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 Invisible unless stumbled upon

    Inseparable from the landscape

     Land of lights

   Glow of a thousand plates that together make up the pixelated terrain of now

    Like flies to a bulb

   Mirage

  That we watch from a distance, behind

Comfortably dazed to the resolution of mass and weight

We sink

           Invisible unless absorbed

       Invisible and yet surrounded

Invisible and yet seen by all

Struggle to resurface

As the negative space is filled up

          The emptiness of the air disappears, or rather

                The empty unanswered space around us disappears, as sand accumulates

     No more silence, vibration of repetition that never decays

It is a memory

      We are filled up, but there is no need for wondering uncertainties

   All the answers are on the window, everything you don’t need to know

No need to go to the surface

     There’s nothing to suspend you there

     Outside you have to use your own strength

  It is complete behind the glass, but when you look close, you see grains 

grains grains again and try to imitate

     Accumulate to have, but not to enjoy

     Accumulate to be certain, but keep looking here

        Keep taking and forget what you have taken

       Stay still, everything will mold to you

       Be content, it’s hard to get up

    Embrace your pixelated self, it’s better, it’s enhanced, it’s ideal

  Everyone is here

Sustained

     Preserved in moments that only happened because there is a record of them

         We cannot bare to be internal

              If I cannot see myself I disappear

http://www.wncn.com/story/28664509/first-woman-in-us-sentenced-for-killing-a-fetus

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Chance McGuigan a través de Buddies In Bad Times Theatre

31 de marzo a la(s) 23:25 ·

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK? Fuck this state, I wouldn't take a shit in Indiana

First woman in US sentenced for killing a fetus

On Monday, the state of Indiana sentenced 33-year-old Indian-American Purvi Patel to 20 years in prison on charges of feticide - an act that causes the death of a fetus -...

WNCN.COM|DE NBC NEWS

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A Taylor Whitaker-Greenaway, Charlotte Januska y 24 personas más les gusta esto.

Chance McGuigan https://youtu.be/LAUcTGeqvOw

Max Romeo-One step forward, two steps backwards

Classic reggae choon

YOUTUBE.COM

Chance McGuigan For real Avery Nineleaf Anderson it seems like every time we start heading to a world of love n peace mafakas always trying to hold us back

Kayly Kaleb Garnier-Wells What the serious fuck. That is some messed up shit right there.

The media takes on many forms, all with their respective aesthetic form. In magazines, for example, images are essential. Photographer Joel Sartore for the National Geographic, says himself in the following video Silent Streams, that for the photograph to be successful, it needs to be “sexy” and “grabby” even when the subject is a clam. His job is essentially finding a way to present nature in an attractive way, because we’re not capable of recognising the beauty ourselves, and yet, they are still just a couple amongst millions of pretty pictures that we see everyday.

I do not mean to say that media is useless, simply that we need to learn to observe things again. The pixelated perspective is not enough to make us truly engaged with life events, but it’s a start, and just next to that keyboard we’re typing on, there’s a world of texture and detail. It wouldn’t hurt to take what’s on the screen and ponder on the factors that make up the story, instead of dodging the analysis and just indulging in infatuated emotional concerns. This would already be a significant form of thought. We are the ones that create or break the apathy, and remembering this is the challenge. As McLuhan says, “we shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us,” but I believe that when we are able to detach ourselves from the medium, we recover ourselves, and it is in this recovery that we begin to overcome apathy.

I have done most of my school work through the internet. It constitutes a large aspect of my education. It awakens my curiosity, and influences my beliefs. I tend, together with many others, to guide my judgments through first impressions. Google is just a tool. A fantastic one in fact, but the issue lies in how we use it. Because of it’s automatic and almost magical efficiency, we need to be reminded of the sea beneath the surface. We need to recover the balance between virtual and non-virtual answers. As Mr. Light expressed with concern, “we have this incredible responsibility towards our future selves.” We cannot ignore the fact that the whole of the internet is in some level made up, and Morozov reminds us to question by whom is it being made up. Who is dictating all our notes?

“The new environment of simultaneous and diversified information creates acoustic man. He is surrounded by sound - from behind, from the side, from above. His environment is made up of information in all kinds of simultaneous forms, and he puts on this electrical environment as we put on our clothes, or as the fish puts on water.”

But of course, there are many positive aspects to these diversified and simultaneous times. Chris Anderson relates to us in his article The Rediscovery of Fire how the internet retrieves, in a way, the oral and visual tradition that was lost with the rise of writing and literacy: “an underreported effect of the increase in our time online is a growing craving for live experience.” He explains, that the historical advantage to the written medium was that it offered scale. Again, that information was reaching more people. But now communication travels around the world in seconds in many different forms that encompass scale, diversity and simultaneity.

There's a kind of magic to receiving a text. We're on someone's mind. Somewhere miles away, there's evidence that what we do and experience is being acknowledged. Amazingly, these letters deeply affect our psyche, because they express -or seems to express- human understanding. But can this connection be compared to companionship? Communicating online is certainly sharing experiences, but it's more like a chronicle in which you describe your particular adventures. The other person might have gone on the same journey, but physically sharing time and space is living, while virtually sharing information is a story with an author. This is not to say that the latter is not valid, but it lacks elements that are essential for human relationships. Behind these little words our imagination is free to construct of them whatever it likes, negotiating the meaning in a very personal way, because in the end, the only person there is you. We may be conversing with others, but we are still very much loyal to, or content with our opinions, since we're not in a situation where we really need to listen to anyone.

Online and offline relationships are not interchangeable. Sherry Turkle describes in her talk, Connected, but Alone? that, "we're getting used to a new way of being alone together. People want to be with each other, but also elsewhere -- connected to all the different places they want to be. People want to customize their lives. They want to go in and out of all the places they are because the thing that matters most to them is control over where they put their attention."

http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together?language=en#t-857045

The more we engage with online conversation, the more we isolate ourselves from the people around us. The internet has the curious tendency of separating us from reality. Because there is so much out there, we just take what we like. We internalize. We don't have to confront opinions different from our own. This is what I see in Lauren Fairweather's video. She mentions in Online Friendships that "forums and social networks are full of people who love the same things I do and won't judge me for it." Lauren seems to be locked into a small, You Tube based social circle. Different opinions make us realize new things about our ideas and perspectives, and dealing with criticisms is part of our development. As Turkle says, "technology appeals to us most where we are most vulnerable. And we are vulnerable. We're lonely, but we're afraid of intimacy [...] We turn to technology to help us feel connected in ways we can comfortably control."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmjSV9Y_OAI

I would say, that most connections I make online, whether I know the person or not, are quite shallow. They may even be some of my best friends that I only see twice a year, but we seldom communicate online. Then again, I exchange long emails and chat long hours with two of my closest friends. However, I did not meet them online. We spent over a year getting to know each other in person before the correspondence began. I see it more as an extension of our "real life" amity.

I don't think that online friendships can take the place of friendships that exist primarily in real life, as Lauren believes. They can be significant, important and truthful, but they are incomplete. Constant tweets, posts, videos and statuses are signals that we want to connect, whilst keeping a distance. As Turkle says, "solitude is where you find yourself so that you can reach out to other people and form real attachments. When we don't have the capacity for solitude, we turn to other people in order to feel less anxious or in order to feel alive. When this happens, we're not able to appreciate who they are. It's as though we're using them as spare parts to support our fragile sense of self."

  The attention given to our virtual identities in social media is a clear projection of insecurity amongst users today. The common use of the internet propagates short, instant, discrete, superficial answers. We depend on first impressions to hold our limited valuable attention. We have to impress with our image, and what's worse is that we want to. Social media is not just a form of communication, it's a form of self promotion. The perfect way to feel that people are following your life story. But if it's all online, where is the self really? In her article Is Social Media to Blame for the Rise in Narcissism? Psychologist Lisa Firestone explains that the "teen ego" found in social media, has less to do with the medium and more to do with a lack of self esteem. According to Firestone, "Many children of the millennial generation were given form rather than substance, presents instead of presence, which leaves children feeling insecure."

http://www.psychalive.org/is-social-media-to-blame-for-the-rise-in-narcissism/

Like all other aspects of the internet, our profiles and biographies are recreations. Constructed representations of ourselves day to day. Short, instant, discrete, superficial facts of me, and they are all, to some extent, idolized identities. Even the ones of those who engage little with the medium. From the little that I post, I have consciously made an effort to appear casual, uncaring and natural, but this intention in itself is already a self conscious act. As mentioned in class, internet identities are curated and they lose their honesty.

The main problem is not that we are censuring and distorting the reality of our lives, but that we believe these lies, and they actually affect us emotionally as if the "likes," and "followers," and "re-tweets" where friendships, support, understanding, listening, presence. As Noga Arikha mentions in her article, The Internet and the Loss of Tranquility, " [technology] is relative and does not represent the totality of the universe."

So are online identities real? No they are not real. Though they may not all be entirely untruthful, there's a fundamental difference between an image and a face. As Greg Benson shows us in his search for real Facebook friendships.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO-1VaR3PPo

                                                                               Ok, I will start typing now.

It has taken me a long time to start writing about what I think of the internet. I've realized that the chronic habit of sitting for long periods of time staring at plastic plates might be more abstract than I thought, but maybe it's just harder to analyse something that you take for granted.

I was raised to engage with my surroundings. To play, make things, get soaked, dry in the sun, to rip my sleeve when I was caught on a fence, to sew it up again, respond to echos, to go out for a walk when I had a question. I think it's easy for us to forget that our understanding of the world comes from our interactions and struggles with physical things. The internet, and more specifically, social media, is an endless virtual collage of responses to reality. The problem is when we fail to recognize that it's artificial, and fall prey to this mouth feeding medium that can so easily turn us into passive compulsive beings. Why does it seem more like an escape rather than an opportunity?

What is so special about the internet, is that we get the sense that it's alive. Click, and something or someone will respond. It's like a universal conscience, and we all get lost in one and different thoughts.

It's an incredible invention; insane though, as it turns out.

"Labor, whether of the mind or of the body, is more than a way of getting things done. It's a form of contemplation, a way of seeing the world face-to-face rather than through a glass...It binds us to the earth...as love binds us to one another. The antithesis of transcendence, work puts us in our place."