technoculture314-09

Yar is concerned with how anti-piracy campaigns naturalise capitalist notions of property. His concern is understandable, but I believe that he does not go far enough in his criticism. The issue that needs to be focused on is a more fundamental one: the entertainment industry’s construction of media texts as commodified objects.

This practice, I believe, is one reason why piracy is such a prominent issue today. For years media corporations have promoted the story and the media text not as amalgamations of knowledge and artistry influenced by wider society (which, Yar suggests, they are) but as discrete, desirable consumer objects. This approach worked for the companies for a long time, but now, with the widespread use of the internet, it has backfired. After all, if a person can get such a desirable object for free via piracy, why would they choose to pay for it?

While piracy’s economic impact is relatively minor now, it is likely that it will have more and more of an impact as larger numbers of people become familiar with technology, worldwide internet speeds increase and new distribution technologies like anonymous BitTorrent are released.

This could lead to a dearth of new media texts, as many of our society’s predominant cultural forms, such as the Hollywood blockbuster, are interlinked with the capitalist system. If the system struggled, so too would they. Indeed, there are types of new media, such as the modern 3D video game, that owe their very existence to the large budgets and technological infrastructure facilitated by the capitalist entertainment industry. After all, it would be prohibitively expensive to make a game like Crysis in a non-commercial context.

Our society needs to have a frank discussion about the commodification of stories and media texts now, as ignoring the issue now could lead to serious consequences in the future. We need to either come up with a new model of media distribution, complete with new media forms, or fundamentally alter the existing model to bring it into line with new technology.

I am currently in the market for a new laptop. When before, my search priorities were weight, size, and design, now I spend endless hours comparing technical aspects such as memory, hard drive, video card, keyboard size, battery life, display resolution and operating temperature. Why the sudden change in searched qualities? Gaming. A few weeks back, lectures based on gaming emphasized the unbalanced gender playing field and stereotypes of women purport by gaming. Although this is possibly the most important issue in relation to gaming and gender, I think that it is also imperative to look at minor effects of gaming on women.
From personal experience and observations of other female gamers, it seems that most female gamers have a better understanding of and a more “fervent” interest in the technical aspects of technology. Although it is true that men are more interested in the actual functionality of the technology while women are more interested in the social aspects, women, especially women who play games, are slowly being immersed into the male side of things.
For me, it was my fascination for the game “The Sims” that got me interested in the technical aspects of my laptop. Upon playing the game, I noticed that sometimes the game would lag or crash. So I set upon finding a way to enhance my laptop, thus enhancing my gaming experience. Upon much Internet research, I found out that a larger RAM and a larger HDD would help with the lagging problem. Thus I bought a larger RAM and a larger HDD and upgraded my laptop myself. Now, I know that this isn’t much of a big feat for men, but how many women can say they have upgraded their own laptop RAM and HDD? While in search for the RAM and the HDD, I also learned the difference between DDR2 and DDR1, and SATA and PATA. Upon having to (or really just wanting to) upgrade the parts myself, I learned how to successfully open up my laptop without breaking everything, and the places of where everything was.
My interest in technology was furthered by my developing interest for The Sims. When the Sims 3 came out, I was dying to try it out. I was unsure about the system requirements so again, I searched around on the web and found a helpful website (http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest) that determines if your computer is able to run specific games. From this I learned that I would need a better video card and processor (in which I learned about NVIDIA GeForce, ATI Radeon, Intel GMA and GHz), which is impossible because a video card is welded onto a laptop. Thus, I am back to my opening sentence, I have no other choice but to look for another laptop that will meet my requirements.
Although this blog post is primarily based on my own experience, I know that other women who are frequent gamers are also more technology savvy than most others because it is a requirement for gamers. From what I have observed, women who play more complex, competitive games such as WoW are especially more knowledgeable about technology. Thus the interest in gaming fuels interest in technology.

*Another piece of actual evidence is the growing number of websites dedicated to women interested in technology. A particularly useful one that I often visit (although it is void of information about laptops) is http://www.technologyforgirls.com/ , and the “Jargon Buster” section is especially helpful!

With the ever changing technology that surrounds us, we cannot but help change with the technology.

Donna Haraway pointed out “we are all theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism: in short, we are cyborgs”. (1991) This statement by Haraway points out how we as a society are becoming one with technology whether we like it or not. We might find this statement as a false representation of ourselves, but we live in an information age, where cell phones and mp3s’ have become extended parts of our body. Technology is not just taken everywhere with us but, has become a daily routine, we incorporate into our schedule. While Haraway’s theory pointed technology and human becoming one, it did not point out technology becoming part of the body.

However people like Stelarc and Orlan are Avnte – Garde cyborgs, who believe in pushing the boundary of the relationship between body and technology. Orlan states “The body as a medium… are we still convinced that we must bend ourselves to the decision of nature, this lottery of gene distributed by chance?”. Both Orlan and Stelarc seem to think the body is not perfect consisting of too many weak points, that the body must be evolved with the technology around is in order to make it complete and adequate.

The idea of Orlan of the body becoming a medium has to some effect become a reality as Kingsley Dennis (2008) believes “The human body is becoming re-configured – or re-wired in to a biological antenna”. Dennis believes we have information surrounding us wherever we go, and we absorb all this information. Although we cannot stop the evolvement of technology, as it brings opportunity and capability, one cannot however ignore the fact that these technologies also have negative possibilities. For instance the Neuro technology that is being developed threatens the privacy of our thoughts and intentions. This type of technology also makes our body a medium, as it will be able to read our thought just like we read articles on the internet.