Hypertext, Hypermedia.

When it starts with the claim that “there is a Chapter Zero, several Chapters One, one Chapter Two, and several Chapters Three” you know it’s not going to be your average uni reading.

I definitely didn’t understand close to everything in Theodor Holm Nelson’s ‘Literary Machines’, but what I did get was just how revolutionary and forward-thinking this article was, originally published in the 1960s.

The first thing that resonated with me was the acknowledgement that the reader “may or may not feel that you understand it fully”, and this proved to be true for me.

The most important aspect that I took out of this reading, and why I believe it to be relevant to our course, is just how revolutionary Nelson’s idea of ‘hypertext’ was back when he coined it in 1960, something that we now have complete access to, and is fully utilized in Networked Media. Through our blogs, we can link to other information, either more of our own writing or someone else’s, and this can lead the reader on a voyage across the internet if they wish.

The author, who himself coined the term, defines ‘hypertext’ as “non-sequential writing – text that branches and allows choice to the reader – best read at an interactive screen”, this is the World Wide Web that I am currently using, and our blogs typify this newfound freedom and abundance of opportunities.

Nelson goes on to state that “there is at present no way to gather, and save, and publish, the many documents and scraps that people are writing on screens and sharing through an immense variety of incompatible systems”, but now, in 2013, there definitely is.

Nelson envisaged the Project Xanadu, a hypertext system designed to support all the features of these other systems, and many more, but this still hasn’t eventuated. Nelson’s future has, however, been somewhat achieved through Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web, based around Hypertext Markup Language and the sharing of information across the world.

Many of the statements regarding the affect that this hypertext would have on society are clearly applicable to our course, and how we have to adapt to its new teaching style. Nelson says that “if you don’t get it there is no persuading you; if you get it you don’t need to be persuaded”, something that Adrian said in as many words in the third ‘unlecture’. Similarly to Adrian’s points, Nelson also states (correctly) that hypertext and its effect was a “manifest destiny” where there was “no point arguing it”, just as this new way of teaching may well become the norm in the near future.

The standout quote for me was far and away:

Education can leap forward into new curricular structures that eliminate sequence and promote initiative and understanding

In my view, this is exactly what Networked Media is aiming to achieve, with it utilizing this hypertext and the boundless opportunities that accompany it.

Wine Glasses, Gaffes, And Scaring Children: Election Week #1

The first week of the election buildup featured pretty much exactly what you’d expect: mistakes, petty insults, and little substance.

In a week where Australian politics got its very own versions of much maligned American politicians Sarah Palin and Anthony Weiner, it was a farcical and slightly comical beginning to what will be a very long election.

When the weeks starts with the revelation that a chairman of an Ethics (yes, ethics) Committee sent his mistress pictures of “his penis plonked in a glass of red wine”, it’s probably going to be a bad week. Yep, Coalition MP Peter Dowling’s attempts to one-up Weiner were revealed, and he promptly stepped aside, but we’ll have to live with that mental image for the rest of our lives.

Carrying on with the ‘let’s embarrass Australia internationally’ theme, Jaymes Diaz’s catastrophic interview went viral and made the headlines in the US. LNP’s Diaz claimed that the party has a “six-point plan” to ‘stop the boats’, but after being asked a total of eight times to reveal these, he could not. Diaz stumbled through the painfully cringeworthy interview before finally being saved by a disapproving minder, and slowly backing away from the interviewer, looking dazed and lost.

This typified how the campaign so far has been solely focused on catchy slogans and the go-to line of ‘stop the boats’, without any real substance from either Party.

You’d think that a candidate being unable to detail any of his Party’s key policies would be the biggest gaffe of the week, right? Wrong. Oh so wrong.

Enter Stephanie Banister, the figure-head for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party. Banister showed a predictably awful lack of basic common knowledge in the interview with Channel Seven, which included the phrase “I don’t oppose Islam as a country”, reference to the Koran as “haram” and claims that the national disability insurance scheme was “working at the moment”. It doesn’t begin for another three years. In another embarrassment for the country, this interview also went viral, and has led to many accurate comparisons with the one and only Sarah Palin.

Not surprisingly, Banister is also facing criminal charges after allegedly placing anti-Muslim stickers on supermarket products, which is probably what got her into the One Nation Party in the first place. Mercifully, she has now resigned.

On the topic of actual policies, the week was rather sparse. The focus, as usual, was on economic issues, with each side announcing one big spending policy. Labor announced an extra $450 million for out of school care places, while the Coalition stated that it would cut company tax by 1.5%.

Meanwhile Kevin Rudd visited a lot of schools and Tony Abbott visited a lot of factories.

Will it get any better tomorrow? It’s debatable.

The People’s Media

The idea of us, as students, being “knowledge producers not knowledge consumers” really stood out to me during Adrian’s ‘Unlecture’. I think this is an accurate way to sum up this entire network of new media, instead of being passive consumers of it, we can now actively create and disseminate pieces of media that interests us.

The aspect of this that most interests me is that of ‘citizen journalism’, when normal people become involved with creating the news and conveying the facts through the avenue of new media. This has been seen on social media sites such as Reddit and Twitter, and gained prominence following the reporting of the Aurora Cinema Shooting and the Boston Bombings.

‘Citizen journalism’ has it obvious and widely publicised flaws and downsides, such as questions of accuracy, defamation, and trust, but I think it is an exciting and innovative way to find out about the news, and in turn allow the audience to become ‘knowledge producers’.

Nowadays, virtually every news story breaks on Twitter. The very first early witness reports or photos will slowly spread to other social media sites and traditional news sources, but with this new media, the best way to keep up to date is to be on Twitter and the like. I think this also allows for more personal, and sometimes honest, reporting, as it is initially coming from people that just happen to be somewhere, and just happen to document the newsworthy event that is taken place.

There is the argument that this rise in citizen journalism is contributing to the perceived ‘downfall’ of traditional journalism, but I think it is more than possible for the two to work together. If done well and cooperatively, both traditional journalism and citizen journalism can complement each other, and ensure that the people get the most accurate news as possible. The news first breaks online on social media, but it still requires professional journalists to get the backstory, and the inside story, and possible consequences, in a way that is impossible for a normal citizen.

This is a TED talk by Paul Lewis, where he details this new phenomenon of ‘citizen journalism’ and how it is revolutionising the reporting of information, as well giving some relevant examples. I found it extremely interesting, and I also think that it relates directly to Networked Media, and how these networks that we are studying can be utilised for good causes.

Unlecture #3

Much like this week’s ‘unlecture’, this one might be a bit of a rant.

The third ‘unlecture’, and it was tempting to just call it a ‘lecture’, seemed to me like a lecture about being different, while not actually being all that different in itself. It mostly revolved around a select few’s complaints and questions on the subject and its apparent irrelevance. I think by this point, a quarter of the way through the semester, we should start focusing on the core elements of the subject, rather than trying to justify it to a handful of people.

I think this subject could be great, I really do. I love the idea of blogging about it, and this forces me to actually do, and more importantly, reflect on, the readings, lectures and tutes, as well as giving us the chance to interact with our peers and see their opinions.

I’ve found the readings very interesting, although slightly too broad, and I can see how they’re directly related to the course.

I like the idea of the ‘forum-style’ lectures, and hopefully this will begin very soon with Brian’s return. I thought both Elliot and Jasmine’s input was insightful and refreshing .

I’ve really enjoyed an array of the points and ideas that Adrian has developed in the previous two unlectures, and I’ve found that these are applicable to my other subjects, and my out-of-uni life as well.

But, a quarter of the way through the subject, it doesn’t really feel like it’s really begun properly, in its entirety.

I also think that it’s a bit of a ridiculous contradiction to not allow laptops. I completely understand the reasoning behind it, but to me, it’s all a bit counter-intuitive, and, dare I say it, resembles single-loop thinking. With the amount of freedom and responsibility that we’re endowed with in this subject, we should be relied upon to stay focused even while using laptops. There have been numerous points and quotes from Adrian that I’ve taken down, but I find this much harder when writing, and in a rush to transcribe it before the next point, it’s often illegible. The responsibility should be on us to still pay attention, and we should be allowed to use our laptops to take notes.

All in all, I found this lecture a bit disappointing, but hopefully it’ll pick up again by next week, and we can get in to ‘real stuff’ of Networked Media.

By Design: Part 2

The second of this weeks readings on ‘design fiction’ is the intimidatingly titled Design Fiction As Pedagogic Practice by Matthew Ward.

Despite its title, I found this article reasonably easy to understand, with it detailing how the concept of design fiction can be utilised in education.

I found the opening line of the featured Fictional Futures to be especially noteworthy:

The transformative potential of Utopia depends on locating it in the future, on thinking through the process of transformation from the present, and identifying the potential agents of transformation. (Dark Horizons)

We’re not looking at things like Star Wars, but rather speculative, possible things that education can be. The Networked Media course is based around a ‘speculative design’; it evolves and adapts in a way that we as students can influence.

Design, by its very definition, deals with the possible future, it involves designers and innovators sharing what they think the future could hold.

Because of this, fiction is so much more than just meaningless fairytales. In many ways, works of fiction can be a more relevant and effective means to convey new ideas and social transformations, just look at something like 1984.

In the world of this course, our blogs are our opportunities to practice this design fiction. Through this avenue, we have the opportunity to openly criticise and offer constructive advice for the course as a whole, and this is something we definitely don’t have in any other subject.

These blogs are also areas for us to experiment with different designs, through posting in different ways and focusing on different ideas.

Ward goes on to list many ways in which education can utilise design fiction, many of which are in practice in NetMed.

The first one that stood out to me was “Normalise to persuade…new ideas, objects, and behaviours are difficult to imagine and assimilate into our view of our everyday lives”. This subject is undoubtedly different to any other that I’ve undertaken, and for many, including myself, this has been slightly difficult to adapt to. Through blogging and explains these ideas, they can slowly become more ‘normal’ for us.

Number 6, “Make space for experimentation” obviously calls on our blogs as areas for this experimentation, for us to speculate on how we want the course to go, and what we would like to achieve.

The writer also identifies that “Things that work don’t create interesting stories”, as evidenced by the popularity of dystopian films and books. The NetMed blogs actively encourage criticism and advice, and this has ensured an interesting and productive discussion across them.

He says that design fiction creates a “sandpit for reality…a safe ground of play and opportunity”, and this is the exactly what I believe our blogs are for.

Finally, the article states that “people are the protagonists in the production of reality”, and in this course, we have been put in control of its direction, with our blogs providing the area for experimentation with design and speculation on what the subject should entail.

By Design

This week’s readings revolved around the concept of ‘design fiction’, which, as sci-fi author Bruce Sterling defines it, is the “deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change”.

It took me quite a while to get my head around this concept, but I think I’ve worked out that it involves using fiction to speculate on how the future will be, or to experiment with new ideas.

The first reading is a simple, and mercifully short, interview with Sterling, where he details this intriguing concept. He identifies the fact that for something to qualify as ‘design fiction’ there must be “serious design thinking behind them”, rather than just showy drama, such as zombie movies.

Design fiction can often be seen in the smaller, background pieces of information in fiction, and as Sterling states, a relevant example is that of 2001: A Space Odyssey, where characters are shown to be using what resembles an iPad.

The film was released in 1968. The first iPad was released in 2010. Director Stanley Kubrick was speculating on what direction technology could practically go, and he got it exactly right. He got it so right that Samsung attempted to use its appearance in the film as evidence as prior art before Apple’s patent.

I can’t count how many times I’ve watched/read science-fiction and thought “that would be cool if it existed”, and this is an example of the effectiveness of design fiction. Sterling labels it a “new set of tools that…[are] giving futurism a second wind”.

There are numerous examples of design fiction featuring in movies and short films, such as this one, Fly Me To The Moon.

This short details possible developments in electronic payment; it has obvious, and very real potential to be exactly what happens in the very near future, but it is still viewed as ‘sci-fi’.

The thing that first jumped to my mind while going through the reading was 1984. The iconic novel is the most obvious example of design fiction, showcasing a dystopian future of constant government surveillance. Now, unfortunately, it seems as possible as ever, with recent NSA developments and the like.

Unfortunately, one of the most promising and exciting pieces of design fiction, the hoverboard in Back To The Future, has still not come to fruition.

I think this the idea of ‘design fiction’ is crucially relevant to the course of Networked Media, as this is the way that it will be taught. It is run on a ‘speculative design’, one that will adapt and alter itself with how we interact with it. In many ways, it is a practical, and grounded-in-evidence, vision of how media course will be run in the near future.

Who knows, one day, maybe our blogs will be looked back on in the same vein as that iPad in 2001, as a precursor to the norm?

Sufjan Stevens – Ten Years On

A month or so ago I wrote a retrospective on Sufjan Stevens’ album Michigan for Tone Deaf. It’s one of my favourite albums of all-time, and it was a rewarding and interesting experience to write an article about it, and investigate its origins further.

Last year I completed a four month long internship with the music website, Tone Deaf. It was a rewarding way to apply many of the things I’ve learned so far at uni in a practical sense, such as in interviews, reviews, and news-writing, and I’ve been able to continue this through being a writer and columnist for Tone Deaf. I was able to meet a lot of wonderful people and it really helped me to realise that writing, in some shape or form, is what I want to do for a profession.

One of the things that I love most about Sufjan’s music is the extensive backstories and historical facts that he includes in them. While you don’t need to know these to appreciate his wonderful music, they help to add layers to the songs, and I found this across Michigan. The songs are all based on Sufjan’s own experiences and upbringing in Michigan, as well as the state’s history.

On ‘Flint’, he details the problems of unemployment and homelessness that has pervaded the city, and his vulnerable and faltering vocals are just brilliant. Every song is meaningful and emotional, and the album as a whole is addictive and serene.

While many see Illinois as Sufjan’s best piece of work, it’s hard for me to go past Michigan. It’s just so intimate, emotional, and delicately crafted, and I always find something new on each repeated listen (which happens a lot).

The whole retrospective is over here at Tone Deaf HQ. 

The Journalistic Muscle

In the networked world of new media, we have an abundance of opportunities and means to create content, and for this content to be seen by people across the world,  allowing for unlimited ways to develop our own writing and abilities in the media.

During a Reddit AMA, I was lucky enough to have Alan Rusbridger, the Editor-in-Chief of The Guardian, answer two of my questions.

These AMA’s typify this new network of media interactions and opportunities that we all have access to. A whole range of people, ranging from normal people that have experience extraordinary things, to an array of celebrities, have participated in these online interviews of sorts, where anyone can ask questions, and the interviewee can choose what to answer. In an AMA, the middleman of a publicist or specific interviewer is removed, allowing fans to connect directly with their idols and find out what they really want to know.

I found Alan Rusbridger’s interview particularly interesting, with it focusing mainly on The Guardian’s role in the recent NSA leaks by Edward Snowden, and the implications of this, as well as more general insights into journalism.

My question to Rusbridger was a simple but important one for myself: “What advice would you have for a journalism student attempting to get into the industry at the moment?”.  Journalism is a constantly developing and adapting industry, and I was interested to see what the editor of one of the most reputable and successful newspaper, both online and in print, would say to the masses of us studying the trade at the moment.

Due to the sheer luck of being online when the online interview was started, Alan Rusbridger answered my question:

Main thing is to publish. Blog, tweet, write, photograph, tweet, video, code, play around with data – or a combination of all of the above. a) it will keep your journalistic ‘muscle’ in practice. b) if you’re any good, you’ll get noticed.

And bear in mind you can do these things at other places than conventional news organisations. Many businesses, NGOs, arts organisations, public bodies, universities, etc are now publishers of extremely high quality stuff. Good places to practise your craft before moving on.

I found this to be an interesting, useful, and even inspiring answer, and one that also serves to justify, in a way, how this course is run.

I love his notion of a ‘journalistic muscle’, and how we must be constantly writing and ‘training’ this muscle in order to hone our writing skills. Maintaining something like a blog is a great way to do this, but as he states, there are numerous other ways to do this.

Rusbridger acknowledges the importance and prominence of social networking in journalism and the media, and doing something as seemingly mundane as tweeting can help to improve your writing skills, as well as get yourself noticed. Nearly every point that he covered as good ways to ‘publish’ are included in the Networked Media course, and I think the fact that we are expected to do three or more posts each work is a good way to force us to train this writing ‘muscle’.

Rusbridger also identifies that “if you’re any good, you’ll get noticed”, and this is a testament to this new networked society; it is just so easy to write something and for it to be seen by numerous, like-minded people, as well as potential employers.

Our Networked Media blogs aren’t just for the tutors and other people in the course, they can be viewed by anyone and everyone, and are an opportunity to bulk up our journalistic, or media, ‘muscle’.

My other question was more specific, and related to the recent series of leaks facilitated by journalists, and how the outcry and reactions from many areas of society affect the industry: “What, in your opinion, are the implications to journalism following the reactions to the Snowden leak and the recent result in the Manning case?”.

And his reply:

Mostly, it’s all bad. I don’t think most news organisations have remotely considered the threat to journalism potentially posed by the methods revealed in the Snowden documents. One basic question: how are we going to have secure communication with sources in future – by phone, by chat, by email, by anything except face to face contact? And, obviously, the use of the Espionage Act – a first world war panic measure passed in 1917 – to clamp down on whistleblowing is really dismaying. But the US still has the First Amendment. Wish we had one of those in the UK.

In his answer, Rusbridger identified how this networked world can be abused and become dangerous for journalism and the media. With the constant surveillance over many online activities, that was in part revealed by Snowden’s leak, it is becoming much harder for a journalist to keep a source secret. I found his comment that he wished the UK had a replica of America’s First Amendment striking and relevant for us, as we in Australia also don’t enjoy this constitutional right to free speech.

Just having the editor of The Guardian answer a nobody like me’s questions shows how brilliant and powerful this networked world is, and hopefully creating content for this blog will help to train my own ‘journalistic muscle’ that Alan Rusbridger identified.

Splendid

Over the last week I was lucky enough to review a handful of Splendour In The Grass sideshows for Tone Deaf. The only thing that nearly compares to attending the festival is going to as many of the sideshows as possible, and this has become an annual tradition for me, as the cost associated with Splendour are far out of my uni student price range.

Everything Everything (Source: Clash Music)

On Friday night it was British weirdos Everything Everything at The Corner, who proved why they’re such a buzz band at the moment. It was an intriguing and genre-bending show that was led by frontman Jonathan Higgs’ incredible falsetto.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra (Source: Consequence Of Sound)

The next night was one of my favourites at the moment, kiwi/Americans Unknown Mortal Orchestra, along with stoner-rockers Wavves. UMO were just incredible live, playing material mostly from one of my favourite albums of the year, II. The talented trio extended and teased out every song, taking every opportunity to provide an elongated jam. I also found Wavves surprisingly enjoyable. Being not all that big a fan of the band’s recorded material, I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but they were very entertaining.

MS MR (Source: Lost In Concert)

After a much enjoyed night off, on Monday I was at The Hi-Fi for MS MR. Although quite liking their debut album, I found them slightly underwhelming in a live setting. Lizzy Plapinger’s vocals were undoubtedly brilliant, but the set sounded similar throughout, and the band’s awkward stage presence didn’t do much to help.

Darwin Deez (Source: Magix)

My final Splendour sideshow was Darwin Deez back at The Corner on Wednesday, and it was an absurd, ridiculous, and thoroughly entertaining way to finish the run of shows. The band obviously don’t take their music too seriously, and their live act is just fun and enthusiastic, including many choreographed dance routines interspersed in the set.

I’m already excited for next year’s Splendour In The Grass, perhaps more so for the sideshows rather than the actual festival.

Unlecture #2

The second ‘unlecture’ for the semester was like diving into the unknown once again. This was the first week of the ‘Q&A’ still forum, with all the tutors and Adrian fielding our various questions about the course.

It begun with Adrian asking us all to put away our laptops, and while I completely understand why this was done (who of us can honestly admit they’ve never spend a whole lecture browsing their various social media), I think it was slightly counter-intuitive to the subject as a whole, one that’s called Networked Media. I think the opportunity to do a ‘live blog’ of sorts for a lecture would be interesting, a stream-of-conscious style post on the things we immediately take out of the lecture, and hopefully we’ll be allowed to do this in the future.

The most important thing that was covered for me was the concept of liability with our blogs, and how even if someone else comments with something offensive or copyrighted, we can get in trouble for it. This unfortunately often leads to bloggers just blocking comments completely (and fair enough), although they can often lead to worthwhile discussion. This is something that is crucially important to us as we’re starting up our blogs, and think we all have a better idea of the issues surrounding it now.

I like the style of a ‘Q&A’ lecture, but I think it will be much more effective as we get further into the course, and semester. A lot of the questions were very basic and revolved around things we can easily find in the course guide, and I think some of these were written just for the sake of writing a question. But the concept of a forum-lecture is brilliant and will definitely be useful later on. When we’ve only got 50 minutes, I think it’d also be better to do away with questions written on paper, and as suggested in our tute, something like a live Twitter feed could be cool and effective.

So far, I’m finding it refreshing and interesting to be taught in this way, and I think it will only get better as we all get used to it and adapt to this different style.