NEW MEDIA: The Technicalities of Creativity

Listen, I wanna tell ya,

Previous post be damned; time as well! Maybe Statistics will put a crimp in my creative narratival life, but the New Media Course I’ve just started definitely will not. It has, perhaps, just gotten me fired up all over again. In fact, it offers so many new directions that I may just drown in a poetic sea of overindulgence. Technical, yes. But as I’ve learned from the learning (post below re Who IS the author?), the understanding does not necessarily detract from the flow, the excitement, the satisfaction.

One of the lectures included reference to websites such as Amazon.com that learns enough about the user to present information geared to that user alone. This ties in with a post I was planning to write this morning about Bloglines’ Recommended Listing which it offers on a regular basis. I questioned how, from my list of feeds, they came up with Dilbert.com. While I have no cartoon or similar sites listed, Dilbert is, in fact, one of my favorites. However, I don’t read it online as yet.

Our first exercise is to read a newspaper media and corresponding online presentation and to create a narrative about the experience of each and both. This could be extremely interesting if you remain aware enough of what you are physically, mentally, and emotionally experiencing at the time. It’s a story of story, carefully drawn.

With a purple crayon.

————–

Final Exercise:  The Future of New Media  (added 1/15/05)

Transitioning

1865

            The sun slipped into the horizon, and so they lit the oil lamps, just a few.  The room, as it grew darker seemed to calm the still, thin figure in the bed.  The woman lie with just a light cotton sheet smoothed over and tucked loose around her body, her nightgown freshly replaced again from one well-drenched with perspiration.  Her auburn hair uncoiled lay like a sunset around the white porcelain face, and she murmured softly in her sleep every now and then.  Her daughter—only one of three who still lived close enough to be here with her since the doctor said she’d had a stroke and later caught the fever—looked up from her chair beside the bed, lay aside her book and reached for sponge and water from the bowl.  Gently patting the cooling water on her mother’s face and neck, a little on the delicate hands that sat like pearls inside the creamy lace of frilly cuffs.  She worried, wished her older sisters were here soon, though one might never make it home at all in time, she lived too far.  From

Ohio

she would be leaving on the train perhaps tomorrow, since the news here from

Boston

would surely just have reached her this morning by telegraph and she would have to find someone to watch the children.  The daughter put aside the sponge and wiped her hands dry, picked up the sterling silver hairbrush and with loving care, she brushed the auburn locks and tried to comfort.  Inside the woman’s fevered mind, she knew one thing; she wanted to hear her daughter sing a lullaby as she herself had sung so many times.  She wanted to sleep, and hear the lovely sound of her daughter’s voice just one more time.  She tried to say the words; they came out in a garbled whisper.  Her daughter stopped the brushing in response, stroked her mother’s hair by hand, then thinking it was disturbing, slowly stepped back and sat and watched all through the night.

            Just before the dawn, the woman, in her forty-fifth year of life, drew one long last shuddering breath and died.

———-

            In 1865, travel was by railroad or by horse and wagon.  The woman’s doctor might have lived a few miles away.  The roads were never shoveled in the winter, and oftentimes it might take days to cut a path with horses’ hooves and wagon wheels alone.  Though people often settled in their own hometowns their lifetime through, they often left because of marriage or adventure.  Handwritten letters crossed the country, borne again by train and riders to the outlying lands of the still unsettled West.  People traveled not by air, but by the sea for months to

Europe

and the foreign lands, remaining for a half a year and more.  And letters crossed the seas as well on ships between the continents and news from home was often a few months old.  But a primitive internet system called the telegraph had been in use for over a decade, and was transcontinental by 1861 (inventors.about.com).  It would be another few decades before the telephone came into use, invented in 1877 and patented by Alexander Graham Bell.

            And still, a woman—one of many, many people—died at an age we would consider shamefully young today; because of the lack of medical knowledge and technology, because of different lifestyle, and often, just because of a deep snow. 

            Perhaps the biggest tragedy is not in death, for we all face with certainty this ending of the living flesh, but in the dying and one’s last moments of clear thought.  Our desires often, as in this case, are not acknowledged or transcoded to make the minutes pleasant as they tick away.

1945

It is on the front lines in the European arena, a young American soldier, blonder than the enemy, lies groaning in a fitful sleep that’s leading into death.  A white-capped nurse who’s just a few years older, wrings out a cloth and softly sponges his face.  In his mind he’s home in

Minnesota

, necking on the porch with Emmylou.  His groans the nurse mistakes as response to painful wounds not meant to heal.  He is far beyond the feeling of his torn, near bloodless body, and the sweet scent he smells is woman and he cannot help the little bit of life left that rises up in passion as he dreams.  The young nurse is embarrassed, but she gently tucks the blankets around in the little comfort she can give, but as he spends, his life is spent with this last wash of warmth before he slips away.

———-

            The planes that promised to bring society together brought with them all the evils of human nature at its worst.  The planes that crossed the oceans and zoomed low over Europe since 1939 carried soldiers, fighters, and many, many bombs.  In the fields the troops communicate by radio.  Motor cars, trains and trolleys cross the countryside and travel is a quick and easy thing.  Life itself is easy.  Except in wartime, or still as always, in the dying.  Within another decade, people will enjoy movies and “live entertainment” in their homes via television, a miracle affordable by most within a decade of its debut.  Still, it is one-way communication. 

Immediately following the end of the war, Vannevar Bush writes an article for The Atlantic Monthly Journal entitled, “As We May Think” that basically points the great minds that helped technologically to win the war, in another direction.  His paper builds from the simple idea of a gathering and storing of all knowledge to date into a database format that is easily accessible to both promote connection of the fields of study and to continue the teamwork that the war effort necessitated.  As he states, “The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged ships (Bush, handout).”

While considering the progression from pencil and paper to photography and printing machines; and with a clear understanding of the techniques as well as the interrelation between methods, Bush “Vannevar Bush (is considered) the pivotal figure in hypertext research. His conception of the Memex introduced, for the first time, the idea of an easily accessible, individually configurable storehouse of knowledge. Douglas Engelbart and Ted Nelson were directly inspired by his work, and, in particular, his groundbreaking article, "As We May Think." (Bush, Virginia Edu.) 

Vannevar Bush was a genius of foresight.  What he envisioned became inspiration in a multitude of paths.  This statement in the article has led to the path I follow in this paper: 

“The impulses which flow in the arm nerves of a typist convey to her fingers the translated information which reaches her eye or ear, in order that the fingers may be caused to strike the proper keys.  Might not these currents be intercepted either in the original form in which information is conveyed to the brain, or in the marvelously metamorphosed form in which they then proceed to the hand?” (Bush, handout).

And further—beyond the individual himself to reach in and control one’s environment by harnessing those currents? 

            Two decades later, people are being trained in computer technology.  Huge Hal-like computers are housed in dust-free rooms within most major companies.  Reports are spit out monthly that weigh a few pounds, put together in books 11” x 18” by up to 3” thick.  Secretaries and analysts go through the accordion style pages to glean out information pertinent to their department’s needs. 

            “200l: A Space Odyssey” is released as a movie at the same time the book is being written.  “HAL 9000 is a highly advanced super-computer and the nervous system of a Jupiter-bound spaceship.  But when HAL goes quietly berserk and starts killing the astronauts, the situation is no longer ideal” (Degani  3).  This was one of the first movies to reveal the computer as a storagehouse of knowledge (remember Bush [not G.W.] ), and capable of running things without further human input.  Half the world is frightened by the power; the other half is excited at its prospects.

1985

            The hospital is one of the finest in the country, the woman knows this, and yet she worries as she watches her eight-year-old daughter being wheeled out of the emergency room to head to surgery.  In the next room over lies the man who drunkenly drove into her and sent her body flying twenty feet into the air, the nurses say.  For another hour she tells herself that everything’s all right, and even when her husband arrives, she’s unrealistically calm and cheerful.  She’d asked to be allowed into the room to hold her daughter’s hand, and was denied although the child tried hard to nod her head and plead to let her stay. But no one noticed, no one saw a movement or a sign, and so they whisked her away, put tubes inside and wires and things and gave her something intravenously that finally took away the goodbye to her mother that she tried so hard to say.  Within an hour, the doctor came out and stood there solemnly, “I’m so sorry…”

            Within a few minutes, a pleasant looking middle-aged woman enters the room to speak with the family.  She offers her sincere sympathy, then comes to the point of her visit.  Organ donation is a rudimentary system of harvesting livers, hearts, corneas, skin, whatever can be salvaged from the dying and dead to transplant and live on in another human body.

                                                           ————

By 1985, people grew quite used to carrying around their licenses with the indication of “Organ Donor” marked as an obvious guide to emergency room staff to maintain circulation and keep the organs alive in anyone coming through their doors—despite the critical condition of the patient as a whole.  As more and more body parts become recyclable, one begins to wonder:  What if the entire list of parts can be reassembled into another whole?

Computer technology has advanced to the point of being user friendly, and while it is still uncommon, many people have them in their homes.  They are not afraid of them anymore.  From the flat text bi-colored DOS screen, people can work—and play, at simple hypertext games.  Still very un-Hal-like, computers are used as tools.  Technology, however is entering the medical field, and pacemakers, artificial hearts eventually replace certain transplant operations.

“In 1982, a team led by William DeVries of the

University

of

Utah

implanted the Jarvik-7 into a patient named Barney Clark. For various medical reasons, a transplant operation was not an option for

Clark

. Therefore, he was a prime candidate for a permanent artificial heart. He survived with the Jarvik-7 for 112 days” (inventors.about.com).

Two decades later, the theory and the mechanical heart are perfected to allow much better odds.

2005

            The old woman sits at the dining room table picking black pepper out of a white sea of mashed potatoes with a spoon.  Next to her, a woman coaxes her elderly father into “trying” a sip of Ensure because he’d “never tasted it”, over and over and over again. After two hours, an aide comes by and picks up the untouched meals.  The woman lives from minute to minute and loses count of each.  Sometimes, she is twenty, and sometimes she is eighty years old.  It confuses her that the people she lives with aren’t her children, don’t remember that she has no children, that they even know her name.  She finds them rude.  She likes the muppets, but she doesn’t know why anyone is laughing at the little movie on the screen.  She only wants to go home, her mother is most likely worried, not knowing where she is.

———–

            Technology has advanced its pace tenfold in comparison to its beginnings.  There are so many people involved and it’s been carried in all directions— as Vannevar Bush had suggested was necessary.  To allow access, to prevent the loss of information or the doubling effort and thus wasted time:

            “In the 1870s, two inventors Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell both independently designed devices that could transmit speech electrically (the telephone). Both men rushed their respective designs to the patent office within hours of each other, Alexander Graham Bell patented his telephone first. Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell entered into a famous legal battle over the invention of the telephone, which

Bell

won” (inventors.about.com).

            Computers are now common and globally utilized by a large percentage of the population from the comfort of their own homes.  The internet, a relatively new system of communication, has encroached on the areas previously monopolized by the use of the telephone, postal service, shopping malls, movie theaters, recording industry, game playing, education, and has infiltrated the medical field in that operations using lasers or minuscule implements are performed non-invasively with surgeons watching a computer monitor that reveals by camera the inside of their patient.  So varied is the performance capabilities of computer technology, that a computer virus attack can halt industry along with the everyday personal user and the government itself. 

            And yet, while people have the benefit of medical technology through monitoring, pacemakers, artificial limbs, life saving and extending equipment, they will still die.  And most often, without being in control of how they will do it. 

            Neurofeedback, and the technique of electroencephalography are being researched with some promise. By studying the brain waves, some advances are made in the understanding and thus the possible interface between man and computer.  Articles begin to appear—both in text and online—about the great potential of the brain to overcome physical damage or affliction.  “Professor Kostov’s Mind Reading Machine” was published in 1998, and besides the article having a really neat title, it indicates a good measure of the power of mind over matter:

            “A couple of times each week, Mr. Killick wheels into the

University

of

Alberta

‘s Laboratory for Advanced Assistive Technology. There he is fitted with a skullcap containing 28 electrodes, and tries to operate a computer with his mind. So far, thanks to a program designed by Professor Aleksandar Kostov and graduate student Mark Polak, he has succeeded in moving a computer cursor up and down on the screen” (Sheremata 42).

            And earlier, in 1996:

“For instance, in 1993 David J. Warner, a neuroscientist at Loma Linda University Medical Center in California, connected the electrodes from our EMG apparatus to the face of a 10-year-old boy who had been completely paralyzed below the neck in an automobile accident. By tensing certain facial muscles, the young
patient could move objects on the computer screen — the first time since his injury that the child could manipulate a part of his environment without aid” (Lusted, Knapp 82).

            By 2003, more work has been done on the development of in brain-computer
interfaces (BCIs) to read brain signals of paralyzed people:

“Most BCIs read brain waves, the electrical impulses created by neural
activity that can be detected—albeit fuzzily—through the scalp. By diligently controlling their mental activity, patients can choose letters to spell words, guide a cursor, or direct crude robots. But a rival circle of scientists is rapidly advancing a type of BCI that is implanted inside the brain. Such devices tap into the more detailed neural signals relayed by individual neurons” (Wickelgren 496).

2025

The man stirred in his sleep, awakened from his morphine-induced sleep to recognize his wife’s voice.  He opened his eyes, tried to smile.  His wife, Helen, smiled back, took his hand, then turned to look at the monitor at the foot of the bed, and read her husband’s greeting, “Hello, I’ve been waiting for you.” 

“Oh, I’ll bet you were sleeping,” Helen replied softly.  She turned back to the monitor expectantly.

                        “Did you call the insurance company?”

                        “Yes, Hon, don’t worry.  The premiums are all paid up and this is all covered.”

After Helen left, the man found he was thirsty.  He should have asked Helen for some water before she left.  Within a minute, a nurse came in, bearing a cup of ice water.  The man took a few sips, then set the cup down and closed his eyes.  He was thinking of when they had brought their firstborn home from the hospital.  He opened his eyes, and watched the memory play out on the monitor.  The scene faded a few minutes later, as the pain hit and he knew he needed some of the calming, painkilling drugs that were automatically fed through the tubes in his arm when he needed them.  When he next awoke, he replayed his wedding day.  After that, the Notre Dame game of 1993.

But cancer was still a killer in a small percentage of cases, and though his mind was clear, his body was ravaged by the disease.  Assured of his wishes being followed, and comfortably free of pain, he knew by the end of that week that he was within hours of dying.  Helen was called, and was by his side.  She watched his slow and shallow breathing, looking up at the monitor now and then to smile at the “I’ll always love you,” he kept thinking for her.  The hospital staff was called in, and helped him prepare.  As the monitor flickered, the staff quickly switched connections, moving him quickly to the operating room on the same floor.  Helen called her son with the news that his father had passed, then left.

A week later, Helen visited her husband at the new wing of the hospital.  She sat alone in the small room and the equipment was wheeled in and set against a wall, switched on, and she was left alone again, watching the screen flicker to life.  “How are you, Hon?” she asked, tentatively, anxious yet a bit nervous, as she had not experienced this before.   She read the monitor, “Fine, Helen, I’m fine.”

———–

One word stands out from all the rest of the new media language, and I’ve formed ideas based upon its varied meanings:  Transitioning.  The fadeout between movie scenes, the chapter heading or the little squiggled lines in books.  A change of time, a change of scene, something that brings us into place with pace of narrative.  We seek out smoothness in its rendering, a gentle impact that is relevant, comprehensible and hides the seconds, sometimes decades of a story without leaving us to wonder where we are.

The final transition though, for us, comes in many ways as well; screeching tires and tinkling glass, or slowly in a breath, a breath, then none.  This is where technology can change our lives perhaps, make dying easier, then like a sequel to the movie, move us on to play another part again (Gibb).

            Nursing care is entering its most demanding time as the baby boomers enter into the realm of the elderly.  Nursing home care is already under pressure to resolve care issues for too many patients with too little caretakers.  One of the projects at the MIT Media Lab is already addressing this issue (as are others in more indirect ways), a project called “Multimedia Bed” related to the “Gray Matter” projects, and under the direction of Ted Selker and Winslow Burleson: 

“This project involves providing a traditional bed with multimedia computing capabilities, eye-tracking, and coordination of the electronics with a projection screen mounted above the bed. The system provides the user with an alarm clock that projects a sunrise on the ceiling at the time the user wishes to wake. It allows the user to go to sleep with a star-lit sky projection, or with a constellation game. And if you play the game well past your bedtime, the system may ask you about resetting your alarm to a later time the following morning. It makes reading in bed easier by projecting your book onto the screen, eliminating the need to prop yourself up using your elbows or a pillow”  (MIT Media Lab).

            The brain itself is rarely the cause of death unless diseased or damaged.  Instead, it dies in response to the shutting down of the parts of the body upon which it depends; the lungs, to breathe in the necessary oxygen, and the heart to circulate the life-sustaining elements within the blood.  “Brain-death” is indeed a very different circumstance than when the brain loses consciousness and dies within moments of the physical collapse of the body.  Death of the brain indicates the lack of measurable waves, electrical impulses that efficiently and with precision ran the machine of the body.  Can a healthy brain, emitting its powerful brain waves be harnessed to be redirected to engineer a more responsive mechanism than its failing body, such as a computer?  Quite possibly.

Is that a good thing, or an affront to God and nature; will we embrace it or in horror turn away?  Do games become more real, or will reality, in fact, become a game (Gibb). 

            Computer technology frightened the populace with its potential for overtaking humanity as it become smarter than any one single man, but instead a depository for all human knowledge.  HAL was indeed something to fear.  But if the computers were human…

LATE BREAKING NEWS, December 2004: 

“Professor of neurobiology medical enginineering and psychological and
brain sciences and co-director of the Center for Neuroengineering, Duke
University enabled the brain waves of monkeys to control a robotic arm” (Miguel A. L. Nicolelis)

            “Paralyzed patients may someday lead more normal lives if scientists can translate brain activity into words and motion. Last year, for example, Duke University researchers showed that monkeys with brain implants could learn to control robotic arms. Cyberkinetics Inc. of Foxborough, Mass., implanted an experimental brain interface into a quadriplegic patient this year” (Vergano).

Works Cited

Bush, Vannevar.  “As We May Think.” Copyright © 1945.  The Atlantic Monthly.  July 1945.

Copyright © 2004 The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/computer/bushf.htm.. (handout)

Degani, Asaf.  Taming HAL.  New York:  MacMillan.  2004

Gibb, Susan M.  “NEW MEDIA:  Transitioning.”  Spinning.  Dec. 10, 2004.  http://smgct.typepad.com/spinning/2004/12/new_media_trans.html#comments

http://inventors.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://sln.fi.edu/biosci/healthy/fake.html  Building a Better Heart.  Dec. 6, 2004

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bltelegraph.htm  “The History of the Telegraph and Telegraphy.”  Dec. 6, 2004

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bltelephone.htm#Inventors  “The History of the Telephone.”  Dec. 6, 2004

Keep, Christopher, Tim McLaughlin, Robin Parmar.  © 1993-2000  “The Electronic Labyrinth.” http://www.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0034.html

Lusted, Hugh S. and R. Benjamin Knapp.  “Controlling computers with neural signals.” Scientific American. Oct96, Vol. 275 Issue 4:  p82.

MIT Media Lab.  Gray Matters:  Multimedia Bed.  http://www.media.mit.edu/research/SigPubWeb.pl?ID=7  Dec. 12, 2004

“Miguel A. L. Nicolelis.”: Scientific American; Dec2004, Vol. 291 Issue 6, p46

Sheremata, Davis.  “Professor Kostov’s mind-reading machine.”  Alberta Report / Newsmagazine. 02/16/98, Vol. 25 Issue 9:  p42.

Vergano, Daniel. “Paralyzed use brain waves to move.” USA TODAY  Copyright 2004 Gannett Company, Inc.  http://www.eid.txcc.commnet.edu:5002/universe/document?_m=7236c207b1aebe5d018a0a74807951ad&_docnum=2&wchp=dGLbVtz-zSkVA&_md5=5d238b3417eb778343bb007afe28f29f

Wickelgren, Ingrid. “Tapping the Mind.”  Science. 1/24/2003, Vol. 299 Issue 5606:  p496,