The bloody blonde Scandinavia

(article in Tabula Rasa, in regular feature 'Through My Eyes')

Scandinavia consists of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. What do you know about Scandinavia - and why should you know anything or even care? Well, I come from Norway, which is the very best country in the world to live in according to the UN. That's why I feel like laughing when I get a popup saying 'Win a Green card - become an American'. HAH! Over my dead body! While it’s true that I have left the mountains, that’s merely because I got really tired of those long cold winters! True as can be, I longed for the sun and I was tired of the little town I was living in. Norway has few people, so I also wanted more culture, more everything. So why did I choose Australia?

About you Aussies
I have wanted to see this strange up-side-down-under land for many years. I thought of it as exotic, and I still do after a big trip from Brisbane through Alice Springs and all the way to Broome. I love it and I'll never regret choosing it over any other English-speaking country. My first impressions were that Aussies are very friendly in that ‘British’ way. Even in public service-offices you smile and ask friendly questions. Hmm, this might say more about Norwegians than you. The point is that many things are backwards here for me, like driving on the left side of the road, saving water (it rains a lot in Norway), Christmas is hot and the stars are different. I also love the fact that Melbourne is very multicultural. I get my junkfood from the Greeks next to the little Chinese kiosk with the friendly family who always ask questions. Fantastic! I have learned a lot about Australia since I came here, and some things are negative. Being Norwegian I got a bad vibe from you after the Tampa-incident. Very bad form of your country! And just like Norway – you are trying to become Americans. Wanna-be Americans. Stop it at once! Be yourselves, you have the most unique country in the world, and you seem to be mixing a lot of ethnicity together without many problems. Just take better care of the aboriginals.

The bloody Viking heritage
Enough about you, back to me. I have asked around and tried to find out what people know about Norway and/ or Scandinavia. The answers were 'cold', 'beautiful', 'fjords', and 'midnight sun', 'northern lights' , 'Vikings' and 'blond girls'. All of which are true, of course. Some of us even have glaciers close to home, brrr. You should also know about Kurt Nilsen who beat your Guy Sebastian in World Idol (we are all amazed and proud of our little blond hobbit).
However, I am not blond, I don't ski and I do not boat around in any fjords on a daily basis. Just like Aussies don't have crocodiles for pets. The Scandinavian society is very modern, rich and high-tech on one side, while on the other side we have fishermen and farmers (like any other fisherman and farmer: down to earth, complains a lot about the weather and don't like politicians), some 'crazy' people who live on small islands far up north and Sámi-people who own reindeers. Sweden I think is to blame for the 'stupid, blond and slutty' -girl image. However, being Norwegian I must agree that Swedish people are very stupid. They are twice as many as us and they have a lot more sun (since all the rain falls on our side of the mountain-range, dang it) so we Norwegians tend to feel that Sweden is our bigger brother. Danish people are very hard to understand because they speak with a potato in their throat. They live in this very flat tiny country and drink a lot of beer (Skaal!). But mostly, Scandinavian people are very similar. I will mostly tell you about Norway, obviously, since the information I have given you about Denmark and Sweden is clearly lacking and coloured by our friendly rivalry. Norway contains about 4,5 million people, is 'ruled' by King Harald V and Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik (who also is a priest, if you can believe it). We have rejected becoming a member of the European Union (EU) twice in referendums but are members of the NATO. We have the honour of handing out the Nobel Peace Price since we have not started any wars in modern times.
However, a thousand years ago we had not yet fully formed our countries and were busy terrorizing Europe and beyond. Blonde, burly and brutal, hungry for loot and land: that is the stereotypical image of the Viking. It's not quite accurate, it was a society of farmers (much like the Rohan horsepeople in the Lord of the Rings and it changed with time. The Vikings gave up paganism (Thor and Odin and stuff), adopted Christianity (after some 'persuasion' with the sword) and often assimilated into the local cultures they encountered and often conquered. The Viking heritage is a part of all the Scandinavian countries plus Iceland. We can (somewhat) easily understand each other’s languages.

The black Oil & music
Only Saudi Arabia and Russia export more oil than Norway. We live on the oil while we try to be the environmental friendly country and the all-over good guys. We give a lot of third-world aid without really noticing while complaining about every little thing. In my eyes, the Norwegians are becoming spoiled greedy capitalist bastards. We mostly jump in the direction USA tells us to, and I think we’ll be a member of the EU in a few years. After the Second World War (Norway was occupied by the Nazis) we rebuilt our country and made the welfare system that has made Norway such a great country to live in. Now we are wanna-be Americans, and I cannot understand why!
I feel there is a lot to say about Norway, but that it would be incredibly boring to read about it. It is however absolutely crucial that you know that it is not by chance that Norway looks like an electric guitar! We are the home of Black Metal and other good metalbands like Turbonegro who recently visited Melbourne. Check it out! Also, we love to laugh and have a very raucous sense of humour. Comic books are big in Norway, and I really miss being able to buy good Norwegian comics like Nemi or Pondus. I would recommend getting these imported here! Much better than salmon!

31

I am 31 years old today. Or tomorrow. It is tomorrow already according to my mobile. Sigh. Should I not have at least 2,4 kids now and be remarried? Should I not have a career and not still be a student? Ok, I am in Australia being a masterstudent, which is much kwl'er than being one in Bodø, Norway. Which I was, for 7 years. Still. The answer is of course no. 'Noone' follows that pattern anymore. If anyone do, it's by accident, or luck, or bad luck. Whatever. If you want to change your life, change it, but don't dwell on what should have been. If I were my mother right now I would have a little me at 11 years old.. Which is scary. One thing is for certain.. No matter what I would never trade him

Appologies for the pitiful rant. A bit of 'Oh No I Am Not In My 20'es Anymore' Panic. Nothing to pay attention to.

*where's my chocolate*

what you do when you really ought to do something else but are trying to avoid starting on it by doing everything else you need to do so that you can

feel some kind of accomplishment:

* Wash the kitchen
* Vacum the floors
* Backup your images on a CD-ROM
* Reorganize your inbox
* Watch TV and the News
* Wash clothes
* Clean up your room
* Empty the trash
* Write in your blog

By the way, that is what I have been doing today. Sure was important to get that done.

Search your own name...

You never know what you can find... I just found this on the Age hp.. I had entirely forgot that I sent that pic in... Kwl. :)

An old boring one: Pomorprosjektet,

CYBERFICTION

Virtual Reality and Cyberspace: Concepts of fiction and reality

Essay in Cultural Convergence.

She was standing on a crossroads branching in seven directions. Library access. She walked along the narrow white road. Of course she was sitting in her chair, but the projection felt real enough. (PIERCY, M. 1991. He, She and It (or Body of Glass))

In Marge Piercy’s cyberpunk novel ‘He, She and It’ the Internet is a graphic virtual reality.

She looked at the screen. Her search was successful. She had the information to get the book; 813.54 CAV-C. She gathered all her things and walked towards the elevator to get her out of the building and into the library across the square. If she was lucky, the book would be where it was supposed to. Of course, it was raining outside.

In my life, Internet is a flat screen. Piercy’s library is in ‘Cyberspace’, a concept that first appeared in a science fiction novel by William Gibson in the 80’s. Now, the prefix 'cyber’ is used for almost anything having to do computers.

The net in both Piercy’s novel and my world are both virtual, since the internet as it is today also demands abstract thinking and a collective agreement and understanding of this abstraction for it to work, be it electronic mail, online roleplaying-games or the World Wide Web. If Virtual Reality and Telepresence would become available to us, we already are familiar with these concepts. Fiction had made us aware.

I read Piercy’s book a decade ago. She was my introduction to the cyberpunk fiction, and it was inspiring to read. It opened my mind to the exciting possibilities of a graphic virtual reality (VR) Internet. By then I was already an experienced user of the Internet, the World Wide Web, online gaming, mud and IRC-chatting. I was excited about the idea of VR technology someday being accessible.

In 1994 I tried one of the first versions of a VR game, in a cybercafe in Berlin. Using a headset and a cord to my arm that also held a weapon, I could turn my head and the picture would change, and I could see when I moved my arm. It was great fun to shoot down attacking birds, and hilarious to shoot and kill my boyfriend who was connected into the same software as I. The graphics was awful though, like an old Commodore game, there were cries of terror from the birds but no sound from my murdervictim. So the experience never felt close to real. But I can easily imagine that the experience will increase immensely when you add sound, smell, touch, wind, motion and great visual environments. All the inputs we are so used to in the every day real life experience. But will it be as good as actual meeting a person in real life, IRL? And if it becomes that good, or nearly as good, would I have killed my boyfriend so light-heartedly?

I can only imagine. But in science fiction and cyberpunk novels, cyberspace and virtual reality is be a normal, second nature environment where people communicate, work, fight and so on. Authors have already started to imagine. My argument is that science fiction, with its many different perspectives from vastly different authors, give valuable and creative ideas to the development of the Internet, but more importantly, can help us understand how different possible technological cyberfutures may change our lives, may change the very way we communicate with each other. It also plays a part in forming our expectations for the future. I do not argue that any of the fictional novels can depict the future as it will be, although sometimes they may be accurate in the extreme. But the fiction can help us see possibilities, help us understand this new virtual abstraction, as well as perhaps help us avoid certain negative consequences of this new “information age”.

Nothing is negative about how we envision how perfect it will be to enter Virtual Reality. It is the utopian vision of how to interact with the Internet, the Matrix – the Cyberspace.

‘Immersion is the apotheosis of virtual culture.’ (TOFTS, D. & M. McKEICH. 1998. Total Recall. In: Memory Trade. A Prehistory of Cyberculture)

We imagine we can choose or own appearance, or that we no longer will have to be judged by our physical appearance. Our behaviour in ‘cyberspace’ will judge us. Concepts like race, beauty and of course place will have less importance. Or so we think, it might not be so easy. In my experience though, much of this is already happening in the lesser virtuality of the Internet as we know it today. We can hide behind ‘nicks’ or ‘avatars’ and pretend to be anyone. We can live out other sides of our personalities, become members of online communities we in our physical form never would dare to venture, experience friendship and even fall in love with only text and graphics, perhaps web-cameras, to help us. But how fantastic would it not be to meet others online as if we were really being there? Technology is developing the utopian dream forward. NASA is working on Telepresence (like the AMES Virtual Environment Workstation). Telepresence is to experience a fake reality like it was real, with the help of different technological devices to enable us to interact with the graphical made environment, also referred to as a virtual reality. So maybe one day we can enter the Internet in ‘person’, that is, as good as being there in person. Mitchell (MITCHELL, W. 1995. Electronic Agoras. In: City of Bits. Space, Place, and the Infobahn) says that with enough bandwidth, processing power and more sophisticated input/ output devices, the boundary that traditionally has been drawn by the edge of the computer screen will be eroded.

But can Virtual Reality really compete with ‘In Real Life’ experience, regardless of bandwidth? Are there unforeseen costs to new ways of communication? What can fiction tell me? Fisher (FISHER, S. 1990. Virtual Interface Environments. In: B. LAUREL, ed. The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design) tells us that science fiction writers have described conceptual versions of virtual environments for decades, like the concept of Telepresence. In 2003 we have yet to escape our bodies and its needs of nature, but many fictional works as well as films have imagined this. It seem impossible that it can ever be as easy as in the film ‘The Lawnmower Man’ (1992) where a man ends up being a part of the network, having left his (dead) body completely. In ‘Tron’ (1982) a man becomes ‘copied’ into bits and physically (if that concept is applicable) becomes a part of the computer. In the box-office hit ‘The Matrix’ (1999) almost all humans are connected into this shared software called The Matrix, although not by their own free choice. Their bodies are floating in a tank of water, where they are fed life-necessities by tubes. One of these life necessities is a ‘life’, and the reality as they think of it (20th century) is being fed to them trough a cable immersed in the brain. Because the humans know of no other reality, they have no reason to believe that what they are experiencing is not real.

Except from ‘Tron’, who preceded even the creator of ‘cyberpunk’, these science fictional works are all linked to the famous ‘Neuromancer’ by William Gibson (1984).

‘Gibson’s cyberpunk takes virtual technologies several steps further by positing the possibility of a direct neural connection between the human brain and the computer.’ (CAVALLARO, D. 2000. Cyberpunk and Cyberculture; Science Fiction and the Work of William Gibson. )

I will not repeat everything countless essays and books have said about the novel that started the genre of cyberpunk , ‘Neuromancer’ . But I will ask some questions and look at some examples. How can the fictional ‘Neuromancer’, written in the early 80’s, still be relevant? It is actually more relevant now than it was then (Cyberpunk, 1990, video). One very interesting work is Dani Cavallaro and her book ‘Cyberpunk and Cyberfuture: Science Fiction and the Work of William Gibson’ from 2000. She argues that ‘provocative forms of knowledge can be deduced from Cyberculture and, in particular, from Gibson’s dystopian narratives, and that these may help us situate ourselves both as individuals and as collectives.’ (p.xvi) In other words, help us understand how we may change as individuals and how our concepts of community may change when our methods for communication change.

Cavallaro also points out that cyberpunk forces us to rethink our understanding of time, reality, materiality, community and space. Definitions of these concepts are no longer easily written in one-sentences. How do we define ‘space’?

‘Neuromancer’ definitely formed our conception of cyberspace as we think of it today. Gibson describes it as a ‘consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators in every nation… that communicate in a graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system … Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data.' By defining the word ‘cyberspace’ Gibson helps us understand this new evolution of abstraction in the history of communication; the abstraction of the Internet, and the possibilities it may have. A kind of encyclopaedia that is being constantly created by net-users, is the website H2G2, derived by the fictional novels of ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ by Douglas Adams. Here cyberspace is defined as ‘everywhere’, as well as a non-space; ‘…cyberspace is a non-space, something that we accept to be true.’ (Anon , 2003). The Internet as we know it today is everywhere since we can access it from anywhere there is internet-access. It is nowhere since the Internet is not one physical place, it is many. The space we share with others online is more an illusion we agree upon in order to make it work. So even though the Internet as we know it today is not a Virtual Reality in that sense that we are immersed in it, we are still looking at the screen, it is still a ‘space’ that we imagine. In this space we see cultures coming to life. ‘Cyberpunk’ has become a culture of its own, or a movement, that has had immense impact on culture, art, music, fashion and technology. A representative for the culture is ‘The Cyberpunk Project’ , which is an online, non-profit organization whose purpose is to promote, support, research, study, and create cyberpunk subculture, cyberpunk science fiction and general cyberculture. The cyberpunks are with many others the users of cyberspace, and they play a part in how to form it, in how communication between humans as well as between humans and machines will develop.

The Cyberpunk Project states that with Neuromancer William Gibsonpresented the idea of a ‘global information network (the Matrix), in a technological dominated dystopian society where social decay is apparent everywhere and lasting interpersonal relationships are nonexistent. There is corruption everywhere and the essence of being human seems to be slipping away'. It is a description that is common for most cyberpunk novel. In Marge Piercy’s post-apocalypse world of 'He, She and It’ the power is in the hands of big corporations, not countries. The corporation is your life, it is where you live, work and die. They decide what you wear, the work you do decide what rights you have. It is not freedom. It is like the worst fears of communism come to life in a capitalist system reached its absolute height. Likewise, Fred Jameson said that Gibsonand his cyberpunk movement has initiated the ‘supreme literary expression if not of postmodernism, then of late capitalism itself’, and Timothy Leary said Gibson ‘has produced nothing less than the underlying myth, the core legend, of the next stage of human evolution’. Cavallaro (2000) say something of the same thing; ‘Cyberpunk presents a bleak vision of a future in which people are subjected to ruthless communications networks, are totally disconnected from one another and long to leave the body behind, yet are trapped in a physical maze of junk.’

About 90% of Gibson’s fictional concepts have come to life. (Cyberpunk, 1990, video) Can we expect more of cyberpunk predictions to come true? Is the next stage of human evolution to loose our humanity, to successfully remove any need of human contact in order to communicate and be more productive and efficient? Cyberpunk helped form the question, and it forces us to come face to face with this fear.

Virtual Reality does not compete fairly; it can completely overshadow reality in doing thinks we only dream of doing. In VR we can choose what part of reality we want, or we can create our own reality. Or so we think, it may all depend upon who has the power of bits. Fiction feeds our dreams and fears for the future, and consequently forces us to come to terms with it. Some of the science fiction literature describes a utopian future and/ or technology. Others describe a dystopian future, the worst possible scenarios. In many ways we are already living many of the predictions, imaginings, dreams and fears of the science fiction literature. We are coming to terms with many of cyberpunk-concepts. We are getting to know them during daily use in both work as well as personal life. For some of us it becoming normal, like second nature.

The gap between the present and the future becomes narrower and narrower, as the futuristic fantasies of classic science fiction turn out to be integral parts of the here-and-now.’ (Cavallaro)

The future has already happened. (William Gibson, 1990)

Fiction cannot see the future, it can only guess. Fiction is completely reliant upon its author, and what knowledge he or she has of information relevant to their work. In some cases the lack of knowledge, as in William Gibsons case, being a ‘computer illiterate’ by own words, can be liberating. In some cases the fiction take something that is already happening and develop it further, to the point or beyond what is perceived as humanly possible. In some cases fiction can seem too naïve to be believed as relevant for the real world. But the positive and optimistic dreams can help us create and imagine, and the negative and pessimistic view of the future of communication may help us try to avoid such a future ever taking place. We must however remember that real life is not all black, nor white. The future will possibly not be any of the dystopian possibilities, or any of the utopians:

Think all the consequences and possibilities at once. Think of the future as a heterotopia, a mix of different kinds of space. (WARK, M. 2002. Too Real. In: DARREN TOFTS, ANNEMARIE JONSON AND ALESSIO CAVALLARO, ed. Prefiguring Cyberculture, an intellectual history. )

the hush hush

cafe is the noisiest cafe on earth. They serve a decent chicken tandori salad though.

I feel like giving you a great poem from Edgar Allan Poe (1831). It's about me, and it's very famous! I guess that means that I am famous as well. I guess I can endure it, even though I did not ask for it.

TO HELEN

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!


-- THE END --

flushed flash

It did not happen.. All that flashy Flash work I was supposed to do today. TR stole all my time..

I am really tired. Need some sleep. The answer to the questions is 42.

at the tr office

The evil sigarettes beckons me, and I have lost again. I'm trying to get some work done for Tabula Rasa. The office is somewhere in between chaos and strict order. It will be allright. I need to make templates, to get some order, to get some system around me. Ian is speaking. Erin is laughing. Jane is singing about some addiction.

Gjeeesp!!

Jeg sitter her med mitt blå morgenlaken rundt meg og sjekker epost en tirsdagsmorgen.. klokken nærmer seg midt på dagen og jeg hører på lokalradioen. Jeg fryser litt på skuldrene.. det begynner å bli høst her nå. Jeg har ting å gjøre, masse på timeplanen... men egentlig har jeg lyst til å legge meg under det varme teppet igjen... mmmmmm. I kveld blir det norsk aften hos Kjetil og Lars i 'Kjøligheten'. Kjøttkaker og Torsdagsklubben!! Gleder meg VILT naturligvis. Gjeeeesp.

The User Pay..

(some initial notes and opinions from this evenings lecture in 'Globalisation')

.. problem is the short therm thinking. Because of the need for profits, noone can afford to wait for decades to get the profits. Noone but the government! Therefore 'User First' is better than 'User Pay' in the case of Telecommunication. 'Privatization' madness has swept the world - linked to 'Globalisation' (or in the word of any Neo IT Marxist with some selfrespect: Cultural Imperialism.)

The Four Paradoxes
1. The Paradox of Equity - Access (90,% don't have Internetaccess)
2. The Paradox of Plenty - 57 channels and it's all crap
3. The Paradox of Users - Knowledge don't equal wisdom
4. The Paradox of Diversity - the BIG 7 dominating

Pirates

of the Caribbean.. is a much much much much better movie, for sure.. I just bought the DVD, although I really can't afford it.. Also because it is my goal to buy every single movie that my favourite actor Johnny Depp plays in.. hmmm.. Once Upon a Time in Mexico will not be purchased until supersale in 2013... possibly..

I just updated the links, and this is more a test of the size of the title if I honest be.. lol

Beer and HackySack

not a very good combination... I actually felt a little naucious.. but when I fell asleep around 7am I was just fine.

Disappointment: Once Upon A Time In Mexico.
What a piece of crap!! I enjoyed Desperado because of its stiliztic quality. The plot was even worse now; way too ambitious!! Even exellent actors like Johnny Depp could not save it, even though he looked kwl with blood down his cheeks. Last time they had Tarantino on board, this time it looked like they tried oh so hard to copy Tarantinos style (Are you a mexian or a mexicant?) but they failed miserably. Unless you really dig Antoni Banderas with long greasy hair - STAY CLEAR!!

wHo tHe hEll aRe YoU?

Going to see the voice of Bart Simpson. It's going to be one of those cultural saturdays.

YES I hAvE a BlOg!

This most excellent blog will be linked to my hp