Cyberculture – Page 4 – Cubilone's Dimension

LINK: MY STRUGGLE WITH SOCIAL MEDIA AND OTHER ESSAYS

My Struggle with Social Media: A Diatribe on Ego and Honesty

…so if I unfriend or ignore you online, I hope you understand. But if you see me go on some friending frenzy you’ll know I found something worth telling the world about. I will have found a banner I can wave that doesn’t read, “Look at me!” Rather, it might read, “Look at us. Poor, sorry, beautiful us.”

A Philosopher’s Guide to Facebook Envy

“It’s a real taboo to mention envy, but if there is one dominant emotion in modern society, that is envy…”

– Alain de Botton

Do you ever feel negative emotions while browsing the web? If you do you’re not alone. A recent study showed 1 in 3 people feel more depressed after visiting social media sites like Facebook. Psychologists call this phenomenon as ‘Facebook envy’.

Best-selling philosopher Alain Botton has pointed out that because Facebook envy is one of the least talked about emotions, it has the power to potentially destroy your life and prevent you from achieving your dreams. To stop this from happening to you, Alain de Botton has invented what he calls the ‘envy diary technique’.

By using the envy diary technique outlined in this post you’ll be able to transform negative emotions like Facebook envy, jealously and frustration into motivation and confidence, allowing you to achieve your goals with more speed and more ease.

The Envy Diary Technique

Whenever you feel envy:

Acknowledge it.

Write down the cause.

Repeat.

Look for a pattern.

Social Media is Distorting Your Creative Vision, and You Don’t Even Know It

What drives your creative work? Money? Fame? Success? If you’re an artist, you’re probably answering “no way”— meaning drives you. Finding purpose or making your life meaningful is your deepest priority, even if it’s not the priority you act on most. (Let’s face it, if living a meaningful life consisted of following an indubitable recipe, we’d all do it. But it doesn’t.)

Whether subtly or profoundly, we all experience this drive for meaning. And though the cause of this drive seems unidentifiable, it’s by searching for it that we add meaning to our lives. Art is just one way we undertake this search. The difficulty, though, with making art is remaining honest, and often our truest desires get supplanted with the desires of others. If you’re struggling to find artistic fulfillment, it may have nothing to do with your skill set or methodology, and everything to do with unquestioned motivations.

For some time now my own work (writing) has felt polluted. I’ve struggled to achieve a sense of honesty, so I recently began exploring why. What I found is an intoxicating ideology and social media as the dominant carrier of it. Together they chloroformed me, stifling my creativity and sapping the pleasure from my work.

EARWORM GARDEN // ESTO NO ES CAFÉ

Laura invited me yesterday to some bar at José Enrique Rodó 1830. Some of her friends were playing music, along with two other acts: a guy who played the guitar kind of experimentally and did the Hun-Huur-Tu thing with this throat (but more skillfully than Hun-Huur-Tu themselves, it seemed to me) and another one I missed forever because it was time to catch the bus back home.

It was 100 pesos for the entrance (~31 pesos to a euro; when I got here 4 weeks ago it was 29—I’m rich!) and another 100 pesos for a strange kind of alcoholic beverage people drink a lot in Uruguay that tastes very much like Fisherman’s Friend. Imagine that, with coke.

A few minutes after I got my drink, her friends started playing their music. The whole concert reminded me of the very first venues in Rock Band, when you first set out and play the easy songs, where supposedly only your friends and some of their friends, at best, come and see you. They were amateur musicians, you could tell: their songs were mostly uncomplicated, and they had a bunch of different instruments, such as unusual percussion (e.g. the lower jaw of a cow, complete with teeth) and types of guitars I would imagine the likes of Inti-Illimani would always keep within arm’s reach. One or two of them were more skilled, but the group as a whole was not. They would go in and out of tune in their polyphonic segments etc. Nevertheless, they left me with a positive impression. I thought they were an interesting group, doing what they enjoy, not caring about perfection and not being scared to experiment in front of an audience.

Then, from the minute I woke up today on, one particular song from yesterday keeps playing in my head. It’s the one in the media player above. It’s a recording I made with my smartphone, that is why the quality is abysmal (I can hear my H2n’s vindictive laugh from the corner—that’s what you get for not having proper sound recording equipment with you ALWAYS ). I can tell that what they’re singing in the chorus is probably “esto no es café” (this isn’t coffee), and I can catch some of the rest of the words but the quality of the recording is so bad and the skill level required for understanding sung language is so high I’m not even bothering.

All that’s nice and good, but something soon dawned on me after listening to his recording a couple of times: I will probably never listen to this song in better quality. This is it.

In this day and age where every original song has a proper recording done in a studio and posted on Youtube, problems like one-off performances, live recordings or poor reproduction quality due to technical reasons seem absurd and things of the lo-tech past. But here we are: an earworm of a song I will never listen to in better quality. If this band never played again, this song would live in posterity in the form of this shitty recording. This realisation gives me similar vibes to listening to the world’s first recording of a song (but not the oldest sound recording in general, that’s too creepy, man). Suddenly you realise it’s a recording; somebody recorded it, it was there and then suddenly thrashed into infinity. It wasn’t born from nothing the way contemporary music makes me think about it sometimes. Somebody was recorded who, after the job was done, left and went on with his or her life. The difference in quality makes me aware of factors I’m sure were invisible for people playing the music. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, anyone? What about “Any sufficiently advanced observer will be able to distinguish between magic and technology?”

You know what though? At least I’m better off than with that Häxan projection with a live soundtrack by No Clear Mind. That was music that rocked my world. I have no recording of it and I will most probably never have the chance to ever even listen to for a second time in my whole life. It makes you wonder what’s important in the end in this art form which has changed so much and has become so very incredibly complex and meta ever since the internet became speedy for cheap, which is actually true for most about everything humans do.

The song is very catchy. The polyphony is excellent, even if not technically perfect. And what’s this genre of music called, if it even has a name? It must, right? There’s an obscure genre for everything. Anyway, I want more!

The bar's facebook page linked above says their name is "Rocoto". — The bar’s facebook page linked above says their name is “Rocotó”.

PS: After I finished writing this post, I started looking around for more info about this group, starting from the address of the place, and step by step I actually found their SoundCloud. Okay, now I sure feel stupid for writing this whole post above! But here it stands, perhaps as a testament to my beautiful, romantic self-delusion and my tendency to make a story out of limited data and believe it if it sounds good enough? Maybe, maybe. Enough playing philosopher for tonight; here’s a good recording of Rocotó’s music. Enjoy!

QBDP EPISODE #8 – THE GARRET EPISODE

Download .mp3

Το καλό πράγμα αργεί να γίνει, είναι γνωστό, αλλά αυτή το φορά το παράκανα: Έναν χρόνο μετά, το podcast με τον Γκάρετ είναι επιτέλους ονλάιν. Ηχογραφημένο 6 Αυγούστου 2014 στο μπαλκόνι του Γκάρετ στην Γλυφάδα, πριν το μεγάλο βήμα του στον χώρο των games (είναι ο φίλος μου που δουλεύει στη Riot που αναφέρω όποτε και σε όποιον μπορώ για να κόβω αντιδράσεις!) και δεν τον έχω πολυδεί από τότε…

Αθεϊσμός vs «εναλλακτική» επιστήμης, ο κίνδυνος της εμπόλα (λολ), ιστορίες από τα Еnglish conversation groups και άλλες από το EVS στη Σόφια, ερωτήματα όπως «σε τι είναι χρήσιμη η νοσταλγία;», «τι θα γινόσουν αν μπορούσες να ξαναδιαλέξεις εναν διαφορετικό δρόμο;», «είναι χάσιμο χρόνου να παίζες games αν περνάς καλά;», «θα είναι το Angry Birds το Mario των hardcore του μέλλοντος;», «πώς θα είναι το facebook σε 50 χρόνια;», «θα ζούμε όταν θα γίνει η Ελλάδα έρημος;», «πόσο μπορείς να πιεις πριν οδηγήσεις;», «υπάρχει το Total Perspective Vortex;», «ποιό είναι το τίμημα μιας ζωής συνεχώς σε κίνηση;», «το Breaking Bad σε έκανε να θέλεις να δοκιμάσεις meth;», «ήταν μαλάκας ο Chris McCandless;» και άλλα πολλά. Μια συζήτηση για τα πάντα και τίποτα, ένα Ne-fest άνοιγμα μυαλών όπως συνηθίζουμε (και η αλήθεια είναι ότι μου λείπει τώρα που είμαστε πολίτες του κόσμου).

Ένα podcast μιάμιση ώρα για να γελάσουμε, να σκεφτούμε, να θυμηθούμε, και που αποκαλύπτει πολλά και για τους δύο μας που δεν μοιραζόμαστε απαραίτητα συχνά. Απολαύστε!

REVIEW: FAHRENHEIT 451

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another post-war American dystopian classic scratched off the (small) part of my to-read list that’s dedicated to… *pensive look*… older books.

Fahrenheit 451 impressed me. I expected it to be good, but, dutifully as I do when the proper time comes, I made all the right connections that proved in my eyes how a 70-year-old book might as well be speaking about today.

They say that “the past is a foreign country”, yet at some unique moments of lucky insight we can get to realise how much we do share with the people from foreign countries, who at first might seem distant, locked away by the fences of culture, yet at some point we take notice that there’s still the gap between the bars through which we can see the other side. Replace the Parlors with tablets and the Firemen with… I don’t know, the NSA, and there you have it.

While it would be a wild stretch to say that books are even slightly hated or feared in today’s society, I would argue that they’re increasingly insignificant. No, actually, it is not books we’re talking about here—just as Faber told Montag that it wasn’t the books themselves, as in the scrawled, bound sheets of paper, that he wanted to save. What we, in the company of Montag and Faber, are talking about, is books as symbols of mindful dedication, a capacity to pay attention to detail and a thinking or intuiting mind behind the scrolling eyes able to connect with what it reads and care about it.

Some minor spoilers ahead.

In the scene where Montag and Mildred go through the books Montag has saved, try to read them and find they are unable to understand them, I was reminded of young Greeks today unable to understand ancient Greek or even Katharevousa, or me trying to read Dostoyevsky a couple of years back and giving up because “I can’t stand the classics.” Beatty’s admission that books were essentially banned (or, to phrase it more precisely, reading was slowly abolished by the government by discouraging literacy) in order to avoid conflicts of opinion that could make people invested in some idea or its counterargument, brought to mind how there exists now a dominant mainstream narrative that requires from people globally to accept it more or less at face value, while every discordant (rational?) opinion is painted as crazy. It’s got to the point where if one does not believe the official story, they are a conspiracy theorist, which seems to be the broad-brush contemporary insult of substantial equivalence to “communist”.

You can go to Reddit these days to get an idea of what’s allowed and not allowed to be discussed in mainstream discourse, although I like the idea that the more taboo a subject is, the closer it is to our cultural blindspot, what people in the future will laugh at us (or curse us) for failing to see, and in a way to the truth—if we can speak of such a thing without missing the point.

I can’t say whether Bradbury was ahead of his time—this would imply a linear, rational process of how the progress of humanity works I don’t agree with—but what I’ll say is that in certain respects, the times themselves have not changed all that much since when Bradbury was fresh out of school and was typing away in the basement of UCLA on penny-operated, time-constrained typewriters. In certain respects. And that includes man’s (and woman’s! {and genderqueer’s! {{[and other terrestrial and extraterrestrial sentient beings!}}}]) thirst for meaning, and the survival, or the continual re-imagining in the aftermath of disaster, of what truly matters.

In short, yes, you should read this book—as another step to protect its family and heritage from their slide to insignificance. Alternatively, you could listen to the unabridged audiobook like I did. It’s just over 5 hours long and the narrator is good.

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REVIEW: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S STAR WARS

William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope by Ian Doescher

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

HAN: —Nay, not that:
The day when Jabba taketh my dear ship
Shall be the day you find me a grave man.

GREEDO: Nay oo’chlay nooma. Chespeka noofa
Na cringko kaynko, a nachoskanya!

HAN: Aye, true, I’ll warrant thou has wish’d this day.
[They shoot, Greedo dies.]
[To bartender:] Pray, goodly Sir, forgive me for the mess.
[Aside:] And whether I shot first, I’ll ne’er confess!

I’m not a fan of Shakespeare. I don’t think I’ve never seen or read any of his plays. Since forever I’d thought that I would find the language or the story boring or something. You know how it is with some things; they rub you the wrong way once and you keep having an unexplainable prejudice against them for years thereafter.

Verily, I stumbled across this work while looking for Expanded Universe publications. At first I was skeptical for the reasons above but it didn’t take me long to discover the brilliance of this here tome. By the way, I read/listened to it in audiobook form, which felt much more like watching the play with the script at hand.

I shall try to be brief. William Shakespeare’s Star Wars not only is a masterpiece of genre mash-up, being something more than the sum of its parts. It made me laugh out loud (for real) with its deliciously tongue-in-cheek yet very serious and perfectly executed Shakespearean interpretation of the story we know and love: for instance, it’s written exactly like the script for something that would be put up in the Globe Theatre, with acts, scenes, entrances, exits, monologues — even Chewbacca and R2-D2 get a few [!!], plus it’s completely written in iamblic pentameter — quite an achievement in itself — and follows various classical drama tropes sublimely. It gave me new insight to the motivations of Han, Luke or Darth Vader; it even made me stop and think why I haven’t read Shakespeare before. In fact, the epilogue by writer Ian Doescher made me realise just to what extent good story-telling has been based on what Joseph Campbell’s introduced and explained in his work
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and how a cross between Star Wars and Shakespeare ultimately makes a lot of sense and can prove thoroughly enjoyable and illuminating.

If you like Star Wars, the English language or simply seeing how far-fetched yet creative ideas can strike gold when done right, I cannot recommend this audiobook enough, although apparently the printed edition comes with some clever and beautiful illustrations (check the cover).

Here’s a little snippet I’m posting here I couldn’t post on Goodreads. Just listen to Vader sharing his inner thoughts and motivations with the audience.

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GROWING SICK OF THE ‘NET YET AGAIN: INCOMING MEDIA FAST

I’ve been disciplining my body these days more than I ever have. Namely, I’ve been following Reddit’s Starting Stretching, Bodyweight Fitness Training Routine for beginners and I finally restarted going for runs, aiming to relive the “glory days” of being able to run up to 10 kilometres, which in fact I managed to do exactly one year ago while I was in Sofia (post about me finally running 8k).

For the past few weeks, I’ve been going to the Alsos almost every day, rotating the bodyweight fitness (push-ups, pull-ups, handstands, L-sits etc) with the running. And it feels grrreat! Daphne has been helping a lot with cooking healthy and nutritious vegetarian meals with lots of protein, not that I’m shy of the stoves, but I tend to cook the same three or four things, not experimenting unless in the mood, and with her in control we’ve been eating like vegetarian kings. It activates me and it’s bringing in some good skills to have. I don’t know if I would be doing it if I didn’t have all the free time I have now, but that’s beyond the point. Having a workout and exercise routine helps me bring some (illusion of) order to my disorganised life, and with some much appreciated visible results.

Nevertheless, what I haven’t been able to organise, discipline and harness at all– seriously, AT ALL — is my mind.

In June last year, apart from running 10k, I posted this little write-up I’m still proud of:

I’M SICK OF THE INTERNET – AREN’T YOU? GETTING THROUGH INTERNET ADDICTION

Trouble is, I didn’t go through with what I pledged I would do. As far as I can remember (which isn’t a lot, because, as typically happens when you regress to addictive behaviour, your memory-forming functions give way to the reptilian dopamine-releasing pleasure centres, quite conveniently, too, because you don’t really want to remember in shame the ego-shattering moments when you and your actions fail to hold up to your initial intention), ten days later I was again browsing the web, free as a bird — or, to be more precise, free as a bird enclosed in a cage made of invisible walls.

A few days ago, while I was running no less, the thought came to me: why don’t I try again with this whole less internet, less media thing? I could use the extra time to think and create. I seriously miss creating…

The next 4 days I’m going to be in Loutra doing a media fast with Daphne: each day, we will be allowed to use the internet for just 30 minutes, and that’s just for e-mail, practicalities and Rights4Water. The rest of the time, anything with a screen will be off-limits. No movies, no games, no TV, no smartphones — I will switch mine to battery-saving “dumbphone mode”– no distractions from the interestnet. The only exception will be my Sansa Clip Zip I will be using for audiobooks, podcasts and music for when I’m doing exercise. The idea is to limit options, minimise distractions and allow for deeper thought and even boredom, which will force us to be creative instead of us automatically turning to the mind-numbing net for excitement and stimulation.

Let’s see how it goes.

REVIEW: DUNE

Dune by Frank Herbert

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“Unique among SF novels… I know nothing comparable to it except The Lord of the Rings.” ~Arthur C. Clarke

I’ll begin with what I saw when I first checked what my Goodreads friends had to say about their experience with Dune:

Thank the gods it was Kivayan, my friend Kuba from Poland, who first made it clear to me how important it was that I read Dune, and not just the first book, no, the whole original series, because only then would I be able to witness the genius of Frank Herbert’s grand image (that there was my attempt to express “big picture” in a more fittingly epic way). Thank the gods it was him and not someone else’s opinion which would have left this book under my personal radar, where it had been for many years.

Scratch that. It hadn’t been under my radar. I’d been aware of it since I was little, mainly from video games or perhaps Karina—I just didn’t know exactly what it was about. All this desert, the sandworms… It looked boring. Like something too slow, deep or intricate for me to enjoy. And let me tell you, I wasn’t wrong: if I had dipped my toes in the spicy sand before I’d reached a certain point in my life, I’m confident I wouldn’t have enjoyed it at all. If I had to say, I’d place the point in question around the time I started watching Game of Thrones, playing alt-history games and reading books like The World Without Us or The Dark Tower.

I had started being able to enjoy books like Dune, only I couldn’t make the connection in my head and notice the switch. There was nobody to suddenly come up to me and tell me that the famous, apparently super-influential old SF book I’ve always thought I wouldn’t enjoy, actually involves loads of topics I’d find very appealing: religion, feudal politics, anthropology, psychology, history, ecology and many others, creating a narrative about how narratives, and historical narratives in particular, work, which I expect to discover further in the next books. Well, there was someone: it was Kuba. But if it hadn’t been for him and a few other people like Amberclock who told me about Jodorowsky’s Dune or JMG who often mentions Dune in his Archdruid Report posts, I’d still have the impression that the book is a boring classic, that it’s to SF what perhaps Proust is to modern literature: supremely influential and important, but not enjoyable.

Of course, I was wrong. I may be wrong about Proust, too. But that’s the point: we’re talking about preconceptions here.

What surprises me is that, for it’s alleged importance, very few people I talked to about Dune while reading it even knew of it. For a book that supposedly played an important role in the popularisation of ecology as a word as well as a term and for one which is among the all-time bestsellers of the genre, it is forgotten today by most. I’ll go down a path I don’t think it’s fair to go down on, but how many people know of Tatooine and how many of Arrakis, Dune, the Desert Planet that surely inspired it?

Nevertheless, I found its ambience as a contemporary read very comfortable, even if 50 years have passed since it was written. Water as a super-valuable commodity (with all related cultural conventions) feels right and is played perfectly. Arrakis is majestic. Reading about the Fremen was very interesting and convincing, and I thoroughly enjoyed discovering the book’s unknown world by looking up the juicy neologisms in the appendix (every book like this should have one!)

Not all’s perfect with Dune, don’t get me wrong. Its characters can feel one-sided or shallow, even Paul, who at times comes off superhumany… but then, hey, he’s supposed to be the one, isn’t he? The various political actors and the role of spice in all of this aren’t very clear, but you know, it’s one of these books you’ll read again and next time it’ll make more sense.

But the weak points don’t matter. Dune is a classic, period, and I’m happy for once to have truly enjoyed a classic because it’s a classic, not despite the fact. What can I say? Herbert’s foreword to the book reads:

“to the people whose labors go beyond ideas into the realm of “real materials” — to the dry-land ecologists, wherever they may be, in whatever time they work, this effort at prediction is dedicated in humility and admiration.”

Good man.

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REVIEW: IDLEWILD

Idlewild by Nick Sagan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“This guy obviously has a sense of wonder in his DNA… an essential upgrade for The Matrix generation — download now!” Stephen Baxter

This quippy blurb was written many years before e-books appeared. When he’s saying “download” he’s simply using tech lingo. People didn’t use to download books just ten years ago. Just making sure.

Well, Stephen Baxter’s quote about Idlewild, which features several times in this book, including most prominently on the cover, is what it’s all about really. I imagine Nick Sagan hates continuously being compared to his father in such a way, but I can’t imagine a better ad for the book itself. I mean, it’s the reason I got interested in it in first place (“huh, Carl Sagan’s son wrote a sci-fi book?”), and to be perfectly honest, I can’t shake the feeling it has a lot to do with why it was written, too.

Anyway, Idlewild reads a lot like a cross between The Matrix, Harry Potter (or other books similar to it that have many special youngsters studying their powers together), Neuromancer and Doctor Who, because of the virtual reality time-and-space-travel. If that sounds entertaining to you, I think you will have a good time reading it (I did).

Admittedly, I thought that the characters were much stronger than the plot itself: while reading I was much more interested in seeing what kinds of new and interesting interactions could emerge between them than I was reaching the end. Nevertheless, I have to say that the plot twist came completely out of the blue, and yes, I’m mildly curious about the sequel. I might read it at some point.

Finally, I would have given it four stars if it wasn’t for the fact that at times I could notice instances of Mr. Sagan attempting to flex his literary muscles. With truly masterful writing this may or may not be perceivable, but it doesn’t really matter, because the reader is inclined to surrender, to suspend disbelief. “This was so cheesy, but I love it!” Here I often caught myself realising that I was reading parts of the book that the writer, Carl Sagan’s son, rewrote many times while actively trying to make them appear as intelligent and techno-cool as he possibly could. Did he succeed? Well, I guess it depends whether you’re asking about the appearance of or the actual intelligence hidden within.

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GAME 2.0 REVIEW — CITIES: SKYLINES

Το παιχνίδι που κατακτάει τον κόσμο των sims… στη θέση του παιχνιδιού που τα ξεκίνησε. We live in interesting times!

Μπράβο ρε Collosal Order. Μπράβε ρε Paradox…

TYPED WITH THE THUMBS

Here I am lying in bed typing away on my new Huawei g620 S. A few days ago I was in Alsos listening to Mysterious Universe and decided it was time to do it, take the plunge. Like they saySmartphones are tools. What could I end up doing with having one in my own hands after all this time of resisting? It’s convenient, sure, but It’s also an experiment for myself, for judging how far down the rabbit hole I will allow myself to go.

It all came together nicely, since my mother hadn’t used her bonus from Cosmote, the little bait they use for making you renew with them (I haven’t forgotten that I hate them, just so you know) so I got it for pretty cheap. Similar to how i got many of my phones in the past. Come to think of it, I wonder how many different phones I’ve used or owned in my life. Must be close to ten by now. Jesus. How worthless tech has come to be. It has come to this!

Anyway. Typing this with my thumbs feels weird. Having my own smartphone feels weird. Well, it’s not useable as a phone yet cause my old SIM card wasn’t mini enough to use in this new hi-tech gadget. I don’t get it. My older phones were all smaller in size. It’s not like it won’t fit. Anywho, I’m enjoying having a smartphone that doesn’t yet work as a phone. That was the idea actually, but iPod touches aren’t getting any newer and I got this one almost for free, after all.

I have to admit. For all that I wanted to dive into the app world, the permissions I have to allow for each one of them and my rights to privacy I’m obliged to blithely forfeit makes me uncomfortable. I know I do so all the time without blinking an eye during the whole rest of life but… Do people just get used to it? I mean, the app I’m using to type this out right now has my password for accessing the admin page of this blog, and it’s not as if it’s developed by WordPressi itself…

Not to mention of course Google and it’s thing for wanting to know everything all the time. How is a man to choose between using a new account for all this or electing to make his invisible secret file with Google THAT much more complete? Connecting my Google search, YouTube past and everything else with an always traceable device that can snoop even more juicy data even more efficiently?

But then taking selfies with geotagging is cool. No really, I tried it, it’s like magic. All about this gadget is like magic. Is it smoke and mirrors or perhaps something more substantial?

I feel as if this post can be the first in a series of posts about smartphones. I’m declaring this right now cause I’m sleepy. Twilight (the app!) worked as intended… Google, I’m now going to sleep, just in case you missed that