Author: Sebastian Lau

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Week 2: CSS Website – Sebastian Lau (Chen)

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~shl620/week2/aboutmecss.html

For my updated CSS page I changed the background color of the webpage and the color of the text. While I found it quite straightforward, I had trouble with giving my sections a background color without it covering the whole line. I searched up how I could restrict the background color to only the text that it was supposed to affect and I got this: 

display: inline-block;

Another problem I had was aligning my image to a different area. At first, I thought I had to use “align”, but after going back to Thursday’s example I realized that I had used the wrong command and instead used “left”. 

I utilized a Google font to use the Quattrocento font for the text in my lists of hobbies. It was quite straightforward as Google fonts lets you just copy and paste the required code to implement the font style. I also used hexadecimal code to get my colors for the text as I wanted it to be close to the color of the background. 

I tried using the “a:hover” command on the image and link, however, I wasn’t sure if it was considered a css command. I think if I used it in the .html document I might’ve been able to get it to work, but I was unsure how to combine classes and the “a.hover” command. 

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Week 2: Understanding Comics – Sebastian Lau (Chen)

One thing I found quite interesting was how different panel transitions were more frequently utilized in different cultures. This reminded me of the medium is the message as the Japanese style of utilizing relatively fewer action scenes and focusing more on the environment was indicative of the cultural differences (perhaps the Japanese take in their environment and enjoy it whereas Westerners are more focused on moving forward?).

Another aspect of this is how realistic the environment and facial features are. While one might think that more realistic facial features would be more appealing (especially as movies are trending to more and more realistic looks as CGI improves) it actually can detract from the reader’s ability to empathize or identify with a character. While how realistic a character looks should be irrelevant to how much we identify them, we still do it unconsciously which can make the medium (the character) the message (we want you to identify or hate this character).

Yet another way this is presented is the use of icons and how we give them meaning even though in a comic they can make literally anything. The message of the content is the meaning we ascribe to it, not necessarily what it actually shows, there is no correct or right way to understand an icon. Even for people who do know the icon might have different perspectives on its meaning. 

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Week 2: Response to Marshall McLuhan – Sebastian Lau (Chen)

From what I did comprehend from the passage the author is arguing that the medium of the message is indicative of our society rather than the content of the message itself. This is because the mediums which we employ are a result of what society wants. I agree with this sentiment to an extent in that the content of the message remains somewhat consistent as humanity progresses. People will always want pleasure and the mediums we develop are a direct product of our desires. For example, in The Machine Stops one could argue that the people are like us, they desire efficiency and control. However, because they communicate or acquire their food via different mediums we consider them to be much different, even though what they talk about or what they order is similar to what we would. When I think about our discussion about how film captures people with darker skin in a less optimal way I can see why the medium is the message. The message with film is that people with darker skin didn’t matter as much to society. If they did, then perhaps film wouldn’t have been such a success as they would be missing out on a bigger market, but because people with lighter skin were the majority of film’s consumers it was fine. 

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Week 1: Response to Ainu article and WCS articles – Sebastian Lau (Chen)

I found the data on the Tegner to be quite interesting and somewhat comprehensive. One set of data that stuck out to me was the list of shark sightings in New York. I was surprised by how many sharks there were around the state, but unfortunately, a significant number were just labeled as “shark”. If we were to make an interactive map or something similar of the sharks around New York, it would have to just be about the number of sharks in general, not the kinds of sharks as many were unidentified. However, we could have sets of information on the page so that people could still learn about the different species. The Seascape article also mentioned keeping the waters clean and I think it would be a good opportunity to also educate people on how pollution affects the diverse aquatic wildlife. Even though the data is set in New York I feel like it would also be a good opportunity to decry certain practices such as shark fishing for the production of shark fin soup (which is more a delicacy in China) as the procedure is quite inhumane. 

I read the article Ainu Success: the Political and Cultural Achievements of Japan’s Indigenous Minority. The cultural divide between the Japanese and Ainu is quite severe and the Ainu people have been suppressed. Because of that, I think we could help spread the unfairly suppressed Ainu culture with designs similar to Ashley (I think that is her name) or Jenny’s interactive projects. Ashley’s perfume/fragrance line would fit well with the objective I am trying to achieve as that’s what the original project did: explore other people’s cultures. Not only would people be able to see the Ainu culture from different Ainu people, but there is lots of room to explore different mediums, not just text, but videos or pictures which could be more engaging. Jenny’s text based interactive story could also be a nice way of introducing people to Ainu culture. I was thinking of a set of topics that could be explored, like food or dance, and clicking on the people would reveal what they think about said topic. 

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Week 1: Response to Short History of the Internet and Long Live the Web – Sebastian Lau (Chen)

While reading the two passages there were some parts that stuck out to me in terms of how it connected to The Machine Stops by E.M Forster. After reading these passages I felt like my knowledge of what the Internet is has increased and has made me view it as something more dangerous than I would have otherwise thought. 

In Short History of the Internet the author writes about how the internet is formed of many nodes that connect to each other, with the purpose of having a less linear communication system in the sense that if one node goes offline, it doesn’t mess up the whole system. While of course, this has helped make the Internet more reliable as it is hard to shut down completely, I feel like this fact is a cause of at least some concern. From what I understand about the way the nodes work if there ever is the need to completely eradicate the Internet for whatever reason then it would be almost impossible without a heavily coordinated effort. I think that is somewhat concerning because there are so many ways that the Internet could affect our lives, and it is getting harder and harder to get away from it. I would kind of compare it to how the Machine permeates everybody’s life and it’s almost impossible to get away from it. The people couldn’t stop it because they either didn’t care or because the Machine was so big that it was almost impossible to stop anyways. As a result, the Machine became ingrained in everybody’s life and when it started malfunctioning nobody would be able to survive if they tried to adapt to the new world. 

When I was reading Long Live the Web I found the idea of a less free Internet to be disturbing. There is already evidence of this with China where many sites get censored to stifle anti-Chinese media and while there is a problem of “fake news” in the U.S I think I would rather have more access to lots of information even if there is a chance for it to be false. I would liken the censorship of the Internet to the censorship of the outside world in The Machine Stops. Because the outside world is barred to the people they never get to know about it and are content with their version of the world because they never experienced anything else. On a somewhat unrelated note, I feel like this is a good argument for traveling in terms of experiencing new cultures and that people who are willing to learn more about the world will tend to be less close-minded.