Media Morphosis

The Internet chews up media and spits them out again. Sometimes they get more robust. Sometimes they get more profitable. Sometimes they die.It's a scary thought, especially if you're personally attached to an old medium like movies, books, records, or newspapers.

But just because an industry is socially worthy, it doesn't follow that it is commercially viable. Today, besides newspapers, three other media are thrashing over their futures in a networked world, and as with newspapers, the rhetoric is mostly of the nonproductive "But I like it!" and "It's good for society!" variety, with not enough thought given to whether these media are commercially viable in the Internet age.

Newspapers
The imminent collapse of the American newspaper industry has spawned entire gazeteers' worth of high-minded handwringing about the social value of newspapers and the social harm that their disappearance will unleash. It's probably all true.Newspapers are fundamentally an advertising-supported medium. Advertisers place ads in newspapers because they believe these ads will sell more products for them. The price of an ad is set by factors such as: How many people will see the ad? Who is likely to see the ad? Are they the sort of people who are likely to want to buy what the ad is selling? What happened to newspapers is easy to understand: There are more and better ways for an advertiser to deliver ads of similar quality to the "spendiest" newspaper readers, most of them on the Internet.

Movies
Big-budget movies require a lot of capital and rely on studios controlling the rate and nature of distribution of the finished product. If you're going to recoup your $300 million box-office turd, you need to move lots of DVDs, TV licenses, and assorted "secondary" revenues.
Let's be realistic here: Nothing anyone does is going to make it harder to get movies when you want them, where you want them, and at whatever price you feel you should pay for them and the harder you crack down on Internet movie-downloading, the more attractive you make buying pirate DVDs -- a virtually zero-risk transaction that directly displaces DVD purchases.
Now, maybe film studios can do what Magnolia Pictures is doing -- distributing day-and-date releases to satellite, pay-per-view, cinema, DVD, and foreign film - and recapture a lot of the money. But if it's not enough, commercially motivated BBMs might simply die. Besides BBMs demands a technological reality that has ceased to exist-- just enough technology to distribute the films, but not so much technology that the audience gets to overrule your distribution decisions.
Making stuff for the Net just doesn't cost as much the audiovisual material we're used to see. It may not be as pretty, but it's very cheap.

CDs
The problem was that the record industry was built on per-unit income from CDs (and records and tapes and so on). The economics of this stink. Besides they produce a great number of failures for each success they make.Whatever profitability there is in the system is seriously jeopardized by the music-listening public's ability to get any song they want, at any time, for any price (including free). And, just as with movies, it's never going to get harder to copy music without permission. Now the good news: The more your music gets copied, the more people there are who will pay to see you perform it live. This may not support a record label with offices on five continents, but it can probably put a comparable (if not larger) amount of money into the pockets of a comparable (if not larger) quantity of artists. But as a category, the future's looking good for recorded music and the musicians who make it.

Books
This one's more of a mixed bag. On the one hand, Internet copying of printed matter is impossible to prevent. On the other hand, for many kinds of books -- long-form narratives, for instance -- reading off a screen is a poor substitute for the standard support. The bad news for books is twofold: First, the quantity and variety of titles carried outside of bookstores has radically declined, thanks to the rise of national big-box chain stores, who do all ordering from a centralized database. The other problem is that we're increasingly conditioned to read short blocks of text -- more text than ever, but in radically different form than you generally find between covers. Combine this with the sheer amount of read-for-pleasure text available at one-click's distance on the Net, and even those of us who worship books find ourselves reading fewer of them.Now for the good news: It doesn't cost much to write a novel neither to produce it.

Celebrity & Gossip

Why are we interested in famous people? Why do we love gossip? Society generally dictates that gossip is just a guilty pleasure. Nevertheless gossip accomplishes important social functions. It allows us to make easy, non-threatening connections with strangers in social situations. Gossip can also provide us with information used for the everyday human interaction.

Why celebrities are not heroes and often not respected – but still famous ?

Eckhart Tolle talks about fame in his book A New Earth. He puts it into context of individual and collective ego enhancing behavior. Both the fan and the celebrity are enhancing their sense of self. They are both being selfish for their own reasons. The fan uses the famous person to enhance their sense of self by association and/or by gossiping. Ego’s are attracted to bigger ego’s. Likewise the famous person wants people to acknowledge and boost their own ego, verifying to them what they tell themselves is their identity. It is a process of mind identification which brings this about. The ego, the thinking mind, is comparative. The reason the celebrity is famous is because we compare him/her to other people who might be more or less famous, or not at all famous.

The hidden function of the existence of celebrities would be to secure the consent of ordinary people to the unequal distribution of rewards, in a unfair absence of genuine equality of opportunity. Basically, you accept an unfair, arbitrary system if you think it’s nonetheless fair, almost random. Becoming famous is a question of luck – and you just wish you’ll be one of the lucky fews in the limo. In this scenario there should be a constant renewal of living celebrities – by contrast with a system with more perenial stars, or (dead, mythical) legendary figures : it shows that there is actually room for newcomers, and entertains every body’s dream to get his moment of fame.

But then, if being famous is about being noticed and admired, you must known that you won’t be admired for any quality of yours – but just for being lucky, which anyone could have been.

Evolution of modern science

In recent times, and especially over the past quarter century:the following trends emerged:
1. Scientific integrity has become a live issue in public culture.
2. Academia and industry as scientific work environments have converged in all sorts of ways.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, doing science was typically more of an avocation than a job. In the 17th century, the great chemist R. Boyle not only financed his science out of his own pockets but also shared a common view that doing science as a "trade" was demeaning. Anyone who accepted money to pursue knowledge would compromise their integrity. Newton, as professor of mathematics at Cambridge, was not paid to do physical or mathematical research but to teach. The 19th century's most famous scientist, Charles Darwin, was never paid to do science. Einstein's three great papers of 1905 were not part of his job specifications. True, over the course of history,
many scientific researchers were in academic employment, but with few exceptions, before the 20th century, the job of a science professor was not to produce new knowledge but to transmit and safeguard the existing one.

The transformation of science from a calling to a job happened during the course of the past century. Indeed, science is arguably the world's youngest profession: The routinization of the paid role is less than a hundred years old; the word "scientist," coined in 1840, was not in standard usage until the early 20th century. Actually almost no one agrees with boyle in that "taking
money to do science will compromise it's integrity"..

The "engineers" and the enterprising scientists whose discoveries can be turned to cures,
power, and, of course, profit are become the most prestigious sort of practitioner, the contemporary culture heroes.

The dissolution of boundaries between academia and industry has given enormous strength to modern science: resources to do what scientists want to do, time to do it, and the reputation that comes from aligning science with the concrete goods — better communications, better health and more energy-efficient products. And if the scientists inhabiting such institutions can now make a good living that too augments the value that our sort of society grants to science.

As we enter the 21st century, new institutional configurations for doing science emerge, together with new scientific agendas and new conceptions of what it is to be a scientist. Some participants and observers of the scene celebrate these changes; others are seriously worried about them. We can be sure of only one thing: The identity of the modern scientist is, in every possible sense, a work in progres.

What is mathematics?

Mathematics is often defined as the study of quantity, magnitude, and relations of numbers or symbols. It embraces the subjects of arithmetic, geometry, algebra, calculus, probability, statistics, and many other special areas of research.

There are two major divisions of mathematics: pure and applied. Pure mathematics investigates the subject solely for its theoretical interest. Applied mathematics develops tools and techniques for solving specific problems of business and engineering or for highly theoretical applications in the sciences.

Mathematics is pervasive throughout modern life. Baking acake or building a house involves the use of numbers, geometry, measures, and space. The design of precision instruments, the development of new technologies, and advanced computers all use more technical mathematics.

Mathematics is the science of structure, order, and relation that has evolved from elemental practices of counting, measuring, and describing the shapes of objects. It deals with logical reasoning and quantitative calculation, and its development has involved an increasing degree of idealization and abstraction of its subject matter.

Ancient history
Mathematics first arose from the practical need to measure time and to count. Thus, the history of mathematics begins with the origins of numbers and recognition of the dimensions and properties of space and time. The earliest continuous records of mathematical activity that have survived in written form are from the 2nd millennium BC. The Egyptian pyramids reveal evidence of a fundamental knowledge of surveying and geometry as early as 2900 BC.

The Greeks were the first to develop a truly mathematical spirit. They were interested not only in the applications of mathematics but in its philosophical significance, which was especially appreciated by Plato. They developed the idea of using mathematical formulas to prove the validity of a proposition. Aristotle, engaged in the theoretical study of logic, the analysis of correct reasoning. No previous mathematics had dealt with abstract entities or the idea of a mathematical proof.

Middle Ages
Indian mathematicians were especially skilled in arithmetic, methods of calculation, algebra, and trigonometry. Aryabhata calculated pi to a very accurate value of 3.1416. Because Indian mathematicians were not concerned with such theoretical problems as irrational numbers, they were able to make great strides in algebra. Their decimal place-valued number system, including zero, was especially suited for easy calculation. Indian mathematicians, however, lacked interest in a sense of proof. Most of their results were presented simply as useful techniques. One of the greatest scientific minds of Islam was called al-jabr who became known as algebra. Consequently, the numbers familiar to most people are still referred to as Arabic numerals.

Social Interaction

There is an appalling article by Sigman where he explains how to pick evidence in order to analyze the correlations among the facts of developing cancer and using Fasebook. His claim is that electronic media, and particularly the use of social networking sites, are leading us to interact face-to-face less and that this has health risks. To begin with he proves the hypothesis that as social media increases face to face interaction decreases. Then he gives evidence that loneliness is associated with various biological effects and health risks.

What I do not agree here is that social networks do necessarily need to diminish face to face relations, they could be an other communication media such as the cellphone, that did not replace physical interaction: on the contrary it generally facilitates it. I suspect that factor that makes people more reticent to meet a friend in person is not related, as plain as this doctor suggests, it must be a much more complex phenomena that is taking place in the actual society.

Probably most people that use mainly internet to relate to others had previous social problems. This communication media allows them to relate to others, in a limited way, and also helps them feel less lonely. It can also help them overcame their social problems by using this communication media to practice and learn their interpersonal skills.

A decade ago, a detailed classic study of 73 families who used the internet for communication, The Internet Paradox, concluded that greater use of the internet was associated with declines in communication between family members in the house, declines in the size of their social circle, and increases in their levels of depression and loneliness. They went on to report “both social disengagement and worsening of mood... and limited face-to-face social interaction... poor quality of life and diminished physical and psychological health” (Kraut et al, 1998).This study was indeed a classic. It was so important that the same research team followed up the same participants several years later and published their results in a study called Internet Paradox Revised.What they found was that the negative effects reported in the first study had disappeared, and that the internet use was associated with better a social life.

solitude

The two emotions, loneliness and boredom, are closely allied. They are also both characteristically modern. The Oxford English Dictionary's earliest citations of either word, at least in the contemporary sense, date from the 19th century ... Loneliness is not the absence of company, it is grief over that absence. The lost sheep is lonely; the shepherd is not lonely. But the Internet is as powerful a machine for the production of loneliness as television is for the manufacture of boredom. If six hours of television a day creates the aptitude for boredom, the inability to sit still, a hundred text messages a day creates the aptitude for loneliness, the inability to be by yourself. Some degree of boredom and loneliness is to be expected, especially among young people, given the way our human environment has been attenuated. But technology amplifies those tendencies. You could call your schoolmates when I was a teenager, but you couldn't call them 100 times a day. You could get together with your friends when I was in college, but you couldn't always get together with them when you wanted to, for the simple reason that you couldn't always find them. If boredom is the great emotion of the TV generation, loneliness is the great emotion of the Web generation. We lost the ability to be still, our capacity for idleness. They have lost the ability to be alone, their capacity for solitude.

Shake the disease

Alexithymia causes difficulty in understanding, differentiating and communicating emotional states. One of the predominant characteristics on the relationship level is a limited capacity of having emotional connections with people since they are not able to see both in themselves and in others the shades of emotion, just the ones considered good or bad. Another characteristic of alexithymics is an attenuated capacity of controlling their impulses, so much so that some of them discharge the tension caused by the unpleasant inner states by compulsive acts, such as abusing food or substances, or through distorted sexual behavior.

Its symptomatollogy include dissociative experiences, low self-esteem, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and also a tendency to develop internet addiction. The difficulty in identifying emotions is associated in a significant way with an elevated risk of developing Internet addiction. On the other side an emotionally impoverished world along Internet addiction (or any other gadget or media like addiction). Addiction to technologies and emotional impoverishment are, in my opinion, codependent. If it is true that alexithymia promotes addiction, excessive use of technologies which in its turn leads us to a “second-hand” emotional life and a disconnection from the place where the emotions get activated, recognized and mature.

An incapacity of identifying emotions means a major risk of addiction. This makes me observe that lack of awareness on our own emotions (and our inner life in general) leading us to act mechanically and become servomechanisms of technology.If we do not understand what we feel, don’t listen to ourselves, consequently we’ll not get to know ourselves, and our lives will depend on external stimuli, which will trap us repeatedly. Therefore, our identities will depend on external inputs, since we’ll not have any other identity, apart from the one which is mirrored in the Net.

An alexithymic’s limited introspective life is a condition which is replicated in everybody who lives in a continuous flow of information, paying attention only to the inputs which come from the outside. The internal life and capacities for introspection become more and more impoverished, and it becomes more difficult to transfer attention from the external to the internal. The awareness of our feelings is an embodied process as much as a mental one, while using the Internet limits us to a mental sphere which takes us away from the connection with the body, taking the awareness of feelings even farther away.

Awareness of our own emotions prevents the dissociative experiences typical of alexithymics because it keeps our feet on the ground and anchors us to the body. Since ever, the best way to gain insight to our emotions – and not just that – is meditation; where the flow of information is only witnessed, made aware, and not acted upon. Fundamentally not clicked.