Reading

OK this week’s reading was long with no subheadings so it was easy for me to lose interest. In a nutshell it was about computer protocols and how they are needed for regulation. Galloway argues that the internet is not an unpredictable mass of data lacking central organization. Points made on computer protocol:

1. Standards governing the implementation of specific technologies
2. Govern how specific technologies are agreed to
3. Technique for achieving voluntary regulation (encoding packets of info)
4. Formal
5. Encapsulate info inside a technically defined wrapper
6. Distributed management system

Does this make sense? Most likely not. Do I care if it makes sense? Definitely not.

 

Manovich quote

‘Cinema already exists right in the intersection between database and narrative’ Manovich

Because the production schedule dictates what is being filmed at what time it is never filmed in a linear fashion. So we can think of the footage going into a database and it is up to the editor to take from this and construct a narrative from this database.

The second reading = more on databases, but this guy (Seaman) authored a ‘complex virtual world generator… users can construct and navigate virtual worlds in real time…’. I don’t really have an interest in this but all I’ll say is it sounds cool.

Hubs and Networks

This week’s reading discusses the 80/20 rule, an example being that 80% of links on the web point to only 15% of webpages, thus creating hubs that dominate the inflow of the links. Searching ‘hub’ on the internet brought up an article regarding ‘The Hub and Spoke Model’ for communication. Here, Armano discusses taking the traditional hub and spoke model and turning into something that looks more like a network which I found interesting. That aside I did think back to when we were discussing hypertext and how it only links one way- which is a problem with hub and spoke. If hubs are created with 80% of links pointing to a smaller number of websites, what happens if these websites are taken down? The information doesn’t feed backwards through the link to notify the source that the link that it is no longer available.

network

Six Degrees- Duncan J. Watts

First of all I must point out that the author’s name is Watts and for the first half of this article he gives examples using power grids. Anyway, this article was overall quite interesting as Watts discusses the topic of networks as systems and how we might understand the behaviours of component individually but collectively behaviour changes. I also learned where the term ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ came from, hence the title.

There were many points made in this article but also many questions were raised, such as ‘how vulnerable are large infrastructure networks like the power grid or the internet to random failures or deliberate attacks?’ Many questions Watts raised can’t be answered due to the fact they are still researching this area which is annoying as I’d really like to know the answer to this one. I’m pretty sure not that long ago there was talk about a terrorist act on the world could involve cutting the cables of the internet. I found this interesting article written back in 2012 ‘Four ways the Internet could go down’, although insightful I don’t think we could never really know just how vulnerable we are to these four problems.

Hypertext 3.0

This reading contained many ideas about hypertext and like I have said in a previous blog, not all of them sink in. Certain things stand out to me that are of interest, I write them down and have a think about them. One point that got my attention was that ‘hypertext becomes experiential’. This might seem strange but I really like this word, EXPERIENTIAL. Meaning we don’t just absorb passively but we gain something from an experience.

‘Experiential learning is the process of making meaning from direct experience’

Landow explains in this reading that idolatry of the author is limited because the reader participates in the text and therefore multiple beginnings and endings are created. I see it like the reader being an editor and can create new meaning from the text by placing emphasis on the particular parts they want to make meaning from.

This sparked the thought in my mind about Barthes’ theory. Death of the Author.

“To give a text an Author” and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it “is to impose a limit on that text.”

Predictions

The big question I ask myself heading into the media industry is: ‘Will I be able to stay up to date with the industry?’.

Reading predictions from engineers and scientists written in the 1940s and 1980s about technologies we now have today gets me thinking where is technology heading? We seem to learn a lot about the history of communications and technologies but so far not so much about the future.  I’m not sure if that’s something that is covered in this course but what I do know is how important it is to stay current. I would say heading into any profession, university isn’t the end of the learning road, especially when working in media. So, how do you stay current? Well, I guess this is where network media and being network literate comes in.

Some predictions for social media here. 

To the floppy disk and beyond

1117551-floppyHypertext’s physical function is allowing the user/reader to click on a highlighted text with their mouse and it will take them to another webpage, which may contain more text or images. The psychological function of hypertext is simply that it makes life easier for humankind. When I read often my mind will wander, some things that I read will sink in and some things won’t. The parts that sink in might spark an interest or an idea and unlike reading a book, with hypertext I can continue exploring that idea or thought in one click of a button.

When reading Nelson’s Literary Machine’s I pictured him as someone wanting to make the world a better place, to make it easier. This seems to be the same motivation that Douglas Engelbart had, he was the inventor of the computer mouse and developer of hypertext. Also Aaron Swartz who was involved in the development of RSS, Creative Commons and Reddit. Aaron’s goal was to make the sharing of information easier and make knowledge more accessible to the world.

So, rather than trying to understand the nerdy diagrams in this reading, one thing I took from it was the passion and motivation to move beyond the floppy disk (and thank God we did), to move into the world where offices become paperless and your thoughts and ideas you wrote on that fluro green post-it note this morning don’t get lost amongst the piles of rubbish on your desk.

‘Computers should bring simplification not complication’.  Ted Nelson

Networking

There is that old saying it’s not what you know it’s WHO you know. How do you get to know more people? Network. The definition of networking is ‘a supportive system of sharing information and services among individuals and groups having a common interest’. Of course this is key in the media industry (although what you know is important too) the more contacts you have the more doors become open (or slightly ajar) for you. Blogging is a tool we as students can use to engage and explore this world of networking- online. In the reading Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge, Adrian describes network literacy is as much contributing to sharing the knowledge as it is to consume it. Network Literacy is about DOING, so as I didn’t have a Flickr account I decided I would get one and work out how to connect it to my blog like Adrian does. While having a look around the site I saw that Flickr Commons has two main objectives, one of which is:

‘To provide a way for the general public to contribute information and knowledge. (Then watch what happens when they do!)’

This ties in nicely with what Adrian was talking about.

Stay tuned for my Flickr debut.