Online reflection by Titus (1035 0693)

Hi everyone,

Have you ever heard about the ‘Cloud girlfriend’? Now it is the time for every lonely man, they are being given the chance to boost their Facebook relationship status - by dating a virtual girlfriend. By this service, you can change your status to be ‘in a relationship with XXX’ immediately.

What is a ‘cloud girlfriend’? How does it work? The "perfect girlfriend" then sends you public messages on your Facebook wall, so you can deceive your friends into thinking you have a girlfriend as well as make you feel like you have a companion.

For the cloud girlfriend, there are some details about it. Cloud Girlfriend will consist of a network of real human beings, not automated bots, which users will interact with over Facebook. The virtual relationship can help guys to get a real girlfriend. As the visitors might think, "Someone else thinks highly enough of this person to date him, so maybe I should too.

Cloud Girlfriend is not a porn site or adult chat service. It is a creation of human relationship. It fulfills psychological needs like intimacy and friendship even though the interaction is virtual. These interactions can even build self confidence and help users navigate real-life situations.

So we can see that cloud girlfriend is a kind of product in sense. It is packaged as a real friend or partner to the user. This issue refers to the topic of Week 6, our ‘Friends’ in network.

Most of the user in facebook regards their profile as important; their status is a sign of them. Profile construction is a need for every user, how do you represent yourselves to others? It is what we called ‘The impression management’. People know you by your status and profile. In mediated environment, people must learn to write themselves into being. It is not only to flavor yourself, but also to contain a good image to your friends: You are a good guy, so it is welcome to have a friend like you.

Cloud girlfriend is advertised as a 'public long-distance relationship'. In my view, it is only a kind of commodity or product. The service is a commercialized relationship; it is under a structure, to contain a good feeling or mood to the user. Satisfy their real need, but in a virtual world.

Besides, cloud girlfriend is not controlled by machine or computer, all of the cloud is run by real people. It comes to a question, can it be a being? A virtual girlfriend is managed by a real officer; I would argue that it is a constructed relationship, a fake of being.

Moreover, this case tells us that most of us can do anything on the internet. There are variable of ‘self’ on the net world, no one really know what you have been done (maybe you are chatting with friends on window massager, but on the other side, you are visiting the porn website…) You can be what you like: open a fake account, meet a lot of new friends, create a new network with others, that is your new identity on the net.

Ref:
Dailymail.co.uk. (29th March 2011) “Lonely men looking to boost their Facebook status with a fake relationship can now apply for a 'virtual girlfriend'.”
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1371115/Cloud-Girlfriend-offers-lonely-men-fake-Facebook-relationship.html> (accessed 17 April, 2011)

Online Reflection by Jodie (10380807)

Hi everyone! I would like to share a culture jamming blog with you which is introducing the 10 greatest works of billboard subvertising. (Reference: http://www.businesspundit.com/10-greatest-works-of-billboard-subvertising/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter)

As we all know, culture jamming is often seen as a form of subertising. People always express their complaint, irony or opinions about the commercial culture. Famous brand names, well-known commercial statements and product images are always used to do culture jamming. Through re-figuring or a little changing the statements or images, culture jamming can produce some ironic or satirical commentary about its origin. There are different ways to do culture jamming such as video, re-figuring brand logo or billboard subertising and this time I would like to use the example of billboard subertising to discuss about the culture jamming.

Nowadays, we can see commercial advertisement everywhere, such as TV ads, internet campaigns, magazine features or major brand billboards on the street. They are not only selling you the products, they are also designed to manipulate people’s thoughts. Many ideologies are generated through the commercial advertisement such as ideal beauty image or consumption.

To me, billboard advertising is the most eyes- catching advertisement since it arouse almost everyone’s attention in the street. From the website that I mentioned above, I would like to talk more about the billboard subvertising no.8 ‘Photoshop on the U-Bahn Line’. There are three famous idols in the poster- Britney Spears, Leona Lewis and Christina Aguilera. In the poster they are in close-up images and they all look gorgeous. However, the poster was added some Adobe Photoshop’s windows into it which has different layers and it immediately became a Photoshop project. This kind of culture jamming is telling people that all of the advertisement character are always edited before and what we see can be defined as a ‘lie’ since they are originally not that perfect.

In my opinion, not only the examples that I shown above but there is also lots of other advertisements which have the same concept behind it- the ideal beauty image. Think about the Dove youtube video that we seen in the class before. We can always see lots of beautiful girls with perfect faces and body shape in the advertisement. The ideal beauty image- slim, big eyes, white skin, etc. are created in every people’s mind and these advertisements made people chasing for the ideal beauty image. Have we ever thought about the motion behind these advertisements? Companies earn money by creating ideologies.

In my opinion, people do culture jamming with different reasons. Some of them do the culture jamming in their leisure time to express their creation or imagination but some of them do culture jamming to express their resistance to the cultural norms. By not affecting the operation of the society, I think culture jamming is definitely a interesting activities and I would like to see more culture jamming especially billboard subvertising in Hong Kong since during my research it is hard to find some example of billboard subvertising in Hong Kong.

Wk 10 Reflection: Bionic contact lens

Have you ever heard of bionic contact lens. It's a kind of contact lens that has a display function. With such contact lens, vision like the photo on the right would become possible. It began as an experiment in 2008 by Babak Parviz, who created a prototype contact lens with a single red LED at the University of Washington in Seattle. These lens have control circuits, communication circuits, and tiny antennas that allow receiving and sending commands to external devices.

In recent years, these bionic contact lens has been transformed into devices for medical uses, such as monitoring the glucose levels of diabetes patients. In last year September, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne produced the first contact lens that could help improve the treatment for people with glaucoma.

Though nowadays the function for bionic contact lens are mainly for therapeutic treatment, scientists hope to expand the usage of this new technology. Already it is possible for this contact lens to show information in front of the cornea of the eye without jamming a person's vision of the surrounding; and developers are now hoping to extend this technology to aviators or video-gaming industry.

When I first know of this technology, my first impression was: what if it went short-circuit within my eyes? Or it exploded? Got a virtual virus? It sounds cool. Imagine looking at my friend and all his/her personal information would show up "virtually" beside him/her like a character in a video game. The article also mentioned the contact lens may be developed as a mapping device. If it is possible, then I shouldn't need a map nor any i-product anymore. I could walk around and pretend I know the place very well when in fact it would be the contact lens guiding my way.

It reminds me of the notion of "cyborg". Cyborg used to be a very vague term; and to create a bio-robot sounded impossible. But with modern technologies, cyborg seems like a near future. Already now there are light-beaming contact lens that could make people's eyes glow. What could be the other possibilities? To where is the extension of the mind? As Marshall McLuhan had said "Technology as extension of the human body"; or is it vice versa now? I have no conclusion for the endless possibility of the future.

Reference: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20927943.800-smart-contact-lenses-for-health-and-headup-displays.html

Student #: 1039 0371

Online Reflection

Ref:
CNN. (18 August, 2010) “Facebook introduces check-in feature.” <http://articles.cnn.com/2010-08-18/tech/facebook.location_1_facebook-friends-facebook-executives-facebook-staff?_s=PM:TECH> (accessed 15 April, 2011)

I’ve chosen a news article from CNN, which is about the newly released feature on Facebook.

Facebook is launching a feature called Places, which allows users who access the network from mobile devices to check-in and broadcast their current location to all of their friends. The check-in function was first available in U.S and it was also available in Hong Kong in February this year. I still remember how excited my friends were when they tried it for the first time.

This function is supposed to be good for socialization since it becomes easier and more flexible to let other friends know where we are, and even with whom we are. But it is also being criticized that it is indeed a violation of privacy. Users are exposing their private information which is assumed not to be made public. It is also said that it increases the risk of burglary, stalking and harassment, especially to users who don’t fully understand the site's privacy options and has no idea of the dangers.

The check-in service becomes an advertising tool also. The restaurants or cafés we are visiting are actually being promoted when we are using the check-in function. Besides the check-in function, user information is being forwarded to third-party by the applications, games and the quizzes we take. We have to either grant permission for them to access information or give up using the apps. Social networking sites are not charity organizations. They have to earn through advertising. Therefore, collecting user data is needed.

We should think carefully about the use of social networks and it is well worth the time to lock down our privacy settings. We should consider more if we decide to post our telephone number and address online. For Facebook, I would update my privacy settings and show the post to my friends only, rather than friends of friends or everybody. We should have a clear division between our private life offline and online, so we can both enjoying socialize with friends online and at the same time keeping a place for our privacy.

Use social media wisely. Otherwise, try to imagine:
When you are supposed to be having a sick leave, your boss discovers that you are being tagged by a non-privacy-sensitive friend, showing that you are having fun at somewhere else instead of staying home and taking a rest; or your girlfriend finds that you go clubbing instead of staying in the office and having OT…Be prepared for another excuse to explain all the mess.

Online reflection - Culture Jamming by Jess Lau

Hi all,

I have picked the topic of culture jamming to share with you. The establishment of culture jamming can be traced since 1980s, it is a form of ironic or subverting mainstream culture by technically challenging the messages that we consumed from commercial advertisements, political promotions and social power discourse. Culture jamming is not limited to power, even individual has the rights to express their views and caught peoples’ attention. As long as the technology rapid development, netizen are easier to publish their pieces on blogs or platforms such as YouTube or Facebook, therefore, the internet has assisted culture jamming expansion and echoes from it. The blog: Culture Jam: Hijacking Mainstream Media (http://ashleighjsmith.wordpress.com/) is a good example, the blogs provided bloggers a platform to post the products of culture jam and explain their intention in detail.

For instance from this poster, we realized it is adopted from the original poster of US Army recruitment, it changed the image into Santa Claus and the slogan “I want you to spend a lot” is explicitly criticizing consumerism and companies over-advertising during Christmas period. These kind of digital activisms arise public notions and reflections, sometime it related or giving supports to face-to-face activisms. For instance, culture jam icons were widely used in the face to face activism – “Buy Nothing Day”. The relationship between them are close, they are both acting as a promotion of each other.

Culture jamming is powerful because it is critiquing the messages behind the advertisements that we are daily encountering. This form of re-production gains bigger echoes from viewers. However, if the readers have not accessed the original advertisements before, the effects of criticism would be decreased.

I think nowadays online platforms have well assisted culture jamming, netizens are able to publish, share or comments on culture jamming pieces. As for the blog I introduced, it is not only posting first-hand culture jam products but also forwarding others’ such as Adbusters. Meanwhile, the format of culture jamming is no longer limited to print or picture, it developed to video and online video platform such as YouTube and Vemo become an excellent platform of sharing.

In Hong Kong, culture jamming are not only based on commercial but also political, the reproducing of HKSAR poster has successfully raising public attention and I certain both of you have seen this icon before. This example has really shown that how culture jamming works and affects us.

Online Reflection - Michelle

Hi, everyone!

I found a blog which is called Wooster Collective. From the blogger, he explains that Wooster is street in the Soho section of New York City. And Collective means “a number of people acting as a group: a collective decision” In fact, the Wooster Collective was founded in 2001. This site is dedicated to showcasing and celebrating ephemeral art placed on streets in cities around the world.
There’s the link, http://www.woostercollective.com/culture_jamming/.

Actually, I think this is a blog which show the street arts around the world to the audience. As we know that, blogger usually divided their entries into different categories. And one of the categories of Wooster Collective is cultural jamming.

In the class, we discussed that cultural jamming can be defined as playfully appropriating commercial rhetoric and a kind of resistance towards the social norms. From the lecture note, we may find that the company would use cultural jamming as a tool to draw audience attention on their advertisements. And it can be demonstrated by GAP’s advertisements. On the other hand, people use some software, like Photoshop, to edit some commercial advertisements to show the resistance towards the social norms. Generally, model who are shown in the ads are pretty and having perfect body shape. Since there are several of beauty and body shape in our daily life, people may not agree with the ideas. Thus, people edit the ads by using the same font or similar slogan with the commercial ads, but fat and old people as their model.

And I found that the blog I recommended has another definition towards cultural jamming. The blogger show us some of the interesting street nameplates. For example, there is a nameplate which is showing the direction. And he found it is interesting because there is a circle and a ring above the arrow. Based on this structure, it is not a simply street nameplate. When we saw it, we may notify it is an angel.




I think the cultural jamming archives from this blog are different with the cases we discussed in the class. The creature is based on common sign to construct. And it is not based on the commercial ads to edit. Also, it is not a resistance toward to social norms. Instead, it is a joke or playful appropriating on our daily life. Although the cultural jamming archives are collected from all over the world, we can understand the meaning of the signs.