Books and Not Books

Adrian Miles

Very nice read from Stephanie on stories, shapes, and what happens if the shape of our containers changes. Anna has a nice thing about if my day has a beginning middle and end then isn’t it a story? I’ll say no. A story requires causation between the parts, and unless I’m a god, the sun doesn’t come up in the morning because of what I do. Simone has links to other stuff and thanks about how we take things for granted when in fact they are not ‘natural’ or forever (book for instance are only a few hundred years old).

Michael is a fan of reading books electronically (and I’d note these are old fashioned books read on screen, and not yet the sorts of things that books might become when digital only).

More Legals

Adrian Miles

Copyright is a big topic. Changing too. James has things on SOPA and creative commons. Laura has a great summary, and Michael links to a story about piracy and discusses one reason why it happens. Many share this view by the way, the bigger issue is to try and solve the issue (it is what we call a wicked problem). But industry reacts and so wants to make the walls, the punishments, etc bigger, harder, harsher. It is a stick rather than carrot approach, and anyone who wants to change behaviour will tell you, carrots work better.

Network Literacies

Adrian Miles

Niamh with notes from the reading, finding the analogy of print versus network literacy useful. Jamie has notes on double loop learning, network literacy and the essay. Tilly realises that while the internet has been there all along for her, there is not an understanding of it beyond the surface, and worries that no one cares that she writes. You’ll have to take it on faith that this question is asked by every writer, even published ones. Mia has a brief, informed, discussion about network and print literacy, doing a good job of outlining differences. Evan has an excellent summary of the network literacy reading including an excellent take away, and some details about RSS, XML and the rest of that alphabet soup.

And By The Way

Adrian Miles

Another afterthought of the legal minefield, come playground. It is international. So while what I write might not defame someone in Australian law it could in Singapore. And if I turned up in Singapore, and the person I defamed was so inclined, they could launch a civil case against me. It doesn’t really matter where it was published from, for most of media law it is about where it is published to.

Let’s Remove This Concept?

Adrian Miles

To begin with think of it as an ecosystem, and then there really isn’t competition (the idea that nature is a competition was understood to be wrong in about 1960). So we aren’t really competing in any way, academically or otherwise (there is no rule that says only 10% can get mark x).

Symposium 04 Questions

Adrian Miles

The questions of the week:

  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?

Symposium 04 Followup

Adrian Miles

Something that we didn’t get to today (the discussion about patents was probably too marginal, patent law isn’t something we need to worry about) was that when you’re writing critically you are allowed to quote material. This is, technically, a breach of copyright but there is a thing called fair dealing where you can quote something for the purposes of criticism. This does not mean you can also use quotes or extracts outside of criticism, fair dealing only lets us do this for the purposes of criticism.

Symposium 03

Adrian Miles

The questions raised are:

  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…

Brady’s post is useful too.

Thought Experiments aka Provocative Questions

Adrian Miles
  • If stories were written on rolodexes what would they be? What is a beginning and an ending, then?
  • If stories were written on walls, in the round, what would they be? What is a beginning and an ending then?
  • If pages dissolved as you read them, so you couldn’t go back, what would they become?
  • Why don’t stories have choruses, like songs?
  • Why does music (and dance, and sport, and poetry) allow literal repetition, but writing not?
  • stories have description, argumentation, narration, and exposition. Well perhaps not argumentation. Only one of these progresses the action, so could you have a story that was only description? or only exposition? (we have songs, poems and so on that do this…)
  • if this is not a story, does that matter (what is wrong with making films that are descriptions, or expositions?, where does the bias for story come from? Why?
  • is story the great coloniser of us? (We are its vehciles, not the other way round?)