I have debated this very same issue in the context of soldier and their role as killers. So in this response I am going to be refering to soldiers and prison executioners collectively as the "killers." Terry often argues it is society that sets them up for their situation and that I cannot possibly understand the predicament that many of them are in in terms of growing up poor and not having any hope. I think that is not true.

There are plenty of students both at UB and Canisius that come from extremly poor families in the "ghettos" of America that are choosing not to be killers but rather to educate themselves out of the system.

Yes, they may have had encouragement from parents who were more caring then others. But I am sure not all of them, when it comes down to it, you (the individual) have a choice to pick up the gun or not. By picking it up the individual is making the choice to possibly play the role of the "killer" in return for weath, education, or increased class status.

In the end I can give a specific examples of another route. Through turning to a religious organization. While I am usually not a big supporter of religion, I definately see turning to god a better solution than killing people with guns or electric chairs. For this example, I would like to explain my friend Jacob's situation.

His mother was an extremly poor Najavo that lived on the reservation in the South west. At some point the mormons( who I typically do not like) came around and converted them. Evtually, she ended up at BU where she met Jacob' father, a mexican-indian who was also from a poor rural ancestry.

They eventually got married, Jacob's Dad became a bishop and started a business around their beliefs, helping kids with social problems like drug addiction in one of those desert outreach programs where the youths are subjected to living with nothing.

Jacob's family eventually became quite wealthy both monetarily and spiritually. Now I have to say I cannot support the Mormons and I am not giving any credence to their belief system. I am just saying their are alternative to killing and those who can't see this are purposely being blind.

There is nowhere in America where people do not have access to the teachings of any of the major religions which support the idea that killing is really wrong. I think the idea of not killing even transcends the moral and spiritual responsibilty of religious tenants and is actually a very humanistic construction.

In the end I am saying if you pick up the gun you are guilty. While society is at fault for making the decisions so tough and difficult for those that are less fortunate. We cannot dissolve everyone of personal moral responsibilty.

I have just taken all of my most favorite blogger posts and moved them here -see previous posts. It is an effort to move myself away from the corporate driven web publishing scheme and into the realm of local discourse. Respond to them if you wish. I figured they were better here where they were searchable.

I would encourage other people to do the same.

Kittler's discourse on the typewriter in his book "Gramophone Film Typewriter" is an informative piece concerning the development and influence of the typewriter. In “Typewriter”, Kittler discusses the many influences the typewriter has had on our society, from acting as an emancipating mechanism for women, to affording the blind the ability to write, to changing the way our entire global society conceptualizes and communicates. Seen as one of the of the major emancipating agents for women, the typewriter, a word meaning both the machine and the woman who operated it, aided in tearing down the "walls" of educational institutions that previously barred them from enrollment.

For the blind, the typewriter tore down the walls of silence in a world full of written expression. The most obvious example being Nietzsche, who suffered a form of blindness which ultimately forced him to give up his position as a professor at the university of Basal, as he no longer could control the medium of his creation, the written word. Nietzsche was one of the first adopters of the typewriter, as the typewriter bridged this gap, allowing the philosopher to literally feel the words come out of his hand and be pressed onto the paper. At the mercy of the machine as messenger for his word, Nietzsche was seriously set back when it malfunctioned only months after he first began to use it, thus destroying the fragile link between the author and the medium that the typewriter had offered. Because Nietzsche was wealthy enough to afford a subordinate to take his dictation, this may seem insignificant. However, this separation between author and work rendered allowed room for intellectual manipulation so extreme, by his sister and her pro-nazi agenda, that for the first half of the twentieth century Nietzsche was thought of as the primary philosopher of Nazism although it was well known that he had a
hatred for German Nationalism and antisemitism, as demonstrated in many of his earlier works.

While I agree that the typewriter was an emancipating force in many ways as demonstrated above, it cannot be overlooked that it also enslaved our society as a primary vehicle to the current state of technical dependence.

The typewriter was the first personal machine that began the trend toward our dependence on brain enhancing machinery, which has been nearly perfected with the advent of its evolutionary great grand child, the computer. This technological wonder, shooting forth from the military production facilities of the west, moved us toward our greater goal of increased efficiency and mass production. Once we reached this goal our society could not ever turn back without being completely destroyed, thus enslaving us in this cycle of endless technological innovation in terms of machines that allow us to rapidly disseminate information. From the brain of the master to the eyes of the subordinate in the shortest time possible, who ever gives up in this race loses all power.

The typewriter itself as a medium can also physically enslave the intellectual. As with the example of Henry James (Kittler, 216). The typewriter, a master product born out of a capitalist society, alters our ability to think by forcing a certain stimulus, in this case the typewriter clank, to be associated with intellectual production in a Pavlovian way. Kittler quotes James, “Soon a reflex loop was created: only the clanking of the typewriter induced sentences in the writer.” In this way the typewriter itself asserts a form of control over the user and demands to be purchased and worshiped.

While it is obvious that the typewriter has affected the way that we think and write, it must also be asserted that the typewriter itself is a product of the society through which it lives. A cycle which means that as far as technology can change us as a society it is ultimately only a reflection of our society's desire.
r

Lastly, the typewriter has also be
en
a


m
ajor source of governmental and religious propaganda, a theme which cannot be overlooked when speaking of it as an emancipating machine. Even more important than propaganda is the fact that the typewriter allowed, for the first time, true governmental efficiency; directly leading to the ultimate submission of the global masses to capitalist agencies. With both governmental and business issues, words became far more powerful than guns.

I am not afraid to accept the situation where I become one with the machine. Sometimes I even welcome it, with the idea that it quickly bridges the gap between me and the collective knowledge the internet holds. I spend way to much time interfacing with machines in a primitive mouse/keyboard way and would love the opportunity to merge for convenience. However, I remain reluctant to accept a cyborg future for myself. My fear is not based on losing myself or being dominated by the machine's will but rather being dominated by the humans that make the machine which would allow me to be a cyborg.

An aspect often overlooked when discussing the role of the machine in the modern human condition is that the machine itself embodies only what the creator of the machine considered relevant. A machine is a reflection of the will of the individual programmers and engineers. This becomes a serious problem when we are dealing with ethics of internal computing. Even if the argument is that machines will be able to create themselves in the future without humans being involved. There is still the aspect that the original machines which made the machines, which in turn made the newest generation of autonomous machines are still dependent on the original design specification created by the humans in power at the time of the orginal machines creation.

What may seem even more terrorfying for woman is that men created the computer langauges and hardware structures that we use today. Granted there may be many females in the field today but the field itself was created by a the will of men. Future machine that will be considered for the creation of cyborgian humans will be based on the history computer sciences. The languages that program them may be new but will definately be based on what languages were in the past like C or java - all languages built by men. Thus the machines must inately reflect a male perspective. The nature of future cognitive computers will definately have a very masculine way of thinking unless there is some major intervention by woman thinkers. This leads to a situation where men inscribe their cognitive ideals onto a chip. Which is then implanted into a woman, where she begins either to function and think like a man or how a man wants a woman to think, being dominated by the male ideal - or does not accept the chip. Thus being evolutionarily left behind in the cyborgian tranformation.

Machines, can be easily dominated by the malicious intent of a select group of people in power. Email servers for example, a society shifting machine that pracically replaces the need for transportation in terms of messages and information. However, add "carnivore" and it becomes reminiscent of Big Brother. The issue being that the people creating carnivore, do not see it as infringing or unethical. They see it as "justice prevailing over the evil terrorists." What happens when the people in power, the ones who create programs/machines such as carnivore make the machines that may be someday implanted under my skin or in my brain.

Most importantly, It is easy to believe that the producers of these machines and programs that would directly interface with the human are going to be profit driven. They therefore would directly have interest in raising your purchasing drive. Today's machines can feed humans information, but there is no guarantee that information is true. Because of the physical separation between man and machine we can chose to ignore information that we perceive to be incorrect or of malicious controlling intent. For example, an advertisement for pornography on the internet. Who is to say that once we accept this information into an internally reglated machine interface that we will retain the ability to reject information. Once the gap has been bridged between man and machine, there is nothing stopping the influence of micropropandga. Will we just be converted in buying machines - or slaves o
f the reamining humans who create
d
th


e
inferface.

Lastly, even if you exclude the possible unethical agenda of the cyborgian interface creator, there is still the issue of computer viri. A computer virus of machine that may regulate your motor control and/or breathing, and or cognitive control would be a source of outside control by a third party. For example, a hacker could program you to carry out his/her murderous wishes. Also, viri could be made o shut you down. In the end I fear the influence of the human in the creation of the cyrborg n the same way I fear George Bush in the creation of a "global democracy."

Blogs are an important technical development concerning the recorded history of the human condition. For eons written history primarily reflected only the perspective of the power classes. During the last two centuries we have seen a move toward the "common people" recording their own history in a written format, as the technology and cost of paper based publication has gone down. This trend has began to change the way that we see our own history, a history that was previosly left to a much tenuous oral tradition.
Blogs bring recording history to the speed and mass availabilty of instant messaging. While possibly a pop trend in their current form, blogs are definately a step away from information being controlled by the power classes. The name blog will someday be replaced, however, the concept of instantly publicated, dated entries will be a cornerstone of future information technology developments.

Journalistic Style Blogs - Blogs of this nature allow the author to immediately publicate information about current events, often events that are neglected by the mass media, bringing the attention to a larger concerned by uninformed population. For example, I witnessed a major incidence of rascism at the Wilson Farms on Elmwood and Auburn. I immediatley posted the information concerning the situation to my community blog with links to Tops corporate headquarters, the owners of the Wilson Farms Francise. Within hours people who check my community blog began to write letters to Tops within a day Tops responded that the manager had been repremanded. While I cannot be sure that this stop him from future incidences of rascism, I can be sure that he has been warned that the people of the community are watching and that they care about what happens in there community markets. This type of small community information is drectly overlooked even by the local media. A more public example wa st he case of Trent Lott, whose racist remarks at the Birthday of Strom Thurman were vritually unreported until the mainstream media picked up on reports from Blogs.

Personal Style Journals - 1st person vs 2nd person historical record
While many people in our class have discounted personal blogs as frivoulous, self involved publications I would like to argue the importance of such blogs. One of the greatest aspects of personal blogs is the ease of use factor. Blogs provide an publication outlet for many people in our society that are otherwise excluded from pubically expressing their feelings due to technological and social barriers.

I was totally outraged at the statement by Elizabeth Osder, a visiting professor at The University of Southern California's School of Journalism, who said "Bloggers are navel-gazers," "And they're about as interesting as friends who make you look at their scrap books." She added, "There's an overfascination here with self-expression, with opinion. This is opinion without expertise, without resources, without reporting."

The mass recording of the human condition should not be conducted soley by the well-trained, highly educated classes. In upholding such opinions Ms. Osder is submitting to the historical precedents of information oppression by the power classes.

In the long run, the mass number of personal blogs currently recorded in databases, will allow future historians to get a much more accurate representation of how people in a particular community felt. A much better representation, in my opinion, than if we are limited only to the opinion of those "studying" the human condition.

Group Journals-
Group journals also represent another way in which we can harness the power of blogs for community building. Group blogs and other closely related online discourse formats such as Wiki, provide many benefits over the traditional online community based communication tools. For example, Blogs offer significant benefits over mailing lists. First, anyone can read a blog, meaning that it is not restricted only to the recipients of the mailing list. This publication of the contents also allows for new members to be introduced to the concepts of the group before joining. Blogs also provide a historical record that is often more accessible than in mailing lists.

Many people still say that blogs are just contributing to the numbness created by mass media saturation. Blogs are not the problem. The true offender of free knowledge is mass advertising. Blogs truly embody what the internet was created for - a free trasnfer of information between people and communities. All in all, I realize that blogs are a trend that will definately be replaced by something better. However, blogs are a really important step in the transfer from a humanity based on closed information to one based on free publication and sharing of the historical recording of the human experience. It is no wonder that in 1999 there were only 23 blogs and now there are millions.

Globalization is not panacea - the Earth will not return to Pangea. While the higher ideals of globalization are a world with no borders, the unfortunate realistic outlook is world with no community and international slavery. Economic globalization is a tool of the power classes used in order to move labor sources from places where the worker is well protected and of higher cost to place with no restraints and low costs. Economic globalization is also a return to the tradition of colonization. Global corporations, once free from the constraints of national law and able to comb the earth for places which will harbor factories run on cheap and dirty child labor. Publically, this movement is conducted in the name of all middle to upper class western citizens. In reality this movement of labor forces is conducted in the name of capitalism to produce profits for the ultra rich.

Television is a major instrument in the promotion of economic globalization. Television make speople from all cultures want the goods of one culture. The culture of a globalized world. Who profits from the export of our popular culture. Nike, MTV, Coca-Cola, Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake, the Spice Girls, etc. It is no coincidence that huge corporations and the personalities the represnt them fund the production of our exported mass media. Through globalization our media is taking over the world and shoving our propaganda down the throats of many unsuspected entertainment consumers in foreign countries. For example, when I lived in Germany I was able to view many American network television stations, including ABC, NBC, CNN, MTV, etc. We now know that during the earlier days of the Iraqi war, George W and his administration lied about many of the reasons and facts surrounding the conflict. There is no doubt that people is hundred of countries witnessed this same incorrect information dissemination while busy consuming our exported entertainment. Because we now know of these outright lies and inconsistences (Sadam was responsible for 9-11, etc) we can now assume that many other things reported on the main stream globalized news media sources may also be questionable.

The same goes for television, the huge lack of local and public television stations terrifies me. This is definately a reflection into the globalization movement. The precursor to globalization is national homogenisation. Soon through media promotion and increased interconenctivity every city in the united states will consist of a Walmart, a Target, A Best Buy, a Texaco, Office Max, and a McDonalds. This import precursor means that main stream media becomes more expensive in terms of advertsisment. For example, to get a spot on NBC at 7PM on Tuesday ocsts far to much money for most local establishments. However, the large multi-national corporations can fund such advertsisments across the world on these globalized media netwroks. The reinforces the position of such corporations in the global market place, opening up channels of demand in more and more places. With the channel so demand in place, the companies become more powerful and can do things such as bribe governemnts for off shore tax protection, child labor, etc

I would like to argue that the internet, originally designed for military purposes of post-apocalyptic communication, is quickly becomming yet another tool in the move toward globalization. While we often see the internet as bringing our global citizenry together in a positive way, by providing free access to many of the worlds information databases, I would like to argue that the internet may also be a tool which can be used to rip our local communities apart and focus us on the acceptance of globalization. By moving our neighborly associations from a local to a global/virtual level, we are giving up much of the freedoms associated with local organization and politcal change. While the internet provides a way for people from around the w
orld
to
u


ni
te in virtual communties under a common interest, it is also providing a distraction from our actual communties. Through services like AOL, the typical internet user is provided with an experience that makes them often feel more "at home" with a fellow "smurf" collector in Sweden than with their actual neighbors, who share a political, social and community infrastructure wth them.

Globalization is a sham, it a a tool that will take the dirty work american corporations particpate in and move it across borders, in essensce sweeping it under the carpet.

Many digital artists are troubled by the notion that video games seems to reinforce the staus quo of the male dominated, violent, capitalist condition. In repsonse to this, artists such as the woman at opensorcery (Annd Schleiner) and Natalie Bookchin among many others are producing gaming environments and modifications which both challenge the role of the video game as a purely entertainment based medium and use them to ecplore social issues and protest the violenece many of them are based aorund.

A great example of an artist using the game engine for social protest is Anna Schleiner Velevet Strike project . Velvet Strke is a game modification for counterstrike, which is itself a modification of a commercial game. In counterstike, a typical military-based, first person shooter game you play the roll of an trooper fighting terrorists. The velevet strike modification exploites code that allows th user to upload a spray paint which can be sprayed on the walls and floor of the game. The sprays found at velevt strike are very anti-violence and often poke fun at the male dominated nature of such video games and he American campaign in Iraq.

Velevt strike has a web page where other artists can upload image files that can be made into sprays for other artists. This idea of female artists confronting the mostly male game players in a networked war space with anti-violence propangda is very unique. It is the first anti-war protests that I have seen within virtual space. Anne-Marie Schleiner of Velevt Strike is definately an informed iindividual who beginning to study games from a crtical standpoint and then reacting in an artistic manor. Here is a link to her statement about velevet-strike.

In response to the project many CS gamers have become quite aggravated and resorted to sending hate male, etc. Here are some examples.
"Hello,
What a stupid initiative!!! If you don't like the game just don't buy it, and don't piss off other people with your shit.
Just a woman could have think of making something like Velvet Strike....
if you don't realize that videogame is just a VIDEOGAME, an that its a fake world, well then, GO PLAY WITH YOUR BARBIE!
its the same kind of people as you that tell that violent movie influence people and make them commit murders. The facts is that most people are intelligent and can see THE difference...
Anyway,"

"CS IS MY WAY OUT AFTER 911"
...I also take extreme umbrage about your section explaining Velvet-Strike. I watched as the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center burned and colapsed. I saw people jumping out of those towers live, not on some TV. I smelt the smoke, heard the rumble, felt the earth shake. Those are images and feelings that are indescribable. I cannot get the image of the first tower crashing down, destroying everything below. I was in that Plaza, was on the Observation Deck, had dinner at Windows on the World, knew people who worked there, took the PATH trains inside of it! And when you say that we should not be at war with Afgnastan, it makes me stomach turn and my heart sink. I cannot begin to describe the anguish I felt after 9/11.

By outraging these people she is not only provoking response but requiring them to think about their actions. Both of these men are very angry and have definately been affected by her work at an emotional level. I believe both men will tell others about it, even if in a negative light. In doing that her message spreads like a vrius among the people she would otherwise not confront until it reaches a taget, like myself, where it sets in.

Anna Schleiner was also the co-developer of Anime Noir. Many web based art initatives challenge the sexual oppression of women. Anime Noir is a Macromedia Director based web art game that challenges the sexual
oppression of women . Online games since
t
he


e
arly days of text-based MUDs have always had an underground and often obvious sexual overtone. Anne noticed that men tended to control these domains. They aimed to create a sexual chat game that encouraged men to behave as sexually desired by females. In the game, onlin eusers meet in avirtual place and are encouraged to get "sexual" through tickling, touching, chatting and other vritual foreplay methods. The goal is for the character to "score" with as many other users as possible - thus rasing levels. to do this the user must sattisfy the desires of the other user in order to be sexually accepted. This encourages men to give into the desires of the female characters in order to gain levels and self satisfaction. The makers of Anime Noir hoped that this influence would continue outside of the temporary gaming space.

Another game modification for artistic purposes called 911 Survivor was created in response to the terrorist attacks of 911. The "game" developers thought that by using a highly realistic 3D gaming engine they could put you in the place of what it was like to be in the tower during the terrorist attack. In the game you are in your office when a plane hits the building. You try to escape. When I last checked you were eventually confronted with no exist and would make the choice - as many did on that on 9-11 to jump ot your death. People palying the game get a sense for the true height of the building and a glimpse at what it felt like from inside.

The artists responsible for this have received numerous death threats , etc. But I do not think their point was to make fun of the victims of the terrorist attck but rather to use the medium most familar to them in order to express the situation to others. The situation is, however, quite ackward as the Unreal 2003 engine used is very much based on killing.

While I feel that the gaming industry, just as many corporate industries is based on greed, violence, and deception. I do feel that the gaming medium is just beginning to be explored as a potential medium for social change and influence and should be seen as an obvious extension to the multimedialisation of art.

I stayed up again to make the buttons shinier and change some code. I was going to go to bed but I knew if I stayed up to 3am I could be the first one to get a star for today.

Matthew and I had a serious talk about life and I tried to get him interested in doing an online childrens book style journal. I think he might actually like it. I hope so because he seemed very bored and sad recently and I just want to see him happy.

On another note, I am really excited about applying for the job at Canisius. I do not really have a lot of time to prepare a portfolio but I have lots of work to show. Really, I spend most of my time working on the site now, so I guess I will have to include that. If I don't get the job its fine because I know I will have a ton of opporuntiy as soon as I graduate but if I do get it, it will make paying off my student loans that much easier.

Heather Killian, if you are reading this please call me 885-1492 or IM on my sideKick, the link is right at the top of my link list. I am really excited to finally see you after all this time.

Rachel, if you are reading this, we should get togther with Heather soon before she goes. Call me so we can figure something out.

I met with Mike from the site, who also happens to be my best brother, at spot. Anyways, we talked about the site and decided that maybe it was time to start a restaurant review.

Mike said the he and Jill could review restaurants with photos and all, and then othe rpoeple could leave comments and rate the restaurant. This would allow for a diversified opinion poll. Say for vegetarians and other people with special dietary concerns like gluten intollerance.

It would also allow for restaurants to be continually reviewed over time in a similar way to the journal format.

Anyways, as a first step I would liek to say that I had the albacore tuna sandwich at Spot Coffee on Elmwood and it was quite tasty. As you can see from the pic I completely finished it all, which is rare for me.

So I spent the whole morning fixing up some last minute stuff and adding the new features. Now I think I am going to head over to Canisius and print out some flyers to hand out at Spot and around the neighborhood.

Maybe I'll see you around.