I Can Haz Entertainment?

Despite having surfed the internet for the majority of my youth, I've only recently become aware of the full extent of internet memes. For those who don't know, an internet meme is a catchphrase, concept, image, video or anything that captures widespread attention on the internet.

Probably the most well-known meme in recent times is the YouTube video 'Charlie Bit My Finger', which is the highest viewed non-Gaga, non-Bieber clip on the net. Something as simple as an infant biting his brother's finger becoming globally popular astonishes me, to be frank. But I think it's a sign of things to come; with cameras more widespread than ever to catch socially valuable moments, the internet will be flooded with memes. With social platforms like Facebook specifically providing for and encouraging the sharing of entertaining or funny material online, internet memes are more popular than ever. This infamous 'I Can Haz Cheezburger' image sparked LOLcats, which I'm sure many of you are familiar with. Internet memes are not only entertaining but also serve as internet 'zeitgeists', for lack of a better word, in that they show what is popular and what is currently circulating the internet.

Nowadays, as part of my daily procrastination routine which has replaced other normal habits such as study or eating cooked dinners, I find myself wandering through sites such as Failblog, F My Life, SorryIMissedYourParty and the like. These sites not only make laugh but I think also help me to keep my finger on the pulse of Internet culture, for example these recently released Inception memes.

Presently, corporate companies are increasingly using Internet memes to create impacting viral marketing campaigns to sell their products. A recent example of this is the 'Will it Blend?' series of YouTube videos by blender manufacturer BlendTec, in which a man blends various items (such as iPhones, shoes, etc.) in his blender to promote the blender's capabilities. Personally I find entertainment memes more memorable than any marketing meme. I'll never forget how hard I laughed when I first saw the above picture!

To finish up, probably my favourite internet meme has got to be one that I'm sure most of you have experienced at least once:

Lies, all lies...

The internet can provide an individual with (perceivably) intimate interactions without the risk of others coming even close to their true selves. Via the internet, you can enter someone else’s world just by reading a blog or talking to a disembodied username on IM. You can feel close to someone. You can picture them, somewhere, sitting at a computer typing back at you.

Equally, you could manufacture this sense of intimacy in others. Here’s an example. There was a blog written by a girl called “Kaycee Nicole” that ran from, according to the Wikipedia page, 1999-2001. In 2001 “Kaycee” died. Or at least that’s what Debbie Swanson, the woman who invented Kaycee and spent three years of her life detailing Kaycee’s many illnesses, posted on the blog.

Here is an article with superior links and anecdotes to those of this blog entry.

Indeed, it was all a hoax, and it got kind of famous, hence the Wikipedia page. In fact, this kind of thing is so common that someone (at least, I think it was him- on the internet, who can tell?) coined a term for it- Munchausen By Internet. Derived from Munchausen by Proxy, where an individual feigns or produces illness in another person, often their child, in order to gain sympathy and attention. Why?

I guess the outpouring of seemingly genuine sympathy, interest, and concern is an appealing thought. If you can invent a persona more desirable, more remarkable than your true self, and have no real consequences, no real dangers of getting found out.*

*provided you lie realistically, and don’t, say, kill off your character, resulting in getting found out because there’s no funeral and your internet devotees- some of whom “you” have even spoken to on the phone- actually want to attend.

You get a sense of intimacy, connection. People care about you.

If you think about it, “internet trolls” work along a similar- if less thoughtful, detailed, or manipulative- line. Take a moment to post something contrived, and reap the attention. Immature, but effective.

Maybe the internet enables people to gain a kind of intimacy, without the risk of proximity, or the potential danger of honesty with another human being.

Some may say that in this day and age we are dependent on technology to the point where we are considered cyborgs. I, however, disagree, they are merely implements used on a day to day basis. Technology has always influenced human life and culture throughout history and the changes caused by technology can appear quite startling, especially to older generations. New technology is always under scrutiny. For example, in the mid 1900s televisions were turning the population into zombies on a scale unheard of before, and now the next generation of threats to human existence are the Internet, mobile phones/devices and video games. While the illusion exists that humans have reached the point where we cannot live without technology such as cellphones and iPods, if they were actually taken away from you I am pretty sure it would not result in death. The devices are less important to us now, than a farmers tools were, and a navigators compass were several hundred years ago. However I am still worried that the Terminator is going to come and get me one day.

TECHNOLOGY Is Taking Over

The term 'Cyborg' scares me, or at least it use to scare me before last weeks lecture. I always thought of a cyborg as Arnie in the film 'The Terminator', 'Star Wars' and robotics. However these three all provided me with negative connotations of the word. Maybe it is simply ignorance and not enough technological awareness on my behalf, but the term really did scare me...

So I did some research and Googled 'cyborg'. Goggle is not doing anyone like me a favour here are the nominees for top three cyborg images on Goggle: Number one, Kate Moss cyborg. Number two, Clockwork Homosapien. Finally, Number three, Technology Man...Scary?

The point that I am trying to make is that Microsoft, Apple, Sony are not getting near my body with their future wearable,integrated technologies. We already all exist in the digital world through our Facebook or MySpace pages. Why should we expose ourselves to becoming digital? I am all for technology and developing in our world, but come on, lets keep it natural!

At least for a little while...

I think, therefore I status-update.

After two years of being a member of the Facebook 'community' (I'm going to be a total Arts Student here and say, read: Facebook 'miniplenty'. Okay. Arts moment over.) I am disappointed to say that it took the last lecture to make me realise that I am a cyborg.

Because of course I'm a cyborg! Things make perfect sense now that I have a term that describes the uneasy feeling I get when I'm in a forest and my cell phone is out of range, and when I reach my grandmother's house there's no wi-fi signal either.

The ability to communicate is a primal one, inherent to the nature of being social creatures. Language deprivation experiments documented in the 13th Century report the Roman Emperor Frederick II tried to test what language children would speak if they were not communicated with at all from birth. He had hoped that it would be the language God had given Adam and Eve, however, the babies all died as infants. Communication, therefore, is an essential element of physical and cognitive development. It would make sense that we who amplify our ability to communicate with new technologies are developing beyond the last generation of humans. And that's practically evolutionary.

So it doesn't scare me, the thought of being a cyborg. I'm not Darth Vader (yet), and I like that I can write this thoughtful observation on my iPhone while listening to music as I walk to my grandmother's house.

Also, I can let my followers on Twitter know that there is some creep trailing me who looks hairy enough to be a wolf...

While it is hard for me to argue against the benefits of technology (after all, it plays a major role in my life), it does contain elements that hinder daily life. We have become so reliant on technology to construct our daily lives that this reliance can pose a major problem when we find ourselves in a situation without access to our technological devices (Power cuts often leave me restless with nothing to do).

As an individual who welcomes and is fascinated by new types of technologies, I find myself somewhat sceptical about the advent of certain technologies and its features. Certain technological advances leave me questioning the importance and benefits it is suppose to contribute to everyday life. For example one of the functions of the Apple iPad is said to replace the use of reading a book in its hard copy, but for many people reading a book is to get away from this technological based world. Although people seem to purchase the iPad, I still find myself wondering about the benefits of it. This development of a device that takes away a route of escape from the technological world, exemplifies how technology continues to be developed in order to evade all aspects of our life.

Despite this and our high dependence on technology itself, it appears that technology does better my life and society in many ways (allowing the communication to keep in touch with long distance friends in ways that make it seem like they are not so far away). It is because of this and more, that I would classify myself as a techno-realist.

So while technology has been developed to remedy ills, enhance our living and advance society into new realms, this same technology can have so called benefits that further encourages our reliance on technological devices and can be seen as causing problems of its own (i.e.: the issue privacy and security, or perhaps even the up rise of robots taking over our world and causing an apocalypse).

Simulated Reality

I watched Inception last night. But that is not the point of this post.

Inception did, however, spark a conversation between my friend and I about the depiction of dreams and the subconscious in the film, which in turn reminded me of V.R.: Virtual Reality.

As a child, I recall being told that we were on the advent of virtual reality, that it would be here probably by the year 2000 (or something). It would be a fantastic place where we could fly around with Ronald McDonald in the a rainbow, and we would ride unicorns and eat cookies and everything would be awesome.

It never happened.

And, last night, the more I thought about it, the more I doubted it would ever happen. In an age where auto-tune and plastic surgery make our celebrities look like robots, we’re still scrambling to get out of the Uncanny Valley in constructed realities.

(It’s interesting to note that, as someone who has played video games for longer than he has gone to school, the effect of the Uncanny Valley is not as strong on me as it is on other people. I’m not entirely sure if it’s because I’m used to seeing all sorts of 3d monstrosities on my screen…

…or because I’m innately less offended by it.)

Even though technology powerful enough for the job might arrive eventually, I doubt a simulated virtual reality would ever be immersive enough for us to think it was reality.

Unless this isn’t reality.