In honour of our group work being about youtube, this is one of my favourite all time youtube videos:

literally gets me everytime

however I also highly recommend checking out the college humour channel or honest trailers both hilarious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBsdV–kLoQ

This week I believe we finally saw the Unlecture that the tutors envisioned from the start.

It was engaging, insightful and somewhat delightful.
Inspiring,not conniving I found myself admiring,
The back and forth, to-and-fro of all the things you need to know.
I’m sorry that I must confess,
that I think this week was the best.
Design Fiction one day all real,
makes me feel a certain zeal.
Although sometimes built on unfound truths,
it made me talk like Dr. Suess.
Is that a bad thing?of course not!
maybe just a little bit I’ve lost the plot.

The Unlecture this week I found was uninspiring. I don’t intended for that to come across as a slight towards any of the tutors as I believe they all do a wonderful job, however this week I just felt disengaged to the topics. I’m not 100% sure if it was the way the ideas were conveyed or whether it was the topic itself however at no stage did I suddenly feel like I was inspired to write a post about a certain topics. I did enjoy the contrasting view points from Adrian and Elliot and unfortunately was not able to stay long enough to hear Jasmine point of view as well. It did show how you can take the same idea and present it in very different ways which I found very refreshing. Maybe it was their plan all along to get this exact post out of me from the unlecture…. sneaky sneaky….

I always use to find it fascinating how people discover new music. I imagine people used to, and possibly still do, send in their EPs or mix tapes to a radio station to see if it can get some airtime, however I feel “the times they are a changin’”. I feel it is now possibly much easier for an up and coming band to gain exposure through the immense benefits of social media. Now a band can simply post some of their music to soundcloud or something similar and then post that link to their Facebook, twitter etc. and their product is now available to all their friends, and if their friends enjoy it they can also simply share it, and so on, and so on…

It makes it easier for like-minded people to share and indulge in an ancient pastime that creates a deeper connection than the tangible and dives into the metaphysical to touch your soul. Music has always been a way to feel and understand our emotions better. Some of the greatest pieces ever written have no words and yet we can still somehow understand the emotions behind the song that the composer must have, or wanted their audience to feel.

Overall I feel its very exciting times for new music, regardless of the Biebers and Lil’ Waynes of the world that are polluting the minds of young people on a devastating level that in my personal opinion should warrant a drone strike on those responsible… ok so maybe not that bad but they make me question the right to free speech. I digress, however social media has allowed myself to find and learn to love new bands, which potentially wouldn’t have happened or would have been delayed without the use of social media. It’s essentially taking word of mouth and then putting it to the power of 10 which is fantastic… unless it helps another boy band… please no more boy bands

p.s If anyone wants to check out some music from some young exciting Melbourne bands then go check out  Seven Year Itch and Elephant Ego

https://soundcloud.com/elephantego/sets/elephant-ego

What changes about Networked Media during the winter? Do people tweet more or post more because they are more inclined to stay indoors than to go out? Are there more scathing online reviews for movies because of our inclined cynical nature when the whether is bad? Who knows, however I do know that this certainly embodies much of my feelings towards the season.

Firstly, there is no denying the impact that social media has had on almost all of our lives. On a global scale, social media such as Facebook and Twitter was at the epicentre of the Arab Spring and continue to play a significant part in the ongoing uprising in Egypt and surrounding areas. On a personal level people have an unprecedented level of communication that was unthinkable 20 years ago. Social media has provided us with a broad expanse of new opportunities, however how far is too far? I want to pose the question whether or not social media is fundamentally a good thing for all of us.

I myself am an advocate for social media as I believe the benefits far out way the drawbacks, but what are some of the drawbacks? Of course there are some of the superficial reasons such as popularity amongst the younger generations or online bullying etc. however what are the more broader implications.

It is my essential belief that the CIA has been going the entire wrong way about it. Instead of spying on people trying to learn about them with satellites and spending billions and billions of doing so, they could have just set up a little website. They could have given it a catchy name. I don’t know maybe something like Facebook and THEY WOULD GIVE YOU ALL THE INFORMATION FOR FREE!!! Now I’m not trying to imply that the CIA or NSA or whatever are spying on you specifically because they probably don’t care what you’re doing or who you are BFFs with. However it does bring up the issue of privacy. How does this have anything to do with network media? well glad you asked.

All the information you put on to Twitter or Facebook you do not own (ahh the pesky terms and conditions strike again)

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/382786/you-didnt-read-it

This information however can be used to tailor advertising to you specifically. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Probably not right now. Will it get annoying? It most certainly will. All your information will be shared and stored among other companies to create a utopia where privacy is a thing of the past. It may not be here now but its definitely coming and boy is it going to suck.

At this stage we are all too far deep and interconnected with social media to go back now but you’d be silly to think it’s not coming. Facebook and Twitter are companies that want to make a profit, and they will do so by selling advertising, and that advertising will be annoying and lame just like when youtube started doing it.

Now social media is here to stay and I’m glad it is, just remember that your privacy settings aren’t so private.

In honour of this post being about “spying” I give to you 50 reasons why George Lazenby should never have been a Bond and Sean Connery should never have stopped –

This is the beginning. Not just the beginning of my blogging career, but the beginning of my totally un-bias/shrewd/cunning/genius opinion on all things network media and beyond, which should be considered in the upmost light and never questioned under any circumstances ever… ok so it may be a little bias sometimes but I’m not winning a pulitzer prize anytime soon.

In my first entry I’d like to keep it nice a simple and discuss one of this weeks readings, specifically Adrian Miles’ post on Blogs. (http://vogmae.dropmark.com/133224/2127747) One thing that really captured my attention in the post was under the Consequences and Conclusions section where he discuss’ an online identity. Adrian explains how having a blog allows for us as students to develop an online persona and certain charisma (which may not be the same when offline) which I personally believe is an extremely important point. It got me thinking about how important it is in the ever rising power of the internet to have some sort of presence on the internet. Wether or not it be on social media like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram or even whether it is just a simple blog for a University course, the importance for an online presence is increasing. It has become the new social norm to contact friends and family through the internet and ever increasingly to meet your significant other through and online dating site. I digress however my point is that it is almost nowadays just as important to have an attractive online personality as it is to have an attractively personality in real life. sad, but with a slight of truth. When you go for a job interview now it is more and more likely that the prospective employer will google your name or search your Facebook to try and figure out what kind of person they are potentially employing. This to me is a prime example of why it is so necessary to have an experience online persona and it is through this blog that not only myself, but others can develop/improve/explore their online personality and what works for them and what doesn’t.

I’m still getting the hang of Blogging this being my first post and all but I’m looking forward to many more grammar mistakes and bad puns.

In the wise words of Ralph Wiggum, “Me fail English? Thats unpossible”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iSD9lPVY6Q