Readings for Wednesday (Week 2.2)

Elliot Heatwole

This week there are two key readings by Vannevar Bush and Ted Nelson, both of which in some way speculate on technological futures by extrapolating the affordances of current technologies.  ‘Literary Machines’ is structured in such a way as to emulate hypertext navigation through information, so it will be beneficial to think about how you are absorbing its contents as you read it.

Key Readings

Bush, Vannevar. “As We May Think.” The Atlantic July 1945. The Atlantic. Web. 19 July 2013. (Link)

Nelson, Theodor Holm. Literary Machines 91.1: The Report on, and of, Project Xanadu Concerning Word Processing, Electronic Publishing, Hypertext, Thinkertoys, Tomorrow’s Intellectual Revolution, And Certain Other Topics Including Knowledge, Education and Freedom. Sausalito: Mindful Press, 1992. Print. (PDF)

Recommended Reading

The recommended reading comes from David Weinberger and contains some relevant take-away ideas that are applicable to today’s technological landscape.  Try thinking about what kind of principles are universally applicable to interactions with types of technology and how these can apply to your own potential futures.

Weinberger, David. Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web. New York: Perseus Books, 2002. Print. (PDF)

 

Readings for Monday (Week 2.1)

Elliot Heatwole

The readings for the coming class are all about design fiction.  Everything you create is designed to participate in a potential future, so logically it stands that being able to anticipate potentialities will inform your approach to both creative and professional practice.  The process of envisioning imagined futures and responding to them preemptively is a key concern of design fiction and may be something that our symposium participants may consider looking into before next class.

Essential Readings

Bosch, Torie. “Sci-Fi Writer Bruce Sterling Explains the Intriguing New Concept of Design Fiction.” Slate. Web. 29 July 2013. (PDF)

Ward,, Matthew. “Design Fiction as Pedagogic Practice.” Medium. Web. 29 July 2013. (PDF)

Bonus Readings

Grand, Simon, and Martin Wiedmer. “Design Fiction: A Method Toolbox for Design Research in a Complex World.” Proceedings of the Design Research Society Conference. 2010. (PDF)

EVA KNUTZ, THOMAS MARKUSSEN, and POUL RIND CHRISTENSEN. “The Role of Fiction in Experiments Within Design, Art & Architecture.” (PDF)

These are both very dense readings, so for your participation requirement (I know it says both) but you can check the box if you read only one.  If you do go for this option I’d like you to have a look at an extra reading that should be completed before class 2.2 a bit earlier.  It’s an extraordinarily influential mediation on the role of science both at the time when it was written and speculating on into the future.  Written in 1945 by Vannevar Bush (one of the key administrators of the Manhattan project, hence the somewhat melancholic tone) it should give you some indication of the value of design fiction.

Optional Reading (from 2.2)

Bush, Vannevar. “As We May Think.” The Atlantic July 1945. The Atlantic. Web. 19 July 2013. (PDF)

 

Welcome to Networked Media Summer Semester

Elliot Heatwole

Hello all and welcome to the 2014 Summer semester for Networked Media.  By now you should have all received an email to your student account informing you of how to activate your blog, so just follow the instructions and make sure you activate your spam filter!
As a recommended blog post for after this class I would like you to think about the way you organise your own knowledge.  How do you learn?  How do you make sense of the information you gather?  And how is this related to the way in which you “move” through networked environments?

I will be posting the rest of the readings shortly, but for the moment I would like you to read through these before Wednesday’s class.  The first is about Chris Argyris’ concept of double-loop learning, a valuable piece in that it makes explicit the ways in which we try to improve upon process (or frequently don’t).

The second is by John Mason on Researching Your Own Practice, and finally we have RMIT’s own Adrian Miles on the use of blogs in media education, a fantastic read for those of you looking to make the most of your blogging experience both now and into the future.

Reflective Graphs

Adrian Miles

A sharp change in the line generally means a qualitative change in understanding. Not knowing more, knowing different.

Unsymposium 0.9

Adrian Miles

Where a potted history of the subject is offered, we touch on unresolved questions, and try to answer, or at least ruminate upon, the experience that may, or may not, have happened over these common twelve weeks.

  • Do the algorithms of a database change the nature of what is defined as narrative?
  • How are databases changing notions ‘traditional’ narrative?
  • How can narratives emerge from databases?
  • Why do some media objects explicitly follow database logic while others do not?
  • Can the paradigm and the syntagm be more the same than opposites in new media?

The slides:

Not in Kansas anymore…

Adrian Miles

Substitute ‘journalism’ for any other heritage media in this story and it is identical. The opening paragraph sums up this subject. The Guardian is doing well in the digital domain and they do not want to employ people who think the digital is just a computer. This subject is network media because digital media is now a tautology. The Guardian is doing well not because they moved to digital, but they moved to the network as a scale free, distributed network. For those of you that have started to get your ‘blogs’ you’re already better equipped for the interview here than the print journalist described. (And read what she writes about the Guardian in Australia and their success because there’s a gap in the market precisely because traditional media here does not understand this new time.)