Welcome to another late post Interwebs,

Going back to week 7’s readings, we had the Potts Murphy Theory on Technological Determinism (To my displeasure) and an interesting collage reading – screenshotted directly from “Adrian’s kindle for mac”.

So for those who don’t know Technological Determinism is a theory and belief that our culture and society are primarily motivated by the development of technology. A good example is the use of mobile phones, they have quickly grown within the past 20 years and nowadays the majority of people carry them.

A technological determinist might argue that due to mobiles we can not communicate more efficiently and that without them we would still be stuck making phone calls at home. Of course that also comes with risk such as texting whilst driving, online predators…etc. However, maybe a non-technological determinist (someone who is against this theory) challenges this argument with the fact that mobile phones have changed the way we live, the drive of our society is not dependent on the fact that mobiles have been invented.

Despite the fact that I never want to really talk, let alone think about technological determinism (along with the rest of the year level) I do concur that I don’t necessarily see myself as a technological determinist, rather I believe that many factors drive our society. Things such as pop-culture, government, economy… there just seems to be too many things to take into account before we can come back to technology as the main motivator. Maybe us humans simply evolve… because we do? We change not because someone has invented a new mobile device, but rather because we crave change. Any agree? Yes? No? Meh…

The other reading we did was a collage. Super weird, basically there were patches of text that were listed down the page, of course when looking at a collage is it important to never reading in a particular direction or manner, just be random. I think since we’ve been talking about reading books lately in class, this was a good reading to relate to the idea of “when does a book begin and end?” or “When does a story begin or end?”. Same question applies here I guess, where do I begin reading and when do I stop? God knows, I like to be told what’s in my meals rather than just putting it in my mouth and taking a guess. Which is probably why I was a little uncomfortable about the concept of having a reading with no beginning or end, just our own decisions. Well…Crap.

During the Week 7 Symposium we talked about both the conscious and unconscious of our minds. Things that we consciously do and things that we subconsciously do. I mean, they talked about how easy is it to trick our bodies. You can trick your body into doing plenty of things these days, some people even attempt to trick themselves into losing weight!

The questions posed:

1. Which is more important in making a great book, form or content?
2. Without a conventional narrative structure, how much control does an author lose?

Which to be honest, I think we strayed pretty far from…

We ended up on the idea of semiotics, and how the way we are taught as we grow can affect the way we view certain things. Words are not necessarily linked with an object, but with the way we perceive that object on a personal level. Example, when I was growing up I was really bad at sitting still when we were driving around in our car, so a way to get me to stop bouncing off the walls was to tell me that Taxi cars were in fact Police Cars. I literally spent all my childhood being afraid of taxi cars… My parents thought it was hilarious of course, but I guess it had to end sometime. By sometime I mean one of the many 10000 embarrassing moments that were my life, basically, I was hanging with a couple of neighbours and they were running around on an EMPTY (I emphasis the empty) road, and I see this taxi car parked across from us. So obviously the first thing that I did was start screaming at them to get off the street before we get in trouble to the other kids confusion, and that my friends was how I learnt that taxi are not police cars.

So in this case, the object (Taxi) for me up to a certain point was a symbol of police, although thats not what they really are and probably don’t give two shits of all us kids running around, but it was what I was told and so I associated the two.

ANYWAYS, the point that was summed up with the idea: words are only defined by what is difference, a word can only mean something only by what it is not rather than what it is.

The Magic Bullet theory was also brought up, not the theory about the assassination of the US President, but the Hypodermic Needle Theory (different name, same theory) suggests that us humans all will wholly receive information in the same way and react in the same way. It’s not difficult to believe that this theory isn’t very popular these days.

And finally the question was asked: Are we egocentric? Narcissistic?
I honestly can’t talk for everyone else but my answer? FUCK YEAH. I am someone who can be shameless and be selfish during certain times in my life. Which also shines through when I’m blogging and so what? Didn’t people realise that it’s all about the online persona that gains the attention of readers? If you’ve read XiaXue’s blog then you’d know that despite her pretentious and vain personality, people love her!

Remember kids, even if you’re a egotistical bitch and I, along with the rest of the world hate you, I’d still love to hate you 😛

“I am better than you and my blog will forever be better than yours” 
– XiaXue via this video

Hello my Interwebs!

How have you been? Good? Good.

I am literally the laziest person to ever walk to earth right now cause I’m attempting to complete work from week 6. Don’t hate me for posting this so late and for it popping up on your reading list-thing (I dunno). Plus it took me a solid 5 minutes to dig up posts from that week, so there we go! That’s my punishment right there.

Marcus talks about how despite those who think that books will “disappear” he thinks that they will continue to live in our lives. I agree, I have always been a book person and I’ve never enjoyed ebooks or audio books for that matter, I think it’s because I’m a visual person I prefer the comfort of reading rather than looking at a screen. Each to their own I say.

Monique writes an entire post composed of all three aspects that we need completed per week – because she’s clever and not lazy, unlike me – she agrees that the “possibilities are unless” when it comes to the untapped world of hypertext and the plethora of things that we can achieve. I am, personally still coming to grips with the way hypertext and hyperlinks work, so I honestly can’t begin to imagine what we can achieve with it.

Claudia after completing the reading asks the question:

When do you decide that you are at the end?

Does the reader become the author?

Once you’re finished, what happens if you pick up the book again and are in a different mood? Won’t that change the ending you have created?

Which are some pretty top-notch questions if you’d ask me, when I read the book I usually accept the ending that the author has given me, and I only ever re-read the book so I can experience the same feeling I gained from when I first completed the book. I mean for those who’ve read Harry Potter, don’t tell me that you’ve never skipped to the end of The Deathly Hallows just so you can experience that tearful moment when Harry, Ron and Hermione end their tale and that they’ll never be another book again. *tears*

Here’s an hilariously adorable picture so no one can get mad or annoyed at me for being so behind –>

Mwah~

Allo my little Interwebs,

I’m the worst student in the world, because I have about 3 blogs to write and about an hour to write them. Joy. Time to start smashing them out like candy I guess. (But shhh, don’t tell my teachers!!). During week 6 our readings talked about the restraints of print literacy and how we interact with stories and/or books.

One main point that stood out to me was “interactive literacy” and that books were “primitive” because they “restricted” us. It got me thinking about how much literature has changed over the past few years just because on the internet and technology developments. Apple came out with iBooks and along with that some interactive textbooks for students to use. A couple of years back I came across a story about a young girl who was raised to be a sacrifice in a Pagan-cult town, purely printed online and free (It was a strange story, I’m not sure if you could find it again). Even these days at uni I prefer to type my notes and read my readings online rather than printing them out, however if you were to place my laptop in front of my parents the first they would request would be a pen, paper and a print out copy of my notes. But then, to us, that’s restrictive, if we write in pen, we’ve made a possibly permanent error on our page and cleaning it up would just be a bigger hassle.

Another thing it made me think about was video games, yep, those small cartridges that hold so many hours upon themselves. I am personally a HUGE fan of video games, especially those with a good storyline. So after reading the two chapters it got me thinking: are some video games a form of storytelling? There are even games where you’re forced to make decisions and then your ending will be based upon those choices you make, which can be fun… unless you’re indecisive. I mean for goodness sakes there’s even dating sims!! In Japan there are literally games where you make choices and attempt to gain the attention of a partner within the game, which, if it wasn’t for the fact that some creepy guy married his DS is actually a rather good testament for how far we’ve come from day to day books.

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!~