Week 6 Reading

Interestingly, Adrian’s book analogies come into play with this week’s reading. There is no set ending when it comes to the internet, unlike your average book. In fact, as the reading asks, “What if you had a book that changed everytime you read it?” Depending on your mood or attitude on a particular day, you can change what you read accordingly. The internet allows us to do just this.

 

Hypertext “describes a tool that lets us use the printed word as the basis for a technology that considerably extends writing’s reach and repertoire.” It is the way of the future, or so it would seem after these recent readings. It is a growing strand of communication and interaction which will only become more and more advanced as time goes on.

Network literacy.

The reading this week was by our very own lecturer Adrian Miles. He discussed the concept that is ‘Network Literacy’. Opening with an anecdote about a girl going to the library to borrow a book. This takes many steps. With the emergence of the Internet however, we have a much easier solution – just Google it.

 

Network literacy is, in a nutshell, having the knowledge to be able to participate as a peer within the emerging 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.

 

All kinds of media, whether it be web pages, blog posts, photos or videos are weaved and interconnected throughout such networks. Where print literacy is a purely two way relationship, network literacy can grow and expand, extending itself between consumers through collaboration.

 

This is an interesting topic which I’m sure we will learn more about – this subject is Networked Media, of course.

This is copyrighted, yeah?

Something I learnt from the readings this week that was quite interesting is that the duration of copyright is the lifetime of the creator plus 70 years. Whoa.

Also I had never heard of a Creative Commons where rather than an owner reserving all their rights, they relinquish some rights and reserves to others. There are different licenses they can choose from, such as an “attribution” license where others can use their work, as long as the original owner is credited as the author.

So we have to be very careful about what material we use in our blog as we must avoid copyright. Any work we produce on our blog is also copyrighted material, which I wasn’t aware of. I thought you had to go through some kind of process to get your stuff copyrighted.