After reading Literary Machines by Theodore Nelson, I must admit I’m in a bit of shock. Nelson somehow managed to predict the internet and the world as it exists online today.

This idea of storage of information on an electrical device and his ideas of how it would be structured are phenomenally accurate. I particularly liked how he spoke about Network Literacy and the dying era of print. This has been very topical in class recently and obviously debated at great length in the symposium. Nelson agreed with Adrian’s point that print was just a passing form. It hasn’t been around since the beginning of time and other ways of communicating existed before print.

Nelson also predicted that:

“Offices will be paperless, as soon as people figure out what this means.”

Paperless offices is now a everyday term and many offices are already at this stage. He spoke about the cost of paper and shipping which is true but now, it is true in another regard with the focus on the environment and the damage caused by deforestation. Paper is expensive to the planet.

Nelson considered the change in structure of education, a point he made immediately after. Schools are now full of computers and in many cases they are completely replacing books.

All in all, the parallels of what he predicted and today’s world are spookingly accurate. The whole concept of hypertext and the language Nelson used to describe them would have been completely foreign in the early 1990’s, however, now it is common and integrated into everyday life.

As much as I seem to be glorifying Nelson (the seer!), his ideas did lean to the extreme side at times, which is particularly obvious when reading this with the hindsight and knowledge we have now. Nelsons’ statement:

“If humanity survives the next century…”

This statement is somewhat haunting. However, also could be said at any point – not to be a pessimist or morbid but with things such as atomic bombs this is a potential reality. As extreme as it may sound it’s not a ridiculous consideration.

All in all, I really enjoyed this reading, Nelson’s writing style was intriguing and easy to read which can be rare in some other readings and I am still amazed at the accuracy of his statements and the portrait of today’s world that he painted.

My request is simple: more readings like this one and I’ll be a very happy student!

So I went to Splendour in the Grass a few weeks ago and I spent a little while this afternoon procrastinating by watching go-pro videos of people at Splendour and thinking about the content. Are these people really safe to be posting these awesome, creative videos online?

The one that triggered me to think this way is this video below.

This guy obviously likes his video making and the video is cool and certainly makes me nostalgic for the weekend. But does he own the rights to use Peking Duk’s song? Does he have the right to use the footage? Doesn’t Splendour in the Grass technically own that?
And finally, would he actually get in any sort of trouble for posting it? It’s just a fun video of him and his friends.

Sometimes it all seems a little unrealistic.

In our tutorial, we talked a lot about taking images online and using them when you shouldn’t be.

I became increasing worried about this over the week and have done my searching and for blogging there are a few options. We were advised just not to use anything that we did not take ourself by one teacher. The other advised to work out what you can get away with without getting in trouble.

Nethaniel  did a great post about this ‘grey area’ of copyright laws.

I’d like to describe us as the lazy generation because, honestly, the 2nd option seems much more reasonable. However, I don’t want to be taking things that people have created when they don’t want me to. So I have found a compromise! The great thing called creative commons. Now, not having much experience online this is all pretty new but after googling a lot about the topic it seems like the best option.

I’m going to try and be creative and post some original images and videos but for the moment, I’m building up to it with creative commons.

In the lecture we were talking about knowing the process of getting something published and the idea was that we are print literate but not digitally literate.

Apparently, we know how to get a book published and how a book is made but we have no idea online of how anything works and we are completely reliant on 3rd party providers.

I fully back the idea that we have less of an idea of how things work past our computer screens, however, honestly, how many of us could bind a proper book or even explain how to do it in any sort of detail? Have a look at this picture of a Book Binding apparatus and please tell me if you’d know how to use it.

Books and blogs are platforms for information, as bloggers or authors, we are content creators and that is our role in the process. I believe that a web designer has a very different role and there are many people needed to create a webpage. Similarly, to the many people needed to create a book.

We got taught how to write in books as kids now are being taught how to type on computers. I don’t believe there is much difference.

So I spent a few minutes being vain this morning and googled myself as suggested in the lecture. Good news (on some level) is that I am almost completely invisible on the internet. I scrolled through the first 20 pages of results when I typed in my name and nothing that came up was me.

I decided to narrow the search and when I typed in ‘Jane Weber Canberra’ there were a lot more results, from an article written about me and my classmates when we finished the IB, to my old radio show, to a defence conference I went to in 2010 and some old rowing results.

‘Jane Weber Melbourne’ brought up no results – maybe I need to make more of a name for myself here.

At least there was nothing bad!

As we spoke about in the tutorial last week, the more views or hits a page on the internet gets the higher up on google it is and therefore, more people can find it. This is all basic production and distribution online.

Adrian touched on this subject in the reading for this week, saying that the internet relies on ‘trust networks’. These validate the information, as more people will follow what you do online if they have some form of trust in you. However, isn’t this some sort of crazy blind faith when acting online? We’ve grown up with the idea that someone you’re talking to online could easily be a creepy 60 year old pedophile – a concept now that links into the new phrase – cat fishing. So how do you trust any one online?

Humans have this instinct that something is true – and given, when you’re talking to your best friend on Facebook it probably is her, however, sometimes it’s not. In the reading, the trust network is more related to legitimising information and creating a following. If more people have trusted it, then you are more likely to trust it yourself… but couldn’t we all be fooled? Or can we claim this as safety in numbers?

Getting onto the topic of numbers, copyright has been of major concern, particularly in this week’s symposium. Another thing that makes me nervous! How do we make sure we’re legally safe online?

I thought Brady came up with some great questions about this after week 2. Check it out on his blog:  Continue reading

We all love secrets. Well do you want to know one about me?

I’m scared of being vulnerable.

Both in real life and online.

Feeding off my first post, talking about the fact that there are a lot of mean people online. I’ve had my fair share of mean people in reality, some of whom I really would not want to encounter again. I also feel as though I have lived a relatively sheltered life, forming a life online leaves me (and you) vulnerable to everyone else out there on the internet. The number of people we come across on an average day increases astronomically when you consider everyone you could potentially have contact with online. As was said in the symposium – blogging has no boundaries.

So this blogging thing is testing me and testing my strength to conquer this strange fear I may have, and yet I’m doing it! I’m going to say I’m now checking it off my bucket list (even though it is compulsory!).

Despite my last post about the internet having a confined community, it has formed a platform for change and another way to get an opinion or piece of information across.

In my politics class today, we were discussing the concept of talking politically, in particular, through music. It got me thinking about Pink’s song – Dear Mr. President. Whilst the song got banned in the USA due to the impact it could have had, the rest of the world were able to see her point of view on the political scene in the States at the time.

The internet does have the capability to make things big and has made a huge difference in the music world.