Unfortunately my technology sources are rather limited. Up until a few weeks ago, I would learn about technology through Stumble Upon and set the focus on Technology. Stumbling through pages of the internet I landed on www.lifehack.org/technology. I am not sure if this site is particularly useful for those who are tech-savvy, but for people like me – it’s incredibly practical. Most of the site’s articles consist of handy tricks like “7 Tricks to Make You A Spreadsheet Expert” or “12 Ways to Secure Your Smartphone”.  Almost all of their tech articles are full of information I did not know at all, and written in a language I can completely understand. The website is simple and allows me to scroll through the headlines and decide which one intrigues me most.

I like that the site allows me to apply their information to my real life, where I feel like I am actually learning something. Again, it’s probably completely useless to anyone that knows anything about tech.

They recently posted a video about the History of the Cellphone:

The visual representation of my self-tracking.

Starred days are days I went to the gym. The percentages represent the quality of my sleep for that night, determined by Sleep Cycle app. The graph, from Sleep Cycle, shows what time I went to bed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jZlSfsE730

The story of Robot & Frank is of an older man, struggling with memory loss, who is given a robotic Care Aid by his son. Frank, an ex-burglar, is at first opposed to the idea of a robot in his home, and his daughter shares the same anti-tech feelings. Though, both can agree that the robot is a big help with cleaning and cooking. Frank has a change of heart when he discovers a flaw, or a gap, in his robot’s programming: it doesn’t know much about stealing. The robot unintentionally assists him with stealing a small trinket from a soap shop, which launches Frank into his old burglary days. He teaches his robot how to pick a lock, and the robot complies as Frank tells him it is just a hobby which is good for him and his health. Frank, who served time in prison earlier in life, steals an old book from the library as well as an expensive necklace from the home of a snippy young tech guy who offended him.

Frank is one of the only patrons of his town’s library, where Jennifer works. Jennifer also has a robot, Mr. Darcy, who works with her at the library. Jennifer, now, is simply a friend who he has a crush on. In the end, we realize she was actually a larger part of his past that he has sadly forgotten. The library is just being transformed, by the snippy young tech guy’s company, into a kind of augmented reality experience. The kind of experience which has no need for printed books (a prediction similar to Gary Shteyngart’s story). The story-line gives the film an interesting interplay of past and future, a future which feels a little too close for comfort.

Books, or printed books, are predicted as becoming extinct. This idea is something people are reluctant to believe, this is the hardest pill for us to swallow. We were okay with technology doing-away with records, tapes and CDs. We were also okay with technology closing down every movie-rental store, and bulldozing over VHS tapes and soon, DVDs. But, people are holding onto their books. This love for print is endearing in our culture, and gives a kind of omni-present sadness to the comedy of Robot & Frank. There’s something about turning pages of paper which people feel nostalgic for when reading books on a screen. There’s something in the past which we don’t want to let go of and for Frank, it is Jennifer.

In the end, the police are on to Frank. The only way to clear him from trouble is by deleting his robot’s memory. Something he struggles doing, but eventually does. He is then put into a care home where everyone else has a robot except him.

The film’s portrayal of the future felt realistic, robots are helpful and butler-like for those who need help at home. Their advanced programming skews the line between friend and robot. Frank defends his robot as a friend, not a slave. It’s a connection that seems plausible, where technology becomes more of a companion or a loved-one in the future (an idea similar to that of Spike Jonze’s Her). His robot has to remind Frank that he is not a person, and deleting his memory will not do any harm. This is difficult for Frank to comprehend, as he is clearly suffering from memory loss in his old age, and does not want his own memory to be completely wiped.

Robot & Frank is an engaging look into the future as it highlights the totally mind-blowing technology, as well as its flaws and opportunities for manipulation – even by an old ex-burglar who knows little about technology. As Frank says, “the human brain, a lovely piece of hardware,” robots will never be quite as complex or intelligent as the human mind. The future holds helpful and state-of-the-art technology but manipulation is possible.

Perhaps my favourite of the film’s insight into the future was a quick line of his daughter’s answering machine: “Why are you leaving me a voicemail?” My parents and my dentist are the only ones who leave me voicemail. If voicemail becomes a thing of the past, I don’t expect to miss it.

Sorry, but even in the future, nice guys finish last. Nice guy meets girl, nice guy loves girl a lot, girl moves in with nice guy, girl leaves nice guy for an evil charismatic friend-killing youthful 70-year-old boss. Classic. The final chapter of Gary Shteyngart’s My Super Sad True Love Story somewhat redeems protagonist, poor ol’ Lenny Abramov, where he retires in an old Italian village – where youth is not an obsession and he can age comfortably. Up until the final chapter, second generation Russian immigrant Lenny had been a balding 39-year-old Jewish man who loved a less than 90 pound, freckled, 24-year-old Korean girl, Eunice Park. The story takes place in the not-so-distant future, almost uncomfortably close to 2014. Appäräti are the more technologically advanced and complex iPhones of the future which obliterate privacy, more so than now. Information like childhood abuse, credit rankings and mood are available as well as a “Fuckability” ranking. Oh yeah, the future is incredibly sexualized. At one point Eunice mentions watching porn in kindergarten class.

The story begins and ends in Italy, but all the action takes place in economically failing America. Lenny has to bypass a digital otter to return home, who we meet several reincarnations of. Eunice leaves Italy because of her abusive father (a reoccurring theme in the novel, where äppäräti sounds similar to ‘father’ in Korean). She lives with Lenny in NYC, where the super sad true love story begins. Nice guy Lenny cries a lot and though Eunice only expresses spontaneous glimpses of affection, we believe she does love him back. Despite her coldness, she is sympathetic to the Low Net Worth individuals in the park and the elderly women in his building.

Immortality, a salient theme of the novel, is an option for High Net Worth individuals, a business which employees Lenny. His boss, and the man Eunice eventually leaves him for, is undergoing treatments (like dechronification and replacing blood with SmartBlood) to reverse aging. He is in his seventies but looks, as Eunice describes, like Lenny’s hot younger brother. His name is Joshie Goldmann, a powerful figure who we believe kills Lenny’s best friend Noah by blowing up a ferry. It can be speculated he posed as Lenny’s American mama, Nettie Fine, to kill Noah.

The virtual self, the äppäräti, is argued to be so essential to us that it gives us meaning and a sense of worth, depicted as “they couldn’t see a future without their äppäräti” (Shteyngart 270). When the technology momentarily fails, young people commit suicide because they “needed to be ranked, to know [their] place in this world” (Shteyngart 270). Today, the need for ranking is demonstrated by a need for likes, followers, friends, retweets on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It is this deep connection to technology which is our downfall, where without it, we feel meaningless. My roommate’s voice echoing in my ears: “I would die without my iPhone”. Perhaps in the future, the virtual self will infiltrate our real selves until the two are indistinguishable. Perhaps, it will make life and death indistinguishable. I argue this may already be happening.

Today when someone dies, their virtual self lives on. The deceased’s online profile is inundated with messages. People write on his/her wall, tag him/her in photos and interact with the profile, rendering it an active site of communication. It’s like the online world doesn’t truly recognize death. The account does not die when the person dies. An article in the Huffington Post outlines this through the death of Anthony Dowdell, where friends would tag him at various locations, like he was there too, “as if he were still living” (Kaleem). This phenomena is mimicked when Eunice Park continues to message Grillbitch a.k.a Jenny Kang, who is suggested to have died.

Maybe it will be our online selves that live forever, or perhaps we will become semi-robotic like Joshie, filled with machines and SmartBlood. Modern medicine can already keep bodies alive long after the brain has died. But, with a skewed perception of death, we may inherit a skewed perception of life similar to Lenny’s: “if we have only one life to live, we might as well have not lived at all” (Shteyngart 275). The impending doom of death determines how we live on a day to day basis, if that element is removed, we may feel entirely meaningless. The ephemeral nature of life is suppose to make us seize the day, live every moment, and follow other inspirational quotes found on Tumblr or tattooed on skin. I want my virtual self to remain separate from me.

References:

Shteyngart, Gary. My Super Sad True Love Story. New York, New York: Random House, 2011. Print.

Kaleem, Jaweed. “Death on Facebook Now Common As ‘Dead Profiles’ Create Vast Virtual Cemetery.” Huffington Post 07 Dec 2012. Web.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOv-3EhVdE8

“His little guy here has created his own world. It’s called Second Second Life, for those people who want to be removed even further from reality”

Thinking about Wednesday’s topic of the Virtual Self reminded me of this clip from the Office. Enjoy!

Flipping through a magazine or a newspaper, one could wonder how the simplicity of print could ever keep up with the complexity and excitement of digital. The print world scrambles to make flashy websites and apps to keep up, some cancelling their tangible papers to invest entirely in the online world. But, what if the two did not need to be separate? Layar introduces the two.

With an average increase of one million users each month, Layar is the world’s most downloaded Augmented Reality app. The app allows you to scan a magazine or newspaper page and reveals additional layers. The app can be used on any page with their logo, any QR scanning code, and movie posters. Their website has a few testers you can scan, like a page from Elle magazine and a Crystal light advertisement. Scanning the Elle page, a video make-up tutorial appears. The Crystal light add fills with colour and allows you to decide which flavour to look at. Layar provides the happy medium for those who love the digital world but aren’t ready to stop buying newspapers or magazines. The app may ease some people stuck in their ways to try something new, as it is a blend of technology and print.

I think this app could help keep newspapers, print, alive. It helps keep them interesting, without having to actually go online to view video clips or more pictures. The app’s popularity demonstrates an unwillingness to give up on print, there is demand for a combination of the two.

The future seems to be striding towards an entirely digital reality, where augmented reality is a part of daily life. This future is both frightening and enticing. I’m not sure if I’m ready to give up on a good ol’ fashion hike or an ordinary book. Augmented reality seemingly dismisses the natural beauty, excitement of the real world. AR implies our daily lives, the natural world before us, should be enhanced and should be better. Sure, it’s intriguing, but I don’t want to forget about non-augmented reality.

Hi I’m Kelsey Hamilton and I am in my fourth year at UVIC. I’m doing a major in sociology with a minor in professional writing, which is what lead me to TS 400. TS 400 is offered this semester, works with my schedule, and completes my minor in journalism. I am not necessarily a tech-savvy person, but I am realizing it is becoming pertinent to almost any profession, not only writing.

I have always had an interest in social media, how quickly it has grown, and how quickly we have lost interest in privacy. I am also interested in, as a journalist, the varying degrees of information available through technology but also hidden by technology.

In another class, a student discussed an article she read of a new app, similar to snap chat, aimed at professionals who do not want a record of their communication or documents between one another to exist. Here’s the article if you’re interested.