so, the second networked media class has come and gone and what have i learnt?

that i’m not a very good listener. and i have a very short attention span. i was always a better reader anyway.

but when we’re asked to sit down in pairs or threes and discuss the answer to a given question, it shouldn’t be so hard…right? i guess not if you know the question. but i seem to have the terrible trait of tuning out at precisely the wrong moments. i have to get that fixed. so the majority of what i learnt in class discussions was that my discussion buddy and i share vary similar tastes in television shows. (who else here misses lost? anyone?)

but, despite my inherent lack of listening skills, i did manage to pick up on some stuff during the class (thankfully because i typed down anything elliot or my other peeps said because it was a lot more useful than what i was saying) but the main point i have is… i still don’t actually know what “networked media” is! so far the last two classes and “unlectures” have predominantly been about the blogs. “what is a blog?”, “what can we put in our blog?”, “why do we blog”, but thats just an assignment (yes, i know it’s important in the whole scheme of everything) and i still want to know… what actually is this subject?

all i got in class was “networked media is not necessarily social media”. ok, so now i know what it’s not. can someone please tell me what it is? i guess i’m single loop learning again here, just waiting for someone to give me an answer. ok, lets double loop it up. to be honest, i’m still not even sure that i get the looped learning thing. elliot explained that “Double loop learning involves questioning the assumptions that you make about the process and in doing, so renegotiate the task based on what you’ve renegotiated about the process.”.

we did have some interesting discussions on the blogs though in class. what i really liked was how elliot described the blogs as “cataloguing our thinking”. its similar to what was discussed in the previous unlecture about our blogs being ours. we are creating an online persona/identity, something which is vital in todays technological society. also interesting was when someone (sorry, i don’t remember who!) brought up the concept of consumption vs. production – our blogs are a way of us contributing to the online world, putting our voices out there to be heard.

this is going too long again. i’m still not getting the hang of short posts. i tend to write a lot, as i’m sure all those millions of people probably not even aware that my blog exists have now figured out. so one final thing from class that i liked.

i don’t really remember how we got onto the topic (me tuning out again!) but i think it was around the time when someone asked what is the network? elliot responded with this cool little bit of info about “web 1.0, web 2.0 and web 3.0” as elliot explained:

“Web 1.0 – any kind of technology that allows any user to post any kind of info (early internet)

Web 2.0 – info getting pumped in to online space – info must be categorised and organised eg. Google (analyse amount of links to a page and quality of content within that page)

Web 3.0 – streamlining content towards specific users. Adapts its content in a way that is specific towards a user – advertising. Eg. Amazon will recommend products based on previous purchases.”

i don’t know what this info really had to do with networks except, like, online info and stuff, but it was really interesting so i do hope to use it someday.