I  like chris’ analogy of ‘the city’

I went to the Infinity Dome on the weekend. The concept was great, a pop up planetarium that brings astronomy to a wider audience. The implantation was a little less great, the clarity of the images were definitely not as good as an actual planetarium but it is exciting that this kind of stuff is happening and available to people. The technology will improve and it’ll only get better.

Technology does not define culture, although it has certainly been used as a tool to shape and influence it. Technology in every sense of the word has been used to progress civilisations, so what does identifying oneself as a Melburnian mean? Mebourne culture is unarguably a result of 200 years of technological advancements and improvements, forming what we have today. Used as processes and tools to aid our routines, businesses and doings. Our culture identity forms independently. The dependablity on technology is fundamental to our culture, but certainly not what defines it.

In the unlecture Adrian explained hypertext in the way that it is the gaps between links that  create the story in narrative. Just like in a film, the editing between shots express emotion and feeling.

The 80/20 rule is a natural phenomenon.

I don’t think I had actually ever known that there was a word for it but its something that is extremely evident in a lot of different systems.

The network takes this 80/20 rule, therefore it is natural.

The network creates its own structure.

It is natural but not arbitrary.

Links increase exponentially, filing a webpage into the 20%.

Popularity promotes attention.

Last night I watched a documentary about the incredible artist and activist Ai Wei Wei.

His presence on Twitter is part of a Chinese social media that extends beyond the great firewall, put in place by the Chinese government. He believes that “connection is an extremely important part of both life and art”, and whilst his popularity in China remains relatively small, he is increasingly idolized in the West.

His involvement in the network is a platform to inspire global audiences, push boundaries and challenge Chinese authorities. Something that in our democratic society we are free to do, but for Ai Wei Wei is a dangerous act of defiance.

This is an example of someone who has realized the potential of social media and the network to reach and inform on a massive scale. Using social media as a weapon against the authorities he records and shares everything. And that’s how you make people notice.

His website.

One of my friends sent this to me yesterday, I thought it was spot on,

” We cannot hope to solve tomorrow’s problems with yesterday’s problem-solving paradigm. Exclusive reliance on incremental, adaptive responses will no longer suffice. We are deep in a planetary emergency now. What is now needed to meet the challenge that faces the human race is a new mode of response, an evolutionary quantum jump, a new order of regulation in our species…”

*did not happen*

When Adrian described the linear way in which we learn and understand history, I was reminded of a reddit post I read a few days before.

The way we remember history in separate causal linear progression is extremely evident is the surprising realisations;

When construction of the Great Pyramids started (4500 years ago) there were still wooly mammoths living on Wrangel Island off the coast of Siberia,

Mozart’s heyday was about the same time as the American Revolution,

Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the exact same day,

The Guillotine stopped being the official method of execution in France the same year that MS-DOS premiered,

Prisoners began to arrive in Auschwitz a few days after McDonalds was founded,

The Pueblo Indians were building Mesa Verde during the heart of The Crusade

Slavery was made illegal in China the same year that the first commercial flight took place. 1910.

The lack of a network structure in our understanding of history means we do not get a complete relational perception of important events.