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Monthly Archives: September 2013
POTTS AND MURPHIE: ALL ABOUT THEORIES
The Potts and Murphie reading was about key theories relating to culture and technology and our society. Here’s a list of the key points I took away from reading:
- Poses the question are technologies neutral in themselves? So, does the way they are used determine their cultural impact? Or do technologies have intrinsic properties that shape the cultures into which they are introduced?
- Technological determinism refers to belief that technology is the agent of social change
- Technological determinism is linked to idea of progress
- TD considers technology as an ‘independent factor with its own course of development and own consequences’
- Ideas that we live in an Information society or Computer Age ‘betray the technological determinist notion that society is shaped by its dominant technologies’
- Consider whether society is shaped by its technologies or are technologies shaped by the needs of society?
- Alvin Toffler’s idea of the “Future Shock” which warned that ‘post industrial societies need to protect themselves from dislocating effects of automation and computer-based technologies’
- Theorists focus on the way a new technology creates new potential and possibility for human thought, expression or activity
– McLuhan’s theory: All technologies are extensions of human capacities
tools and implements are extensions of manual skills, the computer an extension of the brain
– Media are technologies that extend human sense perceptions
FRIENDSHIPS
This was originally published on The Teenage Girl’s Survival Guide
Friend ~ “a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard” .
Sitting in the computer lab after school hours, You Tubing the Elephant Love Medley from my favourite movie Moulin Rouge and singing along, I knew I’d met one of my best friends.
Bonding over our mutual love of Ewan McGregor, secretly reading the Vampire Academy in our religion classes and re-enacting scenes from Titanic, my friend Jade is one of those rare finds you meet in high school and know you’ll have for life.
As you grow up you realise the importance of quality over quantity in friendships. You learn it’s not about having as many friends as possible BUT about having real, true people who’ll have your back no matter what.
Friends are what make your life that little bit more interesting. Friends are the people you go on crazy exciting adventures with, the ones who know your secrets, your flaws, your strengths, your embarrassing moments and love you for being you.
Think about the friends you have. What is it you look for in a good friend? Similar thoughts, beliefs, interests? Or the opposite- drastically different personalities? What draws you to each other?
Different friends offer you different things. There are your childhood friends, your family friends, your high school friends, your work friends, your uni friends. There are the people who come into your life briefly before shortly exiting and then there are the ones you know will be there for the long haul.
I’ve got friends who won’t sugar-coat things for me. Who’ll tell me the cold hard truth even if it hurts because- let’s be honest- none of us wants to leave the house looking like a cake faced barbie doll!
Other friends will put up with me whinging and moaning about why my life isn’t textbook perfect and to their credit offer empathetic smiles and pearls of wisdom.
You know you’ve got good friends when they let you call the shots on where to go for coffee every time even if it means walking the distance.
Good friends are there in emergencies, will hold your hand when you’re scared, wipe your tears away and hug you when you’re broken-hearted.
My good friends let me raid their closet at a minute’s notice to find the perfect outfit.
They’ll pick me up, chauffeur me around, take me out to dinner, for coffee, to a movie.
They’ll laugh with me and not at me when I’ve done something absolutely ridiculous.
Good friends will tell you to slow down on the drinks and then pull your hair back when you’re vomiting.
They’re the ones you can go months without speaking to and when you finally manage to see each other it’s like you’ve never spent a day apart.
So if you’ve got all these amazing people in your life, what can you offer to a friendship? What values do you bring?
Are you a good listener? A problem solver? Full of vitality and excitement? Loving, caring, compassionate?
I’m sure you girls know friendship is about give and take. You have to put something into your relationship in order to get something out of it.
Friendships can be fragile things; hitting highs and lows. One minute you might be doing absolutely everything with a person and the next you can barely stand the sight of them. Sometimes it’s worth mending your friendships and other times you’ll be happy to ‘break up’.
Remember that no one is perfect. You’ll make mistakes, get into fights, be disappointed and disappoint others. Maybe you won’t always agree with the choices your friends make and sometimes your friends will be pissed at the decisions you make.
But at the end of the day, nothing beats having true friends to share your life with.
WEEK 9: GALLOWAY ON PROTOCOL READING
This reading was very long however there I do have some key takeaway ideas from my reading.
The reading discussed how the terms ‘diagram’, ‘technology’ and ‘management style’ come together in the modern age to define a new ‘apparatus of control’. The diagram refers to a distributed network resembling a web, technology is the computer and the management style is protocol.
Galloway ponders how the rise of technology will affect our future society and in particular thinks about who will have power and control. The theorist, Deleuze, believes we will exist in societies of control. They will operate with machines, information technology and computers. In this sense, Galloway and Deleuze say that power will no longer reside to the government as command and control will be able to move around.
Galloway speaks about computer protocol and defines it as a ‘set of recommendations and rules that outline specific technical standards’. On the internet, one such body of protocol is known as RFC (request for comments) documents. They are used by engineers who want to build hardware or software to meet common specifications.
Besides this, all this talk about control societies made me start imaging the premises for future dystopian worlds (both fictional and real!)
WEEK 9 READING: CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
The John Potts and Andrew Murphy reading consider the terms ‘technology, culture and technique’ and how they intertwine in our society.
In thinking about what technology is:
- Long history and changing meanings of the word
- It developed with terms like the ‘Industrial Revolution’ to describe the radical restructuring of Western societies as a result of industrial processes.
- During the 1860s, technology meant the system of mechanical and industrial arts
- Technology has now come to describe the overall system of machines and processes
- Contemporary meaning of technology is ABSTRACT. Can be said “we now live in technology surrounded by technological systems and dependent on them”
- Technology in the contemporary world involves cultural values, ideologies, ethical concerns and is shaped by political and economic determinants
The reading then went on to discuss what a technique is:
- Put simply it is “the use of skill to accomplish something”.
- We need techniques to use technologies
- If we lost technique we would lose operational skills and the thinking to produce technologies
Finally, what is culture?
- Very difficult to define
- Can be about self-contained cultures
- Can also embrace all human activity around the world
- Can pertain to the arts or entertainment
- Potts and Murphy think of culture as DYNAMIC and MULTIPLE
- It is dynamic because ideas and values change
- It is multiple because it contains the activities of different classes, races and ages.
- In the words of Brian Eno: “Culture is everything we do not have to do”.
08 UNLECTURE
My main takeway point from this week’s unlecture was about ‘Play, game and stories’. Adrian told us that gaming is defined by the notion of competition instead of narrative which marks a clear divide between games and stories. You can have games without narrative and you can’t win a narrative. What seems to link the two together is the notion of ‘play’.
Adrian explained this idea clearer in his blog post by showing that you can play with both games and stories. So, you can play without needing to win and play with stories and words just like you can play games. When thinking about the word PLAY it is important to note that the end goal is not always winning. ‘Play’ can cause different results depending on what is being played- so playing with a story and language or playing a game. So, while games can have stories they don’t necessarily need to have narratives. The end purpose is to win.
Another important point, was about filtering content on the internet. Filtering means that depth is encouraged rather than exploration. Adrian told us he believes the future of this will see the ‘recommender’ become ingrained in this system.
BOBBIE AND KATIE COLLECTION
This article was previously published on Couturing
Bobbi Brown and Katie Holmes have joined forces to bring you a makeup line ideal for the busy, modern woman. Renowned for creating makeup that is ‘simple, flattering and wearable’, the new line includes the limited edition Bobbi & Katie Palette and the Mini Brush Set, which hit stores from September 15.
The brush set and cosmetic case are sized perfectly to fit your handbag and encapsulate the notion of ‘beauty on the go’.
The Bobbi & Katie Palette is the essential face palette with an interior mirror, eight eye shadows, two pot rouges and a mini eye pencil. Encased in a ‘journal’ that was inspired by Katie’s own journal, the palette is stylish and chic. The shades include neutrals, pinks, browns and shimmery pastels making the palette versatile enough to use for both day and night!
The eyeshadow shades include a shimmery pink chiffon, metallic brown sugar, metallic pink quartz, metallic black cocoa, ballet sparkle, stone, and antique rose eye shadow.
For blush, you can alternate between a lighter pretty pink color or a deep raspberry shade. To line eyes, look no further than a chocolate coloured eye pencil.
To complement the gorgeous shades in the face palette, meet the Mini Brush Set! Taking up minimal space and time you’ve got no excuse not to whip out a brush for a flawless makeup finish. The chic brown cosmetics bag includes four mini brushes you can use with the palette to complete your beauty look. Brushes include the Mini Face Blender Brush, Mini Eye Shadow Brush, Mini Eye Sweep Brush and Mini Smokey Eye Liner Brush.
The Bobbi & Katie Palette and Mini Brush Set retail at $115 each and are available for a limited time only. So get in quick to cut time on your makeup routine without compromising on its quality!
Bobbi Brown is available at Myer, David Jones and www.bobbibrown.com.au
07 READING: THE RICH GET RICHER RULE
The second reading for the week was again by Barabasi, on the “rich get richer” rule. To be perfectly honest, this week’s readings have (so far) failed to interest me. They seem to just drizzle on about nodes and hubs and linking and wind up getting a bit complicated.
Barabasi compares networks such as the Web to Hollywood to demonstrate his points. This is what I got from the reading:
– If networks as varied as the Web and Hollywood both display a power-law degree distribution then there must be some universal law responsible for it that could apply to ALL networks
– The rich get richer phenomenon could explain the power laws
– EVERYONE agrees that the Web is growing
– Despite the enormity and complexity of the web it continues to grow incrementally node by node
– If we consider Hollywood with the Web both start as small networks and then expand as time goes on.
– Most real networks share an essential feature: GROWTH
– We link to things based on our knowledge and experience of the world
– When deciding where to link on the web we follow preferential attachment: So while our individual choices are unpredictable as a group we follow strict patterns.
Hopefully next week’s readings are a little more interesting…
07 READING: THE 80/20 RULE
The Barabasi reading considered the idea of rules to explain the ‘network behind the web.’ Barabasi structured his article around Pareto’s Law known as the “80/20 rule.” That basically said that ‘four-fifths of our efforts are largely irrelevant’.
To explain this point, Barabasi used examples in management. So, 80% of profits are produced by only 20% of employees. Which to elaborate on in terms of the economy seems to say as the title of the 2nd reading does “The Rich get Richer”.
Anyway, the point of this reading wasn’t for us to examine the economy (well perhaps as a side note) but to see how the 80/20 rule can be applied to networked media. In terms of finding an exact science that has created the network, various studies have been conducted. It was hypothesized that ‘webpages are connected to each other randomly’.
Enter: The POWER Law. So basically, this power law doesn’t peak like a bell curve and implies that many small events coexist with a few large events. What they found, was that “millions of website creators work together” (perhaps inadvertently) “to generate a complex Web that defies a random universe”.
And in some way, I think this includes us as we are webpage creators of our own mediafactory sites. Together we create this network that operates the web.