Artykuły w czasopismach na temat „Virtual binary tree”

The need for efficient access and management of time dependent data in modern database applications is well recognized and researched. Existing access methods are mostly derived from the family of spatial R-tree indexing techniques. These techniques are particularly not suitable to handle data involving open ended intervals, which are common in temporal databases. This is due to overlapping between nodes and huge dead space found in the database. In this study, we describe a detailed investigation of a new approach called ?Triangular Decomposition Tree? (TD-Tree). The underlying idea for the TD-Tree is to manage temporal intervals by virtual index structures relying on geometric interpretations of intervals, and a space partition method that results in an unbalanced binary tree. We demonstrate that the unbalanced binary tree can be efficiently manipulated using a virtual index. We also show that the single query algorithm can be applied uniformly to different query types without the need of dedicated query transformations. In addition to the advantages related to the usage of a single query algorithm for different query types and better space complexity, the empirical performance of the TD-tree has been found to be superior to its best known competitors.

In order to simulate the plant branch structure in three-dimensional space, and extract the growth more efficiently, this paper presented a new method to simulate the structure of plant branch based on quasi binary-tree structure and three-dimensional L system. The results of the actual trees simulation shows that this method can describe the plants branch structure efficiently and provide a new way for the simulation of plants.

Objective: The objective of this study is to construct predictive unbiased structure-based virtual screening (SBVS) protocols to identify potent ligands for estrogen receptor alpha by combining molecular docking, protein-ligand interaction fingerprinting (PLIF), and binary quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) analysis using recursive partition and regression tree method.Methods: Employing the enhanced version of a directory of useful decoys, SBVS protocols using molecular docking simulations, and PLIF were constructed and retrospectively validated. To avoid bias, SMILES format of the compounds was used. The predictive abilities of the SBVS protocols were then compared based on the enrichment factor (EF) and the F-measure values.Results: The SBVS protocols resulted in this research were SBVS_1 (employing docking scores of the best pose on every compound to rank the results and selecting compounds within 1% false positives as positive), SBVS_2 (employing decision tree resulted from the binary QSAR analysis using docking scores and PLIF bitstrings of the best pose of every compound as descriptors), and SBVS_3 (employing decision tree resulted from the binary QSAR analysis using ensemble PLIF of the selected poses from optimized docking score as the cutoff). The EF values of SBVS_1, SBVS_2, and SBVS_3 are 28.315, 576.084, and 713.472, respectively, while their F-measure values are 0.310, 0.573, and 0.769, respectively.Conclusion: Highly predictive unbiased SBVS protocols to identify potent estrogen receptor alpha ligands were constructed. Further application in prospective screening is therefore highly suggested.

The collision detection in virtual scene can effectively improve the fidelity of virtual reality, however, the existing collision detection algorithm are not fully ideal. In this paper, a collision detection optimization algorithm based on hybrid bounding volumes is presented to improve the real-time ability of bounding volumes collision detection. The algorithm combines the simplicity of AABB-AABB overlap test with the tightness of k-dops. Bounding volumes binary trees of the objects are designed as double-layered structure, which employ AABBs at the top layer, and k-dops at other layers. The intersection test uses different methods to detect the contact status among objects. Quest tree method is used to speed up the algorithm. Experiment results show that the algorithm above is efficient in improving the real-time and accuracy of collision detecting.

Structure-Based Virtual Screening (SBVS) campaigns employing Protein-Ligand Interaction Fingerprints (PLIF) identification have served as a powerful strategy in fragments and ligands identification, both retro- and prospectively. Most of the SBVS campaigns employed PLIF by comparing them to a reference PLIF to calculate the Tanimoto-coefficient. Since the approach was reference dependent, it could lead to a very different discovery path if a different reference was used. In this article, references independent approach, i.e. decision trees construction using docking score and PLIF as the descriptors to increase the predictive ability of the SBVS campaigns in the identification of ligands for cyclooxygenase-2 is presented. The results showed that the binary Quantitative-Structure Activity Relationship (QSAR) analysis could significantly increase the predictive ability of the SBVS campaign. Moreover, the selected decision tree could also pinpoint the molecular determinants of the ligands binding to cyclooxygenase-2.

This paper presents the designing of path planning system in an environment contains a set of static polygon obstacles localized and distributed randomly by using differential drive mobile robot. In this paper the designed algorithm (two dimensional path planning algorithm) is proposed in order of investigate the path planning of mobile robot with free collision using the visibility binary tree algorithm. The suggested algorithm is compared with the virtual circles tangents algorithm in the time of arrival and the longest of the path to the target. The aim of this paper is to get an algorithm has better performance than the other algorithms and get less time of arrival and shortest path with free collision.

This paper presents the designing of path planning system in an environment contains a set of static polygon obstacles localized and distributed randomly by using differential drive mobile robot. In this paper the designed algorithm (two dimensional path planning algorithm) is proposed in order of investigate the path planning of mobile robot with free collision using the visibility binary tree algorithm. The suggested algorithm is compared with the virtual circles tangents algorithm in the time of arrival and the longest of the path to the target. The aim of this paper is to get an algorithm has better performance than the other algorithms and get less time of arrival and shortest path with free collision.

The progressive mesh representation is in general introduced for a continuous level of detail, and with it smooth transition between meshes can be achieved. However, the method is impractical for realtime simplification. Despite that, the realtime generation of progressive meshes is often required for applications such as in a robot simulation system or a flight simulation system where models are constantly modified by the actions of object collision, object destruction and reconstruction, etc. A new method is presented in this paper to tackle realtime simplification through progressive meshes. By the algorithm only the current mesh and readily accessible local information of each vertex, such as vertex position, edge length, neighboring vertices, adjacent faces, and face normals, are considered at each simplification step. All edge-collapse costs are calculated and sorted into a binary tree using the heap sort algorithm at the initial stage. At the iterative stages only the neighboring affected costs need be recalculated and rearranged in the binary tree. Other properties, such as vertex color and face texture, are processed in the same way as the geometry. The algorithm greatly improves the time performance under the constraint that the quality of the generated meshes be acceptable. Tests show that the algorithm is viable in a realtime simplification for medium-scale virtual models on PC platforms.

Due to the of use of ICTs and ODL, Virtual University (VU) has become one of leading distance learning university in Pakistan. However, the retention rate among online learners found considerably low. The primary objective of this research was to dig out determinants of retention of MS /MPhil students at VU and modeling their retention by considering important influences. For sampling purpose, three departments with the most students were considered and complete enumeration was done. There were 4,608 students from three departments; Computer Science & Technology, Management Sciences and Education have been included in this study. To dig out the important retention factors, this research has used a Chi-Square test, optimal scaling, a decision tree using CHAID analysis, and then developed a suitable model for student retention. Binary logistic regression techniques were applied. Results have revealed that gender, scholarship, province, location, and division are significant factors and contributing in predicting students' retention at VU. Detailed outputs are shown in respective tables and figures. At the end, different recommendations and suggestions are proposed.

This paper presents the design of a path planning system in an environment that contains a set of static and dynamic polygon obstacles localized randomly. In this paper, an algorithm so-called (Polygon shape tangents algorithm) is proposed to move a mobile robot from a source point to a destination point with no collision with surrounding obstacles using the visibility binary tree algorithm. The methodology of this algorithm is based on predicting the steps of a robot trajectory from the source to the destination point. The polygon shapes tangent algorithm is compared with the virtual circles' tangents algorithm for different numbers of static and dynamic polygon obstacles for the time of arrival and the length of the path to the target. The obtained result shows that the used algorithm has better performance than the other algorithms and gets less time of arrival and shortest path with free collision.

AbstractThe use of principal points and principal vectors in the formulation of the equations of motion of a general 4R planar four-bar linkage is shown with two kinds of methods, one that opens kinematic loops and one that does not. The opened kinematic loop approach analyses the moving links as a system with a tree connectivity, introducing reaction forces for closing the loops. Compared with the conventional Newton–Euler method, this approach results in fewer equations and constraint forces, whereas the mass matrix entries remain meaningful, but there is a stronger coupling between the equations. Two equivalent mass formulations for the closed kinematic loop approach are presented, which need not open the loop and introduce loop constraint forces in the equations of motion. With the method of complex joint masses, the mass of the links closing the loops is represented by real and virtual equivalent masses, defining the principal points. The principle of virtual work with the inclusion of inertia terms is used to derive the equations of motion. As an example the dynamic balance conditions of the four-bar linkage are derived. With the method of the equivalent mass matrix it is shown how a constant mass matrix can be used to describe the dynamics of binary links with an arbitrary mass distribution. A four-bar linkage could be modelled with only three truss elements instead of the conventional result with three or more beam elements, which gives a significant reduction of the computational complexity.

Рассматривается особый способ телесного присутствия зрителя в различных произведениях виртуальной реальности (VR). В некоторых из них зритель присутствует лишь в роли наблюдателя / свидетеля, или «призрака», не способного взаимодействовать с миром виртуальной инсталляции и влиять на происходящие в нем события. В других же элемент интерактивности проявляется ярче, роль зрителя более не сводится исключительно к наблюдению, он становится активным участником инсталляции. Произведения искусства, созданные с применением технологий виртуальной реальности, – это искусственные «миры», предлагающие зрителю новые ощущения, обычно зрительные и слуховые, потому что в большинстве проектов передача тактильных ощущений пока отсутствует. Важным аспектом при разработке VR-инсталляций для художника является определение законов «поведения» виртуальной среды, окружающей зрителя, и здесь возможны эксперименты с законами альтернативной природы – VR. Также важны «правила» присутствия в VR зрителя / пользователя. Важно определить, на каких основаниях, в каком статусе он находится в пространстве инсталляции, обладает ли механизмами реагирования, рычагами воздействия на «мир», и если нет, то чем это обусловлено, почему это может быть ценно и для зрителя, и для художника. Если же элемент интерактивности находится в центре образной структуры проекта, то какие выразительные возможности могут открыть действия пользователя и его интеракция с произведением и другими пользователями через это произведение? Как можно охарактеризовать опыт, который получает зритель, взаимодействуя с VR-работами? На эти вопросы мы и постараемся ответить в данной статье, исследуя различные произведения искусства, созданные с помощью технологии VR. Основной авторский тезис заключается в том, что развитие виртуальной реальности дает возможность выстроить опыт нового чувственного плана: альтернативной субъективности и сверхчеловеческого видения многомерных взаимосвязей между явлениями и событиями в мире, – выводя тем самым наш способ мышления на совершенно другой уровень – внеэгоцентрического состояния, формирующего новую оптику «планетарного видения». This article discusses a special way of the bodily presence of the viewer in various works designed for virtual reality. In some of them, the viewer is not able to interact with the world of a virtual installation and influence the events taking place in it (although they can, for example, move through the digital space); in others, there is a limited quality of presence at the perception (but not action) level leading to a meaningful result: when the viewer is compelled to observe events as the director/artist intended – their gaze is built into the point of view of the director or camera. Finally, there is a third type of VR projects where we find an enhancing user interaction with the digital environment. Viewer’s capacities – including the ability to move in the space of the installation and interact with it – depend on the “genealogy” of a particular VR piece. There are basically two types of VR pieces that have the same image and sound output devices, but differ significantly from each other in the way moving image is produced and in the kind of effect produced on a recipient. The first type involves the creation of real-life decoration with actors in it filmed on a panoramic camera (a device with a 360-degree view). This kind of the piece is similar to panoramic cinema: it is basically a film that provides a high-quality image and a bright immersive effect, but does not provide the viewer (just like classical cinema) with the opportunity to interact with screen reality. In these cases interactivity goes down to choosing the point of observation and following the camera. Examples reviewed in the current article include such pieces as “Caves”, “Container”, “Montegelato” (demonstrated at the Venice VR Expanded, 2021 program), etc. The second type of VR is based on creation of virtual space and 3D models of characters and objects inside it (“Goliath”, “Anandala”, “Last Worker”, “Samsara”, “Lavrinthos”, also viewed in Venice). These pieces are technically part of a game-design framework since they are constructed on game “engines” and imply a high degree of interactivity. Here the emphasis is on the interaction with an artificially created world, even though authors may limit the viewer’s ability to act within the VR space and make only limited number of choices. Observing various strategies of interaction in VR, I outline three kinds of them: (1) lack of interaction; (2) limited interaction (participation at the level of perception, but not action); (3) full-fledged interaction. Artists put the very phenomenon of interactivity into question each time eliminating certain aspects of this experience. For example, a user can be deprived of an ability to move (as in the Tree VR project offering one to “be” a tree that cannot “respond” to the violence committed against it) or, conversely, granting one such “rights” and “powers” in the virtual world that are hardly imaginable in everyday practices (flight, telekinesis, etc.). The element of interactivity may either structure the project or, on the contrary, be “bracketed”, users’ actions (participation or the lack of it) turn into means of artistic expression. What kind of expression? How can we describe the experience that a viewer gets interacting with VR pieces? The current article provides an answer to these questions in a broad sociocultural context, including issues of bio- and digital ethics. I examine the VR pieces of the first and second type (where a viewer is limited in actions and cannot influence the events taking place in the installation) and explore the difference between them, conceptualize the compelled inaction of the viewer. In this regard, based on the concept of event introduced by French philosopher A. Badiou (meaning something that changes the frame of our perception of reality), I agrue that VR technologies can be considered as a machine for producing events – an apparatus for actualizing potentialities that are converted into events for the viewer and in the future may or may not become a reality. It depends on whether the viewer decides to “embed” the opportunity offered by the virtual event into their Weltbild. For example, one could take off VR-glasses and transfer the aesthetic affect into some kind of action in reality beginning to show greater social responsibility, taking part in social assistance programs, becoming more tolerant, etc. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated by experiments conducted in the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University (USA). Furthermore, I focus on projects that create the possibility of communicating and interacting with nonhuman agents that populate the space of VR installations. And the emphasis is shifted from the “anthrope”, who is used to seeing oneself in the center of the world (a subjective position that has been constructed in Western culture since the Renaissance) to the play of nonhuman entities. This pulls up the paradigm of anthropocentrism, basic to European culture, and provides one with an ability to think and act on a completely different level — on extra-egocentric one. In case when the viewer has freedom of movement and interaction within the VR world, the rules and restrictions that the artist/director imposes on this interaction are important, since the quality of viewer’s experience will be shaped by it. It is the need to perform motoric actions aimed at achieving a specific goal (or the impossibility of doing so, as in case of projects of the first and second types) that shapes viewer’s identity in the field. In a VR installation of the third type (“full-fledged presence”), the viewer can, like an actor in the Stanislavsky Theater, become an actor “in the proposed circumstances”. The elements of such installation and models of user’s interaction scenarios with its interface (including motoric actions) are aimed at helping the viewer get immersed into their “role”. However, if in theatrical plays and films actors were supposed to perform for a spectator to follow the plot and transfer their emotional and cognitive projections onto it, in VR these projections are turned onto the viewer. Thus, in the field of virtual reality, languages of various arts intersect: theater, cinema, game design, etc. are giving rise to multiple hybrid formats of experience. Projects of the third type can also be seen as shattering the viewer’s habitual egocentric position. Such projects, which problematize our experience as a contingent construct, make it possible to design an experience of alternative subjectivity. I argue that the development of virtual reality makes it possible to build the experience of a new sensual plane: a re-subjectivised and superhuman vision of multidimensional relationships between phenomena and events in the world. Thereby our way of thinking is being brought to a completely different level: an extra-egocentric state that forms a new optics of “planetary vision”. ”Planetary optics” does not imply a view from afar. The precise (not abstract) way of thinking is a challenging thing; it is hard to get away from reducing reality to familiar schemes, binary oppositions and common hierarchies. That is why, while analyzing the strategies of artists working with the medium of VR throughout this article, I focus on pieces where these familiar schemes get overturned. A hunter becomes a prey, an actor becomes a non-participant, and so on. The binaries of male and female, Eurocentrism and Orientalism, nature and culture, animal and machine get blurred not to erase the boundaries between them but with the aim of offering the spectator-actor a new perspective or even a set of perspectives, points of view, positions of various stakeholders, polarities and experience of a multipolar world. “Planetary optics” does assume a multipolar world (after all, we cannot block some part of it and separate ourselves from other beings, we are too intertwined with other techno- and biological actors) — and one of the ways to achieve this multipolar way of thinking can be through the experience offered by the VR medium, an artistic image that becomes personal experience. And, in turn, existing experience will allow the viewer to attain a more flexible and tuned perception, correlating it with the Weltbild, perhaps, of social groups far from it with their own interests, which however must be taken into account. Therefore, VR as a medium has not only artistic, but also social meaning, since it may concretize and focus human thinking, prone to abstraction, it may synthesize the sensual and the rational. The further development of virtual reality will perhaps make it possible to build a visual experience of a new kind: one associated with a different scale of view, different assemblage points, the experience of a hybrid space that combines the virtual and the real (what might be called a “meta screen”), so that the user will be able to look at the world with a different vision (for example, to see multidimensional connections and networks of actors in different approximations).

Symbolic execution is a widely used approach for automatic regression test generation and bug and vulnerability finding. The main goal of this paper is to present a practical symbolic execution-based approach for LLVM programs with complex input data structures. The approach is based on the well-known idea of lazy initialization, which frees the user from providing constraints on input data structures manually. Thus, it provides us with a fully automatic symbolic execution of even complex program. Two lazy initialization improvements are proposed for segmented memory models: one based on timestamps and one based on type information. The approach is implemented in the KLEE symbolic virtual machine for the LLVM platform and tested on real C data structures — lists, binomial heaps, AVL trees, red-black trees, binary trees, and tries.

The students’ performance prediction (SPP) problem is a challenging problem that managers face at any institution. Collecting educational quantitative and qualitative data from many resources such as exam centers, virtual courses, e-learning educational systems, and other resources is not a simple task. Even after collecting data, we might face imbalanced data, missing data, biased data, and different data types such as strings, numbers, and letters. One of the most common challenges in this area is the large number of attributes (features). Determining the highly valuable features is needed to improve the overall students’ performance. This paper proposes an evolutionary-based SPP model utilizing an enhanced form of the Whale Optimization Algorithm (EWOA) as a wrapper feature selection to keep the most informative features and enhance the prediction quality. The proposed EWOA combines the Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA) with Sine Cosine Algorithm (SCA) and Logistic Chaotic Map (LCM) to improve the overall performance of WOA. The SCA will empower the exploitation process inside WOA and minimize the probability of being stuck in local optima. The main idea is to enhance the worst half of the population in WOA using SCA. Besides, LCM strategy is employed to control the population diversity and improve the exploration process. As such, we handled the imbalanced data using the Adaptive Synthetic (ADASYN) sampling technique and converting WOA to binary variant employing transfer functions (TFs) that belong to different families (S-shaped and V-shaped). Two real educational datasets are used, and five different classifiers are employed: the Decision Trees (DT), k-Nearest Neighbors (k-NN), Naive Bayes (NB), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), and LogitBoost (LB). The obtained results show that the LDA classifier is the most reliable classifier with both datasets. In addition, the proposed EWOA outperforms other methods in the literature as wrapper feature selection with selected transfer functions.

Abstract Background Virtual reality (VR) technology is an ideal alternative of operation training and surgical teaching. However, virtual surgery is usually carried out using the mouse or data gloves, which affects the authenticity of virtual operation. A virtual surgery system with gesture recognition and real-time image feedback was explored to realize more authentic immersion. Method Gesture recognition technology proposed with an efficient and real-time algorithm and high fidelity was explored. The recognition of hand contour, palm and fingertip was firstly realized by hand data extraction. Then, an Support Vector Machine classifier was utilized to classify and recognize common gestures after extraction of feature recognition. The algorithm of collision detection adopted Axis Aligned Bounding Box binary tree to build hand and scalpel collision models. What’s more, nominal radius theorem (NRT) and separating axis theorem (SAT) were applied for speeding up collision detection. Based on the maxillofacial virtual surgical system we proposed before, the feasibility of integration of the above technologies in this prototype system was evaluated. Results Ten kinds of signal static gestures were designed to test gesture recognition algorithms. The accuracy of gestures recognition is more than 80%, some of which were over 90%. The generation speed of collision detection model met the software requirements with the method of NRT and SAT. The response time of gesture] recognition was less than 40 ms, namely the speed of hand gesture recognition system was greater than 25 Hz. On the condition of integration of hand gesture recognition, typical virtual surgical procedures including grabbing a scalpel, puncture site selection, virtual puncture operation and incision were carried out with realization of real-time image feedback. Conclusion Based on the previous maxillofacial virtual surgical system that consisted of VR, triangular mesh collision detection and maxillofacial biomechanical model construction, the integration of hand gesture recognition was a feasible method to improve the interactivity and immersion of virtual surgical operation training.

As the name suggests, the humanities is largely a study of the human condition, in which history sits as a discipline concerned with the past. Environmental history is a new field that brings together scholars from a range of disciplines to consider the changing relationships between humans and the environment over time. Critiques of anthropocentrism that place humans at the centre of the universe or make assessments through an exclusive human perspective provide a challenge to scholars to rethink our traditional biases against the nonhuman world. The movement towards nonhumanism or posthumanism, however, does not seem to have had much of an impression on history as a discipline. What would a nonhumanist history look like if we re-centred the historical narrative around pigs? There are histories of pigs as food (see for example, The Cambridge History of Food which has a chapter on “Hogs”). There are food histories that feature pork in terms of its relationship to multiethnic identity (such as Donna Gabaccia’s We Are What We Eat) and examples made of pigs to promote ethical eating (Singer). Pigs are central to arguments about dietary rules and what motivates them (Soler; Dolander). Ancient pig DNA has also been employed in studies on human migration and colonisation (Larson et al.; Durham University). Pigs are also widely used in a range of products that would surprise many of us. In 2008, Christien Meindertsma spent three years researching the products made from a single pig. Among some of the more unexpected results were: ammunition, medicine, photographic paper, heart valves, brakes, chewing gum, porcelain, cosmetics, cigarettes, hair conditioner and even bio diesel. Likewise, Fergus Henderson, who coined the term ‘nose to tail eating’, uses a pig on the front cover of the book of that name to suggest the extraordinary and numerous potential of pigs’ bodies. However, my intention here is not to pursue a discussion of how parts of their bodies are used, rather to consider a reorientation of the historical narrative to place pigs at the centre of stories of our co-evolution, in order to see what their history might say about humans and our relationships with them. This is underpinned by recognition of the inter-relationality of humans and animals. The relationships between wild boar and pigs with humans has been long and diverse. In a book exploring 10,000 years of interaction, Anton Ervynck and Peter Rowley-Conwy argue that pigs have been central to complex cultural developments in human societies and they played an important role in human migration patterns. The book is firmly grounded within the disciplines of zoology, anthropology and archaeology and contributes to an understanding of the complex and changing relationship humans have historically shared with wild boar and domestic pigs. Naturalist Lyall Watson also explores human/pig relationships in The Whole Hog. The insights these approaches offer for the discipline of history are valuable (although overlooked) but, more importantly, such scholarship also challenges a humanist perspective that credits humans exclusively with historical change and suggests, moreover, that we did it alone. Pigs occupy a special place in this history because of their likeness to humans, revealed in their use in transplant technology, as well as because of the iconic and paradoxical status they occupy in our lives. As Ervynck and Rowley-Conwy explain, “On the one hand, they are praised for their fecundity, their intelligence, and their ability to eat almost anything, but on the other hand, they are unfairly derided for their apparent slovenliness, unclean ways, and gluttonous behaviour” (1). Scientist Niamh O’Connell was struck by the human parallels in the complex social structures which rule the lives of pigs and people when she began a research project on pig behaviour at the Agricultural Research Institute at Hillsborough in County Down (Cassidy). According to O’Connell, pigs adopt different philosophies and lifestyle strategies to get the most out of their life. “What is interesting from a human perspective is that low-ranking animals tend to adopt one of two strategies,” she says. “You have got the animals who accept their station in life and then you have got the other ones that are continually trying to climb, and as a consequence, their life is very stressed” (qtd. in Cassidy). The closeness of pigs to humans is the justification for their use in numerous experiments. In the so-called ‘pig test’, code named ‘Priscilla’, for instance, over 700 pigs dressed in military uniforms were used to study the effects of nuclear testing at the Nevada (USA) test site in the 1950s. In When Species Meet, Donna Haraway draws attention to the ambiguities and contradictions promoted by the divide between animals and humans, and between nature and culture. There is an ethical and critical dimension to this critique of human exceptionalism—the view that “humanity alone is not [connected to the] spatial and temporal web of interspecies dependencies” (11). There is also that danger that any examination of our interdependencies may just satisfy a humanist preoccupation with self-reflection and self-reproduction. Given that pigs cannot speak, will they just become the raw material to reproduce the world in human’s own image? As Haraway explains: “Productionism is about man the tool-maker and -user, whose highest technical production is himself […] Blinded by the sun, in thrall to the father, reproduced in the sacred image of the same, his rewards is that he is self-born, an auto telic copy. That is the mythos of enlightenment and transcendence” (67). Jared Diamond acknowledges the mutualistic relationship between pigs and humans in Guns, Germs and Steel and the complex co-evolutionary path between humans and domesticated animals but his account is human-centric. Human’s relationships with pigs helped to shape human history and power relations and they spread across the world with human expansion. But questioning their utility as food and their enslavement to this cause was not part of the account. Pigs have no voice in the histories we write of them and so they can appear as passive objects in their own pasts. Traces of their pasts are available in humanity’s use of them in, for example, the sties built for them and the cooking implements used to prepare meals from them. Relics include bones and viruses, DNA sequences and land use patterns. Historians are used to dealing with subjects that cannot speak back, but they have usually left ample evidence of what they have said. In the process of writing, historians attempt to perform the miracle, as Curthoys and Docker have suggested, of restoration; bringing the people and places that existed in the past back to life (7). Writing about pigs should also attempt to bring the animal to life, to understand not just their past but also our own culture. In putting forward the idea of an alternative history that starts with pigs, I am aware of both the limits to such a proposal, and that most people’s only contact with pigs is through the meat they buy at the supermarket. Calls for a ban on intensive pig farming (RSPCA, ABC, AACT) might indeed have shocked people who imagine their dinner comes from the type of family farm featured in the movie Babe. Baby pigs in factory farms would have been killed a long time before the film’s sheep dog show (usually at 3 to 4 months of age). In fact, because baby pigs do grow so fast, 48 different pigs were used to film the role of the central character in Babe. While Babe himself may not have been aware of the relationship pigs generally have to humans, the other animals were very cognisant of their function. People eat pigs, even if they change the name of the form it takes in order to do so:Cat: You know, I probably shouldn’t say this, but I’m not sure if you realize how much the other animals are laughing at you for this sheep dog business. Babe: Why would they do that? Cat: Well, they say that you’ve forgotten that you’re a pig. Isn't that silly? Babe: What do you mean? Cat: You know, why pigs are here. Babe: Why are any of us here? Cat: Well, the cow’s here to be milked, the dogs are here to help the Boss's husband with the sheep, and I’m here to be beautiful and affectionate to the boss. Babe: Yes? Cat: [sighs softly] The fact is that pigs don’t have a purpose, just like ducks don’t have a purpose. Babe: [confused] Uh, I—I don’t, uh ... Cat: Alright, for your own sake, I’ll be blunt. Why do the Bosses keep ducks? To eat them. So why do the Bosses keep a pig? The fact is that animals don’t seem to have a purpose really do have a purpose. The Bosses have to eat. It’s probably the most noble purpose of all, when you come to think about it. Babe: They eat pigs? Cat: Pork, they call it—or bacon. They only call them pigs when they’re alive (Noonan). Babe’s transformation into a working pig to round up the sheep makes him more useful. Ferdinand the duck tried to do the same thing by crowing but was replaced by an alarm clock. This is a common theme in children’s stories, recalling Charlotte’s campaign to praise Wilbur the pig in order to persuade the farmer to let him live in E. B. White’s much loved children’s novel, Charlotte’s Web. Wilbur is “some pig”, “terrific”, “radiant” and “humble”. In 1948, four years before Charlotte’s Web, White had published an essay “Death of a Pig”, in which he fails to save a sick pig that he had bought in order to fatten up and butcher. Babe tried to present an alternative reality from a pig’s perspective, but the little pig was only spared because he was more useful alive than dead. We could all ask the question why are any of us here, but humans do not have to contemplate being eaten to justify their existence. The reputation pigs have for being filthy animals encourages distaste. In another movie, Pulp Fiction, Vincent opts for flavour, but Jules’ denial of pig’s personalities condemns them to insignificance:Vincent: Want some bacon? Jules: No man, I don’t eat pork. Vincent: Are you Jewish? Jules: Nah, I ain’t Jewish, I just don’t dig on swine, that’s all. Vincent: Why not? Jules: Pigs are filthy animals. I don’t eat filthy animals. Vincent: Bacon tastes gooood. Pork chops taste gooood. Jules: Hey, sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I’d never know ’cause I wouldn’t eat the filthy motherfucker. Pigs sleep and root in shit. That’s a filthy animal. I ain’t eat nothin’ that ain’t got sense enough to disregard its own feces [sic]. Vincent: How about a dog? Dogs eats its own feces. Jules: I don’t eat dog either. Vincent: Yeah, but do you consider a dog to be a filthy animal? Jules: I wouldn’t go so far as to call a dog filthy but they’re definitely dirty. But, a dog’s got personality. Personality goes a long way. Vincent: Ah, so by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, he would cease to be a filthy animal. Is that true? Jules: Well we’d have to be talkin’ about one charming motherfuckin’ pig. I mean he’d have to be ten times more charmin’ than that Arnold on Green Acres, you know what I’m sayin’? In the 1960s television show Green Acres, Arnold was an exceptional pig who was allowed to do whatever he wanted. He was talented enough to write his own name and play the piano and his attempts at painting earned him the nickname “Porky Picasso”. These talents reflected values that are appreciated, and so he was. The term “pig” is, however, chiefly used a term of abuse, however, embodying traits we abhor—gluttony, obstinence, squealing, foraging, rooting, wallowing. Making a pig of yourself is rarely honoured. Making a pig of the humanities, however, could be a different story. As a historian I love to forage, although I use white gloves rather than a snout. I have rubbed my face and body on tree trunks in the service of forestry history and when the temperature rises I also enjoy wallowing, rolling from side to side rather than drawing a conclusion. More than this, however, pigs provide a valid means of understanding key historical transitions that define modern society. Significant themes in modern history—production, religion, the body, science, power, the national state, colonialism, gender, consumption, migration, memory—can all be understood through a history of our relationships with pigs. Pigs play an important role in everyday life, but their relationship to the economic, social, political and cultural matters discussed in general history texts—industrialisation, the growth of nation states, colonialism, feminism and so on—are generally ignored. However “natural” this place of pigs may seem, culture and tradition profoundly shape their history and their own contribution to those forces has been largely absent in history. What, then, would the contours of such a history that considered the intermeshing of humans and pigs look like? The intermeshing of pigs in early human history Agricultural economies based on domestic animals began independently in different parts of the world, facilitating increases in population and migration. Evidence for long-term genetic continuity between modern and ancient Chinese domestic pigs has been established by DNA sequences. Larson et al. have made an argument for five additional independent domestications of indigenous wild boar populations: in India, South East Asia and Taiwan, which they use to develop a picture of both pig evolution and the development and spread of early farmers in the Far East. Domestication itself involves transformation into something useful to animals. In the process, humans became transformed. The importance of the Fertile Crescent in human history has been well established. The area is attributed as the site for a series of developments that have defined human history—urbanisation, writing, empires, and civilisation. Those developments have been supported by innovations in food production and animal husbandry. Pig, goats, sheep and cows were all domesticated very early in the Fertile Crescent and remain four of the world’s most important domesticated mammals (Diamond 141). Another study of ancient pig DNA has concluded that the earliest domesticated pigs in Europe, believed to be descended from European wild boar, were introduced from the Middle East. The research, by archaeologists at Durham University, sheds new light on the colonisation of Europe by early farmers, who brought their animals with them. Keith Dobney explains:Many archaeologists believe that farming spread through the diffusion of ideas and cultural exchange, not with the direct migration of people. However, the discovery and analysis of ancient Middle Eastern pig remains across Europe reveals that although cultural exchange did happen, Europe was definitely colonised by Middle Eastern farmers. A combination of rising population and possible climate change in the ‘fertile crescent’, which put pressure on land and resources, made them look for new places to settle, plant their crops and breed their animals and so they rapidly spread west into Europe (ctd in ScienceDaily). Middle Eastern farmers colonised Europe with pigs and in the process transformed human history. Identity as a porcine theme Religious restrictions on the consumption of pigs come from the same area. Such restrictions exist in Jewish dietary laws (Kashrut) and in Muslim dietary laws (Halal). The basis of dietary laws has been the subject of much scholarship (Soler). Economic and health and hygiene factors have been used to explain the development of dietary laws historically. The significance of dietary laws, however, and the importance attached to them can be related to other purposes in defining and expressing religious and cultural identity. Dietary laws and their observance may have been an important factor in sustaining Jewish identity despite the dispersal of Jews in foreign lands since biblical times. In those situations, where a person eats in the home of someone who does not keep kosher, the lack of knowledge about your host’s ingredients and the food preparation techniques make it very difficult to keep kosher. Dietary laws require a certain amount of discipline and self-control, and the ability to make distinctions between right and wrong, good and evil, pure and defiled, the sacred and the profane, in everyday life, thus elevating eating into a religious act. Alternatively, people who eat anything are often subject to moral judgments that may also lead to social stigmatisation and discrimination. One of the most powerful and persuasive discourses influencing current thinking about health and bodies is the construction of an ‘obesity epidemic’, critiqued by a range of authors (see for example, Wright & Harwood). As omnivores who appear indiscriminate when it comes to food, pigs provide an image of uncontrolled eating, made visible by the body as a “virtual confessor”, to use Elizabeth Grosz’s term. In Fat Pig, a production by the Sydney Theatre Company in 2006, women are reduced to being either fat pigs or shrieking shallow women. Fatuosity, a blog by PhD student Jackie Wykes drawing on her research on fat and sexual subjectivity, provides a review of the play to describe the misogyny involved: “It leaves no options for women—you can either be a lovely person but a fat pig who will end up alone; or you can be a shrill bitch but beautiful, and end up with an equally obnoxious and shallow male counterpart”. The elision of the divide between women and pigs enacted by such imagery also creates openings for new modes of analysis and new practices of intervention that further challenge humanist histories. Such interventions need to make visible other power relations embedded in assumptions about identity politics. Following the lead of feminists and postcolonial theorists who have challenged the binary oppositions central to western ideology and hierarchical power relations, critical animal theorists have also called into question the essentialist and dualist assumptions underpinning our views of animals (Best). A pig history of the humanities might restore the central role that pigs have played in human history and evolution, beyond their exploitation as food. Humans have constructed their story of the nature of pigs to suit themselves in terms that are specieist, racist, patriarchal and colonialist, and failed to grasp the connections between the oppression of humans and other animals. The past and the ways it is constructed through history reflect and shape contemporary conditions. In this sense, the past has a powerful impact on the present, and the way this is re-told, therefore, also needs to be situated, historicised and problematicised. The examination of history and society from the standpoint of (nonhuman) animals offers new insights on our relationships in the past, but it might also provide an alternative history that restores their agency and contributes to a different kind of future. As the editor of Critical Animals Studies, Steve Best describes it: “This approach, as I define it, considers the interaction between human and nonhuman animals—past, present, and future—and the need for profound changes in the way humans define themselves and relate to other sentient species and to the natural world as a whole.” References ABC. “Changes to Pig Farming Proposed.” ABC News Online 22 May 2010. 10 Aug. 2010 http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/22/2906519.htm Against Animal Cruelty Tasmania. “Australia’s Intensive Pig Industry: The Intensive Pig Industry in Australia Has Much to Hide.” 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.aact.org.au/pig_industry.htm Babe. Dir. Chris Noonan. Universal Pictures, 1995. Best, Steven. “The Rise of Critical Animal Studies: Putting Theory into Action and Animal Liberation into Higher Education.” Journal for Critical Animal Studies 7.1 (2009): 9-53. Cassidy, Martin. “How Close are Pushy Pigs to Humans?”. BBC News Online 2005. 10 Sep. 2010 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/4482674.stmCurthoys, A., and Docker, J. “Time Eternity, Truth, and Death: History as Allegory.” Humanities Research 1 (1999) 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.anu.edu.au/hrc/publications/hr/hr_1_1999.phpDiamond, Jared. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. Dolader, Miguel-Àngel Motis. “Mediterranean Jewish Diet and Traditions in the Middle Ages”. Food: A Culinary History. Eds. Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari. Trans. Clarissa Botsford, Arthus Golhammer, Charles Lambert, Frances M. López-Morillas and Sylvia Stevens. New York: Columbia UP, 1999. 224-44. Durham University. “Chinese Pigs ‘Direct Descendants’ of First Domesticated Breeds.” ScienceDaily 20 Apr. 2010. 29 Aug. 2010 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100419150947.htm Gabaccia, Donna R. We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1994. Haraway, D. “The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others.” The Haraway Reader. New York: Routledge, 2005. 63-124. Haraway, D. When Species Meet: Posthumanities. 3rd ed. London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Henderson, Fergus. Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking. London: Bloomsbury, 2004. Kiple, Kenneth F., Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas. Cambridge History of Food. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Larson, G., Ranran Liu, Xingbo Zhao, Jing Yuan, Dorian Fuller, Loukas Barton, Keith Dobney, Qipeng Fan, Zhiliang Gu, Xiao-Hui Liu, Yunbing Luo, Peng Lv, Leif Andersson, and Ning Li. “Patterns of East Asian Pig Domestication, Migration, and Turnover Revealed by Modern and Ancient DNA.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, United States 19 Apr. 2010. 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0912264107/DCSupplemental Meindertsma, Christien. “PIG 05049. Kunsthal in Rotterdam.” 2008. 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.christienmeindertsma.com/index.php?/books/pig-05049Naess, A. “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement.” Inquiry 16 (1973): 95-100. Needman, T. Fat Pig. Sydney Theatre Company. Oct. 2006. Noonan, Chris [director]. “Babe (1995) Memorable Quotes”. 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112431/quotes Plumwood, V. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge, 1993. Pulp Fiction. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Miramax, 1994. RSPCA Tasmania. “RSPCA Calls for Ban on Intensive Pig Farming.” 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.rspcatas.org.au/press-centre/rspca-calls-for-a-ban-on-intensive-pig-farming ScienceDaily. “Ancient Pig DNA Study Sheds New Light on Colonization of Europe by Early Farmers” 4 Sep. 2007. 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070903204822.htm Singer, Peter. “Down on the Family Farm ... or What Happened to Your Dinner When it was Still an Animal.” Animal Liberation 2nd ed. London: Jonathan Cape, 1990. 95-158. Soler, Jean. “Biblical Reasons: The Dietary Rules of the Ancient Hebrews.” Food: A Culinary History. Eds. Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari. Trans. Clarissa Botsford, Arthus Golhammer, Charles Lambert, Frances M. López-Morillas and Sylvia Stevens. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. 46-54. Watson, Lyall. The Whole Hog: Exploring the Extraordinary Potential of Pigs. London: Profile, 2004. White, E. B. Essays of E. B. White. London: HarperCollins, 1979. White, E. B. Charlotte’s Web. London: HarperCollins, 2004. Wright, J., and V. Harwood. Eds. Biopolitics and the ‘Obesity Epidemic’. New York: Routledge, 2009. Wykes, J. Fatuosity 2010. 29 Aug. 2010 http://www.fatuosity.net

It used to be so simple. If you turn on your TV or radio, your choices are limited: in Australia, there is a maximum of five or six free-to-air TV channels, depending on where you're located, and with a few minor exceptions, the programming is relatively uniform; you know what to expect, and when to expect it. To a slightly lesser degree, the same goes for radio: you might have a greater choice of stations, but you'll get an even smaller slice of the theoretically possible range of programming -- from Triple J to B105, there's mainstream, easy listening, format radio fodder, targetted at slightly different audience demographics, but hardly ever anything but comfortably agreeable to them. Only late at night or in some rare timeslots especially set aside for it, you might find something unusual, something innovative, or simply something unexpected. And of course that's so. How could it possibly be any other way? Of course radio and TV stations must appeal to the most widely shared tastes, must ensure that they satisfy the largest part of their audience with any given programme on any given day -- in short, must find the lowest common denominator which unifies their audience. That the term 'low' in this description has come to be linked to a negative meaning is -- at first -- only an accident of language: after all, mathematically this denominator constitutes in many ways the most fundamental of shared values between a series of fractions, and metaphorically, too, this commonality is certainly of fundamental importance to community culture. The need for radio and TV stations to appeal to such shared values of the many is twofold: where they are commercially run operations, it is simply sound business practice to look for the largest (and hence, most lucrative) audience available. In addition to this, however, the use of a public and limited resource -- the airwaves -- for the transmission of their programmes also creates significant obligations: since the people, represented by their governmental institutions, have licenced stations to use 'their' airwaves for transmission, of course stations are also obliged to repay this entrustment by satisfying the needs and wants of the greatest number of people, and as consistently as possible. All of this is summed up neatly with the word 'bandwidth'. Referring to frequency wavebands, bandwidth is a precious commodity: there is only a limited range of frequencies which can possibly be used to transmit broadcast-quality radio and TV, and each channel requires a significant share of that range -- which is why we can only have a limited number of stations, and hence, a limited range of programming transmitted through them. Getting away from frequency bands, the term can also be applied in other areas of transmission and publication: even services like cable TV frequently have their form of bandwidth (where cable TV systems have only been designed to take a set number of channels), and even commercial print publishing can be said to have its bandwidth, as only a limited number of publishers are likely to be able to exist commercially in a given market, and only a limited number of books and magazines can be distributed and sold through the usual channels each year. There are in each of these cases, then, physical limitations of one form or another. The last few years have seen this conception of bandwidth come under increased attack, however, and all those apparently obvious assumptions about our media environment must be reconsidered as a result. Ever since the rise of photocopiers and personal printers, after all, people have been able to create small-scale print publications without the need to apply for a share of the commercial publishers' 'bandwidth' -- witness the emergence of zines and newsletters for specific interest groups. The means of creation and distribution for these publications were and are not publicly or commercially controlled in any restrictive way, and so the old arguments for a 'responsible' use of bandwidth didn't hold any more -- thus the widespread disregard in these publications for any overarching commonly held ideas which need to be addressed: as soon as someone reads them, their production is justified. Publishing on the Internet drives the nail even further -- here, the notion of bandwidth comes to an end entirely, in two distinct ways. First, in a non-physical medium, the argument of the physical scarcity of the publication medium doesn't hold anymore -- space for publication in newsgroups and on Web pages, being digital, electronic, 'virtual', is infinitely expandable, much unlike frequency bands with their highly fixed and policed upper and lower boundaries. New 'stations' being added don't interfere with existing ones here, and so there's no need to limit the amount of individual channels available on the Net; hence the multitude of newsgroups and Websites available. Again, whatever can establish an audience (even just of a few readers) is justified in its existence. Secondly, available transmission bandwidth is also highly divisible along a temporal line, due to the packet-switching technology on which the medium is based: along the connections within the network, information that is transmitted is chopped up into small packets of data which are recombined at the receiver's end; this means that individual transmissions along the same connection can coexist without interfering with one another, if at a somewhat reduced speed (as anyone navigating the Web while downloading files has no doubt experienced). Again, this is quite different from the airwaves experience, where two radio stations or TV channels can't be broadcasting on the same frequency without drowning each other out. And even the reduction of transmission speed is likely to be only a temporary phenomenon, as network hardware is constantly being upgraded to higher speeds. Internet bandwidth, then, is infinite, in both the publication and the transmission sense of the word. If it's impossible to reach the end of available bandwidth on the Net, then, this means nothing less than that the very concept of 'bandwidth' on the Net ends: that is, it ceases to have any practical relevance -- as Costigan notes, reflecting on an all too familiar metaphor, "the Internet is in many ways the Wild West, the new frontier of our times, but its limits will not be reached. ... The Internet does not have an edge to push past, no wall or ocean to contain it. Its size and shape change constantly, and additions and subtractions do not inherently make something new or different" (xiii). But that this is so, that we have come to this end of 'bandwidth' by never being able to come to an end of bandwidth on the Net, is in itself something fundamentally new and different in media history -- and also something difficult to come to terms with. All those of courses, all those apparently obvious and natural practices of the mainstream media have left us ill prepared for a medium where they are anything but natural, and even counterproductive. Old habits are hard to break, as many of the apparently well-founded criticisms of the Internet show. Let's take Stephen Talbott as an example here: in one of my favourite passages of overzealous Net criticism, he writes of The paradox of intelligence and pathology. The Net: an instrument of rationalisation erected upon an inconceivably complex foundation of computerised logic -- an inexhaustible fount of lucid 'emergent order.' Or, the Net: madhouse, bizarre Underground, scene of flame wars and psychopathological acting out, universal red-light district. ... The Net: a nearly infinite repository of human experience converted into objective data and information -- a universal database supporting all future advances in knowledge and economic productivity. Or, the Net: perfected gossip mill; means for spreading rumours with lightning rapidity; ... ocean of dubious information. (348-9) Ignoring here the fundamental problem of Talbott's implicit claim that there are objective parameters according to which he can reliably judge whether or not any piece of online content is 'objective data' or 'dubious information' (and: for whom?), and thus his unnecessary construction of a paradox, a binary (no pun intended) division into 'good' and 'bad' uses, a second and immediately related problem is that Talbott seems to claim that the two sides of this 'paradox' are somehow able to interfere with each other, to the point of invalidating one another. This can easily be seen as a result of continuing to think in terms of bandwidth in the broadcast sense: there, the limited number of channels, and the limited amount of transmission space and time for each channel, have indeed meant that stations must carefully choose what material to broadcast, and that the results are frequently of a mainstream, middle-of-the-road, non-challenging nature. On the Net, this doesn't hold, however: here, the medium can be used for everything from the Human Genome Project to peddling sleeze and pirated 'warez', without the two ends of this continuum of uses ever affecting one another. That's not to say that what goes on in some parts of the Net isn't unsavoury, offensive, illegal, or even severely in violation of basic human rights; and where this is so, the appropriate measures, already provided by legal systems around the world, should be taken to get rid of the worst offenders -- notably, though, this won't be possible through cutting off their access to bandwidth: where bandwidth is unlimited and freely available to anyone, this cannot possibly work. Critical approaches like Talbott's, founded as they are on an outdated understanding of media processes and the false assumption of a homogeneous culture, won't help us in this, therefore: rather, faced with the limitless nature of online bandwidth, we must learn to understand the infinite, and live with it. The question isn't how many 'negative' uses of the Net we can point to -- there will always be an abundance of them. The question is what anyone of us, whoever 'we' are, can do to use the Net positively and productively -- whatever we as individuals might consider those positive and productive uses to be. References Costigan, James T. "Introduction: Forests, Trees, and Internet Research." Doing Internet Research: Critical Issues and Methods for Examining the Net. Ed. Steve Jones. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1999. Talbott, Stephen L. The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst. Sebastopol, Calif.: O'Reilly & Associates, 1995. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Axel Bruns. "The End of 'Bandwidth': Why We Must Learn to Understand the Infinite." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.8 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/bandwidth.php>. Chicago style: Axel Bruns, "The End of 'Bandwidth': Why We Must Learn to Understand the Infinite," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 8 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/bandwidth.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Axel Bruns. (1999) The end of 'bandwidth': why we must learn to understand the infinite. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(8). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/bandwidth.php> ([your date of access]).

If I find out that you have bought a $90 red light sabre, Tara, well there's going to be trouble. -- Kevin Brabazon A few Saturdays ago, my 71-year old father tried to convince me of imminent responsibilities. As I am considering the purchase of a house, there are mortgages, bank fees and years of misery to endure. Unfortunately, I am not an effective Big Picture Person. The lure of the light sabre is almost too great. For 30 year old Generation Xers like myself, it is more than a cultural object. It is a textual anchor, and a necessary component to any future history of the present. Revelling in the aura of the Australian release for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, this paper investigates popular memory, an undertheorised affiliation between popular culture and cultural studies.1 The excitement encircling the Star Wars prequel has been justified in terms of 'hype' or marketing. Such judgements frame the men and women cuing for tickets, talking Yodas and light sabres as fools or duped souls who need to get out more. My analysis explores why Star Wars has generated this enthusiasm, and how cultural studies can mobilise this passionate commitment to consider notions of popularity, preservation and ephemerality. We'll always have Tattooine. Star Wars has been a primary popular cultural social formation for a generation. The stories of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Darth Vader, Yoda, C-3PO and R2D2 offer an alternative narrative for the late 1970s and 1980s. It was a comfort to have the Royal Shakespearian tones of Alec Guinness confirming that the Force would be with us, through economic rationalism, unemployment, Pauline Hanson and Madonna discovering yoga. The Star Wars Trilogy, encompassing A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, was released between 1977 and 1983. These films have rarely slipped from public attention, being periodically 'brought back' through new cinematic and video releases. The currency of Star Wars is matched with the other great popular cultural formations of the post-war period: the James Bond series and Star Trek. One reason for the continued success of these programmes is that other writers, film makers and producers cannot leave these texts alone. Bond survives not only through Pierce Brosnan's good looks, but the 'Hey Baby' antics of Austin Powers. Star Trek, through four distinct series, has become an industry that will last longer than Voyager's passage back from the Delta Quadrant. Star Wars, perhaps even more effectively than the other popular cultural heavyweights, has enmeshed itself into other filmic and televisual programming. Films like Spaceballs and television quizzes on Good News Week keep the knowledge system and language current and pertinent.2 Like Umberto Eco realised of Casablanca, Star Wars is "a living example of living textuality" (199). Both films are popular because of imperfections and intertextual archetypes, forming a filmic quilt of sensations and affectivities. Viewers are aware that "the cliches are talking among themselves" (Eco 209). As these cinematic texts move through time, the depth and commitment of these (con)textual dialogues are repeated and reinscribed. To hold on to a memory is to isolate a moment or an image and encircle it with meaning. Each day we experience millions of texts: some are remembered, but most are lost. Some popular cultural texts move from ephemera to popular memory to history. In moving beyond individual reminiscences -- the personal experiences of our lifetime -- we enter the sphere of popular culture. Collective or popular memory is a group or community experience of a textualised reality. For example, during the Second World War, there were many private experiences, but certain moments arch beyond the individual. Songs by Vera Lynn are fully textualised experiences that become the fodder for collective memory. Similarly, Star Wars provides a sense-making mechanism for the 1980s. Like all popular culture, these texts allow myriad readership strategies, but there is collective recognition of relevance and importance. Popular memory is such an important site because it provides us, as cultural critics, with a map of emotionally resonant sites of the past, moments that are linked with specific subjectivities and a commonality of expression. While Star Wars, like all popular cultural formations, has a wide audience, there are specific readings that are pertinent for particular groups. To unify a generation around cultural texts is an act of collective memory. As Harris has suggested, "sometimes, youth does interesting things with its legacy and creatively adapts its problematic into seemingly autonomous cultural forms" (79). Generation X refers to an age cohort born between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s. Finally cultural studies theorists have found a Grail subculture. Being depthless, ambivalent, sexually repressed and social failures, Xers are a cultural studies dream come true. They were the children of the media revolution. Star Wars is integral to this textualised database. A fan on the night of the first screening corrected a journalist: "we aren't Generation X, we are the Star Wars generation" (Brendon, in Miller 9). An infatuation and reflexivity with the media is the single framework of knowledge in which Xers operate. This shared understanding is the basis for comedy, and particularly revealed (in Australia) in programmes like The Panel and Good News Week. Television themes, lines of film dialogue and contemporary news broadcasts are the basis of the game show. The aesthetics of life transforms television into a real. Or, put another way, "individual lives may be fragmented and confused but McDonald's is universal" (Hopkins 17). A group of textual readers share a literacy, a new way of reading the word and world of texts. Nostalgia is a weapon. The 1990s has been a decade of revivals: from Abba to skateboards, an era of retro reinscription has challenged linear theories of history and popular culture. As Timothy Carter reveals, "we all loved the Star Wars movies when we were younger, and so we naturally look forward to a continuation of those films" (9). The 1980s has often been portrayed as a bad time, of Thatcher and Reagan, cold war brinkmanship, youth unemployment and HIV. For those who were children and (amorphously phrased) 'young adults' of this era, the popular memory is of fluorescent fingerless gloves, Ray Bans, 'Choose Life' t-shirts and bubble skirts. It was an era of styling mousse, big hair, the Wham tan, Kylie and Jason and Rick Astley's dancing. Star Wars action figures gave the films a tangibility, holding the future of the rebellion in our hands (literally). These memories clumsily slop into the cup of the present. The problem with 'youth' is that it is semiotically too rich: the expression is understood, but not explained, by discourses as varied as the educational system, family structures, leisure industries and legal, medical and psychological institutions. It is a term of saturation, where normality is taught, and deviance is monitored. All cultural studies theorists carry the baggage of the Birmingham Centre into any history of youth culture. The taken-for-granted 'youth as resistance' mantra, embodied in Resistance through Rituals and Subculture: The Meaning of Style, transformed young people into the ventriloquist's puppet of cultural studies. The strings of the dancing, smoking, swearing and drinking puppet took many years to cut. The feminist blade of Angela McRobbie did some damage to the fraying filaments, as did Dick Hebdige's reflexive corrections in Hiding in the Light. However, the publications, promotion and pedagogy of Gen X ended the theoretical charade. Gen X, the media sophisticates, played with popular culture, rather than 'proper politics.' In Coupland's Generation X, Claire, one of the main characters believed that "Either our lives become stories, or there's just no way to get through them." ... We know that this is why the three of us left our lives behind us and came to the desert -- to tell stories and to make our own lives worthwhile tales in the process. (8) Television and film are part of this story telling process. This intense connection generated an ironic and reflexive literacy in the media. Television became the basis for personal pleasures and local resistances, resulting in a disciplined mobilisation of popular cultural surfaces. Even better than the real thing. As the youngest of Generation Xers are now in their late twenties, they have moved from McJobs to careers. Robert Kizlik, a teacher trainer at an American community college expressed horror as the lack of 'commonsensical knowledge' from his new students. He conducted a survey for teachers training in the social sciences, assessing their grasp of history. There was one hundred percent recognition of such names as Madonna, Mike Tyson, and Sharon Stone, but they hardly qualify as important social studies content ... . I wondered silently just what it is that these students are going to teach when they become employed ... . The deeper question is not that we have so many high school graduates and third and fourth year college students who are devoid of basic information about American history and culture, but rather, how, in the first place, these students came to have the expectations that they could become teachers. (n. pag.) Kizlik's fear is that the students, regardless of their enthusiasm, had poor recognition of knowledge he deemed significant and worthy. His teaching task, to convince students of the need for non-popular cultural knowledges, has resulted in his course being termed 'boring' or 'hard'. He has been unable to reconcile the convoluted connections between personal stories and televisual narratives. I am reminded (perhaps unhelpfully) of one of the most famous filmic teachers, Mr Holland. Upon being attacked by his superiors for using rock and roll in his classes, he replied that he would use anything to instil in his students a love of music. Working with, rather than against, popular culture is an obvious pedagogical imperative. George Lucas has, for example, confirmed the Oprahfied spirituality of the current age. Obviously Star Wars utilises fables, myths3 and fairy tales to summon the beautiful Princess, the gallant hero and the evil Empire, but has become something more. Star Wars slots cleanly into an era of Body Shop Feminism, John Gray's gender politics and Rikki Lake's relationship management. Brian Johnson and Susan Oh argued that the film is actually a new religion. A long time ago in a galaxy far far away -- late 1970s California -- the known universe of George Lucas came into being. In the beginning, George created Star Wars. And the screen was without form, and void. And George said, 'Let there be light', and there was Industrial Light and Magic. And George divided the light from the darkness, with light sabres, and called the darkness the Evil Empire.... And George saw that it was good. (14) The writers underestimate the profound emotional investment placed in the trilogy by millions of people. Genesis narratives describe the Star Wars phenomenon, but do not analyse it. The reason why the films are important is not only because they are a replacement for religion. Instead, they are an integrated component of popular memory. Johnson and Oh have underestimated the influence of pop culture as "the new religion" (14). It is not a form of cheap grace. The history of ideas is neither linear nor traceable. There is no clear path from Plato to Prozac or Moses to Mogadon. Obi-Wan Kenobi is not a personal trainer for the ailing spirituality of our age. It was Ewan McGregor who fulfilled the Xer dream to be the young Obi Wan. As he has stated, "there is nothing cooler than being a Jedi knight" (qtd. in Grant 15). Having survived feet sawing in Shallow Grave and a painfully large enema in Trainspotting, there are few actors who are better prepared to carry the iconographic burden of a Star Wars prequel. Born in 1971, he is the Molly Ringwall of the 1990s. There is something delicious about the new Obi Wan, that hails what Hicks described as "a sense of awareness and self- awareness, of detached observation, of not taking things seriously, and a use of subtle dry humour" (79). The metaphoric light sabre was passed to McGregor. The pull of the dark side. When fans attend The Phantom Menace, they tend to the past, as to a loved garden. Whether this memory is a monument or a ruin depends on the preservation of the analogue world in the digital realm. The most significant theoretical and discursive task in the present is to disrupt the dual ideologies punctuating the contemporary era: inevitable technological change and progress.4 Only then may theorists ponder the future of a digitised past. Disempowered groups, who were denied a voice and role in the analogue history of the twentieth century, will have inequalities reified and reinforced through the digital archiving of contemporary life. The Web has been pivotal to the new Star Wars film. Lucasfilm has an Internet division and an official Website. Between mid November and May, this site has been accessed twenty million times (Gallott 15). Other sites, such as TheForce.net and Countdown to Star Wars, are a record of the enthusiasm and passion of fans. As Daniel Fallon and Matthew Buchanan have realised, "these sites represent the ultimate in film fandom -- virtual communities where like-minded enthusiasts can bathe in the aura generated by their favourite masterpiece" (27). Screensavers, games, desktop wallpaper, interviews and photo galleries have been downloaded and customised. Some ephemeral responses to The Phantom Menace have been digitally recorded. Yet this moment of audience affectivity will be lost without a consideration of digital memory. The potentials and problems of the digital and analogue environments need to be oriented into critical theories of information, knowledge, entertainment and pleasure. The binary language of computer-mediated communication allows a smooth transference of data. Knowledge and meaning systems are not exchanged as easily. Classifying, organising and preserving information make it useful. Archival procedures have been both late and irregular in their application.5 Bocher and Ihlenfeldt assert that 2500 new web sites are coming on-line every day ("A Higher Signal-to-Noise Ratio"). The difficulties and problems confronting librarians and archivists who wish to preserve digital information is revealed in the Australian government's PADI (Preserving Access to Digital Information) Site. Compared with an object in a museum which may lie undisturbed for years in a storeroom, or a book on a shelf, or even Egyptian hieroglyd on the wall of a tomb, digital information requires much more active maintenance. If we want access to digital information in the future, we must plan and act now. (PADI, "Why Preserve Access to Digital Information?") phics carve The speed of digitisation means that responsibility for preserving cultural texts, and the skills necessary to enact this process, is increasing the pressure facing information professionals. An even greater difficulty when preserving digital information is what to keep, and what to release to the ephemeral winds of cyberspace. 'Qualitative criteria' construct an historical record that restates the ideologies of the powerful. Concerns with quality undermine the voices of the disempowered, displaced and decentred. The media's instability through technological obsolescence adds a time imperative that is absent from other archival discussions.6 While these problems have always taken place in the analogue world, there was a myriad of alternative sites where ephemeral material was stored, such as the family home. Popular cultural information will suffer most from the 'blind spots' of digital archivists. While libraries rarely preserve the ephemera of a time, many homes (including mine) preserve the 'trash' of a culture. A red light sabre, toy dalek, Duran Duran posters and a talking Undertaker are all traces of past obsessions and fandoms. Passion evaporates, and interests morph into new trends. These objects remain in attics, under beds, in boxes and sheds throughout the world. Digital documents necessitate a larger project of preservation, with great financial (and spatial) commitments of technology, software and maintenance. Libraries rarely preserve the ephemera -- the texture and light -- of the analogue world. The digital era reduces the number of fan-based archivists. Subsequently forfeited is the spectrum of interests and ideologies that construct the popular memory of a culture. Once bits replace atoms, the recorded world becomes structured by digital codes. Only particular texts will be significant enough to store digitally. Samuel Florman stated that "in the digital age nothing need be lost; do we face the prospect of drowning in trivia as the generations succeed each other?" (n. pag.) The trivia of academics may be the fodder (and pleasures) of everyday life. Digitised preservation, like analogue preservation, can never 'represent' plural paths through the past. There is always a limit and boundary to what is acceptable obsolescence. The Star Wars films suggests that "the whole palette of digital technology is much more subtle and supple; if you can dream it, you can see it" (Corliss 65). This film will also record how many of the dreams survive and are archived. Films, throughout the century, have changed the way in which we construct and remember the past. They convey an expressive memory, rather than an accurate history. Certainly, Star Wars is only a movie. Yet, as Rushkoff has suggested, "we have developed a new language of references and self-references that identify media as a real thing and media history as an actual social history" (32). The build up in Australia to The Phantom Menace has been wilfully joyful. This is a history of the present, a time which I know will, in retrospect, be remembered with great fondness. It is a collective event for a generation, but it speaks to us all in different ways. At ten, it is easy to be amazed and enthralled at popular culture. By thirty, it is more difficult. When we see Star Wars, we go back to visit our memories. With red light sabre in hand, we splice through time, as much as space. Footnotes The United States release of the film occurred on 19 May 1999. In Australia, the film's first screenings were on 3 June. Many cinemas showed The Phantom Menace at 12:01 am, (very) early Thursday morning. The three main players of the GNW team, Paul McDermott, Mikey Robbins and Julie McCrossin, were featured on the cover of Australia's Juice magazine in costumes from The Phantom Menace, being Obi-Wan, Yoda and Queen Amidala respectively. Actually, the National Air and Space Museum had a Star Wars exhibition in 1997, titled "Star Wars: The Magic of Myth". For example, Janet Collins, Michael Hammond and Jerry Wellington, in Teaching and Learning with the Media, stated that "the message is simple: we now have the technology to inform, entertain and educate. Miss it and you, your family and your school will be left behind" (3). Herb Brody described the Net as "an overstuffed, underorganised attic full of pictures and documents that vary wildly in value", in "Wired Science". The interesting question is, whose values will predominate when the attic is being cleared and sorted? This problem is extended because the statutory provision of legal deposit, which obliges publishers to place copies of publications in the national library of the country in which the item is published, does not include CD-ROMs or software. References Bocher, Bob, and Kay Ihlenfeldt. "A Higher Signal-to-Noise Ratio: Effective Use of WebSearch Engines." State of Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Website. 13 Mar. 1998. 15 June 1999 <http://www.dpi.state.wi.us/dpi/dlcl/lbstat/search2.php>. Brody, Herb. "Wired Science." Technology Review Oct. 1996. 15 June 1999 <http://www.techreview.com/articles/oct96/brody.php>. Carter, Timothy. "Wars Weary." Cinescape 39 (Mar./Apr. 1999): 9. Collins, Janet, Michael Hammond, and Jerry Wellington. Teaching and Learning with Multimedia. London: Routledge, 1997. Corliss, Richard. "Ready, Set, Glow!" Time 18 (3 May 1999): 65. Count Down to Star Wars. 1999. 15 June 1999 <http://starwars.countingdown.com/>. Coupland, Douglas. Generation X. London: Abacus, 1991. Eco, Umberto. Travels in Hyper-Reality. London: Picador, 1987. Fallon, Daniel, and Matthew Buchanan. "Now Screening." Australian Net Guide 4.5 (June 1999): 27. Florman, Samuel. "From Here to Eternity." MIT's Technology Review 100.3 (Apr. 1997). Gallott, Kirsten. "May the Web Be with you." Who Weekly 24 May 1999: 15. Grant, Fiona. "Ewan's Star Soars!" TV Week 29 May - 4 June 1999: 15. Hall, Stuart, and Tony Jefferson, eds. Resistance through Rituals. London: Hutchinson, 1976. Harris, David. From Class Struggle to the Politics of Pleasure: the Effects of Gramscianism on Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, 1992. Hebdige, Dick. Hiding in the Light. London: Routledge, 1988. Hopkins, Susan. "Generation Pulp." Youth Studies Australia Spring 1995. Johnson, Brian, and Susan Oh. "The Second Coming: as the Newest Star Wars Film Illustrates, Pop Culture Has Become a New Religion." Maclean's 24 May 1999: 14-8. Juice 78 (June 1999). Kizlik, Robert. "Generation X Wants to Teach." International Journal of Instructional Media 26.2 (Spring 1999). Lucasfilm Ltd. Star Wars: Welcome to the Official Site. 1999. 15 June 1999 <http://www.starwars.com/>. Miller, Nick. "Generation X-Wing Fighter." The West Australian 4 June 1999: 9. PADI. "What Digital Information Should be Preserved? Appraisal and Selection." Preserving Access to Digital Information (PADI) Website. 11 March 1999. 15 June 1999 <http://www.nla.gov.au/padi/what.php>. PADI. "Why Preserve Access to Digital Information?" Preserving Access to Digital Information (PADI) Website. <http://www.nla.gov.au/padi/why.php>. Rushkoff, Douglas. Media Virus. Sydney: Random House, 1994. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Tara Brabazon. "A Red Light Sabre to Go, and Other Histories of the Present." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.4 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/sabre.php>. Chicago style: Tara Brabazon, "A Red Light Sabre to Go, and Other Histories of the Present," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 4 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/sabre.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Tara Brabazon. (1999) A red light sabre to go, and other histories of the present. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(4). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/sabre.php> ([your date of access]).