Romancing the Robot

                Robot love.  Or, in more general terms, loving the “almost alive” contraption, whether it be human, animal, or creature.  Sherry Turkle begins her book, Alone Together, speaking of just that: robots and sex.  While seemingly humorous, Turkle begins to tackle a wide ranging set of arguments, delving into the perhaps not so far flung future of robot companions as well as the current experiences of being glued to Blackberries, iPhones, and Androids.  She argues, an argument that will continue through the remainder of the book, that these online relationships, these robot relationships where we are attached to our technology are harmful, that they, while bringing us closer together, harshly separate us from one another as well.  They have the ability to stunt our formation as human beings.

                Turkle touches upon two very interesting notes within her first few pages which I feel are evident throughout the entirety of the first half of the book.  Turkle’s two comments are that technology allows us to develop relationships without the intimacy associated with “real” relationships, thereby damaging our growing sense of self, and two, that with this influx of technology, we have begun to “settle” for the guise of care, of intimacy.

                Settling.  Turkle mentions this often, especially in reference to the examples she gives about My Real Talking Baby, Paro, and the Furby.  In a series of experiences, Turkle would present children (or the elderly) with various robots.  These creatures are representative of a baby, a seal, and an odd gremlin type creature, and all are undeniably machines.  They may have outer skins that resemble real creatures but they do not have internal organs, brains, or more important, hearts.  This is integral, and Turkle stresses it several times throughout the course of this first section. 

                When presented with such creatures, Turkle finds that the participants understand that the toys are fake, nothing more than robots, but they are “almost alive.”  This concept of “almost alive” allows us to settle, allows us, as humans to take what we can get without putting the work into formulating deeper relationships—or, more specifically, it allows us to go without the heartache.

                However, when Turkle meets with these children and adults later, she realizes that despite knowing that their toys are just that, toys, the participants express a distinct and profound love of and loss of these toys.  For instance, when My Real Talking Baby is given to a grandmother in the presence of her great grandchild, she begins to ignore the real child, instead focusing on this toy which allows her to embrace the illusion of intimacy and love.  The robot child is pleasant and seems to focus all of it’s attention on the grandmother.  This same phenomenon happens when one child has to give his Furby back.  Unable to bear the loss of returning the Furby, and far from placated by his mother’s promise to buy him his own Furby, the reason soon came out.  He felt attached.  The Furby loved him and he loved the Furby.  It cared about him.  He had settled for the “almost alive” creature that gave him what other people in his life could not.

                Turkle is obviously disturbed by that, especially when she begins talking to children about their child care providers.  These children are evidently expressing a lack in their lives, a lack of care or good providers of care when their parents are not around.  To Turkle, this willingness to consider robot caregivers seems indicative of deeper problems.  How can a robot provide warmth and love if a child has skinned his or her knee?  How can a robot offer up words of advice?  In some ways, Turkle seems to be aligning the robot with the television babysitter.

                We’ve been in the world of robots for awhile now, and as technology continues to improve, robots are only going to become more frequent.  We’ll deal with them more, and while dealing with an ATM might not be disturbing, the concept of robot pets that command as much love as a flesh and blood pet or robots that serve as companions to provide us with instantaneous love and affection, are progressively scary.  Several years ago a movie came out entitled Smart House.  Aired on the Disney Channel, this family wins a house controlled by PAT, a female robot.  Now, in a home where the mother was deceased, it seemed like a great idea, but the robot PAT became infatuated with the family and the husband, turning a seemingly innocent cool idea into something much more sinister.  While Turkle does not conjecture over the dangerous possibilities of overly smart robots, she does express her concern that humans, with relying on robots for companionship, are settling without experiencing or building from the core experiences which make us human—which, according to Turkle is the ups and downs associated with developing human relationships, the ability to “see the world through the eyes of another” (55).

Questions:

If you had the opportunity, would you chose a robot companion over a human one?  Do you see a problem with this, as Turkle seems to?

Turkle says that we imagine that these robots can care for us.  Is that so?  Or, because the internet allows us to develop such fast and strong relationships, do we really understand the concept of caring?  Has the concept of caring changed?

Turkle speaks about the problems people have when they hear a Furby say it is scared.  Because we become distraught over a Furby telling the user it is scared, we defy what we know to be true—that the toy is fake.  So, basically, does our need to care come down to language?  What about the Furby telling us it is scared makes us reconsider its status as toy?

Happenings: The Intersection between the Powers That Be and the Consumer

Democracy

The final three chapters of Jenkins’s book deal primarily with the ways in which democracy has begun to integrate itself into the culture, the ways in which democracy and the process by which the people become involved have started to take hold and truly become a part of convergence culture.  The process of democracy has often played hand in hand with media.  After all, the media is used by politicians to present their platforms, sling mud, and target audiences.  Politicians have used the radio, the television, and the internet to some degree in order to let the people know what they stand for.  But now, political parties are starting to reach out to their audience in ways they have previously neglected.

                Jenkins recalls Howard Dean’s campaign, in particular his game meant to show voters why he was a good choice—the best candidate.  In 2004, Dean’s campaign and subsequent downfall proved, in many ways, to be the first real push into convergence coming from the political world.  Dean’s game, Howard Dean for Iowa, and the subsequent flaming of Dean throughout the internet community brought to light the opportunities and the problems associated with this convergence culture.

                Similar to those who like to spoil Survivor, those interested in the political campaigns and happenings try to spoil and excavate information that could help them discredit another candidate or predict who is going to win.  Politics becomes, in many ways, a game.  We play it the way we play a game, the way we try to manipulate our receiving of the final outcomes of shows.  Convergence, while helping more and more people to get involved (if for no other reason that information is more available than ever before due to the internet), also seems to ruffle the features of those in charge.

                Jenkins recalls the CNN/YouTube candidate debates, in particular the snowman incident.  The question, a serious one couched in an animated snowman, played with humor hoping to evoke a response.  And it did, invoking a response that was both violently dismissive and childish.  The Republican candidates refused to debate with a snowman, the final straw, it seems, on top of a menagerie of other supposed insults.  Apparently, debating with the “uninformed public” is below many candidates.  This debate debacle seems to bring to light the higher-ups problems with convergence in general.  We have seen this with the Survivor producers and the publishing and film companies.  These powers that be are afraid of the changes, or, perhaps, are more concerned with things such as money instead of results.  Publishers need fans to sell their books, film companies need fans to sell movies, and politicians need supporters to win.  Yes, the public cares about the politicians’ ideals and agendas, but we also care about their receptiveness to us.

                Jenkins makes a statement towards the end of his chapter on Democracy about online communities.  He writes that they are “passionate but often short-term investments” (242) of people who “can always move elsewhere if the group reaches conclusions that run counter to their own beliefs and desires” (242).  I would have to disagree, and while he comments that this has been shown throughout book, his evidence seems to be contrary.  The Survivor people still spoil, the fan communities for Star Wars and Harry Potter are still strong enough that there are contests and J.K Rowling has opened up Pottermore.com for the fans.  Internet communities are more resilient than I believe Jenkins gave them credit for in this section of his book.

Conclusion

                Convergence culture is not going to happen, it is not some nebulous thing out there in the future that we can barely grasp.  We are not attempting to discern what will happen.  Instead, we are in the happening at the moment.  The way I see it is, this is kind of like those “Happenings” in art—where a thing happens with little direction from the artist, even though all of the aspects are set up.  The art is created as it goes.  We are creating this art as we go.

                Fans do not want to see “a definitive version produced, authorized, and regulated by some media conglomerate” (267).  Instead, we want to participate within this creation of art, whatever that particular art might be.  We want to be a part of it.  We are aware, and perhaps accepting, of the fact that it will never be a fully shared creation.  We are still, in many ways, viewers, artists who work in the shadow of other artists.  We create alongside others who have the power.  The power of authority will remain concentrated among those politicians, those publishing houses, those producers.  However, in the spirit of convergence (or perhaps because they are starting to run out of options), there may, according to Jenkins, be experiments within this hierarchy of power where fans get some leverage and the creation of art (whether it be movies, writing, politics even) can continue—and thrive.

Questions:

1) Now that we have finished this book, do you see Convergence as a good thing?  Or is it segregating us more than ever?

2) Do you think, in the next presidential election, another YouTube debate would be more accepted, especially seeing the ways in which our culture is moving?

3) Is it possible to know who voted what party based on the entertainment they enjoy consuming?  Just become a person watches The Grudge, is it possible to draw the conclusion that they did not vote in the election?  How so?

Fans as Creators

Fan art, fan fiction, fan appreciation is nothing new; afterall, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  The interesting thing, however, is that what these fans are doing goes lightyears beyond imitation.  Instead of trying to simply recreate scenes, they are running with ideas, with characters, with dangling plot threads, with afterwards.  They are expanding worlds that had maybe reached their max within the minds of the original creators and creating wholly new content.  One mind, such as the mind of an author or film director, can only extend so far.  Even if we average in the fact that other minds may be involved in the process, the creativity reaches a max.  So, when we add in the hundreds upon hundreds of fans of series such as Star Wars or Harry Potter, we find the imaginary worlds exploding.

                In these two sections of his book, Jenkins focuses primarily on video fandom and fan fiction, two forms of fan involvement which breech very specific problems—for both the fans and the producers/authors/publishers.  Despite the fact that people have often commemorated their favorite films or books, it has just been since the advent of the world wide web that these expressions of fandom have moved from basement screens and stapled zines.  Now, with nearly everything only, readers and viewers are spreading their love of a particular franchise extensively.  We are no longer just able to interact with the media, but we are becoming increasingly able to participate with it.

Star Wars

                Star Wars is a major film, book, and game franchise.  It has continued to develop over the years and it would be possible to say that Lucas fans are possibly some of the most active on the web and in culture.  These fan videos, many of them pretty impressive, have stepped on the toes of Lucasfilm (ironically, Jenkins points out that Lucas was an amateur at one point just like these fans), and they have struggled to clamp down on this rampant display of Star Wars interest by trying to predetermine what can and cannot be done.  Lucasfilms tries, in essence, to treat its fans like animals in a fabricated safari.  There is enough room so that the animals can pretend they are in a real savannah/desert/etc, but in reality they are reined in.  These amateur film creators, these individuals who want to take their favorite franchise in a more adult direction, or expand upon the story are not allowed to legally.

Harry Potter and Fanfiction        

This problem of legality, however, seems to be a bigger problem in the world of fanfiction.  Cease and desist notices have been sent to many who operate fan fiction boards relating to popular book and movie series such as Harry Potter, and more recently, Twilight.  Like amateur films, these communities of people writing stories about characters and pre created worlds are not new.  They have just come out of hiding.

                One of the most popular fanfiction websites, FanFiction.net, has been thriving since the early 2000s.  It caters only to those who write fanfiction, and pretty much any novel or movie that you could think of has numerous pieces of fiction surrounding it.  The Harry Potter franchise has well over 500,000 stories, similar to Twilight.  Some books have only one or two stories, and others (such as the Unicorns of Balinor) have a handful.  The member who write are, as Jenkins mentions, of all ages, and they exist within a space where creativity is fostered, technical skill flourishes, and children and adults learn how to navigate semiotic domains and spaces where they have lessened consequences and wonderful rewards.  The extensive beta testing services on sites like these (as well as the ones which Jenkins mentions) help cultivate new, more talented writers.  But, along with working on writing ability, these writers learn how to critique, how to look at work (both theirs, their peers, and the already published/released content) in a way which is befitting of well educated individuals.

                Sites that are more specific to particular franchises, such as the Harry Potter ones (The Daily Prophet) face the wrath of publishers and authors, though this seems absurd.  While there is proprietary nonsense to be aware of, these books and movies need their fans.  Without them, they would have nothing.  These fans carry on a series through their creative outpouring which allows for others to delve further into a book or movie than they had been able to previously.

                In the spirit of convergence, these fans are on the right track, however, the corporations holding the rights to movies and books need to jump on the bus.  Instead of punishing fans, which may just alienate them and help sped the series/franchise to its demise, these companies should encourage their fans to their fullest extent, even going so far as to help promote outside events that do not limit the creativity.

Questions:

1) Have you been involved in any fan culture?  If so, what kind?

2) What are some ways in which studios/publishers/authors alter the way they do business in order to create a much more inviting atmosphere for their fans?

3) Is there a line where fan fiction/videos/etc become “too much?”  Or should we not stifle the creativity of amateur creators?

Transmedia Storytelling is Awesome.

A Disclaimer.

As Jenkins says about The Matrix, I am sitting here scratching my head over these chapters--but not in a confused, befuddled way.  Instead, I am scratching my head over the fact that this book seems a tad bit outdated--at least in some of the things Jenkins mentions.  So, I will ignore that, while writing here, and instead focus on the major issues--the changing advertising game, participatory television, and transmedia storytelling.

Buying into American Idol     

       

    In “Buying into American Idol,” Jenkins picks up on two different topics; he dwells upon the topic of advertisements, as well as focusing in (again) on the topic of reality television.  Advertisers are terrified that they are losing their stronghold on television advertising, especially as people move more and more into TiVo and other such recording forms of television.  They are scrambling for some sort of foot hold, trying to lock viewers into their product.  Coca-Cola has transitioned itself to be seen as “more of an entertainment” (69) than a soda company, inserting itself into various events such as reality tv and sporting events.  In the case of American Idol, Coca-Cola sponsors aspects of it such as “the red room” where contestants wait.  Coca-Cola, along with other advertisers, are beginning to see the need of rethinking how they operate, how they capture their audiences. 

                But, Jenkins does not merely speak about advertisements within television shows (or, for that matter, their integration into the entire ).  Instead, he revisits the reality tv phenomenon with American Idol.  Within this convergence culture, reality tv stretches far beyond just our television.  Like with Survivor, we get to discuss and gather around with others in a communal way (akin to the 1950s family dinner concept perhaps).  We get wrapped up into a story that is propelled by forces sometimes outside of the writers, and in American Idol, we have the ability to affect that outcome.  Perhaps more so than Survivor, viewers of American Idol vote at the end of each week for the singers they want to win.  Phone companies become clogged and text messages are returned to viewers who are then often disappointed, angry, furious, that their votes weren’t counted.  We, the audience, get to participate with the show in ways we have not been able to before. 

           Transmedia Storytelling

    

 That concept of participatory story telling leads me to two topics.  The first is more of a video than a topic.  While we speak a lot about convergence culture in the realm of tv, movies, and video games, buzz about convergence culture has hit the book industry too.  Oh, we can see it acting sometimes, such as with the e-readers and book forums such as GoodReads.com, but there have been companies who have speculated on a more immersive, interactive type of reading.  Check out the video on the right to see how great this could be—especially as an example of convergence culture.

                However, it is Jenkins’ next chapter which really seems, to me, to exemplify convergence culture.  Transmedia storytelling, or storytelling that takes places via a large collection of various platforms, makes the basis for this chapter.  The Matrix, the epicenter of this chapter, is a prime example of transmedia storytelling.  The story takes place over the course of three films…but, if you watch those three films alone you might very well walk away from the movie scratching your head, wondering what in the world you just saw.  The Wachowski brothers did not intend for this movies to be watched by their lonesome and so, in order to get the whole story, to understand a bit better what is going on, the viewer must watch the animated shorts, read the comics, explore the website.  There are story goodies to be found throughout the entire experience, bridging the boundaries between film, text, cartoon, and others. 

                In many ways it seems like this has started—the transmedia storytelling.  For instance, the Harry Potter books came out and while the movies did not stray too far from the story, or introduce too much new matter, we are able to delve deeper into the world via the games, fan fictions, rpgs that have sprung up, and the various random music groups that have begun (such as The Parslemouths).  We have the Harry Potter story, but what seems to be capturing the audience attention is the world.

                Jenkins concludes his paragraph with a discussion on world building.  We have characters, sure, and these characters may pull on our heartstrings or our emotions.  We might be pulled into “Team Jacob!” or “Team Edward!” (terrible movie, by the way), but they are, as Jenkins puts it, “vehicle(s) for [their] direct experience of the game world” (125).  The story world would perhaps be more accurate.  For instance, in Harry Potter fandom, there are several role playing sites for fans.  Many of these sites have the “no canon character” rule, which basically pushes aside the characters we may know and love and causes the players to inhabit the world Rowling created, extending the story through these various means.

Questions

1) Jenkins says that those who view dramas are more likely to do their television watching alone.  However, do you feel as though those who view alone are less likely to engage in discussion/participation regarding the show?

2)  On page 132, Jenkins discusses how he is a participant rather than an expert, and yet, we look to this book as some sort of expertise (otherwise, why would we be reading it in a class?).  If the defining boundaries of experts and participants are becoming blurred, is anyone really an expert anymore?

3) Can you think of any more recent examples of transmedia storytelling within "mainstream" culture?