The "America-Asia-Europe" Wide Web

The World Wide Web: a mass of information, pictures, videos, and other forms of communication zooming from one end of the world to the other. Undoubtedly, all of this communication is bound to impact cultures and countries in more ways than we can imagine. Many have suggested that the Internet and its growing presence can and will influence a democratization in education and power. With a few clicks of a button or a strum of the keyboard, we have the potential and the capability to influence millions of people worldwide. Or at least, that’s what we’d like to think. While this vision is hopeful, there is nonetheless a sharp disparity in the people who do and do not have access to a computer or the Internet. Therefore, it remains to be seen how far this democratization can go, whom it will ultimately impact, and what it means for those whom it does not reach.  

The so-called “World Wide Web” is a misnomer in that Internet usage is primarily limited to areas of Asia, North America, and Europe. Africa and the Middle East have the lowest rates of Internet usage in the world and make up the smallestpopulations among Internet users.

What will be interesting to note is how a lack of online presence from Internet users in Africa and the Middle East will affect a computer user in somewhere like the U.S. As a digital native myself, I’ve experienced looking at images and watching videos from Internet-heavy areas in genres such as Japanese animations, European dance music, and Brazilian music videos. I cannot say that I have seen the same for areas of the Middle East and Africa.

The Internet is a powerful tool in that it combines the television and radio to distribute information faster than before. Furthermore, with the increasing presence of the Internet, there has been a merging of the virtual and the physical in that what occurs online, has implications offline. So how would someone such as a digital native become influenced from a lack of Internet presence from less digitized countries?

In all likelihood, there are cultural biases that could be formed in that with a lack of exposure comes a lack of understanding. The only information that users read online pertaining to areas of the Middle East and Africa deal primarily with war, violence, and disease. On websites such as YouTube, the number of videos relating to African or Middle Eastern music, for example, is substantially smaller than those from other parts of the world. All of these disparities in online representation add to a further potential misrepresentation of culture. While it will take time for African and Middle Eastern countries to develop to the level of digital technology present in other countries, the absence of online presence is bound to have a detrimental effect to already skewed cultural perceptions.  

Fouc-oh you didn't.

Michel Foucault’s “What is an author?” had to be one of the most difficult pieces I’ve ever read. The title was so simple yet so deceiving. It merely asks a simple question. But that question led to an entire essay of even more confusing questions, concepts, and ideas. The premise of this now famous essay questions the author function and his harmful role in society as someone who limits fiction. As a solution, he states we should not focus on the author (for he is already dead) but rather focus on a work’s mode of discourse.

The man who caused me grief. The smile is also deceiving. 

While it was an interesting read (more like reads since I had to read it at least five times to grasp the majority of his concepts), I cannot help thinking that his ideas and essay as a whole do not apply today. It is important to note that “What is an author?”, which was originally given as a lecture, was delivered in 1969, over forty years ago. According to Moore’s law, technology increases and changes every eighteen months. Breaking up forty years worth of change into eighteen-month increments means a lot of change, to put it simply. Just a few years ago, we were using beepers. Today in 2013, we are using smartphones, cell phones with the same capabilities as computers. In Foucault’s time, one of thefirst microchips was created. Now almost half a decade later, you would be considered technologically behind if you didn’t have your own computer.

With regards to today’s author function in comparison to Foucault’s author function, that too, would naturally change. Although there is no definite answer in exactly how much has changed, one thing that is certain is the tremendous amount of change in the modes of discourses. While Foucault was concerned with the author function and his affects on print and fiction, our concern today is no longer limited to just print. Instead, we have almost every piece of technology and its function as a mode of discourse to question.

Overall, it’s apparent that everything has changed since that lecture that itself forever changed post-structuralism. While Foucault made many interesting observations and contributed several thought-provoking ideas, in our ever-changing culture, it remains to be seen how much of his ideas can to applied to our world in the twenty-first century. 

Not Actually Lost in Translation

While the growth of the Internet has been hailed as a technological revolution with countless benefits, there have been some cries that have criticized it for its negative repercussions. One of the threats that I found to be most interesting is the supposed loss of language and communication.

            I found this to be ironic since one of the greatest attributes of the Internet and its accompanying forms is its ability to communicate quickly over great distances. In today’s Internet and online culture, there are numerous languages, some of which even I’m not too familiar with. These include your typical Internet slang in which you can shorten typically long words into shortened versions (Probably = Prolly), phrase slang which shortens entire phrases into a few letters (Shaking my head = smh), and even website specific slang which certain phrases and words are common to that website only (On the website tumblr.com, the common slang language includes using the phrase "my feels" which jokingly indicates that the user is emotionally affected by something).

            Even as a digital native, I can understand these concerns. What may be a harmless and joking butchering of the English language could have long-term repercussions for young children who are accessing computers and the Internet. While older users will understand the grammatical errors behind them (hopefully), younger users may actually take these silly abbreviations and errors as proper language.

            Aside from that concern, I don’t see much of a threat to the English language, or any language for that matter since almost every language has its own Internet version. While changes in language may seem harmful to everyday speech, rather than viewing these new Internet languages as limiting, I’d like to view them as changing and broadening our ways of thinking. Learning new languages has been proven to by mentally stimulating with many cognitive advantages, allowing our minds to interpret, understand, and create new ideas and concepts. Learning “Internet speak” shouldn’t be any different.

            I like viewing Internet languages as puzzles themselves, taking some unnecessarily long words and creating simpler forms for easy access and use. Something as long as the phrase “I see what you did there”, is now commonly shortened to “ICWUDT”. Written language is all about putting intangible concepts into the visible and understandable. Internet languages do just that, possibly to an even greater degree than “official” languages. 

It's more than just book vs. e-book

Writing and its accompanying devices are undoubtedly the one medium that has changed the most in the past few decades. From print to typing and now even texting, writing is changing and will continue to change. Some even claim that because of the differences in tools with which we use to write and read, we process the information differently and therefore, think differently. Jay David Bolt touches upon this idea briefly in a section of his book, “Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print”.

Although the majority of his piece delves into questioning the reason for the importance of print over digitized writing and their subsequent relationship, what I found to be the most interesting was his concept of writing space. Whether it’s the papyrus scroll of ancient Egypt or the high-speed computer of the 21st century, our thoughts are being brought to life in ways oral tradition would never allow.

Along the same lines of the importance of writing space and its effects on both the writer and reader, Claire Lamont uses annotations and their effects on the reader to claim her importance of writing space. With changes in all forms of writing, it is no surprise that something like annotations would also change in the form of hypertexts. Lamont questions what effects these hypertexts, which can extend from a page of a website to an entire video, could have on the understanding and experience of a reader. Evidently, the writing space of the computer could have some implications in that this new hypertext-induced reading experience could either provide more information than ever or, as Lamont fears, make the reader stray from the original text.

Based on the above sources, today’s reading experience is not just a matter of book versus e-book or print versus digital. It is an altogether different challenge on how we want to read and learn. We should no longer focus on the trivialities between the benefits of print (ie. Personal attachment to books, ease of use, etc.) and the benefits of digital (ie. Ease of access) but rather how we want to obtain and maintain a relationship with the author and his message. Prior to these readings, I had never given much thought to the complexities involved in writing and reading. Regardless of preferences in tools, the focus of the reading experience should definitely focus on what would best encompass that particular author's intention. For example, when reading material from areas such as a textbook, it is imperative to have as much information as possible. Therefore, the use of a digital tool such as an e-book would be extremely beneficial. One has only to type in a few keywords to expand knowledge of a certain topic. Recently, there have been increased efforts towards this digital learning experience with the accompaniment of CDs along with textbooks, interactive online learning devices, and textbook availability for tablets and e-readers.

However, although the digital reading experience would enhance learning for textbooks and other academic-based readings, it would not do the same for more literature or leisure-based reading. As mentioned by Lamont, there is a different kind of relationship formed between an author and a reader when it is a relationship founded on print. In contrast to a textbook in which the author's message is the information provided within the book, something that can also be found in numerous other textbooks and information sources, the author's message in every day literature is solely within his one book. Each word is written with both the message and the reader in mind in an attempt that not only expresses the author but also involves the reader.

Cryo-what-ifs

The search for immortality, youth, and prolonged life is made up and embellished in fiction, stories, television shows, and movies. We’ve seen it all from the magical flower in Gilgamesh to Rapunzel’s hair in Tangled to horcruxes in Harry Potter. It’s evident that we as humans are extremely concerned, or even obsessed, with living healthier, younger, and more beautiful lives. Some would go so far as to want to live forever.

Then it’s no surprise that with our increasing capability to alter ourselves with the help of medicine and technology and our insatiable desire to perfect and change our human form, we turn to transhumanism, science’s very own form of the fountain of youth. Transhumanism is the idea and growing movement that we can change human beings for the better, releasing ourselves from most of our natural inhibitions, with the help of technology. The most common forms of transhumanism include areas of anti-aging, DNA altering, robotics, and molecular manufacturing.

However, the area that most caught my attention was the field of cryonics, a technique used to store human bodies at extreme temperatures with the hopes of one day reviving them in the future. Branching from cryogenics, the study of what occurs at relatively low temperatures, cryonics is probably something that most people have heard of, or at least seen in science-fiction literature, film, and television. Though it may seem outlandish to some (after all, cryonics was even shown in an episode of SpongeBob Squarepants where Squidward is frozen in a refrigerator and later revived in the future), it is actually a process that is becoming more and more common and aspects of cryonics are already in use. With the help of cryogenics, doctors in neuroscience help prevent blood vessels from rupturing in the brain. Moreover, CPR and defibrillators are used everyday to help revive those who suffer from heart attacks. Alcor, one of the largest cryonics facilities, currently has two hundred patients and 20,000 potential candidates.


Cryonics....Squidward Style

            To quickly sum up the process of cryogenic freezing, once a patient is pronounced “legally dead”, a term here that means heart functioning has stopped but brain functioning still occurs, specialists work to remove quantities of water from the body and insert a type of anti-freeze to prevent cells from expanding and shattering. With a price of $400 annually and close to $150,000 total, companies like Alcor will preserve the body and its organs, allowing them to remain in this state of “cryonic suspension” with the help of liquid nitrogen for as long as it takes for technologies to catch up.

But what does catch up mean? That’s the other, more mysterious part of cryonics: we don’t have the technology yet, in layman’s terms, to unfreeze people without killing them. There has yet to be a case in which a human being has been “brought back” from his previous cryonic state. Scientists hope that with the help of molecular nanotechnology, or MNT, cell damage can be repaired during the freezing process. Keeping that in mind, potential candidates go in knowing that they will most likely “wake up” (if they ever do), decades to centuries from now. It is predicted that we’ll have the technology by 2040, though that’s just a rough estimate.

            With all this science and uncertainty in mind, why go through with cryonic freezing? To be honest, I wouldn’t go through with it. Even with the prospect of another life in the future, I can’t imagine living in a world without my family and friends. Nothing, in my opinion, is actually wrong with cryonics. I can definitely see the benefit in living longer or maybe even living better in the future. That’s one case made for cryonics: current incurable disease may find solutions in the future, allowing those living right now to potentially be cured and live healthier lives in the future. Apart from this reason, I personally don’t see any benefit to my life. There is so much uncertainty with waking up decades apart from your current state. No one knows the effects of living in a completely new world. I can’t even imagine the psychological and mental effects it would have, even if you were to wake up as a brand new, less human you. Moreover, would you really be willing to start another life without knowing anyone?

We have yet to see the implications of cryogenic technology. With its growing number of candidates and patients, it’s easily bound to be one of the leading technologies and fields in years to come. Though for some people, it may seem like a route to a different and improved life, for me and countless others, it’s complexity, confusion, and disorientation in the guide of perfection. 

The Depth of our Global Culture

America is without a doubt one of the most diverse and dynamic countries in the world. With the over 14 million immigrants entering the US, in 2011, America is being bombarded with music, food, books, and languages from all over the world. Though it’s exciting that we’re becoming more exposed to the world, I can’t help wondering the depth of all that diversity. When you walk outside New York City, a city with a demographic of 45% white, 25% Hispanic, 25% Black, and 5% Asian, you see signs that say “authentic Japanese cuisine” or “real Italian pizza”. You may have even heard your friends and family say something along the lines of “this place is legit” or “this is real food”. Where did this differentiation come from, the difference between “real” and “fake”?

Though America loves to accept new and eclectic styles, we still like to have an American twist to almost everything. Moreover, those who are promoting these products know it. As one of the biggest global economies in the world, the American market is a gold mine for those who understand and know how to influence Americans. Though we claim products to be ethnic, cultural, and exotic, there is still some form of Americanism attached to reel our American dollars in. For example, I recently ate dinner at a Chinese buffet back home in Philadelphia. Among the sweet buns, lo mein, and fried rice, there was buffalo chicken, French fries, and pizza. Though we like to think of ourselves as willing to try new things and accept new cultures, it’s evident that most of us find ourselves moving towards the familiar.

Maybe you’re one of the few who genuinely enjoys experiencing and immersing yourself in another culture’s food, language, and arts. Most people aren’t like that. They like to have some footing or ground in their original culture. I know that whenever I go out to a restaurant with the attempt to try new food, I always find myself tempted to try the safe foods that I already know and enjoy.

It seems like there is a cultural idea at work here in the US of A. One in which we think we’re experiencing culture when we’re actually not. This inclination towards an American point of has some serious backlashes. One of which is the idea that we’re experiencing a culture when we’re merely observed and understood (albeit vaguely) a fraction of what that culture consists of. For example, I’m sure those of you who come from different cultural backgrounds can relate to the following conversations:

“I love Japan! Hello Kitty and Rilakkuma are so cute” Okay.

“I love India! Slumdog Millionaire was a great movie” Uh huh.

“I love Koreans! K-pop is awesome!” Alright.

Because of the superficiality of our exposure to all these countries, you have to wonder how it affects our perception of these cultures and their people. When the 2008 blockbuster Slumdog Millionaire received widespread attention and critical acclaim, many Indians, both in America and abroad, raised objections to its somewhat unrealistic plot and depictions of life in India. There were claims that there were more realistic and overall better films on poverty and Indian slum life. A third complaint was that although it was a film about India, it represented a very narrow piece of India’s culture. With a film so widely distributed all over the world, there was a concern that people would incorrectly judge India as a country made up of slums instead of the growing economic force that it is.

Similar reactions have occurred for television shows and other forms of media. Most recently, the previously popular (but now cancelled) MTV show, Jersey Shore, had been placed under scrutiny for its depiction of Italian Americans and its use of the slang term “guido” to describe them. The definition of a “guido” consists of a person, usually Italian-American, who typically lives on the East Coast. Similarly to the concern posed by the Indian community, numerous members of the Italian community expressed disapproval of the portrayal of Italians as solely interested in sexual pursuits, alcohol, and wild behavior.

In the average day, we go through our lives with being exposed to hundreds of different cultures. From using a Korean Samsung Galaxy SIII, to eating from that Halal Food stand, to using furniture from the Swedish-based Ikea, we are living in a heterogeneous setting without even stepping on a plane and moving to another country. Although we’re being exposed to dozens of different countries and ethnicities daily, it’s important to keep in mind that many times, we’re only shown a small segment of its people and their lives. We cannot base our judgments and perceptions of an entire country of millions of people based on a movie, a television show, a type of food, or the actions of one person. Though there are claims that we are in a global environment, this is not actually true unless we take full advantage of all the information and experiences that are out there for us to enjoy.