Thursday, February 21, 2008

Formal Blog 6 Option 3 - Christopher Walker

Technology in DADOES

Man, I wish the movie “Weird Science” was real.

Representation

  • a presentation to the mind in the form of an idea or image

  • a creation that is a visual or tangible rendering of someone or something


Technology plays a huge part in respresentation and in many ways. In DADOES, all the men are wearing lead cod-peices. That's the first thing that comes to mind... maybe I shouldn't admit that. I should say that technology plays a huge part in misrepresentation, in both DADOES and the real world.

In DADOES, the technology is so advanced you cannot distinguish androids from humans (or animals). One could compare this to the Dove Self Esteem Fund. Advertising has become so manipulative – they take a picture of a fairly attractive woman and alter all of her features in order to create a face/body that's psycologically more appealing. The only difference between the two is tangability.

Empathy boxes in DADOES present the user with the idea or feeling of empathy. In the real world, the T.V. does this through the news and adopt a child infomercials.

The mood organ alters moods in DADOES. The technology in the real world that would be comparable could be TV or “mood” drugs (such as paxil and prozac). The most basic level on TV or the internet, you can pick what you want to watch. Essentially stimulating your mood of choice.

The TV actually has an interesting effect on human beings. It releases dopamine, causes the eyes to dialate, decreases blood flow to the brain, and has an effect on memory. All the short jumpy cuts in advertising are designed to tap into a survival instinct – when our surroundings change we tend to take notice (whether we realize it or not) in cause it's something that may threaten our survival. So, we remember stuff almost as if it's been implanted into our heads – kind of like false memories implanted into andriods (DADOES).

Androids appear to be human – the deception is similar with internet technologies. No one can be certain if that twenty one year old car model you're chatting with is really some psychotic forty two year old lunch lady.

Sony's robot dog, the AIBO – is just fifty to a hundred years away from the fake animals in DADOES.

Just the fact that you're “re-presenting “ something denotes it's ripe for deception.

1 comment:

Adam Johns said...

This is a choppy post - maybe deliberately? To mirror the choppiness of television which you're critiquing? Anyway, some of this reminded me of other posts - your advertising discussion goes back, deliberately or not, to Erika's entry, and the television section to Andrea's.

In both cases, you're adding something valuable to the discussion, focusing on the _reasons_ for the facts Erika and Andrea observe: there are particular reasons for the ways in which women's images are altered, and others for why television has a verifiable effect on us.

I have no idea whether you actually read either post or not, but this makes an interesting point: if you did read them, and if you had framed this post as an extension of and response to theirs, you could have done even more.

I guess that's a point for everyone. Read each other's posts, and use them!