Category Archives: Reading reflections

Reading reflections

Protocol

This week’s reading was a little bit difficult to understand, but i got this quote from it which is a pretty succinct run-down of what this is all about. “Yet instead of governing social or political practices as did their diplomatic predecessors, computer protocols govern how specific technologies are agreed to, adopted, implemented, and ultimately used by people around the world. What was once a question of consideration and sense is now a question of logic and physics.” Basically this quote is juxtaposing the original definition of the word ‘protocol’ (a piece of paper attached to the beginning of a diplomatic document that summarises its policies/arguments/discourse) with the new meaning of ‘protocol’ in terms of computers.

There was also a point raised that related to the previous reading about databases. It basically stipulated that there was a dialectical opposition between two principles within protocol (which is what makes the internet seem so chaotic when it’s not). The hierarchical organisation of data (databases) such as DNS, and the random distribution and transmission of this data between computers, such as IP and TCP.

If we want to get from point A to point B on a highway, that is through IP, which is located because of DNS, then the requirement to stay in between the white lines and stop at a red line is protocol. It all makes a little more sense this way.

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Reading reflections

Manovich Reading on Databases

This week’s reading by Manovich discussed databases and their relationship with narrative. From my understanding of the reading, databases are organised lists of items about the world that completely contradict the cause and effect structuring of narrative. In alliance with these databases are algorithms. These work mainly within the realms of computer gaming, that is, they require the player to execute an algorithm in order to win.

Data structures and algorithms are then complementary. The latter encapsulates any process or task, any sequence of operations; and any object in the world is modelled as a database, meaning that it is organised in a way for efficient search and retrieval (linked lists, graphs). Together they have a symbiotic relationship, the more complex one is, the less the other needs to be.

Interfaces are a new way to handle databases and are really only applicable to the Web. In olden days, when someone made a painting, the interface and the work would be one, because the media used and the end product were the same thing. But with internet pages, different interfaces can be managed over the same material. Interface and content are therefore separate. Hence, it is possible to present different versions of the same work, using different interfaces over the same content.

The most notable part of the reading for me was at the beginning because it helped me think in terms of the creative essay.

“Indeed, if the world appears to us as an endless an unstructured collection of images, texts and other data records, it is only appropriate that we will be moved to model it as a database, but it is also appropriate that we would want to develop the poetics, aesthetics and ethics of this database.”

and

“The open nature of the Web as medium (web pages are computer files that can always be edited) means that the Web sites never have to be complete – and they rarely are because the sites are always growing.”

I think these help to answer a few questions about change and flow on the internet, but I’ll discuss my thoughts further in the creative media essay.

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Reading reflections

The 80/20 Rule

80-20

Vilfredo Pareto noticed one day that 80 percent of his peas were produced by only 20 percent of his pea pods, he then made an interesting link between this observation and other sociological aspects of life (much of which is identical to Murphy’s Laws of Management). 80% of Italy’s land was owned by 20% of the Italian population, 80% of profits are produced by only 20% of the employees, 80% of the customer service problems are created by only 20% of the customers and so on.

The reading goes on to use the example of America’s highway maps vs America’s plane routings to instantiate the difference between a “random” network, which abides to the rules of a bell curve, and one that follows the Power Laws, which describes an ever decreasing curve. As such, the connections the highways made from city to city ranged from one to three, with no particularly better connected “nodes”, whereas the plane routings sketched out a few cities with a huge number of connections to other smaller cities (or nodes), and many cities with only those larger nodes as connections.

If we look back at last week’s symposium, we talked about how there could not be a ‘centre’ in the web. Even before the internet grew to be what it is today, people had predicted that, like most things in nature, information dissemination would follow a bell curve, so even then, people knew no node could be the centre. I think that this Power Law kind of shows us that where there can be nodes with extraordinarily large numbers of links, no node will ever connect to everything else in less than one step or link on the internet. As Watts argued in previous readings, our social circles’ makeup has created a small-world problem, and we are no further then 3 steps from more than half of the population on earth, but there is no way a single person is exactly one step away from everyone else, this can easily be applied to the laws of the web.

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Reading reflections

Erdos Number and Clustering

Thoughts based on the Barabási reading.

The Erdos number. Each person who coauthored a book or article with Erdos (a great mathematician) has an Erdos number 1; a person who coauthors with one of Erdos’ coauthors has an Erdos number 2, and so on. In the end, we discover that the people of the scientific community are remarkably close nit, with people such as Bill Gates boasting an Erdos number 5, and he is more of an innovator than a scientist.

Even then, they discovered that those scientists should have had a relatively large Erdos number if they had picked their coauthors randomly, but their small Erdos numbers points to the fact that they did not pick them randomly, but that they did in fact cluster.
Clustering is the social practice of maintaining relations with people who maintain relations with each other. When we cluster, we dramatically heighten the chance of two people knowing each other. In fact, clustering is the only way that the six degrees of separation can even exist. What does this mean in terms of network media?

Our strong ties are often rendered useless in a practical sense. They move around the same people we do, and therefore rarely are the ones to offer us job opportunities and the such. It’s our weak ties that we need to take advantage of. Fortunately or unfortunately, someone already has. FaceBook and other social media networks are most likely the first to jump up at the opportunity. How does this interrelation with everyone in the world affect us? How does the fact that I am no more than 6 steps away from any given person on Facebook change anything?

Well, if the strong ties are useless for information spread, then this means everything. Think about it, what are the odds of the first degree of separation being a strong tie, someone you are friends with, quite low, so the second is already quasi inexistent. This means that by the first or second degree, you already have thousands of weak ties begging to be exploited, used for rumour spreading, information flow, commercial practices such as “Tell a friend and get free [..]”. I never even realised the extent of the power of our networks!

And now, a video example of synchronised clapping, the human brain’s subconscious need to synchronise itself with others around us. (it’s sort of relevant, kinda)

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Reading reflections

The Small World Problem

The Watts reading was a little bit difficult to understand, it made use of a complex analogy with the electric grid system in America and how its failure caused widespread panic to relate to social networks.

I think the most important part of the reading (or maybe the part i understood best) was the discussion of the “Small-World Problem”. Watts discusses the six degrees of separation and how if each person knows a hundred others, by the sixth degree, you are able to reach 9 billion people. The only setback is that maybe 70 of my friends might also be friends of my best friend, which means that the degrees are actually much more complex, with people intertwined with each other all over the place. This is where the problem begins to surface; the more we know our friends, the less we know the rest of the world, and the more our friends know us, the less we can reach out to the rest of the world through them.

The matrix of networks such as internet and especially hypertext is a lot like this web of friendships and connections, never ending and extremely complex. And what happens if one of the electric lines breaks down? Well someone out there isn’t getting any electricity… What a shame!

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Reading reflections

Hypertext

Just a few dot points and explanations that I can come back to when i get confused about hypertext.

Hypertext is sort of like virtual text that allows the reader to learn more through interactive multi faceting techniques.

The two types of hypertext structures so far are, the axis based, linear e-books that are complimented by footnotes on some points, and the network structured hypertext where everything is always more or less linked.

The three kinds of hypertexts are:

at the basic most, entering an essay or dissertation into an HTML template

writing in the presence of other texts, that is, through linking with other essays or paraphrasing passages

writing a stand-alone essay while providing networked material to prove this argument, the axially material therefore becomes a part of the text as the audiences chooses which parts to investigate.

Blog is another kind of hypertext essay that allows for ‘discursive prose.’

intra textual linking of blog posts allows for the reader to navigate through the posts without necessitating the blogger to explain again.

comment enabled blogs also allow for hyper textual abilities, as features such as TrackBack allow for the URL of the commenter to be exposed for others to follow.

By googling the phrase “how many bloggers”, Landow stumbled upon a blog about a woman’s sexual exploits. “She includes enough personal information, including photographs and the assertion that she is black and jewish, that her anonymity doesn’t seem well protected. I assume the blogger intends the site for her friends, but Google mistakenly brought me here, as it may well bring her parents and employers.”

“The edges of a blog… are porous at best”

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Reading reflections

Technology for the Mind

Vannevar Bush supports a very interesting contention that never even crossed my mind in his discussion entitled ‘As We May Think”. By today’s standards, advances in technology allow us to control so much of the material aspects of our world, while human knowledge and the mind is still something that is so uncontrollable. Bush points out that while scientific exploits have pushed the boundaries of human physical capabilities, the methods of reviewing and transmitting the results of research are still generations old, and by now “totally inadequate for its purpose”.

People who conscientiously try to keep up to date with worldly events through habitual readings will often not be able to recall the information they learnt the previous month. This is because we still use the same means to record the ephemeral experiences of human thought and action as we did centuries ago.

Nonetheless, Bush rebukes this by adding that we are at a frontier and that this kind of technological advancement for the mind is imminent.

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Reading reflections

Unintentional Liars – Mental Maps of How to Act

In the Chris Argyris reading ‘Theories of Action’ some very interesting psychoanalytic arguments caught my attention. Argyris presents two mutually inclusive theories of human behaviour that he calls ‘mental maps’, under the influence of which people would tend to act certain ways. These hardwired maps are supposedly what dictate contextual human behaviour rather than the actual underpinnings that that particular action may uphold. In other words, people are willing to simply act a certain way because they have been told that it is the ‘right’ thing to do, or because it is politically correct, rather than because they considered the ethical entitlements of that particular behaviour. This is what Argyris describes as ‘Theory-in-use’ as opposed to ‘Espoused Theory’, by which we tell people (or ourselves for that matter) what we would do in certain situations.

Below is a link to a video that I am using for my Broadcast Media assignment which pretty accurately describes these theories on camera.

Fuck the Poor – A Social Experiment

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Reading reflections

Network Literate

What does it mean to be ‘network literate’? Well apparently practically all of us born in the digital age are what you can call ‘network literate’. Much like being fluent in another language, being network literate means to have a profound understanding of the infinite compilation of knowledge that is known as ‘the internet’.

One point that Adrian makes in his discussion of network literacy which is particularly noteworthy is that there is a difference between being network literate and being good at network literacy. Outside of the (comforting) confines of the World Wide Web, our society thrives upon mindless consumerism; what does mindless consumerism inevitably lead to? A whole lot of waste… Being good at network literacy means that you put in what you get out, you contribute as much as you consume, so that none of this virtual consumerism of information leads to ‘disparate’ bits and pieces getting lost or buried with new information. Everything is recycled, classified and shared, so that new information can be born and grow organically through the intricacies of the Web. A post should not simply be read, understood, then forgotten about; it should be tagged based on your understanding of it, so people will find it more easily and shared through RSS to as many services as you want, as long as it’s out there, so the rest of the world can also benefit from the knowledge you have earned. That is my understanding of what it means to be network literate.

Is the net really ‘greener’ (conceptually at least) than the actual world? Wow!

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