Sunday 24 August 2014

WEEK 6: Not that optimistic, still


This week’s reading contents seem to be quite appealing to me, since they suffused a sense of pessimistic feeling towards future technology. For the past month, I have been unstopping concerned about the side effect of ubiquitous media. I fear the possibility that technology would be intelligent enough to control us, just like what happened in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, what invented by human finally kill human itself.

What I need to emphasize is that I am never a technological determinist. In China, I always treated myself as a neo-liberalist to same degree, but when reading the story of “Weev”, I realized that I haven’t get that far indeed. ”Computerization will set you free.” What kind of freedom does it mean? Is there any boundary for this kind of freedom? I wondered.

One good example is the 3D-printing. Is this just like the technology of cloning? How could it be if it is used to print animals or human? What's more, what about Bitcoin? Could it be possible that it becomes the top one currency of the world one day instead of American Dollar? In fact, for a nation, the control of its currency is so
vital since currency could control the whole market, then the totality of economy, then the nation itself.

To be honest, I’m not that optimistic about the utopia of the future cyber world. For me, the “free” or the “open” market does bring more opportunities and possibilities, however, it also brings completely new order to the world rather than a “free” and “open” one which isn’t written down literally but appears everywhere.


Work cited:

Golumbia, David, “Ceberlibertarianism: The Extremist Foundations of ‘Digital Freedom’,” Viginia Commonwealth University, Dept of English: Sep 2013

Winner, Langdon, “Technology Today: Utopia or Dystopia?” Social Research, Vol. 64, No. 3, Technology and the rest of culture (FALL 1997), pp.989-1017

Sunday 17 August 2014

WEEK 5: Transcend the Boundary


Luhmann’s Social System Theory simply gives us a new theoretical framework and vision to re-understanding society and individuals. Personally, it gives another opportunity to re-consider Chinese democratization progress. According to Luhmann, democracy is a product of social evolution process. When society evolved to a functional differentiation society, political system has become one of many systems, which means that it must operate within society itself. In my opinion, this kind of political operation could be named “Mechanical Democracy”.

If Luhmann was right, in the future, hopefully, the globalization of function system described by him could be able to re-shape China, not by human well (which is impossible at present), but by the power of rational system (if it is strong enough).

Well, go back to ubiquitous media sphere, from my point of view, Luhmann’s best contribution is introducing Socialism into different fields including computer science. In ubicomp area, the system or the environment becomes unprecedented important. The relationship between human and the rest could be reshaped. In this case, human won’t be dominated any more. Due to the functional differentiation, all individuals are just living in different subsystems. Therefore, human can no longer be understood as a specific integral unit. The stabled ubiquitous environment system could break through the traditional way of interface, and just being existence and operating Rational smoothly and constantly.


Sunday 10 August 2014

WEEK 4: The Way of Understanding


For an English learner, for example, as me, the only possible way to understand a certain English term is trying my best to find out its Chinese translation. Unfortunately, this was what I failed to understand the word "embodiment" in the past week. Obviously, the Chinese-English dictionary did give me a possible definition, it still confused me when I tried to put this meaning into Husserl's, Heidegger's or Merleau-Ponty's theories. Obviously, I could "perceive" the definition, I could even "touch" it, but I couldn't figure it out.

 I. Dear Mr. Martin Heidegger (Jesus, What are you thinking about?)

This is just how I feel about the limitation of understanding. For me, without language itself, the producing of meaning seems to discontinue. Consequently, for this week's readings, I merely aware that they do talk something about another way of understanding instead of human language which I really love to read about.

So, even I have to admit that I failed to understand what they talk about, I still feel joyful when I look into the way of future understanding. At least, I could imagine about the beautiful blueprint: with something called “tangible tools”, we could understand the “meaning” by “perceiving” or even “touching” without language. At that time, I really love to review the readings again.

Work cited:
I. Davide Calandrini, 2013, http://www.toonpool.com/cartoons/Martin%20Heidegger_193958

Sunday 3 August 2014

WEEK 3

Kia ora! This is my second week in Auckland now and I’m just getting used to the bus system day by day and I decided to quit writing poems and just enjoy the cozy time here to live like a Kiwi. Actually, I have found something exciting about AT System which is so advanced. What I mean is the HOP Card system. You just swipe your HOP Card when you get on board, and when you get off and swipe it again, the machine will deduct the certain travel expenses from your card. Yes, have you found what is amazing? Yes, the machine could identify how long you have traveled. From my point of view, the most likely technology which been used is LBS. So, well done, I’m really impressed about that.

In fact, this intelligent system is a part of Human–computer Interface. Interface, in my opinion, could be defined as that systems (or objects, or humans) use some functions supported by another system to operate information transportation, meantime, the systems (or objects, or humans) don’t need to know how it works to achieve certain functions. That’s just the beauty of Interface. I don’t have to know how the HOP Card Machine works and just enjoy the convenience of it.

By the way, about the future Google cars, apart from the optimistic atmosphere diffused in last class, I personally have a lit bit concern about it. Here’s the story, try to think about it: one night, you are pretty drunk after a party. You just start your Google car engine and it just drive by itself safely and considerable fast. You won’t make any troubles on your way at all. In fact, you are just the passenger and it is Google car that send you home. Well, the legal dilemma is that, have you broken the traffic laws already?