Tag Archives: Seonaid Drummond

Thoughts

Peer Review

Jess talked about last weeks’ symposium which I couldn’t come to because of a BCNA event at the NGV (which was pretty cool btw). She discusses databases in terms of narrative, explaining that the two have been said to be natural enemies. This makes me think of something i read in the database reading saying how databases were in dialectical opposition with the other system (I forgot the name of it how embarrassing) that distributes the information stored within the databases.

It’s good to know that Seonaid is just as confused about the protocol reading as I am. She makes an interesting point, however, about internet not being hierarchical; indeed it can be described as a decentralised ‘horizontal line’, but what’s interesting is that Web traffic nevertheless submits to a hierarchical structure, such as DNS.

 

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Thoughts

Peer Thoughts

In her exploration of the Manovich reading, I found Seonaid‘s explanation of building narrative in terms of databases really useful. I didn’t get through the whole reading myself, but she talks about how navigating through a database works as a way of creating our own narrative, which was an interesting point. George talks about a part of the reading which i didn’t get to. He talks about the limitations of the screen as being similar if not identical to those of a simple book, why is it any different to read off a screen than off a book? He questions how future media makers can possibly break through the ‘rectangular’ boundaries of the screen.

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Thoughts

Classmate Thoughts

Alex is a bit mind boggled by one of Barabasi’s quotes about the 80/20 rule. ‘Millions of web page creators work together in some magic way to generate a complex web that defies the random universe’. The Barabasi reading talked about internet being a random universe and therefore needing to abide by the rules of the bell curve, which it doesn’t. I think Alex is just confused (and understandably so) about how the internet, with all its few ‘powerful’ nodes and millions of not so powerful nodes can detract so well from a system that already defines most of the universe: the bell curve. Michael revels at the discussion of the bacon number and how densely connected networks can be. I think it’s important to note however that the Bacon number is just an example to instantiate just how dense these networks really can be. It was done with Erdos in the past, and can be done with any celebrity, Kevin bacon isn’t some kind of Hollywood landmark (maybe to some). Seonaid talks about the discussion on egalitarianism on the web during the symposium. She reckons that this ‘utopian vision’ of the web, as she puts it, cannot be achieved. Nevertheless, with hypertext, she likes to think that if your content is engaging enough, people will link to it, doubling your chances of someone else reading it, and so on, which is always a nice way to look at things when it comes to scale-free networks.

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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

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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