Okay I must confess, i’ve been a bad student. I have missed the past three Networked Media classes. I can somewhat justify it, I mean, I just started a new job and they’ve had me working throughout the duration of my Networked class and I feel guilty asking to change shifts so soon into my employment.

Nevertheless, in my quite hectic schedule i’ve been keeping up with this class, the major essay assignment and attending symposiums. I was sitting in class today, for Communication Histories & Technologies, listening to a group’s speech and they brought up that one time Facebook crashed for nothing more than half an hour, and how people were ringing the police, and directly calling Facebook HQ because they felt so “out of the loop”. That’s kind of how I feel right now. On the other hand, I also feel there’s endless possibility for me to catch up by reading into my peers work and reflections. Ah, the beauty of blogging.

I just realised i’ve been severely lacking in posts regarding my peers work however I do check theirs a lot to see where they’re at and I love hearing how everyone interprets what we learn differently. I thought i’d recap on a selection of posts from these guuuurls from Week 9 posts.Neeve created an excellent and very extensive post about the symposium which I take she enjoyed just as much as I did. I really liked the focus she made on Adrian’s points, as I had steered my own Symposium post towards what Elliot had said, very nice Neevey. Alex had a nice and clear post about one of our main readings for Week 9, to do with the 80/20 rule which I felt supported exactly what I understood from the reading (always good to know you’re on the right track!). Lastly, Rachel’s anecdote at the beginning of her own symposium was most enjoyable to read. As I said, it’s lovely to hear how people relate what we learn to their own stories and experiences.

Lovin’ your work lasses.

I thought that an interesting quote by Anderson was presented in Tuesday’s symposium. Anderson stated that “For too long we’ve been suffering the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare, subjected to brain-dead summer blockbusters and manufactured pop. Why? Economics. Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching – a market response to inefficient distribution.”

This got me thinking of something that has always frustrated me about the success of films at the cinema. At the moment it is Term 3 school holidays, and for as long as I can remember, roughly a week or two out from the beginning of school holidays we see an advert on TV for a new movie that is to be released as soon as the holidays start. Generally it’s an animation of excellent quality itself, but B-grade content with largely bizarre concepts. These “run of the mill” films have been produced to please young audiences and families who are looking to do something during the holidays. I feel like Walt Disney himself would be turning in his grave if he saw some of the animation content being produced today, for the sheer purpose of profit at the cinema. Animation has become far less one-of-a-kind Toy Story iconic, and more-so fulfils the economical demands of the film industry and all those associated in film production.

What Anderson said corresponded with the way I feel about school holiday production. I feel like my grandparents when I say this but I think children should be shown Mickey Mouse classics, rather than some 90 minute film about underground cave-dwelling trash collector trying to save his friends from an evil exterminator (like seriously….what???…who even thinks of this stuff?!)

 

 

 

 

 

Every day I catch the train to and from uni, to and from work. It seems to be almost second nature now, hopping on and off, connecting from one line to another. In yesterday’s lecture Elliot explained that when we deal with distributed networks, we are effectively dealing with nodes and restrictions of the “emerging hub system”. This relates to the map of Metro because for example – Richmond Station is a hub station, and the nodes are the many lines that transfer off of it. When dealing with networks, this says that some websites link to other information.

Another point I really liked was brought up by Adrian, when he was speaking about the idea of linking and connecting to others on the internet through common ground, where we can search what meets our requirements or understandings, and find several others who think likewise. However this theory is not to be confused with something like hashtags on twitter, where that is a more open, free-flowing realm.

Finally, bacon. No, not bakin’ bacon, Kevin Bacon. This was something I had heard of before, the “6 degrees of Kevin Bacon”, which ironically rhymes with the theory it links to, “6 Degrees of Separation”. The Bacon theory suggests that all celebrities, no matter how well known or not, have 6 or less “bacon points” between them, and all those on the big or small screen are in some way “related” to Kevin Bacon.

This symposium went in so many different directions, it was a really good one.

“The 80/20 Rule”. Barabási, Albert-László. Linked: The New Science of Networks. Cambridge (MA): Perseus, 2002. 

In this weeks reading I discovered really interesting rule, devised by Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto who created the “80/20” rule (funnily enough, he himself never referred to it as this). Pareto observed this phenomenon while gardening, where he noticed that 80% of his peas were produced by only 20% of the pea-pods, which lead him to a broader study showing that 80% of Italy’s land was owned by only 20% of Italy’s population. It is interesting to read how many examples of this there are out there in the world. I was trying to think of my own example and it took me back to memories of Year 12 whereby i’d devise 10 potential designs for a product, and only properly work on two. I certainly have to agree that it’s indeed possible to “assume” this 80/20 rule/phenomenon can apply to pretty much everything out there in the world, but realistically it’s not the case. A successful link though, is between the 80/20 rule and our understanding of networks. Pareto states that a network can follow a bell curve structure, and can also have nodes. Meaning that the epicentre of the network has “branches” that extend out, broadening the overall physical expansion of the network.

 

What a time for this to surface, to justify my answer to the question posed in last week’s symposium. I woke this morning and checked my Twitter as per usual, and was immediately exposed to a topless Jennifer Lawrence. I am a massive J-Law fan and this made me feel sick to my stomach to think that someone would post this of her against her will.

Upon further research I discovered that Jennifer was among many women who had personal photos leaked on the internet this morning. I was sent a link of all the women and their photos;

People rush to say “celebrity” photos but at the end of the day they’re just women like anyone else, and I don’t think anyone deserves to have their own privacy violated like this. I find it honestly disgusting that photos have just been lined up, so that the sick-minded can view them all at once.

Internet is a dangerous place.