Category Archives: Readings

0=0 Neutrality and the weekly stalk

Posted on by under Readings, Stalking, Symposium

 

basic1-119_smiley_neutral-512

This weeks symposium and tutorial looked at the idea of neutrality. This term, one I thought I once understood, was quickly flipped and manipulated into a new sphere of confusion and over analysis.

It raised the question, is anything considered neutral?

So back to basics, what does the term neutral even mean? Michael  thinks that neutrality is the idea that something would have no influence on anything else. Evan also makes a good point and feels that the closest he can get to thinking of something neutral is binary opposition, such as light vs dark. Without having darkness, we cannot understand light, and vice versa. I think this is an interesting way of looking at neutrality.

Both Michael and myself agree with  Angus’ point as he explains that ‘it is pointless for someone to find something neutral because if that someone can reference it in some way, it is not neutral.’

Michael closes by making a good point that he is not sure that anything can be neutral. Even becoming aware of something occurring creates a chain reaction of though within one’s mind. Although it may not have direct relevance to you, it is still influencing you.

Good job Michael, you totally hit the nail on the head 😉

Theories of Culture and Technology

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This weeks reading by Murphie, Andrew, and John Potts looks at the relationship between culture and technologies. They look at answering questions such as what impact does technologies have in our lives? How do we live with them? Are technologies neutral in themselves, that is, does the way in which they are used determine their cultural impact? Or do technologies have intrinsic qualities that shape the culture into which they are introduced?

All of these questions are interesting in their own right, but the final idea about whether or not technologies are neutral in their own right or not made me think.

A definition of technological determinism is given as being the belief that technology is an agent for social change. They use the example of the phrase ‘you can’t stop progress’ as a good example of this belief.

Honestly that’s as far as I got in understanding this reading. It seriously hurt my brain, and after completing 2 essays in 2 days I gave up.

I blame technology!

Dom’s View on Hypertext

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Dom has a great post about Hypertext. He starts by providing multiple examples of ways hypertext can be used. He links to other people blogs, other photo’s and uses words and images as the link.

He looks at the way’s in which people use hypertext today and explains how this weeks reading by Landow examines electronic linking and how it can also be used within e-books. He goes on to explore how this allows readers to navigate a text with ease and efficiency, such as skipping to a specific chapter of a novel at the touch of a button. Or, in some instances, to other texts entirely.

I find it interesting how these links create an intricate world of endless interconnected texts. It allows a more three dimensional world, branching out from traditional print literacy to an existence of networked literacy.

This post was helpful as I focused on the second reading instead by Jay David Bolter about writing space.

 

This weeks summary

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Dominic Chambers has a great example of hyperlinks in his blog and also has a brief rant about the readings, I must admit I often have a similar sense of frustration when I open up the readings. Simone Lau has a good summary of this weeks reading about Hypertext by George Landow, Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization.

Writing as Technology

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writing

This weeks reading was a chapter in Jay David Bolter’s Writing Space and was titled Writing as Technology.

Bolter believes that the role of writing is for “collective memory, for preserving and passing on human experience”.

I for one really enjoy this definition and idea of writing. I love to look at the world around me, listening and looking for potential blog post ideas. I believe that everyone draws from experiences in their own lives as inspiration to write a new story, or create a film. The best emotions spring from life experiences, love, hate, vengeance and happiness, these raw feelings are the building blocks to great writing.

Writing enables us to “arrange verbal thoughts in a visual space”. Writing is definitely therapeutic. Ask anyone who owns a diary. Putting your feelings out of your brain and onto some paper is one of the best methods organising thoughts. It’s not only calming but largely productive. Thoughts ping around our minds, doing loops, circles and often disappearing entirely, only to pop back up again at 3am and proceed to keep us awake all night. By writing things down our minds can settle and our thoughts won’t end up lost in the depths of our minds.

This reading suggests that the power of writing and more importantly the power of words is so vast it can transcend time.

It’s encouraging to think that even though our writing technologies and publication methods are changing our writing can have an everlasting impact. The idea that what I am writing this very second will one day be read. Whether it be tomorrow, next week in class or at my eulogy. Even in 200 years time. Who knows. But it’s a pretty exciting thought.

 

Online Self

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In David Weinburger’s piece, Small Pieces Loosely Joined he looks at the way we depict ourselves online compared to how we present ourselves in real life. Do we really have an online personality?

Weinburger talks about this online anonymity that allows users to create their own profile, often one that exaggerates or completely re-creates our real offline personality.

I don’t think any Internet user, especially those that use sites such at Facebook or Twitter can claim they haven’t slightly altered there online form to be more appealing. Even the content we choose to share or not share impacts the way others view them online. We choose to share the positives and choose to not share the negatives. I argue that this creates an ‘online personality’.

However, having said this, it’s true that humans also present different versions of the self in the physical world. The way you act when interacting with your family at the dinner table compared to how you act when having some drinks with your friends on the weekend will be vastly different! I think the point is though that the internet makes us actively think about self representation by giving us the tools to easily construct who it is we want the world to believe we are.

 

Networked Literacy: “Yes, it’s difficult”

Posted on by under Networked literacy, Readings
Knowledge

In an interesting piece by Adrian Miles “Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge” he looks at the communications sphere known at networked literacy.

He begins by looking at a comparison between print literacy and networked literacy using Penny (a student) and how she visits a library to get out a book.

Miles begins to explain that to be network literate is not the same as, being computer literate.

This can be seen in the same way that we understand print literate is much more than just being able to read and write.

Miles goes on to define network literacy as being able to participate as a peer within the emerging knowledge networks that are now the product of the Internet, and to have as ‘deep’ an understanding of the logics or protocols of these networks as we do of print.

While this definition still has a tendency to confuse me on multiple levels, the example he gave of his daily works began to unravel the given definition.

On a daily basis he might read something online that is relevant to his teaching. “I will write about this in my blog, providing a link to this content. I will also bookmark this site via my del.icio.us account so that I can find it again and so that others may also find it. Meanwhile, I’ve also added some academic references to CiteULike, and I know my students and others can get this information because each service provides custom RSS feeds that can be subscribed to. Next, I move two photographs from my mobile phone to Flickr, one of which I’ll be publishing into my blog and the other will be shared with some colleagues for a paper we’re writing together.” etc etc.

What I have come to understand from the piece is that networked literacy is the ability to weave together multiple media platforms (web pages, blogs, photo’s, video’s etc) and distribute them across the network in a simple manner.

Or as Jill Walker has defined it:

“Network literacy means linking to what other people have written and inviting comments from others, it means understanding a kind of writing that is a social, collaborative process rather than an act of an individual in solitary. It means learning how to write with an awareness that anyone may read it: your mother, a future employer or the person whose work you’re writing about.”

I think I like her definition better.

 

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