Chris’s Comments (group member since Apr 03, 2013)

Chris’s comments from the EDCMOOC group.

Well said Kirstie. I agree with all of that! I'm really glad we carried it on and it was a great opportunity to try out Twitter as a learning tool. On top of all that there were the tremendous books we read! I look back now at James Tiptree, Don De Lillo, Phillip K Dick, William Morris, Daniel Keyes, Cory Doctorow etc and think how great it was to be introduced to all of them. Very inspiring, and I often think back to them and to the chats in general as a reference point for ideas and inspiration.

Cheers,
Chris

Thanks so much for keeping this going Kirstie. Regrettably I am going to be busy on Saturday, and also probably the first Saturday of September. I have done so badly this year :( but I love how the chat is still going & will endeavor to attend if I can.

I am away on the 2nd May unfortunately. Hope you have a good discussion though, it sounds like an interesting read.

Chris

Oh no, I've failed you again this month. I remembered I am meeting a friend this evening so won't be able to make the chat :(

I've got 40 pages into the book so far and it is very intriguing. Loads of themes so far on advertising, privacy, AI etc. One idea struck me that in the future what if our gadgets & printers did all our thinking for us. What's left of us? Do we just live in our memories? Or always trying to recapture that elusive perfect moment? Maybe the book goes on to explore that. Sorry, bit of a rushed contribution from me thins month!

Oh whoops, I just read the story at the above link but two pages are missing! I had a quick search but couldn't find another online copy. Off to the library for me.

The bits I read were hilariously absurd and profoundly thought provoking in equal measure - just as you'd expect from KV!

Asta wrote: "I added several short stories/novelettes to our bookshelf.
Most of them are recent winners of either Hugo or Nebula awards ("Oscar" equivalents in science fiction).
I also remember that during one ..."

Fantastic selection Asta. Thanks for adding. Bravo! All new ones to me so can't wait to read them

Just read the story. Will need to re-read again before Sat but it covers some pretty deep topics as you'd expect from PK Dick! Here are some themes & questions hastily sketched out to get the ball rolling:

1. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Who does the thinking when you switch on a computer - you or it?

2. The story was published in 1990. Do you think there are similarities between the empathy boxes and our modern smart phones and tablets?

3. State control. I kept thinking of cold war politics reading the story. How a whole ideology is set up based on fear of what someone else might be doing. "Fear of the unknown, like tiny children. That's our ruling circles: tiny, fear-ridden children playing ritualistic games with super-powerful toys"
Does technology liberate us from that? ie because we share more, things are more open, wikileaks etc. Or does it make it worse? ie do we really think about the wider consequences? Our digital footrpint etc? Do we hand over control of our data too easily?

4. Who was Wilbur Mercer? What did he represent?

5. What did you make of Mr Lee? Two quotes from him:
"I can pick up those thoughts, even if you deny them to yourself".
"He has not changed his mind," Mr. Lee said urbanely, nodding to both men, apparently amused by the situation

The standout quote for me which summed the whole book up was: "The tide in man's blood has been complicated by technology, the daily seeping falsehearted death". There is a strong sense throughout the book that mass media, technology, consumerism has isolated us from our more primal fears and emotions. All the characters react to that in different ways. And some of the passages are either absurd set pieces (The Most Photographed Barn in America where people take pictures of taking pictures) or scathingly satirical takes on this (Hitler studies being a marvelous success, or lines like "We need an occasional catastrophe to break up the incessant bombardment of information...India remains largely untapped for disasters". Here are a few more quotes and questions I picked out

"A network of symbols has been introduced, an entire awesome technology wrested from the gods. It makes you feel like a stranger in your own dying".
1. Has technology alienated us from the real world?

"You are the sum total of your data".
2. Was the book cynical, or accepting, of this type of statement?

"They whispered to each other in the checkout lines. They became secretive, shifty, appeared to
withhold the latest and worst news from others; appeared to blend a cunning with their haste, tried to hurry out before someone questioned the extent of their purchases. Hoarders in a war. Greedy, guilty."
3. What would he have made of online shopping?

"What good is knowledge if it just floats in the air? It goes from computer to computer. It changes and grows every second of every day. But nobody actually knows anything".
4. Is there such a thing as too much information?

"We'd become part of the public stuff of media disaster"
5. Is the book right to be cynical of the media?

Good questions. The Most Photographed Barn in America passage was funny and well observed. Even more in the age of social media.

I need to finish the book this afternoon. Look forward to the chat later.

Chris

Lots of themes. I had to read some parts a few times & could probably do with another read through myself! I liked the imagery, language & style of writing too. It was original, funny, and fresh. Some questions from my notes

Does technology take away our identity, or enhance it? Or maybe a better question, does advertising take away or enhance our identity?

Is the book a criticism of advertising? Or accepting that it is an inevitable part of life, even with its flaws?

Who has got power in the book? The scientists, the GTX corporations, or the individuals like Paul or P.Burke? What does it say about free will?

"Holocam total-environment shells are very expensive and electronically super-stable. Inside them actors can move freely...the whole scene will show up in the viewer’s home in complete 3-d, so real you can look up their noses...You can blow a tit ten feet tall when there’s no molecular skiffle around".
What did you think of the style of the writing and the language? Was it being satirical? Cynical? Or just plain absurd?

"The next time she plugs in to open Delphi’s eyes it’s no different — do you notice which relay boards your phone calls go through?"
We get called Zombie at the beginning of the story. What was the narrator trying to tell us, the reader? That we are stupid? That we need to think more? Did the book inspire you or make you feel helpless? Utopia or dystopia?

“The news.” He laughs. “There’s nothing in the news except what they want people to know...They’ve got the whole world programmed! Total control of communication. They’ve got everybody’s minds
wired in. One great big vortex of lies and garbage pouring round and round getting bigger and bigger and nothing can ever change. If people don’t wake up soon we’re through!”
The book was written in 1974, pre-internet days. From the passage above, do you think the internet has removed the "vortex of lies and garbage" or just replaced it?

Great questions Ary. I sat down to read the story today with a cup of tea. Cup of tea was still hot when I finished! Didn't think it would be so short. But a lot of pretty profound questions.

About a quarter way through and anticipating what is to come based on the above comments! So far I've enjoyed the way the narrator's voice changes ever so slightly as he's writing his progress reports. It really mirrors how we as the reader are trying to work him and the story out. It's a really effective narrative device I think.

I'm seeing quite a few themes that chime with some of the other books we've read:
- education: how do we develop or even control this in individuals?
- human happiness: what makes us happy? Being smarter means we might know more, but we might also despair at being able to see other people's foibles & hypocrisies in a clearer light.
- Science/technology: like Frankesntein or Brave New World, what are the moral & ethical implications of tampering with genetics and the "natural order" of things?

I kept thinking of Tony Blair's comment on the Iraq War and WMD's, "I only know what I believe". Or his whole comment was, "Do I know I'm right? Judgements aren't the same as facts. Instinct is not science. I'm like any other human being, as fallible and as capable of being wrong. I only know what I believe". That could've come straight out of this story.
So there were lots of parallels with our lives now, and with real events. There was also the issue of security & trust which echoed the Government filtering of the internet now. They say it's for our security but it isn't at all, there is another agenda at work. And that's the same across many political stories like the Snowdon one.

I was also thinking of how improvements in technology & science change the way we convict criminals. In the story, the precogs "know" what will happen in the future. How close are we getting to that now? What would have once been dismissed as "they are a bad character full stop" could now be proved otherwise. There was this story which I think has come up before http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/234...
And the neuro-scientist David Eagleman researches this too. In the case he describes in the first part of this link, the criminal "knew" they were going to do something before they had. They didn't know why, but they just knew it. The post mortem revealed they had a brain tumour. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/a...

This is also related to the issues of destiny and free will which came up. Although the characters, and we the readers, keep getting wrong footed about who is pulling the strings, in the end he does kill Leopold Kaplan as the pre-cog had said. It felt a bit like Oedipus Rex. No matter what he did he would always fulfil his destiny. I was also thinking about other old stories, like King Arthur and the sword in the stone for instance. That idea that your destiny is marked out for you. Or whether you can shape your own destiny? Might you win a battle but ultimately end up losing the war? I guess it's a powerful human emotion, and and one that is easily manipulated - for good or bad. To what extent will science or technology use or abuse this?

Q1:Thinking of the sory's title, what does the wall represent? Is it civilisation,or Earth itself? Nature/environemnt? #edcmchat

Q2:"You’re placing too much humanity behind her eyes".What did Felka represent to you? Was she stronger or weaker than the others?#edcmchat

Q3:What about the idea of Transenlightenment in the story? Has the hive mind/post human improved humanity? #edcmchat

Q4:"She looked deep into his eyes & reached out a hand. But there was nothing he could do to help her" Is the story all dystopian?#edcmchat

Q5 "the walls oozed beguiling patterns as if a dark forest had suddenly become enchanted" Is there a spiritual side to the story? #edcmchat

This story took me a while to get into, but then it burst into life with some really interesting scenes, ideas, thoughts, and questions. I've just been jotting my notes and thoughts down here, trying to pick out some themes & questions. What do you think?

1. "I don’t think we can begin to guess the thinking of a true hive-mind society". Can we?

2. "There was no way the Conjoiners could not have seen this for themselves, but it seemed inhuman not to acknowledge what had happened". Here we touch on the very human characteristic of empathy - could we be hunan without these emotions? Have we lost any since the advent of the internet? (eg trolling?), or gained any? (eg altruism via Just Giving pages of Claire Squires, for example?). Later on we get this passage talking about the character of Felka:
“You don’t understand,” Galiana said. “You’re placing too much humanity behind her eyes. Keeping the Wall alive is the single most important fact of her universe—more important than love, pain, death—anything you or I would consider definitively human.”

3. Galiana squeezed his hand and an instant later he knew something of Transenlightenment. The experience was shocking; not because it was painful or fearful, but because it was profoundly and totally new. He was literally thinking in ways that had not been possible microseconds earlier". Does this remind you of the psychedelic trip that Will took in Huxley's "Island"?

4. "The formerly gray walls oozed beguiling patterns; as if a dark forest had suddenly become enchanted. Information hung in veils in the air...“You can perceive things now,” Galiana said. “But none of it will mean much to you. You’d need years of education, or deeper neural machinery for that—building cognitive layers. We read all this almost subliminally.”
How much of learning or knowledge comes from the education we get? (maybe defined as passive reading and listening). And how much from intuition or sense (maybe defined as active seeing and doing)?

5. “I don’t understand,” Clavain said. “I thought we destroyed the Wall; completely killed its
systems.” “No,” Galiana said. “You only ever injured it. Stopped it from growing, and from managing its own repair-processes correctly…but you never truly killed it.”
This made me think of nature & the environment and the effect technology has on this. The Great Wall of Mars is created by technology, but also susceptible to death and decay - it needs looking after. So what are the implications? Are we currently destroying a finely balanced ecosystem? Or is this all just part of natural evolution? Do we control nature, or does it control us?

6. The character of Felka raised questions of human/machine. On the one hand she seems very human - vulnerable, childlike, lonely - but at the same time very trans-human or powerful - she is the one who is keeping them and Wall alive.
"the Wall’s just a machine. Which means if Felka recognized kinship with it…what would that make her?” "“Someone lonely, that’s all”

I'll do it!

"Inject life and emotion into your memories". Where does this quote come from? Dystopian sci fi short story? Or smartphone advert? This story made me think to what extent are we in, or getting towards, the world of Rekal Incorporated? See also, Samsung Galaxy's, "A phone that follows your every move".

I listened to a couple of good interview with Cory Doctorow yesterday. They cover loads of interesting topics to do with writing, copywrite, publishing, crowd funding, privacy, and lots of other things I didn't really understand on first listen! Well worth a listen if you have a moment
http://www.muleradio.net/newdisruptor...
http://craphound.com/?p=2773

Just wanted to ask what people will be using to read the tweet chat on Saturday? I've used these two before. Anyone use anything different?
1. http://tweetchat.com/
2. http://twubs.com/

From reading the book so far, the ideas behind it seem better written and more interesting than the book itself. That quote above is quite profound as it touches on so many issues to do with data, copyright, information, collaboration, privacy, individuality etc etc, as well as how we make art. It reminded me of the project, "Everything is a Remix". Have humans always been "open source", as it were, in the way we come up with ideas?

There is a quote in "Little Brother" where the main character is describing how he made his own computer out of parts, "The best part of all this was how it made me feel - in control. This is why I loved technology: if you used it right it could give you power and privacy".
But how does that sit with the philosophy of open source? And, say, something like wikileaks or Edward Snowdon? Who really has the power & control? What power and whose privacy are we talking about? And who defines that?