Teaching about Cyberculture

From Metaverse

Welcome to the MetaVerse wiki, an encyclopedia of cyberculture - including film, fiction, and activities for a variety of topics. This site was created to support the Elon University course GST 364: "Imagining Technology: Computers and Contemporary Culture". The wiki includes many resources for students and faculty who are teaching and learning about contemporary "technology & society" issues. Enjoy!

Contents 1 Resources for studying cyberpunk 2 Resources for studying virtuality 3 Resources for studying transhumanism 4 Resources for studying the "make" phenomenon 5 Resources for studying collaboration and cooperation online 6 Movies

Resources for studying cyberpunk

• OVERVIEW: Cyberpunk definition from Wikipedia
• PRINCIPLE: Mind modification and body modification
• PRINCIPLE: State vs Individuals, mega-corporations, totalitarian goverments, control of individuals
• PRINCIPLE: Real vs Virtual, blurring the line
• PRINCIPLE: Dystopian, film noir
• ACTIVITY: Life in 25 years - one of the hallmarks of cyberpunk fiction and film is that it takes place in the near-future... but what do you think life will be like in 25 years?

Resources for studying virtuality

• ACTIVITY: Snow Crash is a fictional work by Neal Stephenson.
• ACTIVITY: Second Life is an online simulation by Linden Labs created after the Metaverse in Snow Crash.
• PRINCIPLE: Plato's Allegory of the Cave is an ancient rhetorical device for discussion of what is real and what is virtual. This is excellent when paired with The Matrix.
• PRINCIPLE: Uncanny Valley is a principle of robotics that we can apply to virtual worlds, avatar development, and simulated and artificially-constructed humans (posthuman, cyborg, etc). This is excellent when paired with Blade Runner and Second Life.

Resources for studying transhumanism

• OVERVIEW: Transhumanism definition from Wikipedia
• PRINCIPLE: improving the human condition through neurotechnology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology.
• PRINCIPLE: this is related to cyberpunk via the principle of body modification
• PRINCIPLE: cyborg
• PRINCIPLE: posthuman

Resources for studying the "make" phenomenon

• OVERVIEW: DIY - the "do it yourself" punk ethic
• DEFINITION: DIY Ethic from Wikipedia

Resources for studying collaboration and cooperation online

• OVERVIEW: This Business Week Article pretty well sums up what this entire class is about. (added: June 11, 2005)

• PRINCIPLE: Prisoner's Dilemma - a classic "what if" scenario that simulates the basics of a cooperation game. Useful for discussing economics of Second Life and VotePair.

• PRINCIPLE: Tragedy of the Commons - an n-person cooperation game illustrating human behavior when faced with simultaneous anonymity and scarcity of resources. Useful for discussing Second Life and File Sharing.

• PRINCIPLE: WIGSOP ("the Whole Is Greater than the Sum Of the Parts")

• ACTIVITY: The following web sites can be set up in "stations" in a computer lab. Each student group visited each site in turn, and created the wiki pages below to describe the contribution of the site to virtual communities.
  • Just Letters (site: Just Letters) - work with others in real time to spell words with magnets on a digital refrigerator
  • VotePair (site: VotePair) - vote trading site that operates as a "prisoner's dilemma"
  • Viral Marketing (site: Bore Me) - compilation of various "viral" emails - great for exploring the concept of "memes" and collective consciousness
  • File Sharing esp. (site: BitTorrent) - why is BitTorrent different than other P2P file sharing in the way it deals with defection in a cooperation game?
  • Flickr (site: Flickr) - folksonomies are hot right now, especially for discussing WIGSOP
  • Del.icio.us (site: Del.icio.us) - another folksonomy site, see also WIGSOP
  • OhMyNews & Grassroots Journalism (site: OhMyNews) - power to the people via grassroots journalism, WIGSOP
  • Typophile (site: Typophile) - watch as individuals work collectively to create letters of the alphabet and numerals.
  • Social Networking Services (SNS) including (site: Friendster), (site: The Face Book, etc. ), WIGSOP
  • Mediachest (site: Mediachest) - a book and DVD trading site built on top of the social networking concept
  • Collective Proza (site: Collective Proza) - collaborate with others to construct a work of fiction
  • Meetup (site: Meetup) - leverage the power of online communication to arrange real-life meetings on a variety of topics/special interests
  • Distributed Proofreaders (site: Distributed Proofreaders) - collaborate with amateur editors to proofread scanned and OCR'ed books for Project Gutenberg. WIGSOP in action.
  • Einstein@Home - new
  • SETI@Home - new
  • Folding@Home - new
  • Bookcrossing (site: Bookcrossing) - new
  • Pledgebank (site: http://www.pledgebank.com/ Pledgebank]) - "I will if you will." Pose a challenge that you will promise to meet if a set number of other people will another (or the same) challenge. Ex: "I will donate $50 to a cause but only if 20 other people promise to do it too."

Movies

Movie Theme Grid - this grid shows popular technology movies, and their main themes/genres/motifs. This grid will be useful for helping students determine how to analyze a given technology movie. Instructors can use this grid to determine which movies "go together" or would be appropriate for discussing a certain theme (i.e. Gattaca is good for biotech issues, Enemy of the State is great for surveillance, Metropolis is great for explaining fear of technology-driven dystopias, etc).

• 2001: A Space Odyssey creating and extending artificial intelligence as just another stage in human evolution. Monkeys galore, 20-minute-long breathing scenes, and a very trippy ending.
• A.I. the first hour: what does it mean to be human? the second hour: snooze.
• Antitrust totalitarian corporate control of individualist hacker - some very silly scenes of "hacking"
• Blade Runner describes a dystopian view of the near-future, in which humans and near-human cyborgs ("replicants") discover what it means to be human.
• Brazil absurdist dark comedy highlights the trouble with technology - dystopia du jour
• A Clockwork Orange media, television, drugs, and technology used for mind control. Also, lots of phalluses.
• Code 46 future dystopia with genetic engineering-related regulation and laws
• Cube totalitarian control of individuals - not sure how much technology is actually in this one...
• Dark City master race of aliens attempts to learn about the human mind; has elements of film noir & dark comic-book feel
• Desk Set fifties comedy romp in which an efficiency expert attempts to integrate computer technology into the research department of a network television station
• Donnie Darko schizophrenia, time travel, outstanding late-80's soundtrack - (director's cut recommended, but substantially different from original) - "John Hughes on acid"?
• Dopamine love story with a backdrop on the "artificial intelligence and biology" theme.
• Enemy of the State explores themes of government control over citizens using technology. Surveillance, privacy issues.
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind investigates what would happen if there were a technology to erase human memory.
• Existenz discusses the blurring of the real and the virtual in the context of a video game.
• Gattaca presents a picture of what life would be like after techniques for human genetic engineering are introduced into daily life.
• Hackers teenage cyber-thriller about "hackers" - explores some themes of statism vs individualism. Good for discussion of the hacker mythos (some truth here, but mostly fiction). Also starring Angelina Jolie as uber-hackstress.
• Johnny Mnemonic classic (bad?) cyberpunk movie showing intersection of memory and technology. Keanu learns to say "Whoa" in preparation for The Matrix.
• Jurassic Park typical Hollywood blockbuster (yawn) asks questions about "playing God" with biotechnology and genetic engineering.
• Lawnmower Man explores the darker side of virtual reality and artificial intelligence research. This is possibly the worst movie ever made.
• The Matrix is an iconic example of cyberpunk film, exploring the boundaries between simulations and reality.
• Metropolis Fritz Lang classic about how the future could result in dystopian society of "haves and havenots"
• Minority Report explores the nature of free will and individual choice in a society where technology can predict the future.
• The Net all about government control of individuals using computer technology. Highlights fears of and obsessions with technology. Individualism triumphs, but without the computer. Also one of the worst hacker movies ever made.
• Paycheck another movie exploring the link between technology, humanity, and memory.
• Pi schizophrenia, paranoia, and "numbers hacking" - a mathematician/data miner finds the secret number controlling both the stock market and the Torah.
• Primer time travel.
• Robocop details the creation of a crime-fighting cyborg
• Sneakers Robert Redford's band of merry hackers solves cryptographic crimes in post-Cold War early 1990s.
• Strange Days virtual reality via headsets; twist is that what is virtual now, was, at one time, real.
• Terminator classic cyborg story
• Thirteenth Floor virtual reality, gaming, what is real?
• THX 1138 future dystopican world in which humans are completely controlled by the government through mind-control drugs and the abolition of sex
• Tron boundaries between "man and machine" - typical 1980's sense of technology fear
• Twelve Monkeys schizophrenia and time travel as devices to explore what is real, what is fantasy.
• Videodrome old-school television media as mind-controlling device, early exploration of boundary between real and virtual
• Wargames highlights the 1980's preoccupation with whether computers represent promise or peril. What is real, what is artificial? When does machine triumph over man? Also, Ally Sheedy wearing ridiculous leg warmers. What could be better?