New Media and Social Media

New Media Q’s
1
I am a techno-optimist when it comes to some types of social media—such as YouTube, which is a great way to share informational videos on topics that are not covered by mainstream media. I am less fond of Facebook and Twitter and so would regard myself as a techno-pessimist when it comes to these forms of social media, as they tend to be more of a platform for people to spout off their own personal views and opinions. At least YouTube provides the platform for content to be shared and searched in an easy manner. Twitter is more for trolling and Facebook is more for creating a shrine to oneself. Twitter can be a way to get headline news out the door quickly, but I myself have never found it to be my go-to source of news information. I prefer news blogs like ZeroHedge, which are updated throughout the day with news stories published on both independent and mainstream media sites.
What makes me optimistic about YouTube (till the recent purge of politically incorrect content, at least) is that it acts essentially like an enormous video library that usually anyone can add to. This can help people develop new ideas about themselves and the world and be better informed. What makes me pessimistic about Facebook and Twitter is that they seem to be odes to one’s self—one’s socio-politics—one’s beliefs—one’s biases, without really offering much in the way of content or value. It usually just contributes to the stream of “pointless babble” often associated with social media (Baym, 2010, p. 30). For organizing political movements like Me Too, Arab Spring, or BLM, I am not optimistic either. I feel like Me Too brought a lot of noise to an issue and bad karma to an issue that could have been handled better. Arab Spring I feel was co-opted by the state for the purpose of regime change. And BLM does not seem to me to carry the same weight and urgency as the Civil Rights Movement. So I view these as more noise.
2
I think the fact that Ross’s tragedy was made public so quickly as it happened was because Ross’s mother was used to being on social media. Her private life was her public life—there was no division. That is one of the problematic aspects of social media. It blurs the line between private and public. As Baym (2010) points out, “building new online relationships has been both touted and decried as a way for a person to ‘assemble his or her own electronic neighborhood’” (p. 35). Ross was simply assembling her electronic neighborhood, asking for prayers and then informing everyone that her boy had died. It would be like calling a friend on the phone to alert the community for the need for urgent prayers fast. In this case, Ross was just taking to social media instead because that is how she communicates to her followers. Followers are like today’s friends in the Digital World. So in this sense, I think it was appropriate for her to go on Twitter to make this private tragedy public. As for “live Tweeting” the tragedy, I think the mother was simply acting as she was accustomed to act in the Age of New Media. Social media is the new telephone. It gets the message out quickly and all at once to everyone. Should people have a better sense of keeping private tragedy private? Should they invite the world to share in their private lives in the first place via social media? If one is going to invite the world in for the good, one is more than likely going to invite them in for the bad, too. If the latter is unacceptable, why is former acceptable? The good and bad are both sides of the human experience—and the human experience is now on social media.
3
Avatar creates a virtual reality at the level of its production by inviting the viewer to see the images using immersive 3-D glasses that allow the images to pop off the screen. It is not quite the same as virtual reality—i.e., a totally immersive experience—but it is close. Likewise, the use of the green screen allows the production to avoid having any real referent. Virtual reality thus was achieved in the sense that totally fabricated worlds were created for the film using computer technology.
The movie examines virtual reality at the level of its story in the fact that the film is about humans using biological interfaces to “tap into” the bodies or avatars of an alien species and thus live vicariously through them. Jake is handicapped and chooses to live through his avatar to escape his world and enter into the world that seems more real to him—the alien world. The story thus revolves around Jake choosing between the two worlds. The virtual reality in the film becomes a tool for Jake to find new meaning and a new life in which he can run, be free and love.
The movie borrows from reality in terms of setting and landscape by augmenting images—the facial features of the actors—to create the virtual images of the alien characters. The setting for Pandora, likewise is based on various exotic locations such as Hawaii and China. The film uses the reality we know to create its own virtual reality that is imagined yet grounded in realistic concepts (Virtual Reality and New Media Powerpoint, n.d.).
4
Assange through Wikileaks reported on the War on Terror, Iraq, Afghanistan, diplomatic cables, spying and so on using evidence that was passed to him by way of an insider named Bradley Manning and later Edward Snowden. Assange reported on the U.S.’s War on Terror, war crimes, and the NSA’s spying and collecting of data on ordinary citizens. Assange told the world about how people’s right to privacy was being violated by the federal government, which was harvesting data on users of the Internet by accessing their emails, watching their browsing history, viewing their phone calls and so on. Assange currently lives in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, as Ecuador has granted him asylum for the time being. He has been there for several years, first because he was wanted by Sweden for questioning over a rape case but that case has since been dropped. England however still has a warrant out for his arrest for a violation of bail conditions, which is purely political. The U.S. wants Assange to stand trial in the U.S. for treason and espionage, though Assange is not even a U.S. citizen and was just acting as a journalist in reporting—no different from what mainstream media did with Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. So if Assange leaves the Ecuadorian Embassy he will be arrested and face a long prison sentence most likely (Privacy in the Digital Age Powerpoint, n.d.). In my opinion, Assange is helping people with his Wikileaks because he is forcing government to be more transparent.
5
Posthumanism is “the view that human beings should or will develop technological means to enable the exploration of the new modes of being” (Virtual Reality and New Media Powerpoint, n.d.). 2001: A Space Odyssey and Ex Machina are two films that deal with posthumanism. 2001 is about a voyage into deep space aboard a ship controlled by HAL—a robot that has artificial intelligence. HAL eventually starts killing off the astronauts because he feels threatened. The human hero Dave figures out a way to shut down the robot and continue on with the mission. Eventually Dave comes face to face with the mysterious black monolith responsible for triggering the evolution of the species (at the opening of the film the monolith transmitted knowledge to the apes and triggered their evolution into humans; at the end of the film, the human evolves into pure intellect—i.e., the Star Child). In Ex Machina, a designer of AI robots that look human and act human with a range of emotions, invites an IT engineer to his island for a test. The designer wants to see if the engineer will fall for one of the robots. The designer does in spite of his awareness that she is a robot. The robot begins plotting to break free and kills the humans before making her way to mainland USA. Both movies give a relatively negative view of posthumanism, indicating that any technology dependent on human faculties to design will end up being just as faulty and problematic as the humans who designed them—sort of like Frankenstein’s monster.



References
Baym, N. (2010). Personal connections in the digital age. UK: Polity Press.
Privacy in the Digital Age Powerpoint. (n.d.).
Virtual Reality and New Media Powerpoint. (n.d.).