N_Madouh

Code 46 is vague, not meticulously absorbed, and it progresses too gradually to be thrilling; nevertheless, it has the power to stay with you long after it is over. This has to do with the timely and thought provoking ideas in the film. I would say that Michael Winterbottom has successfully anchored it in the world we know or can imagine not far off, which is pretty demanding to not think it’s fictional. The idea behind genetic laws was one of the most interesting aspects of the movie. The strict Code 46, which prohibits sexual interactions among people who share matching DNA is not far from being reality. In addition, the global warming, which is an important issue these days, in which people work at night to avoid the sun's harmful effects as well as its relation to pollution was as well considered in the movie. As a love story, it seems to me that I only found two things interesting with it: the abuses of authority William has when he has the virus and the potential oedipal nature of his relationship with Maria. The idea of breaking the rules and laws that were extremely strict became somewhat the movie’s core which is interesting to see how going against the mundane routine would do. From the reading “from grid to network” by Mark C. Taylor, it’s apparent that what he was trying to convey was the idea that leys behind the "moment of complexity" via the examples that he illustrates. For instance, compares Mies van der rohe’s modernist grid, Robert Venturi’s “postmodern” revolt, and Frank Gehry’s “radical complexity” in buildings like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Taylor persuasively was arguing that Gehry, utilizing new devices for new ways of conceptualizing; thus, accomplishing structures, characterizes the “moment of complexity”; in other words, “as connections proliferate, change accelerates, bringing everything to the edge of chaos. This is the moment of complexity”; hence, “falling between order and chaos, the moment of complexity is the point at which self-organizing systems emerge to create new patterns of coherence and structures of relation.” This is where then he merges to explaining “information, chaos, and order.” What is very interesting, in my opinion, is Taylor's demonstration of information system’s “adaptation.” “Walls, which once seemed secure, become permeable screens that allow diverse flows to become global.” So now, “Information,” he points out, has become more clearly material, and "matter is informational." As a result, the Information age is not simply about increasing abstraction or "dematerialization." Instead, "the line between the material and the informational has become permeable" as "information processes become considerably more extensive." The structure of “call and response” that Sanford Kwinter has demonstrated in his reading was quite compelling in relation to the fact that it’s the idea engine that runs the act of communication between two elements on one scale, and the communication between two larger organizations on another. In his reading (African Genesis), he initiated by displaying some analogical references to what could support Roy’s project. “The first, like the periodic pheromonal wakes laid down by termite swarms, are primarily responsible for forming the site, the second for the unfurling of the local “pods.” In the wild, space is organized through tension and relaxation.” So in other words, as he was saying “animals dominate other animals within territory, but are dominated outside it.” As a connection process, it seems very logical in respect to the idea that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Now the question is, why do these elements and/or organizations initiate the communication? It is understandable that its instincts, but then again the question “transforms” to __how__ they initiate that communication? How does it become a give and take situation? “Musicians find their entrance into a song not by counting from a main beat, but from local entrances provided by one another individual instruments.” Kwinter started discussing that through his research of African heritage which includes their pattern making, dancing, and music which he analyzed as “rhythmic distributions, on the one hand, and rhythmic unfoldings, on the other.” In other words, “rhythms, as we noted, do not stand alone; they pick one another out, cut across one another, focus one another, and make one another be “heard.” Rhythms are responsive and reciprocal.”
 * Week [ 1 ]**
 * Winterbottom [ Code 46 ]**
 * Taylor [ From Grid to Network ]**
 * Kwinter [ African Genesis ]**

“The shimming complexity of movement and color was at once awe-inspiring and disturbing,” Kwinter is describing the earth. “The massive liquid object, struck us” Kwinter trying to demonstrate the layers of information that the earth contains that we are not really becoming conscious of seeing it as dynamically a communicating unit as he was talking about it from seeing it from out of space. The communication between its “energy flows,” its “fires raging at its core,” to its “exterior orbiting” motion is what he calls soft systems: the system, one might say, is driven by its very “softness,” its capacity to move, to differentiate internally, to absorb, transform, and exchange information with its surroundings.” “In embryology it remains a theoretical question of how specific features can emerge from nothing, how a differentiated embryo can emerge from the blastula, a field of identical cells.” On a smaller scale, Kwinter also questions that behavior. Liquid organisms are organizations; they can maintain their structure and stability through transformation. It has to keep moving; otherwise, it’s going to loose its stability and ultimately fall apart. These liquid organisms/fluid systems/soft systems as Kwinter refers to systems that are concerned with not just having to moving merely, but concerned with the movement that travels through them “nonlinear systems, however, cannot be explained simply through an understanding of their parts, because their primary behaviors represent properties of interactions between parts. When system is broken down, these interaction-based properties disappear.” “The movement from low-level rules to higher-level sophistication” is what Johnson refers to emergence. It is what happens when an interconnected system of moderately primitive element self-systematizes to shape up a quantum leap in its behavior in addition to its adaptive manners. “What features do all these systems share? In the simplest terms, they solve problems by drawing on masses of relatively __stupid__ elements, rather than a single, intelligent “executive branch.” __They are bottom-up systems, not a top-down. They get their smarts from below__;” in other words, instead of being designed by a universal or master planner, emergence starts at the very base stage. From Johnson’s examples and analogies – ant colonies, human brains, city structure – all tag along the laws of emergence except he zooms in and out to fit the scale he wants to talk about, and embedded in these interconnected actions, lies forces that allow those elements to go larger in scale whether its ants building colonies or human body parts correspond to each other.
 * Week [ 2 ]**
 * Kwinter [ Soft Systems ]**
 * Johnson [ Emergence ]**

The Man with the Movie Camera by Vertov is a film in a way experiments time and speed in frames in the route of traveling in time through the work and action-packed life of a large city. Although the movie doesn't tell a traditional story, the movie does have a composition and a sequence in the journey through a day. This movie is apparently a documentary in the Soviet Union, it somehow reminds me very much with the movie "Koyaanisqatsi" except it’s way older and primitive in a way. What is really exciting about the movie is that the background music is going simultaneously with the pace of the movie which becomes in a sense “ambient.” Vertov’s choice of scene envelops a wide range of everyday life. From people, stors, factories, traffic, to leisure activities including sports and seaside scenes, beauticians and hairdressers, weddings, funerals, divorces and births. First shots show the city immobile before the initial commotions of morning leading to a normally eventful day. Also, the camera and cameraman are an essential element of the film showing the entire process of filming, from all sorts of directions and obscure points, on stationary tripods and from moving vehicles, and even shows the editing of the film itself. In Himanen’s article, he compares the Hacker Ethic with the traditional Protestant work ethic and points out how much they vary. He also stresses how the hacker ideal of openness influenced the creation of new communication forms such as chatting. Pekka Himanen also contrasts this motivation by passion and joyfulness with the work ethic pointed out by Weber “while the hacker work ethic’s precursor is in the academy, Weber says that the Protestant ethic’s only historical precursor is in the monastery. And certainly, if we expand on Weber’s comparison, we can see many similarities.” In addition, he uses the monastery as an early manifestation of the principle of work being an end in itself. Furthermore, he compares both, the Protestant work ethic and the hacker’s work ethics to ethics dominant in ancient Greece, which is quite remarkable. “The scientific ethic entails a model in which theories are developed collectively and their flaws are perceived and gradually removed by means of criticism provided by the entire scientific community” which he started to demonstrate in his other chapter where it illustrates the importance of what he calls “organized skepticism.” According to Himanen, it seems that through the collective communication: “open-resource model in which some one announces: I have an idea, I can contribute this much to it…the Net would be used as an effective means for joining forces and later disseminating and developing the idea further,” evolution takes a forward step and becomes what I may interpret as an intricate exchange/input of solutions for a build up system which ultimately that exchange/input turns into the scaffolding/glue to what ever is being developed. In Resnick’s reading, it appears that there is a big difference in being a consumer and a creator in usage. This article covers the issues floating around the use of technology as a learning tool and how one has to differentiate the two types of technology as a passive and an interactive for learning. So as an example that was mentioned, a stereo is simple to learn and use, a very basic machine, providing an instant way to ignite it and have it working, performing multiple tasks that no necessarily in need for deep thinking. Hence, the interaction with a stereo is passive, very much like using any other machine such a video, TV, or microwave. Now on the other hand, learning to play a piano is completely the contrary due to the fact that it offers learners/students an extensive collection of experiences. In using a piano, the learner/student becomes a creator rather than a consumer of information, which would provide the learner/student with a deeper affiliation with the material through that personal experience. This process would encourage problem solving and creative thinking as well as being less reliant; consequently, learners/students become active participants in a hands-on learning process. The principal idea is that through external building or interaction, learners/students are imposing/inflicting their own internal learning/cognition processes. __
 * Week [ 3 ]**
 * Vertov [ Man with movie camera ]**
 * Pekka Himanen [ The Hacker Work Ethic ]**
 * Mitchel Resnick [ Pianos Not Stereos ]**

In the approach of collaborative interaction, modifying the performance of certain information whether it’s within, introduced, or in the process of being eliminated as a result of an upsurge of primitive negotiation between minute elements; hence, immigrating that interaction from state to state in favor of survival or the progression of destruction with respect to rate.
 * [ Complexity ]**
 * [** **Example ]**