my contributions to wikipedia

Form and content as applied to televisions, and actual TV shows, is an idea which is always changing, much like how form and content itself is always changing. Since television is a relatively new invention compared to many other things which we use today in our everyday lives, the form of a television is still in an infant stage. The TV’s of the past were big, heavy things that were extremely expensive for their time and it was rare for there to be a TV in an ordinary household. If you had a TV in the 1950’s, you were in the minority. Now, if you do not have multiple TV’s in your house, you are in the minority. TV’s are getting bigger as far as the screen is concerned, but they are very thin and many can be hung on a wall like a poster, so all of the dead weight of TV’s of yesteryear is no longer an issue. The form of a TV has rapidly developed over the last 60 years or so and does not seem to be slowing down. The content of TV has developed just as much, if not more, than the form and actual hardware of a television. In the past, the content of TV was minimal. Most televisions only received 6 or 7 channels and most of them dealt with world news and other serious topics. Now, the content is much more elementary with channels that show almost anything which will draw an audience. People nowadays watch TV to be entertained, as opposed to the past where people watched television to be informed. People do still watch TV to be informed, but the percentages are rapidly moving away from information and toward entertainment and recreation. Things like Comcast Digital Cable which offer upwards of 1000 channels allow for almost anything to be aired and make it difficult for a person to not be able to find something desirable.

Pale Fire

The first thing which I feel obligated to tell you before I begin my response is that I am not the biggest poetry reader in the world. I never really understood the point of saying something in a way that was so hard to understand instead of just coming right out and saying exactly what you think. Poetry is a little too roundabout for my taste.
However, one thing which I usually am into are novels, and part of this question included what we think the purpose of a novel is. I believe that the main purpose of a novel is simply to tell a story. There can be many different kind of novels, fiction or non-fiction, and stories such as comedy or science fiction or a love story, but in the end, novels basically just tell stories.
In my opinion, Pale Fire is not unreadable, but its damn close. I tend to get very discouraged with readings if I do not fully understand them right away, so it took a lot of effort to get through this one. I do not see myself trying to read all of it, Spook Country was hard enough. While I was reading I wasnt really focusing on how postmodern it was because I was mostly trying to just understand the meaning of it, a task which I do not feel I was successful at.
I feel like the foreword was a little too long. Forewords are always too long and this one seemed particularly dragged out to me. Like I said before, I do not think that this was unreadable, but I also wouldnt call it a work of genius, at least not yet. maybe my opinions will change once we are in class and I learn more about it from discussion, but right now I would have to say the this is none of the above.

group 1 response

Overall, I feel that group 1 did a pretty good job with their presentation. Copyright laws can be confusing for anyone, so to try to explain them in a short period of time to a group of people who knows very little about them as well is no easy task. As far as postmodernity goes, their connection to it was a little weak in my opinion because just because there are new ways of sharing things and new ways of stealing things, such as music, does not mean that it is postmodern.
I am in agreement that these new ways of stealing make it easier for people to get away with it, and that this is the reason why we se so much more of it nowadays. Things in the field of stealing music and copyright laws are evolving just like anything else in life is evolving.
I think that the way the presentation was given could have been a little better and more organized. I think that the use of both video and powerpoint is good, but to switch back and forth so many times was not ideal in my opinion. I also think that they focused a little too much on music and not as much on copyright laws as applied to everything.
1)Do you feel that copyright laws should be weaker, stronger, or are they good as they are now?
2)The penalties for copyright infringment are pretty harsh, do you think they should be weakened, strengthened, or left alone?

form and content

The difference between form and content is not something which I am particularly knowledgeable about, but I would have to guess that form is the way in which content is presented, and content is what is actually being presented. As for youtube, I would have to say that it is modern in some ways and postmodern in others. The reason it is modern is because it is simply videos of people doing things, but it is postmodern because of the way it is presented to people. Youtube is video sharing from person to person and is not professionally done, making it postmodern because anyone can do it. In this case I would say that the content of youtube is modern because it is just video, but the form of youtube and the way it is presented is postmodern.
As for the Shakespeare sonnet, when you change the words around, you do not change the form because it is still a sonnet and in the classic sonnet form with 4 lines and all that good stuff, but the content is nowhere near what it was before. The original sonnet makes perfect sense and can be read fluently and understood by anyone with a 5th grade reading level, but when you change the words into alphabetical order, it does not make any sense, to anyone. I would argue that changing the form from the original sonnet to a sonnet where all of the words are just in alphabetical order is just a stupid practice with no real purpose. The only reason why anyone would do that is to try to cause unnecessary confusion amongst the readers of the sonnet. It doesn’t solve anything so why not just leave it as it is, accept it as one of the works of a great historical writer, and move on? There’s no need to change things just for the sake of argument.

response to group 3

1. As far as postmodernity goes with group 3's project, they had an entire page of their website dedicated to explaining how it connects to postmodernity. I think that one sort of underlying connection to postmodernity is how the presentation was actually presented with each individual sitting at a different computer viewing an interactive website. The lack of a very direct person to person communication is a very postmodern idea.
2. A few examples from their presentation that support their claim are all of the videos that demonstrate flash mobs. However, I feel that there were way too many video examples in the presentation. I think that it would have been more productive to focus more on what a flash mob is instead of just feeding us a massive amount of random flash mob videos to try to pass the time.
3. Looking back, would you have still had us go to the library and check a book out and give it right back, or would you come up with another idea that might be a better example of a flash mob?
Would any of you ever want to personally be envolved in a legit flash mob with a lot of people that went around doing random things, or do you think that the whole thing is just a waste of time?

response to group 4

1. The only thing which I did not like about the presentation was in the video where all of the little blurbs in articles were highlighted. The reason I did not like this is because all of them were changed so fast that i did not have time to actually read what they said. For all I know they could have just highlighted random paragraphs in random articles. They related to postmodernity by saying that there is not much emphasis on the high and low ground and therer is more emphasis on the middle. Also, now everyone can connect with anyone through the internet instead of having one person connect with many.

2. One example which I thought would be good for this project before, I even saw that it was in it, was the family with the balloon in Colorado. That is a prime example of a family pulling a stunt to try to get noticed and using the fact that they knew the entire country would cover it and feel sympathetic about it if they said that their son was in the balloon. Another example which supports the group's position are all of the random videos on youtube which show people doing stupid, sometimes even painful, things just to try to get noticed. All of those videos are prime examples of poeple just trying to get noticed and have their 15 minutes, or 15 seconds, of fame.

3. My two questions are kind of on the personal level, they are as follows:
Do any of you personally want to be famous?
Would you personally rather be infamous or not remembered at all?

3 videos response

In the first video with Will Ferrell, it is obvious how this would reach a younger audience. Everyone knows how funny Will Ferrell is if you have ever seen Anchorman, Step-Brothers, or any of the other hilarious Will Ferrell movies, so it is not hard to see why a younger audience would want to watch this video, even if it is speaking about a not so funny topic.

In the second vidoe, we're number 37, the content is presented to you in sort of a song form with a very fast paced, uptempo feel to it. In this day in age, people have such short attention spans and are easily distracted, so a slow documentary type presentation would not be nearly as effective, especially to the younger generation. Also, I feel that this video is almost the definition of postmodernity because it is a self-made video which a man has created and is now spreading around the world without the help of a major filming company. The ability to do something like this is a very postmodern idea.

The last video is pretty much the complete opposite of what I said was good about the first two videos. The first two were short, sweet, and to the point, but the last one required a lot more time than I would normally spend watching a video. That short attention span idea comes back into play because there are not many people, including myself, who are willing to sit there and watch a youtube video which is almost 10 minutes long. Also, I do not feel taht this video is really postmodern in any way because it was basically just people talking with nothing really catchy about it that would make me remember it. I believe that the information in the video is useful, but I think that it was simply presented to us in the wrong way.

chunk 5, question 4, 5th response

www.whoyoucallingaskeptic.files.wordpress.com

www.mapmongolia.com/images

Before attempting this question I had never even heard of the Mongolian Death Worm, so I decided to do this question so I could possibly learn about it. Here is some basic information which I was able to find simply by going on Wikipedia.

The Mongolian Death Worm is a cryptid purported to exist in the Gobi Desert. It is generally considered a cryptozoological creature; one whose sightings and reports are disputed or unconfirmed.It is described as a bright red worm with a wide body that is 0.6 to 1.5 meters (2 to 5 feet) long.In general, scientists reject the possibility that such mega-fauna cryptids exist, because of the improbably large numbers necessary to maintain a breeding population, and because climate and food supply issues make their survival in reported habitats unlikely.The Mongolian name is олгой-хорхой (olgoi-khorkhoi) where olgoi means large intestine and khorkhoi means worm, so full name means "intestine worm" because it is reported to look like the intestine of a cow. It is the subject of a number of extraordinary claims by Mongolian locals such as the ability of the worm to spew forth sulfuric acid that, on contact, will turn anything it touches yellow and corroded, which would kill a human, and its ability to kill at a distance by means of electric discharge.

From what I have read, I think that Gibson uses a Mongolian Death Worm in “Spook Country” in order to represent fear of an object which you do not know what it is, or fear of something which you are not even 100% certain exists. For Hollis, she is living in fear every hour of everyday because she has all of these people telling her what to do and what to believe, but they are all asking her to believe them based on good faith and without providing any hard proof, so she has no idea what to do or who to believe. She thinks that she should be afraid of Bigend because he might have been telling her lies the whole time, but it is that uncertainty which keeps bringing her back to Bigend because he could have been telling her the truth the whole time. All in all, Hollis’ life is filled with uncertainty and people telling her to do things and just expecting her to do it. It is almost as if Hollis is not in control of one thing in her life, a fact which she, and really any human being, hates.

Chunk 4, Question 2, 3rd response

Product placement being demonstrated for Coca Cola on the popular television show American Idol

Product placement is something which has unfortunately become a major part of our everyday life. Everywhere you go, whether you are walking down the street or just surfing on the internet, you are bombarded with annoying advertising ploys. Some feel that Gibson talking specifically about Volkswagons and not just about cars is his way of promoting Volkswagons, however I do not feel that way.
The book “Spook Country” is about the future and postmodernity, and if product placement and advertising have become such a big part of life today, can you imagine how big of a part of life it will be in the future? I feel that when Gibson talks about Volkswagons specifically, I feel that he is just trying to give the reader a clear idea of what he is talking about in order to make his difficult writing style a little easier to understand, especially for readers like myself who are not too experienced with trying to decipher texts.
As I stated, I do not feel that Gibson is trying to promote Volkswagon when he mentions it in the novel, but to me, when product placement gets out of hand, it is one of the most annoying things in the entire world. One thing that I really look forward to and enjoy watching every year is the X-Games, and if I could find one dirt bike rider who did not have an advertisement for Monster energy drinks or Red Bull, he would automatically become my favorite X-Games athlete.
If the product placement tactic is something subtle, such as a person drinking a Pepsi in a movie, that does not bother me because it just seems like a part of everyday life, but when a product is almost being forcefully placed into my brain, all that does is make me not want to buy the product, which is exactly the opposite of what the company is trying to accomplish.

Chunk 3, question 3, 5th response

From what I could find, steganography is a way of hiding data within another piece of data. Some people may confuse steganography with cryptography, but in reality these two methods are very different. While cryptography is used to make something unreadable to a third party, steganography’s goal is to hide data from a third party completely, much more private that cryptography. The one thing that is most scary about steganography than anything else is the fact that an ordinary person is not supposed to know that it exists, so someone could be planning the next major terrorist attack right in front of our eyes and we would have no idea or defense mechanism against it.
http://www.garykessler.net/library/fsc_stego.html
In the book, Chumbo describes his way of using steganography. He says that using iPods to hide information and transfer potentially harmful information is very useful because a person is a lot less likely to check an iPod for steganography that they are to check a laptop or something else much bigger than an iPod. I was very confused on how he might achieve this because I am not 100% sure what Chumbo says he puts on these iPods. Does he just put songs in a particular order that signify a message, or does he record other things and just put it on an iPod? I believe that Chumbo is using steganography to tell people, or at least lead people on, about where the containers are and what is inside of them, but I don’t think he tells anyone the truth, and in reality, he is the only one who knows about the containers.
Steganography could have very easily been used in the planning of the 9/11 attacks, and since this is a post 9/11 book, I find it very hard to believe that a concept like steganography finding its way into Gibson’s book is a coincidence.

Spook Country, section 2, question 4, third response,,,, i think??

In chapter 29, Gibson makes a lot of interesting points about the war on terrorism and America’s role in the war on terrorism. Milgrim says that if you are scared of a terrorist, you essentially are letting the terrorist win because that is what a terrorists goal is, to “terrorize” you. Personally, I would have to say that I agree with Gibson on this point because a terrorist, while he/she is a very dangerous person, a terrorist is simply that, one person, so how much “damage” can one single terrorist really do? There is no such thing as a person who is bigger or more important or more dangerous than a country, so the idea of being deathly afraid of a terrorist is relatively unthinkable to me, especially since the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack are so minute, as minute as the chances of winning the lottery, which Gibson also points out in the text.
Also, I have to disagree with the notion that Gibson is trying to make a real-life political statement by having this scene as a part of “Spook Country.” I think that Gibson is trying to demonstrate Milgrim’s views about the war on terrorism, not his own. It is very possible that Gibson does agree with the view of fearing a terrorist being pointless, and the idea that if a nations laws are situational, that nation has no laws, but I feel that in this situation he was simply trying to go in-depth with the feelings of the characters in his novel. Gibson seems like a very professional person to me, so I feel that if he had a problem with something the government was doing he would find the proper forum to say so, he would not make a backhanded statement in one of his novels to display his unhappiness.

Vikings-27 49ers-24, an amazing finish as Favre does it again and snatches victory from the jaws of defeat with a 32 yard TD pass to Greg Lewis with 2 seconds left to win the game, Minnesota 3-0.

Spook Country Question #2

Personally, I feel that Gibson uses specific product names in “Spook Country” in order to make the story seem more believable. If he were using product names that were made up or simply not using product names at all, readers would have a harder time following, but when you read the word “Bluetooth” or “Ipod” or ‘Lego” or “Astroturf”, these are items which the typical person is familiar with and can easily relate to.
While looking at the webpage for the Mondrian hotel in Los Angeles I was struck by how “modern” this motel appears to be. A good amount of the furniture is very curvy and modern looking. This hotel is very pricy, not to mention the extremely good looking girls they have posing on every page of the website.
On the other hand, the Standard Hotel in Los Angeles, while still very adequate looking, in my opinion, pales in comparison to the Mondrian. It still has that curvy modern look, but the rooms do not appear to be as big. The prices are also significantly lower, which may be exactly what someone is looking for, but when renting a hotel room, you get what you pay for, so a cheaper room usually means a worse room.
I feel that using modern technology terminology and including hotels and technological items that exist in real life helps Gibson’s cause. However, some people, maybe more of the older generation, would say that using modern terminology is bad because it confuses them when he mentions an Ipod or something that they do not know what he means, but figuring out what some of these items are can simply be achieved by looking at a computer for 5 minutes. Even with those people in mind, they are a small minority of the general public in today’s world, so therefore using modern terminology is a bigger plus than it is a minus.

william gibson info

William Gibson, an only child, lost both of his parents before the age of 18, so at an early age he was virtually on his own. He is from Conway, SC, a town which I have oddly enough actually been to, but in 1967 he moved to Canada in order to avoid the Vietnam War draft. "Spook Country" is a novel written by Gibson in 2007. "Spook Country" deals with the issue of privacy and the notion that no one is safe and could be being followed or watched. This is a topic that most people will tend to shy away from because they don't like to think about things like that, but it seems as if Gibson takes this challenge head on. I am very much looking forward to reading this novel and being envolved in some very interesting class discussions.

Vikings 27 Lions 13, Minnesota 2-0, you can look forward to more Vikings updates in the future.

My digital life, or lack thereof

For a 19 year old college student, I do not use modern technology as much as you might think. I have a cell phone which I have with me all day, but it is not one of those fancy ones which you can get the internet and all types of other stuff on it, I use my alarm for texting, calls, and an alarm almost exclusively. I have a laptop which I use to go on facebook and play games, and of course, to do homework for BHP. The TV in my room is on almost constantly, but that soesnt mean that I am always watching it. I really don't play video games too often. I feel that I might be as technologically inept as any college student on the planet, I have an Ipod, but I havent used it in 3 years. Most of these new inventions go right over my head.

Postmodernity definition and example

According to www.thefreedictionary.com, postmodernity can be defined as follows: Of or relating to art, architecture, or literature that reacts against earlier modernist principles, as by reintroducing traditional or classical elements of style or by carrying modernist styles or practices to extremes. In this definition, I feel that the major point is that postmodernity, whether it is taking the norm to an extreme, or if it is going 100% opposite of what the norm is, postmodernity is always something which deviates from the norms.

When I think of postmodernity, the first things that comes to mind are what humans view as the future. For example, a tv show like The Jetsons, which is a very futuristic view of what the earth might be like in the distant future is what I think postmodernity is.