Give a little love and it all comes back to you

So I was watching TV tonight and I saw a commercial for a new video game coming out called "Saints Row 2". The commercial was a bunch of clips from the new video game where, from my understanding, you can play as a gangster. Looks like you can shoot people, steal cars, and other gang type things. Maybe it's me getting old, but I think the violent influences in our soiety today are extremely disturbing. Many video game company executives claim that their products offer no more influence than violent movies and television programs. Two thoughts on this:

A) Violence in movies can be just as bad. And it's not something I completely condone either.

 

B) Media (TV, film, web) is a passive media. You watch and absorb, your mind shuts off. In video games you're an active participant in the violence you're creating. 

I remember last year I was at a Christmas exhibit back near my home town. They had a small collection of old toys. I remember looking at them and noticing they were just a little more than metal with paint. Nothing shot sparks, no glowing eyes, and hardly any moving parts. In order to play with those toys you had to exercise your imagination. Use your brain to play. I worry for today's children and the effect that all of the over-stimulation and adult themed media is having on them. In film school I had a professor who once told our production class to be wary of what we want to put into this world because it will manifest itself. The more violent content we create the more violence we propagate in our society. As Gandhi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world." I think the entertainment industry at large needs to take a good hard look at itself, and be a little bit more responsible with the "art" they are supplying our society with. 

Beauty is only pixel deep

I recently found this video online on a random blog. It reminded me of an interesting article I read in the New Yorker a few months ago. The article covered Pascal Dangin, the founder of the photography touch-up company Box Studios based in New York City. As a photoshop user myself I knew what a powerful tool photoshop was, and I was perfectly aware of it's use in most fashion, health, and entertainment magazines. What I didn't know was to what extent. 

I had always thought that retouching photographs was limited to airbrushing bad skin or add make-up post shoot. Little did I know that it spans much further. Artists can slim the calves on women, and bulge the biceps of men. They can add clothes onto a scantily clad model for the Middle Eastern market, and add wisps of hair blowing in the wind. They can add flesh, add lights, and add tone. The other scary fact is how many magazines and add agencies use these technologies. Dangin views himself as an artist. The digital pixelscape his canvas, and the cursor his brush. There is no doubt it takes great skill to transmute beauty in the ways he does, but what I'm more concerned about is what affect these manipulations are having on our society. 

Without dispute I can say that we emulate ourselves based in what we see in the media. Much like the way we have our first "Ah-ha!" moment of our own identity when we recognize our own image in the mirror, we look to others for our place in the world. This ranges from socially acceptable behavior to our own aesthetic appearance. Certainly there are plenty of those who go against grain, but in our formative years (teenage and younger) acceptance is crucially important to our identity. How healthy is it for people to compare themselves to a digitally remodeled persona? I don't think the problem is that digital remodeling exists, but in how it's "presented". 

In the article there is no doubt Pascal sees his work as art. He's a staunch advocate of having creativity driving technology, and not the other way around. Like a modern DaVinci he points out how important understanding the physiology of human body is when retouching. While he may add plumpness to a breast or slim a buttocks, he's always careful not to deform the muscular and bone structure so as the models no longer look human. There is no doubt his work art. For what is art but to point out beauty in this world? To portray your subjective experience through a medium (of course the argument as to what is art goes much deeper, but is not the main purpose of this stream). The problem is his art is often not credited as art, or credited at all. As the article points out his work is never credited in magazines, and the public is mostly in the dark as to the digital transformation their role models undertake. 

It's important to remember that whether photographs are retouched or not, beauty comes from the inside. How many times have you stared into the face of a love one and blemishes that you noticed when you first met disappear. And likewise, how ugly does a person become when you discover their true colors through some immoral behavior? Beauty is not just an aesthetic value, but one of intelligence and morality. Beauty is found in confidence, strength of character, intelligent ideas, and the purity of soul. I think it's important we teach our children and others these lessons. 

iReview the iPhone

So I bit the bullet. With my Verizon contract approaching an end I decided to cut my ties with them and head to AT&T for the iPhone. It was a long time coming. Ever since I was a wee one I was a Mac user. I remember way back in the day when it was System 7, and the big technological jump was going from 16 colors to 256 colors (wow, I feel very dated). I'm getting very scared for when I get older and have kids, "Back in my day we didn't have neural implants, had to type with our hands..."

 But before jumping into the good of the phone (cause there is plenty), let me first give the bad news: as a phone it's fairly weak. While I could easily dial up people with a few quick button presses on my old phone, I now find myself constantly waiting for for my iPhone to catch up so that I can dial out. Plus my entirety of my contacts are now in my phone, and sorting through to find names can sometimes take more effort than you wanted to spend. 

The goods news: as a gadget it is very cool. 

I was a subscriber to .Mac before, it allowed me to store my contacts online, gave me an e-mail address, as well as a small amount of online storage all for a yearly fee. The site changed, and it's now called 'MobileME'. This service links my iPhone to my computer. THerefore if I change a contact on my phone on my computer it syncs up with my phone, and if I erase e-mail from my phone it erases on my computer, and visa versa. It also has my calender, world clocks, an alarm clock, notepad, maps (with SIGalert traffic), calculator, and weather, plus more. On top of all that, you can also download new applications to customize the iPhone more to your personality/usage. Some programs inclue:

Taxi: locates your location through GPS, then gives you numbers  to local taxi companies (plus show the cross streets of your area)

urbanspoon: the program picks a random restaurant and shows the food type, area, and cost. If you don't like it just shake (yes, shake) the phone again and another random restaurant is picked. Links to the internet to show you reviews and sometimes menus. 

Trulia: links you with the Trulia website. Finds your position on the map and shows you open houses within your area. 

Yelp: links with the Yelp! website. Uses your location to find local restaurants, bars, coffee houses etc... Then links you directly to the user reviews. 

Moves: Search out films by either location, film, or theatre. 

Mobile News: Shows you news articles from around the world through AP. 

Remote: Maybe my favorite. This allows you to control your iTunes from your iPhone. That means I can be in my kitchen playing my music from my room and change it via my iPhone. Too cool. 

Of course the other bad news is that with so many cool features you can easily kill your battery if you play around with your toy too much. But all in all I'm loving my new toy, and it's blowing my mind how much smaller the world just got. 

Google Search: True Love

I know I've been on hiatus with my 'Meditations on Love' entries, but there are still a few more chapters I'd like to squeeze out. So onward...

With the recent bombardment of technology we've encountered in the past decade our entire world has changed. The way we interact with people, and the way we feel for people has also been affected. In this entry, I want to take a look at how these changes have affected the way we go about relationships, and how we love. 

--------------------------

How can I miss you if you never leave me? 

I once wrote that to a lover a long time ago during a stint at a Colorado Outward Bound course. I was out in the middle the woods in a national park, and I had only a picture of us to remind myself of her. But what I meant by it was that she was still everywhere, my memories or her voice, her smell, and her glowing smile. Of course at the time that statement seemed very endearing, but with today's technology that statement is quite literal. If you are on a trip, or far away from your loved ones you have many ways of keeping up with them today. There is Skype, AIM, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Text Messaging, E-mail, Webcams, Blogs, etc... Missing physical contact with each-other? They even have a vibrator that can be controlled from a remote location by your lover over the internet. Or suppose your love fades, and the relationship ends. Whereas a few years ago you would never hear from your ex, today their information is still easily accessible. Whether you see their relationship status change on Facebook, pictures of their new significant other on MySpace, the urge to communicate when seeing them on AIM, or reading their Blog; you ex is always within the reach of a few keystrokes.

Compare this model to how things used to be "back in the day". Let us look at love in a time before e-mail, before telephones, before telegrams even. To get in contact with your lover you would have to physically write a letter, and wait the months it would take to have the letter delivered by boat or horse, and have then wait for the response to be delivered back. Today it is as easy as sending a text message and waiting a few seconds (which of course you can check to see if they've read it or not). Compare a common "love text" today with a exceprt from a love letter written in 1838.

2008

i luv U

1838

What would I not do for love of you, my own Clara! The knights of old were better off; they could go through fire or slay dragons to win their ladies, but we of today have to content ourselves with more prosaic methods, such as smoking fewer cigars, and the like. After all, though, we can love, knights or no knights; and so, as ever, only the times change, not men's hearts...

They say distance makes the heart grow fonder. And with today's technology they say the world is getting smaller, does that mean our fondness and desire for others is waning as well? In order to tackle this question let us look at another way technology has changed our love lives, the way we meet people. 

With social networking sites like MySpace and dating websites like Match.com and eharmony meeting people would seem to be easier than ever. Sign up for a site, type in the attributes you are looking for a mate, and hit enter. Voila. Multiple different profiles show up, and you can browse through them to select who you would like to contact. All of the benefits of meeting people in a bar, but without shouting over loud music. But there is one factor, which I mentioned in my previous entry, that you cannot search for: chemistry. Don't be surprised if you meet that athletic, open minded female that listens to the same music and the result is one hour of awkward painful conversation. Even with the benefits of technology, finding a lover seems just as hard as ever when actually applied. 

An article in The Atlantic a few months ago looked at the effects that new technology (more specifically Google and the internet) had on affecting the way we think. The argument loosely says that our brains are not instinctively programed to read, that we must train it to read, and the way in which we read directly affects the way we think. We are in the process of adjusting to reading on the internet. We no longer sit and read a long novel, slowly examining plot, sentence structure, and vocabulary. We are now in the world of the internet. We have a near infinite amount of resources, and as a result we have now resorted to a scanning method of reading; jumping from webpage to webpage, traveling on a highway of hyperlinks, going wherever our curiosity takes us. While the article convincingly shows us how our minds have changed through this new technology, one thing that is not covered is what is the effect of these changes on our emotions? Surely thought and feeling are connected, and since our thought process is changing naturally so must feelings. 

Surely on could say computers can replicate our thought process; Google is nothing more than an artificial intelligence. When someone asks me what kind of car passed by my mind instantly researches my knowledge on car shapes and logos, finds the correlating images, and verbally expresses my "search results". But while computers maybe able to simulate our thought process can they mimic our abilities to emote and love? The reason I bring this up is because the more we use the computer and internet to acquire information the more our brains become like one. The playwright Richard Foreman worries we risk becoming "pancake people", a people spread too wide and too thin (or even worse becoming crepe people... bad joke). He mentions that mistakes are human, and it is often through mistakes that we learn and grow. With todays instant gratification it's no wonder that we see so many divorces. If something doesn't work perhaps you just searched wrong, therefore the answer is simple, click 'back' and try another result. My Grandfather once told me, "find a good woman and stay with her." An old fashioned way of thinking perhaps, but perhaps just a way of thinking that existed before our minds became the scatterbrained models that they are now. 

As I'm typing this I realize my mind itself is wandering, and there are no real conclusions I am coming to here. But I suppose this post is more of a survey of the way technology has affected the way we love. So with that I'll leave you all of these thoughts to ponder, and ask yourself how technology has affected you and your mind. 

Welcome to Provo

Today for work I traveled to Provo, Utah for the next show I'm working on Stadium of Fire. It marks the first time I've traveled for work, and it was pretty interesting. At the airport I met up with my bosses and a co-worker, then we hopped onto a little plane to head East. I think as far as airplanes go there are two types of people: aisle people and window people (I'm sure there must be middle-seat people, but I have yet to meet one). I'm definitely a window seat person. I like looking out the window to see the views from above. You can learn a lot from high up, like:

• There are a lot of people with pools in LA

• The I-10 looks much better from above than on and directly behind a parade of cars. 

• There are some beautiful mountains just North of LA. 

• Golf courses take up roughly about the same size as five or so neighborhoods

• Hills mean nothing for urban planners

The plane ride was short, and we soon arrived in Utah. We all hopped into our Lincoln Denali and started our trek to Provo. It was fun traveling with my team. We kind of felt like, well, a team. Like we were storming into this small town on a mission. We arrived at the hotel checked in then grabbed a quick lunch. There wasn't much rest time, as my boss had me bring my laptop to lunch so that I could work at the table  :/  

I am amazed by the internet, it is amazing. You can literally do almost anything with it. As an abstract idea we are having dancers hide behind a sheet to replicate famous photographs through time representing moments in freedom: end of WWII, the civil rights movement, the Berlin Wall coming down, etc... As my job I needed to track down these photos, and acquire them in high resolution form. So for example I needed to find the picture of the protester at Tiananmen Square blocking the tanks. So with that I googled a loose description, found the picture. Found out the picture is referred to as "The Unknown Rebel", discovered the photographer Jeff Widner. I found his website (check out his portfolio, he's got a lot of good stuff), and discovered he now works at the Honolulu Advertiser (Awful name for a paper, but at least they're honest). Yellowpages.com search for the paper, then called directly and got in touch with Jeff. Spoke to him, and got the photo use for free. My big victory of the day. 

But it's amazing how much information we can drum up with a few clicks of the keyboard and taps of the mouse. In the large scheme of things I think the internet is going to be an incredible tool for the future of mankind. I think it'll open communication between cultures, and bring people together. We will learn more about each other, and get a greater human understanding of one another.  Others will learn about human rights, and we will learn about those who infringe upon them and challenge them.  

Sorry, random tangent, back to the travel theme. I'm excited to be back in the Southwest. I think the four corners might be my favorite corner of the world. I love having snow capped mountains looming over me in the distance. I love that I can peek out my balcony and see a dark night sky with stars. I'm hoping I get to play a little while I'm here, but I don't have any expectations on that front. I know we're here for business, and there is a lot of work to do before our event. But I'd better head to bed, speaking of work; it awaits me only a few hours away- Goodnight room. Goodnight moon. Goodnight weekend. 

Strength

Ever since I've started blogging I've been fascinated by other peoples blogs. The more I pay attention to this blog phenomenon the more friends I've discovered have their own. Some use the space to vent about their dating lives and the incredulous bar habits of single men. Some use the space to share their lives with old friends from around the states. Some use it for daily epiphanies from life and the work place. And some use it for emotional venting, a personal journal used for letting steam into the open air of the internet. Aside from checking my various friend's blogs I'll once in awhile scan through random blogs online to see how others use their little corner of the web. 

While scanning one day I found a blog with a simple title: "I'm Mad". Reading those words it felt like an old friend calling me on the phone to vent, reaching out to me- I had to read it. The blog belongs to a Woman from Texas, with triplets; one of whom has cerebral palsy. In her blog she writes about her day-to-day life, and the struggles she goes through to find acceptance for her littlest one. Reading more of her posts I couldn't help but admire the strength of this woman. I already think women are the strongest, most beautiful, and amazing creatures in the world. Tell me what is more amazing than the ability to bear life. Tell me what is more beautiful than when a a woman looks you in the eye and smiles. Tell me what is stronger than fighting against hundreds of years of oppression with calm and gentle class. But after reading this woman's blog I was even more amazed. She feels hurt and neglect from a God that she has worshipped all life, yet she still shows an unwavering faith and love towards him. That is true strength. I felt honored to be part of her inner sanctum. To be able  see the weakness that she could never show in front of her children. To read about the immense strength she draws on a daily basis from her four year-old child who can't even walk on her own. I can only hope to be half the parent and person she is. To show that much love and forgiveness, that much compassion.

A few weeks ago I had what most bloggers must go through; the despondency of feeling like your writings are going into the void, being tossed into an immense darkness of nothingness. That was until a close friend of mine IMed me, thanking me for my most recent post. She said she was feeling blue that day, and reading it picked her spirits up- that it was just what she needed to read (She has always been a huge supporter of my writings, and for that I am forever grateful. Thank you). We all blog for different reasons. But I think the best result from blogging, or any creative medium for that matter, is never what we originally intend. We blog to share ideas, to trade stories, and to express ourselves. Never do we intend to inspire others, to infuse them with strength and purpose. Certainly it's great to catch up with an old friend online, sorting through their old photos and stories. But when you find strength and inspiration from a complete stranger, a kind hearted mother from an unknown place- that is the true power of this medium.