#4 Symposium Pandemonium

Now this week’s symposium made me wonder about two things:

– Why is it so easy for our generation to share private information about ourselves?
– Does this mean that we have forgotten about privacy altogether?

For the first point I want to point out that not everyone is naive and willingly shares everything about themselves on social media. However there is an overwhelming amount of people that just don’t care about the potential harm this could do their lives in the present and the future. These social networking companies make it quite easy for these to use them as a platform for the world to notice. This makes me think that we naturally want to feel included and important in the eyes of others and by being online we have a sense of safety as typically when online we are in an environment we are familiar with and comfortable with.

As for the second point I don’t think we forgotten about privacy, instead we created an illusion that the space where we share the information is safe. The same people will never yell out these private details from the roof tops out of the fear of strangers hearing it. When online there are a lot more eye balls that can see this information but since we don’t see them in our mind they are not there. As a great man once said, “out of sight, out of mind.”

I.R.W.Y.V. (I Review What You View) – The League Season 1 – 5

Now The League has been around since 2009 and it’s pretty much a household name amongst cable viewing Americans, in Australia though it’s still pretty much an unknown. This still baffles me as it is one of the funniest comedies in the last decade.

The originally FX now FXX show revolves around six best friends and their own Fantasy Football league and that is pretty much plot in its entirety. Being a show about American Football, Australians might think that they won’t be able to understand the jokes but the show being about this sport is purely incidental as the humor comes from the extreme level of competitiveness and rivalry. The show is semi improvised meaning that all the madness that is set up is all made up on the spot, which is credit to the comedians in the show. Speaking of comedians the show has some real comedy cred with Nick Kroll and Paul Scheer playing as two of the six main characters.

Now this show is clearly not for everyone since it can get quite crude and offensive. I however feel that the jokes are done tastefully enough since they aren’t rude for the sake of being rude, that is just the brand of humor that fits this show. Since its going onto its sixth season I feel that Australia should tune in to the show as it is genuinely funny with loads of guest appearances from comedic legends such as Seth Rogan, Tom Lennon, Sarah Silverman, J B Smoove , T J Miller and many more.

This brings me to a score of a: Watch unless easily shocked or offended otherwise its great fun.

Now have a listen to the origins of the trophy name and the term ‘Eskimo brothers’.

Week 6 Reading

This week’s reading by Douglas introduced a different concept about hyper text than last week’s reading which was also about the same subject. The part where he mentioned that a book “changes every time you read it” was quite interesting. This is true in the sense that the story itself doesn’t change but instead we change our interpretation of it. As we get older our perception of the world change therefore the meaning make out of these novels always changes.

The point about hyper texts being fluid and print texts are fixed was also quite interesting as books are limited to having one beginning, one middle and one end but not other mediums. The example given about the ‘choose your own adventure’ books such as the Titanic reminded me of a game I played a few years ago that has more than 20 different endings called Heavy Rain. It had one beginning but about half way through the game the player’s decisions in the game have a significant impact over the progression and conclusion of the story. In fact the main characters can fail the objective of the game and die at any point. What really was a surreal moment for me was when I seemingly failed this task and expected to have to restart but it never came as the story kept moving but into another direction because of my mistake. I had gotten a few friends to play the game and we all had a completely different story in the end.

#3 Symposium Pandemonium

Last week time was not on my side and to be fair neither was it this week and frankly when is it ever on anyone’s side except death. Anyway I missed last weeks post about the symposium but I’m here this week.

This week I actually found myself agreeing a lot about what has been said about high school as a the production line that after 6 years leaves dazed and confused and even worse ill prepared to face the real world. Basically we are grouped together in a class because our parents happened to conceive us in the same year and that’s it. How the educational system is set out, it limits any uniqueness to learning. I remember when I was in year 9 or year 10, the whole class conducted a multiple intelligences test which acts as an indicator for what type of learning best suites you. It was pretty safe to say that the entire class wasn’t a visual learner so why are we grouped on what type of learning best suites us if school is supposedly as learning institute?

I.R.W.Y.V. (I Review What You View) – Broad City Season 1

This new Comedy Central series from creators Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson is a like a breath of fresh air. The series follows two young best friends struggling though a life of low income in New York City. Broad City was actually developed from their web series of the same name that was produced from 2009 to 2011.

The show has a feminist bend on a traditionally male skewing network that actually is funny. The chemistry between Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson is great to watch but perhaps the best aspect of the show is the outrageous supporting cast. A personal favorite of mine is Ilana’s booty call Lincoln Rice DDS, played by Hannibal Buress. The character is pretty much modeled after the Hannibal I love that. He is a softly spoken dentist who wants to take their relationship to the next level, but continuously fails to do so. He comes across as the most stable character on the show which is even more intriguing as he is paired with the most unstable one. On top of that he is a comic fountain of jokes, just listen to this guy.

Overall the show delivers actual laughs although most jokes tend to be subtle which makes the show funnier if you watch it more than just once. Sometimes it suffer from the trying too hard to come across as a dirty show but it has more clever set up than those types of jokes and they fade out as the show progresses.

This brings me to a score of a: Watch if you are a general comedy fan and/or love Hannibal Buress.

Now here is a clip that pretty much sums up why I love the character of Lincoln.

Week 5 Reading

After reading the Reading 1 for this week (an extract from: Nelson, Theodor Holm. Literary Machines 91.1) Hypertext is “non-sequential writing text that branches and allows choices to the reader, best read at an interactive screen”.

Well isn’t that a mouthful, any who this made me wonder about how fast we are progressing from a technological aspect. He predicted that offices would be paperless, publishing would be electronic, education will be focused on initiative understanding, and libraries may not exist. Seeing how far we’ve come in the five year Theodor (I Theadore his name) had written this, it’s not a farfetched as it first seems.

Let’s be honest for a sec, when we need to research does our mind automatically think “library” or “Google”? Thanks to advancing technology we are being conditioned to move away from traditional print literacy. Thanks to the internet when we read a text we can click on another text which leads us to a video and then all of a sudden you start rubbing your eyes as you realize you spent three hours watching cat videos.

Mandatory Hipster Blog Post

neeve’s

I think that this blog post is quite funny and the title really hooked me to read the entire post. I also liked the the fact that you posted a picture of the cereal. I feel that the introduction could have been in the category description rather than on the post it self. I guess you could have wanted to introduce the new segment on the first post but it’s so etching to keep in mind next time you post a new segment. Overall I quite enjoyed reading about your hipster breakfast ideas and I look forward to reading more in the future.