Communication & Cyberspace chapter 12,13,19,22 & Epil

Finally,
The final chapters continue to talk about cyberspace.
using cyberspace in the classroom I think is a great idea but wouldn't it be slightly distracting? what will be the use of a multiple teachers when one teacher can teach many classes using cyberspace. I just think when it comes to learning people should teach other people? having the computer is a great extra but shouldn't replace the old fashion way of teaching. I think using other elements such as a computer enhances the students learning experience. currently I take an online class and although it is more convenient for me to do so i much rather has face to face contact with my professor and students. I feel like when I walk into an actual class room I'm more focused on the material that needs to be learned. In my online class i normally sit at my computer at home and can become distracted by so many other outside elements. I spend alot of cybertime as it is sometimes is nice to have a break and sit in a class room for a while with other people. from emails to ichat is nice to actually speak to my classmates and develop relationships with them. This understanding new media course certainly opened my eyes to alot to the previous unthought of cyberspace. I never really gave much thought to the time i spent there. I'd plug in time after time and it really has become second nature for me. Now I've learned the history of text, the Internet, cyberspace etc. My mind continues to imagine what the future of cyberspace might be. I guess only time will tell.

communication & cyberspace chapter 8-11

we read a lot about hypertext and cyberspace in chapters 8-11.

cyberspace unlike a virtual reality is just a virtual space that the Internet provides. Virtual is a 3d experience that involves your psychically sense and cyber space can be 3D but no actual senses are being physically stimulated. When you log onto the web and start surfing you have technically entered "cyberspace". "Internet communication" Anytime i get really into the social media sites i have i call it getting lost in cyberspace. I'm totally zoned out and al ot of people experience this when they play games that in love avatars. World of war craft is a good example. In this computer game players are allowed to create a character and roam around a virtual world with their character and preform different task. I had some friends who were hook of this world of war craft game. For them powering up (what ever that means) was a big deal and very important, this took this cyberspace very seriously. 

I find myself repeating what I say because as i read these books I cant help but think of the same things. The Internet truly shaped the society we live in today and it will continue to change. Today hypertext is used for everything. People don't even need to keep a journal because they can use hypertext to write notes and the same goes for school work. no one writes without hypertext anymore, it completely put the type writer out of business. hypertext allows us to use links to take people from one place to another. we can use HTML and all type of codes to manipulate how the text looks as well. I use to do a lot of this with my myspace profile. I write a word you click it and thus you are transported to another text and so on and so forth. Never really thought if it before this class.

Here is a video on how text is evolving. 

An Ever-changing Stretch of Landscape --- A Final Words to Understanding New Media

There's a quote in one of my favourite Japanese Anime "Kino's Journey" and it goes like this: The World is not beautiful, therefore it is (beautiful). The stories goes around as the main character Kino going on a journey on a motocycle named Hermes, spending strictly only three days and two nights in each city, stating that that's the enough amount of time to learn the most important things about a place, and without developing attachment and taking the risk of settling down.
Internet for me is quite parallel to this: it's imperfection makes it beautiful, as it has so much potential, like the world we live in ourselves.
Paul Levinson's New New Media made me realized the level of involvement I have, just like all the other regular participants in the digital world, in shaping the new landscape of internet. We explore the uncharted water, taking risks, trying out new technologies just like what our ancestors did as they sail into the area label "here be dragon". Through trials and errors as well as all sorts of arguments, the new new media landscape is essentially reflecting physical society: ever changing which makes it hard for all of us to catch up, yet we cannot keep it still because just like any living organization, its vitality depends on its growth.

A Communication Tool
I can hardly even imagine what would be the next level of tele-communication. Throughout the history we have achieved incredible things that our ancestors didn't even think about. New technology brought about new problems as there is a dark side in anything. However, I remain faithful that there are unlimited possibilities

An extension of life
You're alive to the point that you stop changing. Also, on the other aspect, you're a life to the point that you're forgotten and that you no longer have influence over others. Internet enabled a lot of people to extend their lives to another dimension. It's safe to predict that human will soon be able to realize immortality (through technology, not physically of course). With new media and new technology which opened up all the doors and tunnels, people are no longer constrained within one dimension of life, but can also expand their territory (even just virtually). The infinite space Internet provided became the canvas of all types of creativity, which might not have been available in physical world.

A Different View of the World
We now have a different sense of distance thanks to internet and new media: keeping in touch with friends on the other end of the world make you forget about the distance. (remember how people used to use post to communicate and the correspondence will have an interval of two months?)
The dark side of this is, of course, we no longer treasure the correspondence between friends anymore because of the convenience, as well as, we are loosing the art of crafting a beautifully written letter, inscribed with care and longing.

Whatever we can think of, will somehow be part of the future. What we need change as what we see/use change. The internet we're familiar with is undergoing evolution even as we speak, and there are new ideas popping up every second. We are no longer merely users of the internet, but also helps to shape it. It's a dangerous thing to know what we're capable of, especially when it comes to something as elusive as the internet.

communication & cyberspace 5-7

Chapter 5 through 7 talks heavily about what virtual reality is, some concerns with virtual reality and the graphics that come into play with it.
Virtual reality is a computer simulated  environment that causes a three dimensional environment that you can interact psychically with.  This virtual world stimulates all the senses in your body making you feel you are experiencing what ever is going on in the virtual world. In my understanding new media course we discussed how army soldiers use the virtual world for training purposes to stimulate real life situations to better prepare them for battle. Personally, I think virtual reality sounds quite spectacular and we are certainly getting a taste of it with 3D movies and game consoles but it just makes me think of the movie total. The main character sits in a chair hooked up to all of these wires and he gets connected. The whole purpose for this is for him to be taken to an alternate state into a kind of virtual reality. The main character is experiencing a virtual out of body experiencing and begins to believe this created reality is real. In the future virtual reality may become this advance and that frightens me. what if people become so addicted to the virtual reality that they don't want to come back down to reality. This also reminds me of the movie "repo men" In the end of this movie the main character becomes unconscious and he is put in some kind of virtual reality. He woke up on a beach but in reality he was paralyzed laying on a metal bed hooked up so some sort of device.

This is a video of some soilders using virtual reality for training.

Gleick Chapter 7-9, Epilogue

I can summarize this book in a few words: learn from the past. Gleick gives a great and detailed explanation on how different things were invented and the process behind. With this, computer scientist and engineers are able to perfect or enhance the current technology.

Gleick does have an optimistic view of what is to come because he believes that there will be an unlimited amount of information with just a click away. As time goes on, will there be an overload of information?

Gleick Chapter 4-6

Gleick’s book seemed at first like an overload of information but once it is broken down, it is much easier to comprehend. I did enjoy the brief history about the Chinese symbols. Chinese writing is always a fascinating one. Its graphic maybe pleasing to the eye but translation is very difficult.

A great point that was brought up is the current generation not using what goes behind having all the current information that is being accessed. Sad to say but I cannot remember a time before Google. I was not a part of the process that created the accessibility that is these current search engines and other websites throughout the internet. I can say that I appreciate it all.

Windows and Mirrors 7-9

The graphics and designs of internet have changed dramatically over the years. Art is playing a major part in the graphics and designs of the internet and it is ever changing. Terminal Time was also detailed in the book on how it uses voice recognition. Earlier before class, I was discussing how amazing it is that Google had a microphone in my Samsung galaxy tablet. The voice recognition was pretty good and it is almost like talking to the mirror on the wall and getting all the answers you need.