Advancement of technologies and finances accelerated the movement of information, communication and transportation across nations. In many ways, international migration is strongly influenced by the emergence of a global information society and by the broad availability of information and communication technologies. Once settled in the country of residence, for many migrants, internet, telephone and television are significant tools allowing them to stay in touch with their countries of origin, or even to facilitate the establishment of new ties between the country of residence and that of origin. Migrants today are often able to lead ‘dual lives’, to maintain close relations, material, and emotional affiliations with both their country of origin and their country of destination. However, there are limitations to the globalization of information, large reliance on internet and telephone would disengage the immigrants from its local environment.
Appadurai argues that in many social locations throughout the world, especially those characterized by media saturation and migrant population, “The mass communication facilitate ‘works of imagination,’ in which imaged worlds and imagined selves can created within diasporic communities, both in local contexts and across national boundaries.”[1] The cyberspace serves as means of providing a sense of aspiration and hope to placeless migrant populations. The online spaces provide a sense of comfort for immigrants to express themselves in ways that they would not feel comfortable doing in their physical context. Internet can serve as a democratic space of dialogue and response with multiple perspectives. This allows immigrants to seek each other out who share the same histories and practices. Internet could also allow all kinds of information and news to travel simultaneously over the world. With the internet connection, substantial number of migrants started to subscribe TV programs provided by the most popular TV channels in their homeland. By subscribing the internet programs, they can watch the news, entertainment, and television drama from their homeland at their convenience. Instant message software such as Yahoo Massager, MSN, Skype…etc are essential to the migrants to stay in touch with their friends and family at all times.
Globalization of information allows the migrants to experience a duality between place of origin and place of residence. “The new immigrant identity is hybridized, interweaving elements of the homeland and new land. Migrants therefore exist in a world of “in-betweeness,” negotiating cultural forms and identities at the crossroads of the nation-state and global diasporas.”[2] Contemporary immigrants are usually deeply rooted in their country of origin. Due to the displacement of their physical location, those migrants often feel out of place and helpless. Internet and telephone are the only sources to keep them away from nostalgia. Regular usage of internet induces the dependence of it. Migrants incline to consume more and more time in front of computer and telephone thus isolate themselves from the physical world. Danah Boyd’s research has shown that Internet usage weaken the ties among physical world friends, families while deepen the ties among distanced people. This fact totally defeats the purpose of immigration, which is to seek for a better living and working environment in other parts of the world. This new phenomenon brought by information globalization is reflected as” loss of social capital” as migrants spent their time transfixed by screens rather than other people around them. Internet is considered to broaden the social network; however, it shrinks the social network among migrants and natives. Danah Boyd’s research has also shown that substantive usage of internet causes social isolation and depression. Internet use at home has a strong negative impact on time spent with friends and family as well as time spent on social activities.
As information globalization raises all the benefits to our society today, it also brings down the level of physical interaction among people. Daily association with homeland strengthens the strong ties the migrants use to have, but weakens, or even cuts, the weak ties in the new society they are in. In some cases, it leads to “bounded solidarity”, when cliques become so turned in on themselves that they all but stop interacting with the wider society around them.
[1] Srinivasan and Ryati, Diasporic Information Environments: Re-Framing Immigrant-Focused Information Research” P. 4
[2] Srinivasan and Ryati, Diasporic Information Environments: Re-Framing Immigrant-Focused Information Research”P.5
2008年5月8日星期四
2008年3月21日星期五
Navigability as a fundamental form of new media
Lev Manovich argues that the key feature of computer space is its navigability; his argument point towards the computer game as an example of “navigable space”. In comparison between Doom and Myst, the player in Doom moves in straight lines, “abruptly turning at right angles to enter a new corridor”[1], the navigational structure in Myst is much more open and liberated. “The player, or more precisely, the visitor, slowly explores the environment: she may look around for a while, go in circles, return to the same place over and over, as thought performing an elaborate dance”[2]. And yet the two games are basically identical since they are both “spatial journeys”. Manovich claim that these games were designed for players to wander around inside, it’s indeed a world. The players gain great control over movement, space and time in the three dimensional virtual space. “Rather than being narrated to, the player herself has to perform actions to move narrative forward…If the player does nothing, the narrative stops. From this perspective, movement through the game world is one of the main narrative actions. But this movement also serves the self-sufficient goal of exploration.”[3] This sense of autonomous in the game world also applies to other motion simulator such as information visualizer, which allows the user to travel around the network database. Apart from navigable space’s autonomous; Manovich also argues that “navigable space is not just a purely functional interface. It is also an expression and gratification of a psychological desire, a state of being, a subject position---or rather, a subject’s trajectory. If the subject of modern society looked for refuge from the chaos of the real world in the stability and balance of the static composition…finds peace in the knowledge that she can slide over endless helds of data, locating any morsel of information with the click of button, zooming through file system and network. She is comforted not by an equilibrium of shapes and colors, but by the variety of data manipulation operations at her control.”[4]
Navigability allows one to explore, to create his or her own world and path. Manovich educed an example from Legible City, in which landmark presents a symbolic rather than illusionist space. “The memory of the real city is carefully preserved without succumbing to illusionism; the virtual representation encodes the city’s genetic code, its deep structure rather than its surface.”[5] This idea of mapping through memory links to Frederic Jameson’s concept of cognitive mapping: a process composed of a series of psychological transformations by which an individual acquires, codes, stores, recalls, and decodes information about the relative locations and attributes of phenomena in their everyday spatial environment. The key attribution of cognitive mapping is its individuality. Given a common exterior environment, each observer organizes and creates his or her unique “map” in the head that is different from the others. Thus, the individual’s spatial behavior relies upon this cognitive map of the surrounding environment. Real world mapping may or may not be relevant in creating virtual landscapes, but it is used to envision cyber world, games and virtual environments, which in turn are reflections of individual’s awareness of the real world. A navigable virtual space creates this possibility for user to “map out” his or her own understanding of the social environment and its relationship to his or her existence.
When technology provides a computer-generated virtual reality that is an alternative to physical reality through navigability and 3-D graphic design, it allows virtual reality to interact with the hyperreality. Jean Baudrillard refers this hyperreality as a simulacrum of the real world. Computer space thus becomes the medium of the simulacrum in which it blurs the line between the “real” and the “virtual” and make it appear “natural.” “It is no longer really the real, because no imaginary envelops it anymore. It is hyperreal, produced from a radiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere.”[6] The user’s experience in the virtual world is of a simulation of reality rather than reality itself. Video game player temporarily forgets the difference between the game world and the physical world.
Apply Fredric Jameson’s notion to Manovich’s argument of navigable space, designing a virtual world through which subjects can navigate and orientate themselves successfully requires an understanding of cognitive map formation in virtual environments. And this formation of virtual reality is what Jean Baudrillard refers to as a simulacrum: the map, the symbol, the real and the virtual that forms the basis that all the information is a simulation of real space, it is a self-reflexive work of the real world.
[1]Manovich, “Navigable Space” The Language of New Media (Cambridge,
MA: MIT, 2000)
[2]Manovich, “Navigable Space” The Language of New Media (Cambridge,
MA: MIT, 2000)
[3] Manovich, “Navigable Space” The Language of New Media (Cambridge,
MA: MIT, 2000)
[4] Manovich, “Navigable Space” The Language of New Media (Cambridge,
MA: MIT, 2000)
[5] Manovich, “Navigable Space” The Language of New Media (Cambridge,
MA: MIT, 2000)
[6] Jean Baudrillard, “The Precession of the Simulacra,” Simulation and
Simulacra. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan, 1994)
Navigability allows one to explore, to create his or her own world and path. Manovich educed an example from Legible City, in which landmark presents a symbolic rather than illusionist space. “The memory of the real city is carefully preserved without succumbing to illusionism; the virtual representation encodes the city’s genetic code, its deep structure rather than its surface.”[5] This idea of mapping through memory links to Frederic Jameson’s concept of cognitive mapping: a process composed of a series of psychological transformations by which an individual acquires, codes, stores, recalls, and decodes information about the relative locations and attributes of phenomena in their everyday spatial environment. The key attribution of cognitive mapping is its individuality. Given a common exterior environment, each observer organizes and creates his or her unique “map” in the head that is different from the others. Thus, the individual’s spatial behavior relies upon this cognitive map of the surrounding environment. Real world mapping may or may not be relevant in creating virtual landscapes, but it is used to envision cyber world, games and virtual environments, which in turn are reflections of individual’s awareness of the real world. A navigable virtual space creates this possibility for user to “map out” his or her own understanding of the social environment and its relationship to his or her existence.
When technology provides a computer-generated virtual reality that is an alternative to physical reality through navigability and 3-D graphic design, it allows virtual reality to interact with the hyperreality. Jean Baudrillard refers this hyperreality as a simulacrum of the real world. Computer space thus becomes the medium of the simulacrum in which it blurs the line between the “real” and the “virtual” and make it appear “natural.” “It is no longer really the real, because no imaginary envelops it anymore. It is hyperreal, produced from a radiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere.”[6] The user’s experience in the virtual world is of a simulation of reality rather than reality itself. Video game player temporarily forgets the difference between the game world and the physical world.
Apply Fredric Jameson’s notion to Manovich’s argument of navigable space, designing a virtual world through which subjects can navigate and orientate themselves successfully requires an understanding of cognitive map formation in virtual environments. And this formation of virtual reality is what Jean Baudrillard refers to as a simulacrum: the map, the symbol, the real and the virtual that forms the basis that all the information is a simulation of real space, it is a self-reflexive work of the real world.
[1]Manovich, “Navigable Space” The Language of New Media (Cambridge,
MA: MIT, 2000)
[2]Manovich, “Navigable Space” The Language of New Media (Cambridge,
MA: MIT, 2000)
[3] Manovich, “Navigable Space” The Language of New Media (Cambridge,
MA: MIT, 2000)
[4] Manovich, “Navigable Space” The Language of New Media (Cambridge,
MA: MIT, 2000)
[5] Manovich, “Navigable Space” The Language of New Media (Cambridge,
MA: MIT, 2000)
[6] Jean Baudrillard, “The Precession of the Simulacra,” Simulation and
Simulacra. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan, 1994)
2008年2月19日星期二
semantic code
The semantic code (SEM.) points to any element in a text that suggests a particular, often additional meaning by way of connotation.
hermeneutic code
The hermeneutic code (HER.) refers to any element in a story that is not explained and, therefore, exists as an enigma for the reader, raising questions that demand explication. "Snares" meant deliberate evasions of the truth.
Starring a Text
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
*Color of television. What is the color of television? Which television, channel or scene is it talking about? It could be vivid or dull. This is a very vague description of the sky color. What surrounding is William try to set the readers into? Most importantly, why is William use the color of television to describe the sky, what does it imply? All those questions will not be answered until the reader gets into the theme of the story. The bridge between the natural world and cyberspace rises up the question for the reader. (HER. Enigma: snares) (1) **tuned to a dead channel. From whose perspective is the color of sky tuned to a dead channel? It is not until later, the reader found out who the narrative is, and why the sky appeared to be a television tuned to a dead channel for him. (HER. Enigma: snares) (2) The story thus begin with all the questions.
The Bartender’s smile widened. His ugliness was the stuff of legend. In an age of affordable beauty, there was something heraldic about his lack of it.
*His ugliness was the stuff of legend. It is not clear to the readers why William has to emphasize on the ugliness of the bartender. (HER. Enigma: snares) (3) **In an age of affordable beauty, what age or world is it? If beauty is not naturally created, and is affordable to everyone, what is the significance of one’s appearance? Or does it matter here. ***The word ugliness has an additional connotation of being insignificant. (SEM. Insignificance) (4)
A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the speed he took, all the turns he’s taken and the corners he’s cut in Night City…
*A year here. Clearly the character was not able to get into the cyberspace for a long time. And this leads to answer the first question of why the sky appeared to be the color of television tuned to a dead channel for him at the beginning of the story. However, this raises another question of why couldn’t he get back to the cyberspace in a world of no boundary. What has happened to him? (HER. Enigma: partial answers) (5)**all the speed he took. The word speed implies him as a drug user, on the other hand as a cyberspace user. People always give a better indication for cyberspace user as they travel on top of the information. However, those users are cyberspace addicts just as those drug addicts. The word speed is a connotation which implies user.(SEM. User)(6).
*Color of television. What is the color of television? Which television, channel or scene is it talking about? It could be vivid or dull. This is a very vague description of the sky color. What surrounding is William try to set the readers into? Most importantly, why is William use the color of television to describe the sky, what does it imply? All those questions will not be answered until the reader gets into the theme of the story. The bridge between the natural world and cyberspace rises up the question for the reader. (HER. Enigma: snares) (1) **tuned to a dead channel. From whose perspective is the color of sky tuned to a dead channel? It is not until later, the reader found out who the narrative is, and why the sky appeared to be a television tuned to a dead channel for him. (HER. Enigma: snares) (2) The story thus begin with all the questions.
The Bartender’s smile widened. His ugliness was the stuff of legend. In an age of affordable beauty, there was something heraldic about his lack of it.
*His ugliness was the stuff of legend. It is not clear to the readers why William has to emphasize on the ugliness of the bartender. (HER. Enigma: snares) (3) **In an age of affordable beauty, what age or world is it? If beauty is not naturally created, and is affordable to everyone, what is the significance of one’s appearance? Or does it matter here. ***The word ugliness has an additional connotation of being insignificant. (SEM. Insignificance) (4)
A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the speed he took, all the turns he’s taken and the corners he’s cut in Night City…
*A year here. Clearly the character was not able to get into the cyberspace for a long time. And this leads to answer the first question of why the sky appeared to be the color of television tuned to a dead channel for him at the beginning of the story. However, this raises another question of why couldn’t he get back to the cyberspace in a world of no boundary. What has happened to him? (HER. Enigma: partial answers) (5)**all the speed he took. The word speed implies him as a drug user, on the other hand as a cyberspace user. People always give a better indication for cyberspace user as they travel on top of the information. However, those users are cyberspace addicts just as those drug addicts. The word speed is a connotation which implies user.(SEM. User)(6).
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