get with the program!

of all the frustrating things to be upset about post-breakup, here's one i never expected:


my phone must have an algorithm for frequently used words, because every time i type "been" it auto-inserts "Ben" instead. a source of endless daily sadness. if i can stop myself from thinking about him, my phone will unforgivingly, unfailingly remind me when i least need it.

foiled by technology, again!

RIP, Steve Jobs

here in Silicon Valley, the news of Steve Jobs's passing hit us all like an earthquake. ripples and jolts of shock and dismay. the news of his death coming only a few weeks after the shock of his resignation as CEO, due to his ailing health.

i know very little of what Steve Jobs was like as a man, but i know he changed our world and the way we lived in it with the power of his ideas. there are traces of his influence all around us, whether we like it or not, and his presence in so many aspects of our modern world make it impossible to not feel impacted by the fact that even such a brilliant and valuable man did not receive the care he needed to overcome cancer. with all that Jobs and his team were able to do and accomplish with him at the helm, it's viciously cruel that he would die so young (only 56) from cancer. whether you're a Mac or PC, it's terribly sad.

just think: as the news is breaking, thousands upon thousands of internet users are taking to their smart phones, their iPads, their Macs (and all the derivative devices thereof), and tweeting, video conferencing, posting to facebook, blogging, etc. all of those actions were touched, influenced, and forever changed by this man and his ideas.

RIP, Steve. and thanks for everything.

Steve Jobs, "How to live before you die."

transhumanism? thoughts on our robot futures.

litmus test: is this frightening? Y/N

remember when people used to worry that the future would be bleak because we'd be captured and enslaved by a superior robot race? remember how ridiculous that sounds? now, remember how simple life was when everyone used landlines (actual pre-planned play dates! if you wanted to have a date you actually had to plan and keep your promises!) and dial-up internet was new wave? remember when Cyber Monday didn't exist? remember when calling an office line or a toll-free number meant waiting on the line to speak to an operator, before interfacing with voice-recognition software and keypad menus (to then be put on hold to speak to someone) became commonplace to modern existence? even i remember those days.

as technology advances, computers become faster, more efficient, more accurate and (more significantly) cheaper at performing the jobs formerly held by humans. imagine a DMV line made expedient and seamless by a wall of computers instead of bulky attendants and clerks. how sleek an LCD screen can be compared to the bulbous inconsistency of humankind!

technological advancements occur at increasingly rapid paces. perhaps out-pacing evolution and the rate of human biological development. it's no wonder a consistently frightening convention of fiction and fantasy is the image of an inanimate object coming to life and possessing the ability to move, change, and destroy. [Cf. Poltergeist, Chuckie, kids' cartoons(?)]

what with technology being (and becoming) what it is, it's expected that machines and computers will come to replace (and out-perform) human employees in many current jobs. while it may come as no surprise that toll takers, for example, have been replaced, the machines are coming for YOUR job next. librarians, postal workers, Blockbuster staff recommenders, watch out! it might seem impossible for computers to perform the jobs of doctors, lawyers, poets and teachers, those jobs that require a unique human brain with the capacity for judgement, critical thinking, creativity, and insight. but consider this: travel agents no longer exist because you can Wiki-travel any destination for yourself. who's to say WebMD won't come to replace professional medical advice in the future? i've already witnessed a robot performing the jobs of a lab assistant in a hospital, couriering blood tests from one medical wing to the other:

and while it takes a special grasp of language, its lyricism and rhythm, to compose the most compelling poetry and prose, randomized text generators can create a free association of words reminiscent of poetics. podcasts of lectures and language lessons can provide an educational experience without the hallowed walls of an educational institution.

before i get too Glen Beck on you all, i guess what i'm trying to say is "no kidding the job market sucks right now." i may have sparkling credentials and an imperturbable work ethic, but so do hundreds of thousands of other jobless applicants. and still, computers will never unionize for health insurance and better pay and better working conditions.

as long as we keep finding ways to replace human workers with computers, and as long as the human population keeps rapidly growing, the gap between job availability and job need will be ever-expanding. kids will continue working on the illusion that they can go to school and work hard and accrue millions of dollars of debt and emerge gainfully employed in the end. only to find a life of depressing retail work and fast-food service await them. back to adolescence, back to where you started. no wonder people are turning to television and Chatroulette and endless escapism. endless, vicious cycle of technology-dependence. and yet, all of us were quaking in our homes on the eve of Y2K, clutching our piles of firewood for strength, hoping the computers would survive the wipeout. shucks, we missed an opportunity.

take the initiative

i dreamt last night that i discovered an old forgotten live session of Bruce Springsteen's, in which he plays a set of 11-13 songs, with lots of soaring violin and a video of someone hang-gliding or flying an open top plane. lots of blue, yellow and green. and the music, though beautiful and folksy, was less like Bruce and more like The Frames. but it was beautiful and the first song was called "Take The Initiative" and i coveted it as part of my growing Bruce collection.

in the dream i was Bruce's tour assistant, but in the form of Portia de Rossi. the Boss was playing a set and i had to stop him to tell him there was someone trying to bomb his tour bus. the Bruce came right off the stage and tackled the terrorist and beat him with his own (the terrorist's) golf clubs. end of story! Bruce for President!

i then woke up at 8:40, which is kinda early for me, feeling like it was really late and i must be dreaming still, because i felt so well-rested.

---

as part of my new year's resolutions and my birthday-initiated self-reform, i am making a conscious effort to make tv and internet less of a daily habit. i think i've grown too accustomed to frittering away my days with these technological distractions and have grown tired of reaching the end of my day realizing i haven't done anything productive, haven't created anything or bettered myself. the worst and most embarrassing time-suck is Facebook. yesterday, i decided i was going to do it, i was finally going to just delete my account and be done with it. it's super annoying, omnipresent, ever-controlling, and a constant source of anxiety (what are people on the net seeing of me? who is looking at it? is there something that could prove deterrent for future employers?) and yet so many of my friends use it that to delete it makes me worry i'll be left out. gah, the trials and tribulations of our modern existence!

so, as of today (and last night too) i have been limiting my Facebook time to ONCE a day. that means i only get to check it once, and after that i can't until the next day. and, i only get to check my notifications, and i only get to approve friend requests, not go seeking them out on the internet. it probably seems silly and trivial, but i think it will help wean me off of this artificial community and start creating real relationships with people again. and, my hope is that after doing this for weeks, i can get it down to just checking Facebook on fridays, and then after that, maybe i'll get down to just once a month, and then, inşallah, maybe i'll be able to delete it altogether from my life.

i'm also trying to limit my use of the internet and tv to about 5 hours combined, which is actually a LOT of time spent on these machines when you say it out loud, but that should say something about my prior habits. the average american spends 5 hours of the day just watching tv and roughly 250 billion hours per year with the idiot box. i'm trying to shave off a little of that time and make it more meaningful. i guess we'll see how it goes but i'm hoping it makes for a happier and less aimless 2011.

welp, my hour's almost up so i should get going!

-stephan!e

oh, and if you're wondering how much time the average american spends watching tv, these nifty scientific reports proved illuminating:

American Time Use Survey Summary

Television & Health

living in the digital age

fyi, anyone born post-1977 is a "digital native" and anyone pre-1977 is a "digital immigrant."

this video is terrifying.



this makes me rethink the "digital divide": my students may not have access to computers at home, but at least someone in their home has a smart phone with internet access. the digital world at their fingertips, and not a clue how to use it. frightening.

industrial camouflage!

found this mind-blowingly fascinating article about industrial camouflage, a defensive method employed during World War II to disguise potential targets from enemy gunfire. industrial camouflage involved a number of different tactics, such as shrouding a steel plant in smoke, painting the gold dome of a state capital building gray, and the most elaborate of these, cityscape invisibility cloaks! using plywood and chicken wire, military defense built 3D models of suburban neighborhoods that sat on top of existing buildings.

uncloaked:

cloaked:

setting up:

on the street:

a postmodern schooling-related rant (kinda)

i had to write a "blog" post for my grad class and this is what i spat:

These authors seem to be in conversation regarding the interconnectedness of the school and society, and the unique role the school plays as a social institution. Provenzo opens up his chapter discussing the interconnection from a postmodern view. He goes on to explain that a postmodern perspective is one that takes culture and history as a context for changes and phenomena that may occur or be observed. I found his discussion of technology particularly interesting. In page 9 of his introduction, he discusses the importance of seeking new perspectives as our culture and society are redefined. That is, coming to consider those things we once took for granted to the point of being invisible, questioning our most basic assumptions of how things are and whether they need to be this way, and what makes them that way to begin with. His discussion of technology, its advantages and conveniences in our modern age, but also its downfalls, rang particularly strong with me. Take technology as an example of how education has sought to adapt to the changing times, but with, what I believe, are drastic results. In this day and age, students are constantly plugged into something: they surf the web to talk to friends, everyone has a phone that text messages as well as sends photos, they know how to use video technology and post videos to YouTube. Instead of talking to people face to face, or going outside to play games with other children, modern age school children are retreating online to talk to others through virtual mediums, and to play Capture the Flag on shoot-them-up video game simulations. Their hyper-reality translates into a constant need for stimulation and entertainment. Teaching practices have come to mirror this change in our children's interactive patterns: best practices now incorporate multiple learning modes, activities, connections to children's knowledge and experiences (frequently manifested as connections to their virtual realities - online games, movies, etc.). Even the drastically increased use of technology in teaching itself, the move away from low-tech transparencies and overheads to digital projectors, document cameras, Smart Boards reflects the change in the times but also the change in needs of our student populations. As a student in public schools, I never once saw more than a chalkboard or overhead used during instruction, never once played a game to "trick" me into liking math, and never had to have teachers explain mathematic conversions using elaborate metaphors involving superheroes to get me to understand or find interest in the subject. I was learning because I enjoyed the raw subject matter itself, and not the fancy instructional tricks my teacher could pull in a one hour class. But, modern day instruction requires hooks, and activities, and even "collaborative conversation" moments to be effective. When did we have to start teaching children to talk to one another and get along? This begs me to wonder, what elements of society does the school seek to accommodate and incorporate, and which elements does it perpetuate? Is our modern society losing its ability to talk to itself because of technology's fierce advancement and seduction of our youth, or is it because our schools are finding themselves also susceptible to the media and mandates of technology because of society itself? I believe Provenzo echoes my same concern when he writes, "simply stated, problems, conditions, and issues in the larger society tend to be reproduced in the schools" (10). The struggle we face as educators, parents, and citizens, is understanding the interconnection between education and society, and how they reflect and influence one another, for good or bad.

geez, my writing has deteriorated remarkably since becoming a grad student + teacher. sleep deprivation, i see you in my future.

misery,
s

booking face

as i mentioned last week, i had a moment of weakness: when my best friend back home made good on her promise to get me to join facebook and sent me an actual facebook invitation, and all i had to do was click a link, i finally gave into years of nagging peer pressure and joined - which, as those loyal to the blog would know, is basically like saying i just became a business major, or purposefully killed a small animal with my foot. it just doesn't make any ontological sense. i mean, i hate facebook.

but lo, i'm one week in and i'm enjoying this. not the whole "collect as many friends as possible" thing (i only friend ppl i'm actually friends with. except this one guy. he was so creepy i was afraid not to friend him. does that make sense?) and i don't much care for the whole "create a fancy profile" aspect (i figure i spent 2+ years generating a pretty detailed virtual and actual persona, which realistically speaking, if these ppl are my friends, they should be familiar enough with. spare the interweb the redundancy, you know?

no, what i'm really enjoying is getting to see other ppl's virtual personalities. there are many ppl i'm facebook friends with now who are totally different via this medium than they are in person. example: i have one facebook friend who i haven't really talked to a whole ton in person, and i always felt like she didn't even like me. but now that we're facebook friends, we've been writing each other basically twice every day, talking about some pretty personal things, and it's crazy, because we hadn't really talked longer than 10 or 15 minutes before!

it's amazing how "wall" posts/ shout-outs take on a different form of (in)formality just b/c of the nature of this virtual space. i guess what i'm saying is that facebook is actually enhancing my relationships with (some) people. (i've noticed that those i'm already really close to, both emotionally and physically close to, are the least interesting - and least interested - to interact with. which is hardly a complaint but more a sigh of relief.)

see what i mean by "enhanced": i had a good friend in middle school who moved to Michigan. we were best friends, but back then no one our age (11-12 years old) had a cell phone, and hardly anyone used anything but dial-up for their internet, so email was unheard of. i still remember writing weekly letters and sending gifts and christmas presents thru the post for about a year before we lost track of each other. gasp and a half, right? (amazing how a young'n like me can assume the "when i was your age..." tone when it comes to technological changes - tech is speeding up our aging! we are quickly becoming outdated! ironic considering the transhumanist view that tech could potentially prevent or delay dying...)

anyway, so i figured if i'm going to be a part of this madness, i might as well try to take advantage of it. test out the tech capabilities, you know? and wow, i realized i could track down all these old friends from middle and high school, all i had to do was remember their names! and suddenly, i found myself retracing and rekindling friendships i'd accumulated over the last 10-12 years! CRAZY, right??! yes, yes it is.

and you know what's even more insane?! i found out that almost everyone is hitching their wagon to the marry train. whoa, when/how/why did this happen? everyone's getting hitched! and it makes me kinda sad, not b/c i'm not even close myself (ha, that's hardly my concern, since i don't envision myself getting married any time soon... or ever?) but because it's so hard, when you haven't seen a childhood friend for so long, to be so excited to find them again and realize, very quickly, that you're not kids any more. nothing hurts the same.

i mean, imagine my surprise to find that my best friend in middle school - who i sat in the back of the bus with and talked about boys with and whose house i went to after school to work on science projects and practice violin duets and watch Star Trek and drink juice boxes with - now has a husband! and, knowing i wasn't there to meet him and watch their relationship grow, that i won't be at the wedding, well, that hurts too. (on a positive note: facebook enabled us to get in touch and catch each other up on the last 10-11 years of our lives! that was pretty amazing.)

it feels like a time warp in here. the past and present are meeting themselves much too quickly, and i feel shrink-wrapped.

-stephanie

a-twitter: life in the digital age

i'm amazed by all the means by which the internet helps ppl keep in touch these days. does anyone even remember how to use a phone or make a house call?

i think technology is seriously incapacitating us. i remember before i even got a cell phone how different my personal interactions and relationships were. i mean, i remember having to plan ahead and set times to meet people - wow, can you imagine?! if i was meeting a friend for a date, it was a specific time and place, no if's, and's, or but's about it. you actually had to keep your obligations and commitments, you couldn't just call them at the last minute and cancel or say you were running late.

i'm sensitive to these things lately because of the amalgam of online applications i have recently started using (what i have come to collectively term my "e-life" applications). first, i finally caved and joined facebook. this was a huge personal defeat for me, since i had held off on joining for the entirety of my college career, because i found the idea of online social networking to be shallow and ridiculous. i had better ways to waste my time on the internet, and, as i constantly reminded others, there are other ways of keeping in touch with people.

but, over the years, as more and more people joined facebook, and i continued to refuse, i noticed i was getting left out of what appeared to be a digital modification - no, transformation - of modern life. my friend Robert likes to talk about transhumanism, and i think that now i finally understand what that term (and its philosophy and associated ideas) means. could it be that humans are really adapting themselves, overcoming "undesirable aspects of the human condition," by plugging ourselves in, and loading ourselves up?

i've discussed before my belief that humans are becoming increasingly technology-dependent. let's think about this: life support. "pulling the plug." we liquefy our lives, distill the essence into digital data, and upload it from any port in the world, as long as we have high speed internet access and an outlet. this process of uploading, of instant publication, of visibility, transparency, inescapability... it's invigorating. makes you feel alive, makes you feel real, makes you feel like you've got an audience and what you're doing matters (because it matters what you're doing). "overcoming involuntary death" - everyone a 15-second internet celebrity, everyone an immortal, everyone inhabiting a webspace. my life was contained in the microchips of a small whirring piece of hardware, until it decided to die. when that happened, i felt like it was i who had been erased. so what did i do? i turned to my virtual self and recovered what i could from the internet. life doubling up on itself: all the music i originally found on the internet, recovered again via my own past posts.

the digitalization of our lives has other impliations as well. facebook is not so much a way of keeping in touch with people as it is about keeping track of people. ah ha! - surveillance! yes, it seems that what we're all really doing is keeping tabs on one another. is there any other way to justify or explain the news feeds? we watch for changes in biographical information, relationship statuses, we track the lives of our friends as if our lives were online dramas being played out for entertainment.

now, a shameful admission: i don't necessarily dislike the idea of being able to track every change in every person's life. i actually rather like seeing what people are up to. example: i love using gmail. the chat feature is one of my favorite tech tools of recent memory because it allows me to see when my friends are online and what they might be up to:

i never used AIM as a kid, even when it was all the rage and all my friends used it to keep in touch. i preferred calling people on the phone or riding my bike to their house to say hi (it seems being behind the technological times has always been a proclivity of mine.) the same is true now: i could easily call someone and get a response just as quickly as i could if i sent them a chat. but, i wouldn't get the luxury of a status message for context. it's sometimes nice to strike up a chat with a friend who, by the look of their status, is feeling down, stressed, or lonely. and i'm sure lots of people would agree that it's a great window for expressing emotions without feeling like you're unloading or being extremely desperate, of putting yourself out there without having to risk anything, because the audience you want is there, in that little sidebar, and if they want to talk to you, they will. and you get the benefit of feeling a slight sense of relief and catharsis, without having to wear your heart on your sleeve, so to speak.

it's also a great way to share a link you like, a clever thought or quip, or even your latest poetry: one of my friends wrote a series of sonnets using the gchat status message as a creative medium (he found the character limit to be an interesting creative feature). i used to document away messages, finding them to be fantastic narratives (that document has since been lost in the death of external harddrive, boooo.)

but, as much as i love status narratives, twitter has taken this to a completely new level. holy shit, man, this thing is madness!!


here is a sight [sic] where you can upload away messages, as if it were a blog, and it stores them for you, as a narrative! and, you can "follow" people you know, or people you hardly know at all! (right now i am following Achewood and a Miami professor who i never took classes with, just talked to occasionally about living wage issues).

the striking thing about twitter is that, unlike gchat or facebook, it doesn't aspire or pretend to be anything other than a news feed for your personal life. there is no use for it beyond occasionally reminding people "yes, i am in fact, alive." in a digital age where we are constantly connected and plugged in, i find it fascinating that our everyday actions can find outlet and audience in cyberspace. ("i am typing... i am thinking... i am breathing... i am living...")

now, that said, YOU SHOULD BE MY FRIEND AND FOLLOWER ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER!!

;-)
-stef lee

p.s. speaking of narratives, a twitter conversation unfolded on the 'net this (6/6/08) morning:

THE FUCK?!!! (part deux)

i come home from school and begin the tedious process of unpacking all my shit just so i can repack it to move out to L.A. to begin my stint as a teacher.

and what do i need more than anything in the world right now? well, to be back among friends and some hugs, ideally, but i'll settle for some comfort music (the one song i can't get out of my head right now is "tonight, tonight" by the smashing pumpkins, and another S.P. song i don't know the name of but that i know i would recognize it if i could only hear it again, because i was overwhelmed with a feeling of forwardness, of no-looking-back, of immediacy and now, that flooded out the words, all i could hear was the beat and the swell of violins, a tolling bell, as i drove around in the infinite dark and expanse of cornfields in northern illinois, clutching the hand of someone i love, wishing we could drive forever and ever into that blackness and this song would never end and i would never have to let go, never have to say goodbye or even goodnight)

but i come home and plug in my harddrive, and what do i hear? an awful clicking, the whir of a struggling fan trying to bring my computer to life, and then the tinny sound of a clunky alert on my computer, telling me it can't read the disk and to eject it. wow, i want to vomit. this is the same sickening feeling i got in my stomach about a month ago when this happened the first time. and why should i be surprised? of course this would happen, i'm karma's biggest bitch. i want to vomit all over Bill Gates and Steve Jobs' faces right now, for inventing my dependency on technological happiness and for turning my life into invisible data, so easily corruptible and so easily lost. bastards!

i can't even begin to contemplate the scope of what i lost this time. (gag reflex). just about everything of value to me was on that stupid little lunchbox-sized piece of machinery, all of my writing, all of my plans for future writing, drawings, photos of friends and video projects (many still in progress), concert videos, memories of friends, lovers and family, and so many, oh so many good albums i may never be able to recover again. funnily, the only thing of huge value i did manage to save on my laptop was my recently completed senior project. and i don't even care about it, because i have dozens of hand-bound copies lying around my room right now. the materiality of it makes me ill. (gag).

i'm going to go the library now, i guess, to try to find a copy of the Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. and then i'm gonna put Billy Corgan on full blast on my half-blown speakers and proceed to drown my sorrows in lemonade and whiskey. and when i sober up again, i'm gonna invest in a typewriter. perhaps i shall become a luddite.

[edit: i go to the library website and find that, of course, both their copies of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness are lost and/or missing. such is my life these days...]

[edit #2: after looking at smashing pumpkins downloads, i realize that the song we were listening to in the car on the ride home was "Disarm."]

with infinite sadness,
stephanie

if only i could Google my life

i curse technology for creating itself* and nurturing my development as a human, for in the process i've become totally dependent!

we don't do anything ourselves any more. sure, it started with the little things: first we were using abacuses, and then we had to invent the calculator, and pretty soon it was supercomputers and smart bombs and satellite TV, and now people can't even get anywhere by reading maps any more, it's all GPS, a robot woman telling you exactly when to turn! we may not have personal robot slaves like ppl always imagined we would "in the future" but that's b/c everything we do and need is a robot of some kind, hell, we're robots! we're slaves to our own progress!

anyway, this is all just because i've been reading thru some old correspondences on my computer today. and in one of my emails i signed off with the phrase "everything is broken. we need to accept it and move on." now, this sounds so familiar, and i know i wrote it, but the use of the quotes in the email makes me think it might also be from something else, maybe a song or a movie, maybe a book? but the thing is, when i typed it into google, nothing came up except for a Bob Dylan song, which i haven't even heard before, and i don't even really listen to Dylan.

when i performed the same search in all my emails, nothing came up except for this one email (the same one that sent me searching in the first place). very confusing. i remember this being a significant phrase to me, mid-December 2007, right around my senior project fiasco. but i still can't quite place the source or the original context for this quote, and i love it so much. i just want to know if i wrote it, and was quoting myself in a different context, or if i owe someone else for these appropriate (and appropriated) words that are striking so true today. i need to know how my life is repeating itself, how the cycles are forming, why everything today feels like a deja vu but i can't quite figure out the difference between dreams and waking.

so, in my desperate search for the origin of this quote, i became overwhelmingly upset that i couldn't just build a large search engine for my life that would distill data from my brain, the brains of everyone around me, all my documents, notepads, every scrap piece of paper, my pockets, my desk drawers and my various lockers and lock-boxes, a machine that could read the indentions of my hand for notes now long washed away, that could recover erased phone messages and away messages and dry-erase board messages, that could mine all my memories and subconscious thoughts and all the music, movies, books and websites i've ever paid even the slightest bit of attention to, and present a nice list of all the relevant pieces pertaining to this one quote, from the entire whole of my existence.

wouldn't that be lovely?

but no. i guess humans aren't made that way. too bad we aren't. maybe in the future we will be. maybe right now, some super robot tech man is reading this and devising the next BIG THING of the century...

powers!
-stephanie


* "but Stephanie," you say, "things don't 'create' themselves, spontaneous generation is a fallacy!" oh-ho-ho, au contraire! what i'm suggesting is that "technology" was created by robots. that's right, the "people" who gave us the internet are really just trying to feed the cancer that is slowly taking over our lives... mwahahhahaa!!! (gives new meaning to "self-made man" doesn't it? ponder that for a while!)