Thoughts

Technological Neutrality

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This week’s symposium was a bit of a mind warp. The idea of technologies being neutral, or not neutral, was the driving idea of the discussion. As it went, Pott and Murphy identified some technologies as being ‘neutral’, but how can a technology be neutral if it was built for a particular purpose?

Firstly, I think Jason’s idea of some technologies being more neutral than others makes the most sense. He thought about it in terms of the internet; since it has so many different ways of employment, it must be MORE neutral than technologies with specific purposes.
Secondly, neutrality is a difficult word. Saying that a technology is ‘neutral’, to me, isn’t etymologically correct unless we are talking about war or someone’s opinion. For this statement to make sense, I think we need to say: “This technology is neutral in terms of […]“. If we continue with the symposium’s hammer example, surely a club hammer is more neutral than a claw hammer. One has a single purpose whereas the other has two.

Neutrality is a point on a spectrum, what that point is is often very ambiguous. But I don’t think it’s correct for Adrian to say that there simply are no neutral technologies, because that undermines the very nature of the word ‘neutral’.

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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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Thoughts

Peer Thoughts

Following last week’s symposium, Alex leaned more toward Adrian’s perspective on the use of the word narcissism as inaccurate to describe bloggers and the blogging practice. She believes the words are too harsh and says that human emotion isn’t always 100% apparent online. Michael agrees, saying that services such as FaceBook are full of narcissist comments and posts. He reckons that some of the features are only a reflection of people’s desire to be noticed by their friends. Seonaid makes use of an interesting image to convey the meaning behind technological determinism as discussed in the Potts and Murphie reading.

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Thoughts

Narcissism and Privacy

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During last week’s symposium, Betty and Adrian began to argue about the true meaning of narcissism and if it was really applicable to online bloggers. Adrian argued that narcissists do not communicate or feel empathy, yet blogging is a means of communication, and most bloggers tend to reveal some kind of empathy even if for the most meaningless things. Betty rebuked by saying that narcissism was an accurate term to use, explaining that she felt the word wasn’t being used in the psychological context.

I would veer towards Betty’s point of view; in the social context, narcissism describes a person who is self obsessed. Blogging is a social platform, so it makes sense to appropriate the meaning of the word that correlates with its context. On a side note, as discussed in the lecture, words are complex, and we can only understand their meaning by virtue of what they aren’t. Everyone has a slightly different understanding of what each word means.

An interesting point was raised in terms of privacy. With smartphone usage proliferating at a ridiculous pace, we see more and more photos of meals, private events, and even intimate moments being shared all over the internet. Adrian argues that this is due to the fact that everyone assumes there is some kind of privacy systematically attached to whatever they post online. But this made me think, even if people naïvely believe their content is protected, what it the difference between going to a restaurant and sharing a picture of a meal, saying it tasted amazing or awful, and telling all your friends about it back in the days where internet wasn’t around? Either way you are affecting people’s opinions of a particular place, thing or idea, the only difference is that internet makes it spread faster. But word of mouth is equally powerful; the people of the French countryside during 1789 who had become possessed by the idea that the nobility were plotting to take down the revolution spread this idea all throughout France like wildfire. Isn’t this practice equally as defamatory?

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Thoughts

Peer Review

Alex notes in this blog post about the ‘produser’ that no longer are audiences passive consumers of the internet, but they are now (we are now) contributing ourselves to the rise of more and more media texts. Even though journalism still works as a very powerful tool for audience influence, she explains that the days when we used to receive information through TV and radio are gone, now not only do we receive this information tenfold with the internet, but we also create our own. The produser, alex explains, is a widely embraced term that is the result of the combination of the words “producer” and “consumer” and encapsulates this new form of audience. Seonaid discusses the idea of transclusion and inclusion. Using the example of wikipedia, she says she doesn’t understand how some systems can be both closed, yet never ending in and of itself. I think she has got the main idea, but only needs to realise that wikipedia is bound to expand only within the realms of itself; wikipedia pages can be created infinitely, but all they will ever be are wikipedia pages. FaceBook, by contrast, allows us to share pages, link, advertise, play, like and post, among many other possibilities that the open FaceBook system offers.

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Random Philosophical Observations, Thoughts

MIchio Kaku on the Internet

Michio Kaku, a famous Japanese physicist breaks down civilisations into three types (type 0,1,2 and 3). He describes a type 2 civilisation as one that is stellar, and therefore immortal. A type 1 civilisation is planetary, which means that it can manipulate anything that has to do with the planet. Kaku believes that we are currently transiting between a type 0 and type 1 civilisation.

He argues that the internet is what we can call a “planetary” telephone system. Through other examples such as the English language, music culture such as youth music, and even economies such as the european union, the physicist explains that all of these things know no boundaries around the earth, and are therefore classified as type 1 technologies and ideologies. The internet knows no boundaries, it is not a caged like MySpace, it is bound to thrive and survive.

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Thoughts

The Worker Ants and Hypertext

In the symposium, Adrian refuted the claims that most of us born in the digital age are network literate, which surprised me because I too had come to that conclusion. Adrian argued using the example of FaceBook that simply because we know how to use it doesn’t mean we know how it works.  FaceBook exploits people by letting them unveil personal information about themselves; who they are, where they go, what they like, and then sells that information to other parties. In this sense, we are what he coins as “The Worker Ants”. “Just because I know how to change the wheel on my car doesn’t mean I am a mechanic.”

Most network literate individuals are self-tought, and maybe that is because we never really learned how to ask good questions. As Adrian said, ambiguity is often more helpful for learning outcomes. But for those who don’t take it upon themselves to question and find answers, they end up having no literacy to know otherwise, and end up being just a part of “the system” as we so often hear it being called.

If, on the other hand, we do delve deeper into it, we can begin to understand that no longer can we say “I didn’t get to the end”. That logic becomes obsolete with the invention of hypertext, the individual parts are interconnected and there is no end to it in sight. This is also why, Adrian remarks, that gated services such as Myspace cannot survive. It is those (such as FaceBook) which allow for growth and exploitation that will inevitably succeed.

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Thoughts

Jessica’s Views on Internet Validity

Jessica shares an interesting story of her “first brush” with internet malware when she inadvertently downloaded spam sent from her friend’s “older sister”, inevitably leading to multiple viruses. This experience has lead her to question the various misinformation being spread all over the internet. While she reckons that she can tell fact from fiction, she provides several instances in social media history where other people did not share her common sense.

Ultimately, it all comes down to personal experience, and maybe a little bit of common sense, but judgement is paramount she explains.

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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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Random Philosophical Observations

This is Water

I think I’ve already mentioned this brilliant man before, his name is David Foster Wallace, he is a university professor of English and creative writing, and an American novelist.

I quoted him in a graduation speech he made in my post The Pages, Not the Book; basically in his speech, he was trying to impart his philosophies on work life and the conscious mind. Wallace used the analogy of a fish who meets another school of fish and says “Careful folks, the water’s a bit unsteady back there.”, and one of the fish responds with “What the hell is water?”. Water I’m assuming is a reference to life itself; as i understand it, the metaphor is trying to show us that moving forward aimlessly is never a good idea, we need to keep reminding ourselves that “Yes, this is water”, so that we don’t miss out on all the gems life offers us daily.

The best part of the speech is when he discusses our conscious decision to always assume everything happens to us, and not to everyone. He explains that we always have the choice to realise that yes, sometimes it sucks, and it’s hard, and unfair, and boring but that doesn’t mean that everyone else is any better off than you, that they don’t understand what you’re going through; and that’s why we should always choose to see any situation, whether stuck in line at a supermarket, or repeating the same tasks every single day at work, as a cynical reminder of how awesome it is to be human. We’re all in the same boat on this journey, we’re born, we live our lives, then we die; so instead of complaining about the fat old lady at the register, let’s revel in the moment and admire the beauty of being human.

Not that any of that is necessarily true, but it’s always a nice thought to keep in the back of your head when you feel like life is taking you nowhere.

And now for another lesson on life, by Jim Carrey this time!

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