Demo OR DIE!!!!!!!!

Demonstrations are a way to show what is going on in a moment of time, simulating through real time or through speed increase or speed decrease. A demonstration is a way for people to get a greater understanding of a situation how it works. “The demonstration, or “demo” has become the defining moment of the digital artist’s practice at the turn of the millennium.” (p13). By having demonstrations it is easier for people to follow along with presentations making everything visual instead of auditory.
The obvious reason why a demo is used so regularly is it complies the basic components of what one is suppose to take out of the presentation, or work that an artist has given and gives the audience an idea of what the work will contain. It involves being brief and concise grabbing the attention of the audience making them want to further their knowledge in the area of work that you are presenting. “Artist and designers rarely send out original work to curators or cart it to meetings with commercial clients. Instead, they make reproductions, either in portfolios or as slides. The advantages of the portfolio are its success at reproducing print work, its impressive physicality and its obvious stability.” (p16). Through different advancements in technology demos are much easier to access. The World Wide Web is the largest advancement that allows people to access data. Demos, slides, pictures and or all of these can be accessed now where ever the internet can be accessed making work for an artist or a presenter much easier.
Throughout time, demos have made their way through different presenters proving a point to thousands of people at a time, “In the decades that followed, certain figures emerged as masters of the demonstration (or “demo gods”)…” (p18). Steve Jobs was one of those people that came up to show that demonstrations can be very useful. While giving presentations to people he would have his computer crash, then pull up his debugger and fix the problem in front of thousands of people at a time. He would fix the problem in front of everyone in the audience showing how easy his computer system actually was. With out a visual display of showing how easy it is to debug a computer, one might just might throw out the information that is given and not believe. With a demonstrations showing how easy it is to debug an Apple, people witnessed and believe getting a fuller and richer understanding of the whole system.
A demonstration does more then just show people how to work a piece of soft ware it helps turn away techno-anxiety, “For one, the techno-anxiety engendered by the demo or die era is not a free – floating nervousness about technology.” (p23) later goes into saying, “It is a nervousness that can in now way be termed neurotic” (p23). With the aid of a demonstration it will help ease the nervousness that comes with using technology. Showing step by step process is encouraging to people and leaves them with the feeling of not being left behind.
A demonstration gives the presenter now a look of being a cyborg. The cyborg imagines is caused by the use of an extension that will help aid in the presentation for people to get a fuller understanding. Since a cyborg is an extension then what is the bare minimum in the aid to help, it would create most of economics into a cyborg economics, this is because many people when presenting a point or a new idea to the public involve the public with some type of demonstration to make sure that there is a fuller understanding when trying to learn a new topic.
With my understanding of the article I completely agree with the author of this article. Demonstrations are such a powerful tool in a presentation to help the audience get a fuller understanding on what the presentation is about. At the same time, I have seen many of times that demonstrations do not go out to plan and can actually work against the presenter. These types of demonstrations are usually unoriginal or very slow in the process that they go by going into way to much detail for the basic understating of the subject. In other cases, when trying to learn a piece of material for the firs time it can be very helpful for a demonstration to aid you in a step by step process.
For our group it is important to make the presentation have examples and different points to show how “Second Life” is going to run in front of the class. Demos are a great way to do this. By having a basic concept that we bring to the class to teach them the basic over view of how the game works is the most effective way that the class will learn about the game.
Ways that we should look at demonstrating the game is, to take the class into the game as if they were to know nothing about the game. On all the computers in the computer lab will have “Second Life” on it and so will the main one with the projector in the front. From creating an account to all the way through the orientation we will show them step by step on how the game should be played and how to advance in the knowledge that is available. By only showing the basic concepts with out going into to much detail it would help the students by grabbing their interest and hopefully if they ever wanted to play the game again, they would know enough to start up and play.
Power point with written instructions and showing what the group is trying to accomplish would help as well in the beginning of the presentation. Giving the audience a auditory check list to help them stay on point will also help the class have a timeline of what needs to be taught in the matter of 45min. Within the power point presentation screen shots from the game would be a great tool. Screen shots could have written instructions on top of them showing a still frame of what the game is suppose to look like a certain points, this could also help out with teaching making confusing parts of the presentation less confusing.
While demonstrations are very important to help with people gaining a fuller knowledge of what presentation is about, it can also work against you. One must make sure that the demonstration stays on point and coveys an appropriate tone for the audience to keep their attention primarily to the presenter.