Unlecture #12

The final symposium of Networked Media served to sum up the course as a whole, and gave a chance for each tutor to detail their thoughts on how it has gone, and what has stood out for them.

I found this format very useful for a Week 12 lecture, especially because most of my other classes don’t run a lecture at all. It was good to be able to detail the trajectory of the course, and how everything links in together (in a network if you would), and although this would have been very useful to see at the start of the course, it probably would have been difficult given the ‘speculative’ nature of it.

I liked the discussion about the internet being transparent, open and public, and how making anything online closed or secure fundamentally contradicts the basic ideals of the internet. The quote from Adrian was nice, describing how individuals are like sponges that soak up new information and techniques, while universities are like bricks, that form a wall to stop people accessing these new things.

The course began with ideas of learning and different techniques of education, such as double-loop, moved on to a whole lot on hypertext and narrative, then to protocol and their influence on the network, and finally to database and their effect on narratives.

I really liked using this style of lecture to sum up the course, and it helped to show that there actually was a method to the sometimes ‘madness’ of the course, and helped to show the coherent links between what we have been reading and discussing, both in the tutes and the lectures.