Show and Tell - Circle Headquarters

After reading the beginning of the book, "The Circle," I found myself relating the company The Circle's headquarters to those of tech companies in Silicon Valley such as Apple and Google. The emerging tech industry continues to expand, with certain companies using the profits they have made to grow bigger and better. I chose Apple and Google as the two companies to showcase because the shape of Apple’s Headquarters reminded me specifically of the Circle (because the building is literally being molded into a circle) and Google’s Headquarters’ lifestyle reminded me of the lifestyle in “The Circle.” I presented two short videos to the class to show how Apple and Google are growing and taking over Silicon Valley.

The first video in class I showed centered around Apple's new $5 billion headquarters project, which is funny enough, in the shape of a circle. It has been dubbed by Silicon Valley folks as "The Spaceship."

The video in class showed the installation of the curved glass that went floor to ceiling around the majority of the building. I referenced the idea of panopticism, which we will be discussing at a future time in class - but the main idea is about internal surveillance. The circle shape provides the perfect form for panopticism to ideally function as a behavior modification device.  This idea relates to the book, "The Circle," through which Mae is punished for not being open enough and for not sharing all of the events in her daily life - which leads to this idea of being surveyed all the time. I thought the Apple HQ provided an interesting view into the future of tech companies and surveillance.

The second video I showed in class looked at Google Headquarters. I tried to show how much land Google encompassed in the video, as well as how much technology they have and what they are doing technologically in society. The idea of Google being a type of “campus” or “community” is supposed to make it a fun, friendly space. In “The Circle” they have dorms set up for people to live in on the headquarters campus so people never really have to leave. They literally live, breathe, and sleep their work. Going back to Google, I wanted to specifically note that Google took over other tech company spaces, which just means they are expanding their area around Silicon Valley. Also, Google has data on all of the Google searches worldwide, they have self-driving cars, one of their cars takes street view pictures....Google actually does a lot when you stop and think about it. On top of all that, they have e-mail accounts, as well as phone accounts now that they have merged with Android. 

This all makes me think that if one company were to take over it all - it would probably be Google. They have enough money, technology, and area to make it happen. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that in the coming years, Google takes over Silicon Valley. 

Meanwhile, we'll all still be napping carelessly away in Google's sleeping pods.

Show and Tell - "Member Berries"

I did my show and tell on a clip from South Park about member berries. In the clip, Randy explains the consequences of a civilization “membering” the good times. He explains to Garrison how member berries cause the users to remember all the good times from their past. Randy even shows how member berries caused the Roman empire to collapse, because they became so lazy and just membered all the good times. This relates to our class discussion about accelerationism and the writings of Thoreau. Thoreau talked about the simplicity of earlier years, which were brought up by the member berries. South Park is saying that the past wasn’t as good as we remember it, and returning to the past is no way to build a future. They imply that membering the good times is the reason why Trump was elected president. Another topic brought up by the clip is the remake. Randy claims that the new Star Wars was not as good as the old one, even though we want to think that it was. During class, we went into a discussion about what made the first Star Wars’ so special, and why the new one lacked that same distinguishing factor. This is kind of the culture remake. It’s hard for a remake to have the same sentimental value as the original. In an earlier episode of South Park, JJ Abrams remakes the national anthem in order to unite the nation. Much like the remake of Star Wars, this new national may seem like it’s doing good, but in reality is just causing us to falsely remember old times. Due to this, Randy claims that JJ Abrams is responsible for rigging the whole election, much to the surprise of Garrison (who is portraying Trump). I felt like this was a good clip for show and tell because South Park does an incredible job with social criticisms. They take real situations and turn them funny, but there is always an element of truth behind all of their stories. Obviously, there were no magical berries causing society to want to turn to the past (in terms of the election), but a lot of the people who voted for Trump were remembering the America that was. These people most closely share the thoughts of Thoreau, while Randy believe that civilizations must keep progressing and leave the past in the past. While many examples in South Park are extreme, they do bring up interesting talking points that can be interpreted in a number of ways. 

Progress for the Sake of Progress

In class over the past week, we have been talking about some pretty incredible recent technological advancements, such as self-driving cars and head transplants. This has gotten me thinking about the type of progress that we have been making lately and if it they is the kind of progress that is truly the most necessary.

According to the accelerationist point of view, the best way to improve society is a reckless pursuit of progress. In many cases, people believe that this reckless pursuit will lead to our own destruction. Since humanity began making such huge technological advancements, it has become clear that we have also been harming our planet. Blade Runner demonstrated society’s worries about the future; people have a general fear of technology and what it could do to us. This makes sense in some ways, for it is obvious that the developed world is doing some of the greatest damage to the planet. However, not making progress could do great damage as well. According to Hans Rosling, who was a professor of International Health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, the planet is at a huge risk because we have failed to develop the under-developed world. Communities that are poverty-stricken have the highest child mortality rates, which leads to them also having the highest birth rates. Family sizes in these countries are thus very large, because the parents cannot guarantee the survival of all of their children. These large family sizes and high birth rates are causing enormous population growth, threatening our planet’s resources. Rosling argues that by developing third-world countries and bringing people out of poverty, we can slow population growth and save Earth’s limited resources before it is too late.

Unfortunately, the advancements we are making may not be the advancements that are needed to help these poverty-stricken people. Like Rigel mentioned in class, most of our progress has been to help rich people. We spend so much money and intelligence on technology that does not benefit those who are the most in need. Perhaps this is simply because these advancements interest us more; perhaps it is because there is more money in “gadgets” like artificial intelligence and super computers than in programs to help the poor.

To truly help others and help the planet, we need to take big risks. We must completely rethink the way we do things and the types of advancements that we are making. This reminds me of a radical theory which my pastor has shared with us multiple times. He proposes that all research on chronic diseases and all projects related to new technologies should come to a complete stop. All of the brilliant people working on those things should instead be required to work on projects to bring food, clean water, and infrastructure to the poor. Likewise, he thinks that business students at the UA should be required to create business plans for under-developed communities instead of creating businesses for making money in the U.S. These ideas would require huge risks and would force people to make completely new kinds of advancements.

As Dr. Bertsch said, “What does all this have to do with media?” Thoreau argues in Walden that we may be just making progress for the sake of progress. He writes that although Maine and Texas can talk to each other, but they do not have anything important to say. We can now do things that we’ve never been able to do before, but why do them? What’s the point? Perhaps we are just making progress for the sake of progress. Unfortunately, by doing this we are neglecting those that are in real need of help. By making progress for the sake of progress, we may also be harming ourselves by failing to slow population growth and failing to preserve our planet’s resources. This is why it is crucial that we rethink the kinds of advancements that we are making in order to help each other and help ourselves.

Show and Tell - Autonomous Driving

A few days ago I did my Show and Tell about autonomous driving. The overall concept of autonomous driving is that the car will be given a software that will utilize machine and deep learning to teach itself from experience how to drive without a "bag of flesh" interacting with the motion of the car at all. For comprehension purposes, I think I should define what machine and deep learning are and where else they are used in our society. Machine learning is the study, development, and application of algorithms that improve their performance of tasks based on prior interactions. It is the key to making things that learn from experience and get “smarter” with use. Deep learning is a type of machine learning where the algorithm takes the form of a multi- layered neutral network compose of non-linear functions. This form of learning is insanely complicated but is how we get human reactions from our technology. Our smart phones use a form of deep learning by having the voice command and response system of Siri or Cortana or anything similar to that. The ability for a device to understand a human voice and then respond with a human voice is ultimately connecting our human language with a programmable language. Most people probably do not realize how difficult it is to accomplish deep learning, even in our technologically advanced society.

The video I showed was pulled from an article regarding how Tesla is going about applying autonomous driving to their vehicles. The main details are how they want to have their vehicles be completely autonomous by the end of 2017 and that they are utilizing machine learning when the car is set in shadow mode while still being driven by an actual person.

First, I want to focus on the year 2017. Google has been working on cracking autonomous driving since 2009 and is estimating it will have it by about 2021, along with a few other car companies. Four years is a huge difference when it comes to the world of technology considering new phones come out every year and laptops become obsolete after a just a couple. This is directly related to when we discussed Accelerationism in class and defined it as the “best way to improve society is not caution, but a reckless pursuit of “progress””. Autonomous driving would obviously have its benefits; there would be no more drunk driving, traffic flow would be significantly improved since the cars could communicate with each other, and, assuming the system was perfected, there would be absolutely no accidents at all. But honestly, these benefits are too good to be true. Autonomous driving will mature and become a fully functioning capability of most vehicles within probably the next 10 years but there are several issues that have to be considered with this advancement. The biggest problem? Our infrastructure. Our roads and bridges can’t even keep up with the number of cars we have on the road now. How are we to expect our government to provide enough money to completely alter the road system to accommodate for the phase in of autonomous vehicles with the phasing out of manual ones? The answer is that it will most likely not happen when we need it to. And how does this really connect with media? Well, more and more of our activities in life are becoming mediated. We have virtual reality and instead of going outside to play basketball, we decide to play a video game version of it instead.

Show and Tell - A Second a Day Video

Today we did our Show and Tell Presentation on the idea of the “A Second a Day” videos that have become very popular recently.  These videos are literally a snippet from everyday of your life for a year, or more.  This requires us to take a video of something everyday.  Although it sounds like a lot, in reality, it isn’t all that much because a lot of us use Snapchat everyday and these videos are just a compilation of what we do on Snapchat.  The girl that made this specific video even said that she had a hard time picking just one second from each day, and some days she chose a few.  This demonstrates how much we document our lives, along with living them.  Taking pictures or videos of ordinary, daily things has become very prevalent.  The biggest example of that would probably be taking pictures of food.  What seems like an irrelevant part of most of our days has become the subject of many photos.  What we were focusing on with this video was the fact that we are always focused on documenting things in our lives, that sometimes we forget to actually experience the events first hand.

On the other hand, this is very unique and interesting idea to keep memories to look back on.  In a way, it is the new form of keeping a journal or diary.  Before, people used to write a little bit about each day in their diary, but now we all take pictures and videos to document our day instead.  So when you look at it that way, it serves more of a purpose and seems worthwhile.  I think there is a good balance between doing it as a memory item versus constantly videoing everything in our lives.  Doing a little bit each day isn’t terrible, it’s when we overload our daily lives with pictures, videos, and social media sharing that there becomes a loss in value.

We then contrasted this video with a similar video that was trying to send a message about domestic violence.  This video had a completely different tone and purpose than the first video.  The first video was for fun and was used more as a memory keepsake, but the second video served to educate people by showing the effects of domestic violence.  This video used powerful images to convey their message.

We also talked about the two videos together and how if the girl in the first video were to have had a bad event take place in her life, would she continue making the video, would she just not share it, or would she somehow document it?  When I thought about this I thought of if someone close to you died, most of us probably wouldn’t feel like taking a video each day for awhile.  Or if we did, we probably wouldn’t share that.  We tend to only share the best sides of ourselves on social medial and for others to view, which means we don’t always share the negative things in our lives.

But going along with that, the girl that made this video seemed to always be doing things everyday, having fun, and always hanging out with people.  I think that relates to the fact that she is college-aged, which is usually when most people have “the most fun in life.”  We aren’t 100% burdened with all the responsibilities of an “adult” life yet.  If a middle-aged adult were to make this video, I think it would have a very different tune because not every day is a great, fun day when you have lots of other responsibilities.  I think another different perspective would also be if someone recorded the same second of every day and put those together.  That would be a more realistic example of the lives we all live, instead of always picking out the best second of everyday.

Here are the links to both the videos we watched:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVcDLXOFUnk 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxT4HaE-ZdM 

Concert Without a Phone

In some of our in-class discussions, the topic of snapchat (or any type of video recording) during concerts has come up. I for one am guilty of going to many concerts and posting the performances of my favorite songs on my snapchat or other forms of social media for my followers to see. Interestingly, when I see other people's seemingly excessive posts of their own personal concert experiences on their social media accounts, I always seem to skip past them. So why do we do this? I'm not sure why it is that we so often choose not to live in the moment, in hopes that the experience will be the same when we watch our videos at a later time, but after going to my favorite rapper/singer Childish Gambino's concert last year, I got a whole new perspective on why it's more important to simply be in the moment and experience everything around you without broadcasting it to everyone else.

After disappearing from the media for almost 3 years, Childish Gambino (Donald Glover) tweeted to the world that he would be creating an experience for his fans that would consist of 6 small-scale shows in one weekend (but you could only choose one) which would be his only live performances in 2016. Given that it would fall on my birthday weekend I immediately decided I couldn't miss out on this opportunity and simultaneously convinced my best friend to make the weekend trip to Joshua Tree, California with me. Upon purchase, Gambino didn't release very much information about the event except the app you needed to get in,  the location of the event, a message for concert-goers to wear the color blue and the fact that he would be performing his entire upcoming album that wasn't going to be released until 3 months after the concert titled Awaken, My Love. When September 3rd finally arrived we made the 9 hour trip to California with no idea of what to expect that night. Upon arriving at Joshua Tree National Park where the concert was held we checked in and explored the grounds. There were many tents set up where some people chose to spend the night (you had to be 21 so I didn't get to do that), food trucks, merchandise tents, a movie screen where he would be premiering his new show Atlanta to all concert-goers, and a huge white dome in the middle of it all which is where the concert itself would be. There were rumors circulating throughout the grounds that no phones were allowed in the dome, but I wasn't completely sure how that was going to work until much later that night.

We ended up standing in line for 3 hours before our show was scheduled to begin so we could be front row, talking to people from all over the country who had traveled here just like us for this new kind of concert experience, until it was finally time to go in. Before we were allowed entrance to the dome itself, two levels of security patted everyone down and required you to give them your phone and any other small personal belongings which they would then lock in a small magnetic bag that you could hold on to, but there was really no way to open it until you left after the performance. Initially, I was pretty bummed because I was about to be front row for one of my favorite artists and had no way to document it for everyone else to see. However in hindsight, the fact that Gambino forced us to be in the moment is what made the concert that much better. During the performance, the dome had the feel of a planetarium with images being projected all around which made it a very visual experience and important for concert-goers to simply be in the moment and take in everything around you. It was also neat to look around and only see other people's hands in the air dancing to the music without any phones. At any other concert, you're surrounded by hands holding their glowing phone screens, but obviously here that wasn't possible. The main reason behind this was probably because he didn't want anyone to leak his new music (even though I heard a few people here and there managed to cut their phones out of their bags somehow to try to capture videos without getting caught by security) but nonetheless, being able to experience the music without constantly checking my phone every 10 seconds and worrying if my snapchat was going to post and seeing everyone else around me simply vibe to the music was a different experience than any other concert I've been to before.

After the concert, all the people we had met before the performance met back up together to discuss what we had experienced. We all talked about how we wished we could've been able to take pictures and videos of everything we experienced to show everyone we knew, but realized that if we had access to our mobile devices, the 2 hour concert would not have had the same effect. From the visuals projected on the dome around us, to all the different instruments, and bright, colorful tribal outfits worn on stage, none of these things would've had the same effect on us if we had all been staring at our phones. Therefore, looking back this atmosphere Childish Gambino created was kind of genius in the fact that this was something completely unheard of for an artist of his magnitude, especially that of a rapper who used to be very social media present. Forcing fans to simply be in the moment is something I feel like more artists should do in the future, in order for their fans to get the full effect of the music that they work so hard to create.

That being said, when I have gone to concerts since then, I think of how much better the experience was when I wasn't more focused on a little handheld screen rather than what was happening right before my eyes. What is also neat, is that Childish Gambino did release a 360 degree VR experience of his opening song for anyone to watch through the PHAROS app that he released alongside with the concert, so that people who went can relive at least some of their experience and for anyone who was unable to go to get a glimpse into what PHAROS was like. Another cool thing I realized about the VR experience is when you turn the "camera" to look at the crowd you can see that not one person has a phone in their hand and all eyes are fixated on the artist himself.

Popular music and fashion website "TheFADER" released a few articles giving further insight on their experience of the concert and the atmosphere which are linked here:

\http://www.thefader.com/2016/09/07/childish-gambino-pharos-festival-review-donald-glover

http://www.thefader.com/2016/09/07/childish-gambino-pharos-photos

And there is also a youtube video I found for easier access to the 360 degree VR experience (video works best through smartphones) as well here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coWcTgU5PZ4