Week 9- Topic 9- Virtual Philosophy and Cyber Punk

Lecture:

This week lecture was a discussion on Cyberpunk and the idea of virtual reality. Cyberpunk is a very complicated and the ability to define it is hard. It can be a very simple definition. It is broken up into two different parts. The Cyber aspect is human/machine aspect and when describing the aspect of Punk, it is anarchic. It is very complicated and it challenges the norms of society with the idea of citizen hacker. Stephen also went to describe the idea of Greece and Rome, the idea that they were a democracy. We had a little history lesson on all the philosophical ideas of different philosophers.
Then for the rest of the class we watched a French movie. It is a new wave film. The film had pictures that we put all together with French speaker and English subtitles. This film was made in the 1960’s with very little money to create it. The message that was trying to get across was the idea of sending a message of what was going on at that time.

Tutorial: The Internet Field Trip

The tutorial task for this week is to compare using chat programs like MSN to a 3D virtual environment where you chat to others. When using an IM program I use MSN on a regular basis, when trying a 3D world I tried IMUV.

I used the active world’s 3D virtual game to chat to others. The one that I tried out was the IMVU website to try and interact. It had a brief conversation with someone else in the site. I was still testing it out and trying to learn how to work it. I discovered how to have a conversation with someone else and that you get credits to go shopping with when in the world. It was interesting. They started to ask me more as time went on, it will take time to fully understand how it will work.

The qualitative differences that I found between the two chat sites were that when talking the words are the same and that the meaning will be the same. You are interacting with various other people in an online website with only others that have that site.

The difference of socializing that happens in these spaces is you are able to see someone’s expressions when talking in the 3D world. You can present your emotions when chatting so you can get a feel about the conversation. You can read their body language almost which is hard when you are just reading the words off the screen.

When on the virtual world you get a person, everyone has a person in which you communicate with others. Avatars are people in which you can dress up and show emotions, you are able to be someone who is presented, with is you can be in different moods, and be able to chat to people and its more like real life in a way. The actions and the moves can be varied for people. It is more a virtual reality was you can dress up, chat to others and have different moves.

I think that this could lead us to socializing like this instead of going out and socializing in real life. 3D virtual worlds like this could take over MSN and other IM messaging sites and will keep people glued to their computer screens and interact with friends this way instead.

Reading:

The Allegory of the Cave Learning @ Griffith

This article had a couple of points that dealt with Plato. There are a couple of points that had to do with his phiosohical ideas on the cave and prisoners being placed in it. Plato was discussed in the lecture and how ideas are was part of the democracy over in Greece with his ideas playing a factor in society.

Burning Chrome By William Gibson Learning @Griffith

This is a novel written by William Gibson published in 1986. The story is about a Chrome, who was a streetwise hi tech whore. When she had customers who annoyed her, she had created her own variation cancers. This all backfired on her, there was a customer who got annoyed with her.
Coretti, had seen her somewhere but he is not sure where he had seen her before. He cant remember what club it had been. She had caught his attention with the way that she moved and walked through the club. Then the connection is made of their first meeting.