Ladies and gentlemen, let the first UNlecture begin! Well technically not the first, but it was the first with a full panel with the return of Brian, and I would say the best UNlecture so far.

Some of the questions that were covered this week:

What is the practicality of design fiction for people who are not designers? What separates it from science fiction?

It was found that there are multiple modes that seperates design ficiton from science fiction. Design ficiton is a completely future orientated practice with designers premised on making a change tomorrow, rather than thinking this is how it was done yesterday. Brian noted that design fiction lets you think very differently and creatively about what counts as evidence as a way to shift it out of ‘design’ and into what we do.

As content producers, is it more important to speculate far into the future or pay more attention to the present?

The panel noted that forecasting a trend into the future makes it less obvious on how it’s going to evolve. And that you can’t perpetrate too far into the future without seeing the problems of the present. It was interesting to note the idea of memory in the first world and how it is easier to remember how you found something than the actual information itself… and no that hasn’t happened to me…

How is a network influenced by its constituents, and how does it influence them?

For this question the types of contituents in a network needed to be identified. Such things as space, time, self, knowlege. Brian noted the idea that technology surrounds us, but also constructs us. I found this a very valid point as we seek structure in the technology we allow to influence our lives.

On the topic of structure have to say that the structure of this week’s UNlecture was far better than the previous ones, it helped to have the time built up around main questions and from that link to other topics.

It’s week three of uni and having had three UNlectures I can say I like the concept, but I do think there needs to be less structure to the actual going about of the hour. Anyone should be able to jump in and add or counter-argue what one person is saying in order to make the environment collaborative.

And no electronic devices? Fair enough studies have shown students in particular may not be able to multitask, but to say in one lecture that ‘we’ have to be responsible for our own leaning, and then put up the ‘scalfoding’ of Secondary School of no electronic devices is conflicting. If we are responsible for our own learning we then should be able to determine what is right and wrong to do in context. We spent a lecture talking about how these devices we have in our pockets have and are in the process of changing the world,  so why then make us put that piece of technology away. I personally prefer to write notes down as I have always recorded it that way and it is a thought process that works for me. But different people have different ways they live with these devices, and if anything shouldn’t we be embracing it.

This week’s UNlecture really focused on the blogs for the course and it was helpful to get some information regarding all the technicalities we should know about; like copyright, content we should post about and security. But I think the key idea of the UNlecture was ‘participation’ and just how important it is in this course. The fact is that the assignments are a product of your own nurturing, and primarily what you achieve is up to you.

Aside from the content, I did find the UNlecture to still be in a lecture-ey format with Adrian up the front talking for majority of the time. Like he noted this is somewhat to do with the architectural structure of the room, as it’s built up around the notion of how the space should be used, slanting towards a common viewpoint. However I think that the UNlecture has the ability to develop into a more discussion based environment with time. I like the idea of handing paper around to write down questions to be answered, but perhaps this could be done beforehand as it takes some time to sort through the paperwork before actually getting to the questions.

Lecture – An educational talk to an audience, especially to students in a university or college.