Category: COMM 2219 Networked Media

WHAT IF EARTH WAS INVADED BY MARTIANS?

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Well, it almost was. Sort of. As good as.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News. At twenty minutes before eight, Central Time, Professor Farrell of the Mount Jennings Observatory, Chicago, Illinois, reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas, occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars. The spectroscope indicates the gas to be hydrogen and moving towards the Earth with enormous velocity…”

It was the day before Halloween, October 30, 1938. The CBS radio network, armed with actor and future filmmaker Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre group, unleashed a broadcast that announced a huge meteorite had smashed into a New Jersey farm. New York was under attack by Martians.

The radio play, narrated by Orson Welles, was written and performed to sound like a real news broadcast about an invasion from Mars.

It was not, but people were convinced it was the end of the world. At one point in the broadcast, one of the actors playing a journalist in the field, dramatically described the emergence of one of the aliens from a spacecraft:

“Good heavens, something’s wriggling out of the shadow like a grey snake.”

The show aired as a series of simulated news bulletins that suggested a verisimilitude to listeners, who believed that an alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress. Mass hysteria ensued. The program, The Mercury Theatre on the Air was a series of live radio dramas that always ran without ads which historians say, helped the broadcast authentically simulate how radio worked in an emergency.

The ultimate moral panic:

In the days following the adaptation, however, there was widespread outrage and panic by certain listeners, who had believed the events described in the program were real.

It made Orson Welles (more) famous. Listen to the broadcast here.

WHY WE’RE HERE

Without giving the impression that I know the answer to the BIG questions, I came across something today that put into greater context why we’re here in Networked Media.

The always-up-to-date birds over at Nieman Lab put me in touch with a great article, ‘The Art and Science of Hiring For Media Startups’ at Idea Lab. One of the highest values sought after when hiring people for media startups is the adaptive, inspired, varied skill and knowledge set to mix content types:

Curation thinking: This is another critical hiring and company culture parameter. No media startup can survive doing just original content, it has to be a mix, of original, of curated or aggregated, of licensed if that is an option. It means hiring people who have the ability to mix content types, and not be moral about it. You’ll be surprised at how many journalists look down upon curation. In a small team, curation thinking also means learning to do a lot more with a lot less…

We are the engineering students of the 20’s! Adaptivity, ideas, innovation, vision, creativity, care, curation – this is the attempt of Networked Media. I say attempt, because  I’m still not totally convinced of the unlecture format (Brian Morris: where are you?). It’s week three and the open forum lecture format is still being ‘worked out’. Also, Jasmine The Tutor felt she had to qualify her very valid opinions with “I’m not sure if that’s right”. Command authority girl! This disclaimer was a whole lot more contradictory to Adrian’s rant than Elliot’s commercial / structuralist breakdown of education exchange. Thank God I don’t have a student tutor.

We are not empty vessels to be filled.

The lecture today also addressed the theme of being, after a student challenged Adrian as to the point of attending lectures if they aren’t relevant.

Without directly answering the question but ‘speaking to it’, Adrain mused that university is not a place of commodity consumption or of a service provider/customer dynamic. Ultimately there is a transact-ory exchange at play, I do have to pay for my degree eventually and would hope I have been elevated by the experience in terms of knowledge acquirement and career prospects. How one chooses to approach their university education is an entirely subjective attitude, which I’m sure favours those who actively engage with content. I care and try really hard at university. Knowledge and awareness are perhaps my greatest values. I am a voracious autodidact. Know, universe and teachers, that I care.

Adrian is gunning for a new communication strategy that involves producing students who are independant thinkers – I can’t not appreciate that. I am therefore grateful to have stumbled across Adrian’s methods in Networked Media (even if the subject is a bit wonky) to wisen me to the importance of speculative media practice. I suspect it is possibly the only safeguard against a complex, diversified, ever-evolving industry (and which warrants a learning curriculum to match).

On ‘The Network’

The unique recipe combinations of ifttt.com from today’s tutorial are testament to the intertwined, evolving nature of content sharing on The Network – it’s boundaryless. Weaving information together, like in curation, is seamlessly managed by clean interfaces optimised for only essential viewing (RSS). In the same way I might find myself speculating a solution on the job, Adrian asked us to think of our ideal ‘What if…’ if I could do anything on my blog imaginable. Then he systematically demonstrated how each speculative request could for the most part, be achieved (such as, automatically post my Instagram pictures to my blog when I share them on Instragram). The exercise demonstrated Model II behaviour by changing the question being asked instead of the method used to solve the problem: why begin at the start? Why not begin with a speculative ‘What if?’ no matter how far away in the future-y future its likelihood may appear? To use an example from the lecture, these processes are rewiring our brains from planning exceedingly logical essays to learning through practice in the most non-linear of ways.

AN IDEA: DESIGN FICTION

Design fiction has been usefully defined as:

…an approach to design that speculates about new ideas through prototyping and storytelling.

There’s that word again! Speculate. The concept and practice of design fiction lives in the space of conventions where artists and scientists get together. One of design fiction’s original mutations is the science-fiction genre novel. In an interview with sci-fi author Bruce Sterling, the whole concept of suspending belief in order to imagine change (in terms of potential objects and services) is interrogated.

What I can glean, is that design fiction is a literal presentation of The Future of Objects. I can see how artists and scientists alike are engaging. Sterling explains that the main way this is done is through video presentations containing a series of vignettes of people interacting with objects and services, as opposed to straight out science-fiction feature films. The emphasis is on participating in the creation of future gadgets, literally designing for the future, rather than telling futuristic stories with ‘Avatar-style heroics’:

It’s not a kind of ficiton. It’s a kind of design. It tells worlds rather than stories.

Clearly, there’s never been a shortage of science-fiction cinema. I just watched Blade Runner (1982) for the first time last night – I hope that’s not what 2019 will look like. Matthew Ward’s article on design fiction in design education roots these ideas in a more relevant context. His reading is a direct follow on from Adrian’s ideas on speculation, of looking forward. Literally, how has design fiction been left out of educational practice and, how has the activity of speculation been left out of education?

It makes a lot of sense it terms of design:

Whether a week, month, year or decade away, designers produce propositions for a world that is yet to exist.

How does this relate to me? Well, in some ways I guess I am a designer too. Strip that title of its general connotations to graphic, interior, fashion, app, architect, industrial: in my Professional Communications trajectory, I am a designer of words, media, communications strategies and ideas into meaningful wholes. Wow – liberating in the Dziga Vertov kinda way! The term designer in this sense lends itself to connotations in the ruminative fields of re-arranger, bricklayer, or projectionist. I like how this course is encouraging me to come to terms with my eventual, yet impending graduation and what happens then. Yes, my thoughts are legitimate contributions but only if I use them in the right way.

I sense I have detected a mindset of Model I behaviour, the very act of discovery lending itself to Model II behaviour.

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A NOTE ON PREDICTIVE TECHNOLOGIES

This week the New York Times reported that Silicon Valley tycoons like Google are working on a new ‘thing’ called predictive search. These tools will ultimately act like a pocket PA from your iPhone, anticipating what you need or where you need to be before you’re even late. Creepy:

How does the phone know? Because an application has read your e-mail, scanned your calendar, tracked your location, parsed traffic patterns and figured out you need an extra half-hour to drive to the meeting.

Engineers explained that it’s such an advanced ‘search’, it doesn’t require people to enter a search querie – the querie is the users individual context (location, time of day and digital activity).

On the creep factor, experts said it might be great for 30-something Silicone Valley geeks, but not so much for 60-something executives. Still:

The technology is emerging now because people are desperate for ways to deal with the inundation of digital information, and because much of it is stored in the cloud where apps can easily access it.

A great example of speculative thinking.

SPECULATION!

The idea of ‘speculation’ in Networked Media has been mentioned many times. It’s a very different way of thinking about education and the weaving workflows of media articles on our blogs. It’s utterly counter-intuitiuve to any prior learning most students, and certainly I, have done. A la Adrian Miles:

Education is not consumerism.

Be a knowledge producer, not content consumer.

Here the focus is on looking forward, instead of reflecting away at what has been and past. Last week in the lecture, Adrain made it clear that we are the engineering students of the 1920’s, that is, we are situated for pioneering radical change because of the subject of our education and the times we are in. We are young, forward thinking, technologically savvy and in debt = let us soothe your inadequacy, old man, and propel your business into the new age of media communications.

This idea of speculation only sunk in for me this week, when a quote by legendry filmmaker Dziga Vertov came to mind. He wrote:

WE affirm the future of cinema art by rejecting its present.

To me, this is such a radical statement. I think this is the space of speculation in media education, and what Adrian Miles had in mind. When Vertov made this declaration, he made a comment not only on the revolutionary potential of the medium of cinema, but of the emancipatory potential of realism in art. Relevantly, the act of engaging in speculative media practices can be liberating, insightful and forward thinking while still remaining grounded in reality. Initially I had trouble understanding the emphasis on speculation, imagining I’d have to free write dystopic science-fiction…

CHRIS ARGYRIS DOUBLE LOOP WHA???

Week 1’s reading was a tome that outlined the research of Chris Argyris into theories of action, double-loop learning and organisational learning.

It was somewhat dense and essentially, applied psychology to a business/organisation context. Keeping in mind direction from the Networked Media blog to find my own ‘take way idea‘, I did.

I identified with Argyris’ Model I association of behavior – at its most basic, a primal mode of survival:

The primary action strategy looks to unilateral control of the environment and task plus the unilateral protection of self and others. As such Model I leads to often deeply entrenched defensive routines.

Here I made a link to the psychology and craft of acting as espoused (there’s that word) by guru and coach to the stars, Ivana Chubbuck. Her method is absolutely grounded in the human condition’s will to win – apparently she’s done some empirical research (a la Chris Argyris). Perhaps more explicitly, and this sounds like something straight out of an acting class:

Acting defensively can be viewed as moving away from something, usually some truth about ourselves.

Some of my favourite performances from cinema find their climax when a character is forced to come to terms with that which they have denied or defended for an entire film. Dustin Hoffman embodies this idea as Michael Dorsey in Tootsie (1982), who denies his true identity when he, a struggling actor, ‘makes it’ by performing under a guise as Dorothy Michaels. As such, this modus operandi is said to hold us back from potential for growth and learning is impaired.

Double-loop learning, the kind that occurs when one interrogates the very value system from which they approach problems from, can only occur in Model II behaviour. This is where Networked Media operates, particularly with blogs.

Blogs allow for reflection because of their nifty Archiving properties and date/time stamps. The way we are encouraged to use these bloggy spaces in Networked is to ‘weave’ information between it and other social media spaces. In doing so, we can challenge/upset/question old media and learning practices, by defining/creating/evolving new ones, and gain a greater understanding through that. Double-loop / Model II learning will:

Encourage open communications, and…publicly test assumptions and beliefs.

In slapping regular posts up to these blogs, it is hoped that we can draw inferences between all of our subjects, further enriching other studies too.

AN IDEAS WOMAN

Photo: SMH

The word ‘idea‘ is defining the overall theme of my first week this semester. In virtually all my subjects I am being asked for ideas immediately.

In Advcanced Print Journalism, I’m supposed to pitch the idea for my Walkley-Award-winning, thousand word, investigative piece of cut throat journalism (that is sure to employ me immediately), yesterday. How, teacher???

In Film-TV2 I gotta get me some rad access to a documentary subject that will fascinate / cause people to emote deeply / remember, and blog it for all my peers to see (and judge). Just ‘have’ an idea.

In Networked Media, aside from designing my own learning and yeaaaahhhh doing a bit more work, I’ve got to make associations and imaginatively create responses to reading stimuli – constantly.

I like the ‘idea’ of having frequent, constant, creative ideas for sure. Soooooo where they at??? On Sunday (July 28th) a well-timed article landed in my lap. Writer Phillip Adams in his regular column for The Australian Magazine, wrote a piece on generating column ideas. Brilliant man! After admitting he found inspiration in his mothers kitchen draw for an article once, he said:

Where do you get the ideas for columns? … You can get a column out of anything, or everything. From a Lan-Choo coupon to Lenin.

What I like about Adams’ article is that he discounts the aimless and impersonal act of Googling to give your own brain a go: fire up your synapses by imagining those thunks a pinball machine might make as it rebounds a metal ball (read ideas) across the field.

Not only ready to help the columnist but capable of remembering just about everything anyone has ever seen, thought or done. All you need is the right stimulus.

This is definitely comforting. Adams goes on to say that everything is for writing about, just as in painting. Rembrandt thumbed his nose at his posh patrons and did a portrait of a carcass of beef:

It’s not the subject, he was saying. It’s how I paint.

Beginning with a mundane object may just be a starting point, so with silly self-consciousness out of the way:

Spoon? Nah. Ladle > soup > pumpkin > farm > gleaner > Agnes Varda…

NETWORKED MEDIA: THAT FIRST WEEK

What becomes apparent is that this subject, Networked Media, is quite an abstract one. It began with a lecture, that will continue in the form of an ‘unlecture’. That lecture contained a lecturer, who lectured about not-lecturing, and who described how the designated time and space would be used from Week 2. Unlectures will break down boundaries and change the world by dissolving well established codes of behaviour between lecturer and student, allowing the student to drive the content of the time/space by posing inspiring questions to a panel of tutors.

Actually, it will be a nice change and a bonus if it contributes to my learning more than a traditional lecture would have. A traditional lecture is usually packed with relevant information that I am generally quite motivated to absorb. I’m not sure how much content exists if the form is reliant on students. For the ‘unlecture’ style of learning to contribute to my knowledge acquirement, quality questions will need to be posed to the panel. In order for learning to occur then, a somewhat ‘sharing of the responsibility load’ needs to take place between teachers and students. If it is not to be that teachers make offerings to students in a very ‘one-to-many’ style of closed communication, a ‘two-way symmetrical’ communication needs to take place in lectures to encourage mutual understanding. If shitty questions get asked – I don’t learn anything: that gives me power to drive my own knowledge acquirement.

Beyond Unlectures, this course appears to be largely self-driven. Key terms used to connote the experience of Networked Media might be: non-linear, speculative, creative, imaginary, explorative, self-driven, ludic, experimental, forward-moving, mapless, ruminative…

YEE HAA!

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