Final Exam

Part I

1. Book groups: the additional texts have been a key component of the course. How has the work in your book groups differed from that which takes place in our discussions of the other texts in class and elsewhere (plurk & blogs)? What kinds of discussions are possible in the setting of the book groups? What is not possible within these settings?

The book groups were different than the class in that we discussed the progression of the story in the book and rarely ventured far from the story line. For example in class we may watch a cartoon that plays on the theme of alterity, and discuss how today is important with respect to that theme. The book groups where a forum where today could be comfortably discussed in the context of the book theme. The class was where it was at when it came to the modern and future notions of the themes we discussed. The blog became a sort of extension of those themes because what frustrated us or was peculiar to us could be discussed with more forethought and candor on the blog and it would sound much more professional than what answers we could come up with in class. Plurk I feel was like the Ticket That Exploded, in that it’s not what was in there that mattered but the format it was presented in. Plurk for me became the super-organism you mentioned at the beginning of class. We could share pictures and videos, ask pretty quickly questions about material and usually get answers. What was interesting about plurk was that it got us to silly things sometimes, the anonymity of plurk and the separation from physical people while on plurk allowed us to sometimes be silly and sometimes be serious, but what was important about plurk was that the restrictions we had because of plurk did not limit us in any significant way. We could post 140 characters and still get the point across. We used the guidance words to set up sentences about ourselves. What gets me is that there was alterity between ourselves and our plurk identities. Every post on plurk was in the third person, as though you are an observer upon your own self. That frame allowed us the comfort of separation from who we are and let us do things that otherwise may not be done, said, or expressed. Some people on plurk had great ideas, but when that third person separation disappeared in the classroom those people would not participate. A plurk class might have been a pretty cool thing, because that setting allows those who are timid or shy to add their two cents, and may get at something very important. In the book groups we can really intimately get to know each other, in a way it is like plurk but a smaller group, and more focused on a single text. The discussions that are possible here are only restricted by the concepts in the book. I found myself wanting to discover how midnight robber is like the material we discussed in class, but it just made things complicated. Midnight robber was just a good, entertaining book. There were some themes and ideas that translated over like technology, and technological advancement in different settings, but we did not discuss them in great detail. I think that the type of discussion that is not possible in the setting of the book groups are ones that deal with today and tomorrow. We will eventually just speak about the content of the book and we need a guiding hand to show us the deeper meaning in the book. I had this happen in the Invention of Morel, I liked the book and when it ended I was confused, only after class discussion did I see its meaning and relevance. The book groups I think will overlook some important concepts and themes within the books. I still am not sure if there is more to Midnight Robber than just its entertainment value, and good ending. I don’t think I am alone because the other posts I read where always dealing with the content and not the content decoded. The message in Midnight Robber escapes us unless there is none and in fact it was just entertainment.

2. Plurk: Without it the class would not be the class. Using the texts we have read in class explain how plurk fits in with the issues of technology and the human body that we have discussed thus far.

Plurk offers us a way to do things and say things to each other that is not restricted by the traditional problems of communication. Instead a different set of restrictions are placed in plurk (140 characters, a few guiding words) we then compose our ideas and post them to the net. As I think about it each book has something to say about plurk and the human body. In Morel we could say that plurk is a sort of machine that lets us upload who we are onto the net and remain there for eternity. In TTE we see just how important language is to us and that even when the format changes we still are able to adapt and communicate. I do however think that plurk is more about identity than bodies, because it does not need bodies to exist; it needs people but not bodies. I think that plurk allows for a certain kind of telepathy because the communication happens once but it remains there as if in TTE machines are doing the work of talking for us. Once it is posted it remains there and is continuous, so communication is happening without the body or even mind. I wonder if plurk is an upgrade or down grade in communication. It is technology but it does not do what we should strive for in communication advancement. I expect real telepathy to be an accomplishment plurk is just a way to hit someone up with a quick note, like a post it notes. The type of communication that occurs will therefore be condensed and meaningless unless there is something larger that is being discussed and digested. For example if I read the Filth, I can then plurk what the Filth is about in 140 characters, but if someone reads that plurk they might not know what I am talking about if they have not read Filth. I could say Communist CHIMP!!! And that would make more sense to someone who read the book and plurk than just the plurk. I think that plurk does not accelerate or improve communication because it does not make things simpler to communicate; it is just another and different way to communicate more complex ideas that must first be learned. So plurk to me in regards to the body and technology is a side step. Plurk becomes a chemistry set that we can extract essence from, but the essence of a plurk post is a derivative of something larger and more complete. Until plurk finds a way to skip that step, it will not be anything more than a process to communicate condensed ideas. There is however something to be said about plurk and the human body. Some people are not able to express their ideas in class, the separation of the body from the ideas and mind allow people to say things on plurk, usually things that they would not say in class sometimes that is the only way they communicated. This demonstrates just how much the body influences the ideas behind the body. The moment the separation of those two things occurs we are able to see that bodies and minds are distinctly different and that one can influence the other, or obstruct the other. I find it fascinating that people do have a mechanism in them that only plurk can overcome, within the classroom setting plurk allows us to enjoy each other’s ideas without the fears that are associated with expressing those ideas.

Part II

1. Others: Alterity has been huge theme of our class, is something that we have thought in a variety of different ways. Using the text of Radical Alterity as a starting point address how you have rethought the concept of the other using a text from the course, the in class discussions, and your experience with plurk and/or blogging.

Radical Alterity seems to suggest that to project the other or to construct the other we must first create a distance between us and them. The other must be near and far, near because they must have something in common with us, something that we can associate with (they are human or do human things perhaps) but far in the sense that we are not them, they have nothing to do with us. When this distance is created we can and do begin to project the bad or regrettable features of ourselves upon the other. They become a kind of scapegoat for our own shortcomings. In midnight robber Janisette became the other to Tan Tan, both where close by proximity to Antonio, but far because Tan Tan ended up killing Antonio. Janisette may have wanted to do this but once Tan Tan did it, Janisette was able to justify harming Tan Tan to exact revenge. It not only became ok to harm Tan Tan it became necessary because she was othered. The class discussions made me think about the other in another light. A bit in reverse I think, the other I thought could only be a bad thing, a kind of means to an ends, but when we were on Life Extreme and the notion of the otherness of animals makes it ok to manipulate and use them for human ends. I wondered if otherness was ever used for good. Life Extreme and our discussions around that book showed me that otherness is just a tool or process by which we take for ourselves the moral authority to do what we think is right and necessary even though they may sometimes be regrettable. It’s ok to eat meat animals are the other, we can even use pigs for hearts and rats for ears because, although we must have much in common to be able to exchange parts, the animals are the other.
Otherness with respect to plurk was weird for me I actually saw plurk as a way to unify rather than divide. So I think that otherness was absent in plurk in accordance with me and other people. Plurk did end up having an othering affect on me with respect to my own identity. The plurk was in third person and naturally makes the other a necessary operator. With the otherness of myself on plurk I was able to see just who Norbertrojsza was and what he thought. I could look back on the plurk in a few years and I think could critically examine and judge whether I like the guy or not, the otherness of myself allows for sober examination of who it is I am. Blogging did not have themes of alterity for me either, when I would post something on plurk or blog I tried to make it as much me as the real me is. I think it is because the blog is an extension of class in a sense allowing us to revisit and expand on ideas confronted in class, the same person inquires in the class as on the blog. When I would read other peoples blogs they to me where not others but often times the same, because we are in the same class, read the same material, we more or less had the same questions and struggled with the same notions. We were also more the same than different and I had no reason to other them, because I stood to gain nothing from it. But it is curious that people I disagreed with where more prone to being othered than people I agreed with. I did rethink otherness with respect to national security and war. I figured out after the cartoon of propaganda where rational thought and desire battle it out in the head that when the other is constructed, it is important to distance oneself from the other, and then to become the other in a subtle way. The further you can get the more effectively the control mechanism can be used. It is an interesting control mechanism that the other can provide, and if used right can be quite effective.

2. 2. Limits: one of the ways that we have approached the small is with our plurk assignments, in your opinion how have these limits: 1) made you think about language 2) made you think about the small 3) helped you with your writing

Plurk has made me think of language as a sort of flexible code. We were not that limited even though limits where placed upon us in plurk. If we wanted to say something we could say it in ways that created mental shortcuts like c u l8tr. I think that when using limits it is important to distinguish between small and bit limits. Not to exceed and at least this much limits, when I think about all the papers I have written that must be at least 15 pages long I shudder because often times the limits of the large create a need to water down and expand ideas that can be expressed quite well in a small sentence. The limits of the small however are more powerful, because humans have their own limits of the small such as poor memory and short attention spans; the limits of the small make for more powerful ideas, because they must be concentrated. An effective metaphor might be taking a piece of candy and diluting it into water (limit of the large) vs. concentrating the candy even more so that it is even more potent and takes up even less space. Language can benefit from small limits because ideas become more potent, limits of the large just dilute meaning. Plurk also allows for language to become a fun exercise, granted we will not be doing plurk exercises in other settings but to impose upon oneself the limits of the small is to challenge oneself to think truly big. I believe it was Einstein who said that true genius is to take a big idea and to simplify it.
Plurk has made me think of the small very little; small is not a great word for plurk I think. A better word might be fundamental or simple. Plurk has made me think about those ideas in virtue of the location and space that the ideas I present on plurk occupy, the memorable features of the passages created, and the usefulness of small limits with respect to strong ideas (vs. big limits). I think that the communication that happens on plurk is useful because ideas can take up little space but have a large impact when they are small and consistent with our own nature as human beings (that is to say creatures with limits of the small of our own) I recently looked under Mickey’s beer caps my friends have been drinking and there are great puzzles that deal with the small, they are small phrases that are condensed even more by the addition of pictures (http://www.mickeys.com/caps/home/index/?go=caps&SID=l02ns0msu5t97s1doqv2d46jk0) when I saw these I immediately thought of nanotext. Hope you enjoy. Those pictures are not unlike the emoticons we used in plurk to describe emotion in our passages. The passage lacks true accurate emotion because we are left to try to understand to what degree one is sad or happy or confused etc. but a small improvement is an improvement nonetheless.
I think that plurk will not help me with my writing in university, because limits of the big are imposed more often than limits of the small. However when I leave university the limits of the small on plurk will help me greatly, explaining an idea in a few sentences sounds like watching a movie instead of reading a book people seem to prefer to have their information, any information condensed and plurk has helped me identify how to use my own limits to make the point more concentrated. In the real world time is money and the quicker a big idea can be expressed and communicated the better.

3. 3. Animals and Machines: our texts have been filled with both of these things. Working with Ronell & Kac’s text Life Extreme, make a case for the difference between animals and machines. Is there such a difference? And where do humans fit in all of this?

It would be all to simple to just say that there is or is not a difference, animals are a sort of primitive machine at best. Physically they are not machines, they posses mobility that many machines do not, animals serve biological functions on the earth. A computer is a machine, but its circuits are not they are components. Animals can be seen as components to the machine of life, but not machines themselves. However we can escape the physical characteristics of animals and talk about their mental capacities, they can be trained (programmed) and do things that without guidance would not be possible, like become Seeing Eye dogs, or carrier pigeons. This malleability allows us to be able to see animals in a way that more closely associates them with machines, because machines are not useful until humans use their abilities to tell the machines what to do, just like animals. We can domesticate animals and by doing so we unlock their machine like characteristics and use them like machines for our own comforts. So animals are not physically machines but rather components of a larger machine that they participate in. They are like machines in accordance with their behavior because they are programmable and upgradeable (like one all too familiar muscular cow) however they must become machines, they are not automatically behaviorally machines. Humans have a dual role because without their influence animals would not be able to become machines. At the same time humans can be programmed the same way other animals can (what is training and why would we call it that after all) humans can be educated but we are animals, so we have a sort of separation within the human race of those who are more machine (trained) and those who are more human (trainer). It is interesting that the training comes from humans though; it is only possible for animals and humans to become machines when humans are involved. Those who are more human are able to exert influence over those who are below them on the human scale; those who are more machine are tools for the purposes assigned them. I really do buy into the master slave dichotomy because enlightened peoples job is to spread their knowledge to the unenlightened. Everyone does not have the capacity to understand this knowledge that some produce. It can be observed in the cartoon about viruses and vaccination. When the immune system militarizes that is no different than the organization of humans into a large machine of some other sort. The component and machine analysis is useful I think in identifying when it is that humans are machines and when they are not.

Is there a difference between machines and animals? Yes. Can animals become machines? Yes but only if humans are involved. Where do humans fit into this, we own the system, some of us even own those who own the system. Humans control who becomes a machine and who does not. It will be up to us who gets to become a machine, not anyone else.

Great class take care Tony.