Thoughts on Who Knows What

I’m gonna be totally honest, this class started pretty slowly, just more of the same we’ve talked about all semester. It got more interesting though when we got into radio and eventually censorship. It’s weird to think how the radio is dying nowadays, only select people really listen to it. I can’t think of anyone who really still owns a radio other than just in emergency situations or power outages. Once upon a time cars that came with a radio or tape player were considered luxury, my 2006 Volvo station wagon was a luxury car because it had a CD player. Now all cars come with radio, CD and the nice new ones have Bluetooth so you can connect your phone since everyone for the most part has a smart phone. People don’t have a need to listen to the radio when things like Sirius XM, Spotify, Pandora and Apple and Amazon Music have their ad free versions. Come to think of it, part of why people don’t like the radio is because of those ads you can’t skip. I for one have zero patience for it and I’m willing to pay for Spotify Premium no matter what, I refuse to go back. When I’m in a rush and don’t have time to connect my phone via the FM transmitter I have for my car, I flip on Sirus XM. My car has the one of the oldest “life time warranty” Sirus XM radios there is but it still works and it’s still better then public radio. Maybe there is something to say about Carr’s theory if we’re too impatient to live with ads now… I still hate it though. To think that there was a time where radio was the main advertisement tool is astounding to me. I never really thought about it but there was only a short time in my life, maybe about half of it, that public radio was still the most popular source of music. I used to listen to Kiss 108 FM all the time and my parents hated it because they played a max 40 pop songs over and over again. Now I have Spotify Premium and drive my parents crazy with my “loud fake music” all the time.

What even happened to NART? We never talked about why those censorship “rules” ended. Actually, we sort of did because there were more channels that were more specific as opposed to the max 10 TV stations. I honestly can’t think of one popular show on today that doesn’t break at least one of those rules besides kids shows, and even they are getting more progressive. Then two new genres have come around, one are the cartoons that have complex worlds, cartoons and lore like Adventure Time that just ended or even Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir. (Both amazing by the way). The other genre is adult shows/cartoons intended to be upsetting or controversial like literally anything and everything on Adult Swim. No contemporary show could be popular or interesting if it followed those guidelines. Even documentaries dramatize things to add shock value. It’s what people these days like I guess. I honestly think it’s way better this way. It means people aren’t afraid of talking about controversial topics and change can finally spring from people’s discussion and openness with it.

With that new comfort comes the problem of sponsors or advertisers dropping shows that stir up conversation. Thus is the problem that YouTube is having where everything is getting demonetized or classifications that prevent adcents. It’s really a big problem the YouTube community is facing, a lot of people can’t afford to be strictly YouTubers as a career and so have to do it as a hobby. A lot of channels are dying because of it and less content is released. It’s because of this adpocolypse, as it’s called, that censorship has become a bigger question. People have started considering what should be censored versus what needs to be discussed, it’s great actually. Too bad the money spenders will always win.

Finally, to what extent should we protect free speech? A lot of free speech is spreading false information or offensive to certain groups of people. Like the anti-abortion people who protest in North Plaza. I despise them. I’m 100% pro-choice (in reason) and it feels like they’re trying to strip women’s rights to their own bodies. Possibly worse is people who preach how homosexuals need to be “fixed” or Jewish people need to be converted. It’s actually hate speech but because it isn’t directed at one person in particular nobody can do anything about it. All we can do is mutually agree that those people are terrible, however you want to interpret that word. Yes they have a right to free speech and yes they have the right to their opinions, but should they be protected at the sake of other (in my opinion better) people? It’s infuriating, impossible and completely unfair.

This day was another HIST day, not that there’s anything wrong with that, I find it fascinating. We talked a lot about Vannevar Bush’s idea of a memex. A desk that can only be explained as the same concept as the internet— minus the online wifi part. The memex was a way of forging one’s own path in researching. You’d be able to access all your information in one place as well as notes you made, and it all fit very well in your traditional desk. Now, Bush’s really complex idea just couldn’t quite be achieved with how far along technology was in his day. While Bush never managed to see his memex come to fruition, he did pave the way for communicative and research development.

He predicted so many things— and I mean so many; kindles, the internet, cellphones, VR headsets, GoPros, the lot and so much more. What I found most interesting were his visions for them. When I say Bush predicted the aforementioned technology, he predicted the concepts, ideas and functionalities of them, not their actual form or what they looked like. Bush’s technology, I can only imagine, would have looked incredibly steampunk…. I think that’s awesome. I love steam punk style so I’m gonna add pictures in case anyone doesn’t know what “steampunk” is and just because I like it, this is my blog and I can.

What I imagine the memex would look like

Bush’s GoPro

(of course you can’t have steam punk without the hat or goggles)

Steampunk is basically fusing technology with industrial era clothing or life, it’s a subculture of people I think fits perfectly for Bush’s ideas. The main thing I took away from our lesson was, however, the way Bush looked at the future. It left me wanting to take time and think about advancements and technology I can imagine in the future. All inventions and all ideas are derived from what we already know or have available to us. We as a species are incapable of seeing into the future. If we could, everything would have been discovered or invented already. What Bush did was take what he know about knowledge, information and research and reshape it into a more effective process. I reflected on what we know/have now and Bush’s idea for his memex. I think the modern era version of a memex is what we see in books and movies. Below are my notes from class, they describe it better since it was in the moment:

• We talked about how research is done and that the internet is the solution… I was thinking it can go further – like the desks used in Ender’s Game that’s what they would look like. And this “dex” to use Bush’s work would be touch screen. Each addition to the thread of thought is like a little hexagonal blurb. You draw lines and connect them, you make more hexagons with writing, these hexagons could have anything (articles, links, photos, videos, poems, whatever is useful to your research. That would be the ultimate “dex”
  • In the future someone might see my idea and think of a better way to make a dex using technology they have and forces that we presently are unable to.

The fact that the authors like Orson Scott Card, and others who write dystopian novels, have already come up with this idea means it isn’t an original though. It’s funny to me how authors would write about these “dex”s that would undermine their being. It’s like Professor O’Malley mentioned in class, Bush (also Berners-Lee who we hadn’t talked about yet) practically made books extinct. Why read someone else’s train of thought, their biases, when you can research and compile you own? This memex would have been the first thing on a long road to their demise. That being said, I think books will never die. That’s because they’re more then just research and information, they’re also stories; and there’s no other solid source of stories.