Author: vra230

My updated website:

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~vra230/week-3/website-1b/index.html

For my portfolio revision, I added upon the code that I had created for our first website project. I had already selected the colors and photos that I wanted to display on my page, so for this project I focused on formatting what was already there by using the CSS tools that we learned in class. The most challenging part of this project was formatting my “favorite things” page, which I wanted separate into two columns using the float and <div> tools. In this part of my website, I wanted to use images and minimal text to visually share my interests and favorite things. At first, I found it difficult for the code to respond in the way that I wanted it to and I struggled to remove some tricky grey borders that I was using as guides, but I eventually achieved the composition that I envisioned. A lot of my color code and font codes were done in-line due in index.html due to my experimentation before in my first draft. I found it difficult to completely remove these in-line codes so I left them in there, but next project I want to have a cleaner main index.html file with all of the extra details in the css file. I also found that it was very easy to get absorbed into the coding process and solve problems as they cropped up. Overall, I found this project very enjoyable and felt creatively challenged.

In Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message,” he makes the argument that it is important to consider the medium as its own entity that has meaning apart from the media or message that it transmits. He introduces excerpts from Shakespeare early in this essay to make the point that the act of innovating new mediums of communication can completely change the media landscape in unpredictable ways. For example, the invention of photography as a medium in the early 1800s can be interpreted as a method of surveillance though its wide use in the criminal justice system and in the pseudoscience of phrenology. Through these social circumstances, photography develops a history of prejudice and racism that attributes meaning to the medium. This supports McLuhan’s idea that mediums are not neutral vessels that suddenly gain meaning through the intent of the user or the message transmitted by the user.

To apply McLuhan’s concept of the medium to modern society, it is impossible to not make the connection to the technologies that have altered our social interactions, consumption of information, and our overall perspective on the world. As demonstrated in “The Machine Stops,” once society has adapted to living within a network of machinery and technology, the information that is communicated through the machine is secondary to the large-scale adjustments that have been made to our thinking as a society. Communication technologies have reorganized and restructured modern society to function within these medias that have become extensions of ourselves. It is easy to become absorbed within the mediums of modern media, but as a society, we should continue to question the cultural and philosophical implications that these mediums impose onto global civilization.

E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops,” written in 1909, imagines the condition of the future if humanity became entirely dependent on technology to complete the simplest tasks of life. It is remarkable that this narrative was written in the early 1900s since Forster has envisioned a future that has been partially realized in the present day. The Machine, the omniscient apparatus that has sheltered and assisted generations of subterranean humans, has advanced to the point that humans interact with nothing of substance besides its interface. Mother and son have not spoken face-to-face in decades, reproduction has been sterilized and regulated, ideas have been commodified, humans are deathly afraid of touching another human after years of isolation—These are all normalized consequences of the machine. After travelling to the surface of the earth, Kuno has the epiphany that “man is the measure” (12). Decades of bending to the rules and measurement of The Machine had caused man to forget himself, to forget that The Machine is not a fixed part of his existence. In the age of the internet and artificial intelligence, we often fear that our existences could be diminished or replaced by machines that have destroyed the essence of humanity and the organic state of nature.

Modern society has already been transformed into a civilization with wires running above and below ground, overtaking and winding around the Earth, to establish worldwide connection. As in Eckert’s fictional world, we rely on our personal devices and the internet to contact others that are physically far and also to “summon” items to ourselves (Eckert would be very impressed that he predicted the rise of Amazon). Although many new and exciting opportunities have emerged from the internet, it can also be argued that humans are hiding behind their devices and distancing themselves from reality. Technology has also affected our desire for direct experience by bringing us images, experiences, and stories from around that can stand in as a substitute for our own experiences. It is important for us as a society to be aware of the grip that machines have on us and occasionally step away from our device to see the world from beyond our screens.