The ‘Symposium’. When I first heard of the idea of this format for the lecture, I thought that it sounded good, but couldn’t picture how in the world it was going to work. But I now see the effect that the un-lectures have been trying to have from the beginning.

Even though we have been trying to veer away from the traditional form of a lecture, I feel like this is the first week we have not really been lectured to.

I enjoyed going over the idea of design fiction again as I think it is a very stimulating idea that I think I still didn’t fully understand.

Overall the format of the symposium un-lecture was pleasing and effective and I am looking forward to having my own questions discussed in the weeks to come.

I loved reading about how someone thought computers would affect the world 33 years ago. Some of my favorite quotes include:

‘…especially things called CD-ROM, CDI and DVI. These have not caught on or even been seen but they are being pushed by Big Corporations with Bug Track Records.’

And

‘Others, already hating computer, correctly dread these matters and hope vainly to stop the computer tide.’

Even though this reading seems old and is almost comical to read living in the age of technology that we do, the ‘plans for the future’ and visions that Nelson discusses are an actuality today.

At school my close group of friends, who very inventively called ourselves ‘the Wolf Pack’, lived our lives on top of each other. I would know that on a Monday at 9:15am Freya (the smart one) would be in Biology in science lab 3, at 11:30am on a Saturday Sarah (the athletic one) would be playing hockey at the Tasmanian hockey Centre and at 3:45pm on a Wednesday Lizzie (the creative one) would be in a design class in the ‘city’ of Hobart.

This year has seen the 12 of us go in different ways. I do not know as much detail about them as I once did. On a Monday at 9:15am I know Freya might be at uni, on a Saturday at 11:30 all I know is that Sarah is in Tanzania volunteering, doing what I do not know, and at 3:45 on a Wednesday Lizzie is in Hobart… and that’s all I’ve got. There is no way that they would know on a Monday at 11:45 I am sitting in Building 80 writing a blog about them as I wait in-between my broadcast media lecture and my cinema studies screening.

I feel like this is actually a good thing. Even though we do not see each other 6 out of 7 days a week or tell each other every little detail of our lives, when we do see each other it is much more special.

Whoever said, ‘absence makes the heart grow stronger,’ was correct.

This is corny I know, but I’m in a sentimental mood.

Ahwoooo to ‘the wolf pack!’

 

In the ‘un-lecture’ this week the idea of gaining knowledge rather than just consuming information was handed to us. I agree completely that as students it is more beneficial for us to gain knowledge rather than just learn information and facts. Especially in the current society we live in where facts and information are readably available to us to on the Internet.

My big question is how best I can gain this knowledge. My previous understanding of how best to gain knowledge would be to have information and by truly looking at and understanding a wide range of information, knowledge would be gained.

This week’s un-lecture has caused me to consider that there are other and more effective ways to gain knowledge.

My taking of the un-lecture was to gain knowledge through experience.

But I still feel like there are other ways too.

I am still unsure what these ways might be as I still struggle to see how we can have knowledge without information, however I am keen to find out! And when I do, I’ll let you know.

In 2007, when I had my original iPod Nano had only just been allowed to have my very own Nokia flip phone, my Dad said to me in amazement, ‘Did you know apparently they are creating an iPod that is a phone as well! It’s going to be called and iPhone!’

Being a 13-year-old girl with no mechanical understanding and a 46 year old with no idea about technology we thought that this had to be a rumor.

This week’s readings introduced the concept of design fiction to me. Seeing as having ideas for what might be needed or what is going to be trending in the future is a quite a foreign thing to me the concept was something I had never really considered.

Whether it’s technical advances, fashion movements or what’s going to happen in the next episode of Suits, ‘designing the future’ has never come naturally to me. I feel I have never been able to pick what is coming up next; this may be because I have been approaching the creative process wrong and not employing double loop learning to the best of my ability.

I have always been really impressed with people who seem to ‘just know’ what is going to be successful in the future. It is interesting to incorporate the idea of design fiction when considering how people seem to ‘just know’.

Matthew Ward talks about design fiction actually being a thorough process and that even the idea may be fictional, that is no excuse for poor planning and you must have a knowledge of how the subject of your design must have a context that it fits into and belongs.

 

 

It will all just be intro stuff… or at least that’s what I thought.

This is my first blog post and unfortunately it is filled with regret and guilt after the first couple weeks of this course.

Being extremely excited about friends from home coming to visit I decided that it would be ‘no big deal’ for me to miss the first workshop and second lecture, or first ‘un-lecture,’ for Networked media. After attending week two’s workshop I soon realised that what I assumed would all be introduction to course and how the workshops would work was, in fact, filled with enormous amounts of knowledge that I will now never know to the extent of my peers.

This experience has now educated me to know how important attendance is and has driven me to create my first blog post sharing this experience.

In the scheme of things, this personal disaster that has left me feeling very behind in this course, is not that bad. With the help of other students’ blog posts I have been able to gain a general understanding of what I missed. But as I said before, I will now never have as greater understanding of the knowledge consumed in the time I missed form this course.

And that is something I will always regret.