Digital Culturist // Issue 5
March 5, 2017
In the fifth issue of Digital Culturist you’ll experience a philosophical theory on disembodiment and embodiment as it applies to VR and AR; a personal essay on anxiety in the digital age; a manifesto addressing creativity in a digital culture; an analysis of modern written language; a short story on the future of VR; a justification of an age-old profession; a commentary of our digital morals and ethics; an evaluation of the underlying forces of digital media.
run Override
A short story by Rebecca Koehn
Her brain tickled as the machine disconnected from her neurons. She felt unhinged without her hardware functioning. It was too quiet. She started to hum quietly trying to mimic the sounds of the birds that normally accompanied her on her walks. It didn’t help — she could still feel her heart pounding against her rib cage. She raised her head and ran her eyes over the world around her, desperately hoping to find something she recognized. A safe haven where she could wait for her hardware to reboot. Instead, she saw a landscape built out of stacks of concrete. It was cold and colorless. Beads of sweat broke out along the back of her neck as she gaped at it. Nothing looked like the world she knew.
Addressing the Creative Netizen
A manifesto by thad higa
The avenues of free speech and expression have transformed from the mouth of a river to an ocean in and of itself. We are inundated with rehashed or incomplete ideas of those pressured or privileged to opinionate. This false sense of immediacy prevents thoughtfulness and true innovation. In this infinite sword-fighting piss-pool of expression, we the desperately connected, find ourselves drowning at the bottom, mouths opening and closing fast as possible, a jaw-propelled rat race to mint the ‘divine’, craving the voice, the sound, and nothing seems to come out. We are the white noise. All has culminated in the creation of voices without legs and without bodies, limbless beggars at a banquet called GET STUFF OUT THERE…
The Sticky Truth About Modern Written Language
An analysis by Mack Flavelle
Our world has become infinitely more complex as the years go by, and language has struggled to keep up. English now has a million words, up from only 200,000 in Shakespeare’s time. That’s an increase of 500%. Most speakers use only a fraction of those words — the average native English-speaker’s vocabulary hovers somewhere around 30,000 words — but communication still takes time, effort, and understanding. You may be annoyed that you have to Google ‘ttyl’ to find out what it means, but someone else will be just as flummoxed by the use of ‘craggy’, or ‘flummoxed.’ Now that we have so many different means of instant communication, we want a language that is simpler, that transcends diction and dialect, and that can be expressed at the click of a button.
Welcome to Stickers.
Time Bombs in Our Pockets
A personal essay by Shane Saunderson
I get anxious, depressed, and near manic at times but I don’t tell anyone that. The irony of publically announcing on the internet is not lost on me, however, I’m getting to a point where I realize that if I don’t speak up, I am fueling the very problem that plagues me. I say this because I believe my struggle and mental health challenges are not completely of an internal origin, but a product of the increasingly technologized life I creep towards with each passing tomorrow. And though I realize the folly of attributing personal challenges to external factors, at the risk of sounding paranoid, I’m legitimately concerned that the future is trying to kill me.
This Folder is Empty
A poem by Jordan D
Let it be known
that when the sparks run dry
erasure lifts into a sphere
once filled
not with stories
but with a stagnant view
of life
mainly a priori
How Tangible is Cyberspace?
A thesis by Paol Hergert
Disembodiment and dematerialization are generally assumed to be intrinsic consequences of digital media, because of the implicit immateriality of digital information, and because the user’s interaction with the media is estranged, or alienated, from instinctual corporeal authenticity. The first claim is likely based on an antiquated (almost spiritual) understanding of digital content as immaterial. Whether or not one sees the alleged immateriality of digital data as enrichment or impairment, this immateriality simply does not explicitly exist. Münker accordingly states that digital data is always originally produced mechanically (145). And yet, in this case, it is perhaps fastidious to distinguish between implicit and explicit immateriality, and more important to note that for the user, digital data is (practically) impalpable.
Have We Unleashed the Monsters?
A commentary by Jim Griesemer
Have people in past been quick to judge and condemn? Yes, of course. But now, thanks to the internet and social media, never before have snap judgments been so easily and widely disseminated. Not long after its creation, the internet was lauded as the great innovation that would bring about a new Utopia of free access to information and interpersonal communication. Everyone would have a voice. Communication barriers of distance would be banished. The truth would be pulled out from under the shadows of institutionalized suppression. To an extent, these things have happened, but not without an unintended effect. The “monsters from the id” gained access to this same awesome power.
We Need Librarians Today More Than Ever
An explanation by Marcus Banks
As long as information exists, information overload will be a concern. So, for a librarian in today’s digital culture, the unique challenge is not solving information overload, but managing it. There are three vital ways that librarians are engaged in improving our digital culture: seeking to increase access to popular e-books as well as the results of scientific research that are published online; determining reliable information in an era of “alternative facts”; and ensuring that online data and web sites are available in the future, in as stable and reliable a manner as books on a shelf are today. Just as they addressed information overload by building an organized collection of printed books, modern librarians are leading efforts on all these digital fronts.
Ad-Supported Digital Media is a Threat to Democracy
An evaluation by Ryan Trimble
But what is the value of mere attention? Well, because most online content is free, publishers rely on advertisement engagement for revenue. And because advertisers pay only for pageviews and clicks, it behooves any publisher using an ad-based monetization model to drive as much consumer traffic to its site or app as possible. This is why we encounter clickbait headlines, salacious photos, pop-up videos and subscription boxes, and other lurid tactics — like reporting on politics with greater frequency and fervency. What’s interesting, though, even ironic, is that many of these ads don’t promote products or services; they simply redirect the consumer to another article, video, or related piece of online content. Yet there is money in this seemingly innocuous merry-go-round.
All stories curated and edited by Clayton d’Arnault
