This week’s reading is about 80/20 rule. 80/20 rule has several important features. These features play a key role in understanding complex networks well. ‘Our measurement indicated that the distribution of incoming links on Webpages followed a power law with a unique and well-defined degree exponent.’ It is usually protected by powerful laws and It does not apply to everything. In this random universe, plenty of webpage creator work together to generate the complex network environment.
Reference: Barabási, Albert-László 2002,“The 80/30 Rule”. Linked: The New Science of Networks. Cambridge (MA): Perseus, Print..
read more about 80/20 rule here
According to Samson Raphaelson’s words, comparing to a playwrights, he is a better craftsman. He is self-administered, wiry and tough-minded. He never sentimentalizes himself. He also never wrote things that matter most to him because of the lack of instincts and emotional richness. He never talked profoundly and with authority about what he knows.
He is right and wrong about his evaluation of his work. He is wrong about that he didn’t give himself his due. One of the most different points between O’Neill or Williams and Raphaelson is that in their film, the audience cannot feel nostalgic or see a theatrical style of ‘civilized’ or as soigne charmers. The films Raphaelson wrote for Lubitsch are more preserved iridescent. Differ from the films Lubitsch made with other writers, the ones wrote by Raphaelson are more puckish, full of texture, fullness and surprise. They play naughtiness very well. For Raphaelson, screen writing is more like writing down what he wants to say, what he has called ‘wild doodles’. So he could try out some ‘crazy’ ideas come into him mind without much responsibilities. ‘He could trust his impulses, his instinct.’ Raphaelson is good at keeping in reserve, however audience know that there will be tensions and the elegance of feelings.
‘Artists are better off when they’re not worrying about greatness and posterity; when they take off their frock coat they stand a better chance of being themselves. Raphaelson knows that.’ However when he starts writing seriously, his article published in The New Yorker is actually very good and doesn’t lack profundity and authority. His emotion and his control are put together very well and in a complete harmony way.
Reference: ‘Introduction’ in Three Screen Comedies by Samson Raphaelson. University of Wisconsin Press. Madison. 1983. pp. 13-19
This week’s symposium is related to cultural memory.
-three dimensions-material, social, mental
-material-youtube/social-people/mental-thinking
-collective memory brought up by Maurice halnwachs in 1920s
-connection of cultural and socio-cultural contexts
-Jeffrey K.Olick-two radically different culture concept over here, people’s subjective mind (individual) and patterns of publicly objectified in society(collective)
-biological memory (we remember in social context) and symbolic order (reconstruct a shared past)
-ways that technology may affect human experience
-technologies may have specific properties or characteristics that play a role in facilitating the occurrence of certain kinds of experiences, but irrelevant to social institutions and power
There are lots of forms of media like YouTube and Facebook in our life that archives the past, becomes part of cultural memory.
Blake Edwards is a well-remembered name in Hollywood. He is a famous comedy director who starts writing films since 1947 and directing them since 1955. The releasing of his two comedies, S.O.B and Victor/Victoria is the mark of his oeuvre keeping almost the longest balance on the shaky treadmill of popular cinema.
In the early seventies, Edwards found that his film, a large part of Darling Lili was cut without his permission. He felt betrayed by Hollywood, so he went to England. Later the success of three pink panther films made him feel better. Then he came back to Hollywood to make film, 10. He had written the script in 1971, but the film then could not be sold to any studio. Finally, 10 turns out to be a big success and brought him good luck again. After that, Edwards got four winners in a row, and S.O.B was like a farcical fist in the face of Hollywood, waiting to see if Edwards can make it number five.
Edwards claimed that 10 and S.O.B were both a kind of representation of himself in his fortyish and male menopause. S.O.B was also a reflection of his career crisis. What’s more, in these two films there are the themes of death and recognition of one’s own mortality. In S.O.B, it appeared in the form of madness. However for Edwards, madness represented psychological madness. So S.O.B was inspired by the anger of Hollywood.
From the Edward’s opinion, the good points about comedy is that it can subliminally attack your prejudices, undermine your defense in a very relaxing way. Unlike tragedy, you are prepared for the pain. ‘So the things the author or the director wants to say he can smuggle in, under cover of laughter, much more easily.’
Reference: ‘Blake Edwards: Life After 10’. in American Film. Vol. 6. No. 9, July-August 1981. pp. 24-28.
In today’s lab, we talked about the coming Mixed Media Creative Critical Essay. Elliot asked us to make a list of all kinds of creative ideas we could use for our essay. Here is our list.
I read the reading by Murphie, Andrew and John Potts, Culture and Technology. It generally described technological determinism and how it has become a promotion of social change. however the opinion about technological determinism is quite different. Some people like McLuhan believes that it is just an extensive way of human capabilities. So do we create technology or technology shapes our lives?
By enhancing the human capacity for social organization, writing has become the preserver and extender of other technologies. Writing is always associated with technology, we need skill to learn how to read and write, the effects of new writing skills would improve and invent some aspects of literacy technology. In the fifteenth century, the printing press appears and begins the mechanization of writing, the first technology of writing.
To prepare for the HTML test, I did a little bit research and create a ‘html page flow path’.
‘HTML PAGE FLOW PATH’
<html>
<head>
<title>Page One/Two(for example)</title>
</head>
Heading level 1&2
<h1>Two</h1>
<h2> Pic</h2>
<body>
Line breaks <br>
Paragraph <p> </p>
link tag <a href=“URL”>text</a>
image tag <img src=“URL”>
image link tag <a href=“URL”><img src=“URL”></a>
align tag <p style=“text-align: center/right/left;”><img src=“URL”></p>
</body>
</html>
In this week’s symposium, two topics are brought up. The first one was differences between print literacy and networked literacy. Although they are two kind of different literacy, they do not against each other. Print literacy refers to books, newspapers, novels, magazines and so on. people can actually read them from a piece of paper. It is the traditional way of consuming information and knowledge. When I am young, the computer and the entire electronic industry was not developed like today’s. People used to read stuff from papers. Now, the Internet has replaced all of these. People can get plenty of information from web pages, phones, laptops. Networked literacy has gradually replaced the printed literacy. However, people still use printed literacy. They are not against each other, and they can exist at the same time. Nevertheless, networked literacy has a larger platform of communication and a larger range of information than printed literacy. This will raise another topic today.
Since networked literacy have a large range of information, how do we recognize and tell its validity. There is various information on the Internet. Some of them is from official website with good authority, some of them is from experts’ opinion, some of them is a random guy’s blog, some of them is from a video draws plenty people’s attention. What should we trust in. How can we tell the reliability. Sometime we trust it wholeheartedly, but it turns out to be fake. We need to filter information from the Internet and try to use the ones with strong authorities.
Another point brought up in the lab was that the future of print literacy depends on if people continue using it from some degrees. People tend to use networked media more those days because it is faster, with more information, easier to communicate. However the networked media is developed from print literacy, the connection between these two is noticeable.
In addition, we prepared for the next week’s HTML test in the lab. I felt easy and confident to the HTML test. We generally went through the process of what we will do during the test. The software we need to download, the file we need to create, the test requirement. Later, Elliot sent us an e-mail of a walkthrough about preparing the test which was very helpful.
I read Caitlin’s Blog in this week’s tutorial. Her blog look really good. In the recent week, she wrote about the symposium and answered the question related to the reading wrote by Nelson.
In the response of the reading question, she explained based on her own experience and understanding of the social media. Also she made some assumptions about the further development of the social media. I thought she did some critical thinking about the stuff in the reading and prove her own idea very clearly. About the symposium, she posted few questions about and explained it using some daily examples including the validity of information on the internet and how we can judge it, the differences between print literacy and network literacy and so on.
In general, they are great blogs and very interesting to read. the content is very specifically analyzed and given plenty of examples.
three colleagues I linked to
http://www.mediafactory.org.au/caitlin-hughes/
http://www.mediafactory.org.au/louisa-keck/
http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jamie-cilia/
