A Brave New World

The idea that struck a chord with me during the lecture this week was the notion that with the advent of the internet, we are able to live a whole portion of our lives separate from our bodies. What I mean is, that we are able to separate the "information" (our mind) from its "physical carrier" (our body) and travel virtually anywhere we want, do, learn and see things whilst keeping out butts planted firmly in our chair.

That is nothing new to anyone, it's pretty obvious I know. The reason I mention it is because so many of us in the world are spending a lot of our time with our minds online; in a sort of alternate world - "Cyberspace" I guess you would call it - interacting with each other virtually but not physically, living our lives virtually, but not physically.

Kevin Kelly calls it "the new economy." John Barlow calls it "the new home of the Mind."With this new world, comes new rules, a new language, a new culture and a whole new way of thinking in terms of politics.

And what an amazing world it is! Judging from the idealist world described in the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, there is complete equality (as all nodes in the network are equal, regardless of race and gender), true freedom of speech, ("anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity"), and autonomy ("we declare our virtual selves immune to your [Governments of the Industrial World] sovereignty even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies").

This world is instead built off the logic of networks. Kelly explains that we "clothe the globe with a network society," connecting everything to everything - making a world that Barlow believes to be "more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before."

So wow - a world completely free from any authority and control? My first thought is - wouldn't that cause complete havoc and chaos? Well, I guess so in a way and in a way not. We see cases of internet bullying, cyberstalking, unethical behaviour (see: gate-crashing of virtual funerals on WOW for example) and networking to cause crazy riots. But on the other side: we see unified communities with free open source software, forums with people helping others, people tagging each other in facebook photos to relive memories and overall sharing of information for education and entertainment.

Just like our real physical world, the virtual world can be a world of good and bad - and to an extent, it is a world that the user them self can influence to be what they want. Hopefully, we will continue to build towards the utopian vision of this "new world" of ideas, information and relationships.

The Puzzle that is Art and Regulation

It's only Week 2 and already there are blogs and tweets buzzing around like crazy with ideas, opinions and debatable issues being raised. Of the ones I've read, it has been passionate discussion about the ethics surrounding the gaming industry. If you feel like reading some more into this, Kyle, Tegan and Samuel all voiced some interesting opinions and the comments that ensued are equally as interesting. It really is a topic which I think could be debated about long into the night... and yet amazingly - that idea is but one tiny fragment of the entirety of debatable issues when it comes to global communication networks!

Lessig's article "Four Puzzles From Cyberspace" touches upon four more themes, each one presenting "a window into one aspect of cyberspace." Contrary to the apparent opinion of the class yesterday, I actually did enjoy reading this. In particular, the two things that struck a chord with me were surrounding the topic of Regulation and the contradictory nature behind the virtual and physical persona.

Let me explain. Lessig discusses the idea of regulation through the example of the state of "Boral" where gambling has been made illegal. With the advent of the internet comes problems with regulating this law as while the governor has the power to "move the server out of her state" she has not "succeeded in reducing Boralian gambling." Why? The internet makes it hard to regulate who is responsible, and even though the server is no longer in the state - it can still be accessed. Space is no longer able to be regulated.

This made me think about sites such as Pirate Bay, which are able to exist by taking advantages of this "loophole." It really is an amazing concept and I don't think anyone is really complaining because, well, it gets people the music, the movie, the program that they want and need. Well, actually no - there are probably quite a few people complaining what with copyright issues and the inability for the artist or producer of the material to even know who has accessed his or her work.

Being a graphic designer and musician (albeit not a great one), I can in a way empathise with this problem. It takes a lot of hard work and time to make the work and it really would be good to know just how popular it is and who your audience is. Back in the day, it was easy to know who watched a television show because you could look at tv ratings. Now? Thanks to the internet, people could still be watching it on tv but they could also be watching it at home on their computers, or on Youtube or a million other sources. Before, one could tell how popular a song was by the sales of the CD and the attendants at a concert. Now? Well, let's see, we have avenues such as Youtube to see a concert, file sharing sites such as Piratebay, online players such as Grooveshark, the list goes on.

I am in no way condemning all of this at all. I am a rather poor Uni student and I won't say I have never used any of those avenues myself. I just wish there was a way for all of this to be regulated in an easy way so the statistics of "media audiences" can be given accurately to those who would appreciate it; it is their work after all. Sites like last.FM which track what people are listening to (with their permission of course) is probably a good start and the way of the future.

All gee, this has gotten a little longer than I expected. I suppose I will keep my rant and rave about the contradictory online persona for another day. Thanks for reading!