Computer is an excellent tool for dealing with logical related tasks. As Fuller (2003) stated, “software's basis in boolean logic, where every action must be transmogrified into a series of ons and offs.” Computer can replaced us as calculator, extra storage space for our brain, an extension for our finger. However, human brain also possess visual, space, memory, experience process ability, and also parts that take charge of our body. We do not see things exactly like another person nor computer, as Gregory’s (1997) Visual Assumption Theory states that we perceive what we see based on expectations, beliefs, prior knowledge, and past experiences, as calculated assumptions and we are typically correct in those assumptions.
No matter how smart a computer is, the output signal cannot directly pass to cognition system inside our brain, as Goldstein (2009) stated that “all perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical or chemical stimulation of the sense organs”. Thus considering all output from computer without doubt is as same as giving our decision making ability and solitude for a machine, or the power behind that machine – another human being or an organization. We should believe in our already existed abilities and we should not believe that there is the best decision based on algorithm made from limited condition.
Text is a common language between human and human, and human and machine. It is a high-level language for machines as it can have different meanings based on different context. However, with the natural language process related studies and new machine learning system, text can be downgraded into binary code or cut into pieces to trigger out other functions in a computer network. Text can be considered as a high-level language for human too, as it required the high ability of cognitive skill for understanding, and the generated results within each human brain are different. While the picture is considered as the most understandable information for human, it is still hard for a machine to understand at the moment. However, with the manual recognizing of human on the images, it teaches the machine to recognize things through categorization, thus can provide us with the related media rather than text. In human sense, text is not just zeros and ones, they are language, that provides our linkages, image, and memories.
As Fuller (2003) claimed, “The way the computer makes available such use, and the assumptions made about what possible interactions might develop, are both fundamentally cultural.” The technologies today focuses on how to extract the data from the input signal, such as our finger movement, voice and even heartbeat. The focus of information display system today is still machine-centered, beneficial for machines to communicate with each other, regardless of the already developed image synthesis technologies. Can we center the information display to back for beneficial for human understanding between human? And help to pass information to the and multi-demensional brains of humans?
“I Will Help You Visualizing And Auralizing And More” is a programme written in HTML and Javascript language which just contains 18000 bytes of data unit. It is a text written to link the already existed JavaScript and methods on the Internet to help translate the text input from the users to retrieve the related images generated by Flickr though the parsing of the natural language process programme into different categories, such as person, adjective, noun and verb. At the same time, the speech generated by the speech synthesizer will be played. It is based on the thought to help users speed up the recognition process of text. However, it reveals the never expected aspect about Internet as a culture and politic.
As the programme run, the pictures upload from the Flickr users and the words from each category pop up and accumulate on the computer screen during the running of each sentence, as a continue mapping of the content, leaving a navigable map that users can freely scroll up and down to see at anytime. The accumulated images are not aligned properly as they are in different sizes, and appear in unpredictable speed. Chun (2006) mentioned that cyberspace is constantly changing and fundamentally unnamable. The programme manifest this idea. The perception of the information changed according to the feed from the Internet community differently each time when running the programme.
The words shown on the screen are just merely recognizable to the subconscious level in the users’ mind. As Skulover (1990) mentioned:
In the rapid-fire flow of conversational speech, words are not fully articulated. The first sounds of names hardly enter our consciousness. By the seeing of bearing text, we do not really see them. we merely recognize them by their primary characteristics. […] We know that it exists because of its position in space, but we see only its surface. Gradually, under the influence of this generaliz ing perception, the object fades away.
By turning each word into an image, we give weight to the word, which is just an ASCII code anymore. It became more powerful than a symbol that can easily input through the key on the keyboard, we will turn our perception on a word into something tangible and relatable. Manovich contends that ‘‘no space in cyberspace’’ ( quoted in Chun 2006). However, this programme generates a synthesized space and bring a close relationship between you and the text, with the space and a flow of time.
The aesthetic of the “I Will Help You Visualizing And Auralizing And More” is linked with other tissues from the internet. Thus the contents of it determined by other writers and the general Internet users. For example, the image aesthetic is determined by the Flickr users but not Google Image Search, which creates a more emotional based atmosphere, such that when you search an object, pictures with background shown, but not just the item. This is due to the reason that a big amount of images uploaded to Flickr are for the purpose of blogging. The speech synthesizer and the natural language process is determined by the programmer who designed them. Therefore, the aesthetic of the web page can be considered as the synthesizer of the open and free part of the Internet landscape.
We are obsessed with a more noiseless representation of the real world. Thus virtual reality equipment, three-dimensional images, and 360-degree representation of space are created. We hope to copy the real world into the virtual space and thus understand the world more thought captured the object. However, as I mentioned above, objects, text, the representation cannot deliver the message. An object captured separated from the connected environment cannot give you a real understand to the world, especially in creating a new dimension and yet undefined space – the internet. We do not need to copy the reality into this space, so as to make sense of the world. What is the noise in the channel is the the obstacles prevent from deliver information and the neglected focus on how human conceived information in terms of emotion, experience, ideas and that other human beings want us to receive.
With the benefit of Internet, human can be more independent. However, it creates an interesting paradox. We no longer depend on other human, but at the same time, we rely on the connection to the Internet, through our cables. The Internet is an extension of ourselves, it connected our nervous system to the bigger world, with others, with a system that consists of the machine and other human beings. Do we be more independent or do we depend on the same system thus turn to be homogeneous?
Through the construction of my ideal channel for freely deliver the message, I realized the unwillingness of the big cooperates who own the information, such as Google and Yahoo, to share their information, make us not able to see the idea through a complete picture of the Internet – the Internet’s complete vision. Although we can still perceive information through searching through their search engine, not in a way that we want.
With such an alteration of the way for us to conceive information, will our way of thinking also change? As Kittler said: "Our writing tools are also working on our thoughts” and "Technology is entrenched in our history" (quoted in Kittler 1999). Latour (1994) also mentioned:
Human and computer are interwoven. Technology is not separable from the society and on the human. The mistake of the dualist paradigm was its definition of humanity. Even the shape of humans, our very body, is composed in large part of sociotechnical negotiations and artifacts.
Whether we influence the technology through the images we share to the Flickr and the text we input, or the technology changed the way we perceive information, is no longer separable.
"After a week" of typewriting practice, Kittler Nietzsche wrote, "the eyes no longer have to do their work”: écriture automatic had been invented, the shadow of the wanderer incarnated (quoted in Kittler 1999). Whether our brain will no longer adapt to process texts or it will strengthen the visualization and auralization of text is a question.
However, in order to make a smart machine, there must be a smarter person behind. In order to achieve a better language perceive system, there must also be people who aim at learning cognition. Without human participating in the society, there is also no need for machines, to achieve our will for manage and understand the world. Therefore, I believe that the human still evolving, like it used to be, but with the technology as their accompany in the society.
Chun, W. (2006). Control and freedom. 1st ed. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, p.39.
Fuller, M. (2003). Behind the blip. 1st ed. Brooklyn, NY, USA: Autonomedia, p.13.
Goldstein, E. (2009). Sensation and perception. 1st ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, pp.5-7.
Gregory, R. (1997). Knowledge in perception and illusion. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, [online] 352(1358), pp.1121-1127. Available at: http://www.richardgregory.org/papers/knowl_illusion/knowledge-in-perception.pdf
Latour, B. (1994). On technical mediation. 1st ed. Lund, Sweden: Lunds universitet, p.64.
Manovich, L. (2001). The laguage of New Media. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Nietzsche, letter of August 20-21, 1881, in idem 1975-84, pt. 3, I: II7.
Shklovskiĭ, V. and Sher, B. (1990). Theory of prose. 1st ed. Elmwood Park, IL, USA: Dalkey Archive Press, p.5.
Kittler, F., Winthrop-Young, G. and Wutz, M. (1999). Gramophone, film, typewriter. 1st ed. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, p.200.