Freewrite

What aspects of the city/urban environment does style wars map? What does graffiti make visible that a traditional map does not?

-layer of subway
-mobile canvas
-more than aesthetic
-law/city admin ... writer/artists
-tension youth
-express their feelings through art
-graffiti, break dancing, rap
-"all city"- names
-writing on the city- illicit -marginated groups/culture
-marking their territory

Key Concepts of Michel de Certeau (Walking in the City)

about: mapping the city through walking

-Optical Knowledge: Looking from the skyscraper of the World Trade Center "agitation is momentarily arrested" (157) : stopped before the eyes
-Voyeur: connected to the objects of seeing, see's the city from above then coming at it from experience or plan, not being a part of the experience down below "His elevation transfigures him into a voyeur. It puts him at a distance. It transforms the bewitching world by which one was 'possessed' into a text that likes before one's eyes. It allows one to read it to be a solar Eye, looking down like a god." (157). Viewpoint that no one has.
-Walker: "The ordinary practioners of the city live 'down below' below the thresholds at which visibility begins. They walk-an elementary form of this experience of the city; their are walkers, Wandersmanner, whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban 'text' they write without being able to read it. These practioners make use of spaces that cannot be seen." (158). They're using space, inhabit space, making distinctions down below, knowledge they don't have to think about, experience through body and not through eyes, there's connection between wanderers and walkers, movement define city. "geometrical or geographical space" (158): planned and built part of the city, being watched every time or not being watched but feel disciplined, geometrical- planning according to geometry.
-migration: refers to mobility
-citizens to use the city productively, and not only passively
-Practices: "Beneath the discourses that ideologies the city, the ruses and combinations of powers that have no readable identity proliferate" ... "concept city is decaying" (160): everyday practices, not exceptional
-idol footsteps: not productive, not contributing to the cities system, walking that has no set roots
-maps are problematic but walking uses space to Certeau

Style (161)
Rhetorics of Walking (161)
Fiction of Knowledge (157)
Waste Products (159)
Optical Knowledge (158)
Legibility (161)
Spatialized (161)
Threshold (158)
Accepted Frame Work (163)
Imposed Order (163)
Agglomeration (158)
Voyeur (157)
Walker
Concept City
Urban Practices
Migrational, Metaphorical City (158)

Fun Home review in class
-fun home vs everyday: domestic space, urban space, our everyday psychology
-dominant point of reference to the understanding of the author: relationship with her father and the understanding of him
-Fun Home references: funeral home (ironic), own home- gothic revival, NYC, grandmother's place, thinking its like a circus

Topic Proposal

Cindy Lee

English 103

Professor Frey

12/5/11

Topic Proposal

Mon Dec 5:  Topic Proposal.

By no later than Mon in class, you should submit digital and hard copy of your topic proposal. Your topic proposal should include your proposed site, the critical question(s) that are guiding your project, the key concepts from Corner you will use, a tentative outline or abstract, and a bibliography.  Your proposal should answer the following questions:

·       What territory/text did you choose to map/analyze?

·       What specific aspects of the everyday do you intend to map & how?

·       What 4 or more concepts from your Corner will you use and how?

·       What critical questions will you attempt to answer in your project?

·       What interrelationships do you intend to chart and what will that look like? What format will your essay/map take?

·       What kind of research will you need to do develop your map further? Will you be looking for background info on your site? E.g. history, images, literature, films, etc.

1.)  My beginning quote: “For the landscape architect and urban planner, maps are sites for the imaging and projecting of alternative worlds. Thus maps are in-between the virtual and the real” (The Agency of Mapping pg. 225). Mapping behind the mind of a child who went through a though time.

2.)  Mapping an angel named Briana Keefe. –her life (her past), feeling (her going through cancer), action (the medical part) until the end of her life.

3.)  – the visual of mapping

- hidden forces of mapping (214)

- finding the map and connections to the map (225) map isn’t a map (225)

- gathering, working, reworking, ……….. of mapping (228)

4.)  Is this the map Briana Keefe went through in her short life?

5.)  I will map my time with her with the feelings she felt while we were together listening to her feelings.

6.)  My memory of her, my recordings of her, past pictures that I took and her parents took, informations from her parents, feelings that I never thought of but she did … etc. 

Guiding Questions to Robert Smithson

1. What are monuments? How do they work to define a city? Based on the essay, "A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey," how does Smithson re-conceptualize monuments and their function?

When I think of the term 'monument' the first thing that comes to mind is historical buildings that are created to be reminded of such as the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, Time Square, etc. In wikipedia, 'monument' is defined as "a type of structure either explicitly created to commemorate a person or important event or which has become important to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, or simply as an example of historic architecture." A monument could be architectural buildings, sculptures, tombs, tools, ruins, etc.
But in Smithson's term of monuments, they are ideas that represents the importance of the surrounding of the monuments. They're not monuments of big buildings or something that everyone in the world knows such as Paris' Eiffel Tower, they are small monuments that he discovered while traveling around Passaic, New Jersey. Bridges, sand box (model desert), parking lots, pipes is what he defines monuments as because they have had a great impact to the city or the land surrounding it. On page 70, Smithson describes the monument of the bridge that connects the Bergen county with the Passaic County as "photographing a photograph" like as if he's "walking on an enormous photograph that was made of wood and steel, and underneath the river existed photograph that was made of wood and steel, and underneath the river existed as an enormous movie film that showed northing but a continuous blank." These unknown monuments can be described in such details and images even though they are just junks or small tools laying around the area which has been there for years. They work to define a city by telling a story to the area. Even though the area might not be special to others outside of the area, it has histories to those that marked the place which creates ideas to the city. It creates more to the surrounding area of the monument which develops more to the city.

Question 1: Can monuments be replaced but be the same monument? (pg. 74 2nd paragraph)

Question 2: Is it still a monument if the surrounding area changes around the monument?

"Colossus" Response

"'City Limits' The Colossus of New York: A City in Thirteen Parts", by Colson Whitehead, is about how New York City is broken up into parts that creates it into a city such as the subway, walking around in NYC, and leaving memory tracks on the Brooklyn Bridge. 
A sentence that caught me while reading this essay was when he said, "Maybe we become New Yorkers the day we realize that New York will go on without us. To put off the inevitable, we try to fix the city in place, remember it as it was, doing to the city what we would never allow to be done to ourselves" (9-10). This tells me that wherever we are at or wherever we lived and leave to, we are still a part of New York no matter how many times anything changes. When we change, New York will still be New York and it will not change. They might create a new building, a shop, or an apartment near or on the place that was not any of those, it is still New York. Whitehead mentioned that our marks (of being there, walking pass there, living there, etc) at a certain spot of New York City might not be visibly there but a memory that will always last there forever. The place you used to take small coffee breaks at might now be a salon store or the restaurant that you used to eat a lot at is now a new building being created for a huge company. New York City is a memory lane for those that walked or passed (by taxi, subway, car, etc) through it today, days ago, months ago, or years ago. 
In New York City, we won't know who we encounter or when we will encounter someone we know or might not know. Maybe someone you might meet today might've been your next door neighbor years ago. Maybe you'll encounter a friend on the subway randomly without even planning it. Whitehead mentioned in the essay about the relationship through people. Like on the subway, someone that's either crippled, pregnant, or old need a seat to rest on. Some people might be kind enough to move out of the seat and allow them to sit in their spot. Others might just ignore them and just sit there until they get off their destination. Whitehead also talks about other encounters on the subway: people that smells, someone finding the other sex attractive, ones that looks suspicious, etc. These people helps create the subway to become part of the city. 
Everything that Whitehead talks about is him telling us what creates a city. The goods and bads of NY creates a city. The people creates the city. A memory creates a city. Walking on a famous path or a random path creates a city. 

Proposal for mapping

For Monday, write a proposal for an imaginative map of Neuromancer that uses "The Agency of Mapping" as a tool for mapping its ageographical and geographical space. Draw on "The Agency of Mapping," the essay by Gibson on "Meta-Cities" as well as previous blog posts.

Mapping Neuromancer consists of both geographical and ageographical spaces. Without mapping out Neuromancer, the readers would probably have a hard time understanding the layout of it. Geographically the map would include the layout of where the streets and the location of a place would be at. Such as riding a subway, the layout would be set up with street names, dots, and specific train colors on the map (knowing what train to get on by asking someone what color train gets to ones destination). Also when looking at a map in general, there would be lines and path on how long it will take to get you there. There are also transportation, buildings, and people that could help map out geographically of Neuromancer.
Ageographically there would be the Matrix. The Matrix would include technology and power to go into a different world. Going into a different changes the mapping in a different way. It includes new areas, new names of streets, people, buildings, etc. There would be unexpected (unrealistic) use of technology to transport one to places or maybe technologies implanted on humans like the train station that travels far out into space or transportation of body. There would also be the ROM, the hologram, and other use of technologies in Neuromancer that would ageographically map out the layout of the book.

quote: pg 228: "A particularly important aspect of mapping in the regard is the acknowledgement of the maker's own participation and engagement with the cartographic process."

Mapping essay

1. What is this essay about?
2. How could it be used to help us "map the urban space" of Neuromancer?
3. Locate a specific quote, paragraph or section that could be used to help you map that space. 
4. In groups, present the general argument of that section, and discuss how it would be used in a proposal for a map of Neuromancer's urban space. 

1.  This essay is about the definition of mapping, the history of mapping, the use of mapping, the changes of mapping, the architect of mapping, the positive and negative facts about mapping, the science of mapping, the philosophy of mapping, quotes from famous mappers of mapping, and the time and space of mapping. 

2. It helps the reader to understand what the city of Neuromancer looks like. It gives specific details in where we are heading and entering in the space and time of Neuromancer. But the new details and the changes in the city, places, and rides describes the addition of mapping to Case and Molly. 

3. "The experiences of space cannot be separated from the events that happen in it; space is situated, contingent and differentiated. It is remade continuously every time it is encountered by different people, every time it is represented through another medium, every time its surroundings change, every time new affiliations are forged. Thus, as David harvey has argued, planners and architects have been barking up the wrong tree in believing that new spatial structures alone would yield new patterns of socialization. The struggle for designers and planners Harvey insists, lies not with spatial form and aesthetic appearances alone (the city as a thing) but with the advancement of more liberation processes and interactions in time (urbanization)" (227). 

 

classmates: 

1. -summary of the whole thing and the analysis of it

-books and films are part of a cultural understanding of space; all these layers to see the world (214)

-maps can change, not necessarily permanent "Thus, mapping unfolds potential ... and diverse consequences" (10)

-mental imaginative images of space

-mapping agency: power, controlling, delineating border, cultural project in imagination and images and stories, emancipate= to free

citations: 

-book: you italicize 

-essay: you quote

Close Reading: Molly's Body (Revised)

Cindy Lee

Professor Frey

English 103

November 2, 2011

Close Reading: Molly’s Body

Molly -one of the main characters of the science fiction novel, Neuromancer, written by William Gibson- is an attractive, physically strong, mysterious woman who becomes a help to Case (the main character of this novel). She is a strong woman whose interaction with space is stronger than what the outside activity can do to her. She moves through and creates space the way she wants and can exclude those that gets in the way. This is due to her confidence in her strengths. The novel describes Molly as “Her body language was disorienting, her style foreign.  She seemed continually on the verge of colliding with someone, but people melted out of her way, stepped sideways, made room” (55). This tells the reader that Molly wants to connect with someone but because of her personality or her aura, the people surrounding her gives her space; she has a feel or a look that gets the people around her to suspect and move aside from her. Molly expects to be respected from people she interacts with by her attractive looks and strong personality; that is why she walks through her path confidently knowing that those that are in the way won’t cross her. But Molly allows Case to share her space or be her other eye seeker so he could see the world in what Molly sees. Case wanted to take over Molly’s body to go into depth to see the space around her and “For a few frightened seconds he fought helplessly to control her body. Then he willed himself into passivity, became the passenger behind her eyes” (55). With her strong presence, Case cannot connect to her body.

Molly started out in the novel as a girl who wore black leather clothes with some technologies implanted on her. One of the implant was the razor sharp blades that comes out from her own free will. We find out that there are sharp blades sliding out of her nails because “Case felt the blades move, very slightly, beneath her nails” (178). The other implant was the mirror shade glasses that allows her to see in the dark, know the time, and map the world. Case meets Molly for the first time and “he realized that the glasses were surgically inset, sealing her sockets. The silver lenses seemed to grow from smooth pale skin above her cheekbones, framed by dark hair cut in a rough shag. The fingers curled around the fletcher were slender, white, tipped with polished burgundy. The nails looked artificial” (25). 

The technological alteration in her body changed Molly as it was written in Chapter 11. In Chapter 11, Case finds out that Molly was a former cyber prostitute. Instead of being the one in control like she is now, she was controlled by others and lived the life that she didn’t want.  She doesn’t want to go back and remember her past but she started to remember each one bits by bits. This is where technology fails for Molly. She technologically enhanced herself with these alterations to survive from her past and create a new life. She altered her body to forget her past and not to be brought up about being a prostitute again. She enhanced herself with razor sharp blades on her nails to be protected from those that gets in her way. If someone were to attack her or to bother her, she could kill that person in one kill with her sharp nail blades without hesitation. She enhanced herself with glasses so that she won’t be able to cry with tears flowing down from her eyes. When she cries, she swallows her tears instead and splits it out. The glasses also make the person that’s looking into her eyes confused and not able to read her or know how she’s feeling. Because of these technologies implanted on her body, she has the confidence to control herself and become a stronger person. It extended her body into space differently than a non-altered body by giving her more protection and freedom than what she was as a prostitute.

Molly inhabits the various spaces in Neuromancer by helping to map out Chiba City with Case. With her strong presence and her technological body parts, she’s able to create her own map and help Case map out Neuromancer. She’s able to protect herself and Case from anyone that gets in the way by giving Case more confidence to not hide in bars or alleys anymore. He didn’t have the guts to find his way through Chiba City but with Molly by his side, he’s able to map out faster than what he could expect from himself. Neuromancer shows the reader how technology could really affect one’s personality and changes in one’s actions like Molly. These alterations bring a huge change in a world of reality verse a world of technologically enhanced human beings.

Citations:

 Gibson, William (1994). Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books.

Close Reading "Molly's Body" draft

Cindy Lee

Professor Frey

English 103

November 2, 2011

Close Reading: Molly’s Body

Molly -one of the main characters of the science fiction novel, Neuromancer, written by William Gibson- is an attractive, physically strong, mysterious woman who becomes a help to Case (the main character of this novel). She is a strong woman whose interaction with space is stronger then what the outside activity can do to her. She moves through and creates space the way she wants and can exclude those that gets in the way. This is due to her confidence in her strengths. The novel describes Molly as “Her body language was disorienting, her style foreign.  She seemed continually on the verge of colliding with someone, but people melted out of her way, stepped sideways, made room” (55). This tells the reader that Molly wants to connect with someone but because of her personality or her aura, the people surrounding her gives her space; she has a feel or a look that gets the people around her to suspect and move aside from her. Molly expects to be respected from people she interacts with by her attractive looks and strong personality; that is why she walks through her path confidently knowing that those that are in the way won’t cross her. But Molly allows Case to share her space or be her other eye seeker so he could see the world in what Molly sees. Case wanted to take over Molly’s body to go into depth to see the space around her and “For a few frightened seconds he fought helplessly to control her body. Then he willed himself into passivity, became the passenger behind her eyes” (55). With her strong presence, Case cannot connect to her body.

            Molly started out in the novel as a girl who wore black leather clothes with some technologies implanted on her. One of the implant was the razor sharp blades that comes out from her own free will where “Case felt the blades move, very slightly, beneath her nails” (178). The other implant was the mirror shade glasses that allows her to see the dark, the time, and the world. Case meets Molly for the first time and “he realized that the glasses were surgically inset, sealing her sockets. The silver lenses seemed to grow from smooth pale skin above her cheekbones, framed by dark hair cut in a rough shag. The fingers curled around the fletcher were slender, white, tipped with polished burgundy. The nails looked artificial” (25).  The technological alteration in her body changed Molly as it was written in Chapter 11. In Chapter 11, Case finds out that Molly was a former cyber prostitute. Instead of being the one in control like she is now, she was controlled by others and lived the life that she didn’t want.  She also doesn’t want to go back and remember her past but she started to remember each one bits by bits. This is where technology fails for Molly. She technologically enhanced herself with these alterations to survive from her past and create a new life. She altered her body to forget her past and not to be brought up about being a prostitute before. She enhanced herself with razor sharp blades on her nails to be protected from those that gets in her way. If someone were to attack her or to bother her, she could kill that person in one kill with her sharp nail blades without hesitation. She enhanced herself with glasses so that she won’t be able to cry with tears flowing down from her eyes. The glasses also make the person that’s looking into her eyes confused and not able to read her or know how she’s feeling. Because of these technologies implanted on her body, she has the confidence to control herself and be a stronger person. It extend her body into space differently than a non-altered body by giving her more protection and strength then what she as a prostitute.

Molly inhabits the various spaces in Neuromancer by helping to map out Chiba City with Case. With her strong presence and her technological body parts, she’s able to create her own map and help Case map out Neuromancer. She’s able to protect herself from anyone that gets in the way giving Case more confidence to not hide in bars or alleys and to just follow along and feel protected. Neuromancer shows the reader how technology could really affect one’s personality and changes in one’s actions like Molly. These alterations show a huge change in a world of reality and a world of technologically enhanced human beings.

Citations:

 Gibson, William (1994). Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books.

Close Reading and Mapping in General

Cindy Lee

Professor Frey

English 103

November 2, 2011

Close Reading and Mapping in General

Reading "Neuromancer" has made me realize the importance of close reading. I used close reading a lot on the science fiction book called "Neuromancer" because of the fact that the book was not understandable for me to read. This book was the first science fiction book that I have ever read which is why this book was very new for me to manage with. But even though this book was difficult to read and that I’m not really into science fiction, close reading and mapping helped a lot to get through the book without that much hectic confusion and hesitation.  

Mapping is important in science fiction because “mappings discover new worlds within past and present ones …” (Corner 214).  To me, mapping means something that already exists and I just need to search for it by asking people or looking for it online. But for mapping in science fiction, it means to find information that’s given in each chapters and creating the place with those clues. Mapping out the clues that the book has given us gives us further information on where the story is leading to and where we are at while on the journey with the characters. We map through the story for some clues by finding out the places in the story, knowing the characters in the story, understanding what the antagonist is after, what the area on a geographical map looks like, finding the ageographical areas in the story, researching the streets and alleyways mentioned in the story, etc. It’s not given to us that easily in the reading; it’s for us to figure out on our own. “Mapping engenders new and meaningful relationships amongst otherwise disparate parts. The resultant relational structure is not something already ‘out-there’, but rather something constructed, bodied forth through the act of mapping” (Corner 129). Mapping is an act of close reading by helping us understand the story by analyzing the clues and the definitions in the reading.

Close reading helps one to understand the plot of the story. Using close reading on the book gives us more ideas on what the story is about and what we need to know the general facts on what’s going on. Without close reading, one will get lost in a science fiction or a fictional book. It's like mapping but close reading is more of knowing the terms, knowing the context clues given, the story line of the book, and the way the characters play in the story. It helps us to write a summary of a story with more details and a better understanding of the story for the readers and the listeners. I probably read over each chapter more then two times to get a better understanding of the story. But that didn’t help out a lot. After the professor went over close reading, I read the book over again and took out words that I didn’t understand, looked them up on the Internet or a dictionary, and replaced those words with the ones that I know. I took out phrases from each chapter and asked myself what it could mean by combining them with other phrases that seemed close with the phrase. With this it helped me have a better understanding of the story.

It was hard to visualize what Chiba City looked like in “Neuromancer” while reading the book at home or on my way to somewhere in the subway. But in class, when the professor taught us about mapping out and close reading, I could finally start seeing what Chiba City looked like by close reading the characters on their behaviors and the way they are represented in the book, finding the areas that are mentioned geographically and ageographically, mapping out where the stores and buildings that Case or other characters has been to, characterizing the automobiles that the characters take, etc. “Long affiliated with the planning and design of cities, landscapes, and buildings, mapping is particularly instrumental in the construing and constructing of lived space” (Corner 10). This is exactly what I did with mapping out Chiba City.

Close reading and mapping out Science Fiction in general has its way in words, phrases, and sentences in the reading to map out what will happen next in the chapters, what we know now from it, and what we need to understand to solve it. The author would write a science fiction book knowing that he doesn't know what will happen next in the chapter and making it an open ended part for the readers to figure out on their own. With mapping and close reading, it will help us guide through the end and get a better understanding on where we are within the story.

Citations:

Corner, James. Mappings: the Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention. Print.






THIS IS THE RIGHT ESSAY TO WRITE !!! 

For Wed: Finish Reading Neuromancer

Close Reading Respons: Due Wed, Nov. 3

In 1-2 pages, use close reading to discuss one of the following topics.  Your response should have a working claim that is generated based on your close reading. (Think of this response as the generating a set of observations and relationships that might be used to generate a map of Neuromancer.)

1.     Molly’s body as it moves through and creates space. Focus on the technological alterations of her body, and consider the way that these affect how she inhabits the various spaces of Neuromancer. How does it extend her body into space differently than a non-altered body?  How doe these alterations create a different mode of interacting with the world--a different “skin” through which to mediate sensory input and spatial relationships? Look at specific moments in the text that refer to Molly’s embodied experience of the world and analyze the text to support your reading.

2.     Case’s navigation of geographical and ageographical space: Consider how Case’s experience of the two spheres (physical, embodied space & the “non-space” of the matrix) inform each other. How is the physical world in which he exists as a body (“meat”) marked by the un-space of the matrix? And vice versa? In what way are they connected? Disconnected? Look at specific moments in the text that refer to Case’s embodied (or disembodied) experience of the world and analyze the test to support your reading.  

Guiding questions for Neuromancer

13. What does social life look like in Chiba City? How are relationships structured? Mediated?

The social life of Chiba City isn't that great. It's pretty scary and dark. The humans create themselves with technologies on their bodies. The people talk not with friendship but with dealership. If they work together or want something from each other there's aways a catch to it. Some are tricked into something like in Case's case, he was in the Matrix and he found out just when Linda came in into the picture. "Case lowered the gun. `This is the matrix. You're Winter-mute.'" Julie Dean = Wintermute (AI artificial intelligence). This is where we readers first get to see Case's internal vision. Rue Jules Verne (fake, hologram) talks about being rich and on vacation there.

Rue Jules Verne - being rich,feels like they're rich and on vacation there. Being tan and makeup and pretty. Computer generated place. "Case went out onto their balcony and watched a trio of tanned French teenagers ride simple hang gliders a few meters above the spray, triangles of nylon in bright primary colors. One of them swung, banked, and Case caught a flash of cropped dark hair, brown breasts, white teeth in a wide smile. The air here smelled of running water and flowers. `Yeah,' he said, `lotta money.'"

14. How does history function as an aspect of the city in Neuromancer? How is this related to the centrality of technology to the city?

History functions by the use of taxis, shops, casinos, bars, drug dealers, clinics, the development of new technology.

15. How alterations of the body fictionalized in Neuromancer provide insight into the everyday world of its inhabitants? What kinds of alterations are made? How does this affect the embodied habitation of the city? How does this affect the experience of the body as a map of self?

Molly's different alteration- her classes, her claws, meat puppet (a prostitute)

Free Write on Mapping

1. How can science fiction (or even fiction more generally) be understood as a kind of mapping project? What does it map?
2. In what way is mapping an act of close reading? Critique? Intervention? (e.g. mapping as an aid to reading, writing, critical thinking)


Science Fiction in general has its way in words, phrases, and sentences in the reading to map out what will happen next in the chapters, what we know now from it, and what we need to understand to solve it. It's kind of like being a detective. The author would write a science fiction book knowing that he doesn't know what will happen next in the chapter and making it an open ended part for the readers to figure out on their own. This is where the mapping comes in. We map through the story for some clues by finding out the places in the story, knowing the characters in the story, understanding what the antagonist is after, what the area on a geographical map looks like, finding the ageographical areas in the story, researching the streets and alleyways mentioned in the story, etc. With mapping, it will help us guide through the end and get a better understanding on where we are at.

Mapping is an act of close reading by helping us understand the story by analyzing the clues and the definitions in the reading.  Using close reading in the book gives us more ideas on what the story is about and what we need to know the general facts on whats going on. Without close reading, one will get lost in a science fiction or a fictional book. It's like mapping but close reading is more of knowing the terms, knowing the context clues given, and the way the characters play in the story. It helps us to write a summary of a story with more details and a better understanding of the story for the readers and the listeners.

Class work: Neuromancer chapter 8

How is Zion defined by the narrative in chapter 8? 

"Zion had been founded by five workers who'd refused to return, who'd turned their backs on the well and started building. They'd suffered calcium loss and art shrinkage before rotational gravity was established in the colony's central torus. Seen from the bubble of the taxi, Zion's makeshift hull reminded Case of the patchwork tenements of Istanbul, the irregular, discolored plates laserscrawled with Rastafarian symbols and the initials of welders" (99).

What aspects of the city do we learn about? Make a list of the city's geographical and ageographical features.

-Shifts from Istanbul to Paris. 

-Japan Air Lines shuttle

-Orbital Station called "Freeside" 

-Ethiopia

-Rastafarianism- making them age rapidly

-Babylon

-there's no gravity (Case and Molly are sent there to learn zero gravity skills without gravity)  

-"secret" bank accounts with illegal transactions

-religious place (holy land) -> Zionites -> jah (God), ganja (marijuana), dub (spindle music ... techno and drugs)

-30 years old

-organization -> founders-elders, "The two surviving founders ........" (107)

geographical
-taxi
-30 years old
ageographical 
-holograms of shops, buildings, etc

Pay attention to the physical, culture, and organizational dimensions of the city.

Physical: Visual, How its built, How people move through it, Interactions between body, Spacial and temporal, relationships between physical object and people

Culture: Sensations- smell, Embodiment, beliefs, traditions, narratives, values, assumptions, desires, expectations, personal bios

Organizational Dimensions: laws, government, clubs, communities 

Riviera: drug addict, makes hallucination happen to people, with Armitage, recruited to be in a team with Armitage

Group Work: Mapping Chiba City

Ageographical

-expect what it would be in a city like people, buildings, technology, space but has different idea of a city like the difference in doctor building to a scary area next to it.
-warehouse, alleyways
-Chiba City ->technology and good places of doctors and clinics but wary and filled with bad guys like theirs, killers, drug dealers
-Matrix -> where your conscious go to search for certain things
-making invisible to visible of mapping out the place (behind bars)
-foreigner crowds (people from other places -international)
-westernized culture
-English name stores
-international aspect of the city
-tracing illegal people will help trace down where Case needs to get to in Chiba City like the Illegal Movement
-trace down paper money "new yen"
-little money doesn't discriminate
-tracing down passers/ illegal people in the city
-particular view of the city

Neuromancer Part 2 summary

No class Mon Oct. 31

notes:
-Left Chiba City (travel)
-Surgery Case is able to "Jack in" to Matrix
-"Booty Traps" in Case's body- threat of losing that ability to hack
-Case can't metabolize drugs
-connects through Molly's body-able to access consciousness when she needs Panther Modern

In groups, outline the plot, as it's advanced in Part 2, " The Shopping Expedition."
-Molly and Case left Chiba City
- Case follows Molly to see her boss, Armitage.
-Armitage wants Case's hacking skill
-Case declines but Armitage told him that he he fixed Case with remember how to hack but if he doesn't work for him, the sac (mycotoxin) that was attached to his blood vessels will dissolve and affect him to like he once was before. This could be some "lie" but Case takes the opportunity.
-injected endorphin inhibitors -ending his addiction to drugs
-Scream Fist, the team that Armitage is in and who's behind the scene
-Molly sends in the group Panther Moderns to spy on Armitage about his background and who he is working for
-Meets Larry, Molly's Friend, a computer technician who doesn't really seem to like Molly hanging with Case.

Pick a section from part 2 that you find amusing.

`How you doing. Case?' He heard the words and felt her form them. She slid a hand into her jacket, a fingertip circling a nipple under warm silk. The sensation made him catch his breath. She laughed. But the link was one-way. He had no way to reply. Two blocks later, she was threading the outskirts of Memory Lane. Case kept trying to jerk her eyes toward landmarks he would have used to find his way. He began to find the passivity of the situation irritating. The transition to cyberspace, when he hit the switch, was instantaneous. He punched himself down a wall of primitive ice belonging to the New York Public Library automatically counting potential windows. Keying back into her sensorium, into the sinuous flow of muscle, senses sharp and bright. He found himself wondering about the mind he shared these sensations with. What did he know about her? That she was another professional; that she said her being, like his, was the thing she did to make a living. He knew the way she'd moved against him, earlier, when she woke, their mutual grunt of unity when he'd entered her, and that she liked her coffee black, afterward... Her destination was one of the dubious software rental com- plexes that lined Memory Lane. There was a stillness, a hush. Booths lined a central hall. The clientele were young, few of them out of their teens. They all seemed to have carbon sockets planted behind the left ear, but she didn't focus on them. The counters that fronted the booths displayed hundreds of slivers of microsoft, angular fragments of colored silicon mounted under oblong transparent bubbles on squares of white card- board. Molly went to the seventh booth along the south wall. Behind the counter a boy with a shaven head stared vacantly into space, a dozen spikes of microsoft protruding from the socket behind his ear.

`Larry, you in, man?' She positioned herself in front of him. The boy's eyes focused. He sat up in his chair and pried a bright magenta splinter from his socket with a dirty thumbnail. `Hey, Larry.' `Molly.' He nodded. `I have some work for some of your friends, Larry.' Larry took a flat plastic case from the pocket of his red sportshirt and flicked it open, slotting the microsoft beside a dozen others. His hand hovered, selected a glossy black chip that was slightly longer than the rest, and inserted it smoothly into his head. His eyes narrowed. `Molly's got a rider,' he said, `and Larry doesn't like that.' `Hey,' she said, `I didn't know you were so... sensitive. I'm impressed. Costs a lot, to get that sensitive.' `I know you, lady?' The blank look returned. `You looking to buy some softs?' `I'm looking for the Moderns.' `You got a rider, Molly. This says.' He tapped the black splinter. `Somebody else using your eyes.' `My partner.' `Tell your partner to go.' `Got something for the Panther Moderns, Larry.' `What are you talking about, lady?' `Case, you take off,' she said, and he hit the switch, in- stantly back in the matrix. Ghost impressions of the software complex hung for a few seconds in the buzzing calm of cy- berspace. `Panther Moderns,' he said to the Hosaka, removing the trodes. `Five minute précis.'

-the foreignness of of her body language
-getting closer to her with understanding her feelings and her life
-memory lane -no meaning to it -a place with antiquated history -aspect of the past
-externalization of the concept
-antiquated
-"the link was one way" (56)
-"passivity" (57)
-"Embodiment"
-Molly kind of knew? that Case was inside of her
-first experience in the book to know what Cyberspace is

In the nonspace of the matrix, the interior of a given data construct possessed unlimited subjective di- mension; a child's toy calculator, accessed through Case's Sen- dai, would have presented limitless gulfs of nothingness hung with a few basic commands.

-its the limit of the matrix
-can be wherever you want to be
-limitless gulfs of nothingness

Mapping Chiba City of Neuromancer

Look at the first section of the book: "Chiba City Blues." What information are we given about the city: Is its representation ageographical or geographical? What do we learn about its culture? Inhabitants? Institutions? Space? Borders? What are the most significant aspects of Chiba City, according to the narrative of the first section? What are the major differences between Chiba City as a fictional construct,
and our own world?

Chiba City is a city in Japan and not that far away from Tokyo. In chapter one of Neuromancer, Chiba City sounds as if its representation is geographical. It is not an unknown place on the map and the real world because it can be pointed out. The names (like Ninsei, Chatsubo, Chiba, etc.) they placed in the book are actual places of Japan; and the people and the area that are described in the book seems the same as how it is described in the real world. Chiba City in the book is like an abandon city where it was just found and that the people living in Chiba City is filled with low life beings that are homeless, burglars, hustlers, druggies and drug dealers, etc. The aura of the city is dark and saddening where "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel" (Gibson).
While searching through the Internet about the real Chiba City, the city has become government designated base. Like how the book described it, Chiba City is developing a technology called "Cyberspace" or the "Matrix" which is a computerized program that manipulates the digital world.  They built technologies that aren't really spread out to the outer world but to themselves. Chiba City is like their hidden underground base to make those technologies. The city is historical and old but it still wasn't deleted from the world."There were countless theories explaining why Chiba City tolerated the Ninsei enclave, but Case tended toward the idea that the Yakuza might be preserving the place as a kind of historical park, a reminder of humble origins. But he also saw a certain sense in the notion that burgeoning technologies require outlaw zones, that Night City wasn't there for its in- habitants, but as a deliberately unsupervised playground for technology itself." (Gibson).
In chapter one, the characters do whatever they want in Chiba City. They left humanity behind and went against the world. They do whatever they want by killing people to get their money, they sleep wherever they want, they eat whatever they find to survive, etc. But these characters have something that we don't expect now but maybe in the future of the real world. They are implanted with technology in their living parts. Like Ratz, he has mechanical teethes that could probably break through anything he bites on. There are robberies and deaths . There are dirty trashes laying around in the city (sounds like NYC). The protagonist, Case, is described in a way of an anti-hero. He is a hustler, a thief, a druggie, etc. He has a mind set of wanting the cyberspace that he once used to remember how to hack into the program and get the details of it. But because of stealing from one of his employers, his central nervous system of cyberspace was erased with mycotoxin. But he tries to find his way back to get a cure to remember cyberspace, his life.  His lifestyle shows the future or what Gibson wants us to understand what's going to happen in the future.

Geographical

Ageographical

Life in the Meta City -Chapter 1: Chiba City Blues

Cyberpunk- a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life" 

Science Fiction- genre of fiction dealing with the impact of imagined innovations in science or technology, often in a futuristic setting.

This story takes place in Chiba City, Japan, during a historical time of the future. But as it being a science fiction, the story turns out as Japan --they would do anything to stop those that gets in the way-- creating a new generation of technologies that other countries have never noticed or developed called the Cyberspace or the Matrix. It is a computer access that manipulates the digital world. Case is the protagonist of the story. He was 24-years-old throughout the story, but when he was twenty-two, he used to be a cyberspace cowboy, a rustler, or a talented illegal computer hacker. He was caught stealing from his employees so for his punishment, he was "trapped to a bed in a Memphis hotel, his talent burning out micron by micron, he hallucinated for thirty hours. The damage was minute, subtle, and utterly effective." His central nervous system was damaged with mycotoxin so he won't be allowed to remember or be able to use his intelligence anymore to hack into the computer or his addiction, the cyberspace. He was one of the few peoples that had the skills to be able to get any data on any system of the matrix and operate any changes to it. But because of his wrong doing of what he promised that he wouldn't break, he lost everything that he only wanted. He tries to look for a cure so he can go back into cyberspace and live his dream on that. After his nervous system was damaged, he lived his life miserably, poorly, suicidally, and a drug addict. But after realizing that he can't give up on Cyberspace, he goes around searching for the cure. He goes to a bar called the Chatsubo that's owned by Ratz. Ratz has some skills where he can break almost anything with his bare hands. While he goes searching around, he looks for a girl named Linda which he met before at an arcade. But while searching for her, he bumps into Molly who in the end of the chapter, said that she needs Case.

The ideas from the essay provides a context for reading the novel by telling the readers more depths of the story on what the person who's writing the context thinks of the story. It helps the readers understand more in easier terms of the story if they have a harder time reading it on their own. Like for me, I surfed through the Internet looking for the meaning of the words and some phrases that I didn't understand in the chapter.

This chapter confused me very much. There were terms that was hard to understand which I kept looking up on online to see what the romanized Japanese words meant. There were quite a lot of Japanese terms used in this chapter. There are also scientific terms that I never heard of before which I tried to ride it in the text for more meaning to it but because the text was all over the place, Internet helped me a lot to understand the chapter. Also there were phrases that confused which I'm not sure how to explain it. There are also shifts in sentences where there's a topic on one place and changes to another and goes back to it which confuses me on where I'm at.

In Gibson's essay "Life in the Meta City", he talks about his definition of a city by "choice", "ageographical", and "Disneyland".  In a city "you never know whom you might meet.. In a small town, you're less lively to encounter people or things or situations you haven't encountered previously" (88). This tells the reader about one part of life in any city that could happen to anyone. You might see the same people almost every single day in a country or somewhere small that you grew up in. But in a city, you might meet a random celebrity walking around for just that night, you might encounter someone you've never met before asking for help, or you might never be able to find people you know unless you made an actual appointment to meet up with them.

Gibson talks about what he believes in what a city is: why it's a city and how it's actually a city (the concept of the city). He talks about his choice of the city on how there are more choices then small towns or places that isn't a city. The city is a place where there's a choice to change it: it's like a 'chance'. You can change parts of the city by adding another building, changing the name of a company, taking out the building, closing down the company, etc. But like Disneyland or London's Eiffel Tower, they can't change it. It's already an expected place.

In the city, you have more "choices", a chance. They would have a lot more choices then small towns. You can do whatever you want in the city, live however the way you want, and be at their "experientially richest" (89).  

Cities are reduced in choice by Disneylanding themselves. It will become too perfect, there will be no more growth, and there will be a reduction of choice. But the visitors are expecting certain disneyfication in the city.but "of every Disneyland: you can't repurpose a theme park" (88). 

There's some way we inhabit the city. No matter where you go you map out where you were at before and remember where you traveled around in the city as if you lived there before. The city can be "ageographical and largely unrecongnized meta city that is the Internet" (89). 

In Class: 

1. What does Gibson mean when he says "cities scan be at their experiential richest during periods of relative disjunction" (89)?
Experience of artists, storytelling, inspiration, (if the city isn't perfect there's always a way to create new buildings, places, fun), low rent, minimal policing (graffiti art around places unexpected).

2. What, according to Gibson is the "risk of Disneylanding" that threatens the life of a city?
Eliminates any possibility for anything else -makes it boring, corporate city, single ownership, over control, reduction of choice, permanent- static vision according to a specific time. The city has to be retro-fitted, not open-ended, got to change all the time.

3. What does Gibson mean when he says "the future of cities will consist of two different modalities combined within the geographical and largely unrecognized meta city that is the Internet" (89)?
         Two Different incarnation -Anarchy of Choice and Disneyfied

Ageographical/Metacity -mapped and experienced through Internet

                                 -Hopstop

                                 -DishFinder

                                 -GPS

                                 -Yelp

International Commerce
Local News

4. How do your answers to these questions frame your reading of Neuromancer?
Concerning of the city and the future of the city. The explanation in the story helps the reader map out what Chiba City might look like and the protagonist to find his destination.

Exploring the Ordinary

Exploring the Ordinary

Everyone wonders what’s really going on to the everyday. Are the objects there, who are we talking to, what are we talking to, are they really there, why is it there, when was it there, why are we talking to it, is it listening to us, can it talk to us, will it respond back, do they show emotions, is it touchable, has it always been there, where did it come from, what can we do with it, does it age like us, can it be human, can they save us, is it important to us, “How should we take account of, question, describe what happens every day and recurs every day: the banal the quotidian, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the infra-ordinary, the background noise, the habitual?” (Perec). These are few of the questions one asks themselves while they realize what they have been doing unconsciously. It’s quite a surprising shock on how this all happens without us really noticing. Like for me, laptop is my everyday and after consciously thinking about what’s going on between my laptop and me, there was no end to the questions and answers and questioning it “seems to have ceased forever to astonish us” (Perec).

During my nineteen years of living, I’ve had about four laptops and eight desktops, which sounds like a lot but I keep wanting for a new generation each year.  PC to laptop from laptop to PC every two to three years was my obsession with computers. But out of all computer used basis, laptops are my favorite. They come in several colors, different designs, large screens, small screens, imported webcam, no webcam, heavy, light, thick, thin, high speed internet, low speed internet, cheap ones, expensive ones, free applications, no applications. I have two laptops with me all the time. One laptop is used for fun and the other is used for schoolwork. The laptop that I use for fun is my Dell Studio that has been used for three years back home in Pennsylvania and now here with me in Brooklyn, NYC. My other laptop is brand new this year of 2011 and bought for my art college, Pratt Institute. It is the 15 inches MacBook Pro.

In my Dell Studio laptop, there are bookmarks of sites that I enjoy exploring. There’s Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, YouTube, Google, eBay, mypratt, Amtrak, Megabus, 1channel.ch, Gmarket, Narutoget.com, Hulu, Yahoo, Hotmail, hey!korean, dramacrazy, Express (my all time favorite clothing store), Forever21, American Eagle, Steve Madden, Viki, and MySoju. There are even repeats of the websites like YouTube videos bookmarked with my favorite video blogs like Niga Higa, music videos, Korean actors and singers talking, amazing dance videos, Korean music bank, America Got Talent, anime trailers, movie trailers, American celebrities, and so much more. My computer is filed with many applications as well such as Skype, Msn, Aim, ooVoo, ViikiiDesktop, eBay, iTunes, Veoh Web Player, QuickTime Player, etc. There is only one imported program and that is the Microsoft Office 2007. The rest are downloads from the Internet, which I probably have wasted all the capacity that the laptop could hold.

My Dell Studio is getting pretty old because it’s been with me for more then three years. It’s always been with me at home on my bed, the kitchen table, the furniture, the basement, the outside field, and my work desk; it’s been with me at my friend’s place, my cousin’s place, my high school, Pratt Institutes studios and dorm room, cars, buses, trains, airplanes, nature, and my apartment. Now it’s a lot slower then it was when I first got it. There are tons of evil viruses eating up my computer, which I booted it many times throughout the years. The battery for this laptop died due to accidental drops and damages to the laptop so I have to stay in one location that’s near an outlet for my laptop battery plug.

In my MacBook Pro, my friend helped me download the Adobe Application that is filed with Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and many other Adobe programs. These programs were needed for my Graphic Design major. Laptops have there own ways to download programs for free online. It’s a waste of money to go out and buy $300 Adobe programs if you could download applications that you need for anything on the Internet. For example, I have Microsoft Word imported in my Mac laptop from using the disk that my friend already has instead of going out to Best Buy or the Pratt Store to buy myself the program. I don’t have as many bookmarks as my Dell Laptop, but I do have favorites and important school information saved onto it such as Facebook, YouTube, mypratt, The Living City: Reading and Writing the Everyday, Yahoo, Google, Hotmail, Amtrak and Megabus. After receiving this new MacBook Pro, I went online on eBay and Amazon and bought myself a creamy royal green laptop case, a light pink keyboard cover, and a sheet of cute Korean letters sticker to protect and decorate my laptop. I’m still new with MacBook Pro so when it comes to just fishing through the Internet for fun, I just my Dell laptop.

My laptops are my first friends to touch and say hello to whenever I come home from school or other places. Whenever I come home, I run upstairs to my laptops and go online and check out my Facebook to see if anyone commented on my wall or my pictures, I check if there were any new videos that’s been uploaded on YouTube, and I check my e-mails to see if I got any neat coupons for shopping. I get on Skype to see if anyone I like is on and wants to video chat with me, I check my msn and talk to my cousin’s from Korea and see if they are still awake to be able to chat with me, I Facebook stalk my friends to see if there are any cute guys that they are friends with. I turn on my Dell laptop and turn on a movie on 1channel.ch and do my Graphic design homework on my MacBook Pro. This is the easiest way for me to stay up and concentrate to do my homework.

I tend to yell at my laptop without me realizing that it won’t speak back. Facebook has this game called Go Go! Matgo, a Korean gambling game. It’s a game where you play against another Facebook user and gamble with fake online money by playing cards. When I’m not focused on the game, I end up losing a lot of money and when that happens, I start to yell out of nowhere at my laptop. I even type harder on the keyboard that makes loud typing noises. This seems to annoy my roommate a lot but she does the same thing too to her laptop when she loses playing Facebook Tetris. After we both finish yelling at our laptops and damaging it a little bit, we start to laugh because we realized that we are yelling at an inanimate object.

Whenever I’m home and slacking off, I tend to stare at my laptops for hours doing nothing but just staring and staring at the screen waiting for some type of chat box or a notification to pop up. Seconds, minutes, and hours passes by but I start to realize how much of the time that I’m wasting staying home just staring at my laptops. “We live it without thinking, as if it carried within it neither questions nor answers” (Perec). We don’t think towards our actions because we just do it: it just happens. Then I begin to regret being like this but it just seems to happen unconsciously. But, laptops are always there to help me out. They can be geniuses and they make me smarter then just learning in class. They make me who I want to be which is a better active person who studies and understands what’s going on in the world by searching the news and learning new ideas on the laptops. My laptops are my life, my savior, my listener, my addiction, my other half, my everyday.