Category: Networked Media

Posts for COMM2219 Networked Media

W10: W9 Readings – Galloway

So I accidentally wrote on the wrong readings last week… Here are my notes from the Galloway reading.

Galloway talks about centralised and decentralised network versus a distributed network.

We spoke in class about how the decentralised and, especially, centralised networked follow a system where radial nodes are connected to system or rigidly connected to each other via set “pathways” (as such).

But then there are distributed networked whereby each node is able to communicate with any other – which represents and ideological system of non-hierarchical protocol. This can often be used to interpret the internet as a more democratic media platform, but this is not always the case as often the smaller nodes feed into the same nodes, enabling them to have more power.

For example, many bloggers would like back to the bigger blogs or highly visited pages, figuring this gives them more credibility or somehow, by association, makes their work more relevant. But in fact this goes against the idea of the long-tail as it feeds into particular nodes of the network thus making them more powerful. As such, despite all the possibilities of a distributed network, the way we use it often feeds into a more hierarchical, centralised media platform.

 

W9: W8 Unsymposium

Lots of talk about video games this week. I love talk about video games, pretty much for the same reason I love talk about graphic design: because I know nothing about it, so it fascinates me!

Elliot said that Hypertext tends to provide different kinds of links but video games present a partiucalr diegesis that you move through intrinsically. He thinks that overall, he wouldn’t consider video games hypertext. Jasmine disagreed, as she though they can be as the interface of the games changes according to the user’s choices, which makes it a different experience.

I think both claims are fair, I’d lean more towards Elliot’s point as I see that there is a particular diegesis that has been designed for the user to be taken one way or another, but then again I agree with Jasmine’s point that there is a difference of experience.

Adrian think that games don’t necessarily have narrative e.g. Tetris. I see what he means, but I still think that with things like that there’s still some sort of story. Even in a game of Tetris there is tension, climax, conflict, triumph, the user is always the protagonist with a partiuclar goal in mind and that goddamn I-shaped block that appears when you’re just about to hit the roof and have nowhere to put it is the VILLAIN! I think elements of narrative exist – it just simplifies them through blocks and simple objectives.

Adrian pointed out that words that serve as signifiers of consecutiveness and seriality are obsolete in hypertext e.g. hence, therefore. This is due to each node being highly granular and can be arrived at at time and read in an isolated way. Important to consider when trying to write a hypertext narrative – I think as student’s it’s been hammered into our brains to be able to write in cohesive, serial manners, so this part of writing a hypertext narrative could be a challenging but refreshing one.

 

W7: The System – Watts’ Six Degrees

“How does individual behaviour aggregate to collective behaviour?”

Watts’ poses this as the ultimate question when we consider complex systems, their affordances and their downfalls in his article ‘Six Degrees: the Science of a Connected Age’.

It is, as he says, one of the most fundamental and pervasive questions in all of science. It lends ideas of infectiousness, collaboration, social compulsion, synergy…

I’m a little bit stumped to answer the question beyond that. Mostly because it depends how you look at it. As Adrian has mentioned, it is a question applicable to a broad range of things from disease, to social media to information systems and so on. Each of these carry their own set of nuances and possible explanations for why individual behaviour aggregates to collective behaviour.

In any sense of networked system that spreads, evolves and augments, I figure there’s a cause, an enabler, a catalyst.

Ultimately, it results in some kind of network that augments the impact of the individual part.

I’ll be interested to hear what others have to say on this in the tute tomorrow – until then, I’ll leave you with this:


 

W6 – From Text to Hypertext

The extract from George Landow’s “Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization” pinpoints some important ideas about how stories and narratives are structured within new media forms.

He argues that “hypertext challenges narrative and all literary form based on linearity, [and] calls into question ideas of plot and story current since Aristotle.” For the most part, I feel that we think of this in terms of electronic forms of print, or making what was traditionally print media an interactive and interwoven experience. In this, we experience different kinds of media from different sources.

But I also think that this can be used to explain the ways in which we consume other media, particularly television.

It can be seen more and more that people want an interactive experience from television viewing. Michael Wesch explains how TV was traditionally a one-way medium, whereby people would congregate around a TV and watch a program at a time and in a way that is dictated by the televisions networks.

However, now people are viewing TV according to their own schedules, on any number of devices, on demand, out of order and so on. As such, it’s interesting to see media creators writing for these trends and technologies that support it.

Case in point: Arrested Development season 4. This show was originally broadcast like any other show, with up to 24 episodes in a season. It was critically acclaimed and had a cult following but was cancelled after 3 seasons. But in May 2013 it made its return on Netflix, the online subscriber viewing platform. Not only was it unique in being produced exclusively for Netflix, but its format was completely re-orchestrated to include 15 new episodes that could be watched in any particular order.

In this, the author “grants readers more power” to read the narrative in the order they wish. Whilst ultimately the narrative as a whole will be the same, the experience changes according to the order in which you view the episodes.

Although this alone may not explicitly relate to hypertext, it does lend to some of the ideas about why authors use hypertext, and particulary why it is so relevant to reading and viewing trends of today.

Furthermore, Landow’s point that authors use hypertext to create combinatorial fiction is relevant to almost any television program with a widespread following.

Although we no longer gather around a TV set to experience a show together as one imagined community, many people share in discussions online through social media and web forums. It is in these virtual spaces that many authors provide hypertext materials, things that add to the original and basic text.

For example, behind the scenes footage, interviews with actors and so on. These texts are available to viewers such that they have the power to extrapolate from the story worlds provided in the original text. They may explore additional areas of interest in ways that may not be immediately available through the primary text, but knowingly and readily available.

These examples embody Landow’s key characteristics of what hypertext includes:

  • Reader choice, intervention, empowerment
  • Inclusion of extralinguistic texts (images, motion, sound)
  • Complexity of network structure
  • Degrees of multiplicity and variation in literary elements such as plot, characterization, setting and so forth.

 

W5 – The Unlecture – Online Viewings

Out of the three videos I viewed as part of this week’s online/virtual unlecture, Michael Wesch’s “From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-able” was the most poignant for me.

His points on how students of today use technology, approach their education and how this works within the institution of higher education are paramount to the ideas we cover in Networked Media, and how I want to be thinking about my education in general.

Being able to find, sort, analyse, criticise and create new information is something I think all students either think they will/have/can learn at university. However, I think many of us are misguided in how we go about this. I don’t think it’s just about learning how to research particular issues or topics of interest, and how we work through a process of finding some sort of ‘solution’ within them. But rather, our learning and higher education experiences should be about making meaning – by way of addressing real issues, utilising the human resources we have at university (other students, tutors, lecturers etc) and harnessing our informational resources.

I think he really gets it right in pinning together those three things. As Adrian said outright from the start of this Networked Media course, we have all the informational resources we need, we are able to connect with like-minded people across the globe, and we can seek out real issues. But within a higher education environment we’re able to practice how we utilise old and new media, harness old and new ways of sourcing information and collaborate.

Because it is a matter of practice. Creating meaning and being able to solve problems is a practice that takes training and some guidance.

As Sir Ken Robinson highlights in his Ted Talk “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”, education should be embracing the unique ways that students evidently absorb information and learn.

In the case of networking and utilising technologies, most of the information young people and students consume and share is via electronic, interactive networking platforms. So why do we still adhere to one-directional, outdated ways of learning such as essay writing or reading printed academic writings? It’s clear that these aren’t favourable or necessarily effective for students in the 21st century.

 

W5 – Hypertext

George Landow’s article “Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization” gives some interesting insights on how we read and analyse hypertext.

For me, a big part of practicing online networking and blogging is understanding the ways in which your work can benefit from the network itself. Your writing and ideas can be instantaneously linked with others. Landow’s description of the first kind of hypertext prose pinpointed how I had used networking and blogging sites in the past: placing links without hypertext into an HTML template that includes navigation links.

By utilising the features of hypertext more extensively (e.g. linking to other sites and content), we not only include draw on the benefits of this information, but instantaneously insert ourselves and our work into a larger context.

This is at once an exciting and terrifying thing for a student – many of us guard our work from peers and ‘the big wide world’ in fear of it not looking up to scratch. So I agree with Landow that it makes for excellent academic practice to introduce and utilise hypertext as a way of pushing students and writers in general towards connecting with like-minded creators/thinkers.

Furthermore, I like the idea of hypertext as reflecting non-linear reading practice. The way in which modern audiences consume/read texts in hardly ever linear, and certainly carries some ‘hyper’ characteristics. I hardly know a single person of my own ago who will sit and watch TV without checking their phone throughout the program, or work at a computer without multiple screen and windows open to constantly switch between.

Jay David Bolter also hits the nail on the head in the first sentence of his article “Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing”: “writing is a technology for collective memory, for preserving and passing on human experience”. Hypertext quintessentially directs readers between different forms of information in order to shape a particular experience. It draws upon multiple sources and directs the reader towards a particular experience and understanding.

Hypertext reflects and influences modern reading/viewing practices, so it makes sense that it should be integrated into our learning and writing process.

W5 – Digi-what?

This is my friend Alex discovering Instagram:

LOL.

He’s a photographer – a pretty good one at that – but he generally kicks it old school so Instagram and the whole idea of ‘networked’ photography is pretty new for him.

While I’m used to this kind of user-friendly networked stuff, there’s still a lot of intricacies I’m still trying to get my head around.

As such, this is my first ever embedded video… HIGH FIVE!

W4 – The Unlecture – Symposium

I thought this week’s symposium worked really well to allow students to hear a variety of views on how design fiction fits into the world. It also reminded me of something my mother mentioned years ago about the kinds of thinkers we need in government – something I’m starting to make more sense of as I refer to other issues in the Networked Media course.

Some things I really like about what was said:

Elliot explained that design fiction is important for understanding what kind of areas our work may fit into in the future. While this wasn’t a huge light bulb moment for me as I’ve been thinking a lot about design fiction how it implores you to speculate about the future and what we might need. It did, however, lend well to Jasmine’s point about design fiction being applicable to any areas of study – e.g. medicine, architecture.

Design fiction speculates about the requirements and possibilities of a future world and the issues inherent to it. For example, will there be new and more complex health problems we need to address? Is there some kind of technology or service we can create to assist in treating these health issues?

Case in point: I imagine living in the 1970s and speculating about generational and social changes in the next 40 years. Perhaps I can see that the baby boomers in Western society are growing up to be more independent of their parents – they appear to value family togetherness less and globalization is mobilizing people and their immediate families away from their cities of origin.

Also, I can see that advancements in modern medicine are keep people alive longer – i.e. those who’ve endured heart attacks and strokes are revived and treated, and go on to live for years in their own homes, yet with some ailments and health problems that at any moment may need urgent medical attention.

These are the health and social issues of the imagined future that speculative anthropologist me of the 1970s anticipates for the next 40 years.

Considering this, I conceptualise a device that may assist in dealing with these issues. Mobile technology is in its infancy, but I can see that there is potential for small devices that may be able to fit comfortably in one’s pocket. Say we were to develop a pocket-sized device that was programmed to send out an alarm to medical professionals as well as family at the touch of a button. That way, elderly people at risk of having medical emergencies could hold onto this device and send out the alarm in case of a fall, or another person has found them collapsed in the street and so on.

It would be revolutionary in ensuring that people are able to receive urgent and important medical attention, even if they live on their own.

To me, that’s the kind of speculative design fiction that makes sense socially and technologically. It’s about imagining the future, our state as a society, the problems and opportunities we will be faced \with and what products and services we could develop to address them.

I also liked Brian’s point that design fiction is about play, but it is also humble. It’s about what kinds of materials you can use to speculate about the future, without being particularly “obnoxious” with inventive ideas. It’s about practicality because, at the end of the day, that’s what matters. It’s not about having the biggest ideas, it’s about having effective ideas.

The discussions from the Symposium also reminded me of something my mum told me years ago: she had read or watched something on TV that advocated politics as being in need of more creative thinkers – that our politicians needed to come from the fields of architecture and design instead of law and science because they were the problem solvers and innovative thinkers.

The discussions we’ve had surrounding design fiction absolutely supports this idea. I’m not particularly schooled on legal studies and practice, nor architecture, but I think of lawyers as working with the existing state of things – navigating the “system” as is, so accustomed to systems such that there is hardly any room for innovation. Therein lies a culture of Model I thinkers.

This is contrasted to people of design, which Adrian mentioned are becoming more valued by large corporations for their innovation and speculative thinking. Designers are not constrained by the limits of “now” – they think outside the box, imagine a future and an ideal and make it happen. Or rather, they are the experience designers whose innovations are implemented by content producers.

Oksana Faryna of the Kyiv Post kind of lends to this idea in her article “Ukraine needs designers, not just economists and lawyers”. Although her points are quite Europe-specific in mentioning how Ukraine needs to build more beautiful public spaces to counter the grey and cluttered streets of a post-Soviet state, there are some concepts about these public spaces and the attention government should be giving them which work on a multinational scale:

“Effective use of public space determines quality of life. It can aid communication and build communities. It’s what makes Europe European.”

These ideas about experience design opposed to functionality and working within a system lend to the overarching ideals and values of what we study in Networked Media as well as the ideas of Model II learning. We don’t want to be the paper pushers, the ones who smash out the copy or painstakingly work on implementing a design. We want to be the thinkers who create (experience designers) and push for others to implement great ideas that have purpose, meaning and longevity across whatever world we may be faced with in x years time.