After attempting to get through the Galloway reading, and write a somewhat sketchy blogpost about my findings, I decided to stalk my peers’ blogs for some clarification. As per usual, Emerald came home with the goods and wrote a couple of really good blog posts that helped me understand a little better just what Galloway was on about. I always find that it really helps to learn from my peers, as they have just as much idea about this stuff as I do.
To paraphrase Emerald (and so I have this written down somewhere to remember), Galloway talked about three different kinds of networks – centralised, decentralised and distributed. The internet is a “distributed” network as it doesn’t have a host, or a central point. Instead anyone, at any place can connect with others. To quote my classmate;
“Pretty much the way I see it is that there is billions of people producing content, and those people choose how they want to connect with other people, or how that content connects to other content.”
Emerald also included a great video on her blog that really helped me understand this Galloway/network thing better.
I also caught up on reading some other classmate’s blog, and I really enjoyed Alison’s post about ‘The Long Tail’ by Chris Anderson. Once again, another classmate helping me to better consolidate my learning in class. She brings up a really good point – the fact that the article was written in 2004. Think about how much has changed since then! In 2004 I was 100% still using LimeWire and burning CDs for me and my brother’s. Piracy is still such a huge issue, but with the continual development of things like Amazon, iTunes, Spotify and Netflix, people are becoming more willing (I believe) to pay for content when it is that accessible!
LimeWire :p
