reference point when evaluating the true extent of the technological developments humanity has observed in recent years, not to mention the complex and unpredictable forms these have taken.

I read the first page of the article without realising it hadn’t been written in modern times … now, this probably says something about my skim reading skillz (it’s pretty much explained in a huge chunk of text from the editor right at the top of the page), or how in touch I have been with current events lately (the article is written in the context of what is obviously World War two, which I just assumed was happening now).

Aside from that though, it speaks volumes of the infinite nature of the developments Bush predicts. In the present day, over half a century after the article’s initial publication, a call for significant development with regard to communication technology remains pertinent. While Bush appears largely to be concerned with the physical aspect of data storage and transmission (the hardware that is necessary to “give man access to and command over the inherited knowledge of the ages” ), we might now consider ourselves to be on the brink of a similarly significant bout of development. As technology itself becomes faster, lighter and more affordable, the applications we find for it surpass even the most optimistic speculations of design fiction. Who would have thought that the devices Bush describes, then only a figment of the imagination for the world’s best and brightest, would prove so accessible as to revolutionise manufacturing, economics, agriculture and communication?

Today it is not the existence of computers themselves that is a testament to the value of design fiction, but the manner in which their intangible extensions (such as the internet) have changed the face of human operation and interaction. This relates nicely to the camera projection Bush seems so excited by.  Describing a ‘walnut’ sized portable camera with 100 hundred exposures, he does not even touch upon the advancement of digital photography as it is today. Due to an inextricable connection with computing technology, we may now take (and instantly view) what is effectively an unlimited number of photographs.

I wonder how Bush might have reacted if told that with the advent of the smart phone, cameras would develop so as to be pocket-sized, make calls, send long tracts of text, access vast stores of information from around the world and send my mum snaps of the inside of my nose while I’m in sitting in a ‘symposium’.

Waaaah, how do people do it? I mean, I was excited to start a blog? In theory I even had things to put on it? I can read? I can type? I’ve been to unlectures? I like good marks as much as the next person?

…but look, still no posts…

Every time I go to actually post something, I end up deleting it…

It feels like I’ve done this a million times…

When I was 14, I decided my best friend and I were going to be famous on Twitter (it seemed fair cos we were already the founding members of a cool band…neither of us played an instrument, but I wrote some really moving songs about Robert Pattinson (4 social commentary…im not a losr)

…It might be pretty surprising to find out that I am in fact NOT twitter famous at present (shoot me a follow if u wanna hear some sweet lyrics tho)…

The next year I decided tumblr was probably a better place for cool, cutting edge 15 y.o feminists like me (This was around about the time I invented vintage clothes and the beatles). I posted once (and I don’t want to alarm you…but I’m pre sure I used the f-word) and got one follower (who was v. impressed).

Anyway, I suppose what I’m trying to say is, while I seem to like the idea of broadcasting my opinions and having them read by people, when it comes to actually putting pen to paper and delivering, there is something stopping me. In lots of ways I think my issue with blogging was addressed in the optional reading Adrian provided for week two … or, as one could argue, the very premise of the medium.

That is to say that blogging is designed to be inherantly expressive or personal; you don’t follow the same structure or subject matter in a blog post as you might in an essay (then again, you probably could if you wanted to). At the same time, though, there is no escaping the fact you are writing for an audience … maybe you know them, maybe you don’t, but at the end of the day people can see what you have written, so it’s no diary entry. What’s more, within this audience is a vast sea of opinion, insight and experience … no doubt I would speak differently to my friends than I would my tutors, and yet both could read this post if they wanted to. Walking the line between the personal and the professional has over time proven itself to be endlessly intimidating for me (that and the fact I am terrified I will be sued for accidentally plagarising something). As if this wasn’t enough, anything I post on the internet is going to be around FOREVER, at best I’m sure this will no doubt be very embarrassing, it worst it could affect my future career and lifestyle prospects.

But, as my 15 yo tumblr self would say

“nothing ventured, nothing gained”*

                            –xo John Lennon xoxo

If I want to learn something from this experience, I’ve got to get messy up in it. So tomorrow I’ll probably do a post about a reading or something…

*(to any prospective employers who have found this, I know this was a famous quote by Lil’ Jon and not John Lennon)