Is it right to right swipe?

Yesterday evening, to avoid trawling through the usual crap on TV, I downloaded Tinder. The dating-come-pick-up app has been circulating around my friends iPhone screens for months, but I have dampened my curiosity to right swipe because 1) I have a significant other, and 2) the fear of being spotted in the flesh by a match around campus proved to awkward to be worth it. However now I’m home for reading week, so: what the heck! 

With the excitement of indulging in something so superficial fresh, I proceeded to waste half an hour (an entire Peep show that it is) swiping through hundreds of faces. Without sounding up my own, I was surprised at how few 20 – 26 yr olds I wanted to right swipe. (For those Tinder free beings, right swiping equals ‘yes’ and left swiping equals ‘no’). Naïvely, I thought with its popularity and addictive nature, this ‘Tinder’ must be a pandoras box of god-like men. I was mistaken. But then it came… My first match. Bizarrely, even though I am in a very happy and loving relationship of four years, I did get a strange buzz from the flattery. 

This excitement was soon followed by a twinge of guilt at my own hypocrisy in presenting myself as a single gal. I reminded myself I had downloaded the app as a means of entertainment and social observation: just because I matched with someone did not qualify adultery. I continued to swipe. After the initial novelty wore off, I realised how callous the whole thing was. I was shocked at my own superficiality and it struck me how many of these faces I was flicking through might indeed be a catch if you met in a different situation.

However, I do think apps like this provide an interesting social insight. Like many others on Tinder, I download the app as an ego massage: just a quick and superficial boost. A questionable motive indeed! Like me, a number of my friends in happy relationships use the app openly as a flattery seeking device, having no intention of following the matches up. But isn’t taking delight in the momentary attention of someone other than your partner, looking down the cheating path just a bit?  

It struck me as strange how some men had wedding photographs as their Tinder pics, what type of woman are they trying to attract and what for? Surely, they can’t be seriously looking to cheat if they are so blatantly advertising their own smiling matrimony! 

This begs the question: What is Tinder for?

There is no arguing the app’s intense and self confessed shallowness. However I would like to think there was something more significant to right swiping than just a quick fix of flattery or sex. I applaud the use of it for busy working singles looking for love: the app takes out those accidental meetings and seems more viable than a drunken encounter. But I can’t help but feel it is a bit sad that university students have to resort to something so transient to find love. 

Perhaps Tinder is the zeitgeist of future dating, a natural development in our every more digital culture that should be celebrated. If so, I wonder why there still is a stigma around online dating when we are all happy to share out thoughts / photographs / daily lives online. A friend and active Tinder user said if she ever met someone on Tinder she would be embarrassed to admit where they had met. So what is the point of the app if people will never commit to those we encounter? Are we such an insecure generation we need strangers to randomly indicate how attractive we are? Surely not…

From biting ant sutures to replacement brain tissue: A history of biomaterials

Christmas for under a tenner

My student loan running increasingly closer to zero, I thought I’d try Christmas shopping on the cheap. After an evening of crowds at winter wonderland the night before, I thought I’d dodge the high street and find some novel gifts for friends and family somewhere the hoards wouldn’t get to. How could I be so wrong! As I turned into a passage off Mile End, I was expecting a jumble sale a la Brighton marina, however what I faced was a queue half a mile long. I walked to the end, annoyed I hadn’t bought a coffee to sip on whilst waiting.

What was I queuing for? Those allusive one pound vintage sales nonetheless (why not go the whole scrimping hog?). After waiting for over thirty minuets, I wondered if it was worth it. The explicit gossip of those surrounding me was growing tiresome, however I had come this far, and the coffee I was so longing for had just turned up cutosy of a friend also aiming for vintage bargains. Between the sea new balance trainers and bleach blond topknots came a scary looking bouncer demanding a pound for entry, we olidged – out of fear, mostly – and went in.

What carnage! Ombre ponytails were colliding, plum lipsticked snarls were grabbing over what superficially looked like a pile of junk. My slightly groggy morning self was tempted to do a 360 there and then, but then I spied a row of fur coats and decided to wade on in. Under the plaid shirts and stained sweaters, there where definitely a few bargains to be found. A friend found a pair of heavy duty wool army pants and plenty of fur collared ski jackets, whilst I grabbed a canary yellow blouse and some lovely tweed trousers, both looking much more expensive than a quid! Once I had collected enough stuff to make my arms ache, I decided to pay. ￡7 for eight items, not bad for things which would have cost me at least seventy pounds to buy new! I left feeling chuffed, and spent the afternoon sampling exotic food on Brick Lane (I would recommend the malaysian pancakes, seriously yummy and cheap too.) Despite the slightly lengthy start, it ended up a good day. If you fancy going to  a￡1 sale yourself,  I would suggest not planning to do things afterwards; carrying loads of heavy clothes in a bin liner gets seriously annoying in the crowds. But overall a really nice pre Chirstmas day!

If not already familiar, take a peak:

http://www.theeastendthriftstore.com

Entropy outside Science

Recently I have been trying to fathom what Alan Wilson’s ‘Superconcepts’ entail. The most recent, ‘Entropy’ involved a hell of a lot of hard and long mathematical equations explaining what is essentially: 1) Things always move from order to chaos without intervention and 2) Heat always moves from hot to cold 3) the spread of information to a wider group. As a non mathematician, I was shaken by those long and bizarre numerical sentences, but as things were explained in plain English, I realized that this complex and nuanced idea of Entropy has earnt it’s stripes as a Superconcept because of the pure universality of it’s basic ideas. So I am going to offer a few examples of how Entropy can be applied to the social sciences, the arts, and humanities in order to further the buzz word, ‘Interdisciplinarity’ whilst trying to break down the two cultures division.

Lets take the social science, Psychology to begin, but specifically depression and mental wellbeing. I would argue that modern psychiatric disorders follow a very clear entropic system in the sense that without active intervention, through either the person themselves, a psychologist, or a psychiatrist, the disorder continues it’s exacerbation. So in defining a good mental state as order and the bad mental state as chaos, this system follows the first definition of entropy well. Of course the definition of good and bad mental states may change; perhaps there is virtue in a chaotic mind for creativity and imagination, however if ‘order’ is seen to be the clarity of someones thought, appropriate emotional fluctuation and all round contentment so the person can lead a happy life, I think entropy does it’s bit in explaining a model of depression or other mental health disorders.

Moving to a more abstracted sense of Entropy, perhaps English literature – the reading, writing, and analytic practices in the subject – also moves in a metaphorically entropic sense. Take for instance the process of writing a novel; the heat of ideas and flair of creativity condensed into the sober and definite object of a book could mirror the second definition of entropy. Or indeed the ideas and politics that surround the author in their life; the zeitgeist of their time in either literature genre or the style of prose, which influence and spread amongst the reader and writer people in the culture. This spread of information perhaps influences the author and they use their writing to pull all these influences together, mirroring the third rule defined.

Or indeed, he process of painting a picture or creating any Art. The ordered and clean canvas to the painted one; the extended process of the new artist’s studio, with clean white walls and organized work top, evolving to the used, paint splattered individual’s creative space; or more literally the process of opening and using a tube of new paint, all go from the ordered to the chaotic, in a distinctly entropic movement.

There is something beautiful in the flow of Entropy; it is always one directional and there is a feeling of equilibrium and balance in the chaos or spread. Perhaps, Wilson’s Superconcepts should become more wide spread to engage a more general audience of critics; these Superconcepts assisting in the movement and development of social attitudes to problem based task solving. But above all I think Entropy is another lense for us to view the world through, maybe revealing new thinking about this previously known.

Art Under What Attack?

I recently visited the Tate Britain’s exhibition ‘Art under attack: histories of British Iconoclasm’ as a supplement to my Material Culture module. What struck me was how the traditional and stagnated curation of the exhibition completely juxtaposed the content; how if a slightly different and more engaging tack had been used it could have transformed the rather dry “look at that art!” walk through into a really engaging exploration of Iconoclasm. 

I found the first few rooms interesting, doing exactly what the title of the exhibition instructed – giving a history of Iconoclasm – nonetheless it was interesting to see how the early Protestant movement used the destruction of Catholic art as a politically religious protest. The traditional curation did not frustrate me until the Suffragette room; perhaps the closeness of the era combined with the motive and significance of those brave women’s acts, seemed bizarrely static in the large and rather boring room. (Here, I would like to show you a photo but cameras were banned, so imagine a large pinkish room with a variety of portraits lining the walls and a few comfy viewing seats – a standard gallery scene)

I think at this point is there could have been an opportunity for visitors to do some image destruction themselves, as Orlik’s scathing and highly critical article(1) rightly points out most of the art displayed were copied of the originals, therefore I wonder why I wasn’t allowed to do some picture ripping or slashing whilst listening to an interview with Mary Richardson about her attack on the ‘Rokeby Venus’?! I understand for the Tate to inspire an anarchic and rebellious feeling towards destroying art is almost definitely dangerous, but the essence of what I am trying to say is the motives behind the art’s original destruction seemed to be skimmed over whereas it would been more beneficial for it to be explored and confronted.

Jones’s ‘Chair’ (2)

The curation of the objects in the adjacent room was so highly provocative I can barely refrain from cussing! So, having just considered the women’s movement and all the modern equality discussion which goes with that, you are confronted by on of the most offensive and vulgar pieces of ‘art’ I have ever seen: Allen Jones’s ‘Chair’. This piece was presented in it’s fully restored form, but why it ever was restored completely baffles me! Whilst I gazed on this epitome of female objectification, like it’s detroyer in the 70’s, I wanted to cover it in paint stripper! I feel that by presenting this as art wprthy of restoration in an age where pornography and the women’s form is still so much public property, I ask the Tate: what benefit does this piece have to my understanding of iconoclasm when the information provided was so dryly objective and neutral to it’s creation, destruction, and current presentation?

Whilst talking to my peers about this piece there has been mixed reviews about the objects purpose and it’s curatorial merit, but there seems to be a general view that if there had been a more involving process either towards the restoration or destruction of a virtual or physical replica, we would have all felt a deeper understanding of the motives and processes of Iconoclasm and restoration, throughout history. 

What I couldn’t grasp was the aim of the exhibition, and I think essentially this was a problem in the location of the exhibition. The Tate understandably couldn’t celebrate iconoclasm, but perhaps but staying so neutral it doesn’t fully explore it either; I wonder if a more innovative curation would have been possible in a different setting, like a pop up gallery. Curation aside, was it ever a viable idea to explore art destruction in the bed of art presentation at all? 

If this topic continues to interest you I recommend a visit to Tate Britain and a read of Orlik’s article, both linked below. I would be interested to hear your opinions on it! 

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/art-under-attack-histories-british-iconoclasm

(1) Orlik’s Article: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/art-under-attack-does-tate-britains-new-exhibition-on-the-history-of-iconoclasm-have-anything-to-say-8864373.html

(2) http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.positive-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/3.-Allen-Jones-Chair-1969.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.positive-magazine.com/design/british-design-from-the-48-austerity-olympics-to-2012-olympics/&h=1905&w=2689&sz=2050&tbnid=bejysivIg_o2aM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=127&zoom=1&usg=__M4DtWE5xW72a1b-0jNUMCk1yIZc=&docid=dGzxoW7kZDeOHM&sa=X&ei=JIF7UsbqGuTX7AbajoGACA&ved=0CDQQ9QEwAg

 

Sharing is Caring: The Future of Knowledge Acquisition

 

Education of the future could be something which school prepares you for rather than contains. Perhaps in the next fifty years we will see a change from the formal-education-into-job progression of today, to life long knowledge acquisition. In Johnson’s book ‘Where Good Ideas Come From’ he discusses “The Slow Hunch”(1) theory of innovation, which suggests individual hunches can grow into innovative discoveries over time. Supported by the BBC article ‘IQ linked to levels of happiness’(2), my ‘hunch’ is knowledge and happiness are intrinsically related. Therefore if the active learning process is continued throughout adulthood perhaps there will be increased levels of happiness and job satisfaction whilst developing a process of “knowledge building”(3), making everyone happier, including the suits.

Whilst reading Johnson’s ‘Where good ideas come from’(4) it struck me that the current school system provides two paradoxical mantras: 1) ‘no copying’ and 2) ‘sharing is caring’. I remember being thoroughly puzzled by these two instructions. On this subject, Chiara Ambrosio’s phrase regarding an aspect of my degree stuck with me quite poignantly “the core courses should give you the ammunition to attack your chosen modules”(5). In a sentence, the formal education of the future should do just that: give us the ammunition to tackle life based problems in a way which is creative and innovative, resulting in greater self-fulfillment. Future leaning in adulthood should be about sharing ideas in a coffee shop (as Watson and Crick so infamously did)(6), spontaneously exchanging knowledge between individuals to compliment our own work or  to aid the work of a fellow knowledge-seeker. Sharing knowledge could indeed be caring in this sense, but for society. There will no longer be the need for the close cosseting of ideas, everyone is encouraged to copy, and not just copy: adapt.

I now encourage you to reflect on your own education. What were the subjects that you were encouraged in? What were the subjects you enjoyed? Do they correlate? In Ken Robinson TED talk ‘How Schools Kill Creativity’(7) he raises how children are steered away from subjects they enjoy towards those more appropriate for job services. However in an age where information is everywhere and gathering it is not confined to institution walls(8), shouldn’t we be finding a way to veer away from Aristotle’s hierarchy of subjects(9)? In doing so, maybe we could create trans-disciplinary innovation beyond formal education giving everyone a hunger for continued learning at what ever age, in what ever job.

Perhaps the knowledge creation of the future needs to hold innovation at it’s frontier; in a world where many of the institutions are failing to change at a speed rapid enough to keep up with the outside world, more universal collective creativity(10) might hold the key to updating our society to the new model. Here I employ the Shirky’s idea of “Cognitive Surplus”(11), in his book of the same name, he asks “how much will we be able to take advantage of the cognitive surplus to produce real civic value?”(12). I think a shift to life long knowledge sharing will do just that: I envisage a world where in someone’s coffee break they read an interesting blog post on their smart phone, there is a FaceTime link on the blog and reader calls the creator. They have a few minuets long ‘face to face’ idea exchange about the topic and then part ways. The creator feels happy because his / her work has been acknowledged, whilst the reader has a greater sense of understanding, engagement, and inclusion in the project. The reader returns to work with that buzzy enthusiasm from creative brain stimulation and does better and happier work as a result. Cognitive Surplus put to good use.

I think the need for purpose is innate to the human condition, perhaps a positive cultural attitude towards infinite learning  could offer that for everybody. If everyone was an Amateur Professor, researching theirown interests, learning and sharing for the love of it, maybe it there would be a rise in self-esteem. After all as Shirky says “the essence of amateurism is intrinsic motivation…to do something for the love of it”(13) – and you can’t be unhappy doing something you love. The beauty of the modern technological age is immediacy; for those who want to participate, knowledge is globally, instantly, immediately communicable, for almost no cost.

I will end on Johnson’s beautifully clear analogy of ‘Liquid Networks’(14): if society behaves like a liquid; flowing, bumping into other atom-people, sharing and creating all the way through our lives – by drawing our inventions on toilet walls or face timing a blog follower – innovation will happen naturally. So who knows, perhaps my hunch for the future of knowledge acquisition will follow the “Slow hunch”(1) pattern: and wouldn’t life be more inclusive if it did?

 

*watch this space*

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Works Cited:

(1) Johnson S. Where Good Ideas Come From: A Natural History of Innovation. 2010 ed. London: Penguin; 2010. Chapter: The Slow Hunch. p.67.

(2) BBC. BBC News – IQ Linked to levels of Happiness [Internet]. 26/09/12. [26/10/13]: Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19659985

(3) Paavola S, et al. Models of Innovative Knowledge Communities and Three Metaphors of Learning, Review of Educational Research [Internet]. 2004. [26/10/13]; Vol.74 (No. 4). p.561. Available from: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3515981?searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3D

knowledge%26acc%3Doff%26wc%3Don%26fc%3Doff&Sear

ch=yes&searchText=knowledge&uid=3738032&uid=21

34&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21102832457657

(4) Johnson S. Where Good Ideas Come From: A Natural History of Innovation. 2010 ed. London: Penguin; 2010.

(5) StudyUCL. Chiara Ambrosio Arts and Sciences BASc 2 [Internet]. 21/09/2011. [20/10/13]: Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0izTmwu8mLk

(6) Johnson S. Where Good Ideas Come From: A Natural History of Innovation. 2010 ed. London: Penguin; 2010. p.169.

(7) TED. Robinson K. How Schools Kill Creativity [Internet]. DD/06/06. [20/10/13]: Available from:http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

(8) Ericsson. The Future of Learning, Networked Society [Internet]. 19/10/12. [20/10/13]: Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quYDkuD4dMU

(9) Moran J. Interdisciplinarity. 2010 ed. Oxon: Routledge; 2010. p.3.

(10) TED. Leadbeater C. The Era of Open Innovation [Internet]. DD/01/07. [20/10/13]. Available from:http://www.ted.com/talks/charles_leadbeater_on_innovation.html

(11) Shirky C. Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. 2010 ed. London: Penguin; 2012.

(12) Shirky C. Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. 2010 ed. London: Penguin; 2012. p.82.

(13) Shirky C. Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. 2010 ed. London: Penguin; 2012. p.159.

(14) Johnson S. Where Good Ideas Come From: A Natural History of Innovation. 2010 ed. London: Penguin; 2010. Chapter: Liquid Networks. p.43.

Blurring the Discipline Lines

In the fourth week of UCL’s BASc, I am becoming more acutely aware of the flaws created by artificial subject boundaries in creating solutions and informing the knowledge of their subject -although as a student in strong support of interdisciplinarity I am likely heavily biased, so feel free to disagree! As I sat in my philosophy lecture a few afternoons ago, listening to my engaging, slow paced, and slightly neurotic lecturer explore (painstakingly) Nozick’s conditions of knowledge against the skeptic’s argument, it occurred to me: why isn’t he using some actual, factual science to help his cause!? Of course when I raised this query through asking ‘if a brain – or in fact any life form – has ever been sustained and stimulated in a vat of nutritious liquid’, the disapproving murmurs of the pure Philosophy undergrads towards my oh-so literal question made the room hum. It struck me that perhaps Philosophy is the pursuit of rationalizing the world around us through verbal pursuits alone, but I ask why not use the aid of Psychology, (or god forbid) the pure sciences, bridging the gap between C.P Snow’s Two cultures and perhaps forging some new, exciting and substantiated knowledge!

Blogging and censorship

So starting a blog currently feels like a pointless pursuit. My nineteen year old esteem cries ‘who would want to read about what you think’ but I guess that is, perhaps, the paradox of blogging. Today, as students on a prestigious new course, at an even more prestigious university, we were asked to contemplate ‘Censorship’ for a group presentation. For me censorship is a difficult but interesting topic of debate; there seems to be many things people are happy for the government or the media to censor, like hard pornography or excessive violence which harms the minds of young boys finding their sexuality or indeed, adults not wanting to see the new level of shock factor for a desensitised nation. However, I seem to have an innate and adverse reaction to the core idea in cencorship. This may be the far-left-socialist in me talking, but the thought of some suit making the decision to censor the information I am consuming makes me feel positively ill – who gave them the bloody right to decide? I feel strongly especially with the news I want (demand) to get as unbiased representation as possible, as I am sure most of you will agree with. This hot topic in my head lead me to consider how censorship will cope with the current and future surge of internet broadcasting, especially (to reference Clay Shirky’s ‘Cognitive Surplus’) from ‘amateurs’ with mobile video cameras and constant live twitter streams. Are we on the edge social media usurping international News channels? What will life be like with our continuous (possibly uncensored) information stream on our google glasses in five, ten, fifty years time?