Did I miss the memo? Does every blog headline have to be a pun?

For our Niki page we have been assigned Alan Turing. He was a mathematician, computer scientist, code breaker, and played a vital role in the formation and understanding of artificial intelligence. He devised a test would differentiate man from machine, I thought it would be fun to go on to two separate chatrooms, one with an automated “bot” and the other with another person. I asked the same questions. I used IGod as the AI forum, and while it was impressive in some areas, it quickly became clear how strict the formatting of it was, and how it devised its answers. I found that speaking to a person changed the way I communicated, with IGod I had been mimicking the formal tone it used. But with the real person on Omegle, it was easy to speak colloquially – in fact it was hard not to.

This made me wonder why we are so fascinated with artificial intelligence. Is it because it allows us to understand what it is that makes us human? Is it the thought that it will aid us in the future? It’s a dangerous game wanting to create robot with human characteristics and intelligence, just how much autonomy do we want them to have because it’s a threat? Robots are far more powerful than us physically, pairing it with emotions is a risk.

When we were asked what we took away from the unlecture #3 all I could really answer was that Adrian doesn’t like questions that demean the course. While I understand his reaction, I thought the way he dealt with it contradicted some of the approaches we are being taught. The question, something along the lines of “Why should I come to the lecture if it doesn’t relate to the content in the tutes?” admittedly sounds curt. One positive thing that really resonated with me was Adrian’s response, “Why don’t you make it relevant?” That was a really clever way of turning the question back around, and asking the student to reevaluate what they want from their course, how they think they will achieve it, and how the can use the course so that it works for them.

However, I had a problem that Adrian tore shreds off this person for such a long time, despite saying he “appreciated” the question, and was “grateful”, that didn’t translate. At all. To me, it just seemed very hypocritical. We are being taught that we need to question the learning structures we are a part of. Why do we do essays? What is the point of the “system”? What are its inherent flaws? How does this structure aid us in our real lives? Or is it, in fact, more of a hindrance? This kind of critical thinking is something Adrian encourages and I think it is important to question the norms accept. I found it confronting that this critical thinking and questioning of the education system is really hammered into us, but this one person asks a (pretty relevant) question and they get attacked, for forty minutes. If I had been the person who had asked the question I think I would have said something.

I also found it harsh and a little close-minded to say this person wouldn’t get a job if they told their employer they had asked this question at university. I think it shows a deep level of critical thinking, a skill required in many job positions. I thought about how many employers would appreciate the bluntness of this person, and the fact that they thought outside the square. Why are we being told to reject the cookie-cutter style of learning when, apparently, we can’t be ourselves in the workplace/real world anyway? I also don’t agree with Adrian when he says people who do not appreciate this learning model are not suited to inventive positions that involve risk or leadership. Wasn’t this person taking a risk in asking such a controversial question? If someone likes a syllabus and instructions, that doesn’t make them weak, or unsuited to a leadership position. They could be even more suited to a leadership position because they are thorough and meticulous. The fact that they are questioning our current learning environment shows that they aren’t a follower, doesn’t it?

The way the question was handled made me uncomfortable because my blog revolves around working through questions I have based on the course and its material. Is this going to be an issue?

I’m a cynical person, on a good day. So when my relationship deteriorated I was left with another reason to hate things. Didn’t help that the guy was a cheating douchebag.

Working in an open plan office, the radio constantly plays the same pop shit on repeat, giving me not only another excuse to hate the world, but also another thing to project my bitterness on to. Those songs that once would’ve been interpreted with some happy Tess-in-a-relationship filter are now completely twisted by the fuck-the-world-especially-men headspace. I’d thought I’d give you a look at my top three examples, and yes, there is a bit of bad language, and if you have an issue with it you haven’t had your heart broken before.

The main offenders on the Top Singles list:

(Another reason for me to hate the term “single”)

P!nk: True Love

In love Tess : *selective deafness for all the lines about why she hates her husband* blah blah something TRUEEE LOVVEE. Yes, that’s what I have. Mmm true love. Did she say something about him being an asshole? Haha I don’t think so. If he is an asshole it’s not true love. What was that? “I want to wrap my hands around your neck”? Hmm I guess if I wanted a piggyback I would technically have to do that but… Seems unnecessary. I think the problem here is that P!nk thinks true love means that you have a love-hate relationship. None of that here, thank you very much!! All just good, yummy scrummy love over here!

Me now: If I fucking hear this song one more time I’m going to stab myself in the eye with a mug. Don’t even ask how. I just will. “You’re an asshole, but I love you”? I can tell you now that sentence is four words too long. Chop it half and we’re getting there, except for the fact that “asshole” is still a little kind. The guy is an asshole and you hate him, therefore it must be true love? Yeah, or you stop sugarcoating it and you’re just as unhappy with your shitty little life as everyone else. Stop throwing in this “love” crap at the end. There is no such thing as “true love”. You just try and hang in there for the most attractive person who fucks you off the least.

Jason Derulo: Talk Dirty

Soppy Tess: “’Cause I know what the girls them need, New York to Haiti”? Yes Jason, they need a loving and committed relationship, not you carrying on like a eunuch wailing about all the herpes you’re spreading internationally. “Your booty don’t need explaining”? Jason one of the key aspects of any good relationship is a healthy discourse, communication. All this sleeping around might seem like what you want now, but you’ll thirty and realise you’ve just wasted so much of your time filling a hole in you by filling a hole in someone else. Temporary pleasure when you could’ve been building a lifetime of happiness with your other half. I guess I just feel blessed that the person that completes me has come into my life already.

Shitty Tess: Fuck you Jason Derulo. “Our conversations aren’t long but you know what is”? The extent of your stupidity? And just how lax are we getting on this “talk dirty” thing? Because I actually think I’d be alright, pretty good even. Because I could certainly reel off a lot of sentences involving “fuck” and “you know where you can put that?”. Does it still count if I’m yelling it at an ex? Oh, Jason, you’re a massive manwhore? That’s attractive. If girls love this so much I’m amazed that I didn’t enjoy finding out my boyfriend shared similar hobbies. “Sold out arenas, you can suck my penis”? Like, it’s not like I had any faith in the human race before that, but seriously? Single or not that’s just abysmal.

Daft Punk: Get Lucky 

Smitten: I guess the sad thing is that my single friends think this song is like, their anthem. What they don’t realize is that in a committed relationship you can so-called “get lucky” every single night. Sex is so much better with someone you love, it’s that real connection with someone special to you. Listening to this song kind of makes me depressed because people think that “getting lucky” is meeting someone in da club and scoring. But, what it means to be truly lucky is to be with the person you love, have someone to come home to and take you out for dinner and tell you you’re beautiful and that you’re their world.

Spitting: I’m horny.

Earlier in the week I read an article about a Dutch scientist who has spent the last 5 years “growing” a burger in a lab. He claimed that incorporating lab grown foods into our diets would be beneficial for several reasons; sustainability (about 70% of the world’s “blue water withdrawals” go towards irrigation, often for the sake of animal farming), to stop widespread animal cruelty, and help provide food to third world countries, eliminating famine. This ties in neatly with what we are learning; it sounds like something from science fiction, and for so long would have been design fiction. But now the product has been designed and in a few years could be commercially marketed and become a household product. This encouraged me to think on other inventions that seem sci-fi inspired, inventions that seem too good to be true – yet have made it in the world. Things like spray on skin.

This led me to think about some other creations from science fiction and which ones are at the top of my want list:

Number Three: Dream Recorder. In comparison to the others I guess this one seems kind of trivial. The concept is simple, a machine that does the equivalent of filming your dreams so they are crisp, clear, unfragmented and rewatchable. I am in no way a spiritual or superstitious person. I don’t read horoscopes or crap my dacks when a black cat saunters past, but I am fascinated by dreaming. From a psychological position, they are captivating. They are something that we all experience but don’t have a definitive answer for. Dreams have a huge impact on the way I view my environment and how I feel in myself. Sometimes the dreams are so vivid, or strange, or emotional that I don’t know how they could be ignored.

I connect with family members who have passed away, see the most picturesque landscapes and have cryptic messages repeated. I remember once I had a dream I lived my whole life, the years passing like seconds until I was old. That must be significant. I have no theory for what it means, I don’t think it is prophetic or even reflective of any emotion present in me. But I am still so interested in it, and it was something I spent a long time reflecting on. Other times I have dreamt I am talking with my late grandfather, and a lot of the time he is very sick, which is difficult, but there is always some positivity in the experience. I also have a lot of dreams that I am being chased or there are plots to murder me. I feel like if I could replay these moments, rewind and pause and rewatch the dreams I would feel more connected to my subconscious (that sounds like hippy bullshit I know) and could perhaps pin down the meaning, or at least study them without the dream fading quickly as it so often does. But this brings me back to the time remote control, is there a danger of becoming trapped in the past, obsessed with rewatching things that have already happened? I feel like that would defeat the purpose of design fiction, where the point of designing is to be forward-looking.

Number Two: A remote control that can pause or rewind time.

sourced from http://www.popcornreel.com/jpgimg/CLICK_Dom_C-289A_wb03_comp_v5_hd_vd8_0046_r.jpg

This idea has been explored in a number of different story lines, but perhaps most memorably in Adam Sandler’s Click. Shame such a good idea is communicated in such a poor format. Whenever anyone asks what “superpower” I would most like (admittedly this conversation doesn’t come up that much) I always think that the ability to control time would be the best. However, it is the kind of tool that I would only want me to possess. I love the idea that I could mess up as tragically as I could and erase it, rewind and start again.

But for me there are so many problems with this. It seems intrinsic to human life that we make mistakes and learn from them, and a huge part of this is doing it in a public forum. You need that external judgment for it to be a real learning experience. Having this device would make every moment seem like a dress rehearsal rather than real life. When I dissect why this appeals to me, I realise the rewind function would be more to preserve memories, have the ability to rewatch moments of my past; my first word, my first kiss, first day of school, the last moments with my grandfather. But then where do you draw the line? At what point does the past fully possess you and you become lost in it?

I also like the idea of pausing time, taking a break from it all. There is the relaxation aspect of it, but also the sense that you are doing something deliciously illicit. I feel like wanting to pause time and walk around in a suspended scene alone is such an only-child desire. Craving that solitary time that I’m used to. I feel like there is something vaguely (VAGUELY) poetic in that but most of all its just sad. Who wants to feel alone in a crowded room? Maybe this is the point of design fiction, to create something seemingly fantastical, but feel free to criticize it too, seeing if it we can realistically envision it in the real world.

Number one: The Point of View Gun from the Hitchhiker’s Guide.

sourced from http://www.empireonline.com/features/absurdly-cool-movie-weapons/p12

The Hitchhiker’s guide is one of my favorite books and its inventions and ideas could give me enough material to fill up the blog for the rest of the year. The knife that toasts your bread as it butters it, the Babel fish that, once inserted in the ear, allows you to understand any language (a concept adapted in Dr Who), and the real-life thinking cap (from in the film). As Adams describes, the Point of View Gun “conveniently, does precisely as its name suggests”, and allows whoever fires it to transfer their viewpoint onto someone else. As I look back over this blog, the majority of posts are me grappling with ideas outlined by Adrian, trying to understand where he is coming from. One zap from the gun and everything about the course would be clarified for me, and vice versa, he could see why I have issues with certain comments.

I’ve had relationships disintegrate from not being able to see inside the other person’s head, desperately wanting to build trust and convey feelings, but so many things getting lost in translation. I love the idea of wordless communication, a ‘weapon’ that allows someone to enter into your mindset immediately, like an automatic clarification and empathy trigger. Imagine how much easier pitches, relationships, assignments, negotiations would be if this kind of technology existed? I guess the flipside is, seeing things from someone else’s viewpoint doesn’t always make you empathise with them.

Things that didn’t quite make the list are the neuralyzer from Men in Black (for all those moments you get foot-in-mouth or make a bad impression, and you rewrite history so that, according the to others present, it never happened. Or, take the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind approach and wipe your own memory, eradicating all those unpleasant memories a break up leaves you with), the invisibility cloak, the “dinner pill”, which tastes and feels like a full meal but is just one pill, with none of the carbs the meal would usually have, teleportation, and cryogenic freezing that actually works. These have been left off my list because they are problematic for many reasons, but perhaps I can explore those at a later date.

Looking at the top three designs that would exist in my utopian world, I find it a little disturbing 2 of 3 encourage perpetuating solidarity, or obsessed with the past. Maybe these products don’t exist for a reason.

The concept of double loop learning was one that interested me. There is a saying that the definition of madness is repeating the same behavior and expecting different results. If single loop learning encourages you to change your behavior to modify the outcome, it would seem that going above and beyond that and challenging the assumption behind the initial action (double loop) would be the antithesis of madness. Which makes sense, it explains the sense of both freedom and direction (and un-insanity) I get when I question ideas and assumptions at have been informing the way I perform. Changing the way you think is exciting. It’s like that moment before you open a gift, and anything could be wrapped in that paper you hold in your hands. The possibility seems infinite.

Although little abstract, an example of the two learnings I thought of was dieting. The desired outcome is to be happy with your figure. The action usually involves cutting out food groups, detoxes, fasting, a buttload of vegetables, and kale smoothies. This behavior can achieve the goal, however, it the achievement is usually fleeting. The moment your will gives, so does your waist. A double loop approach would perhaps involve questioning why you want to look this way, or why you think a fad diet will achieve this for you. Maybe it entails questioning why you want to change, why are you aren’t happy in the first place.

Anyway, that’s great in theory and corny to read, but it’s not where I was planning on going.

The point is, I understand the concept of double loop learning, I appreciate it and I can apply it. But, as per usual, when I attempt to apply my logic or my knowledge of the world to this class, everything goes tits up.

I have one big questions when it comes to understanding and applying double loop learning in the context of Networked Media.

In this particular example:
Assumption = what you believe makes a good blog
Action = executing a blog that conforms to your notion of what makes a good blog
Goal = a good blog.

First I looked at what I thought made a good blog (outside the sphere of the networked media class). I think a good blog is engaging, is interesting stylistically (literarily and visually), tells me information I didn’t know, or hadn’t considered from that angle previously, has a sense of humour (not essential but it helps) and is addictive to read. For this subject, I believe a good blog addresses the key issues and ideas raised in class and in the “unlecture” and looks at them in a unique way, interacting with the ideas playfully, critically, philosophically. And yes recognize all of these descriptions are very vague. But even so, do I need to reevaluate them and the assumptions that lie behind them? Perhaps a great blog is informal, not based on course content and is largely situated outside of the networked media bubble. These are all approaches I am going to experiment with.
But there is a HUGE HUGE HUGE GAPING PROBLEM here.

In pretty much every ore example I could think of for double loop learning the outcome is directly measurable and apparent. Take the diet example, you’re happy with the way you look or you aren’t. You lose weight or you don’t. Your self esteem increases, or it doesn’t. Based on this, you can change your behaviour and change your assumptions too.The huge problem here is that I don’t know if my blog is good or not. I might think it is. I might be meeting my assumption of what a good blog is, executing it perfectly, have compliments streaming in from my peers and even those from outside the course. My mum might love it and my dog doesn’t sick up when I read it aloud. An international publishing house offers me a lucrative contract to keep pumping out my gems of wisdom and I become a millionaire. But when it all comes down to it, if Adrian doesn’t like it, I don’t get a good mark. It’s a simple as that. And the problem with that is that I don’t know how he feels toward it until I get that HD or that credit 10 weeks from now. It’ll be a smidge too late to apply this feedback, change my behavior + assumptions then because the mark has been given. It means that I’m perpetually in a loop of questioning, second guessing myself, changing, never settling on one style, constantly challenging my view of myself and my assumptions of what makes my writing good or bad. Being critical and analyzing your work is essential, I get that. But when there is no baseline, how do you improve?