Happy New Year everyone! What a whirlwind it has been, which kind of explains why I haven’t posted in AGES!
I have wonderful news to share with you! Helpful Steps finally secured payment on Lazarus, the eksobionic suit at the Elite Gym here in Cork!
This means that Lazarus is now a permanent fixture at the gym thanks to a community of incredible people who rallied around and successfully raised the €150,000 euro needed! The Helpful Steps Inaugural Charity Ball at City Hall played a significant part in raising funds and it was a truly amazing night, which I thoroughly enjoyed!
Now, those with limited mobility will have access to Lazarus and will enjoy the associated health benefits of this groundbreaking technology.
Photo: Courtesy of Helpful Steps & EksoBionics
I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and I wish you a peaceful and prosperous new year. May all your dreams be realised in 2016! J x
So, I have been a little redundant in terms of my blog posts over the past few months as I have been extremely busy working on a short video documentary. My last post may have served as a teaser or little hint that the topic of my documentary is bionic technology. The film centres around the story of Nathan Kirwan, a young man who, after a fall in 2013 suffered a C4 Spinal Cord Injury. It documents how Nathan and others are benefiting from using the Eksobionic Suit at the Elite Gym in my city of Cork in Ireland. The Elite gym is the only gym in the world that houses this technology. Other suits around the world are in rehabilitation and clinical settings.
For the past number of months, I have been following Nathan Kirwan, Spinal Cord Injury survivor and Colin O’ Shaughnessy, owner of the Elite Gym in Cork as they attempt to raise the much-needed €150,000 to keep a piece of ground- breaking wearable technology at the gym permanently. Affectionately known as ‘Lazarus’, the EksoBionic suit aids those with limited mobility to ‘walk’. This inspired me to make a documentary, Every Step I Take. Please take a look,
The charity www.helpfulsteps.ie set up by Nathan and Colin will hold the Helpful Steps Inaugural Charity Ball on the 10th October 2015 at City Hall here in Cork. It promises to be a spectacular night with lots of surprises and entertainment in store. Lazarus will of course make a very special appearance! Tickets are priced at €100 per person and you can contact Olive Downey on 086 3357424 to secure your ticket or email olive@helpfulsteps.ie. Click here for further details.
It has been reported in the media this week that Ray Flynn, an elderly British man is the first person in the world to have his sight restored using a bionic eye implant.
Mr. Flynn suffers from dry age-related macular degeneration or AMD which causes his sight to be significantly diminished and only allows partial vision out of the corners of his eyes.
Last month, however Mr. Flynn participated in a ground breaking medical trial during which surgeons inserted a device known as the Argus II to the outside of his eye.
So, here is the ‘science bit’. A tiny camera attached to the patient’s glasses captures a scene which is sent to a small patient-worn computer.
The scene is processed and transformed into instructions that are sent back to the glasses by using a cable.
The instructions are transmitted wirelessly to the retinal implant. The signals are then sent to the electrode array, which emits small pulses of electricity.
These pulses stimulate the retina’s remaining working cells, which transmit the visual information along the optic nerve to the brain, creating the perception of patterns of light.
Patients learn to interpret these visual patterns with their retinal implant.
The video below illustrates exactly how it works.
However, the cost is approximately €213,000 so unfortunately I don’t see the bionic eye becoming widely available in Ireland for quite some time.
Another emerging technology that I am currently researching for a short documentary project is the Ekso GT Robotic Exo Skeleton which allows wheelchair users and those with limited mobility to ‘walk’.
When users of this wearable technology shift their weight in the upright standing position, sensors are activated which initiate steps and battery powered motors drive the legs.
Those who have mobility need to stand and walk to stay healthy. Those with limited mobility as a result of Spinal Cord Injury, MS, Stroke, Friedrich’s Ataxia and Spina Bifida also need to stand and walk to improve lung capacity, bone density and bowel and bladder function as well as staying fit and healthy.
In Ireland, there are currently 3 EksoBionic suits, 2 of which are in clinical/rehabilitation settings. The other one? It is in a gym here in Cork!
The Elite Gym in Cork is the only gym in the world that houses the EksoBionic Suit, affectionately known as Lazarus, making it very accessible for users. It is currently on deposit since Jan 2015 and it will cost €150,000 to keep it in the gym.
Colin O’Shaughnessy , owner of the gym and world-champion kickboxer and Nathan Kirwan who is a C4 Spinal Cord Injury survivor established www.helpfulsteps.ie and have been fundraising since January this year to secure Lazarus’s stay at the gym.
Users from all over Ireland have been travelling to Cork to use the suit and have been participating in the Walk with Me Challenge at the gym to raise much needed funds.
The difference between the bionic eye and the bionic suit is that the cost of the bionic suit is achievable and the benefits are priceless.
Recently, I watched the documentary Life 2.0 which introduced me to the virtual world Second Life. Created in 2003 by Philip Rosedale (former CEO) of the Linden Lab, Second Life is an online virtual community where instant gratification and consumerism drives the pursuit of the ideal body, lifestyle and relationship.
It is a world where ideal body parts can be purchased, where the avatar through businesses like real estate and retail exchanges the $Linden Dollar for the $USD and where real life product placement exists for companies like McDonalds, Coca-Cola, American Apparel etc. Residents may visit multiple locations via ‘teleportation’ and common abbreviations include RP (Role Play), NOOBS (new users), RL (real life) and SL (second life).
The documentary follows three Second Lifers, a man that spends hours on end each night posing as an 11 year old girl, a couple who try to transpose their online relationship into a real life love affair and an entrepreneur who, from her modest basement makes money from her virtual clothing line.
I don’t want to spoil how each story ends but suffice to say, the film certainly captures the blurred line between the real world and the virtual world. It also evidences the pursuit of the ideal self through the avatar. Second Life is a world where anything can happen and living out these fantasies in the real world doesn’t necessarily work.
Having watched the documentary, I was flabbergasted that I had never even heard of Second Life and so I was intrigued. I installed it and created my avatar, Valda (named after a female superhero from my Mandy comic days). I didn’t really know what to expect and like most Irish people who land in a new country, I headed for the virtual pub, The Blarney Stone. I was fairly underwhelmed. It was just a bunch of boobs and six packs dancing in a bar. I didn’t purchase enormous breasts or a skinny waist or long legs when I created my avatar. My avatar looked normal compared to the others and so Valda didn’t get much attention.
I hung around other various places in Second Life and found it both tedious and fascinating from an observational point of view. I cornered my lecturer in the canteen a few days later and asked him if he was familiar with Second Life. Of course he was and went on to tell me that he didn’t think it was as vibrant a virtual community as it once was. “But, HOW did I miss this? It has been going since 2003 and I only came across it now,” I asked. My lecturer simply said, “You were probably too busy living in your first real life.” Good point.
FYI, the documentary Life 2.0 is available to watch on YouTube and it won an award at Sundance in 2010. Would love to hear others’ Second Life experiences so feel free to get in touch or post a comment!
Sir Ken Robinson author, speaker, educationalist (and all round funny guy) says that our current system of education, which was founded around the time of the industrial revolution is killing our creativity. We are in the midst of a digital revolution and yet, he argues we are operating within a traditional system of academia that measures intelligence with tunnel vision. “We are educated out of creativity,” he says. Robinson would argue that in education today there is a need for more of an aesthetic experience, a learning environment where all the senses are stimulated.
According to Gardner and his theory of multiple intelligences, we have seven main types of intelligence; visual-spatial, bodily-kinaesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, linguistic and logical-mathematical. I suspect we have many more than seven, we just don’t realise it. Have you ever thought about how you learn? I have realised over the past few months that I am aurally inclined and remember what I hear rather than what I see. When I was in secondary school (many moons ago), I wasn’t actually aware of how I learned and we were of the ‘chalk and talk’ generation where one size supposedly fit all. Not so.
Robinson discusses the rise of ADHD and ADD as an epidemic and believes that an education system lagging behind technology is one of the key-contributors. While he acknowledges that this epidemic in schools is a challenging one, he says that medicating children with Ritalin only serves to dull their senses further. But then others would argue that technology is to blame and that because everything is instant and immediate via touchscreen, children have a harder time focusing and concentrating on one thing at a time.
Award-winning ballerina and choreographer Dame Gillian Lynne found formal traditional education difficult. Her teachers complained that she had poor concentration, was unable to sit still and thought she had a learning disability.
Gillian was only eight years old, but her future was already at risk. Her schoolwork was a disaster, at least as far as her teachers were concerned. She turned in assignments late, her handwriting was terrible, and she tested poorly. Not only that, she was a disruption to the entire class, one minute fidgeting noisily, the next staring out the window, forcing the teacher to stop the class to pull Gillian’s attention back, and the next doing something todisturb the other children around her. –
– excerpt from The Element by Ken Robinson
Well, of course she couldn’t sit still. She clearly had a high bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence that wasn’t harnessed or nurtured in a traditional educational setting. Dame Gillian Lynne became a professional ballerina at the Royal School of Dance on a scholarship and went on to choreograph iconic musicals such as Cats and Phantom of the Opera.
I have to admit, I am with Ken Robinson on this one. Education is trying to adapt but it is still chasing the tail of technology and needs to focus on an holistic approach that nurtures and credits all our various intelligences. I don’t think that machines will ever completely replace educators but I foresee an era where they will take on more of a curator or facilitator role, whereby they will filter through a lot of the rubbish online and share the really good resources with students.
The more I de-construct technology and question its true purpose the more I begin to think that George Orwell’s iconic book 1984 was not a work of fiction but a prophecy, a long lens into the world in which we live today.
I recently watched CitizenFour, an award winning documentary which follows former NSA technician Edward Snowden’s story as he reveals in a series of interviews that the US government have access to the movements and activities of every American through covert web operations at NSA . According the Snowden, US citizen’s phones were being intercepted, their e-mails read and their data collected despite not being on any “watch list” as suspects for prospective terrorist attacks.
I began to wonder what Snowden’s motives were behind exposing one of the worlds most guarded secrets. He certainly didn’t come across as someone courting celebrity, recognition or money. In fact, in the documentary he seems like a regular geek who believes in truth, accuracy and transparency.
Would it be so naive to think that perhaps he lifted the lid on this international scandal because he felt that what the NSA and the US administration were doing was inherently wrong on all levels? Perhaps Snowden and many like him take issue with the fact that we have traded our privacy for the ‘free’ world of the web.
We are now paying the price and living in a surveillance state where organisations like the NSA and government security are the ‘thought police’. ‘Big Brother’ is the dominating force of international security that exists through the ‘telescreens’ of our smartphone, ipads, laptops and desktops.
Snowden has been living in exile in Russia since his passport and papers were siezed by US officials and he faces prosecution and probable incarcaration without the opportunity of a fair trial if he returns to the US. What does that tell us about the world we live in? We learn in history books about dictatorships and totalitarian regimes. We read in the papers about dictatorships and regimes in far off lands like the Arab World.
But in our so called sophisticated western society, some one woke up one day and became aware that technology married with governmental corruption is a conduit for a more subtle form of technological totalitarianism to thrive.
The Guardian newpaper reported good news in Snowden’s case this week. The NSA are set to be legally challenged following a landmark decision by the appeals court that the mass surveillence of phones, as exposed by Snowden is indeed illegal. See the full article here.
Have you ever noticed how on Facebook, some pages and friend posts slowly begin to disappear from your newsfeed?
According to progressive internet activist Eli Pariser, this is what is known as the ‘filter bubble’, a term he coined and a concept he later discussed in his book of the same name. The algorithms of corporate giants such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon etc. are, he says curating the world for us, tracking our user habits online and ultimately deciding what we see and what we don’t see. Our own unique information online is used to tailor what we see, but the problem, according to Parisier is that we don’t know what is being ‘filtered’ or edited out.
The trouble with the filter bubble is that our lives and interests become compartmentalised and we risk having a one dimensional vision of the world and a lack of shared ideologies and perspectives. He believes that this will further fragment society.
This dystopian notion of Orwellian screen surveillance has been around possibly even before Orwells prophetic “1984” and modern discourse is understandably preoccupied with issues of privacy, internet security, data privacy etc. But what about extreme surveillance and control in the offline world?
In a fascinating interview on The John Murray Show, Korean-American award winning author and journalist Suki Kim describes how surveillance and filtering information is very much alive in the offline world of North Korean society today.
In 2011, she entered North Korea under the guise of a teacher at the elite all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology in the North Korean capital. She has written a compelling book about her experiences entitled “Without You there is no Us.”
Suki Kim describes how, along with the students and teachers she was constantly watched and closely monitored by the military guards and minders under the regime of the Great Leader Kim Jung Un. She says she was never alone and hyper controlled by the minders who lived in the same quarters as her at the University. Her classes were recorded, her lesson-plans were controlled and she was not allowed to share any information with the students about ‘the outside world’ which made teaching a challenge. No communication with the outside world was permitted.
BBC’s Panorama documentary (short) gives a chilling insight into the life under the regime at Pyongyang. (No Copyright Intended)
The fact that the University students have never heard of Michael Jackson is shocking but shows how controlled and protected from the outside world they really are.
We have often heard the phrase, “what you don’t know wont hurt you” and “ignorance is bliss”. Surveillance and control both online and offline got me thinking that maybe what we don’t know will hurt us in the future. Perhaps Eli Pariser has a point when it comes to the filter bubble. Pariser has come up with 10 Ways To Pop Your Filter Bubble, that is to un-filter and de-personalise your web experience. While his measures aren’t bullet proof, there is some comfort in having just a little control over what we see in the online world.
Cyber feminist Anita Sarkeesian is both vilified and revered by those in the gaming industry. In 2009, she launched feministfrequency.com, a website designed to educate others about the use of tropes by developers in their gaming creations.
Anita Sarkeesian contends that there is a pervasive pattern in modern gaming as women are depicted as sexual playthings as well as victims of violence by their male counterparts.
In her web series Tropes vs. Women in Video Games launched in 2012, she points out that games like Bioshock 2 (2010) portray women not only as background decoration but as sexualized, maimed women in ‘arousing positions’. In stark contrast, she notes that there is a distinct lack of sexualization and objectification of male characters in games.
A YouTube user under the name of ‘Thunderf00t’ not only criticises Sarkeesian’s claims but also the fact that she was crowd funded through Kickstarter accumulating $158,000 in donations 2012 to make the web series. The user claims that she has only done 5 videos in 24 months which works out at $30,000 per video. ‘Thunderf00t’ admonishes her for having her comments section switched off.
It is understandable in the aftermath of Gamergate where female gaming developers were subject to trolling and insidious, vile threats of physical and sexual violence. Cast your mind back to an earlier post where I alluded to the world of gaming as a bloodsport.
One might argue that the sexualization and objectification of women is nothing new and is something that had been around for centuries. How do you change a stereotype that is deeply entrenched in our culture?
Iconic women like Marilyn Monroe, Madonna and Beyonce have used their sexuality to sell their movies and music and are often admired by other women for using their beauty and prowess to their advantage.
More worrying is the emerging culture of those that hide behind their online anonymity to bully and terrorize others. Personally, I think Anita Sarkeesian’s thesis is a little one-dimensional and simplified. In my view, feminism particularly cyber feminism is complex and needs some teasing out.
“I have a couple of conditions. The debate will last at least an hour, and must be streamed live. No subject is off-limits. Questions must be taken by each speaker from members of the audience and from each other: there should be plenty of time for cross-examination. Questions should not be shared ahead of time. No earpieces, and no long prepared statements. Admittance is free. (I’ll cover the cost of the venue and security, if need be.) And that’s really it.”
I am not sure Anita Sarkeesian will be signing up to the debate any time soon. The fact that she has disabled her comment section on YouTube screams to me that perhaps she just wants to be left alone to get on with it.
In a world of selfies, belfies and butts, isn’t it high time we think about keeping our online hygiene and behaviour in check and think before we click?
Celebrity sex tapes are now…oh so 90’s. We all remember Paris Hilton’s not-so-sexy sexploits , not to mention Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee and all that ‘frolicking’ on their yacht.
I used to sympathise with celebs and the invasion of their privacy up to a certain point. More often than not, a trusted associate from their close-knit inner circle would steal the tape from the celeb’s house. By the time the Kardashians descended upon us, I guess I became more cynical and wondered if the footage of Kim in compromising positions was nothing more than a carefully orchestrated move on the part of her scary stage mom Kris Jenner.
It has been argued that online communication can be a great leveler of issues related to things like gender and race, as your online identity does not necessarily have to be tied to your offline physical appearance. On the other hand, does the invincibility of online anonymity make us all the more dishonest and deviant?
Cue-Catfish the Documentary, in which filmmaker/photographer Neve Schulman gets more than he bargains for when it transpires that the beautiful artistic girl he is in an online relationship with is not at all who she says she is according to her carefully constructed online identity.
In August 2014, sexually explicit pictures of Jennifer Lawrence and Rihanna to name but a few appeared online. The photos were hacked by those pesky 4Chan people from J. Law’s iCloud account, disseminated and distributed all over the internet.
According to an article in The Guardian, she was outraged and called it a “sex crime” and that anyone who viewed the images were also guilty of a violating her.
It is difficult to sympathise in a world, which has now, lets face it become a voyeuristic surveillance state. There is no such thing as online privacy these days because as Aleks Krotoski says in her BBC Documentary Series A VirtualRevolution,
“there is always some highly motivated geek with the necessary computing skills to play David to the State’s Goliath”
The world of gaming is a competitive sport . In the 2012 Sundance Award winning documentary Indie Game, it is a blood sport.
The movie profiles independent game developers, partners Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes and Phil Fish (of Polytron) and their struggle to get their games completed and into the indie games market. McMillen and Refenes work on their game Super Meat Boy.
The premise of the game is a simple one. Super Meat Boy the main character has no human skin. He is in pursuit of Bandage Girl, his soul mate but has to try and dodge the chainsaw blade obstacles in his quest to get to her. It is quite a romantic and sweet idea when you think about it. Bandage girl will complete Super Meat Boy by protecting his exposed flesh with her loving bandages.
“My whole career has been about trying to find new ways to communicate with people because I desperately want to communicate with people but I don’t want the messy interaction of having to make friends and talk to people cos I probably won’t like them”
-Edmund McMillen
McMillen is a likable character. We see him propose to his girlfriend publicly at a gaming convention…obviously.
Microsoft offers McMillen and Refenes the opportunity to take part in an Xbox Live Arcade Promotion but they must finish the game in a month. Due to financial pressure they agree and it is a race against time to get Super Meat Boy finished on time.
Refenes, the other half of the partnership comes across as somebody that badly needs to learn how to relax. He clearly suffers from anxiety and this manifests through his appearance alone. Unshaven, pale, thin and a diabetic, he seems to slowly unravel as the release date of Super Meat Boy approaches. He becomes increasingly agitated and his mood becomes erratic due to stress and sleep deprivation. Yet the partnership seems to work well with McMillen as the ying to Refenes yang.
Phil Fish is the developer of Fez, a game that he has been working on for four years (since 2008) so the pressure is on. He initially receives funding for the project. However due to the lengthy development delay, the funding is pulled and he is under enormous financial pressure.
“I am so closely attached to it. It is my identity. It is Fez. I’m the guy making Fez”
-Phil Fish
Phil Fish is as unlikeable character. He has clearly alienated a lot of people including his former partner Jason Degrout. It is evident that it was a bitter gaming break up. Phil Fish needs Degrout to sign some legal documents on the morning of the Penny Arcade Expo in Boston to seal the final separation deal otherwise he will not be able to debut Fez at the Expo.
We see his anger escalate when there is no sign of Degrout. He goes ahead and sets up his booth anyway but his demo gets off to a disastrous start as the incomplete Fez is plagued with bugs.
Phil Fish is a controversial figure in the indie gaming world and famously tweeted his followers following the cancellation of a sequel Fez 2, “Seriously, shut the f**k up about Fez 2. It is never going to happen. You don’t deserve it.”
I don’t want to ruin the plot or give away too many spoilers. Suffice to say this documentary is fantastic and well worth a look. It gives an incredible insight into both the creative nature and the psychology of independent gaming developers. It also effectively charts the emotional investment of the artists in their creations. Incidentally, if any of you have played both Fez and Super Meat Boy, I would love to hear from you, so feel free to comment and let me know which game you enjoyed the most!
Jenny Regan Cybercultures 
