Understanding New Media Chapters 47-49

These chapters of Logan's book again deal with New Media not covered in McLuhan's original book. Chaper 47 talks about Virtual Reality and the development of 3D virtual reality platforms. It also describes the concept of role-playing games, as well as massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). These games, as the name suggests, include many players and often include a storyline and a theme. Chapter 48 deals with robots, bots, and agents. Logan defines a robot as "a hybrid technology consisting of a computer and an electromagnetical mechanism that can automatically perform tasks such as manufacturing, mining, exploration, or clean-ups in environments unsafe or difficult for human operators." Robots have been used in manufacturing for years, often making production faster, but coming at the expense of jobs for human workers. Chapter 49 discusses artificial intelligence (AI) and expert systems. AI is divided into two forms: weak AI and strong AI. Weak AI is,  "the use of computers to automatically perform tasks requiring human intelligence. Strong AI involves the area of study in which research have attempted to create a computer with, "an intelligence that its human creators would not be capable of." An example of this is the IBM computer Big Blue, which won a chess championship.

6/21 Chp. 47-49

Chapter 47 discusses virtual realty. It is important to note that VR seems realistic because it allows for interactivity and therefore a sense of personal involvement. Furthermore the chapter talks about certain VR games that feature real money to be able to purchase virtual commodities or services. When reading this, the Sims social, a Facebook game came to mind. The Sims social allows you to use real money and convert it into Sim money in order to buy certain virtual items or get to the next level. Chapter 48 discuses the role of the robot. Robots have impacted old media by their ability to be programmed to play soccer, sumo wrestling, navigate around furniture in order to clean and even be part of space exploration. What I found most interesting about the Robots is that some robots are able to be part of invasive surgical procedures. Robots have the ability to do so many things that are crucial in human life. For an example, some robots have the ability to translate languages, read emails out loud and even summarize a paragraph. These “bots” help simplify thing needed in everyday life. Chapter 49 discusses weak AI and strong AI. Weak AI would be the lowly calculator or a system programmed by someone to make inferences for a given set of data. Strong AI would be a computer capable of developing intelligence that humans do not have. The author argues that this is a fantasy because “computers are only extensions of our own intelligence (323).” Lastly, the author talks about AI and its ability to help explore the web. I found it interesting that the website StumbleUpon is a helpful resource to retrieve useful information from the web since it is filtered by people and the machine.