Symposium 09

I don’t remember much from this week’s symposium, and my 3 lines of notes haven’t been much help in jogging my memory. I do however remember a discussion of blogs as ecologies, though I’m unsure of how much detail it was covered in. Here’s my take.

Ecologies are systems of beings, through which each being interacts with another, either directly or through various degrees of separation. In the case of out Network Media blogs, this is true. We each link to other student’s blogs, with each person linking to different people than those who linked to them. This creates a chain, or more of a complicated series of hubs (some people get linked to a lot more than others), nodes and links. This series functions much like an ecology, with a blogs popularity (or life) dependent on other blogs in the chain. If a blog is not linked to enough, it loses popularity (gets lower search results in google). This occurs in much the same way that an animal in an ecology dies if it does not have enough food to eat (is not linked to enough other animals that it could survive on). In this way, blogs act as ecologies.

For another take on last week’s symposium, visit Kiralee, who talks about networks and their restrictions, or Mia, who remembered three interesting things, and finally Kenton, who looks in to Cowbird.

 

H2O molecules????

For some dumb reason, I decided to study biology right up to the end of year 12. I had a proven track record at being awful at it, but I soldiered on, worried that I might revisit my childhood dream of being a marine biologist and need a science pre-requisite for university. So if studying biology taught me anything, it’s that I while I’m awful at science exam, I can appreciate a clear, formulaic and scientific book extract.

This course has been about going beyond the regular, the boring and the easy to understand. It has focused on broadening horizons and making a lot of people confused. And while I appreciate reading and learning about new ways of thinking and doing, I also appreciate a bit of good old science. Science writers, or science text book writers, know how to make complicated and congested ideas and thoughts make sense. Barabasi’s writings on the 80/20 rule, Pareto and water molecules made sense; even when I thought he’d maybe lost track a little and none of this related to networked media.

In his introduction to the reading, Adrian mentions that the notion of links, nodes and hub is why you probably shouldn’t talk about people behind their backs, even if you think you’re safe. I was recently telling a girl at work about something another person I know said. My work friend is 6 years older than me, from the other side of the city and goes to a different university, and yet she knew the person I was talking about through her boyfriend. Luckily my work friend and I had the same views about the person in question, but I was still a little shaken.

I think that the 80/20 rule, while maybe not known in name to many people, is quite common knowledge. We know that there is a chance two seemingly separate people are connected to each other, but we choose to ignore it. How often do people use the phrase ‘it’s a small world’ when they run into someone that they’ve known for years, with similar interests, possibly even in the same city as they’ve both lived in their whole lives? We are just like H2O molecules, sometimes sticking together, and sometimes bouncing off each other, but remaining in the same small container, destined to one day, in all probability, meet again.

The Future of Television in Australia

BxJ_wdxCEAAuvq6

Orange is the New Black price comparisons show just how much Australians are paying compared to the US. [Image from choice.com.au]

Today’s been a busy day for Malcolm Turnbull.

Last night he held a panel to discuss the future of television in Australia, with representatives attending from Foxtel, Village Roadshow, Telstra, and iiNet, as well as consumer group Choice. The panel met to debate the best ways in which to tackle the growing ‘problem’ of piracy in Australia. One good thing came of this; Village Roadshow admitted their mistake in delaying the release of high-profile films in Australia, and have promised to now match release dates with the US. While this is good news for the both consumers and the film industry, for those of us who are drawn more towards television, the panel made no new progress. Foxtel still has a monopoly on the industry. Foxtel still charges exuberant prices. Netflix (or a similar service) is still unavailable. And the government is still moving towards punishing the illegal downloaders of otherwise inaccessible content. Research by Choice shows just how expensive it is to watch TV in Australia.

And that’s not all TV lovers have to be worried about. Malcolm Turnbull today announced that community television will likely lose it’s license by the end of 2015. He believes that the service needs to move into the future, and is therefore pushing it online. Community television will no longer be television. This is a sad blow for us media students. What this holds for the future of RMITV is currently unknown, but you can pretty much guarantee it’s not going to be a happy ending. Community TV is not leaving without a fight though. On twitter, #committocommunitytv is being used to show support for the service, and a petition is still circulating at i.committocommunitytv.org.au. Get around it.

 

Symposium 7: Privacy

During this week’s symposium, privacy online was one of the main issues debated. Betty argued that everyone should be in charge of their own privacy, and should be aware of their own privacy settings and what they are putting online. She mentioned the Cloud, and in light of recent events which I will not link out to, talked about the Cloud’s privacy issues.

While I agree that people should be in charge of their own privacy online, the Cloud is a different issue. The Cloud, which is free to a limited extent with Apple accounts, promises personal hard-drive free storage to it’s users. For many people, the Cloud is a convenient way to store data and be able to access it from anywhere. However, many people also do not fully understand the Cloud, and are unaware of how much of their data is put up their automatically for Apple. This is in addition to most people, including me, believing the Cloud is secure and safe to use.

Betty argued that privacy within the Cloud is not and never has been guaranteed, implying that security issues within the service are common knowledge. They’re not. When a huge breach of privacy occurred in the last week concerning the Cloud, many people were quick to blame the victims. Their argument is that if you do not private data leaked, do not do anything you wouldn’t want the public to see in the first place. This is completely stupid and outright awful. This is victim blaming. Some creep steals from you and massively violates your privacy? Sorry but that’s your fault for doing things many other people do.

While the Cloud may not be secure, this is not knowledge that most people have. You cannot blame someone for having faith in a heavily-used system. Betty argues that you should never put anything in the Cloud you don’t want leaked. Kiralee and I discussed this logic and agreed that you could argue the same for any system. Do not store things on your phone because someone might steal it, dust it for finger prints and figure out your passcode. Then they might steal your identity. Maybe we should blame the awful people stealing data instead of the victims. Just a thought.

 

You + Me

It’s 11.20 on Tuesday, the day of my Networked Media tute, and I haven’t written a blog post in 2 weeks. To be honest, after finishing the essay, I lost quite a bit of motivation to blog. But I know I’m meant to, so here’s a post.

When I woke up this morning I discovered P!nk and Dallas Green had announced an album overnight. The two have paired up to become You + Me, and their first song, You and Me, has been released. It’s great. But I’m super biased. Judge for yourself.

 

Bonus Shields!

At first I thought that Shield’s writing was linear, and the numbers were just a strange way of breaking up paragraphs. But as I read on, I realised that this was more of a chain-of-thoughts type of writing. Like in English class in High School when your teacher would tell you to write down everything that goes through your mind for five minutes and you just ended up talking about how your hand couldn’t keep up with your brain and how loud the person sitting next to you was breathing.

There is meaning in Shield’s writing. I understand the idea he is trying to get across about collage writing. But it just seemed to come about in a more round-about way. Shields has sources and examples, but they seem to come out of nowhere. The ideas are there, but it just takes a while to grasp them as you try to follow Shields’ thought process. It’s an interesting way of reading and writing, and certainly not too difficult, but I’m also not sure it’s how I want to read everything.

Changing criteria dictates this post.

These are some of my favourite posts from this week. By this week, I mean I read them this week. And by read them this week I mean I read them 5 minutes ago.

Brady links to a seriously on-point clip of Louie CK discussing piracy in Australia.

Kenton understands the fury I feel when I see people sleeping in all the best study spots.

Jess‘ post of internet validity is clear and nice and friendly, just like she is.

 

Remember Neopets?

I’ll be honest right now, I have not actually read this week’s readings to completion. I skim read the last third of the first extract and opened the second extract in a new tab, so I’m pretty well versed on 2/6ths of Douglas’ ideas. But I’m going to write a post anyway, because it’s Monday night and I have class tomorrow.

Douglas explores some pretty cool uses of hypertext is his writing. I tried to think of examples of interactive hypertext stories that I know of, but the closest I got was The Sims, which meant that I took a three-hour break to be born, become and architect and have 6 babies. I thought of Pottermore, J K Rowling and Co.’s interactive website, but realised that it’s remains a linear story, and basically just a re-telling of the books. I struggled to think of anything else that I knew of, which shocked me, because Douglas had plenty of examples in 2000.

In an only slightly relevant example, this article details the way in which the consumer, in this case the player, can have a huge effect of the original intention of a product. Within the online game, Neopets, the game currency has had major inflation issues caused by large numbers of new accounts, large numbers of inactive accounts and players placing an increased importance on having the ‘best’ items. While Neopets is not strictly an interactive narrative in the sense that Douglas discussed, this example goes to show just how much power an audience can have.

I’m now off to play Neopets, so I guess my next post will be in about 3 years.

Symposium Five

Mentioned in today’s symposium was the VCE system, with Elliot bringing up exam knowledge retention rates. According to this article, medical students forget 25-35% of basic science knowledge after just one year, and have forgotten up to 80% in 25 years. In my own experience, I’ve found that I remember hardly anything from my information-heavy VCE classes. Just tonight my sister asked me to help her with her Year 11 geography homework, a subject I completed three years ago. I figured once I had a look at what she was doing, it would all come back to me. But I couldn’t remember anything. I couldn’t remember the basic acronym for map essentials, or how to write a geographically worded paragraph.

Some might find this low retention rate reason to question the point in learning at all. And while I agree with Adrian that VCE should not be seen as the be-all and end-all, I do think it has merits. Up until the very end of VCE, I had no idea what I wanted to do after school (I still don’t really know if I’ve made the right choice, but until I find a better option, I’ll stick with Media). VCE offered me the opportunity to explore a range of different subjects, even to do a VET, VCAL or TAFE course at the same time. I was able to bring my experience working at McDonalds into my studies through a Certificate of Retail, which boosted my ATAR and gave part-time work a non-economic purpose.

But while VCE may have worked out okay for me, some of my friends now look back on it as a waste of time. My school, while good at showing us other options if we asked, also pushed us to VCE if we were capable (they were especially keen on keeping anyone who would achieve high marks, and thus help them boost their reputation). I think most of us felt that VCE was the path to success. But for some people, it was just two years they could have spent doing something else. I have friends doing diplomas they always knew they wanted to do, and thus could have completed by now. I have friends in apprenticeships and in TAFE, and while some didn’t figure out that that’s what they wanted to do until after Year 12, others knew all along and just felt compelled to complete VCE in case they changed their mind. They don’t regret completing VCE, but certainly don’t see it as something that has helped them thus far.

I wonder if the attitude towards VCE will ever change. Maybe if university costs get higher, more people will consider other options earlier on, but I doubt it. A change in mindset will not occur on it’s own. There needs to be a general change in the way success is viewed. Success is not a piece of paper you get when you’re 18, unless that’s how you want to measure your success. For others, success may be a Certificate in Early Childhood Education, or a part-time job which pays for overseas travel. I view my completion of VCE as a success, because I know that I worked hard and it got me to where I want to (sort of) be. Whatever success is, it’s personal and shouldn’t be a generalised notion.