Edited by author 10-23-2002 02:37 AM
Rhetoric 174: SAFE

The comments of my colleagues are very intricate and complex. I feel that the movie is much simpler than it looks. Simply, the movie is about modernity and its affects on people. In short, the movie "Safe" illustrates that societal progress will bring about new modern problems.

I know a person who developed asthma in college. This person was never allergic or asthmatic, but once in college this person developed allergic and asthmatic symptoms. This could be do to the fact that new particles that exist in specific regions are now in one's system and the body is reacting to them. I have to agree with Grace that this is a modern event.

At first, I thought Carol's symptoms were caused by idleness, low self-esteem, and depression. However, I realized that Carol was indeed allergic to chemicals when she began to bleed and convulse after entering the dry cleaner shop. However, her chemical reactions seem to be more than just her chemical environment. The movie does not find the origin of the illness. It explores different areas or potential causes of her illness. The director implies that lifestyle, chemicals, and mentality could be causes to Carol's physical reactions. I thought that this illness paralleled that of the Gulf War Syndrome. No one knows what causes the sickness among the veterans. Scientists have only implied that it might be due to chemical exposures. All I know is that the world we live in is getting dirtier, smaller, and more congested. It is bound to affect the existing population in someway. Maybe these case studies are early warning signs for something bigger. Only time will tell.

Google zeitgeist

http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html

"I think part of the point is that there is no state of nature for her (or any of us) to return to"

Actually, this is kind of what I meant - there is no nature for her to return to, but that she believes that there is some pure form of Nature (that has no toxins etc) to return to. My impression was that she believes that Nature is toxin free and that this leads her to purge what little nature is left in her, hence her not being able to get in touch with her own toxicity. I know thats kind of unclear, but I'll post again when I've thought it out some more :)

Better late than never: [SAFE]

The brackets around the title "Safe" are very meaningful in this context. They give the title the feeling that it is closed off: you are safe within its boundaries. The character played by Jullianne Moore is constantly searching for a place where she can be "safe", that is, a place tucked away from chemicals. The problem the movie presents is that she is never very safe anywhere. Moving from her home, into a safe room in her home, to a camp somewhere in the Midwest, to a closed off safe room within the camp, she does not find alleviation from her ills anywhere. In fact, the more she searches for a safe area, the worse off she becomes and the more difficult it becomes for her to return to normal life. Part of the reason behind her becoming accustomed to life at the safe-camp is that she will never return to her previous life, and both she and the movie-watcher know this. In a kind of continously progressing psychosomatic response to her environment, she is experiencing a slow death caused by the continuous closing off of safe areas to her.

Rhetoric 174
CDC Inquiry

Early Sunday morning I posted my comments on the CDC website. I posted my suggestions on improving the quality and the presentation of the site. I pretty much said that the site should not be a reference source, but more of a primary source for information. I also added some other suggestions and left my contact info. I will keep everyone posted if they ever respond to my comments. I'm guessing that the response rate will illustrate how effective our taxes are being spent.

DARWIN POND: NO EMPATHY

After perusing the virtual pet website, I chose the Darwin Pond link. Although there were other 'cute' options such as the virtual hamster the name of Darwin Pond won my attention, on account of its uniqueness from the rest of the titles. The software download itself was free and expedient. The general object of the game is to raise or manipulate a pond of "swimmers" by choosing such options as: add, erase, kill, clone, or modify the genes of a swimmer among others. Although I found it extremely entertaining to exert an almost divine control over these organisms, the game did not create an empathic response within me in relation to these creatures. The swimmers all looked the same, they were merely two limbs in a V-shape wriggling or swimming in the same locomotive movement. Not only were they physically identical but they also had no distinct characters or qualities. Above all, they had no eyes, which have the curiously powerful effect of creating empathy. No, there was no empathy but rather simply a sinister relishing of being able to have these creatures at my utter and total control.

However, this sadistic enjoyment seems to only have been possible with an acquiescence to the idea that these creatures were, in fact, alive. This effect must have been caused by the option choices (i.e. mutate swimmer, clone swimmer, swimmer information). So, on this level the game may have succeeded in establishing an illusion occurring on an almost unconscious level of the player. However, empathy did not occur because it was just as easy to kill these creatures as it was to add them into the game and see what they did to one another.

Darwin Pond is an extremely creative game and I would recommend it to anyone to try it because there are no emotional strings attached.

I've been looking over the Tamagotchi Book of Remembrance and it's really amazing and funny how much the people who left messages anthropomorphize and adore their "dead" Tamagotchis. Here are a couple quick examples to illustrate my point:

"Bladdy Bunder A poor Tamagotchi that gave his life in the reckless persuit of Human Happiness. I will miss him dearly."

"I'm so sorry I left you at home. Trust me though, I'll take good care of your baby. See ya' when I get there!!!!!!!!!"

I like how the Tamagotchi was prusuing "Human Happiness" and the hint that the second person would see their Tamagotchi in heaven, like a deceased relative. Another strong comment I found in the middle of a message was "I GUESS THIS MAKES ME A BAD PARENT!!" The whole board was full of feelings of guilt and abandonment. But the funniest ones contained a mixed feelings, such as:

"Oh lucky, my tamagotchi, I put in the changeroom so I could go swimming. When I got back, someone had kipnapped you and I never saw you again. I hope something REALLY bad happens to your kidnapper. A month later, I gotanother tamagotchi like you but I will always remember you."

"My Charlie, my poor poor Charlie. I made a mistake of killing you. I wanted a new character, but I still loved you."

"He was a cute little alien in some ways but a pain in another. He will be dearly missed by all."

I like how the first one signals as to the expendability and consumerism of the Tamagotchi. The second also reasserts the electronic nature of the Tamagotchi, while mourning its projected life. The final is just funny as the author doesn't sound that sorry. This last group are the least empathetic entries:

"You ungrateful little wretch."

"A simple giga-pet who died of complacations"

The first Tamagotchi referred to here died after a week, but I've found terribly mournful entries for Tamagotchis that only lived 4 days. Here the owner is still having an emotional reaction to the death of his Tamagotchi, only in this case it's anger. In psychological terms this anger could still be an appropriate expression of the grieving process. However, the last entry deprives the Tamagotchi of its personhood by coldly calling it "a simple giga-pet." But I also wonder how old the person who wrote that is, considering the awkward spacing of the words and the misspelling of "complacations." I suppose I associate strong empathetic and anthropormorphic reactions to a machine a sign of youth or naivete, which is what makes the last entry so odd.

Edited by author 11-10-2002 03:13 PM
When I was younger and the concept was still fairly new, my uncle gave our family a program which installs a virtual pet onto your computer desktop. Ours was a cat. You get to custom design the color, shape, and size of your cat, and the best part was that each family member can choose their own cat. This was fun for about one week. Every time you log onto your desktop, the cat pops up and runs around the screen and meows. You can play with it using virtual toys on your desktop which make it happy. You can also pet it using a big virtual hand and it will purr. I clearly remember the different ways in which it tried to make you love it. It emulated many of the movements and sounds of real cats when looking for attention... meows, purrs, rubbing up against things, even trying to distract you from whatever work you were trying to accomplish on the computer. In the end, it was not very convincing. The cat's head and body were poorly animated blobs of whatever color you had chosen for their fur. It did not look real. Sometimes it acted real, but not enough to create a real empathic response. Often, the cat was more annoying than fun. I don't know if these pets died or not, because we all started ignoring ours at about the same time, and never opened the program again. In fact, I think we deleted it because it was taking up valuable space on the hard drive. I think I should also mention that at the time we already had a real cat, so perhaps the comparison was part of the disappointment. The imitation cat just didn't succeed in gaining the same kind of empathy as the real cat... it looked wrong and besides, why play with an imitation when you have "the real thing"?

I believe that empathy has a great deal to do with the ability of putting yourself in someone else's shoes. Having empathy involves the presence of another person's fate in your decision-maiking and thought processes. Empathy is the force that causes one to feel remourse, guilt, regret, etc as well as bring about good changes (i.e. social justice, public health, etc.). I suppose empathy can also be a force in bringing about malicious actions, but then that would be when empathy fails. Empathy is generally associated with altruism and this seems to be what separates the androids from the humans - the choice to choose to help yourself or to help others is available in humans, but androids do not have that ability although they may try to fake it. Then, would I be able to claim that empathy is part of the inner feeling of being alive?

Julianne Moore is starring in a new Todd Haynes movie called "Far from Heaven" as a 50's housewife living a "perfect" and model life with her husband, but then starts to spiral downwards when issues of homosexuality, racism, etc start to surface.

A Visit to the Virtual Dog Pound
      Initially, I thought I might be empathetic towards the mastiff that I picked out at the virtual dog pound. The fact that it came from the pound was indicative of its helplessness. I began to think of dogs in real pounds being euthanized if never adopted. The fact that I got to pick my breed warmed my heart because i could associate my virtual dog with real life dogs that I have known and loved. But, the empathy stopped there. The virtual dog lacks an ablitity to reciprocate. Real dogs provoke empathy because they're spontaneous, and virtual dog is not. A real dog has personality and virtual dog does not. Real dogs are cuddly and virtual dog is not. About the only thing empathetic about virtual dog is its being a reminder of what is real (and it failed miserably in most cases considering it wasn't even animated and it's bark was that of a chihuahua and not a mastiff). Empathy is understanding and entering into another's feelings, and virtual dog shows no sign of feeling. Ergo, no feelings of empathy here.

Neopets
I clicked on the link to Neopets. I was already familiar with the site since one of my previous roommates was absolutely obsessed with this website. (She would spend literally 6-8 hours a day playing with her Neopet...) So, I created a "bruce"- a very cute little character that is a Penguin. I took "Lil_Penguin" around the Neopets town, bought him books to read (he gains "intelligence" points this way, and will make comments like "wow, the history of neopets- how interesting! after you have him read them) and also bought him various toys and things to eat. Apparently he likes vegetables the best, becuase he will not eat things like donuts and pizza... When you have him play with toys, he will say things like "thank you!" and "that was fun! let's play some more!" but since it is just randomly generated script, he is not actually all that interactive. It appears that you have to feed him every so often or else his "hunger" status will become very low and he might starve to death. You also have to groom him or else he could get sick. However, I feel absolutely no empathy for this animal. While it is cute, it does not move (it is always just the same picture on the screen). Apparently there is a battledome arena where your neopet can fight other pets (although I was not sure exactly how this works, I could not seem to fight anything). There are also a bunch of games and "gambling-type activities" that you play to win money so that you can buy things for your pet. I think that this aspect of the website is probably where people get hooked. There is a "wheel of excitement" game in which you spin a wheel to win various prizes, but since you can only spin it once every two hours, I think this is where people say "okay, then I will just go play some other games on teh site and come back later" (I've seen this reasoning in action with my old roommate). Surprisingly, however, there was an utter lack of pop-up ads, which is odd since it seems that a site with addicting games to play would take every opportunity to advertise to the users. While the website is very elaborate and there is much to explore, I don't really see the appeal of the site, nor do I see how one could really care about an inanimate picture on the screen. I think they could definetly improve on the level of interaction that you have with the neopets. It does not even make sounds or even tell you to feed it, you just have to check the status screen for yourself and while it does, "talk," I think it is all randomly chosen from a list of ways that the pet can respond (it will even repeat itself) so it does not seem like the pet is unique in any way. Overall, it seems next to impossible to have empathy for your neopet, but easy to get hooked on the games and the idea of just being able to "purchase" more items for your pet.

Happy Hamster
This site and the pet itself are not as exciting as the others posted here. The hamster itself is quite adorable. It's quite plump and the animation is incredibly cutesy. In contrast with the other virtual pets, Happy Hamster tries to recreate the reality of owning a hamster through its simplicity. In the words of the creator of Happy Hamster, the hamster "will walk around, stuff its cheeks with food, unload the food, eat, sleep, groom itself and sleep"-- and this is pretty much all it will do. In the beginning, the program is incredibly boring. The center screen is that of a rotund light-brown hamster with a small pillow as a bed and a feeding tray; the hamster doesn't even have an exercise wheel. However, as time goes on, its small walks and puzzled looks as it responds to your cursor makes Happy Hamster endearing. But what really elicits empathy is not the pet itself but the motivation behind Happy Hamster's creation. The creator, Ms. Arai developed Happy House out of personal tragedy-- her own hamster passed away and she wanted to have a companion while spending long hours on her computer. I personally do not feel that Happy Hamster is a perfect or close to perfect rendition of a hamster. However, this particular hamster may be a perfect representation of Ms. Arai's hamster. Maybe Happy Hamster's sole focus on feeding (to the elimination of the stereotypical exercise wheel) is what reminds Ms. Arai of her deceased pet. Ms. Arai embodies the distraught owners of the cat that Isidore picks up in the novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Unable to accept the loss of a real pet, they order an electric copy to defy the mortality of their pet. Although to the rest of us, Happy Hamster is not even remotely close to a real hamster, it elicits empathy for all real living things. It doesn't matter that the animation is choppy, or that Happy Hamster doesn't excrete waste, Happy Hamster, as the webiste describes,"gives meaning to why we keep warm beasts about us". And I'm sure this is exactly what Mercerism is based on.

The digital spawn’s name is BonziBUDDY. Large, constantly blinking oval eyes, tufts of fur, a tiny bellybutton and a sweet perpetual smile all aligned in the seduction of my girlfriend into clicking the download button. Ordinarily I would strongly preach against downloading this beast, as PRODUCTS like this tend to change every setting imaginable on your computer system, but I then remembered that I was in need of a specimen for study.
The beauty of this monster lies in the fact that his cuteness is engineered to allow his company to get a foothold on an end user’s computer. Once downloaded and installed, BonziBUDDY becomes ubiquitous. You start up the computer and he greets you with his digital voice, “Good morning! I’ve missed you <your name>.”
Naturally, you launch your Internet browser and find that your homepage is now www.bonzi.com, and in the upper right corner there is now something called the bonzi.com web compass. Oh but wait, there’s more!
He also sings songs! If you’re a huge fan of Stephen Hawking’s voice synthesizer and always wanted to hear him sing, then download B.B. and let the fun begin! But it gets better: after he’s done singing, he says “Did you know you can send me to school to learn 19 new songs, <your name>?” After clicking yes, your BonziBuddy-modified browser takes you to the “school” where you find out that tuition is a dirt cheap $9.95. Bonzi then informs you of all the other great features he can learn: 250 jokes, 250 facts, he can even learn to read your email messages to you while you’re playing him in a game of Bonzi’ Beach Checkers ($19.95). Oh but wait! For only $49 per year, you can become a Gold Member and have all of Bonzi’s add-ons, plus you will receive Premium Gold Customer Support on any questions you may have, (like how you successfully remove his invasive digital tendrils from your computer).
Now, if instead of clicking ‘yes’ to learn the new songs you click ‘no’, BonziBuddy makes a truly sad face! His head droops, his arms go limp at his sides, he frowns and then makes a little whimpering noise. Who am I to deny him the opportunity to learn?? I must admit that I initially clicked ‘no’ and after seeing his face I was compelled to at least go check it out.
Seriously, this guy is an empathy machine. The large eyes are quite compelling and you continue to revisit them often because of the regular blinking. The little tufts of fur and vague human form truly allow one to identify with his “emotional responses.” He also breathes. That’s right! While he’s hanging out, his chest rises and falls in simulated respiration. Further, just like the Microsoft word paperclip, Bonzi is always using a prop: A cute little butterfly will land on his head, he juggles coconuts, puts on sunglasses, swings on a vine and even eats a banana. Eating, and breathing? Well what about sleeping? Of course: I turned on the computer one evening around 11:30 PM and there was Bonzi, yawning, and saying in a winy ‘you just woke me up voice’ “I’m not used to being awake this late, <your name>.” He then quickly perks up, but you do find yourself wondering just how late it is and what exactly you’re doing on the computer at this god awful hour.
So, today, my girlfriend told me I could remove him. “Won’t you feel badly?” I asked. “Well, yes, while I’m looking at him. But, if he’s not here when I turn on the computer I won’t mind.” He really is a remarkable piece of work, but I’m looking forward to retiring/de-installing him.
Wow. I actually felt some guilt before, during and after the removal process. Now that’s some effective marketing!

I chose to look at the virtual kitty and it was virtually boring. It is pretty much the same thing as the virtual puppy, only the cat wont sell out, it makes you earn it's love. I name the cat Richie Rich and it is so far very difficult to please. You get these different "toys" the cat can play with you have to manage its "happienss level." This seemed strange to me because in "real life" when do pet owners care about managing their pets happiness. Isnt the point of a pet to make yourself happy? Also, on the website is a button that you can program to take you to another website just incase your boss walks in and you need to look busy. Its called the emergency button and you can choose which website to go to when you log in to take care of the kitten. Honestly, I have no idea why anyone would spend time doing this. But it is a very simple system and its interesting that someone would put in the time to make a website like this. I still cant figure out what the point is. So far my cant is only 1 virtual month old. I wonder if it dies.

I went to the virutal dog pound site. Here you have the opportunity to adopt a virtual dog. There are a variety of breeds to choose from, I chose the German Shepard and named it mateo. Once you choose your dog you basically enter a competition where you compete against other players on the basis of your money and your dogs health. The better you take care of your dog and the more it will assist you to score higher. On the other hand if you decide to neglect your dog your score will drop. The game starts out with each player recieving 100 dollars in cash and a weekly income of 45 dollars. There is even a section in the game that allows you to chat with other players for advice, if for example, you can't manage to get your dog to go to the park with you. Once you enter the game it has a chart with a list of variables that are considered in your score as an owner, such as the dogs: age, happiness, health, loyalty, training, friendliness, etc. After I went into the kitchen of my apartment and the same picture of my dog accompanied me in there I began to get a little annoyed, at least they could place another picture of the dog in there (like from a different angle or something). Anyway, after I bought my dog his (yeah I made sure I didn't adopt a bitch...He acts like a little bitch though) leash and dog food I quit the dumb game, stupid dog wouldn't eat his food, he just stood there like he always does. So I am sad to say that my dog is now starving somewhere on the web and you know what? I could care less.