Cyborgs, the terminator is real after all...

The term Cyborg is now becoming more prevalent in everyday life. Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline were the first to use the term in 1960, when writing about self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space. Since then, the dream of incorporating technology with our natural life form has gone wild, resulting in the birth of the Cyborg. Over the years there has been many films about cyborgs, mainly noticeable is the film "The Terminator "in which the computers turn against mankind. The question is, with the integration of technology with our body, will we lose the essence of being human and is that a bad thing? 

In today's world, we have started a journey of integration with technology. In the last two centuries, we have made epic advancements to improve aspects of our body. There have been some instruments already invented which you could class as cyborg technology.In the 19th century the first hearing aid was invented which consisted of a long pipe and horn, nothing as such cyborg about that. But, today, we now can have a small hearing aid which isn't even noticeable, implanted into our ear, using instruments to capture and filter them to our brain.We also now have gastric bands and pacemakers which can be inserted into our body. The pacemaker which regulates an irregular heart beat, has the disadvantage to be hacked remotely which could result in death. This is maybe a small insight in to the future of Cyborg technologies. 

Some of the inventions are fantastic and should keep evolving. For example, some soldiers in war inevitably get hurt by bombs and bullets resulting in a loss of limbs. Due to cyborg technology, they can now have replacement arms and legs etc to help them with daily life, and giving them some of their dignity back.
 But, what i think could be a major problem in the future, is the cyborg advancement in mental and brain capabilities.

Kevin Warwick is a Professor of Cybernetics who is all for electrical chips in the body and turning himself into a Cyborg. Along with many other scientists, they are trying to pave the way for memory enhancement and having the internet in your head among other things. The problem is, when pacemakers in today's world can get hacked, what does the future hold when we have a chip in our head. What happens when a tyrant in power wants to impose a dictatorship? Probably hack our brains by installing an electrical neuropath virus. I guess the scientists will have to invent a mean antivirus and firewall...
But what really worries me about Kevin Warwick's mentality is that he talks about how speech is meaningless when we could speak through chips in our head. If he applies that train of thought to speech which shows emotion and HUMANE bodily functions, then it probably won't be too long before they eradicate emotion and senses, because after all who wants to be a primitive organism.  Anyone fancy being a cold Cyberman?

Who are we to play God? Although saying this, we already have in so many other aspects of our life, we might as well carry on the horrible degrading path to non existence. 

The rise of interactivity

Everyday, the human population grows forever closer to computers. Interactivity has increased rapidly, especially since the boom in social networking sites. The way we execute actions and why we execute them is being changed at a rapid pace. A talking dog can now be watched on Youtube by millions in the matter of days because of the collective social actions that we all take together. Whether this is a good thing is unknown, many agree that this is a positive progression while others argue against some aspects.

On sites such as Facebook or Twitter, media is now passed around the world in a matter of seconds, but it is for the social collective to decide whether it has the chance to get widely spread. With buttons such as "like" and the tagging system on twitter e.g "#92Chrisc", we are now able to announce to everyone what we like  and  can  have a say  in what becomes  popular. The result  in the way the media operate has for ever changed  the way in which  humans  interact with  technology, in  some  respects we are manipulating what comes to  the forefront of culture and society by using these "like" buttons. This  is a great  tool for the citizen journalist,  who is now  able to influence  social thinking  and to also  distribute news articles amongst other things.    

Although saying this, there has been some speculation that sometimes the top ten trend has been manipulated as to not show what the company doesn't deem fit as showing. Which in turn shows that possibly, the trending system is not a truly free application which we always have influence over. For example, in the recent months there has been an global occupation in many of the major cities around the world, protesting the grips the banking system has on government and businesses. The new New York occupation like many around the world, has a media group which tweets throughout the day. This has then been re-tweeted globally for more than two months. Many people involved in the occupation believe that the company is suppressing the tag #OccupyWallStreet as it hasn't appeared in the top ten even though it has had a surprising amount of mentions. Full article available here. RT said "In March of 2011, Bloomberg news reported that JPMorgan Chase & Co., arguably the largest corporate bank in the world, “has invested in a fund that has bought about $400 million in Twitter Inc. shares." They also added "In the end, Twitter might be more than happy to help the US government overthrow undesirable regimes in other parts of the world. But when it comes to giving voice to those who have decided to challenge a system of corporate greed and income inequality at home, silence might ultimately figure better into their bottom line". If this is true,  the emerging online manipulation echoes tactics used by oppressive regimes in some countries such as China or Egypt. It suggests that the government is using interactivity to manipulate people's thinking processes.

The rise in interactivity has also enabled fans to be closer to there stars like never before. Many "celebrities" and politicians now have profiles on many of the social networking sites, which has created a new link and relationship that was not present before. It is now possible to get your "celebrity gossip"  from the horses mouth, cutting out the middle man such as OK magazine, allowing the audience to watch away at a "twitter war" between their favourite celebrities. Thus, creating a hyperbolic use of interactivity.
Politicians are also interacting with the public increasingly by using the Twitter system to voice there opinions and political stance on policy. This is a great advancement for civilians being able to interact with the government personally on some levels. It enables us as a population to get insight into individual political thought processes and opinions. In October MP's ruled that it would be fine for them to use electron devices for the purpose of tweeting whilst in the chamber although, earlier in the year, Parliamentary authorities tried to get the use of the devices band the guardian reports, saying it would disconnect them from the primary object of the chamber.

Overall, it would seem that we are heading towards a road full of interactivity. In a never ending evolving world, we need to weigh up the good and the bad and analyze the outcome and try to see what the future holds for the process. We need to also understand how  the true nature of online freedom interacts with online activity , because you may be doing something online "freely" but it might not necessarily be a free choice. 

What is news and what is the impact of the advancement in Technology

This is a very important question to ask. In today and tomorrow's world, news will yet again change as it is constantly evolving. But what will be the effect of this evolution progress? In today's world, freedom of speech is being challenged every day such as the likes of Wikileaks or the the U.S.A constitution.  One of the core functions for a news organization to do, is to produce topics that the social community would like to learn about, or, is it sometimes what the news organizations think we should learn about?

In today's age, news can broadcast to mass audience in an instant with ease. This is a relatively new progression in news distribution but i think one of the main detriments to this outcome is that  news organizations have grew to an enormous size. Hundreds of years ago news traveled by word of mouth or by humans traveling on foot to different city's and towns. The source of the information would be only one of the few with the knowledge of worlds events. Taking this into mind, it would be hard to get a different outlook on the report if they questioned it as communication was limited. Life without the internet, who'd of thought it ?

The 1800's saw the invention and rise of the steam powered printing press machine. This was one of the first times newspapers could be spread on a mass scale.
By the end of the 19th Century Europe and North America were linked on day to day basis by the advancement of the Transatlantic telegraph table . This meant that information was able to be sent and received on the same day which eradicated the need for ships to send messages which took at least 10 days. In the 1930's, the Alexandra Palace mast was turned on, allowing mass audiences to watch the Television. The only channel to be broadcast for the next 20 years would be the BBC, which now had the capability to instill the same message into millions of people.

With the likes of the BBC, CNN and Rupert Murdoch's News International who all either own or broadcast news all over the world, there is growing skepticism about how much independence there actually is in the news industry market. These organizations often report the same story's with slight differences but still with the same core message. As well as this, because of the fast paced movement of news such as news 24, there is always a need for fresh news to be broadcast to the nations. But with this, often comes bogus stories as each organization will broadcast the same news as too not be seen behind there opponent. This became apparent with the so called capture of Saif al-Islam in August. Many reports told the public that he was captured, only for him to turn up on the streets of Tripoli the next day. This was done without checking the source of the information which turned out to be the ICC (International Criminal Court), something which you would of thought would be essential. Reports from the Telegraph and Reuters. Was this just an innocent mistake by the newspapers, or, is this just one of the many cases where the government use News as a tool to instill fear into the heart of Libyans, who had already witnessed NATO missiles and bombs destroying their land. It seems to me that misleading impressions is rife today. It's key to note here that the west will profit around $300 billion from this extermination.

The rise of the internet has enabled any human to become a citizen journalist anytime. It is now possible to get a different angle on the news, through advancements such as mobile's and camera's, images and video's can now be caught on tape and publicized through the internet domain. As well as this, through sites such as twitter and facebook, these files can now be distributed on a global scale. For example, on the day of the 7/7 bombings, the first reports were from civilians in the area who had taken images and videos, which resulted in them being sent to news agencies. It is now possible to be up to date in an instance, even when a news crew is not present.
As well this, it would seem it is getting easier for the population to catch out illegitimate reports and articles as we ourselves become the journalist. Citizens and local officials reported that NATO have been destroying food supplies, water supplies and hospitals, in effect taking out it's infrastructure and committing war crimes on the Libyan population. They alerted journalists to there findings youtube .
There is no doubt that the internet is transforming the way we look at news.

Cyberspace, the final final frontier.

Well not quite, but cyberspace is still being explored by many people and the future capabilities of cyberspace. Some say that cyberspace has the capability to be a literal virtual reality one day that we can step into whilst others say the term no longer has pertinence. Maybe this is just a story from a science fiction novel but if we explore the past, we can see that these "novels" can become reality.

In 1982 William Gibson known as the "noir prophet", first came up with the term "cyberspace" in his novel called "Burning Chrome". Gibson referred explored the term cyberspace and referred to it as the "mass consensual hallucination of computer networks". In some senses this is true because in today's modern world, we undoubtedly delve into the world of networks every single day. Some would say that the term "cyberspace" has no value anymore, as it has now become an evident part of human life which no one thinks about anymore.

 As of June 2011 there is now around 2110 million internet users. After all, Cyberspace has created various mediums which are very useful to us and sometimes essential for our daily chores, for example, Journalists like to be constantly up to date with news and events as it happens. This is now possible because of technology such as Mobile applications which keep you up to date every minute. It's no wonder there are so many internet users which shows no sign of slowing down as more people get connected. Here is a graph from internetworldstats.com showing the growth from 1995-2010.

Cyberspace also has the capability of addiction and fraud. Sometimes at a very dangerous level which can result in possible death. The MMORPG World Of Warcraft is the world's most played game with around 11.1m subscribers as of June 2011. This produces colossal profits for Blizzard(the game maker) but produces game addictions like no other, World Of Warcraft- the new drug.  This game has produced a virtual world where any person can create a character, a class such as a priest or warlock, can eat or drink (even get drunk) and progress with their level to 85. You may think the game would end their, but it doesn't. They have features called raids and dungeons where you can team with other online characters to get gear. All of this adds up to cold stone addiction, with many people playing for years.  Many people get so sucked into the game that there marriage breaks down or has problems. Here is a forum for people who have addicted partners http://www.olganon.org/?q=node/15214. Another problem that has arose is that with younger people, students are failing there courses and are becoming social recluses. In a person's life , the younger years are a vital learning curve in your development to survive in later life. With the younger generation playing these games, they are missing out on vital skills which could potentially effect them for the rest of their lives.

Does history help us understand digital culture?

In my opinion, it is very important to look at the history of digital culture because we wouldn't be where we are with out it. Also at the start of the internet for example it would of been built around some core basic values which like anything else in the world, grow and stay entwined as that idea progresses. It is important to study the core values in a historical way because their are two sides to a coin, there is a lot of good that came from Digital culture but at the same time there are darker parts which need to be explored.

The internet was merely a by product or development from the project ARPANET in which the U.S DOD (Department of Defenses) wanted to make a reliable system in which they could communicate. One of the main reasons was that, they wanted to be able to communicate between research centers throughout the country. Others speculate that the reason for them doing this was because the U.S government was paranoid about their ineffective communication networks which would suffer gravely from a nuclear attack. The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990 as it had become obsolete to NSFNET which was more widely used with a bigger user base. The NSFNET went on to evolve to the internet we know today.

With the birth of the public internet,  the birth of radical freedom of speech and information. was also born. Some of which is disturbing and worrying. Hilary Clinton said "Blogs, email, and text messages have opened up new forums for exchanging ideas – and created new targets for censorship." While ideas and thoughts can be exchanged and developed freely most of the time, there is also a form of war on the internet where different government agencies try to censor information or keep tabs on you. Of course some times these measures are necessary because there are websites which have child porn on or other inhumane forms of torture.

The internet has transformed so much, enabling the common person to have the capability to be an internet policeman. On October 15th the loosely nit hacker/activism group Anonymous who are branded by government agencies as dangerous, found a trove of internet sites on the Darknet ( a hidden form of the internet). The web hosting service Freedom hosting was found to contain sites with immoral images and videos. Anonymous has since closed down the website hosting service and has kept up attacks when it has tried to resurface. Sometimes you could say it is necessary to work outside of law if the government agencies are failing which the internet has encouraged.

What kind of blog am i writing?

There are many different forms of blogs with a different target audience. It is important to understand who you are directing your blog at otherwise it will be lost for no one to see. In this instant, my blogging posts will be critical and analytical rather than a dreary problem page where an agony aunt is awaiting.

Within Digital Culture i will attempt to explore and explain the good and the bad involved in the many mediums.When a new medium is born, a dark side to that medium is also born which has the capability to be detrimental to society as a whole such as Facebook or the constant hound of consumerism through advertisements which invade our everyday life. I feel that with blogging there is more room to scrutinize with certain world events where as with an news organization there will inevitably more restrictions on what you can and can't report.

Blogging as a whole can provide a independent and more free analysis of events and news around the world, as opposed to an organization such as the BBC or ITV who adhere to Association press. It gives you a much broader spectrum to write about as opposed too a biased news report about how we are winning the wars and depicts the civilians as joyous. This is incongruent as they are being killed and hounded by NATO bombs everyday along with the infrastructures of their country's being destroyed for years on end.

Why study digital culture?

In this day and age digital culture is a very important topic to study as it is important to study the impacts of digital culture on our society as a whole. Are the new mediums a good thing or should they approached with caution? Within just over decade digital culture has transformed from the cold dingy room of a press office, and has transformed into many mediums. Currently there are many different forms of media which includes blogging, podcasting, Twitter and Facebook to name a few. It is thought that by 2015 there will around 15 billion people globally connected via Electronic devices, a scary thought.

Social networking is having a major influence on digital culture and it seems to have the ability to mould society without even trying. Social networking has now become entwined into everyday life with the average user spending approximately 6 hours a month on Facebook. My opinion is that this figure is actually much higher, as in my own experience i know tens of people that spend the majority of the day on it. A lot of people say they don't even know why they are on there, because a lot of the time there is nothing to do and just end up trawling through pages endlessly. Just think of what could off been achieved within that time frame. The question we should ask is, are social network sites creating a new love affair and addiction and does it affect the way in which we interact with social groups?


Currently there are around 687 million registered users of Facebook worldwide but the Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg doesn't think that’s enough and aims to have 1 billion registered users. The larger the database, the larger the income revenue will be, as company's will be willing to pay more for advertising and your personal data. In the past year, on average, it has grown by 20m a month, although analysts say that this number is steadily declining in the west. A spokeswoman for Facebook said: "We are very pleased with our growth and with the way people are engaged with Facebook. More than 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day." This to me sounds like a new addiction where the users have to get their fix everyday.
Over the past few years i myself have witnessed how Facebook has influenced how the social circle of friends interact on Facebook. From personal experience it seems like it is mainly effecting the current generation of teens and it would seem each social circle will act differently to the next one. For example for some unbeknown reason there is a trend for young women at the moment to take pictures of their friends on the toilet. Goodbye morals. I can't see the month through without seeing at least one of these pictures surface on my feed. It would seem that self respect is slowly being worn away, not caring if the whole world can click on their profile and see them urinating. Are you confused because I am. It's as if no one wants privacy anymore and Facebook endorses it. When did the right for privacy disappear? Even if you wanted that picture not to appear on the site, you don't really have any choice in the matter, if your friend decides that they want to upload it then they will, what's stopping them? It's not very feasible to expect someone to contact the Facebook team and demand they take it down from the friends photos, it just wouldn't happen with the majority. Again, where has privacy gone?

Studying digital culture is pivotal because along with other issues, it essentially has the possibility of digressing culture through the use of manipulation. With the likes of Facebook and Bebo etc, there is a constant live feed from people's lives and a log of what they are doing. It's more or a less a socially accepted spying tool used by the masses or a big stage full off bad actors performing. People constantly update their photos and status's which in turn influences the audience because, not everyone is as confident as they say they are and this feeds their paranoia about themselves. So what we end up with is a social circle of sheep’s where the majority of people do the same thing. It's pretty hard to see an individual picture these days. Picture on the toilet anyone? Of course this is really about being accepted by the world and your friends which is fine but then again would people be as paranoid about their image if it wasn't there in the first place? This is a dangerous road as individuality and identity could be lost.

As well as this Facebook has the potential to increase jealousy and again paranoia. In 2009, the journal CyberPsychology & Behaviour published results from research into relationships and the impact from social networking. It conclusively found out that it does increase jealousy. This is because partners are more likely to get paranoid from there partner talking to people from previous relationships. Amy Muise from the study says “Ambiguous scenes involving a partner and contact with past romantic and sexual partners are among the common triggers of jealousy in romantic relationships, and these ambiguous scenes are a regular occurrence on Facebook. This is just one reason why having access to personal information can be dangerous. If you new everyone's thoughts you'd probably hate everyone.


Another interesting thought is looking at how social networking effects a person's education. Looking back at my educational life and even right now, i know that I have been distracted at times, which ends up with no work or a incoherent piece of writing. The Telegraph said "Researchers at Ohio State University found that a majority of American students who used Facebook every day were underachieving by as much as an entire grade compared with those who did not use the site". A researcher from the University was stated as saying "Our study shows people who spend more time on Facebook spend less time studying,". I highly doubt Newton would of discovered gravity or calculus if he had been checking Robert Hooke's status.
I understand that digital culture is a very important advancement in humans and it will undoubtedly be around for a long time which is a good thing, but at the same time we need to analyse and truly understand some of the detrimental aspects of it such as social networking.