Reality TV's Interactivity

With the onset of a new reality genre, television can now be seen as an interactive environment through such things as various measures of voting and online chatting. This can be seen as a positive change with a growing trend of more and more people wanting to be able to interact with and change the shows they watch. In the simplest of definitions interactivity can be described as “involving the actions or input of a user” (Merriam-Webster). That would pretty much include about everything we use these days such as using a remote, dialing a phone, typing etc. When using the word in this paper I’m meaning it as a more restrictive term. In class we talked about Zork and how the decisions you made that affected the storyline were interactive. This is more of what I mean by saying reality TV can be interactive. Instead of taking a passive role by just simply watching the show viewers are given the opportunity to interact and make decisions that affect how the program plays out.

The trend is quite evident that more people want interactive TV with its countless displays of such already available. A survey conducted by Harris Interactive showed this result. “72% of reality TV show viewers are interested in enhanced interactive elements, as are 65% of sports viewers and 50% of drama viewers. [Overall] 66% of viewers said they would also like to interact with TV commercials” (Hefflinger). This trend can also be seen in the ratings for the interactive reality shows. Since its debut in 2002 has continually been the number one rated show in television with on average well over 20 million viewers per episode (American Idol). Other reality programs that represent various types of interactivity also do very well in the ratings department which shows viewers demand for such capabilities.

Being such a broad term, interactivity can mean a lot of things when it comes to reality TV. There are many ways one can take an active approach with the television they watch so the term needs to be more defined. The book Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched explores this same idea and defines the interactivity with reality TV in two different ways. The first being “that access to the means of media production will be thrown open to the public at large, so that ‘everyone can have their own show’–or at least a distant chance of becoming a star on one of the dozens of reality formats that have seemingly taken over the airwaves” (Andrejevic 2). By giving average people with no acting experience or any connections the ability to apply and be a star on a television show leads to the possibility of anybody being able to affect what or who’s on television. As we’ve seen from the majority of the reality shows these average people have changed the face of television by creating new types of people and things we can see on TV. The second of the author’s definitions is that interactivity in reality TV is “a change of a limited representative element of audience participation to a direct partaking in decision making processes” (Andrejevic 153). This is what I want to work with, how viewer interaction can really make a difference in what we’re watching.

The idea of television being interactive started long before reality TV and will most likely continue once the genre fades. An early account of this was in 1953 with a children’s show called Winky Dink and You where “kids in the US [could] buy a special transparent sheet to place over the screen and, using ordinary crayons, help the show's characters draw things like pathways or tools” (Dodson). Although this didn’t actually affect the show this was an early instance of where people stopped simply being passive watchers. A huge milestone occurred when for the first time someone on a telephone called in during a TV show which is thought to have been during NBC's Today Show in 1959. This simple thing has spiraled into a norm of TV where people can call into shows and give opinions. This novel interaction became a growing trend among soon to be staples of the television world.

As somewhat of a precursor to reality shows like Survivor and American Idol the game shows of the past and present demonstrate an earlier form of viewer interactivity. Contestants on the shows were average people, for some like The Price is Right all you had to do was wait in line and try to have a big personality to get on the show. Since people were only on each episode for short amounts of time viewers couldn’t get an emotional attachment to the contestants so all that was available was loud and entertaining personalities. Game shows like Family Feud also paved a way for viewer interaction by starting to “survey 100 people”. This eventually led to viewers being able to vote in answers for future questions during broadcasting of the show which is where reality shows took a hint.

The genre of Reality television doesn’t have exact limits as to what it includes. Even its precursor game shows can now be considered reality TV with Howie Mandel being nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality - Competition Program for hosting Deal or No Deal which is like any other game show. In my and most other sources opinion however would say what the average person would consider reality TV can be traced back to the premiere of The Real World in 1992 which was drastic change from the sitcoms of the time and that the game shows are different genre. For the first time you had unscripted relationships strangers broadcasted for everyone to witness. This led into numerous spinoffs of the format until a reality TV hit a peak in the early 2000’s with the creation of such shows as Survivor, Big Brother and American Idol where the format was greatly changed and there were winners and prizes involved. This is where interactivity of home viewers started to come into play.

I interviewed several of my friends to see what their opinions were on whether or not reality television could really be considered interactive. As you’ll see I got a mix of results, some which gave me ideas for this paper.

Megan Richardson said:
“You should talk about how it’s not interactive because it’s not real anymore”
This was funny to me since as I’m writing this she’s in the other room watching The Hills right now getting mad at Spencer because of how much of douche he is even though she clearly knows it’s fake. She’s also the only other person I know besides myself who’s so completely obsessed with Big Brother that she not only votes whenever the opportunity arises but would also do anything to be on the show. When I brought up this fact she only then admitted that this voting was a way of interacting with the show.

Kendra Kasznel said:
“Of course it’s interactive. Look at things like The Hills where what people think of an episode is shown during the show.”
I didn’t actually know what she was talking about which lead me to seeing this first hand and indeed she lead me to a whole new way of interacting with TV that I wasn’t even aware of.

After hearing me talk about voting with Megan, Jessica Lindley stated:
“Yeah, but you know the voting doesn’t really matter, the producers choose who they want”

Other friends mentioned various voting as being interactive or like Megan, saying simply that it’s all fake so how could it be interactive.

As with a few of my friends a lot of people right off the bat would say that reality TV isn’t really interactive. Their arguments would mainly consist of stating its either fake or that votes don’t really count. While I have to admit that there are plenty of fake “reality” shows out there like Paris Hilton’s My New BFF and The Hills (where even the cast members admit to being cast and how they reenact scenes) that give the genre a bad rep you can’t discredit all the others because of them. It would be like saying comedies aren’t funny because some are terrible. How could one really say it’s all fake when you have a show like Big Brother where there’s a 24/7 live internet feed of the house that you can watch online, it’s as real as it gets. To say voting doesn’t actually count is another statement trying to discredit the genre with an already bad rep. Sure if there was some poll on one of the clearly fake shows I’d agree the voting could possibly be a hoax but when it comes to programs such as American Idol and Survivor where a large sum of money or contract are involved I can safely say the votes surely count. It’s not as if you can see someone counting off the votes for the President yet I’m sure everyone would believe those votes count, so why should it be any different for TV. Even though there are plenty of misleading “reality” programs, the clearly credible ones have provided an outlet for viewers to interact with their favorite shows.

Voting has become the stand out way for viewers to interact with a reality series. Instead of just simply watching a show, you can take an active role by helping to make decisions that affect what happens for the rest of the season. In shows like American Idol, Dancing With the Stars, and the first season of Big Brother viewers vote week by week to eliminate a contestant. Each week you can potentially change the fate of game and because of it there has been numerous fan sites these type of shows meant to get people to vote for certain people. The goal for Votefortheworst.com is to “encourage you to have fun with American Idol by voting for the bad and truly entertaining contestants” (Vote). People are now starting to interact with each other to have a greater effect on the show and time and time again they have been successful such as when the terrible singer Sanjaya Malakar lasted a long time on Idol and when Master P (who never actually danced) continued to stick around on Dancing with the Stars. It just goes to show that the votes really do matter and that people can make a difference in what they’re watching.

Along with being able to vote for winners viewers are also now starting to be able vote for who they want as cast members of shows. For the All-Star season of Big Brother fans had the opportunity to vote to choose eight of the 14 contestants in the upcoming season. As opposed to shows like Idol once the show started it’s the contestants that vote each other out not viewers yet in the end the winner and the other final four were all people who were chosen by America and the majority of the rest who voted in lasted a long time as well. So even though while watching viewers can’t interact, their initial decisions still played a crucial role in how the show turned out. The same type of idea was used with the last season of The Real World. People could create profiles on MTV’s website where America could vote for their favorite to be part of the cast. Greg Halstead was ultimately chosen and became an instant villain which from watching his profile videos you could tell was bound to happen. By being able to chose cast members viewers are finally able to make decisions in what they want in a contestant as opposed to what producers want.

A final way that viewers can interact with a show through voting is demonstrated through shows like Top Chef and Project Runway. When a commercial break starts polls are asked to viewers about the show or contestants. An example would be asking “Who is the best chef?” or “Who deserves to get the axe?”. Viewers then have the opportunity to text in their vote or vote online with their opinion and the results of the survey are shown right before the show returns from the commercial break. Although this doesn’t affect the outcome of the show viewers opinions are shared with each other and the world for that matter. This can also lead to producers getting a taste of what people want and who to focus on in the upcoming episodes.

Although there’s plenty of evidence that The Hills is far from reality it has provided a new way for fans to interact with the show. After the first screening of an episode the MTV website creates a group in The Hills forum where fans have the capability of talking with each other about various things they liked or didn’t like about the episode. MTV then chooses comments they find particularly intriguing or funny and displays them at the bottom of the screen when they replay the episode directly before they play a new episode the next week. An example of this is in one of the replaying episodes while Holly was telling off her sister Heidi’s boyfriend Spencer off at the bottom of the screen was displayed:

Shimmer1 wrote:
“Unlike Heidi, Holly has a back bone. She put Spencer in his place. I don't understand Heidi, I have seen her and Spencer out just the two of them no stage photo ops just the two of them and they look miserable. I am just wandering if Spencer is holding something over Heidi's head. She seems genuine when she is with Holly and the letter to Lauren seem genuine. There is something going on with the whole Speidi thing.”

These types of comments are added several times during the episode. People can also submit videos of themselves giving opinions about the show that are shown during the episode (MTV.com). During these showings they mute the actual show and the only thing you can hear is the viewer’s opinion. People’s comments are thus integrated into the actual show and affect what we as viewers are watching.

With the increase in interactivity levels in today’s reality television viewers are getting an opportunity to stop being mindless drones and start making a difference in what they watch. A staple in the genre, voting via phone, text, or online to give contestants the boot has put the control in the viewers hands and the ratings alone show that people do indeed want this power. By giving viewers the capability to choose contestants can not only affect the types of people cast on that particular show but can lead to a change I various programs since casters can get a better feel for what the average person wants. Other methods such as live polls and forum comments being displayed are just another way to show that viewer’s opinions are being heard. We’re in a time where everyone’s views matter and interactive reality TV has provided an outlet where this can be shown on an almost daily basis.

Works Cited

"American Idol." 8 December 2008. Wikipedia. 8 December 2008 .

American Idol. F.A.Q's. 25 November 2008 .

Andrejevic, Mark. Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
Inc., 2003.

Dodson, Sean. A Short History of Interactive TV. 5 April 2001. 7 December 2008 .

Hefflinger, Mark. Survey: TV Viewers Want More Interactivity. 22 January 2008. 7 December 2008 .

"Interactive." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2008. Merriam-Webster Online. 9 December 2008

MTV.com. The Hills - Episodes. 6 October 2008. 8 December 2008 .

Thought, AI, and the Nova

While you read this, the sun is getting older (Lyotard 8). It is burning up its stores of energy until one day, some five billion years from now; there will be no more. The inevitable death of our sun brings forth the inevitable death of all life on earth and the death of all thought. Questions will also cease to exist. Not just simple yes or no questions, but also the answerless questions. The questions philosophers spend years of their lives thinking up the answer to. You have heard these questions before -- “if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Why waste the time in pondering these questions? We, as a society of human beings, need to focus not on these answerless questions, but on a way to preserve and continue our thinking and cognitive abilities beyond the time when there is no sun to give us energy, no moon to look up at, and no earth to live on. We need to develop a way to continue human thought beyond the time of the sun's death. If we don't, then "after the sun's death, there won't be a thought to know that its death took place" (Lyotard 9).

To continue human thought after the sun’s inevitable death will require us to examine what “thought” is. Next, we must look into artificial intelligence as a way of carrying and further developing human thought after the sun’s death and materials that would be able to survive the death or technologies that will enable thought to outrun the effects of the cosmic death.

First, what is thought? Is it something we are capable of producing from birth? I mean is the ability to produce advanced thought available at birth or does it need to be developed? Jean Piaget, a developmental theorist, believes cognitive abilities are developed and development can be recognized in four stages; sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational (Bertocci).

The first stage of development, sensorimotor, occurs between a child’s birth and about 2 years. These children experience the world through movement and their senses (Bertocci). Take for example a baby. If the baby is hungry, it cries. If it poops, it cries. They know when they want or need something, but they cannot express it like you or I can. The mind at this stage of development starts to develop object permanence. So when you are playing with a baby, and you hide a toy under the blanket, the baby knows the toy was there in your hand but they think it disappeared because they cannot see it anymore. Or when you are playing peek-a-boo and you hide. The baby cries because it does not know where you are and it gets scared. But when you pop back out, the baby stops crying.

The next stage of development, the preoperational stage, occurs when the child is between the ages of about two and seven. Here, the child’s semiotic capabilities increase and rapid language development occurs (Bertocci). For example, are you thinking now as you read this essay or are you just reading? If you are just reading over this essay seeing letters and putting them together to form words, are you thinking? Surely you are. You may not remember it but letter recognition and reading was once a skill you had to learn. Through my three-year tenure at Jumpstart, a program working towards the day every child enters school prepared to succeed, I spent months, if not the whole year of being partnered with my preschool child working with him on letter recognition. Not even reading, just being able to look at a word, recognize and tell what the letters are that make that word up. It was a slow and arduous task, but necessary. Without being able to recognize letters a person would not be able to read or write.

The third stage, concrete operational, is existent in a child between the ages of seven to eleven years old. Here, cognitive development is at a point were conservation is acknowledged (Bertocci). No longer will a child put a quarter-sized blob of glue on paper to glue an elbow noodle. The child can also think logically about concrete events, conceptualize things like math with numbers but not items and can follow the trial and error approach to problem solving (Bertocci). Say you don’t have money to buy your wife’s life saving medication, so you walk into the pharmacy and steal it. Was that wrong? Well, a mind in the concrete operational stage of development would say yes it was wrong, even though you did it to save her life. They know the difference between right and wrong but struggle with bringing in the abstracts to make a decision.

The final and most advanced stage of development is called formal operational. This stage encompasses most children and adults over the age of 11. Take note that not everyone is able to perform cognitive processes at the formal operational level. These processes consist of abstract thinking development such as hypothetico-deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, and deductive reasoning (Bertocci). This is the stage that we want our artificial intelligence to reach and what I will discuss in the greatest detail.

In his essay, Can Thought go on without a Body, Jean-Francois Lyotard states,

In what we call thinking the mind isn’t ‘directed’ but suspended. You don’t give it rules. You teach it to receive. You don’t clear the ground to build unobstructed: you make a little clearing where the penumbra of an almost-given will be able to enter and modify its contour (Lyotard 19).

In other words, to be a formal operational thinker, the mind must be able to receive an idea and enhance it; similar to a tiny acorn being planted and turning into a giant oak tree.

Lyotard also states, “thinking and suffering overlap,” (Lyotard 18). This is especially prevalent in the formal operational thinker. The majority of students who attend universities are formal operational thinkers. If not, then they are when they leave. I believe it is the university’s main objective to create people who can think on their own and not just teaching the students a specialized skill like geology or engineering. They want to create people who, when given a problem, will rise to the occasion and be able to solve it without anyone holding their hand. The universities have their professors challenge the students. They give their students a prompt (the seed) and have the students expand upon that prompt say in an essay or on an exam (the oak tree). Often times the students complain at how hard the assignment is. They take the caffeine addiction to a whole new level while pulling off the all-nighters to finish that paper or cram for that exam. It is never pleasant and always full of suffering. But, no pain no gain.

To take it to the next level, or should I say the next level of formal operational cognitive abilities, will require the most suffering. The majority of university graduates go right into the job market, but some stick around. They pursue the higher degree. They suffer for anywhere between two years and the rest of their life thinking, researching and analyzing what has not been thought. “The unthought hurts,” Lyotard says, “because we’re comfortable in what’s already been thought. And thinking, which is accepting this discomfort, is also, to put it bluntly, an attempt to have done with it.”

All right, so we understand what thought is, its stages and its development. But where are we now in developing an analogous machine or software that can mimic the process of human thought and think on its own. For this we look into artificial intelligence and the cutting edge research.

First, what is artificial intelligence? John McCarthy writes,

It is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable (McCarthy).

Artificial intelligence, in other words, is a computer program that can think on its own. Some forms are based on ways similar to how humans think while others are based on pure computational power, such as the chess programs of today. These programs play at the grand master level and have little intellectual prowess as compared to the human chess player, but they compete by substituting large amounts of computation of moves for their lack of intellectual capabilities (McCarthy).

Secondly, what are different branches of artificial intelligence and is every branch necessary to make a software package that can further human thought beyond the sun’s inevitable death? Don’t get your hopes up, we are no where close to being able to produce robots like those Hollywood creates such as IRobot and 2001: A Space Odyssey. The artificial intelligence and its branches are merely computer programs.

The first of which is based on logical artificial intelligence. It is “what a program knows about the world in general, the facts of the specific situation in which it must act, and its goals are all represented by sentences of some mathematical logical language. The program decides what to do by inferring that certain actions are appropriate for achieving its goals (McCarthy2).

Another branch is the ever-evolving branch of search. Here, the program examines large numbers of possibilities like moves in a chess game or inferences by a theorem-proving program (McCarthy2).

Pattern recognition is another branch of artificial intelligence and it does what the name describes it as. It is a program that “makes observations of some kind, [and] is often programmed to compare what it sees with a pattern. For example, a vision program may try to match a pattern of eyes and a nose in a scene in order to find a face. More complex patterns, e.g. in a natural language text, in a chess position, or in the history of some event are also studied. These more complex patterns require quite different methods than do the simple patterns that have been studied the most” (McCarthy2). Geoffrey Hinton at the University of Toronto published a paper on this very branch. In figure two of his paper, To Recognize Shapes, First Learn to Generate Images, he shows an image of hand written digits that are difficult to recognize. The artificial intelligence program, he calls it a neural network, recognized all of the digits and got them all right. However, the program was not confident in its answers but nonetheless it got them all right (Hinton).

Another branch of artificial intelligence is the branch of inference. Here scientists are working on getting programs that can allow the program to infer things from facts given (McCarthy2). Take for example a bird. We infer that the bird flies, but when we find out it is a penguin, our inference reverses and we infer it cannot fly. The scientists are working on a program that will do just this.

Common sense and reasoning is a branch where a program is being written that is the farthest from human similarity despite being of research since the 1950’s (McCarthy2). Where as another branch, learning from experience is making great strides in its development. There are learning laws expressed in logic and programs can only learn what facts or behaviors their formalisms can represent… [U]nfortunately, learning systems are almost all based on very limited abilities to represent information (McCarthy2).

The branches I just listed are used in applications like game playing, speech recognition, understanding natural language, computer vision- interpreting the two dimensions as seen from a camera into three dimensions, expert systems – a system that interviews an expert in a field and embodies their knowledge, and heuristic classification – a system that is given information and puts it in categories for later use like deciding whether or not to accept a credit card purchase (McCarthy3).

It is difficult to link where we are with the development of artificial intelligence to Piaget’s development of cognitive abilities. Some of the artificial intelligence is at a preoperational level like the work being done by Geoffrey Hinton and number recognition, while others are below and above that level. Some artificial intelligence is learning how to interpret what it sees and other artificial intelligence can beat a grand master in the game of chess. McCarthy states,

Computer programs have plenty of speed and memory but their abilities correspond to the intellectual mechanisms that program designers understand well enough to put in programs. Some abilities that children normally don't develop till they are teenagers may be in, and some abilities possessed by two year olds are still out (McCarthy).

Where artificial intelligence comes into its short fall is where its designers lack the understanding of how to put intellectual processes into code.

Obviously we are not at a time where we can say we have completed our research in artificial intelligence and the artificial intelligence is capable of furthering human thought. We still have some work to do, but we do have four and half billion years left. So what else can we add to the artificial intelligence that will make it more then just a computer program that can process information and events like the human brain? Lyotard suggests having the machines suffer. Remember, he stated that learning is suffering. So if we have the machines suffer then they can learn from their suffering and advance even more. I think we should also focus on making machines that can also reproduce and create evolutionarily better machines to even further human thought. Eventually, I see the time coming where our human thought is long gone and what is left is synthetic thought created by artificial intelligence. That doesn’t bother me because thought, like life, is evolutionary and is bound to change but the building blocks, the ones we humans created, will still be there.

All right, so we have the software, now how do we make it survive the sun’s death? Luckily for us, our sun is of a lower mass and won’t blow up like a larger mass star does when it nova’s. However, it will still have a violent death. The sun will expand past the orbit of Mercury, the luminosity will increase by 100,000 times and there will be a point called the helium flash when the star regains stability in its red giant stage. After this, the sun will collapse in on itself, expand again this time burning carbon not helium and then the outer shell will drift off at a rate of tens of kilometers a second. Thus leaving behind a planetary nebula and a white dwarf (Chaisson 322). So, knowing that our sun won’t go through too much of a violent death, we can begin to theorize ways to avoid its final stages. The final stages will emit massive amounts of radiation, unlike anything we encounter today. I believe this will be one of our biggest challenges. So, we have two options here. Build something that can protect our artificial intelligence from the radiation or build something that can out run the radiation.

For the first option, we would need some strong and protective materials. As of now, the strongest material in the world is the carbon nanotube. It has a specific strength that is 312 times greater that of steel (Carbon). This could work, but as of today we have only created nanotubes on the millimeter scale. Option two would be to build a ship that can outrun the solar radiation. We would need something that would be able to travel close to the speed of light, the speed limit of the natural word as far as we know. Again, more work is needed in this field as well.

Luckily for us, we have the laboratory that can test these materials or machines we create for their strength, durability and if they will be able to perform in outer space. The lab is called NASA’s Spacecraft Chamber of Horrors and is located at the Goddard Space Flight Center outside of Washington D.C. in Maryland. The first of the many tests the machinery would undergo is being placed in a centrifuge that will whip the materials around so they will experience the gravitational (G) forces (up to 30 Gs) they will expect to see on launch and in flight (NASA). The materials can also be shaken on a number of vibration tables that simulate the vibrations they endure during launch or space flight (NASA). Materials would be able to be tested in an acoustics chamber that will enable scientists to determine if the material will be able to survive launch. One of the most crucial tests is the nicknamed ‘the rack.’ It is called the Super Lightweight Interchangeable Carrier load test facility where an object is placed in it and is pushed and pulled by pneumatic cylinders to simulate the forces that could be felt in space flight (NASA). Another chamber is the electromagnetic interference chamber. In this chamber, radio waves are blasted at the object in order to test if the radiation will disrupt the operations of the machine (NASA). The final, most important test is being placed in the Space Environment Chamber. This chamber creates a vacuum like space and can heat and cool from 300 to -310° F (NASA).

Now, I just spent over 2,900 words describing why it is necessary to focus our energies not on answerless questions but on surviving or at least discovering a way to give our thoughts a chance at surviving the nova. But why did I waste my time, or your time in doing so? Some people think this concept of surviving the nova is a bunch of hogwash and unnecessary. They have a point. Who is to say we can, as a society, make it that far. I mean take a look at our struggle for energy. We go to wars because of it. Soon, if the predicted effects of global warming turn out to be true, we will be going to war over the basic building block of life, water. Also, look at where technology has gotten us. It has allowed for us to create the atom bomb, the abilities to create viruses and chemicals that can eradicate all life on earth. Lets not forget to mention man’s track record with sacrificing the rest of the world for individual benefits – our current economic crisis comes to mind.

This outlook doesn’t look so good. Bill Joy says it best in his article, Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us. He says, “Our most powerful 21st-century technologies – robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech – are threatening to make humans an endangered species. His opinion is that we humans will create technology that will put humans in danger, maybe even extinct.

But that is a rather pessimistic outlook. Personally, I am a glass half full type of guy, not a glass half empty. So, lets examine the good that can come from continuing our thought. If we get to the point naturally, the way we are heading now, we may get there eventually. I mean we have almost five billion years left, right? Lets examine what has been done since the dawn of civilization -- Stonehenge and all of its predictive capabilities, the pyramids and modern day metropolises, suburban sprawl, indoor plumbing, electricity, televisions, internet, artificial intelligence, rockets, the International Space Station and landing on the moon. This list can go on forever. Just think, everything we humans are and created up to today have only really been in development for around five thousand years. We have at least four billion years until we face our inevitable doom. Think of what we can do!

Also, Earth cannot be the only planet that life calls home. What if there were other planets, like us, who are having similar problems? Wouldn’t it be great if our thought machines reached those planets and helped the life forms inhabiting the planets advance to where we were when our sun died? Think of the possibilities then! Now, instead of just four billion years, the influence we as humans can have on other life forms is infinite!

I agree with Lyotard in that we should quit asking ourselves answerless questions. They won’t get us anywhere or give us answers. All they do is provide entertainment for some, headaches for others, and mind training for deeper thought. So lets look into how we can allow human thought to survive past our sun’s death. We may be able to influence other life forms or at least save some lives by allowing them to learn from our mistakes. History does repeat itself.

Works Cited

Bertocci, Michele. "Cognitive Development." University of Pittsburgh: Introduction to Educational Pyschology. Wesley W. Posvar Hall, Pittsburgh. Sep. 2007.

"Carbon Nanotube." Wikipedia. 2008. Wikipedia Foundation, Inc. 9 Dec 2008 .

Chaisson, Eric, and Steve McMillan. Astronomy A Beginner's Guide to the Universe. 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007.

Hinton, Geoffrey. "To Recognize Shapes, First Learn to Generate Images." Home Page of Geoffrey E. Hinton. 26, Oct. 2006. University of Toronto. 9 Dec 2008 .

Lyotard, Jean-Francois. “Can Thought go on Without a Body?” [photocopy].

McCarthy, John. "Basic Questions." John McCarthy. 12 Nov 2007. Stanford university. 9 Dec 2008 .

McCarthy2, John. "Branches of AI." John McCarthy. 12 Nov 2007. Stanford university. 9 Dec 2008 .

McCarthy3, John. "Applications of AI." John McCarthy. 12 Nov 2007. Stanford university. 9 Dec 2008 .

"NASA's Chamber of Horrors." HowStuffWorks Videos. NASA. 9 Dec 2008 .

Scientific Management in Entertainment Lighting

In the 1880’s, Frederick Winslow Taylor was just getting started on his ideas that would become the basis for scientific management. As a chief engineer at Midvale Steel Works, Taylor was able to study, test and apply his theories in an actual factory setting.

From his experiences as day laborer, Taylor knew that the men working the machines limited themselves to between one third and one half a full day’s work. Once Taylor was made a foreman, he was able to enact changes to the management system that would eventually become the “piece-rate system”, one of the major points of his system. The basic idea behind the piece-rate system is that a first-class worker should be able to produce set amount that has been determined by careful study. The first-class worker is expected to meet or exceed the task in order to be payed a higher wage than average (Boddewyn 105). The practice of this system is beneficial to both the laborer and management since the laborer gets a higher wage while the management receives a full day’s work from the laborer. While the piece-rate system prohibits many of the original laborers from continuing in that line of work, Taylor firmly believed that every man had a place and a line of work that he was particularly suited to (PSM 31).

The guiding principle behind scientific management is to maximize the profit of the employer as well as the employee. In order to achieve this, Taylor laid out four principles or guidelines that must be practiced in order to achieve true scientific management. The first principle is “the development of a true science” (68). This principle requires careful observations of how every aspect of a task is carried out. While working at Midvale Steel, Taylor realized that the combined knowledge of the task of the laborers he oversaw was much greater than his own. He started his implementation of scientific management with a study of the techniques used by several first-class workers. Using the data obtained, he determined a set of motions and tools that would optimize the completion of the task.

The second principle is the “scientific selection of the workman” (68). This step is the process of studying specific traits a person exhibits and comparing them to the requirements of the task. The most famous example of this is case of a pig-iron handler. The laborer, Schmidt, was selected to receive training that would enable him to handle 47 tons of pig-iron per day instead of his previous amount of 12.5 tons per day. The work he was to perform consisted of heavy lifting; therefore, the ideal worker would be incredibly strong but also quite unintelligent. As long as he could follow instructions, was able to lift the 92 pound pieces of pig-iron and physically capable of working at the increased rate, he was perfect for the task.

The third principle is the “scientific education and development” of the workman (68). In this step, the workman who has been chosen for the task is trained in the methods developed through the studies that specific task. When being trained, the workman must be instructed in every aspect of the task so that there are no wasted movements. Along with the new movements comes training with new tools. The tools are developed by studying what every individual worker uses in the first step to complete the task. From the observations, a new tool is created that is set up to be the most efficient tool for the task.

The fourth and last principle is the “friendly cooperation between the management and the men” (68). This is an extremely important principle because without the cooperation, the entire system ceases to function properly. Under scientific management, much of the foreman’s responsibilities, including training and setting the rate of production, are removed. This enables the functional foreman to work more in a management capacity, overseeing the workers, coordinating and preparing materials for tasks, maintaining machinery, etc. (Nelson 485).

The principles of Taylor’s scientific management revolutionized the way many industries were run. Even today, Taylorism can be applied to any situation involving a management team overseeing a work force. The examples I will use come from my experiences as an entertainment electrician, specifically my work as a Master Electrician (ME).

An organization that helps promote the principles of scientific management in the theatre industry is the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT). USITT works for the optimization and standardization of theatre practices and techniques. They constantly hold workshops and forums to educate the technical theatre work force. Every year USITT holds a national conference that contains a large variety of educational sessions as well as opportunities to discuss practices and techniques with peers and first-class workers. One of the major accomplishments of USITT is the creation of data communication guidelines. Prior to the USITT guidelines, proprietary data communication systems threatened to destroy entertainment lighting.

Along with the standardization of data communication and drafting procedures, USITT has helped support the creation of an Entertainment Technician Certification Program (ETCP). In order to become ETCP certified, an electrician must be extremely well trained and educated in many different aspects of entertainment lighting. The ETCP certification is the mark of a first-class electrician.

One of the roles of the management is to organize all the materials the workers will need to complete their tasks. In theatre, this is primarily accomplished in production meetings. In these meetings, the heads of each department (electrics, set, costumes, props, sound, projections, construction) and the direct overseers of the work force come together to discuss the stages of production and the various aspects that accompany them. Production meetings are where budgets and possible rentals are discussed, new ideas and concerns are brought to attention, the various designs are presented, and, most importantly, the schedule is set. In these meetings, the most important dates for the ME are set. These dates include the due date of the light plot, the hang date, the focus date, the tech days, and the strike date.

Upon receiving the light plot, the job of the ME is to make sure that all of the required information is there and everything makes sense. If there happens to be any missing information or an aspect of the plot is not clear, it is critical to get any questions answered in a timely manner so that the production is not held up. After everything has been set straight, the ME must order any needed materials and organize what is already owned. The electrics orders for most productions consist mainly of colored gels (example) and patterns, also known as gobos (example). Most of the organization of materials that are already owned concerns the inventory of lighting instruments. The ME is responsible for organizing the required inventory in the performance space prior to the hang in a way that is convenient for the workers. The last part of preparation before the hang is to organize how the instruments will be hung and powered. Depending on the space, this could take a great deal of time.

On the day of the hang, the ME is responsible for organizing the workforce into small groups. At the University of Pittsburgh Reparatory Theatre, the ME usually has several experienced electricians or Assistant Master Electricians (AME) to lead the groups, much like a gang boss or functional foreman. The job of the foreman is to train the less experienced electricians and help them as needed. The smaller groups allow the foreman to pay more attention to each individual. This is a point Taylor constantly stressed since “each workman has his own special abilities and limitations” (SM 43). With the foreman’s able to focus on individuals, the ME is able to move around more freely and help the laborers when a foreman is either unavailable or unable to.

Once the instruments are all hung, it is necessary to power them. Depending on the space, it is usually in the best interests of both the management and the work force to plan out where each instrument is getting plugged in ahead of time. If the ME does this, it gives the work force a distinct task and the ME does not have to write down everything each group plugs in. Planning ahead like this also enables the ME to be available to help the workers with any problems they might encounter.

The next major event for the ME is the focus day. If the ME has planned well and done his job, he should be able to concentrate on first training the work force and then helping troubleshoot any problems that arise. It is during this time that the designer may want to change the location of certain instruments. It is the responsibility of the ME to instruct the laborers in the necessary changes and keep track of it on paper.

After the focus, the next major date is the tech weekend. This is the time when all aspects of the production come together for the first time. The set is in place and painted, the lights are hung and focused, the sound design is complete and the actors are on the stage. During the tech process, it the ME must train the person who will be the light board operator how to use the light board and how to troubleshoot minor problems. The ME also provides the board op with a preshow/post show check list. Once tech is over, the ME is only called if there is a problem that the board op cannot handle.

As the production comes to a close, the ME starts to prepare for the electrics strike. Part of the process is determining the work force available at the strike and organizing how to split them into groups. In general, the strike consists of the dismantling of the set, storing the costumes and props, and taking down the lighting instruments. The electrics strike requires a designated area for each variety of instruments and a collection point for the gels and gobos. Once all of the gel and gobos have been collected, the last task of the electrics strike is to store all of it.

Throughout the production process, the ME has several powerful tools available to organize the information. The first is a computer aided drafting program called VectorWorks (VW). VW enables the ME to print the design (example) in order to give the workers a better look at their tasks. Another tool available to the ME is a program called Lightwright (LW). LW is a specialized spreadsheet utility (example) designed specifically for entertainment lighting. Integrated into each program is the ability to export and import stored instrument data (i.e. channel number, gel color, position, purpose, etc.), making them very powerful tools when they are combined. However, as with many tools, VW and LW are constantly being updated and added to according to the needs of the tasks. Soon, a new version of each program, VW 2009 and LW 5, will be released and electricians and designers will start using them because “the moment we find a new and improved or a better way of doing the work everyone will …[work] according to the new method” (Testimony 780).

My personal experiences start two and a half years ago with productions of Ghost in the Wire and Vinegar Tom. As far as electrics is concerned, these two plays were run under the old management system, not scientific management. With the old system, the management was extremely disorganized and left almost all of the work up to the laborers. As I said earlier, the role of the ME is to prepare the required materials for the hang. In both of these cases, there was a complete failure to prepare which ended in longer hours for the laborers and a slight delay in the production process.

The first two productions for which I was in the role of the ME were The Recruiting Officer and Desdemona (plot) in the Henry Heymann theatre. As part of the management, I organized everything ahead of time so as to create an easier task for the laborers as well as a friendlier atmosphere. As part of the preproduction process I created hang cards (example 1, 2, 3). After organizing the work force into small groups, each with a gang-boss, and training gang-boss’s how to read the hang cards, I was able to be available for questions instead of have to carefully keep track of where each group was hanging and giving them information as they went. The grid of the Heymann is only about eight feet high, so the workers used ladders to hang the instruments. Once the groups started hanging, my main task was to hand out the hang cards in an order such that the groups did not run into each other.

With the use of the cards, the hang was completed within three to four hours each time. The hang for Vinegar Tom took a full six hours to complete, without putting all the gel and gobos in the instruments. Completing the hang quickly enabled the laborers to move on to cabling the instruments. Again, I had cards set up for the laborers to make their tasks easier.

Another production that I worked on recently was Lysistrata in the Studio Theatre. The Studio is different from the other spaces we have at Pitt in that instead of plugging directly into the power source or dimmer, the instruments are first plugged into a circuit that runs back to a wall mounted circuit panel. The connections from the panel are then plugged into the dimmer. On previous shows, plugging the instruments into the circuits has been done with one person doing the plugging while another writes down the circuit number. After all the instruments are circuited, everything was plugged into the dimmer in the same manner. It is easy to see how inefficient this method is since it requires very few laborers when there are quite often many available.

As the ME on Lysistrata, I planned out the circuiting and dimmer hookup (example) ahead of time so that while most of the laborers were hanging and circuiting the instruments, someone could be connecting the circuits (example) to the dimmers at the same time. This method of hanging and circuiting kept all of the laborers busy and did not waste any manpower.

My most recent experience as an ME is for the production of Angels in America. This production is taking place in the Charity Randall Theatre, a proscenium space. Being the largest space Pitt Rep uses, an organized management is crucial to the success of the production. Since the Randall is such a large space, it was harder than working in the Studio or the Heymann because I could not be as readily accessible to all of my work force. As ME I needed several assistants that I knew I could trust to act as foremen for the different sections of the theatre. Along with functional foremen, the laborers had access to paperwork that was easy to understand.

Throughout all of my experiences as an electrician and later an ME, I have been able to observe other workers, discuss techniques with first-class electricians and develop a science for the different steps leading up to the culmination of the production. As an ME, I am able to better place my laborers with the jobs that suit them best and am more able to train them in the actions of their task. Last of all, I have found that the more prepared I am as an ME, the easier it is to get along with my work force.



Works Cited

Boddewyn, J. “Frederick Winslow Taylor Revisited.” The Journal of the Academy of Management. 4.2 (1961): 100-107.

Nelson, Daniel. “Scientific Management, Systematic Management, and Labor, 1880-1915.” The Business History Review. 48.4 (Winter, 1974): 479-500.

Taylor, Frederick Winslow. The Principles of Scientific Management. New York: Cosimo, Inc, 2006.

Taylor, Frederick Winslow. Scientific Management. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1947.

Taylor, Frederick Winslow. Testimony before the Special House Committee. U.S. Senate. Washington D.C. 64th Congress 1st Session, 1916.

Final Project: Narrative Creates Technology.

We accept technology as it is, taking it for granted while benefitting from its uses. For every problem, there is a techno-solution, and for every complaint with that solution, there is another ‘update’ to take its place. One after another, piled higher and higher. You might ask…where does it all begin? And I might answer…where didn’t it begin? But the exact origins aren’t the focus here, so much as the reason a fair amount of our technology has come to be the way that it is. Why this way, as we see it in everyday life, and not another, a completely different approach? Several factors are involved, but one of the main contributors – lately – is narrative. Specifically that of science fiction. It is my intent to take you, the reader, through the reasoning of how it happened, why it happened, and for what purpose. Because, despite its entertaining appeal, science fiction in the media has always had a particular motivation in creating a new world that doesn’t exist. I’m just here to explain what that is.

To begin with, we have to take apart the title, so there’s no uncertain terms as to where I’m going here. Technology, as is known, is derived from techniques, which boils down to the method by which something gets done. In the very basic sense, every action is a technique. Walking, driving, reading, writing, etc. It’s just how you do things. Technology is innovation applied practically. You get an idea and you put it together and there you have it. Purpose achieved. Narrative falls under this. It has the purpose of creating a story, telling a tale, and that in of itself could have plenty of other reasons behind it, depending on the writer. I write this inform. I also write it to prove some kind of point. Narrative is the innovation and application of words, and those words can create the simplest particle to the infinite mass of a universe. Ideas are one of the reasons people consider humans complex. We think of things, consciously, a great deal more – insofar as can be observed – than any other being on the planet. Both the narrative and the technology human beings develop spring from creative ideas, and that is where this routine truly beings.

I say science fiction is one of our great contributors because it always has. There is just no real dispute. It’s all very simple, you see. One day, someone thinks up an idea for an invention, or a state of being, or some sort of incredible event…but it can’t happen. It’s complete nonsense! It is to be considered fiction, because it either hasn’t occurred, or it can’t. Classic tales of scientific romance were the forerunners to this. H.G. Wells, one of the first men to write of such things as time travel, alien invasion, space travel – many great things that were just out of everyone’s league at the time. This would never happen, and yet…we’re on the moon. Well, that probably wasn’t due to him. The idea of scientific romance was to explore the idea, not to explain how it might work. Still, it was a stepping stone, an all important factor in the development of this narrative. You literally wouldn’t have science fiction without the predecessors. Because while a book such as War of the Worlds was a commentary on war and psychology underneath the pages, it nevertheless had the effect of causing people to wonder.

As stated, an idea is a very powerful thing. A writer puts the idea to paper and sees where it will go. In science fiction, the premise of it can always be put to the simple question of “What if…?”. What if the future ended up like this, because we did that. Science fiction is, as implied, loosely implying that these are things that might happen, however unlikely, even though science can’t seem to bear it out. So, the authors create these tales based on a “What if…?” just to give the readers an iota into the concept of what might occur if the world suddenly turned out like Blade Runner, for instance. A dystopian future where a devastating nuclear holocaust has deadened the world and forced the surviving population to rely on technology in totality for survival? Back when Philip K. Dick wrote it, it was not impossible. In fact, the idea that it could – no matter how unlikely – was probably the motivation. Think about it. Putting aside that there are many nations out there with nuclear armaments, there are enough of those missles out there in the stronger countries alone to reduce us to a rundown and mostly wasted future. Everything from the laser tubes to the androids are possible, right now. You can have a World War Terminus, and then science will have to be applied towards methods of survival, which would include trying to make a living off-planet. That would create the need for androids as laborers and such, using the technology for cloning as a basis, and that would essentially make us Blade Runner.

Now, the “Why?” for that. Why is it, regardless of underlying intentions, to write a novel quite like that? It’s because, in many cases, books of science fiction are trying to warn us off the theoretical dangers of whatever it is they’re concocting. Dick uses a very real threat – nuclear devastation – to bring us into his world. If nothing else, tales of a dystopian, violent future is easily the way to warn us away from going down that path, to learn from a mistake before it happens. You take Isaac Asimov for a minute. Not only is he the author of a series of novels based upon the idea of robots with human-level intellect, but he has written a large number of short stories about life in the future. For whatever reason, the effect they have on the surface is that a world that ends up this way may not be best for human society as a whole. On the other hand, the idea of the robot has had such an appeal that it is a series of books with many authors borrowing from the idea and his universe in specific. And the reason? Because writers create worlds with narrative, and narrative has an effect on people.

Now, the reason for why I say there is a substantial influence on the world in reality by way of science fiction is very simple. All that has been stated thus far leads to this: You take an idea, such as robots, and you just wonder about it for a while. Everyone does this, but for the right people in the right profession, it can be applied. Because once, the phenomenon was out of our reach, science fiction being an impossibility. Invention and innovation has made the impossible possible in the past. It always has. But in more recent times, the idea is not from many long years of studying and developing a theory. It’s from cracking open a book of Asimov or Bradbury, and then discovering how it can be done. With science fiction acting as both a hub for theory and entertainment, people are infatuated with lasers, teleportation, space travel, genetic cloning, and so on. The idea of the clone certainly came from science fiction before such things as stem cell research and the like. Philip K. Dick’s androids in Blade Runner are still biological no matter how you slice it. So, the book becomes the template, the real theory, for the scientist to work off of.

What you have here, then, is what’s known as a Stand Alone Complex. An idea and innovation has developed into a real and usable thing in the world we live in, but there was never an original in the first place. A work of fiction is still fiction. There is no long history of the study of the robot with the positronic brain and the Three Laws system Isaac Asimov created, but you can be sure that if someone creates a truly thinking machine, Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics will be inserted for the safety and benefit of those in charge of the thing. So, Asimov would therefore be credited for the invention and theoretical application of something that doesn’t exist, and we are hard at work already to create an AI to match specifications.

Of course, television is another major influence from the sci-fi end. Again, that is still a narrative, but it’s in the form of a script for actors. Nevertheless, you have worlds to create and a society to insert into them. Let’s take another example, a much simpler one, in fact. Star Trek, for instance. Do you have a cellphone? If so, take it out and flip it open. Though there are phones that slide open or are one solid piece, cellphones designed to fold and flip open like that – for their compactibility and such – were influenced directly by that show. Even funnier, they’re already far more advanced as is. At the rate things are going, communication badges aren’t too far off. But television has an even more powerful effect on people than just reading the book, since you no longer have to imagine as much how it looks, what it does, and other characteristics. It is so much easier for things in science fiction to be created nowadays because not only do the ideas have a theory, but the act and the expected effect can now be witnessed, enabling the scientist in question to simply figure out how to do that, rather than drawing his/her own conclusions from tests.

But it actually goes further than that. Because…this society is one that can believe in the map before the territory. There is a tale that, in summary, involves a kingdom whose ruler decreed that a map cover its entire length, a beautifully-rendered copy of the landscape and territory. Thus, it was done, and people lived on the map. But then, it is discovered that the land was rotted underneath the map, because the people had begun to like the map more. And so, the map creates the territory. The idea of narrative creating technology here is no different. It no longer becomes necessary to research things anymore. We feel comfortable, largely, with creating our fantasies, making them the real land that the map has become. Media has become a powerful thing. Like with the mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap, you can create a total fake, a complete work of fiction, and then later, it becomes a reality. Spinal Tap was never a real rock band, so someone decided to make it so. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Finally then, I get to the exact purpose in mind. We can always say that writers have something to convey in their words on many levels, even if they did not intend it so, but there is something more deliberate, more focused about science fiction narrative than others. You deliberately write about something that science literally balks at, and why? H.G. Wells wrote The Time Machine, and now there’s a long list of theories as to how it might function, for no other useful purpose than theory. Well, here’s a thought… Try to imagine what the world might be without these kinds of narratives. Consider…science within the theory of the possible with only a regular-level of development in theory, invention, etc. Technology still moves on, but at what pace? There’s no spark for the unknown, to strive for the unreachable, save for what you can see, smell, taste, touch, and feel. The theory of the sixth sense is even abandoned as paranormal nonsense, and not that it could account for a physical sense the brain subtly translates into creepy feelings. There will be cars, planes, and definitely still landing on the moon, though there will be no more thought of alien beyond the quaint theory that Mars could have once supported life. In a number of ways, it might just be a world like the one we live in, but with a number of changes that might make it a dystopian sci-fi itself.

Without science fiction, all the wonderment is reduced to unproven and untestable theories. It was always speculated that black holes lead somewhere…maybe to a world of anti-matter, that their crushing force creates a singularity, and how they actually operate. That’s not so much as science fiction as Stephen Hawking. But that part of science would never be applied to, say, generating anti-protons in a lab or building a hadron collider to try and study quarks. Because while you could say that you did these things for the furtherment scientific knowledge, the methods required a few leaps in logic on how to proceed that might’ve taken many years more or never occurred at all without a few well-placed sentences. Your cellphone might not exist as it does now without a little nudge from the original idea of an advanced pocket communicator, with a far better signal than a radio transmitter. It’s a bit hard to predict exactly what the future – or our present – might look like without science fiction giving it a nudge here and there. In a way, it could be seen as the reverse of science fiction, since we’re creating the fiction. It would be a world of cold hard facts, where radical theories are regularly thrown aside like Galileo proclaiming that Earth wasn’t the center of the universe. Heresy and nonsense! Perhaps it would be a Puritan world, brought forth by an accident at Time Safari Inc. It would be, in a word: BORING!

Ah, but why? Why all this? Writers create these tales for a reason. Many reasons, no doubt, both above and below the surface. You write a book to make money, but also to make a statement of some kind. You write an essay to obtain a grade, but also to prove a point. There is an underlying purpose, or else the work just wouldn’t unfold that way. And why not come out and say it? Because people don’t like to be told. In some cases, they can’t be told, because getting cooperation that way is like pulling teeth. So, you bait them along and wait for them to bite. And once that’s done, you reel them in carefully, almost so slowly that they don’t even know it’s happening. Finally, you have them, and the notion is planted. They have to think about it if their brain actually works. There is a point. There always is. George Orwell wrote 1984, about a future that was advanced and mighty, but also lifeless, in a way. A world where everyone is a number and has little more existence than to act as a cog in a wheel. There was a film production of it, but I find that THX-1138 also gets the idea across. Why tell us about a future world like that, where humanity is practically destroyed? Easy. They don’t want it to happen. Isaac Asimov wrote about many theoretical futures in which the human race is dependent on one machine or another for all the answers, so much so that they would be crippled without it. You write about such things, make a plot out of it, because you don’t want society to devolve into a world like that.

It is a far better thing that people keep their innovation, their ideas and wild imaginations. It’s part of what makes us the way we are. But if we destroy the world, or create dominating super computer, or become slaves to our technology to the point where there’s no more ‘us’ but rather the ‘its’ and their organic extensions…it’s all over. We who write walk a fine line. People are gonna read this stuff, consider its content, and give their opinion. You have to give them ideas so they won’t make disastrous ones. Science fiction writers show an endless array of how the future might be, or how a new instrument might effect the world. They do this as a warning. You can write as many books as you like, but there’s only one real world to work it out on.

House of Notes

Note that for this work, I will commonly use "Danielewski" to refer to author Mark Danielewski while using the stage name "Poe" to refer to his sister Annie Danielewski.

At a very simplistic level, it is clear that Mark Danielewski's work in House of Leaves connects to Annie "Poe" Danielewski's work in her albums Haunted and Hello. The fact that the albums have tracks titled Five and a Half Minute Hallway, Dear Johnny, Angry Johnny, and even House of Leaves should draw an obvious parallel. However, Poe's work does more than simply reference the work of her brother. The two mediums collaborate much more closely, and Poe's albums connect with the novel at both a lyrical and musical level. Likewise, Poe's music shares similarities with Danielewski's writing by reinforcing the idea that things are not always what they seem. Haunted and Hello have the potential to impact a listener's/reader's view of House of Leaves by reinforcing many of the ideas perpetuated about the novel, its characters, and entertainment as a whole by Mark Danielewski. Poe's repeated use of contradiction forces the reader to stop and think about Danielewski's material. The true benefit to readers is that much of the material Poe chooses to emphasize is material which the average reader could simply gloss over. Through her music, Poe forces readers to consider Danielewski's work in depth rather than seeing details as diegetic fluff. The end result for the reader is a greater understanding of House of Leaves, both in the context of the plot and Danielewski's message, by realizing the one cannot accept everything at face value.

Contradictions are a prevalent theme for both Danielewski and Poe. Poe's work is quite clever in that it commonly appears to contradict itself as well as Danielewski's work. For example, the track Five and a Half Minute Hallway may initially seem to stand in stark contrast to Danielewski's representation of the dark, mysterious, polymorphic hallway that appears in Navidson's house. Danielewski portrays the hallway and its branching corridors to be dreadful and frightening. Given that, one would expect the music of a song named after the hallway to be very moody, atmospheric, or even chilling. However, Poe takes a different route and the musical score of Five and a Half Minute Hallway is slow and mellow. It is completely devoid of the jarring noises and dark undertones one would expect.

By creating such a drastic contradiction, Poe forces the listener to truly consider House of Leaves and the point Danielewski makes. When the song's lyrics are considered, a parallel can be drawn easily enough to Navidson's trek back to the house proper after the rescue attempt on Exploration #4. Stranded at the bottom of the Spiral Staircase, Navidson has to try his best to journey out of the labyrinth. Considering the height of the staircase based upon Tom's dropping of a quarter, Navidson realizes his situation is essentially hopeless. However, he moved onward regardless. Rather than succumbing to fear or even madness, Navidson prevails by focusing on his family. His thoughts of Karen save him as he remembers her "as vividly as possible. In as much detail. Eventually [he] went into this daze and the hours began to melt away. Felt like minutes." (323)

While Navidson has a rather optimistic take on the matter, it should still be clear that it would not be physically possible for him to walk a distance greater than the diameter of the Earth on the small amount of food and water he had available. Rather, Navidson's thoughts literally transform the hallway into a much smaller, shorter rendition which allowed him to reach Karen. While a reader might be tempted to give the whole matter up to coincidence and luck, Five and a Half Minute Hallway completely nullifies that possibility. While stuck in a "hallway that keeps growing", Navidson did not give in to hopelessness. Instead he achieved some degree of inner clarity in thinking about Karen. He was able to convince himself, just like the song's lyrics, to continue for just a little bit further. Navidson's level of peace melds perfectly with the song's folksy quality and is suggestive of tranquility. Thus readers/listeners come to understand that while the song contradicts the hallway, it is only superficially about the hallway to begin with. Instead, Navidson's journey is the true focal point of the track. The song does not allow the reader to miss the nuances of the house which prove that it, much like the song itself, is not entirely what it seems and can be altered by the mindset of the individual within.

Poe's contradictions do not stop there and indeed they become even further layered within themselves as the album progresses. The track House of Leaves initially seems to be a song which matches with the novel perfectly. Only after further consideration can it be seen to possibly contradict. Just as Danielewski layers the narrative throughout the novel, Poe likewise layers the meaning within each of her tracks. Once again, nothing can be taken at face value without deep consideration.

The track initially seems like a perfect fit for the book since the entire feel of the song is extremely dark. The score is slow and deep, with occasional high-pitched elements screeching forth at what seems to be random. The composition would be quite fitting for a horror movie and thus likely mimics the feeling that most readers would assume the house to give off. However, the song is not merely an instrumental and in the background another track plays. Similarities arise again; Danielewski has a story inside of a story in his novel House of Leaves while Poe has a song inside of a song in her track of the same name. The song is Dominique, a French song by The Singing Nun. Dominique clashes profoundly with the track House of Leaves. It has a very upbeat, almost jovial tune about it. When listening to it, once can almost imagine a Frenchman walking down the street in the middle of the 20th century with a spring in his step, humming the tune. The lyrics themselves are even positive. It is about the man Dominique who goes from sinner to believer, lonely to in company, starving to fed. Essentially, Dominique believes and good things happen. (Song Facts)

The instrumental for Poe's track fits quite well in relation to the house depicted by Danielewski. By the same token, Dominique mirrors Navidson himself during his previously described escapades surrounding Exploration #4. However, the two contradict one another sharply. As the track plays out, the parts of Dominique being played in the background are frequently overpowered by the dark overtones of House of Leaves and the cacophony it can generate. Again, though, it serves to emphasize the same point as Five and a Half Minute Hallway. Navidson was against the odds as the house attempted to overpower him in his return to Karen. By having faith, this time in himself rather than in a higher power like Dominique, he was able to overcome. By layering contradictions on top of one another, Poe again forces the reader to understand the nature of the house and the factors which allowed Navidson to persevere where others, such as Holloway, failed.

Yet another track, Dear Johnny, establishes no direct contradiction of its own but instead chooses to focus on a contradiction Danielewski himself uses in the novel. A superficial reading of the novel might lead one to consider Johnny's predicament as his own fault. After all, Johnny's life has become dominated by putting together Zampano's work with The Navidson Record. To regain his life, Johnny simply has to stop working with Zampano's material. However, this is yet another facet of the novel which cannot be simply taken at face value. Instead, a deeper inspection is required to see that Johnny's mental state will not allow him to stop working with Zampano's material. He has no choice but to persist because he believes that, to some degree, he is a product of The Navidson Record and that, in a monumental contradiction, he is not creating it but that it is creating him. In reference to Zampano's material, Johnny actually claims that "... this thing has created me..." and goes on to say "... I am nothing more than the matter of some other voice". (326) He even takes such an idea literally when he says Zampano is "trapped inside me, and what's more he's fading..." (338)

Johnny's ideas may seem little more than nonsense, especially to readers who refuse to believe that his mental state is anything other than normal and healthy. To such individuals, the possibility for Johnny to simply walk away from Zampano's work may still exist. Poe's work with Dear Johnny refutes there being any possibility for Johnny to move against the act of re-creating The Navidson Record. Not a typical song, it consists of just over two dozen words that form a message to Johnny, ending with the demand of:

"Bring me to the blind man who
Lost you in his house of blue."

The line forms a command, issued to Johnny to bring forth Zampano. Of course, since he died Zampano himself cannot literally be presented. However, the line can be understood to mean that bringing someone to Zampano is the same as bringing his work to light. The track essentially acts like a voice in Johnny's head, telling him to finish his work. However, in this case the lyrics alone are far from settling the matter. Rather, the instrumental score solidifies Poe's case. Much like House of Leaves, the song features strong, dark undertones. It also features occasional high pitched effects, such as whistles. A piano appears sporadically to add an almost haunted feel to the track. Most importantly, a gong rings out in the background at set intervals. The overall effect achieved by the gong is to supplement the dark atmosphere with some degree of profoundness; it signifies that something deep and important is taking place. Given the musical score, the command posed by the lyrics becomes something more. It becomes an ultimatum.

Johnny's inner mentality is not just suggesting he should continue Zampano's work. It is not even ordering him to finish it. Instead, it is giving him absolutely no choice in the matter with the implicit threat of worse consequences should he choose otherwise. By focusing on the contradiction that exists between Johnny's point of view and the actions of a rational person, Poe forces the reader to understand Johnny's plight. He is not completing The Navidson Record out of any true desire of his own to see it completed, beyond the possibility of containing it, or to honor Zampano. Instead, he works on it because in the recesses of his mind the decision is not his to make.

Surprisingly enough, one of Poe's most contradiction-laden tracks comes from her Hello album. The track, Angry Johnny, presents the listener with contradictions in every form possible. The track is melodic with soft, almost sensual vocals. While the tone alone would not likely make anyone listening believe the song to be laced with happiness, it would also not indicate that the song is about murder, which is precisely the case. The easy, smooth track that could be found in a jazz lounge is mixed with lyrics on the various locations, mindsets, and composures for committing murder.

The music video for the song adds yet another dimension to the contradiction. Poe is shown on a bed amidst various objects suggesting romance: pictures, hearts, flowers, and chocolate. Such visuals support the jazz room-like quality of the music, and as such they clash just as strongly with the song's lyrics. It is not until after three minutes into the song that the lyrics are sung with a more aggressive tone and visuals such as a skull with a candle are used to remind viewers of the true meaning behind the song. While that meaning could easily stand alone, it also correlates strongly to Danielewski's depiction of Johnny.

Repeated throughout the song is the line "I want to blow you... away." The initial connotation the listener is likely to develop is sexual before the line finishes, denoting murder. Poe draws a connection between sex and murder; one turns into the other. It makes another contradiction since, at least in a pure sense, sex would suggest love while murder lends to hatred. The connection is not an empty one, however, especially when considering Johnny and Lude. Before being overwhelmed by The Navidson Record, Johnny's life is a menagerie of drugs and one night stands. He and Lude both revel in their ability to sleep with dozens of women a month and while Johnny often seems as though he wishes for more, it is never enough to cause him to alter his behavior. Regardless, when Johnny considers a list compiled by Lude of women he slept with in a month, he adds his own notes on their past, all of which he assumes to be horrific. Included are comments such as "hiding from a stalker", "had her first abortion when she was twelve", and "date raped last year". (265) He assumes all of these women to be emotionally damaged.

The true contradiction is that Johnny takes the concept of sex and renders it meaningless in regard to the concept of love. Rather, sex is typically accomplished for the carnal pleasures of sex itself. On several occasions Johnny makes it clear that he would desire a stronger, more serious relationship. Near the beginning of the novel he obviously feels rather strongly for Clara English. Since falling out with Clara, Johnny has a several encounters with different women, some of which have potential for meaning, if not necessarily love. These include Hailey, for whom he experiences some feelings of pity, Tatiana, through whom he gains insight and wisdom in several ways, and Thumper, who Johnny perhaps comes the closest to actually loving and yet she is also the one with whom Johnny never sleeps.

Indeed, Johnny actually makes a contradiction against love with his “relationships”. He never truly connects to the women with whom he has sex. Pity was involved with Hailey, something which, had the relationship progressed beyond a simple night of sex, could have led to understanding, empathy, and perhaps even greater emotions beyond that. Instead, Johnny never deals with her again and she remains only has a remnant in his memory. Such an experience contrasts sharply with Thumper. Johnny sees Thumper as the epitome of the perfect woman. Time and again he seems to express legitimate feelings for her. However, she remains the one woman Johnny obsesses over yet with whom he does not sleep. For Johnny, sex is about living for the moment and escaping from the issues that present themselves to him. It does not correlate with love or understanding.

Given some of his fantasies about her, it is clear that Johnny would most certainly like to sleep with Thumper, or at least would have liked to do so earlier in the book. By the time he has an opportunity, however, he is forced to deny it because in his mind sex and love, or any type of relationship, make no connection. Johnny makes no pursuit of the women he sleeps with and it leads to a complete reversal of what people would commonly expect from a relationship or even interaction between genders. Johnny does not meet women and try to establish any type of deep connection with them. Instead, he meets them and immediate sex and drugs are the key. Thus, Johnny's actions carry a strong connection to Angry Johnny. In the song, Poe establishes that sex leads to hate, aggression, and simple negativity as a whole. Johnny's life exemplifies this since his own sexual interactions which, though not always leading to negativity like they do with Kyrie, still most certainly do not lead him to love.

By forcefully establishing such a strong contradiction throughout Angry Johnny, Poe exemplifies how Johnny's constant sexual exploits never lead to love like one would expect. Rather, love is ideologically murdered and replaced by a mindset which impedes Johnny's very ability to attain what he desires. Again, it establishes a level of sense, twisted as it may be, to Johnny's actions throughout the novel. The reader is unable to simply gloss over the fact that Johnny has sexual encounters with many women and make the quick assumption that Johnny is a playboy doing what he enjoys. Instead it provides further insight into the story by establishing the fact that Johnny's actions are more than they seem.

Throughout Haunted and Hello, Poe consistently emphasizes and supports the ideas presented by Danielewski in House of Leaves. Essentially, Poe's albums present the same ideas and occasionally even a different take on the same events as Danielewski's novel. Indeed, it could even be seen as yet another re-telling of House of Leaves; it is simply another layer on the tale. Zampano has his creation of The Navidson Record, Johnny has his piecing together of The Navidson Record along with his own notes, the editors of House of Leaves present their version of Johnny's overall work, and finally Poe casts her telling of the material presented to readers. The fact that in doing so she chose to present the same themes and the same mentality as are presented in the novel makes a strong statement. Just as Danielewski and Poe are siblings, their works are siblings to one another. House of Leaves, Haunted, and Hello all portray the same messages, often achieved via the same means. By constantly using contradiction throughout her work, Poe is able to draw attention to some of the more subtle messages found within Danielewski's writing by forcing him or her to consider the circumstances and details which relate the two pieces and which allow the contradictions to make sense.

Works Cited

Danielewski, Mark Z. House of Leaves. New York: Pantheon Books, 2000.

Poe. Haunted. Atlantic Records, 2000.

Poe. Hello. Atlantic Records, 1995.

Song Facts. http://www.songfacts.com/lyrics.php?findsong=2053 - Dominique English translation.

Super Mario - The Interactive Fiction Edition

Yesterday I happened to stumble across this picture:


Click for full-sized version.

It's just a mock-up picture but I thought the idea was certainly interesting. It's a shame that the projects are due in three days since I think it would certainly make an interesting one to try to turn an existing game into a work of IF.

Self Evaluations

First, regarding the self evaluations:

Everyone should send me an email me their self-evaluations by Tuesday; sending one immediately after you finish your final project is probably simplest.

I want three things. First, a self-rating on a scale of 1 to 5 of your participation in class, and a second self-rating on a scale of 1 to 5 of your work on the blog (for almost all of you, this amounts to a self-evaluation of your critiques of the writing of other students. Third, feel free to include a sentence or two, or at most a short paragraph, commenting on your performance in either area, or both.

Here's what these scores mean.

1) You only rarely participate in class / your critiques are often short & perfunctory (you usually focus on trivial details, and that only briefly, or you simply praise them then quit).
2) You have something substantive to see perhaps once a week / your critiques are sometimes acceptable, and sometimes sub-par.
3) You have something useful to say most classes / your critiques are consistently acceptable, but in no way extraordinary (you usually spend your allotted hour, and you consistently if imperfectly focus on your peer's argument).
4) You participate consistently, usually having more than one useful thing to say every class / your critiques are more often good than acceptable.
5) You believe that nobody in the class has more useful things to say than you / your critiques are consistently thoughtful and detailed (you *always* spend your hour on them).

Note: I'm asking for this because I really want to know what you think. Generally speaking, I will be guided by honest self-evaluations; if you are obviously exaggerating, though, I won't be happy. Here's another way to put it: I'll tolerate a little inflation, if you seem to have honestly thought through your own work, but only a little.

Final Projects:

I'm looking forward to them! Work hard, and let me know if you have any questions. I won't be able to read drafts, but I could certainly answer questions, and I'll be checking my email regularly.

Ai and the Nova comments

The comments I received were, in my opinion, weak. I was able to pull a few things out. First of which was the need for a better and stronger thesis. I thought I had a decent one in there, but it doesn't jump out. Even looking at the essay a week and a half later, it was hard for me to pick out what it was. A better thesis is as follows:

The answerless questions philosophers have spent decades pondering over are still without an answer. Why waste the time in pondering these questions? We, as a society of human beings, need to focus not on these answerless questions, but on a way to preserve and continue our thinking and cognitive abilities beyond the time when there is no sun to give us energy, no moon to look up at, and no earth to live on. We need to develop a way to continue human thought beyond the time of the sun's death. If we don't, then "after the sun's death, there won't be a thought to know that its death took place" (Lyotard 9).

The last paragraph, I was commented on stating "there is no point" reguarding how answerless questions serves no point. Basically, I think my commenter called me stubborn, but in nicer words and I agree with him. It definately caught my eye, so for a stylistic perspective, I am going to try to stay away from comments such as this one.

My next step is to hit the books and web for some research.

Rough Draft Comments

I need to state my argument much more clearly. The fact that interactivity within the internet, and in general, is a highly sought after characteristic. With the introduction, I need to discuss the several definitions accepted by scholars and explain why I think each works or doesn't work. From this, I plan to make my own definition from a combination of the accepted definitions from the scholars and then apply it to why interactivity within the internet is what every website strives for.
In terms of taking things out of my paper. I need to get rid of the random comparison to choose your own adventure novels and my topic of internet interactivity. It takes away form the focus of the paper and in general is more detrimental than beneficial.

I need to increase my research material on website interactivity with hyper links, internet polls, nested videos etc...

Rough Draft Revision

I need to state my argument more clearly and clarify my examples rather than just throw them in my paper. I need to work on transitions and tying everything together and also include how I am affected by these videos and websites, instead of how the general public is affected. And I will add to why I think the CYOA videos can become more popular when the books didn't.

Workshop Comments

I still have a lot of my paper left to write so a lot of the comments dealt with bulking up the paper. I need to make my argument more clear and have more support for my argument by getting statistics and such. I was told I should also delve into the term interactive and restrict it more from the text book term.

Workshop stuff

I had many style errors, such as me saying "pretty much" and "although" like I was not sure of myself. So I need to make sure I am sure of myself in the paper. Also, I need more argument than plot summaries. I think it is because I did not have enough written to have an argument that was well thought out. There was a couple suggestions on how I run with this: maybe why do directors need to adapt or evolutionize novels to fit films. Or compare how 2001 was adapted from novel to HOL was adapted from video. Lastly, my introduction has a couple confusing sentences that I need to break down.

Peer editing results

I think the major criticism with my project so far was the fact that it doesn't flow very well. The individual bits and pieces stand alone just fine, but in the bigger picture, their arguments are weak. What I need to do is piece the branches of my essay together and make sure that each pathway makes sense the whole way through. Also, after reading John's paper, I've decided I need to spend considerably more time on some of my other album analysis. Some are a bit shallow and lacking.

Project Updates

One of the main points that were criticized in my CYOA book was the length of the story lines. I was told to lengthen the individual legs of the stories, this I agree with. The hardest part of this project is thinking of enough ideas to write about. I will try and continue to write, hopefully good things that will improve my story line. There can’t really be a counter argument since I am doing a creative project.
I did not get a chance to share the other half of my project. I intend to do two CYOA story lines in this project. One will be a story containing Haraway’s ideas and quote’s. These will be explained and also compared to other quotes throughout the year. The other will be the idea I showed to the class. I will keep writing and hope everything works out.
Sam Luffy

Class Workshop

OK so in the workshop we did in class, the biggest points brought up were that A) I need to finish writing my research, and B) that I needed to write my conclusions. Also I was told that I should introduce my argument earlier and make it clear. So all I need to do is just finish up typing everything.

Workshop Suggestions

The main suggestion I got in class was to refocus myself on the main point of my paper being that the Holodeck is an ultimate form of interactive narrative. I haven’t spent enough time talking about how it is interactive fiction. I also need to restructure the paper a little bit because now it seems more than a little disorganized. Other suggestions I got were to give more examples from Joy’s article, and to talk about current technology that resembles something like the Holodeck.

Classroom Workshop

During class I did not get many comments on my project. The main one is that I could make some of the sections longer then they are right now.

Workshop

The workshop was helpful, especially since Nick read my paper. He incorporated Haunted along with several other concept albums in his own work, so it was good to get reassurance from someone else working on the same project that my own outlook wasn't completely crazy. One thing he mentioned, though, was that he while he liked the individual work I did with various tracks in relation to parts of House of Leaves, I never did anything considering the album as a whole in relation to the book as a whole. Basically, I focused on the small picture in a few different ways but never included the big picture.

That said, I'm going to look into including another segment to my paper looking at the album as a whole in relation to the book as a whole. Ideally I would like to use this to go along with the individual connections I made using various tracks. I think it would serve as a nice segue into my conclusion if I can pull it off.

Workshop.

I found this useful, since whenever my own personal views on a work come short, I can always gain inspiration from others. It's a granted that other people just simply don't think the way I do. Differently-oriented in the thought process. Which is why getting in a group and figuring this stuff out comes in handy. Because of that, I have a somewhat new direction to take in my final, and hopefully the opinions that I gave in turn were useful. Really, we all have some damn fine ideas. They just need some tweeking. Sometimes, it's the tweek of ages, and other times it's a minor change that makes the difference.

Comments on class group discussions

Basically what was suggested to me on my paper from both of my partners in the group was that they would like to see me explain the significance of the fair in terms of what it did to Jimmy's psychological effect. I explained the effect it had on the world and I will look in to their suggestion and see what I can revise for the final copy.

Kevin did a really good job on his project and it looked very good when we went to the computer lab to see it work.
Ryan's rough draft was short and the only suggestions I made to him was to explain more in depth his arguements which in his draft he said he was planning on doing.

rough draft on Jimmy Corrigan final project

The World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 was the last world’s fair of the 19th century and one which featured inventions and innovations that illuminated the real beginning of the modern age. This fair is the setting for many of the flashback sequences found in Chris Ware’s graphic novel, “Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth,” which is comprised of sequences that tell the story of Jimmy Corrigan’s eponymous grandfather. By understanding the breadth and scope of the 1893 exposition, readers can better understand both the story of Jimmy’s grandfather and the ways in which that story influences and enriches the present-day sequences. This enormous event was recognition of the ways in which the Western world was going through significant changes, and it is therefore an intriguing backdrop and important metaphor for the changes happening within the Corrigan household. One of the new novelties introduced at the exposition was experimental psychology; knowing this can provide deeper insight into the older Jimmy’s parental conflicts and sense of alienation and the legacy of the Corrigan family.
When the World’s Columbian Exposition opened on May 1, 1893, the city that sponsored it was just 60 years old. Incorporated in 1833 as the “Town of Chicago,” it started with just 300 residents. But Chicago was in the right place at the right time. Immigrants from everywhere were drawn to the “golden funnel” by the Illinois and Michigan canal and “the city’s early simultaneous investments in railroads”; by the late 1800s, Chicago’s population was over one million, and it was the second-largest city in the country (McNulty 5).
As plans began for a world’s fair to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of the New World, Chicago won out over proposals from New York City, Washington, DC, and St. Louis for the privilege of hosting. Julie K. Rose calls it
“the last and the greatest of the nineteenth century's World's Fairs, . . . a reflection and celebration of American culture and society--for fun, edification, and profit--and a blueprint for life in modern and postmodern America” (Welcome page).
The planners enlisted premier American architect Frederick Law Olmstead, designer of New York City’s Central Park, to lay out the overall design of the exposition grounds. Architects for the individual buildings included Henry Ives Cobb, Richard Morris Hunt, Charles McKim, George B. Post, and Louis Sullivan, who helped design the exposition's buildings in a Beaux Arts style under the supervision of Daniel H. Burnham. Sophie Hayden, the first woman to receive a degree in architecture from MIT, designed the Woman's Building. James Gilbert observes that this famous and influential project allowed the architects to create, “bridges between utopian planning and notions of the perfected city and the actual plans of urban architects, road-builders and transportation designers” (256).
The fair was an enormous undertaking. Most of it was contained within a 630 parcel of reclaimed swampland, bordering Lake Michigan. It was bounded by the Palace of the Fine Arts at the northern end and the stock exhibit and pavilion at the south. The map shows major structures that included buildings devoted to leather, machinery, forestry, agriculture, manufacturing and liberal arts, electricity, mines and mining, transportation, horticulture, and fish and fisheries. The grounds featured a Colonnade with an obelisk near the Administration Building and a “Paris-style” arch that formed a water gate from Lake Michigan into a formal basin. In addition to the Woman’s Building and the Music Hall, the fair included buildings devoted to many of the world’s nations, including the U.S. Government Building (and one highlighting the state of Illinois), as well as the Streets of Cairo, a Turkish Village, a Moorish Palace, a Dutch settlement, an American Indian village, and villages featuring Germany Austria, Algeria, and other nations. Norway sailed a 10th century Viking longboat across the ocean and through the international waterways to join the fair.
The grounds included a pier style, two ponds, and a large lagoon, with a wooded island in its center. The exposition even had the novelty of a moving sidewalk. The exposition was built over the railroad terminal, an appropriate location considering the major role the railroad had in building Chicago itself into a great metropolis.
Most of the buildings were constructed of composite materials, often a mixture of hemp and plaster, and the majority of these temporary structures were lost in a fire after the exposition closed. However, the structure of the Palace of Fine Arts was made more permanent and became the first home of the Field Museum; it is now part of the Museum of Science and Industry complex. The Parliament of Religions Building was constructed outside the Jackson Park site and was planned from the beginning to become the new home of the Art Institute of Chicago after the fair closed.
But even the most temporary structures were designed to help visitors envision the coming century, the bright future of technology and new ideas that was on the horizon, as well as the best traditions that future could draw upon. Gilbert observes:
The Chicago Fair linked the utopian speculations of the late nineteenth century, particularly as expressed by Edward Bellamy and William Dean Howells, to the City Beautiful movement of the first decade of the twentieth century which redesigned cities following the inspiration of the layout of the Fair (256).
The architectural choices were praised by many but condemned by some critics, including one of the designers involved; Louis Sullivan later predicted, “the damage wrought by the World's Fair will last for half a century from its date, if not longer” (Chicago Historical Society). The exhibition’s designs laid the groundwork for the subsequent “House Beautiful” movement in American architecture.
Altogether, 46 nations presented 250,000 displays, including the first-ever Ferris wheel. It stood 250 feet tall and rotated 36 cars, each able to hold up to 60 people. Philip Jenkins notes:
Arts and Crafts products were much in evidence . . . which were presented as belonging to a kindred tradition, to societies that did not acknowledge any artificial demarcations between art and life, secular and spiritual. Native displays included some of the finest products of the Northwest Coast cultures, including model Haida and Kwakiutl villages. Indian crafts had a special appeal for women's groups, since these represented a distinctly feminine achievement (72-73).
The Chicago Historical Society describes other exhibits as:
curiosities rather than serious displays of technology and progress. They included an eleven-ton cheese and a 1,500 pound chocolate Venus de Milo in the Hall of Agriculture and a seventy-foot-high tower of light bulbs in the Electricity Building (1).
The range of items on display, ideas illuminated, and innovations presented were mind-boggling. Jack Schendler observes that the fair “boosted the morale of Americans during a deep economic depression” (142).
One of the most striking displays was the introduction to the general public of a new science, one that had been gaining a foothold in Europe but which was still relatively unknown in the United States. It was introduced by Hugo Münsterberg, a German physician who later became a pioneer in establishing the fields of Industrial, Experimental, and Clinical Psychology. Münsterberg, Margaret P. Munger writes, “created quite a sensation . . . when he introduced the American public to the new science of experimental psychology with a display of the shiny brass and polished mahogany instruments used in Germany to measure the mind” (Munger 288). The concept of being able to systematically study human psychology, to understand the powerful influences of family, biology, and circumstance in creating personality, was astonishing and to some fair visitors fantastical.
While some scholars have focused on the numerous mechanical inventions unveiled at the exposition, inventions that presaged a new age of technology, the arrival of psychology may have been even more important in thrusting the world into the future. Certainly, in terms of Jimmy Corrigan, it provides ways for contemporary readers to understand the lonely isolation of both grandfather and grandson and to see the psychological connections between the generations.
Selecting the World’s Columbian Exposition as the backdrop for the grandfather’s story allows Ware to introduce subtle irony on many levels. The exposition promised a brave new world, filled with gadgets to ease the drudgery of life and optimism to enjoy the bright future. The Corrigans had little of either. Modern day Jimmy does have a tape recorder, but he plays with it with the same lackluster apathy with which he approaches everything. It does not bring him any closer to his new-found father than his own ancestor was to his.
The fact that this same exposition introduced the tools for self-examination is another subtle irony, since neither Jimmy from the 1890s nor his grandson seems remotely interested in self-examination either. They both miss out on what Münsterberg argues to be the process of self-discovery that made psychology such an exciting new science:
Everybody noticed early whether his memory worked well or badly, how his attention sometimes failed him, how he was able or unable to think out a problem, how fear or hope, and joy or anger, arose in him. He may have been startled by the wonders of his dreams or by the play of his imagination; he may have thought about the limits of his personal talents or about the special gifts of his mind; he may have felt conflicts between his resolutions and his will. In short, the naïve curiosity which turned first to toys and tools, to stones and plants, later turned to memory ideas and fancies of the imagination, to feelings and excitements, to acts of desire and of volition, to talent and intelligence (1).
This actually describes the kind of life both Jimmys live, but only in the physical outlines. Jimmy Corrigan (either present-day or grandfather) may be “the smartest kid on earth,” but he seems supremely uninterested in using his intelligence to find happiness or at least to understand why happiness is so far from his grasp.
Were either to apply the most useful tool introduced at the exposition, both might start by looking long and hard at their relationships with their distant fathers. Yet both exhibit more than a little of what Münsterberg describes as “a certain unwillingness to link theoretical psychology with the practical needs of the community. “Some have the feeling that psychology loses its dignity when it becomes a handmaid of routine life (341)”. Both Jimmy Corrigans have very real practical needs that applied psychology could help meet, yet both avoid looking inward. Perhaps it is part of the Corrigan legacy.
The World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 was an exciting six months of discovery, wonder, and possibility. It happened on the brink of a new millennium, as the world stood poised to step into the unknown. A century later, technology and science have changed that world in ways the exposition’s planners could not have dreamed. Yet grasping the available opportunities requires initiative and curiosity. It is probably not a mistake that the world inhabited by the younger Jimmy Corrigan looks very much like the world of his grandfather. Even their parental figures behave in the same distant way, and neither Corrigan has found a way to move on.




Works Cited
Chicago Historical Society. “The World’s Columbian Exposition.” Retrieved on November 25, 2008, at
http://www.chicagohs.org/history/expo.html
Gilbert, James. “Social Utopias in Modern America.” Visions of the Future in Germany and America. Norbert Finzsch and Hermann Wellenreuther, eds. New York: Berg, 2001. 251-273.
Jenkins, Philip. Dream Catchers: How Mainstream America Discovered Native Spirituality. New York: Oxford U P, 2004.
McNulty, Elizabeth. Chicago Then and Now. San Diego: Thunder Bay P, 2000.
Munger, Margaret P. The History of Psychology: Fundamental Questions. New York: Oxford U P, 2003.
Münsterberg, Hugo. Psychology, General and Applied. New York: Appleton, 1914.
Rose, Julie K. “The World’s Columbian Exposition: Idea, Experience, Aftermath.” Retrieved on November 25, 2008 from
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma96/WCE/title.html
Schnedler, Jack. Chicago. NY: Fodor’s Travel Publications, 2001.
Ware, Chris. Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. New York: Pantheon, 2000.