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 Notes 4/25
Werner Herzog quotation:

·         Understanding between people

·         Responses imply some ‘dark corners’ are necessary

Supports Chorost: increased exposure to the ‘dark corners’ is a negative aspect of increased internet communication

Chorost on privacy:

·         Strong antivirus software/computer security  allows more control over what information is shared but it can never be blocked completely.

·         How distinct is the individual if they can never stop communicating? How genuine is the ‘individual’

Sadie on Tron:

·         Issue with programs being considered less intelligent/inferior to the humans or udders.

·         Too many clear cut categories and hierarchical structures are formed and cause conflict.

·         Does breaking boundaries equate to not having descriptive categories at all? Or is it:

To remove negative connotations of categories?

Consider them all the same essentially but with variation?

Anda’s Game:

Gamer experiences/purposes:  Experience success, social aspect online, independent playing, entertainment, boredom, sometimes need to pay, sometimes pay by choice

Economic effects:

·         According to the author, ‘Property rights’ are added to games.

·         ‘Gold farmers’ trade real money for virtual products

·         ‘Commodifying play’

·         Brings race/nationality/class into the virtual world where it is assumed they are absent

In Anda’s Game, does defending the working players solve any problems?

·         It keeps them in their job, and keeps the industry going

·         The story is cautionary against this kind of activity

Literary analysis: BFG as Big Friendly Gun compared to Big Friendly Giant?

Performances

Jacqueline and Marina

·         Information transmission: the human brain makes sense of random data automatically

·         Poem generator: http://thinkzone.wlonk.com/PoemGen/PoemGen.htm with words from the course edited in

·         Did we subcounciously interpret what was random? Was it random?

Apo and Sadie

·         Play: Response team for Japanese tsunami on Skype.

·         Anticipated the natural sciences would be most important, but distribution of information also proved significant.

·         Coversation between characters: Information librarian / Psychologist and sociologist / Life scientist / Humanitarian

·         Backs facing: brought closer with technology but still distant/not seeing each other in terms of physical space and opinions