Journal 6 : Are we losing Real Identity to our Virtual One?

There are two ways of looking at this. Parts of ourselves are used in some of the cyber world or in this case for security. We don’t have ourselves as a whole rather instead, pieces of what we we’re made of. Fingerprints, retina scans, palm scans, voice recognition, and other sections of us have been transferred into the digital world today as of security locks. However, this isn’t what I mean when I’m getting to the main question.

The other self we have are our online avatars that we may have in different sites, games, or forums. In our online personas, when we first create them, we have our own perceptions on how they should look, and we eventually change them when more options become available. In a study at Stanford University with support from the National Science Foundation, they observed from through some various experiments, that whatever the subjects’ avatar had been changed, there was a slightly different influence that they saw in themselves. These influences can either affect one’s physique, appearance, or preference when it comes to socializing or hanging out with others. The personas we have in our daily physical lives and our online lives are blurring together. Which leads us back to the original question, are we losing our real life personas to our virtual avatars?

Here’s a link to the article:

http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/science_nation/virtualself.jsp

Journal 5 Artificial Intelligence and AIs

Normally when we hear the term “Artificial Intelligence”(A.I.), we think of the science fiction super computers that can do everything on their own without the need for people. However, fantasies aside, A.I.’s today have their part in digital artwork through their programming, simulations, analysis, and calculations. In reference to the previous journal post on games, upon examination, all games essentially contain an A.I. to control, react, and change things according to interaction. Even sites that we use such as E-bay, Amazon, Facebook, and other marketing or social sites use A.I.s, but they are more like “agents” according to Jaron Lanier in Christine Paul’s book. These intellectual agents use the similar properties of A.I.’s in order to place recommendation for purchases or advertisements for products or pages according to the history of previously bought items or visited pages. With the turn of digital technology into art, artificial intelligence is not excluded in this integration. Though they “cannot be simply labeled ‘AI projects’” (Paul 2008 p. 147). they create a larger expanse in the capabilities that interactive art pieces can now include.

Although, A.I.’s are essentially almost used for everything computer/electronic related, do A.I.s used in games, the Internet, and art pieces really differ from each other? In what ways has artificial intelligence influenced your perspective and work?

References:

Paul, C. 2008. Digital Art. 2nd edition. NY: Thames and Hudson, Inc.