GIST Web Paper 4

Intro:

Rabid mole – just use audio initially, then have footage of mole, then quick fade to black, quick fade back to mole, quick fade back to black (“He just peed on me!) quick flashes of swings, fan, Jared, rats, basket ball woman

 Hillary Godwin

April 19, 2011

GIST – Dalke

Frankenstein and Lilith:

An Examination of Creator and Creation

      For this Webpaper, I intend to examine the concept of creation in Frankenstein and how it reflects my understanding of gender and technology. To do this I will incorporate the myth of Lilith to further discuss the relationship between the creator and the creation. I will draw parallels between the two stories, concerning the role of gender, information, science, and technology in generating perceptions of creation.

Relationship Dynamics

Bloodchild: A Present Day Dystopia

           The internet and its vast connections across the globe have allowed for an unprecedented flow of information, communication, and technology that has never been matched before in terms of speed and volume that these connections operate. As a result, psychologists have begun to explore cyberspace as a viable platform for psychotherapy and clinical work. Cyberspace psychotherapy offers many improvements from face to face psychotherapy.

Natural Hair Community on Youtube

It is perhaps the woman’s curse to be pressured into societal norms of what is considered beautiful. Although many know the common saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” it seems as though most do not truly agree with the notion. Since the arrival of enslaved Africans on American soil in the fifteenth century, the standard of beauty has changed very little. In the media and entertainment industry, blonde straight hair is considered the ideal hair type, and sought after by most who are not born with it. Women receive information about the standard of beauty in their culture, and are thus expected to meet those standards.

     In three of the classes I have been taking this semester, the internet, technology and the intra-action between them and us, humans have overlapped in many ways. The internet is becoming increasingly relied upon by us, technology is improving constantly, at a speed never ever thought of before.
In our reading of World Wide Mind, Chorost gives and example of how connected one becomes with his/her electronics, these technologies that we have become very relying upon. He mentions his story of how he lost his BlackBerry, and referred to is as if his BlackBerry is a part of him, “ ...and I walked out, minus BlackBerry.”

The Creation

I have been working on this project for the last five years when I am at home. My goal was just to create a virtual friend whom I could actually have a conversation with. It might seem little strange for a lot of people that I am creating a virtual friend when I could just go out and make new friends, but I was never really good at socializing with other people.

I have tried to get over my problem by just trying to talk to others, but I have embarrassed myself so many times that I figured it would be less painful to just stay home and play with my computer instead. However, I sometimes miss having someone to talk to.

In class, we discussed different types of information and languages. Anne asked "how important (essential??) is inefficiency, incompleteness, lack of understanding, to our both "slowing down" and "staying connected"? (eg, the QWERY phenomenon). Some of us seemed to think that there is a zero-sum balancing out between efficiency and understanding when it comes to recording what we say with technology.

Drawing on Grobstein's quote, he asks that if there are highly unambiguous "languages" (mathematics.. computer languages), and how come ordinary language is highly ambiguous in interpretation..does it serve to facilitate discussion? Maybe ambiguity even evokes new knowledge..

After first reading Octavia Butler's "Bloodchild," my immediate conclusion was that the egg-implanting Tlic were evil and monstrous, and the Terran, who seemed to be human-like, were helpless and should be pitied. After our discussion in class about this short story, I realized that the relationship between the Tlic and the Terran is much more symbiotic than it is parasitic (after all, the Terran were referred to as "hosts"). It's obvious that the Tlic need the Terran to host their young, since without them, they would be unable to reproduce. But the dependence on the Tlic by the Terran is not as clear. If the Terran had simply refused to host the Tlic eggs, it would not be possible for them to survive alone on the Preserve.