Beauty as luring us into our own destruction
Can we override our aesthetic responses? When we find something beautiful can we deny its beauty? Beauty is only up to the person who is judging it. “Beauty is different than other feelings.”

Why did you choose the look of your avatar: Beauty, ugliness, iconic, attention grabbing? What avatar do you think is the most beautiful? Why do you think that? Can you see the beauty in other Avatars that maybe at first you didn’t find beautiful?
Foglets are robots that have no physical needs.

Our Avatars have no physical needs (unlike something like the SIMS where the SIM can’t survive without the essentials and is only happy if we fulfill it emotionally and physically. In this way, a SIM is in 3rd person. We as humans behind the avatars have emotional needs in order to be personally happy. Our virtual selves are not self-sufficient robots.
Ribofunk,
Having the ability to engage in real-world activities, such as sex, drugs, street gangs, groups.
Show how we have the ability to do this is Second Life.
We are not confined to physical space any longer. We can meet in virtual worlds, with virtual times, people in the same place form different times of the world. We can have virtual meetings across the world, and even communicate and interact with each other in a time that exists different from both parties, a time that is made up in the virtual world. It could be 9am where I am and 9pm where someone else is, but we could meet in midday virtual world.
This brings us together, gives us the ability to be connected even though across the globe we are totally disconnected. We may or may not really know the person on the other end; but we are in the same space at the same time in the virtual world. Is it easier to be yourself in a virtual space? I think that it is. I let me guard down and feel like I can say anything regardless of who or what the other avatar is. I take comfort in knowing that the other person doesn’t know me, but at the same time it is also easier for me to interact even when I know the person. Does anyone else feel that way? Could you be friends with someone in a virtual world and not in the real world?
The network itself speaks back to us.
Access to network depends on physical location.
Where the global and financial elite gather.
“Standing still is the kiss of death and networking is a never ending job.” In the corporate world, the big shots and bosses make the employees feel insecure so that they try their hardest all the time to be good at their job. Choose profit over pleasure.
What does this mean in terms of networking?
“Optimized transience disorientation” is a condition in networks and the workplace. *Feeling overwhelmed by the information overwhelmed by information. “You can’t get rid of old information fast enough to accommodate the new”.
Think about why we need so much stimulation. It’s like we crave it now, to pack in as much information as we possibly can into our minds. We have short attention spans—is this due to our inability to pay attention to one thing because our brains are overloaded? Shaviro says “this is the price of being connected”—why do you think that Shaviro makes overlaod of information a negative thing?
Referring to Noir, Shaviro talks about McNihil “son of nothing” who has lenses that translate everything he sees from an over stimulated networked society to 1940’s equivalents, but not in a virtual reality kind of way—he still communicates with and lives in a real society, he just sees it differently than what it actually is, as a film Noir. A grey scale, black and white, simple world out of the past without a networked society. No loud colors or flashy advertisements, nothing jumping out and trying to catch your attention.
What do you think it would be like to live in a world like that? And, by the way, I hate film Noir, so when Shaviro says we, I am in complete disagreement.
Film noir takes us out of the networked society because the main character is someone who is out of the system. Someone who may be “noble or corrupt” but removed from the system nonetheless.
In Blade Runner, the replicants are simulacra, but feel pain in a simulated world nonetheless. (I have never seen Bladerunner)
Looking for The Edge outside of the network. In this sense, noir becomes where everybody is connected, the darkness, the betrayal–the “shadow” of the noir.
There is a connection between debt and death. Death is an escape from debt, and when the debtor dies, the belongings or assets of the debtor go to the collector. This relationship is inverted in a networked society, where not even death can get rid of debt. This means that debt is an escape form death, that no matter what, including dying you cannot escape from debt. It does not just erase or go away. It is forever embedded in your life.
We never finish anything. Everything is changing so rapidly that there is not even a moment to catch up on anything that you owe.
In American culture especially, we are expected to be on the go all the time, and because of this, we never get anything fully and completely done. This is an issue that does not extend cross culturally it seems. Is this concept a network-connectedness issue or an American issue?
Debt is limitless.
Can we say then, that no matter how much debt you are in you will always be indebt and any amount of debt is just the existence of it? Is this to say that everyone is in debt and has to pay back something, so why don’t well all just be in debt together? Most people are in debt their entire lives. And if when we die, we still can’t get rid of it, who cares? I think it’s more of a source of anxiety than anything else, and actually I have come to terms with my debt issues, and realized why not just pay 100 dollars a month to continue debt and all the while spend more to be more in debt. It may sound stupid, but for right now it’s all I can do. Debt is limitless, and I can still only pay the monthly fees. This is also touched upon when Shaviro talks about Children of Production and The Tendential Fall of the Rate of Profit, in relation to Vampires and Zombies.

Children of Production & The Tendential Fall of the Rate of Profit
Vampires and bloodsuckers—relating back to the beginning of the book when Shaviro talks about the bed bugs and the symbiosis of humans and parasites. “No predator can live in the absence of prey”.
If this is true, than no matter what, debt will go on because we humans exist. The debt-vampire will never die, even when we die, the vampire is still living on our blood money it has sucked out of us and we can’t do anything about it. And just to draw this analogy further, the vampire will come after my entire family even after I die.

Drawing on the rate of profit, a “corporation cannot fully reach its potential profit” because the more efficient something becomes, the more profitable it is, but then there is more potential for large decline.

Fade Away and Radiate (179 & The Whole World is Watching (180)
WHETHER YOU PARTICIPATE OR NOT, YOU ARE A PART OF THE NETWORK
Shaviro talks about how people who do not directly participate in a network are still close enough to be affected.
Is this referring to putting people in target groups?
“Whatever appears on the television screen is a raw experience for those who watch it, therefore television is reality, and reality is less than television.”
*Contest this. Reality is not less than telelvision.

Exhibitionists vs. The Silent Masses: The silent masses are unaware that they are being watched, and the exhibitionists present the spectacle to be watched.
Comparison of Micky-san in the book Red Spider, White Web to being on Ecstasy. Are drugs like technology? Extensions of ourselves as McLuhan suggests? Do you think that it’s extreme to say that the way that drugs affect our bodies the same way that television and other media do?
There are different levels of reality, of existence when you are on drugs. It’s totally virtual, if you want to consider virtual as being something that’s not real. The feelings on drugs aren’t real no matter how much we want them to be. I can’t say though that the long-term affects are the same (have you seen Celebrity Rehab?) Actually, isn’t there a help line for people who become too obsessed with VR games?