It's interesting that authors Bonnie A. Nardi and Vicki L. O'Day used the 1927 film, "Metropolis" as a segway into their book, Information Ecologies - Using Technology With Heart. In film history classes, I've studied Metropolis multiple times and written papers about the symbolism and advanced visual effects. But the most important part is the message behind it - one that stretches generations and rings true today.

The silent, black-and-white film was one of the very early science fiction flicks and dealt with classic themes - social unrest and crisis among the working class; corruption and capitalism; a utopia turned dystopia. It was made in a time before any of the technology highlighted was even possible - video conferences, robots, Frankenstein-style brain morphing. It's set in a futuristic, tech-fueled city, which is run by workers who spent their lives underground, consumed by the task of keeping the city running and the machines functioning. Oh yeah, and there are robots. Sexy girl robots.

Metropolis is such a progressive film that it's easy to overlook the trappings of early cinema and view the subject in context of today's society. It's a message that is still relevant today, in a world where advances in technology have hurt as much as helped, and where the divide between rich and poor continues to grow.

Information Ecologies frequently touches back on the film to illustrate their point about community, as influenced by technology and information. You can draw parallels from the film's message to our lives now.

The higher classes can experience and take advantage of available technologies, using it to advance and gain power - much like the rich city leader in the movie. But such technologies, due to cost and specialization, are mainly slated for the elite caste. Lower classes, the working class, cannot readily access new technology because it is too specialized - it becomes a burden, rather than a tool.

I've noticed that people tend to fall into two categories when it comes to new technology:

1. People who "get it" and adapt quickly to new technology, embracing the advances. These are the "early adopters," the people who signed up for Web sites like Twitter before the masses. They tend to be a younger generation, which grew up with computers and rapidly advancing tech.

2. People who don't understand it - and maybe, they don't want to. Many people, like our parents and grandparents, can't grasp the concept of how new tech works and how quickly things change, so they become frustrated and give up. These are the people that are afraid of the internet, and can joke about not understanding "the email". They tend to be older, for whom computers are a new development.

These categories help to further that gap between people - again, this is a point touched upon by the film, except with social castes instead of age groups. Pretty revolutionary, right?

Another problem that I've found, which I think is subtly foreshadowed in Metropolis, is that we as a society are becoming too tech focused - things are automated, created for convenience. This creates distance and we lose the "human factor."

I'm as big a nerd as they come, but there comes a point when we reach technology overload. Too impersonal, not enough face-to-face communication. I'd rather talk with someone in the real world, than in a "virtual world."

Steve Wozniak, the man who together with Steve Jobs invented the personal computer and founded Apple Computer, will be appearing on the next season of Dancing With The Stars.

Meanwhile, Steve Jobs has mysteriously left Apple Computer for perhaps forever do to health reasons and the Windows 7 Beta has just been released and gaining very favorable and anti-Vista reviews.

Last month was also the 25th anniversary of the Mac being unveiled the public with Apple's risky Super Bowl ad.  The Mac was the first commercially successful personal computer to use a graphic-interface instead of text and mouse.

I think it is a fitting time to go back and look at the history of the personal computer revolution and the two men at its healm, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. A fantastic movie that chronicles their parallel rise and how Microsoft ripped code directly from Mac OS to create Windows, is Pirates of the Silicon Valley.  Although now a little outdated, the history in it is not.

The social media revolution going on at the moment is just a second step in what these men and a few other key players set into motion as young men. They challenged the industries views of computers. There is a great scene in the movie, when Steve Wozniak lays the first Apple computer on the president of HP's desk. The older man looks at the pile of parts and then at the college aged Woz and says "this is for regular people? What would regular people want with a computer?"

The whole movie can be viewed online here, which i think is the only fitting way to watch it.

“Brandon, you are the only one I know I can ask advice on this.”

“Ok, shoot.”

“It involves World Of Warcraft and an ex-boyfriend”.

    Surprisingly this isn’t the first time I have had a conversation start like this.  My friend had been seeing a guy (in real-life) for about a month and made a character to play with on his realm (game server).  When the relationship fizzled, she had spent a lot of time with that character and gotten to know the people she played with on that realm and didn’t want to leave.
    She had ignored the ex-boyfriend until the day before she came to talk to me, she went to check her character’s mailbox and inside was a letter with 100 gold from her ex.  My friend didn’t know what to do.  Was this a sign that he still liked her? Was it a sign that he wanted to be friends? Or was it just a courtesy?
    My friend tried talking to her girlfriends about her dilemma, but none of them could comprehend the issue. This led my friend to talk to me.  We talked about what sending in-game currency was like in the real world. Was it like sending flowers? No, it wasn’t romantic. Was it like sending Monopoly money? No, she could get actual use out of the in-game gold.
    This guy sent a gesture in a virtual world that led to the same kind of questions as if he sent her a box of chocolates.  One of the first things I told her was it was a mistake to make a character on his realm that early in the relationship. It was like moving into his apartment after a month of dating.  The reason she didn’t want to leave, was similar to the shared friends argument found during a breakup. I was a World of Warcraft Dr. Phil.
    So what can we learn from this and how does it relate to Information Ecologies?  “Virtual Worlds” are a huge buzzword in the online communication field right now. One of my biggest pet peeves is when public relations people throw around “Second Life” like it is more like “Second Coming”, while in reality Second Life has around 43,000 paying players and World Of Warcraft has 11 million and growing. No wonder most of the experiments in using Second Life to communicate fail, there just isn’t an audience in there.
    Online worlds are the ultimate in Information ecologies, they are places built entirely to break the bounds of reality, yet we as humans seem to carry the familiar with us into them.  That is what I gained from the book, is that no matter how much technology weaves itself into our existence; we will not loose the basics that make us who we are. It is the same drama, just a different packaging.
    Now, I wonder what  my friend is getting for Valentines Day? A new sword or some dwarven tavern ale?

Information Ecologies by Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O’Day explains the many rolls that technologies play and cautions us to be more aware and critical of the advances in technology.  The authors state, “When we adopt new technologies, we face uncertainty about how our quality of life may change.  The development of new technology affects the nature of work, school, family life, commerce, politics, and war.”  (Nardi and O’Day pg13)  This is further explained with many examples including one about the Sami in Finland and the impact that snowmobiles had on herding reindeer.  (Nardi and O’Day pg 41)  I think that the authors make a good point, that we should be aware of the advances made because the effects that they have might not be what we intended, Winner refers to this as “technological drift.” (Nardi and O’Day pg 41)  I also found the discussion of the metaphors used to describe technology; tool, text, system, and ecology particularly interesting mainly because of our last book Metaphors We Live By.  Part II of the book introduces case studies about Librarians which they describe as a keystone species, Pueblo a virtual classroom, and gardeners or intermediaries between technological concepts and the world, the use of digital photography in the Abraham Lincoln High School, and an example of what they see as a dysfunctional ecology in a teaching hospital. 

While reading the book I found myself talking to my grandparents about how technology has changed and its affect on them.  My grandfather told me about a paper he had written when he was in college about possible affects that advances in technology could have on their culture.  The example he had used at the time was the automobile.  He had explained in the paper that as more and more people bought cars it affected the economy because people were able to travel further for work and other actives and that cars spawned changes in other industries such as drive-in movies and restaurants.  

I was interested to see that even back then (I thought that it might seem rude to ask the year so I do not know exactly when this was) they were concerned with how technology was affecting daily life and that their concern was about the automobile.  I am sure that most people would be wary and perhaps have moral or religious objections to the advances made to weapons and human cloning as well as others.  However, we should be aware that concerns were also raised about innovations that we could now not imagine life without.  This is not to say that we should be “technophiles" follow along blindly with all advances but that perhaps some of our concern is based in the fact that we are not yet familiar with the idea.  

 Near the end of the book the author’s voice their opinions about the internet and their concerns about commercialization.  They describe it as means of communication that connects us with “information, services, goods, and other people.”  (Nardi and O’Day pg188)  I agree with this but I think that we are finding that there is much more to the internet than that.  At this moment I am on my laptop which is wirelessly connected to the internet in my house.  Because of this I am able to periodically update my twitter status.  When I update twitter it also updates facebook and on facebook I am friends with someone that I am, at the moment, trying to avoid. While I could de-friend that person I prefer not to, but I do not want to talk to them either.  However because my facebook status is changing, they know (if they cared enough to check) that I am indeed home or at least in a position to talk to them.  So, I have had to prepare accordingly for such a conversation.  While this seems petty, it has changed my daily routine.  If anyone of those technologies were not doing exactly what they were suppose to do I would not be in this position.  However, I would certainly not exchange my laptop for a bit more privacy.

Hello Everybody,
 
If you're interested, check out this video.  It's from the first trailer for Resident Evil 5, the soon-to-be newest installment of the long-running survival horror series of videogames, set to release next month.  It contains imagery that I believe is worthy of investigation.

  Much has been made of this trailer's questionable use of imagery.  Last April, I commented on the trailer and on some of the discussion that it created.  While some people felt that much was made over nothing, a few of the more articulate members of the gaming press looked at the situation seriously.  N'Gai Croal, a Canadian-born black man (I guess that would make him African-Canadian-American, perhaps),  is a well-respected videogame writer for Newsweek magazine.  Shawn Elliott, whose blog I linked to, is now a videogame developer at 2K Games in Boston.  When I heard the buzz surrounding the trailer, I was skeptical.  After all, Capcom is a Japanese company who has been extremely successful at reaching out a global (read: European and North American) audience.  The Resident Evil series of videogames has always sold well here, so I never suspected any malice on their behalf.  After viewing the trailer, however, I was left with a bad taste in my mouth. 

Here is a new trailer, which is much different from the original. 

  This newer trailer clears some things up for me, and while most of the antagonists are black, everything seems to be spun in a way as to make it not their fault.  And there appears to be a higher-up antagonist, who is white.  Your darker-skinned (I'm unsure of the female character Sheva's nationality) also seems to make things a bit more inviting. 

  I bring this all up again because a free, playable demonstration of the game was made available recently for download for the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3.  I downloaded it when I had the chance, and played it twice on the snow day.  It was a visceral and cerebral experiences.  I played the section shown in the first demo. The addition the dark-skinned co-protagonist is an extremely notable addition.  There was no African partner in the original trailer.  Instead, the trailer showed a dashing white hero squaring off against hordes of sneaky, shadowy blacks.  Your man, Chris Redfield, stood tall and withstood the onslaught of dozens of angry black bezerkers. 

  Here, I should probably digress and say that I play a lot of shooting games.  Some are played online, cooperatively against human opponents, while others are played against computer-controlled characters.  Common enemies in shooter games include aliens (such as in the Halo and Gears of War series), Nazis (such as in Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, and Brothers in Arms), or zombies (Resident Evil, Left 4 Dead).  These are all easy-to-hate enemies.  Aliens, especially aggressive, imperialistic ones, are easy targets.  Nazis and to a lesser extent, WWII Japanese, responsible for countless war atrocities and crimes against humanity, are also commonly featured in shooting games.  Zombies too are great to kill as they're highly aggressive, and are already dead.  However, things feel much different when you are killing hordes of black zombies.  I believe that this is because their most noticable difference between them and your primary onscreen avatar (or myself as a white man), is their color. 

  When I saw the first set of five or six black zombies approach me in the game, it was an experience unlike any other I can remember in a game.  It was even more powerful than when I faced off against an ethnically diverse set of zombies in Resident Evil 3.  This time, it felt more real, looked more real (hello, hi-def) and sounded more real (thanks to surround sound).  I never expected to feel a sense of dread in a game like this.  It was similar to past Resident Evil games to be sure, but it was also more potent.  I don't know if this means anything about me, if anything.  I hope anyone interested can check this stuff out and talk with me if you'd like.  I'm curious to hear from both game players and non-players, guys and ladies, and people of all ethnic backgrounds, but especially African-Americans.  I am curious if they felt the same thing that Croal, Elliott, and I felt. 

Comments are welcome.  Do it.  Do it. Do it.

Joe

I just recently started on Twitter.  I am finding it quite interesting to see the daily thoughts of my friends and classmates that I may or may not find out if I were speaking to them via phone, text message, smoke signal or any other communication medium.

No offense to the George W. Bush fans, but during his administration, I found myself asking, "What was he thinking?!"  This occurred many times.  I felt I probably wasn't the first one to think this about the President or anyone in positions of power, especially the government.  So when I saw that members of Congress are on Twitter, giving us the ability to read some of what they do in their daily lives and revealing their innermost thoughts, I found it fascinating that politicians were wiling to open themselves up on Twitter, even in these days of politically correct spin doctors and public relations individuals washing their words.

I recently saw this article.

Last week, the class read Metaphors We Live By, by Bowker, and we discussed how metaphors shape our perception of reality as well as the concepts by which we live.

I would like to structure my blog in terms of the major metaphors discussed in Nardi and O’Day’s book Information Ecologies.

The first major metaphor is how Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis relates to their discussion of information ecologies (an additional metaphor they discuss later which I will speak of later).  Metropolis shows the fears of technology taking over our lives with humans becoming slaves to the machines.  An opposing view about technology would be a view that technology would make all our lives easier, letting machines do all the work that humans hate doing.

After introducing traditional metaphors for technology, the authors introduce a new metaphor describing technology and its social effect of humans.  Information ecologies is more appropriate as a metaphor because its shows how technology is created by humans, placed into a setting, then it is changed or manipulated to suit the needs of the local practice.

If we look at the metaphor ecologies and its use in the sciences, the term is applicable because, “it includes these local differences, while still capturing the strong interrelationships among the social, economic, and political contexts in which technology is invented and used.” (47)

Other metaphors used are keystone species and gardeners.  There are those who fear that technology will replace the humans needed to perform certain tasks in our society.  For example, now that the Internet has provided us with unlimited access to information at our fingertips, and how computers can organize and classify ways of cataloging books in libraries-some may say that the need for librarians is gone.  The authors, however, say that librarians are a keystone species.  Librarians as we see today are needed to dissect information for us, what is applicable to what we want to know, and what is accurate.   As we know, the downside to access to unlimited amounts of information with no censor is that some information maybe inaccurate.  Gardeners are those in specific information ecologies that adapt to the use of technology quickly and help those in the ecology who are having difficulty adapting to the technology.

Another metaphor that is stated is diversity.  Diversity is used to state that when technology is instituted in information ecologies, all parties who are open to its usage should consider the input and details of its usage.  

Nardi and O’Day dive deeper into the diversity metaphor when describing the Internet and their fears of commercial enterprises overwhelming other usages for the Internet.  They cite a book written by Bill Gates in which he describes the potential for the Internet and its use to make money in a capitalistic society.  I agree with all their fears and their refutations of claims made by Gates, but I think they must consider the audience that Gates was writing for; he may have been writing for businessmen rather than a general audience.

Overall, the analysis provided by the author’s tells us exactly how to appropriately incorporate technology into our life.  It addresses any possible fear that a reader may have and gives the reader the power to take action.  The metaphors used are easy to understand so one doesn’t have to be educated in any particular field to understand they have the power to use technology to their advantage.  It allows us to be proactive, rather than reactive, giving us control and choice.

Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart by Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O’Day is a book that challenges us to rethink the way we are involved with technology. Nardi and O’Day expose deficiencies in three technological metaphors (tool, text, and system). They develop their own metaphor, that of ecology. Nardi and O’Day define information ecologies as follows:

 

“We define an information ecology to be a system of people, practices, values, and technologies in a particular local environment. In information ecologies, the spotlight is not on technology, but on human activities that are served by technology (p. 50)”

 

            Information ecologies are similar to biological ecologies in that they are local, diverse ecologies that co-evolve and depend on several keystone species (p.51). For example, Rowan University is a large information ecology. It is composed of a vast assortment of components such as students, professors, computer labs, and dorms. Each part has its own solidarity, yet a change in that part can affect the entire ecological system. If students do not continue to attend the university, then the university will lose money. Professors may be laid-off, tuition may rise, and the quality of the information ecology may suffer as a whole, if it does not collapse entirely.  

This ecological metaphor hands power and control over to you and me. We have the ability to shape technology in our own information ecologies to fit our needs and standards. The ecology metaphor makes us responsible for technology instead of the technology being responsible for itself. In order for technology to be effective, we must consider the whole ecology. We must understand and consider the values of the many diverse parts within the entire system.

            I felt a sense of empowerment as I read Information Ecologies. It is nice to think I can mold my own technological sphere by being active in its ecological system. My only concern is that many people do not have this same sense of empowerment. They do not feel as though they are a part of an ecological system, and I worry that their values and opinions are easily forgotten and left out. Perhaps, by posting this blog, I am doing my part in the various information ecologies I belong to by empowering others within my ecological sphere.