Month: March 2014

Remixing Culture

After watching the TedTalks, “Laws That Choke Creativity”, early one when the “talking machine” was created, a man named Souza argued that, “the infernal machines would take away from our creativity and artistic value in our culture.” In a way, he was right. Broadcasting brought up the recurring fear of new developments taking away from our artistic value. Broadcasting was a terror in how it developed a new control over popular content. “BMI took public domain works and gave it away for free. They predicted that people would revolt because only the second public best domain was available for the public” (“Laws That Choke Creativity”). However, while our culture is growing more accustomed to learning and developing society through digital technology, it is the opportunity for the revival of “vocal cords” and celebrating amateur culture. The amateurs are the people who produce for the love of what they’re doing, and not for the money—what modern generations are doing today. “Remixing” an original video, song, or speech is how we understand our culture today. If anything, I thought that remixing our culture was developing a process to understand our modern culture. However, my question is, do you think we should fear the remixing involved in our culture and how it will take away from true understanding of past, present and/or future events?

Art, Games, and Technology Research

The primary thesis stated in Jones’ article, “Computer Graphics: Effects of Origins”, is “new forms of art and technology are frequently cast in the mode of old forms, just as other aspects of material and symbolic culture have been” (Jones 21). Jones is saying that the quality of computer graphics will build on itself and continue to get better. The functions and realistic graphics will improve constantly.

Jones provided many examples of historical examples to illustrate her thesis. One specifically, about how the papyrus columns built in Egypt were inspirations for the stone columns of ancient Egyptian architecture. This instance depicts how people build on success. The builders of the columns had derived previous ideas into creating something better, stronger and generally with more support. This is just an early example about how people have a progressive nature.

One Specific example in today’s society to support Jones’ thesis of work is the continuous development and progression of computers. “Generally speaking, computers can be classified into three generations” (Steitz, Beverly). Each generation lasted for a certain period of
 time, and each provided us either a new and improved computer or an improvement to the existing computer. “The invention of integrated circuit brought us the third generation of computers” (Steitz, Beverly). This new integration has allowed computers to become smaller, more powerful more reliable and they are able to run several programs at the same time. When the Microsoft Disk Operating System was born, it introduced the personal computer (PC) for home and office use. Soon after, Apple provided us the Macintosh computer with its icon driven system and then Microsoft worked to create the Windows operating system. Both systems have worked As a result of the various improvements to the development of the computer we have seen the computer being used in all areas of life. It is a very useful tool that will continue to experience new development as time passes.

Steitz, Beverly. “A Brief Computer History.” Boston University Education. Boston University, 2009. Web. 1 Mar. 2014.<http://people.bu.edu/baws/brief%20computer%20history.html>.