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According to McCullough (2004, p.5), the term "ubiquity" has been applied to all manner of globalizing technology and has come to mean anything that has to do with universal connectivity. We've witnessed a paradigm shift that's gone from cyberspace to pervasive/ubiquitous computing. Digital technology now comes out of the screen and into our physical space and under our laws of physics; it's now built into our rooms, ingrained in our devices and props - it's everywhere. 

It's all instrumented and all interconnected. Temperature censors, traffic sensors etc all transmitting a sea of data that you could just drown in.

Since 1994, microprocessors have outnumbered people on the Earth. It's estimated that by 2020, there will be 50 billion objects connected to the Internet meaning that for every person there will be 6.6 objects connected to the Internet.This blows my mind.

The video, The Internet of Things explains how we're now living in what could be referred to as a 'system of systems' where all of the different devices in our homes are working together in transmitting data - making our home a system - but then outwardly transmitting data within a universal system. 

"It used to be that certain settings – a plush hotel lobby; a hushed library; a crowded subway car; a public park – conveyed certain social cues about how to behave and what should be going on in a given place.  Now, as the fixity of urban context evaporates as our consciousness moves to our smartphones, we are becoming overwhelmed with information overload and complexity" (Bollier, 2013).

Surveillance and the loss of privacy is also a bad side effect of pervasive information technology but it's still not intrusive enough for us to stop using it completely. 

I couldn't help but think of the (amazing!) film I only just watched a few days ago that relates perfectly to this topic - Spike Jonze's Her.

This film's narrative was the perfect example of ubiquitous computing and the future of the Internet of Things. In it, the protagonist, Theodore, purchases a new OS1 - the world's first artificially intelligent operating system that has a consciousness and eventually finds himself in love with 'her'. The most interesting part is that it's mutual. There were so many scenes in the film that showed what a true "smart home", "smart computer" or "smart phone" would be like as everything was automated and voice-operated. Yet you couldn't help but watch with a great sense of sadness as everybody seemed so isolated and basic human essences like love could be contrived (Theodore's job is to "write" (more voice-command) love letters between couples - so he'll pose as the person in the relationship who sends their lover a letter). 

I guess the best note to end on regarding such a complex topic is this:

"Let us focus on habits rather than novelties, on people rather than machines, and on the richness of existing places rather than invention from thin air" (McCullough, 2004, p.24).

McCullough, Malcolm (2004) Digital Ground Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 3-24

 Bollier, David (2013) ‘How Will We Reclaim and Shape the Ambient Commons?’, David Bollier: news and perspectives on the commons, July 16, <http://bollier.org/blog/how-will-we-reclaim-and-shape-ambient-commons>

If everything is going "virtual", what does this mean? Is the virtual something new or was it there before? Are media creating new "virtual worlds", or was the world already virtual, or both?

According to Paul Dourish (2004), the history of interaction is a gradual expansion of the range of skills and abilities that humans have that can be incorporated into the interactions we have with computers. He believes that tangible and social computing draw on the same sets of human abilities and skills and therefore both exploit human facility and familiarity with our everyday worlds. Regardless of if it's a world of social interaction or physical artifacts. Therefore, an individual cannot be separated from the world in which they live and act. The way the everyday world works, as well as the way we experience it, both are drawn through direct interaction with it. "We act in the world by exploring the opportunities for action that it provides to us - whether through its physical configuration, or through socially constructed meanings", (Dourish, 2004, p. 18).

So what about augmented reality? How does it differ from virtual reality? Well according to trusty Wikipedia, augmented reality is a way to use technology to redefine space by placing a virtual layer over the world; it's more of an expansion or extension of your reality. Contrastingly, virtual reality replaces the real world with a simulated one. 

If looking specifically at the week's questions at the beginning of this blog entry, "is media creating new virtual worlds or was the world already virtual, or both?", referring back to the previous week's topic might come in handy. If we consider the concept of the media, our minds and our bodies as practically being in and of the same thing, then we could say it is possible for the world to have been "virtual" before we applied specific technologies to define what we know today as a "virtual reality". 

This gets me thinking about the digital, ubiquitous computing world we live in today, where interaction through wires has become just as efficient or trustworthy, if not more, than physical interaction itself. This constant pull towards a newer, fresher, more innovative way to get closer to one another, to strengthen interaction within our world seems to only get bigger. Like Facebook buying the Oculus VR - a virtual reality headset to immerse someone into a 3-dimensional world. What does this mean for social interaction? Is it a form of monopolizing the beauty of human interaction? Does it revolutionize or just extend what we know as us; our realities, our thoughts, our selves? 

This week's topic was one that indeed got the mental juices flowing... flowing > igniting > exploding into a billion pieces of mush splattered across the inside of my skull. Same, same. The irony of this is quite amusing as questions like 'what is our mind?', 'what is consciousness?' and my favourite, 'does thinking happen in the brain?' had been mentioned throughout the lecture and readings. 

As much as this topic confused me, it did get me thinking in a whole new light about technology of today and the deep connections between such technologies and our physical beings; and thus our perceptions of the world and who we are within it. 

As Alva Noe (2010) recites, 

"A human being, like every living being, is a locus of densely interwoven coupling with the world around us. We make consciousness dynamically, in our exchange with the world around us. Ultimately, if we want to understand consciousness, we need to go out of our heads and look at the way we are embodied and also bound to and embedded in the world around us..."

Essentially, the mechanics of our biological selves are innately intertwined with all that surrounds us. So it could be a question of the chicken or the egg - our sensory data perceives our surroundings and identifies things as what we know them to be, but what we know them to be is also constructed by information that is given to us at a pre-existing time. So the mind, the thing that feels, identifies, interprets and perceives is actually an extension of the rest of the world as opposed to an internal, individual 'thing' within our physiological selves. 

In accordance to Andy Clark's talk of the 'natural-born cyborgs' (http://vimeo.com/16717229), I think the simplest way of looking at such a complex analysis of media, minds and bodies is to think of technology as an extension of our physical selves. So looking at a very simple and singular example of media through a pen for instance... rather than being its own apparatus, an object that has no value, feelings or mind, it should be seen as an extension of our hand which holds it, to communicate what is in our minds to the receiver of the information. The mere existence of the pen itself, even the way it is physically crafted, is a result of the intent of those who created it; to be an extension of their hand > arm > thoughts > mind > beliefs > knowledge > their world. 

That said, although we're surrounded by a multitude of technologies, communication devices and media outlets, somehow, we're all a lot more connected - physically, mentally and emotionally, to all of these than we think.

Noë, Alva (2010) ‘Does thinking happen in the brain?’, 13:7 Cosmos and Culture <http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2010/12/10/131945848/does-thinking-happen-in-the-brain>

A - Alphabet. Agents of change. Augmented methods of the spreading of ideas. 

B - Beginnings: Block printing. Books revolutionizing the world.

C - Changing societies. Communication being copied, categorized, catalogued, then cross-cultured.

D - Defining a society. Dictionaries. Dissemination of information in a disciplined format. Democracy.

E - English. Epistemology. Evolution. Education.

F - Formatting. Formalizing language, ideas and communication.

G - Greek origins. Great Vowel Shift.

H - Hierarchical. Hieroglyphs. Hegemony. History.

I - Information in order. Industrial planning and calculating. Ideograms.

J - Jurisdiction of language. 

K - Korea: featural alphabet. Kingdoms.

L - Language. Linguistics. Letters.

M - Memory. Mnemonic. Mathematical structure of communication. Monitoring societies. 

N - Numerical record-keeping. Networked. 

O - Optimization.Organization of sounds. Orthography. 

P - Printing. Pronunciations. Phonemes. Prominent Period in history. 

Q - Quest for innovations. Quick communication.

R - Reorganize. Read. Reference guides. Rationalizing societies, cultures and humans.

S - System. Scholarly. Scanning. Semiotics. Semantics. Solidarity between people. Scientific. Standardization.

T - Talking. Teaching. Timelessness. Translate.

U - Understanding. Umbrella of knowledge. Unity. 

V - Vowels. Vernacular. Voice of society and culture.

W - World. Western system. Widespread. 

X - eXploration.

Y - Yearning to connect, learn, inform.