Week 8 Lecture

Week 8 Lecture!

This weeks lecture we discussed the Definition of Democracy, from the history of how it was broadened over the last 200 years to the most obvious representation from the Ancient Greeks, participatory or direct democracy. I’m a massive fan of the ancient Greek system where every citizen had a right and duty to vote. Unfortunately in this day and age citizens do not pay full attention to politics and are forced to vote, it is clear that democracy isn’t at its best. 1 in 5 on the electoral role fail to vote; now that’s some enthusiasm! I don’t blame them though, corruption just pours out of the government. Moving on…

Cyberpunk! - One outlet for political expression with regards to the internet. And they come in forms off…

- Technology and mythology

- Utopia and dystopia

- Cities and Machines

- Technological change

- Modernism to post modernism

Public sphere – the domain of social life in which ‘public opinion’ forms.

I really liked John Gilmore’s opinion on free speech and censorship, I agreed with most of what he said. Such as deliberation and discussion are key attributes of democracy, and his example about the American man who posted pornography on the Internet, and although he was jailed the site was still active and the photos were still accessible without him. Makes you wonder how many sites clog up the Internet, how many have been abandoned but still cause harm or irritate people.

We moved on to hackers, or “originally computer programmers with a desire to so understand the intricacies of computing systems”. We discussed the use of hackers and how it is automatically referred to crime due to the bias views of mass media. People forget that Hackers can do good as well, maybe Die Hard 4.0 needs to be played a little be more, although I hate it with a passion.

William Gibson came next, and what an interesting man he is! He developed the term “cyberspace” and “virtual realtity”. He gets his ideas from science and theory and reinvents them, very interesting!

All in all a lot to take in this week..

What do you think of the Australian Government's plans to censor the internet

It looks like a great opportunity for the chinese government and australian labor party to bond, but for the australian public should be given an option. For example parents can choose weither there kids can by accident discover R18+ or they introduce the strange world to them personally. Weither giving the public a choice or not, this is still going to slow down the internet and piss a lot of people off. All in all, i think life would be better off without it and accidents can always be positive in some way or form.

Week 8 Tasks!

Week 8 Tasks

Week 7 lecture

Week 7 Lecture

Community- Collaboration – Choice

Creative Commons

-A non profit organisation founded in 2001 (with the first version out in 2002), and what they do is create available standard licenses to enable creators to be more flexible, aka, “some rights reserved” instead of “all rights reserved”. Its marking the creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to hold! Also more freely available content! Check it out! ->http://creativecommons.org/

Free Culture/Open Source

- Freedom to run a program for any reason

- Adapt software to your needs

- Redistribute copies

- Freedom to improve and release improvements to the public

GNU licenses was a legal document that controls what you can and can’t do with Free Software

Proprietary Software

- Source code remains confidential

- Software developed mainly in-house

- Business model is selling finished software packages

- Traditional software production

Free Software

- Source code free

- Anyone can use it under limited rights license

- Goals set by community

- Business model is supporting services supporting the software!

Property Software vs. Free Software

E.g.

Apple and Windows Vista vs. Firefox Openoffice.org

This is HILARIOUS!!!! I found this a long time ago, and I thought it was very creatively put together. In the week 6 lecture while we previewed 280 days I saw this on the screen and i yelled this out this as a suggestion. I highly suggest you watch the related links.

Week 6 Lecture

Week 6 Lecture

Loved this lecture, mainly because we spoke about the videos that producers and consumers are creating now days. Ok, that didn’t really make sense, to put it more simply, we are consumers, we generally watch professionally created, produced and edited content from traditional media producers. I’m more of a “fat” consumer.

Producers use the “big” screens of life such as…

1. - Cinema (shared with public)
2. - TV(shared privately)
3. - PC (personal or shared)

and the “small screens” include…

1. - Personal Media players (mP3, iPods)
2. - Mobile Phones & SmartPhones (iPhones)

Later on in the lecture we were showed http://www.fanfilms.net/ which is a great website full of videos made by consumer/producers. Great inspiration for our own videos!

Something to Ponder...

What would you do if tomorrow that website with all your content was gone?

GET PRETTY ANGRY, and investigate for an hour or so until i give up and go float around the pool with a beer. I honestly suck at investigating!!

What would you do if you found out that glossy magazine had published your photos without asking? Honestly, i'd be surprised and honoured, but then my self consiousness would kick in and I would ring up the magazine.

How would you feel if a newspapers contained writing that came from your blog and you got no credit for it? I would ring the newspaper up straight away and ask why they claimed as there own.

Week 5 Lecture

Week 5 Lecture Notes!

Media? New Media? Social Media?

I didn’t want to explain or interpret some of these, so I’ve copied and pasted them.

Technology – “… is the scientific study of mechanical arts and their application”.

Media – When technology is used for social and cultural communication. TV!!! Yay!!

Virtual Community – “… when people carry on public discussion long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationship”. (H. Rheingold, 1993, The Virtual Community) This can get nasty though…just ask ACA or TT, joking, never EVER ask them about anything.

Individual Identity – “Its virtual reality, we self fashion and self-create”. (Turkle, 1995, Life on the Screen).

Turkle also stated that people often turned to the Internet to meet others with similar interests, as I’ve said in my earlier posts, THIS IS NOT SANE or healthy.

Web 2.0. – Created by Tim O’Reilley and friends after the 2000 crash. They created key technologies to do with the creation of web services with importance on the user’s experience. Its features…

Folksonomy -> “tags” on posts

The idea of user-generated content, e.g. putting photos, videos and text on the Internet

Open API -> sharing data openly between services on the Internet.

The Read-Write Web

So what I’m picking up here is that Community was a big idea and theme running here.

Summarising Social Media, it involves, Web blogs, Social Networking Services, and content Sharing communities.

Makes you wonder who owns the internet, and who owns the pictures that you post up… well I believe if you put it on the net your also giving away your ownership, and you’ll find on websites where you post anything, wither it be text, photo or video, there are terms and conditions in veryyy small print.

What opportunities can you find for political participation via the internet. How many of the following can you achieve while sticking to your political beliefs?

1. Sign an e-petition. DONE- stopping Australian Internet Censorship
2. Respond to a professional blogger at a major news site. DONE - to simon at news.com.au aout 2DayFm
3. What is Barak Obama up to today? DONE - Today Barack Obama turned down no fewer than five requests from Downing Street to hold a bilateral meeting at the United Nations in New York or at the G20 summit starting in Pittsburgh.
4. Find out who your local, state and federal representatives are. NOT DONE - totally gave up
5. Look up the Queensland or Australian hansard to find the last time your local member spoke in parliament. NOT DONE - this is soooo hard
6. Let your local member know what you think about their last speech. NOT DONE- dont even know if they did make one

NCT Week 6! The Break away from Katie Kochanski on Vimeo.

Week 5 -

Presuming that you are a user of MSN, or other IM programs (or have used it before, or at least know about it)...

Besides the obvious differences (such as ActiveWorlds is 3D and MSN isn"t, etc) what are the qualitative differences between the regular IM program and a 3D environment?

WELL, if instant massaging hasn’t already taken the life and reality out of socializing, here comes a 3D environment we can now chat on. Alright, enough is enough, this is just getting sadder and sadder. GET OFF YOUR COMPUTERS AND GET OUTSIDE.

I think its absolutely absurd wither it is good quality or not! I know our world is huge and there are billions of people, but there is no need to talk to them through a 3D world, if you are that desperate to make friends, go join a club, society, club or even a club scouts but not a 3D world.

I understand that it helps and is a great advantage to communicating and meeting people, but msn is a much better idea in my mind. Why? Its keeping it simple people, and its not an overload when it comes to profiles. You can build a completely new different life on 3D sites, if that doesn’t spell out self-consciousness and “needs a social life” I don’t know what does.

I think its ok when you have a goal with these sites (world of warcraft), but when it comes to building a life… going to far.

In conclusion to this question though the quality with 3d, I found it to be slow and annoying, Msn is way faster and far more convenient for me, especially as I only go on to check my facebook and do work.

What is different about the kinds of socializing that happens in these spaces? Does the 3D aspect make much difference? 


I think the difference is both dramatic and pointless. Although it might be real and you can do countless amounts of new things including build homes, businesses, play games and meet people, you can do all these in a healthy environment. So although this does make IM better, in my mind it’s like a mobile phone with a cheese grater and its only going to lead to all sorts of sickness.