• Attendance
• To point at common philosophical issues associated with new media
• Born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
• 1911-1980
Marshall McLuhan
Best known writings:
• (1967) The Medium is the Massage (with Quentin Fiore)
(1962) The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man
(1964) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
Understanding Media (1964)
Famous ideas:
Medium is the message: The form of the medium is more significant than its contents.
Gutenberg Man: The man whose consciousness is has been changed by the printed book.
=>The Internet Man?
Technologies: Not simply inventions which people employ but are the means by which -people are re-invented.
• Clothing as technology
• Housing as collective skin
• Extensions of... bodies in space
Heat-control mechanism: means of defining the self
• Central nervous system, technological simulation of consciousness
• Social (knowledge) building as creative process of knowing will be collectively extended to the whole of human society (foreseeing the Internet?)
Electric network & nervous system: "It is a principal aspect of the electric age that it establishes a global network that has much of the character of our central nervous system.
Brain: The interacting place where all kinds of impressions and experiences can be exchanged and translated, enabling us to react to the world as a whole.
Hot medium: A lot of information provided, little to be constructed, e.g. movies, photo
Cool medium: Little information provided, a lot to be constructed, e.g. television, telephone
=> Is the Internet cool or hot?
=> Is an online community cool or hot?
Global village: Electronic mass media collapse space and time barriers in human communication, enabling people to interact and live on a global scale (Gutenberg galaxy, 1962)
• "The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village." (from The Medium is the Message)
Article: McLuhan meets the net
• McLuhan, Complete list of works
Cyborgs: (Marsh 2003). Are we cyborgs?
Digital technology is an abstraction of the analog.
Article: Analog and Digital
How stuff works?
• * alphabets
• * numbers (of different formats)
• * images
• * moving images
• * sounds
Digital representation allows handling the digital representation instead of the actual matter.
ideas.
=> Practically everything in the world is being converted to digital representation!
Is there something that cannot be modeled as a digital representation?
Why is this happening?
• -More efficient use of bandwidth
-Digital content is often more cheaper to handle, e.g. digital photographycompared to film camera costs (film, papers, etc).
-Digital representation is universal. There was a lot of carriers in analog world: for voice magnetic tape and vinyl LP; for pictures magnetic tape, slides, films etc.
See also: Analog hi-fi enthusiasm
As if...
• Pretending
Model of...
• Manipulable on the representational level, regardless of other 'reality'. =>
• Reality, realism
Scratching the deepest issues of life!
What's real?
Reality?
Whose reality?
When reality?
Your idea? Seek for definitions.
Why do actual phenomena need to be simulated?
Because they allow studying and training processes that are too:
• Complicated (E.g. Neural system, ecology)
• Inaccessible (E.g. Quantum physics...)
• Costly (E.g. Impacts on economy, flying an airplane)
• Ethically questionable (E.g. new drugs or treatments)
• Dangerous (E.g. emergency procedures in aviation)
• Nonexistent (E.G. VR and CAD in architecture or design)
• ...to be studied directly
• Artificial life
• Simulation games
• Second Life
• Willy Nilly stimulation simulation
Cyberspace: computer-simulated reality, a model of a constrained part of the world (Gibson 1984)
• Inspiration from cybernetics, the science of complex systems control
• Perceptual illusions are based on built-in tendecies of the perceptual system
Gestalt laws, Gestalt psychology: emergence of something more the sum of parts
Old media:
• Cinema based on the illusion of continuity
• Illusion of spatial continuity in stereo audio
• Concepts
• Gestalts
• Illusions
• Reality (?!)
• Constructivism
• Social constructivism, Vygotsky, Piaget
=> Perception and cognition are all about simulation and about the virtual!
• Habbo Hotel
• Holistic experience of presence in virtual space
• Perceptual illusions
• Emotional presence
• Stereo audio
• Stereo vision
• Experimental Virtual Environment EVE
• VR Media Lab Aalborg
In order to get the immersive illusion, you need to wear stereo glasses and position-tracking balls.
• Phantom haptic device (videos)
Phantom haptic device
• Haptic immersion setups (images)
• Article
• Teleimmersion
• Telehaptics Collaboration via haptic environments!?, telesex
• Telesurgery, robot surgery
• Telephone
Television, freaky technology at its time!
• Teleconferencing
• Remote control
• Graphic identity or representation in a virtual environment, or at remote location
• Articles
• Ubiquitous technology
Ubiquitous media?
Web 3.0?
Comments?
Pick 2-3 articles from the provided links and read.
Last time
• Spend 5 min per ideaEXTENSIONS OF MAN
Goal:• To point at common philosophical issues associated with new media
Marshall McLuhan
• Official site, Wikipedia• Born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
• 1911-1980
Marshall McLuhan
Best known writings:
• (1967) The Medium is the Massage (with Quentin Fiore)
(1962) The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man
(1964) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
Understanding Media (1964)
Famous ideas:
Medium is the message: The form of the medium is more significant than its contents.
Gutenberg Man: The man whose consciousness is has been changed by the printed book.
=>The Internet Man?
Technologies: Not simply inventions which people employ but are the means by which -people are re-invented.
• Clothing as technology
• Housing as collective skin
• Extensions of... bodies in space
Heat-control mechanism: means of defining the self
• Central nervous system, technological simulation of consciousness
• Social (knowledge) building as creative process of knowing will be collectively extended to the whole of human society (foreseeing the Internet?)
Electric network & nervous system: "It is a principal aspect of the electric age that it establishes a global network that has much of the character of our central nervous system.
Brain: The interacting place where all kinds of impressions and experiences can be exchanged and translated, enabling us to react to the world as a whole.
Hot medium: A lot of information provided, little to be constructed, e.g. movies, photo
Cool medium: Little information provided, a lot to be constructed, e.g. television, telephone
=> Is the Internet cool or hot?
=> Is an online community cool or hot?
Global village: Electronic mass media collapse space and time barriers in human communication, enabling people to interact and live on a global scale (Gutenberg galaxy, 1962)
• "The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village." (from The Medium is the Message)
Article: McLuhan meets the net
• McLuhan, Complete list of works
Andy Clark
• Writings on the Extended mindOther sources
• Autopoiesis. Social phenomenology as a biological phenomenology (Mariotti)Cyborgs: (Marsh 2003). Are we cyborgs?
DIGITAL WORLD MODEL
Underlying ANALOG level on which low current vs. high current is interpreted as 0 and 1, respectively.Digital technology is an abstraction of the analog.
Article: Analog and Digital
How stuff works?
Digital representation as a model of world!
There is a digital representation (=model) of some resolution for every imaginable phenomenon:• * alphabets
• * numbers (of different formats)
• * images
• * moving images
• * sounds
Digital representation allows handling the digital representation instead of the actual matter.
ideas.
=> Practically everything in the world is being converted to digital representation!
Is there something that cannot be modeled as a digital representation?
Why is this happening?
Advantages of digital representation over analog
• -Inherent noise is not carried - more reliable• -More efficient use of bandwidth
-Digital content is often more cheaper to handle, e.g. digital photographycompared to film camera costs (film, papers, etc).
-Digital representation is universal. There was a lot of carriers in analog world: for voice magnetic tape and vinyl LP; for pictures magnetic tape, slides, films etc.
Back to analog?
Analog computers may hit back, e.g. Chua's parallel analog visual computer. Supporting visual operations instead of text-based commands, such as "rotate" , "crop" .See also: Analog hi-fi enthusiasm
VIRTUAL & REALITY
• Virtual <- Virtus = "excellence, potency, efficacy,As if...
• Pretending
Model of...
• Manipulable on the representational level, regardless of other 'reality'. =>
• Reality, realism
Scratching the deepest issues of life!
What's real?
Reality?
Whose reality?
When reality?
Your idea? Seek for definitions.
SIMULATION
In addition to digital representations as models of the world, digital representation allows simulation models of complex dynamical processes and systems.Why do actual phenomena need to be simulated?
Because they allow studying and training processes that are too:
• Complicated (E.g. Neural system, ecology)
• Inaccessible (E.g. Quantum physics...)
• Costly (E.g. Impacts on economy, flying an airplane)
• Ethically questionable (E.g. new drugs or treatments)
• Dangerous (E.g. emergency procedures in aviation)
• Nonexistent (E.G. VR and CAD in architecture or design)
• ...to be studied directly
• Artificial life
• Simulation games
• Second Life
• Willy Nilly stimulation simulation
Cyberspace: computer-simulated reality, a model of a constrained part of the world (Gibson 1984)
• Inspiration from cybernetics, the science of complex systems control
Illusions
Origin of the word (etymology): il-lusion = " in-game"• Perceptual illusions are based on built-in tendecies of the perceptual system
Gestalt laws, Gestalt psychology: emergence of something more the sum of parts
Old media:
• Cinema based on the illusion of continuity
• Illusion of spatial continuity in stereo audio
Construction
Mental processes that build from fragments or elements:• Concepts
• Gestalts
• Illusions
• Reality (?!)
• Constructivism
• Social constructivism, Vygotsky, Piaget
=> Perception and cognition are all about simulation and about the virtual!
Virtual worlds
• Second life• Habbo Hotel
Immersion
• Virtual environments that support the illusion of getting 'submerged' in the environment with• Holistic experience of presence in virtual space
• Perceptual illusions
• Emotional presence
• Stereo audio
• Stereo vision
CAVEs
• CAVE automatic virtual environment• Experimental Virtual Environment EVE
• VR Media Lab Aalborg
In order to get the immersive illusion, you need to wear stereo glasses and position-tracking balls.
Haptic environments
• Haptic (WP), illusion created with touchable physical forces, force feedback• Phantom haptic device (videos)
Phantom haptic device
• Haptic immersion setups (images)
• Article
Tele...
• Telepresence, games• Teleimmersion
• Telehaptics Collaboration via haptic environments!?, telesex
• Telesurgery, robot surgery
• Telephone
Television, freaky technology at its time!
• Teleconferencing
• Remote control
Avatars
Origin in Sanskrit: Incarnation of deity• Graphic identity or representation in a virtual environment, or at remote location
• Articles
Ubiquity
Ubiquity: Illusion or idea of "being simultaneously everywhere" , omnipresence• Ubiquitous technology
Ubiquitous media?
Web 3.0?
Summary
The relationships of humans, technologies and media allow multiple perspectives and truths.Comments?
Assignment
Blog comment: What kind of virtuality/reality/community could Web 3.0 involve.Pick 2-3 articles from the provided links and read.