Lame

It is entirely possible to fall in love, and get your heart broken in less than 24 hours.

Okstupid

I found this in my phone today, I remember writing it after I came home rather drunk and after a really bad okcupid date.

Have we lost the ability to make honest connections with other people or is what we do is just another way to get in another persons pants? I'm sick of having meaningless relationships with people I barely know and would rather be apart of something good and meaningful which would benefit each other. Who are we when we think that we come on a dating website just to be friends or just to fuck? This is a hypocracy and a big callous fuck on the idea of love. So what do we do? Be apart of the ass which the internet provides on its sex laden platter or truly fall for someone who likes us for our faults, admires us for our pleasantries and picks us up again when were down. I want someone who likes my idiosyncrasies, pushes me beyond my limits, is a muse, a best friend, my lover, and loves me for who I am. Where is my goddess? Where can I feel warm again? I honestly doubt its even possible.
Should I give up? Is it an impossible dream which I have no hope of obtaining?
She's there somewhere, my muse who smiles when I speak, gently caresses my arms and kisses me before I go to bed. She adores me as I do her.
Or she's with someone else, settling for who is available as most have. She's an idea, a dream of what a girl could be and something I more than likely will never have.
What do you know about the people around you? There are 8 million people in new york and how many of them are in good relationships? Ideal? Haha! That's a joke. Most I would think go through an 8 month stint which never amounts to anything. I envy those who have something truly wonderful in their lives. Maybe I'm bitter, maybe I'm idealistic and want something I will never truly have.
I mess up, and I don't even know it.
I want so badly to fall in love.
I wish sometimes it wasn't so hard for people to like me, or for me to like them.

**end**

Just thought I would share it with the world, secretly

what the what?

my life is weird right now.
I'm in a state of disillusion which I believe I need someone in my life. I feel kinda alone, yet full of people who love and care about me. Why would I feel this way if I'm full of people who care about me? I mostly think it's because I am admonished myself to believe that I need someone; Someone who will surprise me, respect me, cherish me, push me, sleep next to me, and be my best friend.
I'm hopeless, a bit sad and discouraged.
My brain hurts.

My Robot Body

When considering the question, "What is your definition of human-computer symbiosis and the cyborg?" The first couple of images that appear in my head are from Science Fiction, including Data and the Borg from Star Trek, City of Lost Children, Surrogates, Ghost in the Shell and the more popular characters like Darth Vader or Terminator.



So, after we get beyond the science fiction stereotypes, what do we really have? In my own opinion, I feel as though there are real life cyborgs and a very real human-computer symbiosis going on in our everyday life, and we seem to have a very beneficial relationship. At the time of Licklider's paper, how could he foresee the technological advances which have made our live more and more dependent on computer technology. Licklider states, "The hope is that, in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly, and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data." If you look at the computing advances, like the mass popularity and usage of the internet, hand held devices, and personal computing, there are very few who do not in some way use these computing devices in order to process information. Could these technologies be considered a human-computer symbiosis? I think that they do, iphones are not any use without their human, and humans (in some cases) can not perform their everyday work tasks without their iphone. This is an interesting relationship of man and machine and in some cases is disturbing, and in some is exciting, to see what is store for the future.
On the idea of cyborgs, Haraway explains that Cyborgs are cybernetic organisms, hybrid of machine and organism, and creatures of fiction and reality. Most believe that in fiction, they definitely exist, but do they in reality? Are people with defibrillators cyborgs? Did Data in Star Trek become a cyborg when the borg added a piece of human flesh to his arm? Moreover, was Data a cyborg when he turns his emotion chip on? When someone come home from war, and his or her legs have been amputated, and given new "robotic" legs is he or she then a cyborg? According to myself and Haraway, the answer would be yes.

So what do I think about all this mumbo jumbo? I think we're moving in a direction where technology is becoming more and more apart of our lives, and there's really no way that we can stop it. To keep up with everyone, and in a way the direction people are evolving, is to embrace technology and integrate it into our lives. My own grandmother emails me now, and realizes its a useful tool. When I die, I would like my brain cryogenically frozen, and maybe someday day in the future long after my body has died, I will awaken with an awesome robot body.

Here's one last thing for the road!

An Idealistic veiw of Internet Policy

When considering internet policy, it is good to consider, in my opinion the different ways in which governments are created, policed, and which succeed and which fail. I may be taking this at a reach, but like in the article by Langdon Winner, he discusses the idea that artifacts like the internet or bombs have political incentives. In that case, when discussing internet policy and how it should be used and distributed, should we consider it a new form of community which would then need its own government?
When I consider this, I believe that, although I am not happy to see it Capitalism may be the thriving force which will allow the internet to continue, as we can see already with companies like ebay, google, and apple making gazillions of dollars through internet capitalism and owning possible monopolies in their own piece of the internet.
With that in mind, when internet policy is considered, the regulations should be on the companies in my opinion who provide the services to the users of it, while the users themselves should be given a hypothetical "free reign" on what they do and how they go about it.
I believe some companies like w3schools.com and creativecommons.org are pushing in a direction which some would think that the internet is becoming to much "free reign" and "socialist." These companies in fact, are two which I believe are ones which should the example of how internet policy should be implemented. W3schools uses the internet as a teaching tool, providing information to its users of how to manipulate the web and discover new ways to use it. Creative Commons allows users to set open source availability to their creative pieces of work and allows for the promotion of arts and sciences, which laid down in the constitution is the very reason for copyright in the first place. On the opposite end companies like Disney are using their money to extend copyright terms beyond what I consider "a limited amount of time" before they are released into the public domain, which is another example of how if internet policy is similar to that of government law, would major corporations abuse their power in order to change the way the internet is used in order to benefit their own wallets? I think so.
Internet policy should be determined by the people and not how much money a corporation will make or the potential loss of money. Although my ideas may be considered idealistic, it is what I would like to see in my own perfect view of how the internet should be ran.

McDatabase

Databases as a whole affect the way people create media everyday. Databases structure and organize our information no matter if you are buying lunch or creating a sculpture made of a piece of marble. The database is the categorization and infrastructure, which these pieces of media (or food for my example) are intertwined. The largest database I feel now is Google. Google affects everyone, and anyone even if you are not online. Google categories people’s interests, search results, weather stats, books, just about anything. Articles written about a tribe of people who do not have Internet and have not touched civilization are put into the google database and are categorized. I design websites, and use databases to inspire my web design. For example you can go to Flickr’s Color Pickr and based on Flickr’s photo database select a specific color which to find images and create new media. The people who post these photos and categorize the colors are apart of this large database used freely by all who go to the website. Media by in large is created by databases, another example of this is the food industry. Food is mass produced, shipped in categories and presented to us in categories. If you end up at a McDonald’s (which I hope you don’t) you will see the categorization and database structure right in front of your eyes. Even further separated into smaller databases of categories if specific meals or value items. The database is used by librarians when shelving books, by a web programmer when adding metatags to allow for google and other web searches to find the information on your website, accountants use databases to structure money assets, photographers use databases to inspire them for new ways to take an image, and graphic designers use databases to create new designs for new “looks.” Although it may seem that an original idea may be behind a piece of art or a cheeseburger, I believe there is a database of information which is the basis for it all.

Just like everyone else, unique

In the Horkheimer and Adorno’s Essay, The Culture Industry the authors believe that “reproduction processes are necessary that inevitably require identical needs in innumerable places to be satisfied with identical goods.” This idea takes away from the individual, and makes each of us a clog in the bigger system. Individualism is seen as a risk, and by uses the same formulas over and over again, there is no error (hypothetically speaking.) With modern digital technology, the question is posed, are we straying from this idea of thinking or are we simply fitting in with the culture industry that will be an ever continuous cycle?
Technology has created for us new forms of media, such as blogs, webcasts, video chat sessions, youtube, google, and many many more hands on user oriented programs and applications which allow us, the users, to create our own media. Creating new media, and going outside this box of culture can be debated either way. Did the industry create culture or did culture create the industry? To be honest I’m not sure. We can look at viral videos for instance, something that the user creates something spectacular posts it online and by trying something new, is a success although straying from the principals in which the essay describes. According to the essay, “freedom to choose an ideology – since ideology always reflects economic coercion – everywhere proves to be freedom to choose what is always the same.” In fact the user who thought they were making something original is simply conforming to the media, which is presented to them, and therefore the culture industry. I believe that new ideas for new types of media are few and far between, to truly separate yourself from the culture industry is in fact risky, and more than likely would not be accepted by the people as a whole. I feel like all this new media is in fact just modifications of old media recycled and repackaged to seem new. Although, not only do I encourage but am enthusiastic to see if actual new forms of media can or will be produced in our age, but like ghosts, I’ll believe it when I see it.