Tag Archives: Networked Media

Notes on reading

Reading: Landow, George P. Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006. Print. (low rez PDF)

  • metatext, paratext
  • ‘we must write with an awareness that we are writing in the presence of other texts”
  • active reader-author
  • Comments as a form of hypertext – active participation from reader
  • Blogs: unsettling the borders between private and public spheres
  • ‘borders of any documents on the internet are porous and provisional at best’
  • links and search tools limit the power of authority
  • When copying exactly a printed text into virtual space, experience and textuality changes, borders are broken
  • Endings: ‘there can be no final word, no final version, no last thought…Always a new view, new idea, and reinterpretation.’
  • Boundaries of open text: it is not a closed, complete, absolute object. Boundaries are blurred, not being what it is. (Derrida)…between absence and presence, inside and outside, self and other.

A rant. A fit – on the symposium

The highlight in this week’s Q&A symposium for me was the debate about whether we need to learn coding to become network literate. As I have mentioned before, it is a choice of words which in turn makes us develop different opinions on the matter. Of course we don’t need to be experts in coding, its not like everyone will get a job or make a living out of it, nor will it harm them to just rely on what is made available to them so far.  However, suppose you are aware that there are things about the network/internet, or ways to do things that may benefit you, would you choose to not know? This knowledge may become handy at some point in the future, or it may just add to our experience of the thing itself, to help us make sense of it. In any case, it is only logical to choose to know more – this is a logical preference not a necessity, not knowing should only be applicable when you don’t have choice. When there is choice and one chooses not to know – that is an excuse. History provides a good enough example that the general knowledge of the average person will only continue to grow. Ignorance may be bliss, but that only remains as long as one is also ignorant of their powerlessness. Knowledge will continue to grow and expand, becoming more accessible to the average person. Despite what I just said about ‘choice’, it is kind of inevitable. 10 years from now, coding might be the basic first year component of this course instead of learning about networked media, which might be a secondary/primary school subject!

Which brings me to my second point…

Too bad we didn’t get to discuss the last question during the session. To generations from early 90’s and older, including myself, the idea that primary school kids and toddlers are growing up with the current technologies and networked devices must seem foreign and not such a healthy idea. Since the internet is already what it is and it all happened before the current generation of kids were born, they are already getting used to technology faster than they can learn to pick up a pen and write the alphabet on paper. Therefore, given their early exposure which allows them to know way more than we do in high school about networked literacies, it is fair to say that these subjects will be taught in earlier education. Kids are already taught through doing. Only generations like ours who adapted to such new technologies during our teenage years will probably need formulas or formal training to challenge the heavy conditioning we had growing up before social and networked media became significant.

First Non-lecture

This week we had our first Q&A style symposium, it was an interactive discussion between a panel of teachers and the students. It was quite an effective way to get the specific information you want to know: although there was a general topic, the direction of the symposium was driven by questions from teachers and students. It was organic and non-directional. Its dynamic structure allowed spontaneity and free flow of interaction. It is constantly shaping much like the internet itself. And on many levels resonate with our blogging experience and this week’s reading, Literary Machines by Ted Nelson on hypertext. 

However, there are some cons to this ‘interactive lecture’. As there is no specific structure, the information that is generated (half-spontaneously throughout the discussion) may not be as clear as if it were planned and thought out sequentially. After all, it is also important to be able to communicate teachings and ideas in such a way that it is well received and understood by many. Also it would be less messy, if one question or answer were finished before jumping around to another idea or in a different direction. With that said, the benefit of a Q&A session is that it allows a topic to then be explored with more depth if it is done in a slightly more organised fashion. 

This week’s session revealed some intriguing and surprising facts: that the millions of Youtube song covers are actually illegal due to the breach of copyrights on lyrics! And that only the copyright owner can prosecute. It was no surprise though that we discovered more grey areas when it comes to policies in the virtual territory. All this makes me feel a little less comfortable than I already was about blogging.

Week 2 in Networked Media

This week in Networked Media, Adrian delivered another fascinating symposium. We were given the challenge to explain and define: What is a book?

Through this thought experiment, conventions and assumptions were once again challenged. Text, pages, words, meanings, beginnings and ends are part of a system we invented and have since been taken for granted as infallible definitions of everything we experience. As we progress in a new world of internet cultures, we are forced to adapt to a world where there is no beginning or end. As we discussed these changes to story organisation, I was reminded of a book I recently came across. In Douglas Rushkoff‘s Present Shock, the media theorist explains the narrative collapse in storytelling in the digital age. He does so focusing not just on the materiality of the traditional and new mediums, but the different temporal experience of the two worlds that affect the way we use them. From reading and watching books and movies that begin and end, we now shift towards a dynamic world of the internet, where we can create our own stories within interactive virtual spaces such as social media and open world RPG games. 

If anyone is interested, Rushkoff is on an episode of Joe Rogan Experience.

Creative Commons

I have thought a lot about how Youtube has allowed musicians to collaborate and virtually perform together. I also heard about actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s online collaborative production company hitRECord, it was a concept that was just as foreign to me as when I got my first email account. But this is the first time I have heard about Creative Commons. Where have I been?! And now it all makes sense!

Discovering this is quite a big deal for me. Thinking back to when I watched this BBC documentary, ‘Planet Ants: Life inside the colony’, about ant colonies as super-organisms that share all information in order to achieve outcomes that are impossible for one. It inspired me to think very differently about the way we should view our world and interact with each other. That we should aim to be absolutely selfless (or rather to expand, boundlessly, what we include as self) in sharing and responding creatively in order to produce an outcome that wouldn’t exist if we hold on to the idea of ownership and confine the way we define our ‘self’.

Just imagine if we behaved as a super-organism, instead of fighting and competing against one another, I’m sure space-travel would be a common means of transport by now.

New perspective on media literacy

The first Networked Media lecture was intense and unexpected. It encouraged the questioning of everything including the structure of this empirical system in university. One of the many fascinating points in the lecture was that the reasons to attend university are changing. Adrian Miles points out that last time it was a matter of scarcity of equipment, facilities, knowledge and expertise. These things were inaccessible outside of academic communities. And that, many of us without any reflection upon this, carry on this assumption today at a time where the internet has made these qualities of university education accessible via tools like Google, Wikipedia or Youtube tutorials. 

Adrian also encouraged the emphasis of quality over quantity in assessing work and educating. These new ways of thinking about learning are refreshing and mind-opening.