A Kid on a Bike Isn't Watching for You

My claim is that drivers are responsible for watching out for children who are riding their bicycles. While riding bikes, kids are busy having fun and are not necessarily watching to see what drivers are doing. It is the responsibility of the driver to keep an eye out for kids in the roadway.

In the argument, I begin with images of happy kids on bikes. The idea is to provoke nostalgia in the audience for the carefree times of bike-riding as children. These kids are smiling, with their friends, and concentrating on having fun, not watching for a car to come by. The next images are of distracted drivers; the audience should recognize common behaviors of texting, using the phone, or eating while driving, all while giving minimal attention to the road; the children aren't watching for motorists, but clearly these motorists aren't watching for cyclists. These images should provoke frustration and anger in knowing that these drivers are sharing the same roads as the children previously seen, and guilt in any audience members who participate in such unsafe behaviors while driving.

The next boy cycling is doing everything right; he's wearing a helmet, he's on the correct side of the road, and he's keeping to the right, where cyclists are required by law to be. Plus, he is smiling, another thing that he is doing "right": he's being safe and having fun at the same time. Contrast this with the distracted drivers, who are neither having fun nor being safe. If they are on the same road as the boy, will they be paying enough attention to slow down and go around him safely? These three images, taken together, are kind of like the build-up in a horror film; the audience can sense what the next image will be, but can't do anything to stop it. Any anger over the distracted drivers should still be present, along with mounting anxiety about what will happen if the cycling boy and the distracted drivers should meet at the next intersection.

With the next image, the audience's fears are realized: A kid was hit by a car, requiring medical attention. The image of a bike left on the side of a road with an ambulance in the background is meant to be gut-wrenching. A child has been in an accident, requiring both a regular ambulance and the air ambulance to respond. There is a Yield sign in the background as well, which could prompt the audience to wonder: Who failed to yield? The driver? The child? Either way, a kid is going to the hospital. In addition to being sickened at the thought of one of the happy kids now being an accident victim, the audience should still be angry at the driver who didn't look out for the child on a bike.

The final images give the potential aftermath of a bicycle-car collision: a grieving family, a child's funeral, and a ghost bike left as a memorial. These images should make the audience sad for the families of those who have been killed, and also give a feeling of the senselessness of this kind of tragedy: a child went from happy to dead in a matter of moments. When the audience connects the images of a distracted driver to a grieving mother, there should still be a sense of anger; that driver took away something precious that was not his (or hers) for the taking.

Up to this point, things have been getting progressively worse for the audience, ending in the needless tragedy of a dead child. The audience, who has been unable to stop the horror of what happened, will now be looking for an answer to the sadness and anger. The final statement, "Please watch out for them," is a plea for drivers to be on the lookout for children playing, but it also gives the audience some relief: Finally, something they can do to stop this tragedy from repeating itself again. While this argument is focused on bicycle-riding children, there is a broader implication that the driver needs to put down the phone, save the eating or the makeup for non-driving time, and pay attention to the road.

The interpretation necessary to get from the images to the desired behavior is the idea that children need protection. Our society puts a greater burden on adults to look out for kids than the other way around, and it's that belief that I'm pulling from to urge adults to watch out for kids. The audience also has to be aware of children's belief in their own invincibility; they will do things that are dangerous (like ride in groups, or without a helmet, or on the wrong side of the road), thinking nothing bad will happen. Adults, however, know that bad things sometimes happen, and should be looking out for children playing.

Image Sources:
Image 1 Community 4:12 URL: http://community412.typepad.com/uniting_to_transform_comm/ 30 March 11
Image 2 And I Still Think So URL: http://www.insuranceblogflorida.com/ 30 March 11
Image 3 Insurance Blog of Florida URL: http://www.insuranceblogflorida.com/ 30 March 11
Image 4 Insurance Quotes.com URL: http://www.insurancequotes.com/ 30 March 11
Image 5 Bikes Belong URL: http://www.bikesbelong.org/ 2 April 11
Image 6 Bicycle Accident Resource URL: http://www.cglaw-bicycle-accident-lawyers.com/ 30 March 11
Image 7 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Online URL: http://www.ajc.com/ 30 March 11
Image 8 Electronic Village URL: http://electronicvillage.blogspot.com/ 2 April 11
Image 9 Private Collection

Are You Sure?

I'm really curious about the parents who complained about the film with the snowman and said their children were "frightened". Since the researchers found that the children were sad, but in a pleasant way, rather than frightened, I'm curious as to how the parents would make that mistake.

In thinking it over, I've come to two possibilities: First, that the parents just made an honest mistake. Since humans are limited in our expression of emotion, perhaps the parents misinterpreted the children's reaction: Were there tears? Did they turn off the TVs? Did they hug a toy? All those reactions could well mean fright in children. Perhaps the parents tried to draw them out, to find out what was wrong, and the children refused to discuss it. If that were the case, then it's totally understandable that parents would think their children had been frightened and complain to the studio.

The other possibility is that the parents said the children were frightened because they didn't like seeing their children sad. No parent wants to see their child upset: It goes against the laws of attachment to not try to do something to ease that hurt. Did the parents, wanting to protect their children, then decide to complain? And if so, I can see a concerned deciding to blur the truth just a little-- after all, it wouldn't do much good to call up and report that a sad film made a child sad. "That's the point!" I can hear the exasperated manager say. So, instead, the parent goes a step further and complains that her child was frightened. Still an emotional response, but one that is more likely to get a satisfactory response from the television station.

Technology and Social Status

Something else I thought about in last weeks' reading was how technology affects one's social status. We discussed how social status affects access to technology-- poorer people have to rely on libraries, for instance, and of course some parts of the world do not even have that kind of community access available (it's probably a low priority, since those same parts of the world frequently also do not have community access to clean water).

But I'm currently thinking about the other way around. It's a basic expectation now for jobs or just for life that everyone has basic competency in Internet use, email, Microsoft Office, etc. (About 10 years ago, I had "familiar with Microsoft Office" on my resume. Not anymore-- now a potential employer would be quite shocked if I weren't familiar with it.) No, the question now is how one does it. Are you a Mac or a PC? iPhone or Blackberry? Foursquare or Gowalla?

From my own experience, it seems that the more affluent segments of society have so many signs of social status (car, house, clothes, jewelry, etc) that a phone or computer is just one more thing. Friends may engage in an argument over which is better, but it doesn't change where you are in your circle that much. For those who are on the lower end of the economic scale, however, the kind of phone you carry becomes a lot more important, since clothes come from Goodwill and cars are old and ugly, if the low-income person has one at all. But a phone with all the bells and whistles, and better yet, one that's decorated up, seems to serve the same purpose as driving a flashy car would do in a different neighborhood.

I first noticed this when I lived in Britain in a low-income area, but for the longest time I thought it was my imagination, until other Americans living in Britain began making similar comments. So I went directly to the source-- my British friends-- and asked. Yes, I was assured, what kind of phone they carry is a sign of how much money they have. (It's possible this has changed now, but since they're in the same recession as we are, I kind of doubt it.) And now that I'm living in a low-income part of Austin, I'm seeing the same kind of thing again-- many of my neighbors have cool, flashy phones, even if they wear older clothes or don't own a car.

One other thing I've noticed (and this is more in the realm of an annoyance at general snobbishness than anything else) is the tendency of the better-off to look down on poorer people because they own a phone. (I know not everyone acts this way, but I've heard it enough times to think it's common enough to merit discussion.) "He can't be that poor if he has a cell phone," someone will say, or "Maybe if she didn't have a cell phone payment, she could afford (insert deficiency here)," or even, "Poor people have no sense of priorities; they'll get a phone before they get a car." (Guilty, thank you very much!)

On the one hand, this attitude may just be a failure to think things through: How can someone get a job to stop being so poor if he/she doesn't have a phone number? Answer: They can't. And I think this minor detail tends to be forgotten by those who would just complain and look no further. But another reason is that the wealthy don't realize that poorer people crave the same kind of status symbols as the wealthier classes do, and will spend possibly more than necessary to have at least something that is nice-- in this case, the phone.

So, that's just something technology-related that I've noticed. Has anyone else seen the same thing?

Creepy? You Might Say That.

I like the idea of Augmented Reality that Benkoil describes. The thought of being able to get restaurant reviews, check whether an apartment is rentable, get more information on a news scene, etc., all while on the move is great. It diminishes the human interaction element of life, unfortunately, but since there are days when I'd prefer not to talk to another human anyway, that isn't entirely a downside. I think people who genuinely want to use technology and continue to interact with people can without too much difficulty.

A point that he doesn't explore too much is how a journalist would feel about "viewers pok[ing] around in a scene or get[ting] more information about something they’re watching right in the frame". So the reporter speaking in the foreground can potentially lose what attention he/she is already getting from the viewing audience? News stations do have to move with technology, of course, but I can't see that sitting well with a reporter, even if he/she doesn't say anything. Could that lead, down the road, to the reporter having a bad attitude, or a "nobody is listening, anyway" approach to the news? On the other hand, such a thing might well weed out the journalists who are in it merely for getting attention.

The final paragraph really strikes me, though; "It can be frightening to think of the possibilities for invasion of privacy." For example, I see an apartment building that I like, so I use my phone to check whether there is anything to rent and for how much. Now, this information is already available online or in apartment publications, of course, but there is something creepy about standing at a building and knowing approximately how much rent the people going in and out are paying. It's not a big deal to see strangers (not for me, anyway), but what if I saw someone I know? That would just feel awkward, since I would never ask in conversation, "So, how much rent do you pay?"

Another displeasing statement is Lewnes' "Augmented Reality could become the direct mail of the 21st Century, by tying a physical mailing to a Web experience when someone holds a page up to her computer’s camera." For people who enjoy direct mail, perhaps that would be fine. But for me, receiving a direct mailing every time I looked at a product online or explored the online features of a magazine would go straight through creepy to the border of insulting-- I'd like to look at things in peace, thank you, without an advertiser cyber-snooping. Of course, we're already so far beyond this point that it hardly seems that it matters, but getting something mailed to my home is just another layer in the your-business-is-our-business world of advertising. Unless it was something I was already committed to buying, that kind of linkup between computer and physical mailbox would probably convince me not to buy a product.


In short, Benkoil's final statement of "let’s see how far the technology goes... then see what objections are raised to how the technology is being used" worries me. He's asking that we wait until the proverbial horse is out of the barn to close the door. I have a better idea-- how about I be given the option now to protect my privacy as technology develops and have a voice in how businesses or news agencies use information, instead of having to fight later to get my privacy back?

Advertising, Kindness, and Sanity

I'm not sure if Brennan is in favor of civil codes or not, although she seems to be when she says the codes "dissipate negative and disabling affects (putting a person at ease)" (123). With our nation's leaders on their current civility kick (a bit rich coming from politicians, but there you have it), the idea of dissipating the negative affects sounds attractive.

We've talked in class about advertisements and the emotions they play on, so now I'm wondering about all the negative affects passed around in advertising. Our airwaves are flooded with images of sad children (or adults, or pets, or whatever "sad" individual the product will fix) to convince us to buy into everything from causes to toilet paper. The current run of ads featuring kids who are embarrassed by their parents' cars, for example, is sickening, only superseded by the back-to-school ads that encourage kids to shop at the right stores so they don't look like "losers". No wonder parents are faced with whining and screaming from their kids who have a bad case of "I want"; the kids have received a negative affect (discontent) from the advertiser and are merely passing it along!

So I turn my TV off. But there is a positive side to the social code; "one is open to others in a way that wishes them well and would dissipate their anxiety or sorrow if one could" (123). This is the courtesy and civility that people are always waxing nostalgic for, in a "remember when people cared about each other?" kind of way. I can't speak for everyone's neighborhood, but I know in my apartment complex we hardly have to have nostalgia; people do keep an eye out for one another for the most part, although I don't think that we know one another well enough to "feel their joy or sorrow" (123). This kind of polite distance-- which has been a part of our social code, although not everyone practices it now-- does provide a buffer against the "conflict between mental health... and spiritual health" (125) that she mentions. We are close enough to care a bit, but not so close as to share all our affects with one another.

There's a term that I hear from time to time and of course can't remember right now that describes the person who has seen too much sad stuff or had too many emotional appeals from others-- basically, people suffer from overexposure to sadness/suffering and their compassion starts shutting down as a protective mechanism. That's what I thought of many times through this reading, that we're suffering from a collective overexposure to others' affects, voluntarily or not, and that is in part what has led to the abandonment of civility. After all, why would I bother being kind if it's going to leave me exhausted? Why would I use up all my thoughtfulness on strangers and have none left for my family when I get home? There has to be some sort of protective barrier to keep one's own mental and emotional state intact, and perhaps the ignoring of social codes is one way that the human mind reacts.

S/R 2: Neuromancer

            In William Gibson’s Neuromancer, it is unusual to see someone who does not have some sort of “enhancement” to his or her body. It is “an age of affordable beauty” (4), and anyone who chooses to forgo enhancing his or her physical appearance, like Ratz, is unusual. But even with his “heraldic” ugliness, Ratz does have a very visible prosthetic arm, so he is still a part of the enhancement culture.

            Case was a cyber cowboy whose nervous system was “jacked into a custom cyberspace deck” (5) to hack into corporate computer systems, until his employers caught him stealing and “damaged his nervous system” (6) in retaliation. Case's livelihood was gone since he could no longer jack in until Armitage, controlled by the AI Wintermute, convinced him to accept surgery to repair his nervous system so he could go back to work, this time breaking into the most sophisticated security system Case has ever seen. Wintermute uses the various humans involved in the "run" to his own ends, not minding when some of them die along the way—the more so since Wintermute himself will "die" in the end.

            Molly, Case's new partner, is also enhanced. Her glasses are implanted in her skull, shielding her eyes, with her tear ducts rerouted to her throat (183). She has a readout with the time on the glasses, and a “broadcast rig” (53) so that someone—Case—can ride along in her consciousness, seeing, hearing, and feeling right along with her. Armitage has undergone cosmetic surgery, his face “a conservative amalgam of the past decade’s leading media faces” (45), while the persona Armitage is just a “flat personality-substitute” for Corto (125); his whole being is constructed, not just his face.

            Other people are also enhanced; many teenagers have “carbon sockets planted behind the left ear” (57) to put in microsoft. The teens were merely keeping up with fashion; Case reflects that in his own day, “if the technology had been available, the Big Scientists would all have had sockets stuffed with microsofts” (59), since in the Sprawl, the culture “carried the coded precepts of various short-lived subcults and replicated them at odd intervals” (58).

            The trodes that Case and other cowboys use to get into the matrix are an enhancement as well; connected directly to the nerves, the trodes allow the cowboy’s consciousness to merge with cyberspace, so that the matrix is merely an extension of the nervous system. While the trodes are not permanent or implanted, they are perhaps even more personal, since a cowboy is living in the matrix when he is jacked in; he can’t see what is around him, only what is in the matrix.

            As has been pointed out in class, we are already living an “enhanced” life. From the computer into which I can directly spill my thoughts to my fancy running clothes that wick sweat to my glasses (which seem pretty thick to me, but would have been much, much thicker a couple of generations ago), my life is driven by technology. While it seems a bit different because none of these things are permanent attachments to the body, we are already pushing that front, too: Prosthetic limbs, Lasik surgery, pacemakers, joint replacements, tooth fillings—some have been around for a while, some are newer, but these are all permanent adjustments to the body. And even if we were to object that these “enhancements” all fill a medical need, then we have to consider piercings, tattoos, or permanent makeup, which is essentially a tattoo. We have already started down the road of physical enhancement.

            If the “enhancement” market did grow to be similar to that described in Neuromancer, it’s interesting to consider how it might be commoditized. Surely there would be a Rodeo Drive version and a Wal-Mart version, just like with clothes or handbags. Instead of saving money for vacation, would people save money for an appearance upgrade? Would it become a factor in hiring practices, that the potential candidates cared enough to choose clothes, hair and face carefully? It’s a bizarre thought that one could pick up a physical alteration in the same errand as picking up the dry cleaning.

            And what about technological enhancements? We all know people whose phones or mp3 players, or both, seem to be permanently attached. If someone is willing to interrupt a face-to-face conversation to respond to a text message, is that so different than jacking into the matrix, and being mentally unavailable even though physically present? Or consider those who wear a Bluetooth or similar earpiece everywhere, a practice which is (mostly) accepted as being normal. How is that different than the “enhancements” found in Neuromancer? While I am uncomfortable with the idea of technology being inside my skin—at least, any technology that does anything fancier than an aspirin or an immunization—it seems that humans have started down this road already, too. This is not an unusual theme in the fantasy genre—there was a Doctor Who episode in which people received the news directly transmitted into their brains, for instance—and it is an increasingly familiar theme in real life.

Written Argument

The purpose of my written argument is to get the audience to think before throwing things away needlessly. To move the audience to this response, I describe the scene at the landfill, including my knowledge of the nasty work that goes on there, thanks to my father being a "trash man" (I believe the PC term is "solid waste technician"). After establishing what a landfill is like, I go on to describe the potential use still available in the reader's favorite t-shirt and my old cell phone.


With the description of the landfill, I'm going for awe at the size necessary for our collective rubbish. I want to give the reader a sense of "what a shame" at all the waste that is needlessly thrown away, plus an idea of what an unpleasant living it is for people like my father to have to deal with an entire city's trash. Then, with the t-shirt and the phone, I want the reader to feel fondness for his or her possessions. So much fondness, in fact, that the reader would not want his or her favorite t-shirt to end up in a landfill unless there were no other option (or any other favorite possession). While there is some guilt at work here, and I'm not trying to avoid it if that's what the reader feels, guilt is not the primary emotion I'm shooting for. The reader should interpret the landfill as a place unfit for any possession that still has usefulness left, and then think before tossing things in the trash.

What's Wrong?

Brennan mentions "a phenomenon that suggests that the affects may, at least in some instances, find thoughts that suit them" (7). Her example is a parent transferring anxiety for a child's education to anxiety over the plumber being late (7). To take the example further: I feel sorry for the plumber, arriving late under these emotional circumstances, who might then be subjected to the emotional outburst that really has nothing to do with him at all. And what if the plumber then absorbs that anxiety and takes it home to share with his family? Thus the emotion gets passed along like a cold: Shorter, perhaps, but still virulent.

Brennan touches on this very thing when she says, "If I feel anxiety when I enter the room, then that will influence what I perceive or receive" (6). The preexisting tension in the room will influence any newcomers whether they are aware of it or not, even to the point of the newcomers blaming themselves; "If I am not aware that there are affects in the air, I may hold myself solely responsible for them" (6).

These statements make sense; the first because we've all experienced stress in one part of our lives (school, for instance) impacting other parts of our lives (like relationships with roommates). In fact, when patching things up after an especially stressful time like finals, roommates may say to one another, "I was just so stressed because of finals," and that is generally an accepted reason for having behaved monstrously for a few days. The second case is also easy to pinpoint, perhaps also with roommates; I've walked into my apartment before to find everyone actively engaged in not speaking to one another. I may have missed the argument, but it would be impossible to miss the fallout. And on another level, I'm sure we could each name someone always who leaves us in a better mood than when we met-- and someone who does the opposite.

So, is Brennan on to something? In this respect, I'd have to say she is, at least in my own experience. Even the most "emotionless" people I know still have an effect on those around them (usually a depressing one). The emotional exhaustion alone after being in a crowd for an extended period is really enough to convince me that humans are like emotion antennas, constantly giving and receiving signals.

Winner

Wintermute was looking for more power, and perhaps a chance to better itself (both desires showing that this AI had human ambitions, either written in or learned). Neuromancer had skills Wintermute didn't have, such as being able to create his own personality (259) and his methods of persuading people to do what he wanted, which were "far more subtle than Wintermute's" (259). But in the end Wintermute "won, had meshed somehow with Neuromancer and become something else" (268). All his plotting and prodding got the end result he was looking for.

But perhaps Case is the one who came out the best. When Wintermute challenges him by asking, "Who do you love?" (261), Case heads off to finish up the run with "a level of proficiency exceeding anything he'd known or imagined" (262). He was "beyond ego, beyond personality, beyond awareness... by the clarity and singleness of his wish to die" (262). Being forced to confront his own self-loathing unleashed all his potential and talent, and also the toxin sacs that had been threatening to take his abilities away again, which his brain took care of itself by producing the correct enzyme (268). It's kind of a twisted Wizard of Oz, where the professor needn't do anything for Case that he couldn't already do for himself. But in the end, he gets a job, gets his old life back, and some new organs for good measure (270). So Wintermute, in getting what it wanted, also released Case to do what he wanted.

But was it worth it? Case is now without Linda, without Molly, with no chance of ever seeing either of them again. And that's how the book closes, which makes me feel like Case wants more, and would even give up what he has to have these women back again. Wintermute may have done him a favor, but he did it by taking away people Case cared about. So in the end, the "meat" won; Case has his life back but is haunted by the longing of companionship.