In Alexander Galloway’s extract from the MIT press, he discusses the historical becoming of the internet, the importance and reliance on protocol, and how it all actually works. I realised after the first few pages that even though I spend hours upon hours of my week on the Internet, I wasn’t sure how it developed into what it is today. Even…
Tag Archive for readings
Database and Narrative
The Lev Manovich writing on “Database as Symbolic Form” attempts to answer the question of ‘what is a database?’ It looks at etymology of the term as well as its current uses and associations, and looks at the differences bettwen database and narrative. The reading suggests that a database is a cluster of singular items and is unaffected by narrative.…
Cobwebs Overtaking Blockbuster
If you haven’t already realised, nobody heads to Blockbuster anymore. Music stores are going out of business. My favourite childhood book store Borders has closed down. We have one thing to blame for this (or thank) – the Internet. The Long Tail by Chris Anderson confirmed my already present ideas about the battle between physical media; CD’s, DVD’s, paper books, and…
Power Packed
This week’s Networked Media course reading by Duncan Watts was an interesting one at that. Why do I care for how the power system works in the USA. Generators are all over the place, and numerous power cables connect from the generators to countless places all over the country. Intriguing, right? Yeah, not really. For the majority of the population, how…
The Mechanical Hand
After reading Ted Nelson’s 1992 chapter on Literary Machines I asked myself a question: How do computers actually simplify our lives? We type on instant-access screens, and have witnessed the “revolution” that Nelson spoke of. Older generations typically argue that computers have complicated our lives, however I disagree, I think they have made daily living easier. Young people take technology…
‘a computer is a trained squirrel’
“A computer is essentially a trained squirrel: acting on reflex, thoughtlessly running back and forth and storing away nuts until some other stimulus makes it do something else… We make the computer do our bidding”. I will admit, that quote made me chuckle a little, before I realised how accurate is really is. Ted Nelson’s early published work on Hypertext…
Check back in 50 years
I just had a read through Vannevar Bush’s famous “As We May Think”. At first I really had no idea what he was going on about. He talked about a special camera the size of a walnut, which could be triggered by the brain seeing something it found of interest and did not require a physical decision to capture a…
The ABC’s of XML and RSS
XML, RSS, ABC, WWE, DFO, AFL. Okay, so you may have picked out a couple of those. AFL is a great Australian sport. WWE is wrestling, I know that much. DFO is where I buy all my discount brand merchandise. But after reading Adrian’s extract, I was left asking; what on earth are these computer geek terminologies XML and RSS?…
Let’s make a Network!
Network literacy means linking to what other people have written and inviting comments from others, it means understanding a kind of writing that is a social, collaborative process rather than the act of an individual in solitary. It means learning how to write with awareness that anyone may read it: your mother, a future employer or the person whose work…
Solving the Copyright Confusion
Almost everybody has used something from the internet that they didn’t create. I’ve always wondered, when is this okay? And when does is cross the line and become illegal? The Creative Commons information video outlines those boundaries. The style of animation is simple, but awesome. I’ve always been a fan of the sped-up handwriting or drawing. It gives the video a…