Participatory Panopticon

I like the concept of ‘participatory panopticon’ for it clearly suggests the well-developed pattern of interpersonal communications in the ubiquitous media era. Participatory panopticon, according to Mark Andrejevic in Ispy, means ‘a form of consensual submission to surveillance in part because the watched are also doing the watching.’ It could be widely adapted to various aspects of our daily life.

Social media platforms are apparently good study objects for lateral monitoring. It is interesting to observe some common but unspoken social psychologies there. For example, there’s a function on Renren.com, a Chinese social networking service, called ‘invisible visit’. It enables us to set up a list of people who will not find our visits in their ‘Recently visitors’ list. Therefore, we can go to his or her personal page, view every texts, pictures and even others’ comments on them, without leaving a trace. It delicately reveals our desires of surveillance without being found out. However, it is also part of ‘participatory panopticon’, because while you invisibly monitor someone, the others are watching you in the same way.

Part of reason why people spend so much time on social media, as for me, is the mutual lateral monitoring. Before social media gets popular, the way people get to know each other is based on face-to-face communication. They did google someone when they want to have a better idea of him, but what they can get are his fragmentary traces online. However, social media save this situation. Take Facebook as an example. For the first time, up to 1 billion people with their true identities are gathered in one communication platform, carefully building up their virtual images by posting words and pictures of their lifestyle frequently. It greatly satisfies our voyeurism. When we are interested in someone, we are likely to ask for his Facebook account and look through every posts of his page.

What Singularity Point May Bring About?

Reading Alone Together, the thing interests me most is the definition of being alive. There’s a vivid story in the article that after a 12-year-old tamagotchi ‘past way’, its owner wrote a poem in memory of it. It might sound funny when thinking people mourn for a black and white pixel game in the shape of an egg, but if you regard it as a companion for quite a long time who would ask for your care and concerns day and night, you might find it reasonable.

As is mentioned in the article, the characteristics exclusively possessed by human being have disappeared. After 1990s, artificial intelligences are thought to have both feelings and needs, which were once considered unique to human beings comparing to animals and computers. It blurs the boundary between being alive or not. In the film A.I. by Steven Spielberg, a robot boy David is designed to be nurtured by families who lose their children or desperately want one. Monika’s son Martin is seriously sick in hospital and in great grief, Monika takes David home for accompanies. He completely rely on Monika because he is ordered to love her for his whole life. He cries when mom doesn’t love him, stand out to protect her when he senses danger, and he feels jealous when Martin comes back home and win back mom’s heart. He’s such a real boy, but also he’s consisted of rubber skins, electronic components and steel bones. The question is shall we consider him alive?

The thing may even gets more sophisticated when taking in the imagination of ‘singularity point’. As is described by the author, singularity point is when artificial intelligence gets the critical moment between they are limited-functioned and they are omnipotent. There’s a guess that after we get that point, we may merge with the robotic and achieve immortality, which again raises the unsolved issue concerning the definition is being alive. To think boldly, there’s going to be a various forms of the human-robot merging, like a disabled human with steel leg, or a physically dead person with wires connected to his brain, which keep him conscious. The latter one might seems reluctant to be considered alive, since we are not used to keep relationships with a brain soaking in nutrient solution, but how can I say he’s not alive, I mean, there isn’t any crucial difference between him and the guy with an artificial limb, is there?

Therefore, what singularity point may bring about, as for me, is a series of philosophical problems and following moral issues, like the legislation of the protection of A.I., or the social status of human being and A.I. or new rules of the distribution of recourses. Apart from being ‘technological rapture’, as is described by the author, it may also be an ethical disaster.

Dystopian Concerns of Ubiquitous Media

One interesting opinion of dystopian of high technology is about the adaptation of high technology. It is presupposed by me or by most of the young generation that it is not a problem to handle the ever changing operation systems of computers, updates of different kind of software, various dazzling type of apps used for every aspect of our daily life. However, when give it a second thought, I find the reality is not even close.

Taking my family as an example, which is a normal middle-level one with general background of education in Eastern China. Not to mention my grandparents who barely give any attention to the Internet concerning tasks, which keeps them away from the benefits and convenience brought by the technologies and live nearly unchanging life ever since twenty years ago, even my parents found it difficult to keep up with new lifestyle, though they try their best to plunge into it. My mother is driven by her will to “see” me after I go to a university away from home and learns to video chat online. And also, she strives to do the online shopping, hoping to grab something cheap and good like the others always tell her so. However, for her lack of knowledge of how computer works, it always frightens her and makes her nervous when every single error occurs, and then she turns to me for help, describing it as a terrible disaster.

Are there such situations that people who are not familiar with Internet live harder than before, because the old fashioned style has been completely replaced by the new one? Even they don’t expect to have that much entertainment or that attractive functions, their life quality has also been harmed? Right now I haven’t come up with an example, but if it exists, that should be a problem. And also, if the high technology blocks the elder generation from living diversified and meaningful life, even if it hasn’t harm their old lifestyle, that should be suspected as well. It reminds me of an old man who once told me in a short conversation, that his life means nothing but picking up his grandson from kindergarten.

Some Thoughts of Social System Theory

According to the social system theory, a human being could be divided into an individual body, an individual mind and an individual communication, among which there’s no hierarchy relation and are completely at equal position. It is easy to find it logical when talking about the relation of mind and body: After all, mind and body exist interdependently, you cannot expect a mindless body to work functionally, or any thoughts to be generated without a brain. However, as for me, communication doesn’t stand at the same height with body and mind. It is rare but possible that a human being exists out of any communication system but his mind and body still work normally. Just think of the very first moment of our birth: Body is there, mind is there, but communication is not. It seems to me that communication comes latter and only at the premise of mind-body duality, instead of the “mind-body-communication trinity” mentioned by social system theory.

To prove the communication system and psychic system are separated, the author illustrates that communication is never equal to what is thought and felt in the mind. I do agree with this single point, as is cliché that language barrier keeps us away from the truth, but I don’t consider it a tenable evidence of the separation of communication and mind. As for me, it merely proves that mind cannot be fully translated into communication, rather than the point that communication is independent of mind.

In explaining the operational closure of social system, the example of communist economy in Eastern Europe is appealing to me. Instead of bringing up those really detailed elements, like corruption or monocracy, It offers a general understanding of the failure, which is caused by the attempt for a economic system to play the role of a political one. I find it interesting because it somehow suggests the future of some other socialist countries, in which the economic system, cultural system are both taken over by political system.

Do we want to simplify interaction or complicate it?

Based on the reading material( the part I can understand) for this week as well as my personal daily experience, I find myself confused by human’s deep inside expectation of interaction. It sounds fair enough to say that people are looking for familiarities in it so that they could easily get access to new technologies with their life experience, however, paradoxically, to pursue familiarities too far becomes an imitation of real life therefore eliminate the necessity of the technology.

We seem desperate to save our time and energy from daily routine. Think back the advertising video Luke played for us last week promoting the concept of ubiquitous media: A lady sits by her bed interacting with different digital technologies to read books, video talk with her daughter and deal with official business. I understand that they are trying to display an extraordinary futuristic lifestyle, but the fact of sitting by the bed, simply waving your finger to do everything just appears weird to me. It makes me wonder how weak and out of shape we could be if we really lead a life like this.

While I’m almost convinced that someday there would only be our brains that are willing to interact with computers, I find that motion-sensing game is a credible opposite viewpoint. Since we already have invented gamepads covering all kinds of action orders that we may encounter in games, why are we still interested in jumping up and down and waving our arms to play a fake tennis game? Is it likely that game is the only form in which we are willing to endeavor more energy? And the choice between a digital ball game or a real one seems to be another question to ask. Apart from the physical conditions, like weather, limits of place, what is the psychological pattern that makes people prefer an embodiment rather the real game itself?

Some Ideas Concerning Cyberspace

When reading Interface Fantasy A Lacanian Cyborg Ontology, I find it reluctant to connect female voice system to Oedipus complex, claiming that people are willing to hear female voice for its maternal characteristics. As for me, it’s over interpreted with tenuous evidence, just like the other viewpoints proposed through psychoanalysis method.

Reading that the cyberspace “blurs the boundaries between self and others”, it causes me to think of my own situation. Since I am used to typing everything important in my laptop and mobile phone, like class notes and memos, and I also mark every book, film and album I appreciate on Douban, a website specifically aiming at marking and sharing cultural products, it’s quite risky but crucial to think what if I’m cut off the cyberspace one day. I wouldn’t be able to remember most of the books I’ve read, for sure, and I would also hardly remember the coming up events and meetings. So am I really taking advantages of cyberspace, or have I already given up a part of me to it? That thought scares me.

Another thing that confused me is the cyber addict, which appears widely on social media. A communication mobile app in China makes people crazily post their daily life, the lunch they’ve had, their boyfriends and girlfriends, complaints about work… After posting that, people desperately wait for others to click “heart” as a support or leave their comments. I understand their thoughts that much because I’m part of them, though I cannot figure out the innermost willingness that drives me so.

The idea that there’s a gap for fantasy between virtual world and reality is appealing to me, meaning that the object itself could never been shown through the cyberspace, but the image, texts or sounds takes the place. I think the most obvious example is the goods we buy online are hardly the same as we imagine, because they’re shown merely in pictures and words that could easily be misunderstood by consumers.