Hey Interwebs,

So during this weeks symposium/lecture we once again like the past many weeks answered the questions provided for us by another class:

• Can technology progress independently of art and culture?
• What is the untapped potential of hypertext?  Will we ever be satisfied with it?
• Have internet users lost a sense of privacy?  Is blogging a form of narcissism?

These questions sparked a large amount of debate, especially between Adrian and Betty who seemed to “agree to disagree” as they explained to us. The first question was already borderline “philosophical”, it brought us the idea of what differentiated art and culture with technology? Was there a culture out there that doesn’t have technology? The Ancient Egyptians had highly sophisticated forms of medicine, economy and art which allowed them to thrive for a long period of time. Whilst the Greeks were beyond their years when it came to mathematical and scientific discovery. These cultures definitely lived alongside not only art but technology, without it neither they or us would have the theories and knowledge we have today.

Then there comes the discussion of tools and technology. Is a tool a piece of technology? Are they the same thing? Well it depends, Betty said that she firmly believed that they were not the same thing, a tool can be used to create art, such as a paint brush, pen or pencil however that does not make it a technology and therefore technology and art are independent. (Wow this is getting so complicated…)

Anyways, the next question revolved around the idea of the potential of hypertext, now I’m still a little iffy about what EXACTLY hypertext, it’s kinda like I know but I don’t know the specifics of it? But it was argued that some guy called Ted Nelson (whom I just did a reading on) was a little annoyed because the link between two texts were only a one way street rather then a communication line. Therefore is one text is deleted then the whole link itself is… as oppose to?? I mean, even if it were a two way street if one side of the link was destroyed then what would happen to the link itself? Either way the link would disappear, would it not? Or maybe I’ve just missed something along the way (probably…).

Moving on… After this week I’ll have my mid-semester break! Can you believe it? Already halfway through the semester!!

…and also aid your teachers with their tasks. Due to the fact that there is about 900 other students participating within this course and our lecturer attempting to link all our names constantly, it apparently got rather.. stressful. Therefore we are now required to post about the writing of others, which isn’t too bad cause now I can see the ideas that others have posted on here!!! :3 :3

Carli talked about the idea that ‘Experiential learning is the process of making meaning from direct experience’ which basically means that we learn through experiences rather than just “passively” learning. Once upon a time when I studied psychology, I did discover that certain actions and can only be taught through experience and repetition rather than just looking at the theories.

Monique mentioned the VCE scaling system that we have and how much it determines success. She argues (to which I completely agree) the reason why VCE is so strongly associated with “success” when it was been scaled in reference to other scores within the system. This argument resonates strongly within me as a student who has just come from the VCE system, I can honestly vouch that VCE and ATAR testing is not a direct result or measurement of intelligence. It’s just how well you play the VCE game.

Maddison reiterates the analogy within the Symposium for week 5:
 If your tyre goes flat, and you jack up your car and replace it, you are not instantly a professional mechanic. Highly trained engineers were the ones who designed the mechanics behind those steps and made it oh-so-simple for you. Without them, you would have been in struggle town. 

This is in regards to being network literate, I am tech savvy and I always have been. Within the household if there are any issues with any of the computers my parents always come to me before anyone else, they literally think I am a tec god or something. But that doesn’t mean I am, they simply view me as one because they don’t know anything at all about the internet or networking.

Hello Interweb,

Since I didn’t attend the week 5 Symposium and I’ve just caught up on the reading (whoopsie daisy) I’m just going to smash both out in one go instead.

So for the week 5 readings we’re talking about Hypertext, now like I said in previous posts, I SUCK at doing my readings and digesting the information within my mind. And so this reading was fun (considered the poor quality of the scanner) in terms of the amount of times I had to re-read certain sentences. Anyways, back to the point, my first question when reading this is what the potential of hypertext is for the future? More specifically: my future? It is theorised that all “future individual texts” will be linked together. Does that mean I could read a book and they can link it to the movie trailer on youtube? Which I do say would be pretty cool.

Think about it this way: you go to a library looking for a book to use for your research. You find the book, however whilst flipping through its pages you discover that it refers to another book or article or researcher that you want to discover more information about, so then you go searching for that book, once you’ve found it, you also discover a word that you don’t understand and need a dictionary for and so the process continues. Now image the same scenario except with a library you have all your texts encoded into ebooks, that is the beauty of hypertext and the hopes for our future. That rather then just having to carry actual books or going to the library we use hyperlinks to link multiple text together and this can be all done is these texts were translated into hypertext.

Of course this is just an example. While there are many who do use a complicated hypertext system it’s probably going to be a while before we can link together the 4,000,000,000,000 posts online and on the World Wide Web.

Now to the symposium, since I didn’t attend I’m just going to attempt to answer some of the questions asked myself (despite the fact that it was my class that thought of them.)

1. How is hypertext relevant to us as media practitioners?
2. What predictions about network literacy should we be aware of?
3. What are the consequences of being network illiterate?

One: the relevance of hypertext to us? Well… To be fair media these days is often digital, and the ability to link to more than one text within a single page in itself is probably rather useful. For those who want to go into producing digital media hypertext will probably change the way we create and write, rather then presenting text and information in a linear format we can start thinking about it as a sharing platter where everyone is connected with everyone else.

Two: I kinda have no idea, the main one I can probably think of is that network literacy will become primarily digital, it’s faster, more efficient and easier to distribute to those around us. Like I mentioned in a previous post, as soon as some form of news breaks the first thing we do is head to our laptops, ipads or phones.

Three: Depends on what we define as “illiterate” But I’d say that despite my parents not understanding the difference between Facebook and Skype, it is important to understand the way the internet works. Especially security and safety, it’s okay not to understand why it works the way it works but not know the dangers of being online can have large ramifications.

Hello my little Interwebs!

This week has been absolutely *crazy* especially with assignments and such so I’ve been behind on my reading, although on the positive I finally posted my 4000 draft posts… finally. Anyways, as the weeks go by the reading seems to be getting more and more… technical? I don’t even know the proper word to describe it, but basically a side story, my ability to retain information is rather… pathetic. As in most of the time it goes one ear and out the other, so you must understand my first world problem when it comes to these readings.

Nevertheless we shall continue onwards with: Bush, Vannevar. “As We May Think.” The Atlantic July 1945. The Atlantic. 19 July 2013.
Not going to lie this was the reading that was easiest to read for me and didn’t kill my eyes because the others were rather poorly scanned in so I just decided to choose this one for the sake of my failing eyeballs.

This reading was kinda… different? It talked about science and the growth of scientific theories throughout the past couple of decades. How it’s bettered our understanding and our communication skills. I was surprised that it had little to do with hypertext or coding (which I guilty assume that the other two readings where but hey if you give me the power of choice I’m going to abuse it a little…). Photography is a large example used within the article, the first camera in the world couldn’t even take pictures of humans because we moved too fast and there wasn’t enough light whilst nowadays we can capture images of stars or even bullets through mid air!

It really made me think about what we would all do if scientific discovery never really… happened. I mean a while back during a stormy night the power at our house went out and we were forced to sit in the dark without any electricity. The first thing my parent’s and I did? We checked our phones, which in some cases was completely useless as our wifi was out. My mum particularly who spends an alarmingly large portion of her day attached to her second-hand iphone was at a complete loss on what else to do and began to panic. Then dad and I panicked because we were running out of batteries on our phones, ipads and laptops.

My family literally had a little freak out because there was no wifi. Which is when I began to realise how important the internet had become within our lives, that we can’t even go 2 hours without it!! Talk about crazy.

If science hadn’t of made break throughs in cameras or if the development of culture and discovery had stopped completely, think about how we would be living? No electricity, no internet… NO FACEBOOK OR TUMBLR? Pretty cray cray I say.

Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.
– Stephen Hawking

P.s. JK Rowling released a new story today!! So the people of Pottermore were right!~

Hi Interwebs,
Once again for this lecture we were given a set of questions to answer:

1. How can you judge the validity of things on the internet?
2. What are the limitations of network literacy? How does it differ to print literacy?
   • What limitations do both literacies share?
   • What strengths help compensate for each other?
   • Can they work together?
   • Are they destined to be rivals?
3. Should network literacy be focused on in earlier education?
   • Can it be taught formally?
   • Is there a formula for blogging? Like how essays have one?
   • What do you think the solution is? Should we let kids teach themselves through doing?

I feel as if we are doomed to never really answer all the questions that we receive…

The validity of information we find online can be quite… untrustworthy… As you discover by websites like The Onion. Which prizes itself on false (but really hilarious) news and the tremendous amount of people they trick everyday. However we were discussing in class and I realised that it doesn’t matter how public and open the online world is, any information you discover there will be more valid than anything you’ll find in a book or library. How do you know the book you’re holding is valid either? You really don’t because that information is probably a decade old, whereas the information that you find online is probably 2 weeks old and probably way more accurate despite a random posting it. There, of course, will be many indicators that information from a certain website will be correct, educational websites and Wikipedia should be the most accurate. Despite what many think of Wikipedia, there are actually a group of professionals hired that are there to make sure Wiki stays on the right track when it comes to correct information and sourcing.

Of course: Always double check the information you’ve been given and the date it was written.

Secondly, network literacy vs print literacy, who will win? I’ve already made a previous post about this (due to a previous reading regarding this decision) and I shall say it again: NETWORK LITERACY KICKS PRINT LITERACY’S ASS!! Example: the day of the symposium, was also the death of beloved comedian, Robin William (RIP), and before the tabloids can even print it on paper it was already all over Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter… any social media and you would have discovered the news. When some heard of the news from friends, instead of going and purchasing a local paper they instead chose to Google it, that my friends, is the power of the internet and network literacy.

Not saying that print literacy won’t ever come back into fashion again. I personally prefer printed books as opposed to ebooks or audio books, and the same concept with magazines. The main issue is that information defiantly travel’s faster via the internet.