Final Essay: Streaming and Anonymity

Today marks the completion of my final essay for my Digital Humanities class. Streaming has always been a passion of mine, as well as consuming unique content from platforms that allow streaming. It provides a unique style of communication between the user and the streamer. The sense of belonging and the community that can surround a great stream can also leave to friendships not accessible elsewhere. I am proud to have discussed the formation of this style of platform and I look forward to sharing that essay with you all.

Please feel free to enjoy the viewing of the essay here --> https://tinyurl.com/y9k4uqt5

DH Final Essay

This is my final essay for my Digital Humanities class on artificial intelligence (AI). In this essay, you will read about the history of AI and get to see how much it has changed over the years. It also talks about the future of AI and how it could play a role in our lives. Hope you enjoy!

Essay:
https://pitt.box.com/s/2gvq8mycbyvwuehfy3vu75q4pe73vae1

Erik Bengtson Essay Exhibit Reactions

Though all of the exhibits were interesting to me, one in particular stood out.  I really enjoyed Mick's look at social media and its impact on society.  Not only did I agree with Mick in that social media does negatively impact peoples lives, but he also made interesting points relating to how willing people are to confront others now.  Social media has helped nurture a us vs. them political culture in our country, and because of our ability to view those with different opinions as the"other" we are now more comfortable with confrontation.  We view it as either I will change their mind, or I will lash out to hurt them based off of their opinion.  It is an unhealthy thing that in part is being helped along by social media. 

The other exhibit that particularly stood out to me was Keisha's exhibit about technology in classrooms.  I felt that she did a good job of not only showing what is possible now, but also with showing what is possible for the future.  

The Impact of the Technological Singularity

For my final essay, I began writing about the positves and negative impacts that a technological singularity may bring to human society.  As I did more research though, I learned that most of the experts within the AI field that predicted negative outcomes had viewed these outcomes as completely preventable.  Being that the positive outcome of a singularity would essentially be a utopia free of death and disease, I decided to shift my focus to the negative outcomes on society.  In the essay, I provide a look at where the experts think AI might take us, and I provide insight as to why it doesn't make sense for the human race as a whole to not proceed with precaution.

The Impact of the Technological Singularity

That is a link to my essay above, thanks to all for reading my blog this semester, and I look forward to writing some more on here in the future!!

Final Essay

Hey guys! I chose to write my final essay on the evolution of artificial intelligence. Through my essay it goes through how artificial intelligence was, how it is now, and the predictions on how it will be in the future. It is crazy to look at how far we have come from what it was, and it's also crazy to think about what it could turn into in the future! I also talk briefly about how awesome Ray Kurzweil is. Also in my essay I tell you my views on future intelligence, but you'll have to read my essay to find that out.

Throughout my essay are various different links to find out more information, or to see video clips of movies I used as examples. I hope you enjoy my essay and I hope your finals went well!

To view my essay:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_VX6ZKZg0ncoNAdFgU2HmDMwsVWR8nqc5rWMt7A7-fo/edit?usp=sharing

Reaction to the Essay Exhibits

Earlier last week, a few classmates were tasked with creating brief presentations that outlined the contents of their final paper for the class. Plenty of genres were investigated, from AI, to gaming and anxiety, as well as a distant reading of the entire harry potter series.

Altogether, it was uniquely interesting to see the views of my various classmates. Some iconic ones to name were Mick's and his discussion of how genuine people are through social media. And with this sense of genuine-ness he investigated how often people tend to research the content they absorb through Social media.

However, out of the plenty that I saw, none were more fascinating to me than Trey's Distant reading of the Harry Potter Series, and Sam's depiction of how games can help with anxiety disorders, such as, GAD.

Both presented their information uniquely. Trey had an HTML based Harry Potter distant reading in which anyone could pick apart any amount of the entire series. My question to him was whether or not he'd noticed patterns within the books, and if he did, if he thought they were done purposefully by J.K. or if they were done by her editors.

For Sam's piece, she expertly opened up her presentation with an animation that captured pretty much any gamer's workstation environment, as well as the emotions surrounding gaming. Her presentation was informative and very engaging which got a big plus from me! I look forward to seeing everyone's works!

Essay Exhibit Reaction

The essay exhibit that stood out to me most was Mick Galbraith's. His essay exhibit was about facts in social media and how some of them are true but many people take everything they see on social media and brand it to be completely true 100% of the time. The part of his presentation that stuck out most to me was the political aspect. He talked about how politics and social media collide a lot. I completely agree, nowadays you constantly see things about politics on social media rather than the news and what you see is more often than not biased and unreliable. Mick's concept was very fascinating and I encourage you all to ask him about it if you see him.

 I also created an essay exhibit. It was about artificial intelligence in the past, present, and future. I think it is quite interesting how far technology has come. If you want to check out my slide show, the link is down below.

 https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Br3XItng4UZOWX6ErrJSWtjkh30X-_qUld89AcI9ogg/edit?usp=sharing

Convergence Culture

Convergence

According to Henry Jenkins, Media convergence is defined as the flow of content across multiple media platforms, multiple media industries cooperating with each-other and the movement behavior of media audiences across different media platforms.

In Jenkins' book "Convergence Culture- Where Old and New Media Collide" he brings up media, the matrix, Art of World making, fan culture and many more ideas/topics. First he writes about media, he defines it as a medium of technology that allows communication at large distances apart. He also defines it as the set of associated protocols and cultures that spring up as a result of that technology. Jenkins also states that some media becomes "old fashioned" after periods of time, for example, dvd players, play station 1, and mp3 players. Jenkins also speaks about the Matrix and how it is one of the best examples of trans-media content. The matrix is a universe that consists of a trilogy of films, whether it be short films, or multiplayer games. The Art of World making, this enables creators to expand their stories into worlds rather than just having a bunch of single works. Lastly, Fan culture, there are many "fandoms"; Star wars, Harry Potter, Star Trek, and many many more. Many of these fan cultures create writings called Fan Fiction, which is where the fans create their own stories based upon the actual film/movie. They can be written about the characters past, or future, whatever the fan writer wants.

To us, convergence culture is like a family reunion of multiple media platforms, it is the sharing of information between old and new media to better coexist.


Thank you and come visit us again soon!

Essay Exhibit- Darren Brautigam

https://pitt.box.com/s/tuo2jy84lkyz1w8nkx6vj8hxgnrbg2y1

Tribe Archive Post

An archive preserves valuable memorabilia, pictures, and other forms of media by grouping them into one accessible and searchable source.  This is different from a collection, because a collection is less focused on the rarity of the items collected. Being avid hip hop listeners, our tribe has decided to make a 1990s Hip Hop music recording/rarities archive.  With its roots in the late 70s and throughout the 80s, Rap began to blossom into the genre of music we know and love today in the 90s. Though much of the genre’s classics are still frequently played and well known, there are many hidden treasures that exist out there for rap’s diehard fans.  Knowing this, we need do need to set some parameters for what we would consider rare enough for our archive. The thing that our tribe decided on was, if the piece of music can be found on Apple Music (with a library of 20 million songs), or Spotify (with a library of 7 million songs). For example, one of the pieces we would archive would be the 2pac song: Runnin’.  For you hip hop lovers reading this, no we don’t mean the very popular and accessible original version of this song. Rather we would obtain a recording of the remix of this song. This is one of the few songs in which The Notorious B.I.G. and 2pac were recorded together. In this era, the East Coast West Coast feud within Hip Hop was at its peak, and therefore it was uncommon for a California rapper like 2pac to release music with a New York rapper like Biggie.  Another example of the sort of music we would have is Heavy D and Notorious B.I.G.s’ song Jam session. This song was only released on the 1994 NBA game NBA Jamz, and is packed full with great 1990s sports and pop-culture references. In addition to music, rap memorabilia of the era would also be included. One idea our group had was related to the action figure released with MF Doom’s Operation Doomsday album from 1994. (This was also the album released with a scratch and sniff cover though smell can’t be digitized, and it will not be in our archive).  We figured we could take the MF Doom super villain action figure digitized, so that it could be 3D printed at any point. In addition to this, our archive would have much more included as well.  

Do you know how to read?

What is distant reading?

Distant reading is a type of analyzation in which large amounts of literary works are fed into a computer program.  The text is treated as more of an object rather than the traditional way in which text is viewed via a close reading.  It is able to recognize patterns and frequencies of words, allowing you to have a macro understanding of the works. Today, we fed our blog into a distant reading software.  

What did distant reading tell us about our blog that we would not know from reading it closely?

Two specific terms that stood out in our results from putting our blog into a distant reading software were art and intelligence.  The reason why we think that this is significant is because those two words really encapsulate what this class is all about. Not only do we focus on aesthetically pleasing art, but we also listen and interact with art in this class.  Intelligence is also a central theme of this class. Intelligence (from numerous perspectives including: cultural, technological, and emotional) becomes a subject in this class quite regularly.

Distant reading or close reading?

Without distant reading, one may not see the importance that the words, art and intelligence have in our blog because they get hidden within the text. Distant reading is like the sparknotes version of Beowulf, you may not understand everything that gets put into the story but once you read the sparknotes you begin to get a better understanding of things. Distant reading is by no means

sparknotes but is something that can give you more of an incite into what we are talking about. When reading literature you need BOTH, the overview to have a broad understanding of things but you also need a closer and deeper understanding of things with close reading.

A response to Kurzweil / thoughts on the so- called Singularity / a response to virtual identities and artificial intelligence and sentience

Ray Kurzweil is an extraordinary man. He was the first to create text to speech technology which was extremely ahead of the times. Kurzweil wrote a book with various different predictions of the future of technology. 25 of his predictions came true! One of them being that he predicted a computer would defeat a world chess champion at chess by 1998, and in 1997 his prediction came . He believes that the person that will live to age 200 is living today. Our response to Kurzweil is that, he is incredible. We agree with his predictions and we have good reason because a lot of his predictions are very true. The ability for humans to live forever may not be in our lifetime but we are not against the thoughts that it is possible.

Thank you Ray Kurzweil for blowing our minds.

Technological Singularity Reaction

The idea of a technological singularity is a highly thought provoking concept.  Essentially, the thought is that technology is becoming exponentially better, and it will continue doing so until it creates an artificial super-intelligence, capable of surpassing all humans in intelligence.  There are basically two ideas as to where the technological singularity will bring us. The first idea is more of a utopian idea. What is suggested is that technology will become so advanced, that it will free humans from the traditional tasks that keep us alive.  Instead, people can focus more on the experiences of life rather than just living. The second idea suggests that the artificial super-intelligence may be a thing. Of course, there a varying degrees of bad theorized. It could be a sort of negative effect that just alters our wants and drives.  Or we could be enslaved by robots. Either way, Kurzweil and experts like him say that we will find out soon within the next twenty to fifty years.

The Singularity is Near

This book is built on the ideas introduced in Kurzweil’s previous books. These books are, “The Age of Intelligent Machines,” and “The Age of Intelligent Machines.” In this book, Kurzweil describes his law of accelerating returns which predicts an exponential increase in technologies such as , genetics, nanotechnology, robotics, and artificial intelligence. He says that once that the Singularity has been reached, machine intelligence will be infinitely more powerful than all human intelligence combined. The singularity is also the point where machines intelligence and human merge.

Can games be a valued art?

**DISCLAIMER**

        Before you continue any further unto this post, understand that this is a furthered reflection to a previous post my group and I made in regards to claiming the legitimacy of games as a valued art form.

                                                         

For those that don't care to read for to long, here is your TL;DR -

Yes.

For those looking for a little more insight as to why, keep reading down below.

Games. They're a world of excitement, wonder, intrigue, and art.

"Art?"

Some ill-informed or ignorant bystander may ask. They're OBVIOUSLY a form of art. Anyone looking to argue against that can look at the Elder Scrolls': Skyrim, which has over 316,000 words of lore divided into 58 separate books that can be read within the game itself. From the Lusty Argonian Maid to the A Gentleman's Guide to: Whiterun. 

                                           
Many games introduce plenty of areas of exploration and discovery with large RPG style games, or MMORPGs leading the charge in this dominion. However, franchises cover there bases well by expounding upon story lines and providing narrative insight into the development of character progress. The Legend of Zelda. A game almost every gamer and NON-gamer may know. Has an expansive narrative detailing tales of past, present, and future Link on his quests to save Princess Zelda, or recover lost ancient artifacts. Some help him, some hinder him, but in the end, the player is taken upon a journey following the masterfully crafted franchise.

It is these iconic games that drive the definition of art. From insightful dialogue, to art-styles that evolve around the player, as well as the amount of effort put in by the army of writers, artists, designers, and testers to create these incredible games.  

Original Work of Electronic Literature by Darren Brautigam

Steel City History

        My piece of electronic literature was a Google Maps presentation that went through and showed some of the historical locations in the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Some of these places shown helped shape Pittsburgh into the great city its known as today.
       Within this piece, you are able to click on a location from a list on the side and read about its history, along with a couple images of that place. They vary from dating back to the times during the French and Indian War, to when the city really started to become a city.
       This piece of original e-lit was inspired by me growing up in this city and being so intrigued by what happened in it in the past. I have always been curious about how Pittsburgh was built and what had to happen in order to make it an astonishing, functional city.

An Original Work of E-Lit. Sci-Fi meets Planet Earth!

A Tale of Destiny

Above is a link to an original work of Electronic Literature that over the course of this semester, I have been working on. The link will direct you to a Google Maps Essay that I have created. However this isn't a simple Google Maps Essay. It follows the life of Dr. Suraya Hawthorne, a well-educated Botanical Researcher who stumbles across a mystery to humanity. Her resulting adventure begins after the surprising arrival of an unknown entity to planet Earth.

Much like the many curiosities that fall upon the planet, this one changes the very landscape of human life. Resistances form, enemies emerge, and the survival of humanity lay in the hands of those "chosen". It is up to Hawthorne and her party of Guardians to discover the secrets hidden to her future and to unravel the mystery of her tumultuous destiny.

This original piece was inspired by the creation of game development company Bungie, and their Destiny 2 game. All of the art found within the piece stems from their concepts drawings.  

Examining the Future of the Common Wealth

I chose to create a piece of electronic literature that takes you on a tour of Pennsylvania's lowest ranked public schools. I chose to do this because I am an education and special education major and my dream is to work in a high poverty school district. There is something about being that person for the students that keeps them going and lets them know that they can do anything they want in life.
With that being said, these schools that you will see in my piece have very low graduation rates and the one is not even able to afford a high school so after middle school they send their students to neighboring schools. The crime rate in these areas is very high as well. In the first school you will come across, Wilkinsburg, the city of Wilkinsburg has a 57% higher crime rate than the national average. Due to the low graduation rates, that is causing the students that do not graduate to find alternative ways of income, which leads to higher risk of crime, as seen in the Wilkinsburg case. This piece was not made to offend anyone if they attended any of these schools, I just wanted to lay out the statistics because I saw them and was in complete shock. I also highlighted the Common Core state averages so that the viewers are able to compare the statistics to a state average. Education is something that is very important to me and I wish that every student could have an equal opportunity. I hope you enjoy Examining the Future of the Common Wealth !




Works cited:

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2018/01/the_50_worst_school_districts.html

*I used the Wikipedia pages for all the schools*

https://www.google.com/search?q=pa+state+common+core+standards&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS790US790&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjy8p30jKPeAhVNslMKHXqADzsQ_AUIDygC&biw=1440&bih=686