Category Archives: Week 4

Week 4 Readings – I’m really bad at this reading and retaining thing…

Hello my little Interwebs!

This week has been absolutely *crazy* especially with assignments and such so I’ve been behind on my reading, although on the positive I finally posted my 4000 draft posts… finally. Anyways, as the weeks go by the reading seems to be getting more and more… technical? I don’t even know the proper word to describe it, but basically a side story, my ability to retain information is rather… pathetic. As in most of the time it goes one ear and out the other, so you must understand my first world problem when it comes to these readings.

Nevertheless we shall continue onwards with: Bush, Vannevar. “As We May Think.” The Atlantic July 1945. The Atlantic. 19 July 2013.
Not going to lie this was the reading that was easiest to read for me and didn’t kill my eyes because the others were rather poorly scanned in so I just decided to choose this one for the sake of my failing eyeballs.

This reading was kinda… different? It talked about science and the growth of scientific theories throughout the past couple of decades. How it’s bettered our understanding and our communication skills. I was surprised that it had little to do with hypertext or coding (which I guilty assume that the other two readings where but hey if you give me the power of choice I’m going to abuse it a little…). Photography is a large example used within the article, the first camera in the world couldn’t even take pictures of humans because we moved too fast and there wasn’t enough light whilst nowadays we can capture images of stars or even bullets through mid air!

It really made me think about what we would all do if scientific discovery never really… happened. I mean a while back during a stormy night the power at our house went out and we were forced to sit in the dark without any electricity. The first thing my parent’s and I did? We checked our phones, which in some cases was completely useless as our wifi was out. My mum particularly who spends an alarmingly large portion of her day attached to her second-hand iphone was at a complete loss on what else to do and began to panic. Then dad and I panicked because we were running out of batteries on our phones, ipads and laptops.

My family literally had a little freak out because there was no wifi. Which is when I began to realise how important the internet had become within our lives, that we can’t even go 2 hours without it!! Talk about crazy.

If science hadn’t of made break throughs in cameras or if the development of culture and discovery had stopped completely, think about how we would be living? No electricity, no internet… NO FACEBOOK OR TUMBLR? Pretty cray cray I say.

Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.
– Stephen Hawking

P.s. JK Rowling released a new story today!! So the people of Pottermore were right!~

The Weirdest Argument I’ve Ever Been In…

Hello my Interwebs,
Today I shall be telling you a story about my argument with one of my family friends, who I shall lovingly name: Penny (because that’s the name that was used in one of our readings). Now bit of background about Penny, she’s a little spoilt and apparently always, always gets her way at the end of the day. Which to be honest didn’t bother me because I wasn’t living with her and most of the time she was fine whenever we hung out, so whatever. Anyways I was inspired to talk about this… experience due to our lecture, where we were arguing about the validity of information online.

So here goes…

Me and Penny, along with a third girl who I shall just called the third girl because she doesn’t play that big a role, were all hanging out at Penny’s house in her room just chilling. And so I discovered a while later that me and the third girl had a common interest in the Australian artist: Iggy Azalea. So we just started listening to some of her songs on youtube via her iPhone, and after a while the third girl asked me about Iggy’s ass and if it was “real”. Now I Googled that question before and according to some news websites she had gotten some plastic surgery. All of a sudden, Penny (who is next to me) grabs my hand and starts blabbering incoherently about how I shouldn’t believe everything I find on the media and internet.

Now side story, Penny is an avid Justin Bieber fan and got upset once upon a time when I told her that he was caught DUI, peed in a bucket, called a fan a beached whale and basically all of the other awful and stupid things he’s done. Her defence back then was that the media were just assholes and that I shouldn’t believe everything that I was told.

Back to the original story, Penny starts saying the same thing again, saying that I was stupid if I believed that nonsense and that she doesn’t trust anything I say. Look, if she had solid proof that I was wrong then I would happily had agreed that I was wrong and moved on with the subject because I know that the internet isn’t always correct. However instead of proving me wrong, she instead called me “stupid” and then proceeded to scream something I really don’t understand because at that point I started telling her to (for the lack of words) “fuck off” due to the fact that I had no idea what she was upset about. I clearly explained to her that she didn’t even like Iggy and I was simply stating something I’ve read on a news website, much like what I’ve ready about Justin Bieber. She kept saying “YOU’RE NOT LISTENING, YOU HAVE TO LISTEN TO ME” and my response? “Why” because why the fuck did I have to listen to her? No reason really, and it wasn’t ‘oh I hate you’ thing, it was purely the fact that she had no proof that what I said was wrong and well… I didn’t care because either way why did it matter? It didn’t, Iggy’s ass has nothing to really do with us, nor does it affect us. However she just seemed to get more and more pissed off because I refused to agree with what she was trying to say (whatever that might have been), it even got to a point where she told me that I was to leave her room and get out of her house. In which I replied that I would “totally listen to you”… if the house had been actually hers and not her parents, which just got her more annoyed… oops. Don’t get me wrong, I thought this whole situation was hilarious, because as the argument went onwards, her parents came in to tell her that she was being a nuisance (as they could hear her yelling) and then she proceeded to bring up OLD OLD OLD insults when I used to have no friends… 3 years ago… Yeah 2011 called they want their insults back.

So basically this all ended when Penny told the third girl that they were going to take her home and leave me here in her room by myself. Yes, I did laugh myself silly when they finally left the room. I had absolutely no idea what had just happened, why was she mad over something and someone that she didn’t even really like? Ahhhh…. The great mysteries of life I say.

Let this be a lesson learned my friends, as Elsa from Frozen said, “Let it go, let it go…”

Week 4 Symposium – Google It??

Hi Interwebs,
Once again for this lecture we were given a set of questions to answer:

  1. How can you judge the validity of things on the internet?
  2. What are the limitations of network literacy? How does it differ to print literacy?
    • What limitations do both literacies share?
    • What strengths help compensate for each other?
    • Can they work together?
    • Are they destined to be rivals?
  3. Should network literacy be focused on in earlier education?
    • Can it be taught formally?
    • Is there a formula for blogging? Like how essays have one?
    • What do you think the solution is? Should we let kids teach themselves through doing?

I feel as if we are doomed to never really answer all the questions that we receive…

The validity of information we find online can be quite… untrustworthy… As you discover by websites like The Onion. Which prizes itself on false (but really hilarious) news and the tremendous amount of people they trick everyday. However we were discussing in class and I realised that it doesn’t matter how public and open the online world is, any information you discover there will be more valid than anything you’ll find in a book or library. How do you know the book you’re holding is valid either? You really don’t because that information is probably a decade old, whereas the information that you find online is probably 2 weeks old and probably way more accurate despite a random posting it. There, of course, will be many indicators that information from a certain website will be correct, educational websites and Wikipedia should be the most accurate. Despite what many think of Wikipedia, there are actually a group of professionals hired that are there to make sure Wiki stays on the right track when it comes to correct information and sourcing.

Of course: Always double check the information you’ve been given and the date it was written.

Secondly, network literacy vs print literacy, who will win? I’ve already made a previous post about this (due to a previous reading regarding this decision) and I shall say it again: NETWORK LITERACY KICKS PRINT LITERACY’S ASS!! Example: the day of the symposium, was also the death of beloved comedian, Robin William (RIP), and before the tabloids can even print it on paper it was already all over Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter… any social media and you would have discovered the news. When some heard of the news from friends, instead of going and purchasing a local paper they instead chose to Google it, that my friends, is the power of the internet and network literacy.

Not saying that print literacy won’t ever come back into fashion again. I personally prefer printed books as opposed to ebooks or audio books, and the same concept with magazines. The main issue is that information defiantly travel’s faster via the internet.