Something of a stream of consciousness post; sitting down on a Saturday night to do a bit of catch up as it were for Uni, and I decided to start off with Networked Media. Here’s what I’m listening to while writing (a 30 minute EDM mix by Knife Party, some ripper tracks in there).
So I started by catching up on the subject blog, and as per mentioning in my blog assessment I stated I wanted to do more of the networking thing, so I endeavoured to engage with somebody else’s blog and right off the bat I found something wonderful! Something I hadn’t thought about before either, as the network is best as revealing.
This post by Alois Wittwer responded to the question put to us last week, “What would it be like to read a story that changed it’s shape every time you read it?” with some observations on the “toxic notions” of a portion of society that like to ‘get something’ out of their lives. I’d agree that this is a rampant desire for pretty much everyone; it can be boiled down to the Meaning of Life thing. No, it isn’t 42 – 42 was the computational error by the Earth of 6 multiplied by 9 and not the answer to the ultimate question – I fancy Douglas Adams was making fun of arbitrary end goals we set ourselves in life when, and as is my main point; the concept of nihilism. Continue reading
This was quite a humbling piece to read. To think that only 20 something years ago a system that I spend a vast majority of my time engaging with was still a concept being flogged to the general public to be met with some doubt.
I spend virtually (literally) all of my time on the Internet (or the World Wide Web as I believe is properly denoted as) and to see a book written about it’s basic function during a time prior to it’s existence is fascinating. I, somewhat jokingly somewhat seriously, claim the Internet as my homeland because in terms of the eclectic nature of my knowledge and interests I seem most influenced by it’s inter-connected nature as a person. My favourite media is produced solely for distribution over the World Wide Web and I revere it as the most useful tool in my life for essentially any activity.
This reading starts off with a preamble explaining to the reader how to engage with the book in a way that best emulates HyperText (and subsequently HyperMedia) in that it is interconnected. The document states that some readers may not understand it, and some may do, and reading that now sounds very strange indeed. Of course I know how HyperText works (or in a more modern way, Hyperlinks)! Why would I need that explained to me?
This shows the drastic changes in perspective we have in today’s society compared to back then in the late 80’s. How awful it must have been to lack an automatic hierarchy of filing web pages and media over a global network. How terrible to have had to buy music in person and physical form, as well as books, photographs, or any medium! What an absolute nightmare to have had to manually arrange and organise file structures so that another user wouldn’t be hopelessly lost trying to locate a single file (although, that can still be a problem, I don’t get why some people can’t use proper file naming and saving techniques).
In terms of Design Fiction, like the other reading for this week, this is precious context for a network we now take for granted. We expect free Wi-Fi with our large fries or latte nowadays, else find yourself lunching in some primitive food establishment. Of course it doesn’t have quite the same foresight as the 1945 design fiction example, but the ‘what if’ situation of an interconnected network is, independently, a simple concept. Immensely useful, but simple. Fast forward ten, twenty years and the growth is mind blowing.
Such a quaint compromise during the symposium, but despite all my brilliance I hadn’t thought of this! If I want to focus, why not just turn off that niggling little voice of a network connection? Something I’ll definitely start doing during study sessions
I did find something out about my own attention during this wi-fi-less symposium though: I have a surprising amount of trouble focusing. Every 30 seconds or so my mind procures some oddity to think about, perhaps along the lines of, “Man, what’s up with that ceiling? I wonder how old that is? How old is this building even?” or maybe, “That dude in front of me has a really nice pen. Gold and silver, I wonder where it came from? There’s that pretty neat pen shop up Elizabeth Street, maybe I should check it out…” you get the idea. Hardly ADHD – I notice the trains of thought pretty quickly and snap myself back into focus – but it happens a lot more than I’d like.
Upon realising this I began to ponder upon the idea very often supposed that Generation Y is an attention deficit generation that has lost a real sense of focus. This, in itself, was a departure from my original thought about myself not being able to focus and the irony right there and then was palpable.
This will be one of my main focuses for improvement to my learning from here on in. I guess all I can try do first is will my way into focus. Whether this will work or not is beyond me, but we’ll see.
One of my favourite albums of all time – Hold Your Colour by Australian/British Drum and Bass group Pendulum – is great for several reasons, but I’ve always loved the genre’s quirk for using samples and sound bites from the most obscure sources.