Reading 04

Adrian Miles

Now we turn towards the pre-history of the World Wide Web, with maverick genius Ted Nelson’s early self published work on hypertext (when Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first protocol for the Web he was familiar with some of Nelson’s ideas), the even earlier and very famous “As We May Think” from Vannevar Bush, which is of interest not so much for all the predictions but for thinking about a machine that lets connections to be made between media things, and then the much more recent, populist, writing of David Weinberger who outlines some simple ways to think about the Web and how it has inverted what there was before. The Weinberger extract is long, but not difficult, but I’d read the other two first as these have both directly influenced the vision of those who first built the things that the Web is, and relies upon.

Extract from: 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. (PDF)

Bush, Vannevar. “As We May Think.” The Atlantic July 1945. The Atlantic. Web. 19 July 2013. (PDF)

Extracts from: Weinberger, David. Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web. New York: Perseus Books, 2002. Print. (PDF)

Blogging, Um, OK

Adrian Miles

Kiralee has some good questions out of the first reading, wondering how they relate to what could, should, might, happen in your blogs. Angus wonderings about linking, visibility and what might happen (I can promise you it is largely the opposite of what Angus’ speculates), and Kerri–Anne also thinks about the role of blogs in media and at uni broadly. Luke uses the reading to contextualise his use of a blog, and Alexandra is beginning to think what might be good about a blog and the possibilities it might enable, time will tell…

Blogs (2)

Adrian Miles

Niamh with notes from the reading about media education and blogs. Mia on hand writing, journals, blogs, learning and, well, a few things. Luke joins blogging with a film with why (nice work – now think about providing a link to the film when it’s mentioned), and Kenton is thinking out aloud about how or why a blog might turn out OK.

Changes to Assessment

Adrian Miles

At the symposium this week it was agreed to make a change to assessment. The final essay task now:

This task can be completed in pairs or individually. If a complete draft of the writing (minimum 1200 words) is submitted to your teacher by Friday September 26 you will receive a bonus of 5 marks. Work that is done in pairs is expected to be more sophisticated (writing, ideas, use of media, references) than work that is done individually.

The entire task, with the new addition, is available under the assessment menu of the course blog.

Blogging, WTF?

Adrian Miles

Rebecca on blogs, the modern world, and the blogs and education reading. Louis on finally getting started with blogging (and if you want to be a journalist and you didn’t have a blog personally I wouldn’t employ you). Evan on blogging, publicness, the invite and possible value of this. Laura has nice summary of some of the key take aways from the reading, and yes, because it’s public a blog requires a certain sort of writing that you don’t ordinarily do (which is good). Seonaid on post industrial media ecologies, blogging, and the whole nine yards.

WordPress on your Phone

Adrian Miles

There’s a WordPress app that you can get for iOS and Android. Makes it simple to post directly to your blog. But things like Byword (my preferred writing app for iOS) also can post to your blog, and then things like IFTTT (check the tutorials here, under the blog weaving heading) make it even easier.

This proves that I can post from my phone

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As I sit at the tram stop, I am remembering today’s lecture.

Is it true that stories no longer have a beginning, middle and end?

If so then I have just been transported into another  galaxy. I see the Internet to be the home of many droplets of information. Some of these are self contained (with beginnings, middles and ends) others are open ended.

This got me thinking …

Pages, Books

Adrian Miles

In that flurry today missed another naive obviousness. Pages and page numbers. It means things are arranged serially, one after another. In fact most of our technical media – until the computer – has as a default serial ordering. This encourages long forms of narrative that have come to privilege a particular sort of cause and effect, again because the material form of our media encourages and allows this. If we didn’t have pages bound together but small cards that could be shuffled (for example) what sorts of stories, and how we then understand the world, would we have and be using?