Questions for Reading

1. Jerry Mander goes into great detail about the effects television has now on humans, with their relationship with the environment, sources of knowledge changing, the atrophy of sensory tools and even perception of reality. So when technology such as virtual reality or augmented reality becomes more common, how will that affect human relationships with the subjects mentioned above?

 2. As I understand, the book was published in 1977 and devices such as laptops and cellphones were not commercially released yet. The television by itself is a stationary device but with mobile devices, is it more difficult to isolate oneself in nature like Mander describes if a portable device could be carried in your pocket?

Timo Brendenberg

Timo Brendenberg's work examines the effect the internet has had on economic, political, and social perceptions by collecting found videos on popular streaming channels, primarily YouTube. Although his more recent work such as I-cloud or The Last Worker Standing deals with the issues mentioned above using game engines and found code. Works like Empire, Drive Through, and Ghost Ride deal explicitly with the collective footage found in YouTube and each one makes a statement of how these communities on YouTube have created this odd phenomena of posting the same videos in a global context. Ghost Ride for example, is a contemplation of videos where groups of people or an individual will dance alongside a moving car. He was interested in the video's that included soldiers in Afghanistan posting the same videos. My first impression was that it was comical and that was most likely intent of the people who posted it. But then it's becomes very odd that this specific type of video made it to these soliders who are fighting in a very bloody conflict over seas. This then becomes something of a shared spectacle; it's doesn't have a deeper purpose and it's not something that is sold as a product. But it a video that is recognizable globally, for those with access to the internet. This ties in with Timo's thoughts on the internet and a form of a global community that has created connections through these shared images.