This week unlecture was quite hard for me to understand since I don’t know what is “ Gift economy” and never heard of it before.

As I understand gift economy is when you given something just for the sake of giving. As Internet has become huge and become the Universal source of information for millions of people which almost for free and this is one of the gift economy.

However everything have two sides. Sometime it cause troublesome by requiring you know the technique or illegal about “ copyright” issue. Because anything that is posted on the Internet is instantly available to anyone else connected to it. Furthermore, there are no technical limitations to the process of copying: as soon as information is uploaded once, it exists—by the very nature of the technology involved—as an infinite series of copies.

As Richard Barbrook, “The Hi-Tech Gift Economy” explained: “The Net reflects two different value systems. The first is that of open source, inherited from the hackers who invented it and the academics who first defined its structure through their early use patterns (see Janet Abbatte, “Inventing the Internet”). These hackers and academics both functioned on the basis of gift economies, and carried those values over into the design of the Net. The result is a structure that is inherently hostile to the idea of “copyright”.”

The big problem is once it has been uploaded; no one can control the flow of it. For example: the new music video of Britney Spears- “ Work B**ch” has been leaked before the release day and they can’t stop the low quality version is downloading by their fan.

Or The leak of the draft “ Bui doi cho lon” not only shocked the film producers but also has caused the lost of millions dollar since no one would go to the cinema to watch it as Vietnamese-American director Charlie Nguyen expressed his frustration on his Facebook page regarding the leak of the draft, in which the storyline, sound, light, color and special effects aren’t properly edited.

However no one could stop the flow even if the police try to shut down the free movie watching and download website, the other one will appear. Just like the famous download movie website “ Movie 2K.to” been shut down by the police the other “ Movie 4K.to” appeared to replace with the new icon “ F**k Police” as daresay

We all can see “ Gift Economy” from Internet is not always good. It brings benefits to millions people but somewhere in this world still have other (authors, producer, company, etc) who are suffering from what we are enjoying.

For me when walking out the lecture room, in my head a question was raised: Can our own personal blogs be considered part of the gift economy? Are motives the only things that determine whether online contributions are part of the gift economy? since we also contribute something and exchange informations.

Have you ever laid in your bed and just cried? Because you think you’re ugly, because you’re not good enough for anyone, you’ve counted all your flaws from head to toe, making you feel worse. Cried because all the comments people blurt out, actually hurt? Cried because your family is not there and no one never understands you, they tell you to stop complaining, that you have so much better than the kids in Africa, even though they don’t understand your life either. You don’t want to seem like an attention seeker, so you bottle everything up. Around friends , you’ve created this lying smile and people believe it but at night, when you’re all alone in bed, the girl who everyone thought was happy so is crying her broken heart out? Ever done that? You’re not alone, it’s happen to me and if you ever wanna talk, I’m always here because I know what it’s like to not have someone.

Culture and Technology is a comprehensive overview of theoretical developments and debates concerning new media technology. Its emphasis is on the creative uses of new technologies

According to Andrew Murphie and John Potts, “Cultural activities from cooking to music making are dependent on technology”. Culture is heavily influenced by religion and technology in an array of aspects.

Religion has always been a large dimension of culture, but as religion’s curve fades out it is replaced by technology’s curve. There is a great danger lurking as religion dissipates, as its institutionalization fades.

Social construction illustrates innovation as a process of co-construction in our society and relates to how society and technology influence each other. “This discussion has made evident the interaction of culture and technology at all levels. The earliest human societies used technology, in the form of tools and weapons to transform their natural environment. Civilizations are based on, among other things, the technologies of building and writing”

A girl asked a boy if she was pretty, he said “No”

She asked him if he wanted to be with her forever, he said “No”

Then she asked him if he would cry if she walked away, he said “No”

She had heard enough; she needed to leave.

As she walked away he grabbed her arm and told her to stay. He said “You’re not pretty, you’re beautiful. I don`t want to be with you forever, I need to be with you forever. And I wouldn’t cry if you walked away, I would die.”

Although I don’t really understand video game, I was still really interested in the discussion of the difference between hypertext and narrative whether or not a video game could be considered hypertext narrative.

Since the first days of the web people have been talking about hypertext narrative – the ability to tell stories using nonlinear text, linked together and organized through the power of HTML.

In the mid 90′s there were many experiments in hypertext storytelling. Lots of interesting and entertaining work came out of that era, but the technology and user base weren’t mature enough to truly realize the potential of hypertext media for storytelling. Those early experiments led to a deep understanding of nonlinear stories, which we can see manifest in massive video games like Fallout – games that tell a cohesive character driven story while still allowing the player freedom to explore and perform actions in their own way.

While gaming matured and learned how to tell better stories in interactive and nonlinear ways, they are still defined by the concept of competition ( aim of winning) rather than narrative even they can have very cleaver story-lines but there is still the overwhelming desire to win the game.

Gaming is currently being applied to media as Adrian ‘s perspective about reality TV show such as XFactor as ‘games’ bought into reality.

The Rich Get Richer

One of the ways a hub based network can be grown is through “preferential attachment”. When a new node is added to a network, the links from the new node will have a higher likelihood of being attached to nodes that already have many links. For example, if the new node initially starts out with two links, these links will have a higher probability of being attached to nodes with many links. This does not mean that a link will not be attached to a node with only a few existing links, just that it is less probable.

Preferential attachment will favor older nodes, since they will have had an opportunity to collect links. One of the examples of a naturally occurring preferential attachment network in Linked is in networks formed from journal article citations. Early journal articles on a given topic more likely to be cited. Once cited, this material is more likely to be cited again in new articles, so original articles in a field have a higher likelihood of becoming hubs in a network of references.

Barabási-Albert network model