Getting Better

I guess I probably should have spent more time on my computer before I began this class, but that is never going to happen, so I will just have to do the best I can with what I do know, which is basically nothing. I move forward in my blatant ignorance!
I have to admit that this weeks reading of Manovich seemed to make more sense to me then what we read before. I never saw "Blade Runner", because I also rarely watch movies, but that didn't seem to cause me to stray too far from the point of this chapter. The one thing that I found strange about this chapter was Manovich's constant use of feminine pronouns. I wondered why he chose to do that. It made me feel like he was trying to say that all females know this stuff and use it all the time, which I found quite irritating. It made me feel like I was the only woman in the world who wasn't using everything he talked about. Anyway -
I did have some understanding of computer games. I bought my kids a game called "Oregon Trail" and also one about the Alaska gold rush for my Mac when they were young. I had the computer , and I wanted them to have something educational for it, which was hard to come by. I might have played each of those games one or two times, just to see what they were like, but that was it. My daughter is now more like me - She was doing a virtual farm on the computer, but got sick of it and let it die. So much for her farming DNA!
When he talked about the screen and the interaction one has with it, I had a hard time understanding what he meant. As I sit here and type this the only parts of me moving are my fingers and my mind. I can't wait to get done and get to the gym and ride my bike away from of this library as fast as I can! I don't go to the movies for the same reason - I can't stand to sit for 2 hours and doing nothing but look at a screen. On occasion when I do watch movies at home, I never sit and watch them - I miss probably 50% of every movie because I am doing other things. The only exception I have found to the screen making someone move is the Nintendo Wii. That makes you get up and move! Other then that, everything else I have seen has been an exercise in sitting and doing nothing.
Manovich finally talks about the moveability of screens/images. This made me think about the world of advertising. Companies advertise on buses and taxi cabs because of their mobility and exposure, but I'm not convinced that those kinds of ads get any more attention then that hugh bilboard next to the freeway in Nampa that spouts out Bible quotes while you are stuck in the Garriety Blvd. traffic jam. It is fancy and changes continually, so maybe it gets more peoples attention. Of course I can't say the content gets any more attention then a regular billboard for a carwash, but it might.
Fianlly, on page 114, he says this, "Eventually, the VR apparatus may be reduced to a chip implanted in the retina and connected by wireless transmission to the Net". Let us hope not! Talk about "Big Brother watching"! I think that is a frightening thought - that we could all be monitored and our every move watched by someone some where. It is bad enough that grocery stores want to monitor what we buy and every business thinks they are entitled to our social security number. I don't want to live in a world of chip implants that allows someone to constantly keep track of me. Hopefully I will not live long enough to see that - but I have 5 granchildren that may and the is unnerving!
( note - as I sit here working on this assignment, there is a guy at the computer next to me playing a game - I think that is rude and inconsiderate of others to use a computer at a library to play a game when there are always people waiting for computers - most of them to do something serious for school!)
One final comment about the "Cyberwriter's Tale" essay - I really conected to this - It could have been me. I too learned to write with a fat pencil and no eraser by a teacher who would smack your hand with a ruler if things weren't just right. I never learned to type without watching my hands, but I can still type 70 words a minute - All those pictures of prehistoric things I recognized and I write the same way he describes - I learned to write using a computer as an undergrad in the early 90's, (1990's!), but only got comfortable enough to use it without handwritten things within the last few years. Even when I taught I kept an old fashioned book style gradebook and one on the computer -- I simply don't trust them not to lose the important stuff I have created.