Notes

Symposium #10

Nathan

This unique and deep meaning of power laws perhaps explains our excitement when we first spotted them on the Web. It wasn’t only that they were unprecedented and unexpected in the context of networks. It was that they lifted complex networks out of the jungle of randomness where Erdős and Rényi had placed them forty years earlier and dropped them in the colorful and conceptually rich arena of self-organization.(p.77)

Power laws rarely emerge in systems complete dominated by a roll of the dice. Physicists have learned that most often they signal a transition from disorder to order. The emergence of them on the Internet signaled just such a change and laid groundwork for the establishment of more complex, but orderly, systems of networking.

 

The long tail theory has facilitated an abundances of niches. The internet and the incredibly vast amount of information available has led to outliers, normally forgotten in retail settings, to be capitalized on. This has also given consumers an abundance of choice and markedly lower prices.

Three Rules:

  1. Make everything available.
  2. Cut the price in half, not lower it.
  3. Help me find it.

Symposium #8

Nathan
  • Nothing is neutral; on the other hand nothing is coercive either.
  • Technologies were created with an intended purpose, however that purpose may be lost as the technology is used for different purposes besides the one it was originally intended for.
  • In relation to gun violence: a key argument in relation to gun regulation is that it is not the technology that kills people, it is the person wielding the technology.
    • This can be applied to any technology. E.g. A hammer may have originally been intended as a tool, but it can be used as a weapon, or to destroy rather than build, or as a chew toy for a dog, dinner for a termite.. etc.
  • Networked media and technology follow this same logic with communications technologies in particular.
  • Networked technologies are intricate and complex ‘soups’ of histories, interlocking social reforms, social conditioning etc.
  • Nothing is isolated; everything exists in relation to something else.

Project Xanadu

Nathan

The Internet has come a long way since the dial up days of AOL. Wifi and 3G are commonplace now and hardlines are used now only for a greater bandwidth. We can now download an upload almost anywhere in the world from our pockets.

This is the result of the Internet and the World Wide Web, and although now the notion of this kind of interconnectivity is commonplace, 30 years ago it seemed a space-age prospect. When Ted Nelson was sharing his thoughts on hypertext culture and ‘Project Xanadu’ (essentially a prototype Internet), he was also confessing his skepticism that humanity would even survive to see his predictions realized.

Hypertext is “non-sequential writing – text that branches and allows choices to the reader, best read at an interactive screen” (Nelson). Nelson highlighted this mode of information sharing as the way of the future. He outlined a world in which offices, businesses, and even homes may be paper-less, instead they would be filled with compters.

Nelson praised computers as instruments to simplify human life (simplification was something that he pushed in many different cases pertaining to computers) and the way to do this was to connect them, making information transfer almost seamless. This vision was realised, in a way, through the Internet.

References: Nelson, Theodor Holm. Literary Machines 91.1: The Report On, and Of, Project Xanadu Concerning Word Processing, Electronic Publishing, Hypertext, Thinkertoys, Tomorrow’s Intellectual Revolution, And Certain Other Topics Including Knowledge, Education and Freedom. Sausalito: Mindful Press, 1992. Print.

Xanadu

Symposium #4 Notes

Nathan

How can you judge the validity of things on the Internet?

There are particular conventions and methods to determine validity; news websites in particular have this. They have a look and feel about them that makes them all similar and gives them almost a ‘stamp of approval’

  • Be wary. ‘The Onion’ looks and feels like a real news site but is a parody site.
  • The number of people saying something (in particular news) the higher the chance its is going to be true.
  • E.g. Robin Williams’ death: when I first heard I immediately turn to twitter to check the validity of the statement. When almost everyone is tweeting about it and linking various articles from various news sources, seems legit

Sometimes it’s very difficult to determine if someone/thing is legitimate online.

If you don’t know the topic area of a blog you are reading about, you need to research the area to prove the veracity of the blogger.

Wikipedia is often branded ad unreliable as it can be altered. However often times it is more accurate than the Encyclopedia Britannica.

 

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?

Economic model that under rides it.

Things like print & network literacy did not exist before we inhabited them; they only exist because we decide to use them.

There are a multitude of literacies that we have – How to read a person’s face, voice, gestures, body language, how to read a street signs, how to tell when it’s safe to cross a street. These are all literacies we have.

Third party services in network literate space disempower us.

  • We do not know the binary code to change the colour of our desktop background; a programmer has written a long and complicated code that allows us to easily change it. In this sense we are network illiterate.

However in print we understand thoroughly the intricacies of the medium.

  • If we so chose, we could write a book, collect the pages, print them, bind them, etc.

Symposium #3 Notes

Nathan

1. How much freedom do we have when writing critically of others or others’ work before we become liable for defamation or copyright infringement?

 

  • Blogs are essentially on copyright lockdown
  • Defamation comes in relation to reputation; if your accusations harm another’s professional reputation then you will be open to defamation charges. Personalizing (naming) in a blog is dangerous
  • Separating opinion from writing un-bias in your blog can help to avoid defamation charges
  • In some defamation cases, truth as a defense is acceptable, however in certain cases it is not a sufficient defense
  • It is not a criminal matter until it is brought to a court; copyright and defamation are civil offences, so unless you’re caught you cannot be charged
  • Imbedded YouTube videos in your blog have implied liability with the host site, i.e. YouTube hold liability for that content if it breaches copyright
    • YouTube have algorithms that run similarity reports to check if there are any copyright violations, and videos are automatically taken down – YouTube is kind of safe in this sense
  • It’s up to the original creator and/or copyright holder to police the breaches in that copyright
    • E.g. if a band’s song lyrics are used in a video, or a cover of the song, etc. it is up to the musicians to police that and press copyright charges
  • If you slander someone based upon gender, race, religion, sex, etc. it is illegal; there is no freedom of speech protection in Australia (America is the only country that has enshrined freedom of speech as a protection)
  • Intent doesn’t matter; if it is offensive to someone then your intent doesn’t matter, it is still offense. The same applies to copyright, whether or not you intended to sexist, racist, etc. if someone interprets that as such, then it is.
  • Opinion v. Criticism; criticism comes from a learned perspective. Opinion has no such backing (a mechanic critiquing a car vs. an everyday person)
  • If someone comments on a blog you host and that comment has links to illegal content, you are responsible as the host for that content

 

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?

 

  • You can patent a way to create a certain way, combining various elements to create something like a drug or medicine
  • E.g. Microsoft has trademarked the word ‘Windows’ however windows companies don’t have to pay Microsoft when they use the word in their companies because it’s a different context