Monthly Archives: October 2013

gummy bears in the future

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well, i felt as though i needed one more blog post to cover this subject before it finishes forever. however, while i was sitting at my desk, trying to think of what to post, i somehow became distracted by a bag of delicious gummy bears. and then proceeded to spend the next 15 minutes trying to stack them they would stay up long enough for me to take a photo. yes, it’s that time of semester, this is what i have come to for entertainment and procrastination, stacking gummy bears.

anyhow, on to what i was actually going to talk about before those tasty bears distracted me. the future… where are we going and what are we going to do when we get there. this entire course has been about networks. but not just networks, how networks are changing. it’s given us a chance to rethink not only what we want to do with our careers but how to look at the world. the world today is completely different to what it was ten or twenty years ago and it will be just as different by the time we finish our degrees in a mere 2 years!

digital technology is the way of the future. everything will be online and everything else must adapt to suit that or face dying out. what will journalism be in 5 years without physical newspapers? what will the tv landscape look like when people don’t need tv’s with channels with set schedules anymore? what will happen to radio when people can play whatever music they want through their cars or phones? (thank god for bluetooth. i can’t stand top 40 radio). scarcity doesn’t exist anymore, the internet has relieved the world of shelf space. everything can be accessed, so why do we still need those platform which limit our range of choice?

the problem is, we want to enter this field, the field of media. but, how can we know what we want to do when we don’t even know if those jobs will still exist by the time we get around to doing them? we all need to rethink our assumptions about everything we know because not only is everything different than it was, but it will all change again very soon.

i wish each and one of you the very best in whatever job you wish to do and i hope it still exists once you get there. until then… goodnight and goodluck

 

 

i dream of machine

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this weeks reading, which can be found here, is an interesting one but seems pretty fitting for our final reading as it is look towards the future of technologies and machinery and science in general really. all the work of smart people and how it can affect and assist the not so smart people. but, that first dream, “the dream of symbiosis”, is pretty much the cause of the worlds destruction every sci-fi movie to do with machines or robots or technology. and so i couldn’t really get past that. have you ever

found a book or movie about machines that can think for themselves, on the level of humans, that didn’t result in some world altering disaster? no.. because it just couldn’t happen. maybe i’m being small minded here. i don’t know i’ve probably just seen too many robot movie. but it happen, they all turn evil. and with their super robot strength, we humans don’t stand a chance. i believe that the more advanced we make our technology, the closer we are bringing ourselves to our own destruction. but, thats just me. maybe i’m overreacting a bit. lets see what those other dreams were…

so, apart from the dream of having the world taken over by robots, we have the dream of emergence. this again links back into my robots theory where with such advanced technology, intelligence must inevitably emerge. (and destroy us all. ok, maybe i’m getting a bit carried away). then there was the dream of emergence, which i only understood because it said something about virtual reality systems. which would be cool. you know, kinda like in the matrix, where the robots control us all by keeping us in a virtual reality of the world while they pretty much eat us.

next came the dream of world peace. and now you’re thinking “how is she gonna turn this one into a doomsday situation?”. well, i can’t. world peace would be great but, i don’t think it’s technology that’s going to get us there.

the dream of transparency didn’t give much definition. i guess it’s kinda just like what adrian discussed in the lecture about everything being out there. once its online, its there for anyone to read so the dream is that eventually everything will be shared equally with everyone.

on the other hand, i have no idea what the dream of flows was about, especially because i kept thinking it said dream of flowers, which i think is much nicer and less likely to lead to our destruction by robots.

next is the dream of the open work. this one also seemed kinda confusing but i understood as similar to another one of adrian’s point from earlier this semester. this was about “content is not king” but rather its the services that provide content or allow users to create their own. the reading says that one of the “Strongest shifts of emphasis in the digital age is movement from creating finished works of art to creating systems of productions of art”. this makes sense because in society today, consumers are now creators too and so a more successful technology would be one that allows for more to be created rather than one that simply is.

no idea what the dream of the other was about and i’m guessing that the dream of new art is pretty much just that, the belief that the future of technology will create more advanced technology and the hopes that that new art won’t one day rise up against us.

the final dream was “hacking the dream” which i can only imagine involves hacking into the internet and changing it to suit your needs or what you want to create, but that one was also a bit confusing. from all of this, i have learnt that i am pretty sure that machines will one day defeat the human race but hopefully i will not be around to see it. before that time happens however, we have a lot of awesome new technologies to look forward to 😀

 

 

so long symposium

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this week was our last networked media unlecture. i have to say, i did enjoy them. they were a nice fresh change on the face of university and lectures and all the other drab. they were interesting. they were about we we wanted them to be about and they were engaging. and more often than not, they introduced me to an awesome new site, like wefeelfine.org from this weeks lecture. these cool sites were about the network, what it or we can do with it and how it works.

so.. what did we learn from this final “unlecture?”

well, it was more of a recap. it even came with slides!!! showing us how even though there hadn’t appeared to be any structure to this course at the beginning of the semester, a structure emerged (see what i did there? like with a scale free network) as we moved forward through the course. we saw how all our different readings and concepts came together. from starting off with our blogs, to hypertext, to scale free networks and centres and the long tail to databases and protocols. everything is linked together. it’s all just one big happy family. that was what i liked about this course. even though there didn’t seem to be a structure, there was. but this also gave us the chance to learn what we wanted to learn. our lecture and classes were fuelled by our questions, we got out of it what we wanted to get out of it. and the blogging allowed you to experiment with idea while contributing your own and explore our place within the growing network. and if nothing else, from this course i have learned to bog, and learned to love it!!! i am excited to be continuing to blog long past the end of the semester.

 

y i can’t study

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and it’s officially here!!!! being the nerd i am, i attended the midnight launch of the brand new Pokemon games, Pokemon X and Pokemon Y. there were huge lines of fans queuing up for the game at the EB store on Swanston street. which was given out from exactly 12:01am on friday night (well, saturday if you’re getting technical).

so, which one did i get? see for yourself:

now there’s just 3 questions i need to ask myself: fennekin or froakie? squirtle or bulbasaur? and Pokemon or study?

these are the hard choices we must make in life

ANTs in my brain

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so this weeks reading by Bruno Latour was called “On Actor Network Theory: A Few Clarifications 1/2.” or, as i liked to call it, “pure evil”. if you wish to torture yourself, you can find it here.

as i’m sure you’ve gathered from those first two sentences, i did not like this reading. it just made no sense. and never really seemed to tell us what actor network theory was. all i did learn was what it wasn’t. for one, it wasn’t about actors. 2, it’s not even about networks. or, not in the traditional sense of networks, or even other senses of the term, such as social networks or train networks. so, if it’s not a network, what is it?

well, there was this sentence: “Put too simply ANT is a change of methaphors to describe essences: instead of surfaces one gets filaments”. but what on earth does that even mean? all just seems like a lot of hoopla over nothing. and don’t get me wrong, i tried re-reading this a bunch of times, it just refused to sink in. so much of this was over complicated jargon that just left me frustrated.

you know what… i give up. you want my interpretation of actor-network theory (or ANT)? here it is:

how many letters in alligator?

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so, as usual, i lost an embarrassingly substantial part of my night tonight to the internet, mainly youtube. and i want you to experience what i did so i am going to share it with you.

first off, the funniest game show answers. god, americans are dumb. some of my faves in this bunch (and trust me, watch to the end, they are all great) are “name a yellow fruit” “orange” and “name a 3 letter animal” “alligator”. enjoy

next up, if you’ve ever wanted to know if there’s a full proof way of assuring that you win every round of rock, paper, scissors… here’s your answer.

third, ever wonder why some movies succeed when others don’t? well, it’s because they all have that same sellable plot line. everyone wants the sympathetic hero to beat the villainous baddie. here’s the lo-down on what story line many movie writers use to achieve their hollywood success:

and finally, one of all time low’s first music videos for the song “coffee shop sound track”. i love that these guys don’t take themselves seriously and like to let their fans see that. every one of their videos are so funny because they are not afraid to make a fool of themselves. another great on is the video for “i feel like dancin‘” so check that one out too if you get the time.

databases or narrative?

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one of the questions from this weeks lecture was asking if databases are narrative. or if they are changing the nature of narrative. the basic answer we got was that databases are not narratives, they are lists. a narrative must follow a story, it is driven by cause and effect. a list is simply… well, a list.

a cool example adiran showed us in the lecture was the cowbird site. i checked it out when i got home and i have to say, it’s a very interesting site and some of the stories on it are great. but, like adrian said, it is not a narrative. maybe the stories it contains are narratives, but the site itself and the way it is presented isn’t. however, going through the site, it did kinda feel like a hypertext narrative. while it was not written by one author with a specific narrative intention, it still has those attributes of the open endedness of the hypertext narrative. there are unlimited possibilities of which story you will see next because each page links out to heaps of other pages that link out to more so that no two journeys through the site are the same. but, even if it allows us to endlessesly scroll through a bunch of mini stories, the cowbird platform is not itself a narrative, it is a database, a collection of stuff, tit bits and stories. it is a scale free network, people can constantly contribute their own content and it will be added to the network and connected to what has been shared by others.

so that got me thinking… is the internet just a giant database? i mean, it doesn’t really just seem like a list to me, it’s so much more. but it also doesn’t really tell a story, unless you look at it metaphorically or something and it can tell the sotry of the evolution of mankind over the last couple of decades. i mean, we pretty much have everything online and all that content together can show how society has changed. i guess that’s kind of not a narrative. maybe it is, society is affected by cause and effect and it all goes online. but probably not. well… i tried.

well, that’s anything of any sub par level of intelligence that i have for you tonight. however, there is another pretty cool site thats kinda like cowbird (and also nothing like cowbird)  called “stumble upon” which you give in your preferences (such as your likes and interests) and it just finds random pages from across the entire internet that it think you would like. very easy to lose hours just stumbling across the internet. have fun 😀

 

too weird to live or just too weird?

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so, the greatly anticipated (well, mostly by me) new Panic! at the Disco album is out. its called “too weird to live, too rare to die” and lets just say that calling it weird is being easy on it. i was excited, i love these guys. yes, it was devastating when they split up due to musical differences and Ryan and john went their separate ways but “Vices and Virtues” (which was the album brendon and spencer made by themselves as the remains of Panic! at the disco) was great, i even preferred it to their previous album, “pretty. odd.”.

and so, i was hopeful for this upcoming album. no, the singles didn’t get me too excited (although i can say that i prefer “this is gospel” to “miss jackson”) but they’ve never done anything i haven’t liked before. Panic! are known for changing their style because each of their three previous albums have sounded completely different to the one before it. and, even when i haven’t liked the music or the lyrics, brendons voice has always saved it. he just has the most incredible vocal abilities and he can make anything sound beautiful. want an example? check out “Northern Downpour” off their second album. or even their original and best known single, “I write sins not tragedies”.

but, no matter how hard i have tried, or how many relistens, i just cannot get behind these songs. maybe it still needs more time. it shouldn’t but maybe it does. yes, i was prepared for a change, but not this. its just too many elements that i don’t like combined without enough stuff that i do like. of course, this is all just my personal opinion and i know there are fans out there who love it. and because it’s Panic! i will continue to listen and will always love them, but i find myself believing  that had i not already been a fan of this band, there is no way i would listen to those singles and it would want to make me check out the album. none of these songs make me want to buy the CD.  For me it’s just too much techno/electric/autotuney i don’t even know how to describe it. but it’s not my style. i like rock/punk bands and this is far from that. it’s all synths and computer music. and the most frustrating part… you can’t even hear his voice!!!! its covered up by all the effects put on top. it’s like they auto tuned him, but he has one of the most incredible voices ever!!!! and you just can’t hear it. and some of the lyrics are supremely average, i’ve never been a fan of one line songs or one line choruses, sometimes there ok but most of the time, just no.

the other hard thing for me is that this album was streamed online almost the same day that the also highly anticipated  extension of All Time Low’s most recent album, the now aptly named “Don’t Panic! its long now”, was streamed online. so i put them both into a playlist on my iPod to listen to them together. and its just so painful moving from the new All time low songs (which also included four beautiful acoustics of songs off the first part of the album) to the Panic at the disco songs because of the drastic difference in the songs. for a perfect review of All time lows “new” album, check out Bec’s blog where she pretty much sums it all up when she says “they’re yet to release a song i don’t like”. and this new extended release is no different and in my opinion has some of their best songs yet. for a comparison, check out the two songs below.

 

all in all, i still love Panic! i’ll still wait eagerly for the next release and next change. i’ll still be standing their singing my lungs out when they eventually release an australian tour date. i’ll still buy their album (although this is the first time i’ve ever even thought about not buying it). and i’ll still probably call them my favourite band (although All time low is very very close to taking that title (and may succeed if i can’t find more redeeming factors about this album over the next week)).

song’s i actually do like off the album (and this is like in a very loose sense of the word because if it wasn’t Panic! i don’t think i’d like any of them) are “this is Gospel”, “nicotine” and “collar full”. yes, 3 out of ten. i feel devastated. maybe it just needs time. hopefully i can come back in a few days (ok, maybe weeks) and tell you i’ve had a sudden change of heart and its the best CD ever. but until then, i’ll be listening avidly to “Don’t Panic! it’s longer now” and trying to push this “too weird too live, too rare to die” out of my head.

oh, and here’s another awesome review of All Time Low’s new album