Tuesday October 21, 2014 Discussion

        The discussion/field trip that we took on Tuesday was really interesting talking about art in the gallery, art in general and artists. I thought hat was really interesting question that came up was, "Why are people so afraid of art?" I never really thought about it before as a fear. What is it about art that makes it so scary? I think that art in general is not scary, but the emotions, feelings, responses and reactions is what is scary. Everyone's immediate reaction is to not say or do anything that would make others judge them in any way, so being forced to look at art and the emotions that art can bring out of a person can a scary process for many people. If people would just go in the gallery and look at it,  they will realize that it is not going to hurt you. Another interesting point that was made during this discussion was that art is marginalized. It made me wonder why? I think that art is marginalized because it isn't as common as people think it is. Those who grew up around art and who's lives are influenced by art and around art daily don't realize how many people out there who either don't like art or don't categorize it as anything legitimate. I think that all art is significant in some way or another, no matter what it is. The artist or artists who created the work had to have had some kind of meaning or purpose behind the work.   

Google changes 'to fight piracy' by highlighting legal sites

        The BBC News article titled "Google changes 'to fight piracy' by highlighting legal sites" talks about how google has implemented this new policy to help fight piracy. They have made their search engine more legitimate and legal. Even though the companies that want their name and label to come up first have to pay Google for this, it helps the user be less likely to download or stream illegal content. In the comments of this article someone wrote, "If it's not Google's responsibility to police its own remain whose responsibility is it? Governments? The Internet Police?" I thought this was an interesting point because Google itself is also a company that needs to make money and just like any other company they have every right and responsibility to have full control over their domain on the Internet. The music industry and entertainment sector of the web may not agree with Google's new policy. They may not have the funds or opportunity to pay Google for these 'pop ups' especially if they are a new band/company/label. Google may only be limiting who pops up on their search engine to those who can afford it, but is also limiting the amount of piracy, legitimacy and legality. 

Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind

        In Women, Fire and Dangerous Things, author George Lakoff begins by describing what a category is and how all the different things that dominate our lives are assorted into categories. "...things are categorized together on the basis of what they have in common" (pg. 5). I liked this quote because of how true it is. Everything that humans categorized is by similarity and I thought it was interesting how things are never classified by how they differ. The newest theory of categorization shows that the way humans categorize is based on their principles. One things that Lakoff said that I thought was really interesting was when he said, "Without the ability to categorize, we could not function at all, either in the physical world or in our social and intellectual lives" (pg. 6). I never thought about the ability to categorize as a vitality of life. I believe that humans do not need to categorize to function, but I also believe that having this ability allows humans to be exactly that, human. As the properties that these categories have become the defining factor of that category it has become easier for the coding of computer software to take over this ability to categorize. I feel like this isn't anything new. For years, since the computer and the internet were invented, the computer has slowly been taking over multiple jobs that were originally done by humans. I never thought about categorization and categorization methods as something that needed this much discussion, but Lakoff definitely seems to think so. I think it is an interesting topic that forces the reader to see things in a whole new light.