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.

Ello Interwebs 😀

So for week 3 I read the following:
1. Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge
2. The Age of the Essay

Network Literacy talks about the difference between print literacy and online literacy. The first example of print literacy talks about books and libraries (much like our previous symposium). They use the example of a student named: Penny, who goes in search of a book to use for her essay/research. Now to be fair, when I haven’t really used the library for research… ever. The only times I’ve ever used the library was for books that I wanted to read (e.g. Harry Potter), by the time I began needing to research the internet was already at hand. In fact, I don’t remember how it happened, but whenever I need to find out a fact the first thing I go to is Google and/or Wikipedia. It’s kinda scary how that its more of an automatic process and I don’t even realised how I got to this point.

So what’s the difference between print and online? Well, firstly, I don’t have to leave the bed to use the latter. But most importantly it is the way we can share, access and be constantly updated on this information. Whilst print literacy has a limit, e.g. sharing with others, updating, online literacy obliterates those obstacles. And we don’t just have “articles” we have blogs, social media, forums and even videos, on top of that, all this information is constantly being updated. And even better we can bring all that information together in an RSS feed, a program when can link together all the readings you are following, basically… It can’t get any easier. The only real issue is that the validity of the information you have is give or take so you must make sure to double, triple check the info.

The Age of the Essay is about the way we write essays and what is considered a “real essay”. I’m not going to talk to much about this because the whole reading fried my brain (just a little it was REALLY long), but not going to lie… I’ve completed 13 years of school and up until that point I still didn’t know what is defined as a “real essay”. To be honest I don’t really enjoy writing essay’s but the majority of the time we do that because your school asks you to do it and so then we follow this structure for the rest of our lives. Fortunately, as soon as I completed my english exam the first thing I threw away from my brain was this structure, I’ve always wondered: Why can’t essays just display our knowledge and understanding? Instead of marking it on fancy words and a solid structure, isn’t the most important part the actual information that we learned? In all honestly, I was taught that as long as you use “big” words, a good structure and present a idea (for example an point about the book you’re writing about) that is partially unique, then you’re guaranteed a high mark. As opposed to someone who presents a good idea and solid argument but average essay structure.

What a shit…

~Abrupt Ending~

Allo Allo Interwebbies!

Regarding this article about one of my favourite Youtubers: Michelle Phan

This isn’t going to be a large post, I’ve just been reading this article and I think its absolutely ridiculous the way that this whole issue is being dealt. I mean, yes I do like MichellePhan but if I really believe that she had done something wrong then I wouldn’t hesitate in pointing out that factor. However in this case MP has gotten rights from the original artist and according to the article she had gotten rights from the record company (Ultra Records) in the past.

So basically? Ultra is looking for a bit of MP’s cash, it’s no secret how much you can make if you’re a famous Youtuber, and to top it off she’s recently released her own makeup line and announced her new book. Safe to say, she’s making quite a bit of dough, and Ultra wants 1.5 million of it.

This is what gets me mad, I do acknowledge that MP has a lot of “haters” but this is a professional record company, who does a better job at lawsuits then actually promoting music. LAME

Welcome my Interwebs!

This post is my response to THIS ARTICLE so go check it out when you can, it rather interesting!
And for those lazy-asses out there the article talks about a guy called Frank Moorhouse who’s suggesting that instead of punishing those who download media illegally and attempting to prevent this issue altogether. We instead try and work along side it by getting the original artist paid WHEN we download certain media (e.g. Music, movies…).

Whilst I think this is a good idea there is a lot that bothers me about this idea and statement.

There is a system where we can download and pay for media, in fact there are multiple systems such as; itunes, spotify, netflix and even youtube is in on the game. I think the issue that everyone here thinks is present is the idea that purchasing media by hand now is considered cumbersome and dreadfully annoying, but that is not the case. The real issue here is that – especially here in Aus – they really charge a load for media, actually no, rephrase, we just don’t have enough money to spend on something that we could get for free to begin with and we’re willing to risk it.

I mean, I could spent 99cents/$1.29 on a song on iTunes or I could find it online for free? Which option would you choose? I mean it’s not like I wouldn’t purchase something online, but that would mean that I completely support the artist/creator… or that I couldn’t find it for free… YOU GET THE IDEA. Anyways, I’m not saying that stealing is good, but people have to be reasonable and understand that the majority (not everyone of course) will take the free option. I could be wrong, but that’s what I’ve been lead to believe, especially when prices can be quite high. Once I tried purchasing an audio book… for $50 (approx), a single audio book for $50??!?!?! But it only took me 2min to find a free version online that wasn’t even pirated!

If people want to find a system where we’re not going to steal or pirate and just plain buy their media to support the artists then they need to find a balance between pricing and controlling websites who pirate their creations. I mean if they charged me $5 for that bloody audiobook then I wouldn’t have hesitated in purchasing it, same if it was for a movie or if a song on iTunes was 50cents instead. I know that I might be sounding unreasonable or crazy, but this industry must understand why we would choose to steal content above all else. And maybe Moorhouse trying to get this point across, but I feel that even if individuals do make media cheaper to purchase there will always be those out there who are looking for a free option. And so unless ALL the free content is taken off the internet (which would be near impossible) or the world wide web was taken down we may never be able control the flow of free and illegal content.

I don’t think piracy is going to kill the music industry. But digital technology and the ability to download will change the packaging from CDs to a single-based business.
– Richard Parsons

(A/N: I realised that half of my posts were never posted because they were all still – by accident- under “draft” …. oops my bad…. So there’s just going to be a huge amount of posts in the next 24 hours)

During this week’s lecture we raised the following questions (made by one of the classes)

1. How much freedom do we have when writing critically of others or others’ work before we become liable for defamation or copyright infringement?
2. Copyright protects published content, however this protection does not extend to the ideas or concepts that this content was based on. At what point does content or “fact” become an idea? And vice versa? For example, if someone were to publish the ‘secret’ or methods to creating content (for example someone were to reveal a magician’s trick, or the recipe to the big mac secret sauce) does that constitute copyright infringement?
3. How are copyright laws policed, and who is responsible for policing them? *in a culture of remix, re-blog and re-post

Although as usual when discussions and tension’s run high we never got through answering most of the questions, however there was a crucial point that I learnt in this lecture: what you said on the internet is public and it can come back to bite you.

Yes my little Interwebs, as much as we feel like the internet is our little slice of heaven, where we could just vent our sorrows and wishes, it is not. The internet is a very very very very public forum where anyone can see what you have written and what you have to say. Now when I was younger and foolish, I ran a blog where all I did was rant and bitch about the experiences in my life, of course now I know better and those posts are long gone… mainly… HOWEVER that is not the point! The point is that you keep your online persona… reasonable? If that’s the proper word to use, the internet is not your diary so please don’t treat it like that. Think of it more as your… decoy diary, if your little brother was going to creep into your room and read something it would be this.

Secondly, talk about what you know and what is the truth, in Australia, there are no laws protecting you against this whole idea of “Freedom of Speech” if you go around trolling and spreading nasty lies about someone/something the chances are they’re going to see it. Now if they’re as useless and small as you are on the internet, the chances are you’ll be alive and kicking. If by poor chance they’re a super hardcore CEO of a giant industry… Better you wear some clean knickers I say. Even if you write something with the intention to cause no ill or harm, this is all dependant on the interpretation of the information your present.

So for the sake of humanity and your criminal records, don’t slander people for their: gender, age, race or religion online!!! You may present an argument if you’re ready for the onslaught, but make sure you differentiate between criticism and opinion. Despite that I do know many who present their own opinion of these topics online (more on that in a different post).

“The main thing that you have to remember on this journey is, just be nice to everyone and always smile.”
– Ed Sheeran

Hello Interweb!

So last week during my first tutorial class for Network, all the students received a checklist for customising our blogs and such. Being the AWESOME student that I was, I may or may not have completely forgotten about the list… which is why I turned up to my second class confused on how many blogposts we needed and not really having anything Network Media related at all… FAIL WHALE. Hence the catvideo, forgive me my tutor for my inefficiency. Anyways… IN DIS CLASS WE DISCUSSED….

Copyright laws and Internet Memes
Consider this: you take a photo, post it in a public area online, an individual sees the photo, takes it and turns it into a meme. The meme blows up and the dipshit who stole the image in the first place is lost in the sea of people that is reddit/9gag/some other website. Due to this fact you can neither prove that this image was stolen from you nor who was the one who stole it so you can gain compensation. Balls.

That’s the thing about copyright though, even if credit is given by the distributer, it doesn’t matter as long as the original artist does not agree with releasing their material, they can still sue the pants off ya. Luckily, if you’re smart then you’ll know that the internet consists approximately of 100329059358290582930582903 people of which you can disappear into.

Despite the previous point, some fair use of material include: satire or parodies, or (as seen in the readings) some artists can provide us with certain rules so that we are allowed to share their content on the basis that we follow these rules. E.g. crediting them for their work, informing them before we change it…etc. (Also know as Creative Commons)

We also made a flow chart/diagram/mind map (Kinda reminds me of highschool…) on…

What is the internet?
Internet VS www (world wide web) – Domain – home – webpage
Internet = Roads (On anything else that doesn’t need a browser)
www = Buildings (In a browser)
Webpage – book page? – content – purpose? – interaction – intention – content draws audience but does not limit them
Google – judge by number of links people put to – quality vs quantity

(Yeah sorry, that was the best way I could type out the diagram, I’ll make sure to get an actual photo next time.)

Some other sort discussions we had were about:

– How to get popular/views/seen on the internet via our blogs, before we all came to the unanimous conclusion that a unique online identity seems to be the best way to get recognise.

– Cookies – the crumbs of your web browser that connects to you to webpages that you have visited

– Kickstarter – the Potato Salad project, this kid literally has about $52,000… just to make potato salad, if I had known that was all it took to make cash then I would have made as much potato salad as the internet wanted. Fuck a day job, I’m going to make some potato salad.

This was an early screenshot I found, but now it’s literally raised up to $52,000!!!

Talk to you all soon my lovelies!

Creative Commons

What is it? That was the first thing I thought about when I watched the introductory video I was given, no actually I’m lying, the first damn I thought about was how someone could draw such a fucking perfect image of the earth.

Moving on…

Basically, a Creative Commons license is a free licensing tool that allows artists to share and the public access to use their material with given boundaries/restrictions.

There are many different types of Creative Commons License’s available for artists to choose from depending on how much freedom they wish to give away.

E.g. Allowing your work to be used by others as long as you are credited, however they are not allowed to change the material in any form or manner, nor are they allowed to gain profit from selling/distributing your material.

CopyRight

The overall theme of this week’s readings was “how do I avoid a copyright dispute on my blog and end up paying my life’s supply of money?” Establishing what we are and are not allowed to share on this page. As well as the protection we receive for our content, such as if we post a photo or video are is completely our own.

To me is seems as if everything these days has some form of copyright within it’s name; images, videos, song lyrics and even certain words when used in the wrong context. We can’t insult, we can’t copy, we can’t even sing a song without technically breaking the law.

I guess what everyone is just trying to tell us is that our own digital footprint can be your best friend or worst enemy, don’t insult and don’t touch what isn’t yours. Whilst some care little for what happens to their content as long as they’re name is the one that appears under the title: Artist, there are many out there who will go the distance to make you life shit. Why? You may ask, because they’re private about their content, and if it’s popular enough they will want to protect it just the same way you’ll want to protect one of your assets.

Be safe online my children!

For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.
 – Margaret Heffernan