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"The electronic media are to us, what 'nature' was to earlier times. That is to say, the electronic media are the inescapable background against which we live our lives and from which we derive our references and meanings." (p.64). A certain sad truth emanates from this passage. That aside though, the truth of it makes it all more important to understand the systems that we live within. The electronic media makes up our lives because it's the current mode of exchanging a wealth of ideas and where advertisers can reach the masses. If not electronic media, then billboards, posters, flyers, advertising in newspapers, etc. That is to say that the media is not a byproduct of the electronic age, only a new mode that they must mediate through, and it's the users equal responsibility to take this with a grain of salt.

“You don’t go into the stacks expecting the precise answer to your burning-question-of-the-moment. It doesn’t work that way. In the thousands of times that I’ve gone hunting in the stacks, I’ve seldom found exactly what I was looking for. You know what I did find? I found books in close by topics. I found answers to questions that I had never thought to ask. Those answers took me in new directions and were almost always more valuable than whatever I originally had in mind.” (p.127-28). This was probably my favorite quote in the whole book. Although I have posted it before for a guiding introduction to my paper on "tunnels" it's worth noting that we have entered a new epoch of information, and how we use that information. While there certainly are good things about the old, we need not fear technology. As is constantly pounded into our heads in the book, we need only ask the right questions. Be inquisitive and really learn rather than diving into an answer that satiates a need for knowledge.

There are many instances in "Rainbows End" where instances are shown that show how opting out is no longer an option, but one that takes it to the literal level is Rivera. Although he does it often enough, one instance can be found on page 165 where Rivera is trying to explain something to the group but just sputters out Mandarin. This is a result of his JITT (Just In Time Training) that's said to have unusual effects on the user, especially in large doses. While I can't argue the specifics in too much detail, it's easy to see how social communication and other methods of data gathering have put information technology at a vast apex over the preceding years, let alone decades. As a result communication changes and now we have torrents of information at any given point, but that necessarily means that we have to be tied to the technology that provides this to us, no matter what the cost. Sometimes, even though the price is high, the opportunity cost of opting out is a devastating alternative in our modern age.

There was a moment in "Rainbows End" (which I can't find the page number now) but basically Miri's imaging software glitches for a moment and she remarks of herself as something of an "ordinary fat girl". This part reminded me of "The Networking of Public Space" where Varnelis and Friedberg talk about how even our physical spaces are being removed for virtual space, such as how things like facebook have dominated the old malt-shop type scenario. Miri is not only avoiding the tangible and real body that is her self, but flicks out of it like it's not even the real her. This mediation is so strong that this phrase is passed haphazardly and fades into the book as if it never happened; it was as if the glimpse of the real was only a glitch in an otherwise good thing.

"His shadow grew longer, the air cooler. And finally he had reached the beginning of nature. A little voice spoke in his ear, announcing that he was leaving the tagged section of the park. Beyond this point, only "low-rate emergency wireless" was guaranteed. Robert walked on, across the unlabeled wilderness.So this is the closest thing to being alone these days."(p.77) I couldn't imagine a more clear allusion to our digital shadows. I love the line "only "low-rate emergency wireless" was guaranteed" as it juxtaposes that it's only guaranteed. The digital shadow, in this instance, is alluded to by Roberts actual shadow, but he literally cannot walk out of the technological boundaries.

In the first sections of "Rainbows End" we hear a constant echo of "ask the right questions." Primarily this comes from Chumlig, the teacher, but this is one of the spurring points for my concept that I called "tunnels". In the early stages of this idea, along with the early stages in the book, the idea is used basically to guide oneself around the cast wealth of information that is available to us. In what is basically an endless realm of potentially helpful, harmful, irrelevant, right or wrong answers it becomes important to guide oneself to the most conducive one.

In this section, a dialogue takes place between a student and a professor to answer the finer points of the ANT theory. At one point the professor asks, "What would be the use of adding invisible entities that act without leaving any trace and make no difference to any state of affairs?" In this he means, what's the relevance? The result is not to teach the actors, or add a third explanation that supplants to previous explanations because that only means one thing: a poor explanation. "But that's the whole point: in an argument is automatic, across the board, all-purpose, then it can't possibly be scientific. It's simply irrelevant. If a study is really scientific, then it could have failed." This concept that's acted out the through the student teacher role helps play out what it means to be an ANT, but it's hard to put it in summary terms.

An interesting idea is brought up in this article about what makes a good text and the two furthest contrasting types are held up to a light: that of the well written account and that of scientific detail.  The difference in these two writing styles vary widely, and in the professional world, to mix the two could be considered unprofessional. The social sciences, however, are argued to need the most to be well written because otherwise, the social aspect won't be observable. Later the challenge is put forth that to include these narratives to the sciences necessitates that it is fiction. The retort, then, is that life does not play forth in the two dimensional drift so casually used in the sciences to ensure certain levels of certainty. Rather, the social sciences engaging in a new form of writing would ensure a more accurate approach for their respective science. "A good text elicits networks of actors when it allows the writer to trace a set of relations defined as so many translations."

"Groups are not silent things, but rather the provisional product of a constant uproar made by the millions of contradictory voices about what is a group and who pertains to what." (p.32). Any group is defined not only by what it is, but also by what it is not. Certain groups exist just to oppose other groups and so the opposition fuels the flame for a certain kind of unity within the masses. The anti-group is necessary to help define even the original group. All of these groups need to be defined by external forces.

"A new vaccine is being marketed, a new job description is offered, a new political movement is being created, a new planetary system is discovered, a new law is voted, a new catastrophe occurs. In each instance, we have to reshuffle our conceptions of what was associated together because of previous definition has been made somewhat irrelevant. We are no longer sure about what 'we' means; we seem to be bound by the 'ties' that don't look like regular social ties." (p.6). In this we begin to need a theory represented later, the "sociology of associations" as opposed to the earlier usage of "sociology of the social". In the new form of re-assemblage, ANT is offered to basically rewrite the way that we consider assemblage.

"The sentences of this book also emerged from the confederate agency of many striving macro- and microactants: from "my" memories, intentions, contentions, intestinal bacteria, eyeglasses,and blood sugar, as well as from the plastic computer keyboard, the bird song from the open window, or the air or particulates in the room, to name only a few participants... What is at work here is what Deleuze and Guatarri call an assemblage." (p.23). These (long) quotes take out the summary of the article, but one last one is what made the article come together for me in a working theory: "What it means to be a 'mode,' then, is to form alliances and enter assemblages: it is to mod(e)ify and be modified by others." (p.22). This latter quote suggests that the interaction has symbiotic implications, similar to the orchid and the wasp. To participate affects both parties.

In this article, Jeff Rice speculates about what college english should be in our modern day. Essentially, with network theory driving every stage of technological being that we have (with the internet being the apex of networking in our day) there becomes a new type of authorship, new ways of finding information, and new ways of distributing information. One concern that Rice brings up is that these networks are being dominated by the same capitalist agenda's that dominate almost every other sphere of the social/cultural realm.e writes "Network criticism often focuses on the continuation of capitalist marketing and branding." (p.129). Rice goes on to present something that he calls "internal networks" where the networks are controlled within the respective ownership of the intellectual property. While my ideas of what can fairly be "intellectual property" are somewhat troubled throughout this class, making me want to side with Rice, it stilll occurs to me that these regulated, internal networks that provide information at the exchange value decided upon sound like something we already know quite well as college students, and furthermore as English majors: books. I do see the trouble with this, primarily being that the "internal networks" in themselves somewhat self-defeat the technology they're trying to possess (after all, what value is a network if you need your credit card at every intersection) and by making all connections limited by purchase, the network becomes stagnant, but from an economic standpoint, I think we are looking at the last of a dying race as far as the "internal networks" go. These capitalist institutions know nothing else, but the public opinion will drive out the old, and in the new ways of dealing with network culture.

This essay focuses on proximity in the sense of the network. Proximity, in this light, is a much better word than, say space, because we don't deal with space in a literal sense with the advent of technological culture, but rather the proximity of unreal/informational distance between nodes. One of the frontiers that is approached to further the points of this essay is a focus on MMORPG's (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) and how it has taken over a certain social sphere, even bringing the animosity of pure human hate to life in the avatars as demonstrated by the crashing of an online funeral attendance in the game WOW (World of Warcraft) of a real players death (the online portion was centered on his avatar) which caused dispute. Another area explored by Varnelis and Friedberg is that these same types of games (or in my example, the same game) have come to provide real life jobs with a tangible income for workers to "farm" gold or other items and sell them for real world currency. An area not explored by Kazys and Varnelis (perhaps it wasn't the case at the time) is that certain countries have made laws that allow virtual property to be treated the same as real life, tangible property. This makes sense, seeing as how the intangible items hold real value represented in the same way one might earn currency, but at the same time it's intriguing (albeit fair, in my opinion) to think that someone stealing a password and jacking online "items" could be treated with the same authoritative content as someone who stole items from an individual on the street or in their home.

In this essay, Varnelis takes sides with some of Jameson's ideas in a presentation on network culture that focuses primarily around the age of computed reproduction (rather than Jameson's recently outdated age of mechanical reproduction/ postmodernism). To varnelis, we haven't even achieved a new "ism" for this epoch of culture, but rather have achieved a state of "historical amnesia" in which case it seems fitting that we don't even bother with a relative epoch name-- we won't even bother recording it or referring to it again. Varnelis goes on to say that, "As we have described throughout this book, the networking of individuals worldwide gives them new links and new tools whith which to challenge the system, but as the chapter on politics suggests, whether newtworked publics can come together to make decisions democratically is still unclear." (p.150). This paricular quote caught my eye, specifically with the initiation of SOPA's arrival recently. The networked public (aka the internet) spat wildly in the face of the SOPA bill, driving it out of the shadows into the disgusted sight of the public. Needless to say, the bill was ultimatelty not passed, however, new bills seeking to do the same level of private probing have been introduced (most recently ACTA) and the public response seems to be lacking in wrath as it had before. It is true that the networked public showed its ability to blurr lines between public and media while also deomstrating that decisions can be made democratically within the network, I feel that we have come to another problem entirely: sensational apathy caused by information overload. This ideal demonstration of public outcry was impressive and indeed seemed to turn the chaotic nature of networks on its head, but in the end, it is the agenda of some to pass these laws, public approval/acceptance/awareness be dammed. With forces acting behind the scenes and basically playing at the very accurate assumption that the networked public lacks a very long attention span (without snesationalism, one may as well not exist within the realms of the internet) it seems to be only a matter of time before we have a fast one pulled on the dissonant names that make up the populace.

In "Protocol, Control, and Networks" Gallaway and Thacker continue on some key topics included in "Intorduction: Rhizome" and even site Deleuze and Guatarri directly. In the technological turning point brought about by modernity, It's becoming clearer every day that hierarchies cannot battle a newtowork-- it takes a network to battle a network. In essence, while a pyramidal hierarchy IS reducible to a single power, and therefor has something of an apex in command, a network lacks this, making it IRreducible to a single power. This structure is becoming more potent, as well as more common place, not only in our sociotechnical networks, but even in the physical world: many military strategies are taking form around the rhizomatic structure to eliminate more functionally demanding roles played out by an individual in older models such as the tree. But this idea of crossing from the technological to the physical realm is of no concern to Gallaway and Thacker, in fact they seek to make these connections too: "... by "networks" we want to refer to any system of interrelationality, whether biological or informatic, organic or inorganic, technical or natural-- witht he ultimate goal of undoing the polare restrictiveness of these pairings." (p.8).

"Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd." (p.3) This quote, although finding it's way to the very second sentence of the entire essay, lays out exactly what is trying to be achieved. the essay "Introduction: Rhizome" seeks to trouble the idea of hierarchical relations in our modernly networked culture and presents a new idea of the rhizome to take it's place. "let us summarize the principle characteristics of a rhizome: unlike trees or their roots, the rhizome connects any point to any other point, and its traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature; it brings into play very different regimes of signs, and even nonsign states. The rhizome is reducible neither to the One nor the multiple." (p.21). The rhizome, then, doesn't focus on place (in the literal sense or otherwise) but instead seeks to trace the mapping of connections (and in this case even the lack of connection draws a certain line of connection-- wrap your mind around that) until there is no structure of hierarchy, but rather a symbiosis of value in every connection that is made.

Foucalt follows in close pursuit of the Fordist approach of rigid command and dominance of the working class, with a strictly hierarchical structure. Foucalt's structure however, expands far beyond that of Henry Ford, expanding to areas outside of work, such as schools, prisons, and the military. The apex mark of this control is the idea presented about the panopticaon: a centrally located structure that is surrounded by cells with the intent of guarding them. the intent of this layout is that any cell could potentially be under watch, and so the prisoners somewhat guard themselves.