Week 9 Lecture Summary

CyberPunk and William Gibson

The lecture this week was about the genre of 'Cyberpunk' and an author of the genre named William Gibson.

Originally I thought cyberpunk was a person or a subculture that existed of some sort of technical speak for 'hacker'. But not quite. I was a tad far off.

To my personal understanding the concept of 'cyberpunk' is actually a genre. Like romance and drama, it is a genre. It is actually a sub-genre of sci-fi. It is a hybrid genre that tries to make sense of this world.

But back to the lecture...

Cyberpunk was described as a gritty aesthetic. It is surrounded by decay and lust. It is surrounded by high technology that humans are fused to machine.

It has a questionable morality. It revolves around opportunism, theft and murder. It is very selfish.

It is kind of like technology. Even new technology, something brand new and it still breaks or crashes.

There is no 'love' in cyberpunk. It is all based on seduction. It is all about getting what you want. You want information (in this case, technology) and this information is everywhere, yet no where, all at the same time.

Although cyberpunk is meant to make sense of the world it believes that the world sucks: existential malaise. We just live but there is no point.

William Gibson writes cyberpunk literature.

List of books: http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/books/books.asp

He is very important for this genre, as his books comprehend the idea of this genre properly.

He is aware that the world won''t get shiner or better and that once information is online, it can never properly be deleted. So he incorporates these ideas into his books.

PRINTED TEE DAY!!

So today has been a very successful 'Printed Tee Day for a Good Cause' to raise awareness of 'Supporting an Age Restriction (16) on Energy Drinks'.

We had 206 saying that they were attending and 65 maybes.

We took photos of some people with their supporting signs, which are posted on a group page.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=122432564473500

It has been a really fun day, fun experience and all for a good cause.

Week 8 TuteSpark and Activity

This tutorial is really difficult because cyberpunk is still a foreign term for me. I understand what it is, but I am still finding it difficult to understand its depth.

Negative Impact of technology on humanity: In a cyberpunked near-future, technology runs rampant, and usually manipulates most societal interactions. Dystopian near futures are very common, but so are futures where the impacts of specific technologies are played out in a world only slightly different from the present. Sacred societal boundaries are often crossed with regularity. Often the earth is severely damaged. Crime and drug use are often key supporting themes.

Fear. It is a really common element in the world. The fear of sickness, death, etc.

Although millions of people communicate through mobile phones, many people fear their effects.

One negative impact on technology was through the video that went viral, about the popcorn.

'>http://www.youtube.com/v/V94shlqPlSI?fs=1&hl=en_US"> name="allowFullScreen" value="true">'>http://www.youtube.com/v/V94shlqPlSI?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385">

This video went viral through emails when it came out, showing what the radiation of our mobile phones can do to us. This creates so much fear in people, that it actually created a small drop in the amount of calls being made, and text messages statistics went up slightly.

http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/mobile-phone-makers-accused-of-hidden-health-warnings-10535

is an article about radiation and the hidden health effects that the radiation of the mobile.

Week 8 Lecture Summary

The Concept of:

Virtual Philosophy

This week's lecture was on "Virtual Philosophy". I managed to stay listening the whole time to this lecture but it was extremely difficult because I really didn't understand what he was talking about. His enthusiasm made you want to listen and follow along, but yeah, definitely over my head. Although a majority of it was over my head, I did understand some aspects of those.

Plato was bought up numerous times (pictured right >>) which I find incredible. I personally love the writings of Aristotle more so than Plato, but the fact that centuries later we still use their theories, philosophies and texts as guidelines and explanations today, shows how timeless and brilliant their work was.

The lecturer said that we can say that philosophy was created out of poetry. This can be see through the works of many Greek philosophers. When studying the texts it is seen that they "thread together".

Parmenides, another philosopher said that "whatever is, is". This particular philosophy has been passed down the centuries as people now quote it as "whatever will be, will be".

But back to Plato. One of his philosophies were that stuff is there, but it has different appearences. For example: A chair. But there are different types of chairs. And does a park bench classify as a chair? We sit on it. So it must be?

We also went through the "Allegory of the Cave". I found a website that helped explain it in clearer, simpler terms. http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm

I won't deconstruct the allegory all over again, but basically it is just an easy explaination as to what we do with the concept of reality.

One last point I found really interesting was anxiety. I suffer from anxiety at time to time when I feel I cannot handle a situation. But really what the lecturer said is very true. Anxiety is the fear of being afraid of fear. He said how people need to treat the reality in our heads and manipulate the material message to another.

To me as interesting as philosophy is, questioning the world and all it's antics, is just....stupid and only leading to trouble.

Week 7 TuteSpark

Wow... keeping up with this blog is crazy!
It is ridiculously hard to use. Kind of looking forward to this assignment being over. Just saying. I am not tech-y...

Alright. TASK.

Try some free software.

Well. Sounded simple, but it was not. Ha. Not with my dad.

Anyway, I did manage to find some free software.

I used Firefox opposed to the Internet Explorer. This was really interesting but I didn't realise there were different types of explorers. Like many people, I assumed that the 'e' (pictured below) meant the Internet. I didn't actually know that it was optional.Anyway, Firefox I can't say I liked or didn't like. It acted no different to how I was used to. It worked fine/ great. I am not planning on deleting my Internet Explorer anytime soon, but to prove a point, Firefox, a FREE software option, worked just as well as something people pay for.

I also used the OpenOffice program opposed to the Microsoft Word/ Publisher/ Powerpoint, etc.
This was noticably different. But like any program, it just takes a bit of getting used to. Like I still can't use Macs, they take time to figure out. OpenOffice was okay. I still definitely prefer Microsoft Word and Powerpoint. They have more options as to what I can do and like to do, but id I got stuck only using OpenOffice, it wouldn't be awful because it is a decent program.

Week 7 Tute Activity

1. What is creative commons and how could this licensing framework be relevant to your own experience at university?
Creative commons, which is something I have been able to talk about in a previous blog, just to outline what it is.
Copyright is when someone owns their work, so "All Rights Reserved", while creative commons is "Some Rights Reserved".
It is the way cooler restriction actually because it gives you the ability to
share, expand, revise and remix.

It would be really good for university students, like myself, to "enhance our experience".
Knowing about the CC licencing framework, gives us the ability to know where to draw the line. We can use CC licenced pictures, videos, etc. to help us with our assignments but we know not to tamper with the copyrighted projects are artworks.
I have had to do a few YouTube videos as assignments for various subjects in this course so far, and one problem we did have was with copyrighted music. I didn't know you couldn't use it, because everyone else uses it. Haha....good excuse. But with this sort of new knowledge you can figure out as to what you can use, upload, share and remix.
I now also know that without a C symbol on it I am not allowed to distribute and tamper with someone else artwork on these YouTube videos.
Knowing about the licencing frameworks is going to be handy, not only in the process of making YouTube videos, but through many assignments as well.

2. Find 3 examples of works created by the creative commons and embed them in your blog.

Ooo. So this is harder than I thought.

Well I am going to have to go with the amazing band, "Radiohead". They are a prime example of using the CC licence. I remember when their song 'House of Cards' came out, and it was announced that they did it all under a CC licence. Not that I actually knew what that meant...but that is completely beside the point.

<>'

This is a website that just clarifies what they actually did under the CC licence. http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8476

Example 2:

Alright. Well Flickr. I personally love this site. For my friends I will write a poem and add matching pictures from this website to the powerpoint. So this website is just great for people to be able to show their artwork.

http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/

Okay, so the aim of that picture was to show that on the attribution creative commons part.

There are 21851115 photos under that creative commons license alone of this website.

Example 3:
Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is a site that is uses creative commons.
http://www.wikipedia.org/

People write on it and then others have the ability to expand, edit, etc. on this site. So it is a good place for people to congregate and exapnd off each others ideas.

3. Find an article about Creative Commons

http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/idea46&div=22&id=&page=

Summary of the Article:
This article goes into the negative implications and pitfalls that Creative Commons have. The impacts are mostly on our cultural environment really. It will change the distribution and production of the future creative projects that will come.
It also, as the title states, analyses the creative common licensing framework.

4. What are Portable Apps. What is it and is it useful?

http://portableapps.com/

It is a program that is perfect for storing all your favourite bookmarks, emails, programs, etc without leaving all your personal information and passwords all over the computer.

It is a really useful program because it is everything people have, all in one place to make it all really convient and easy to locate. It is also really good because it is free. So a free software and a perfect alternative to programs that charge.

Week 6 TuteSpark

Leading on from the lecture on online privacy & social networking....

Who owns the content you put on the internet on various sites?
Well the website does. You are uploading your content onto their website. They can use it and distribute how they please. It most likely would be on their terms and conditions, that these days nobody reads.

This includes pictures, video, text, etc?
Yeah, I mean it is their website. They have the right to take down anything they don't like one there as well.

Think about all the content you upload onto social networking sites - Do you own it?
No. They do. They own the pictures that you decided to upload. You may have taken the photo and may have copyright to taking the picture, but you don't actually own the picture.

Who has the right to use your creations?

The company or owner of the website does, as you have uploaded your information, photos, creations onto their website.

This is an example of an enraged person who has discovered that Facebook has specified in the Terms and Conditions that once uploaded, the photos then belong to them.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6314950779

Assignment Update

So we currently have 188 people attending our event, which is pretty exciting as it is only 2 days away!

We got some pictures plastered on our group,
http://www.facebook.com/?sk=2361831622#!/group.php?gid=122432564473500

It was really hard using photoshop, but we did it! Ha.

It is in the Photos folder.

Week 7 Lecture Summary

Free Culture, Free Society

This week in the lecture we once again had our Guest Speaker Adam Muir.

We learnt about Creative Communities.

Basically there are three key words in this.

Community-> Collaboration -> Choice

I learnt the different between copyright and creative commons.

We have all seen these symbols before but I finally learnt what the CC stands for. CC= creative commons

(Images thanks to google images)

Copyright is basically "intellectual property". It is "all rights reserved" while creative commons is "some rights reserved".

The additional part we learnt was about the Source Code.

The source code is like a recipe. It is all those weird letters, symbols and numbers that come up. It is pretty techy. Way over my head...

It is compiled information that aren't given out to people, because OTHERWISE the techy people who actually understand how to do that sort of stuff, will be able to change the program or give the program or sell it, etc.

There are numerous programs these days that are 'free or open' software.

They are like free versions of programs.

Community- Work together to find solutions

Collaborations- Doing this within the law.

Choice- It is your choice, the alternatives. There are books that are legally available free as well.

Update Update Update on Assignment!

SO...

for this assignment so far we created a Facebook page called Support Age Restriction on Energy Drinks and so far we have 9 members, which is pretty lame really but still, we are getting there.

http://www.facebook.com/?sk=2361831622#!/group.php?gid=122432564473500

I also created an event for a fake protest on facebook which is plastered on the page.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=122432564473500#!/event.php?eid=155471687798967&ref=mf

Then today I created a blog :)

So we should be updating regularly on the health issues, etc.

http://energydrinkagerestriction.blogspot.com/2010/09/energy-drinks-are-they-safe.html

And I created a group for people to 'Like' on Facebook! Immediately I got 4 people to join!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Who-thinks-that-energy-drinks-should-have-an-age-restriction-of-16/112113725512798

So, yay for progress!

Week 6 Lecture Summary

Lecture Summary

So I learnt quite a bit this lecture.

Adam Muir was our guest lecturer and he helped define a few things.

Technology- 'Scientific study of mechanical acts and their application to the world'.
But what he pointed out that I found really interesting was technology is useless if you don't have the knowledge to use it. This was a really valid point. This is a major generalisation, but mature people usually have difficulty using technology because they haven't got the knowledge.

Media- 'When technology is used for social and cultural communication that technology becomes a medium of communication'.

Virtual Community

• way to explain a group of people who communicate via the internet.

while

Individual Identity

• way to explain how people express who they are via the internet. Examples- are like nicknames.

So this is how I came to understand.
The Virtual Community, was especially popular when the internet was not as popular as it is now. People got to socialise with other people with similar interests, so it was creating a community.

The Individual Identity follows the same concept that our current generation follows. It is all about 'me'. The internet and social networking is about people "promoting" themselves. People have the websites pages to show everyone their opinion, their pictures, their life. This apparently has a name called the ego-centric social network, which is pretty self-explanatory.

This is what I really got out of the lecture. There were heaps of other points, but this is what I really took away from it.

Week 5 Task

Task: We are to devise a plan to get noticed by 'normal media'.

So we formed a group of four to complete the task. We all are very different personalities and we were trying to use all our "creative juices" to come up with a good idea to do this, but we kept failing with good ideas. We thought we had one and we left the tutorial thinking we were onto something. Then we were thinking about it, and although it sounded fun and like a good idea it wasn't enough to get noticed by normal media. So we came back together this week and came up with the idea of making an age restriction on energy drinks.