Chicken or the Egg…

Talking about the ways in which new media are studied and experienced as historical subjects, this week’s reading suggested something that I found very intriguing. Lets momentarily remove ourselves from our daily technological whirlwind. Everyday we’re so caught up in texting, emailing, tweeting, blogging, liking, hastaging..the list can go on and on. Yet, how often, if not ever, have you thought about how all of this came about. Just like the ancient old question, was it the chicken or the egg  that came first, which came first in the development of ‘new media’? Was it the development of technological methods and devices in which resulted in advance, interlinked communication? Or was it the development modern ideas of communication that sparked the development of technological devices that allowed for such communication desires? Perplexing isn’t it! As easy as it would be to pick one, both options are equally viable. Does the newest version of Facebook come out because we need better ways of communicating or because the website technology was developed first?

Searching through the many interesting posts of other students to see what they have to say about this weeks content, I find that Monique has tied her reading in with the discussions from this weeks symposium. Monique reflects on the secondary reading from this week by Manovich. Funnily enough though, I also found that there are linking ideas from Kenton who also see there to be no beginning or end to databases. Similarly, Monique finds from Manovich that ‘the database in itself is always growing, and, like hypertext, becomes increasingly more connected and is never complete. There is no beginning in certain databases, nor is there a final link.’

source: http://stevemouldey.wordpress.com/2014/07/14/why-does-education-have-so-many-chicken-and-egg-arguments/

source: http://stevemouldey.wordpress.com/2014/07/14/why-does-education-have-so-many-chicken-and-egg-arguments/

Film Review: Spike Jones – ‘Her’

Original. Unexpected. Creepy. Modern. Radical. Intense.

These are only some of the words I thought after watching Spike Jones’s film ‘Her’. Based around lonely and socially withdrawn divorcee Theodore, the film follows the life of the love letter writer as he struggles to understand ‘love’ in a world that has lost it’s grip on technology. After Theodore purchases the latest talking operating system fully equipped with artificial intelligence designed to adapt and evolve, he finds himself falling further and further in love with his virtual system. Always available, supporting, caring and fun, Theodore loses complete sight of ‘Samantha’ as a production of extensive technological development and instead sees her as his lover. Blinded by his aching loneliness after his split from childhood sweat heart, Theodore becomes disorientated with normality and removes himself from reality in order to feel and be loved.

With both a beautiful music score that perfectly embodies the themes of love, companionship and the need to find humour somewhere in between and a captivating colour palette of tonal reds pinks and oranges, this film is brilliantly original in what you see, feel and hear.

Yet as unusual and unlikely as the story of ‘Her’ may be, there is no denying the plausibly of some of the concepts Spike Jones imbeds throughout the duration the film. The story of Theodore, lost in love and the extensiveness of the technology that surrounds him, certainly made me question what is store for us? Do we find comedy in this film because of the genuine humour or are we simply trying to laugh off the subtle hints of a possible future? Through a unique blend of comedy and romance, Spike Jones presents a very thought provoking film in a quirky yet heat warming way. 

 

You many not be bilingual, but you can be biliterate

Sitting on the train this morning, reading this week’s content I realised that I was quite literally surrounded by everything that Adrian Miles was talking about in his piece about ‘Network Literacy’. Looking up from my laptop, almost everyone that was on the train was holding some sort of electronic device capable of enabling the user to read, write or listen to anything that interested them on the web.

Yet whilst reading up on the differences between print and network literacy, it made me think, for the amount of people that pour their time into the online world, how many of them actually understand it? How many people are simply ‘computer literate’ yet are naively ‘network illiterate’? With the world now being so technologically dependent, print literacy is fast becoming next week’s topic in your weekly highschool history class rather than something that is being taught and practiced on an every day basis.

Being biliterate, therefore understanding and practicing both print and network literacy is now something that is a necessity rather than a unique, personal characteristic. Unlike the real world, in the online world of websites, RSS, HTML, blogs, links, search engines, tags, subscribers and live feeds, writing is not about who wrote it, but about what is written. Throughout network literacy, you are what you write.

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