Blog Post – Week 4

Had my first online class for Networked Media today. It’s a strange feeling having to wake up early to catch a live stream on my computer, as I’m used to considering computer time as my own. Never thought I’d be saying this, but I’d honestly rather take the train into the city for classes.

The primary reading I looked at this time was in relation to Web 2.0 and the topic of agency and control. Seeing those words appear throughout the text started to give me awful flashbacks to VCE Media Studies and the trials and tribulations I had to endure throughout my time in high school, like watching movies and having to take notes at the same time. I absolutely hate that feeling you get when you’re focussing too hard on the film and words won’t come out, but you’re also focussing too hard on writing and can’t remember what’s going on in the film. But I digress.

This reading gives a real ‘pulling back the curtain’ feeling when reading it, looking at whether we’re the puppets or the puppet masters on modern social networking sites. This is a really scary realisation, especially in a trying time like this with all the pandemic news and weird political nonsense. If users are totally in control of the content they post and consume, then that’s terrifying because anyone can say anything and misinformation can spread faster than can be controlled or debunked. However, if the social media platforms are actually in control of everything, then that’s also terrifying, because now what people say and who gets to hear it can be easily manipulated, resulting in important information being silenced.

While the reading didn’t necessarily address this specifically, it provided a basis for consideration of a ‘grey area’ of sorts, leading me to think, “Where in the middle of these two extremes is the best?” How much freedom and how much restriction should be allowed to ensure that neither extreme is overpowering? I hope that proceeding in this course will help me to develop a more complete understanding of this subject and, eventually, equip me to come closer to some kind of conclusion on this.

Blog Post – Week 3

Not much to say about class today, given that I ended up missing it. Of course, in the midst of a significant health crisis, I just so happen to catch a cold. Luckily I can confirm (at least to myself) that it is just a cold, as all the symptoms are the ones that while a cold or flu might produce them, coronavirus generally does not (sneezing, blocked nose, no coughing or fever). In fact, what I’m feeling right now is the same as what I felt like getting back from my holiday to Japan in January. That was brilliant fun being sat in an airport, congested and wearing a face mask, while the TV next to the boarding gates is reporting the first person to person case in Japan. Lovely.

The readings for this week were to do with images in the network and the implications that the general subject has. One reading had a really interesting section to do with Wikipedia articles on climate change changing the images they had after the United States backed out of the Paris Climate Agreement, with pictures of wind turbines and the like were changed to statistics and charts. It’s crazy to think about how much influence images have over the way the web shapes our ideas about things, as in the past text was the only component. Now, we are so surrounded by and saturated with images that we don’t really think about what they are, as despite being concerned about climate change, I never noticed a distinct change from the positive to the negative, and now if I compare articles and posts about climate change from 10 years ago to now, the difference is clear.

The things that we cover in this course continue to shift the way I look at the web (which I guess is good, given that it’s the point of the class), and often I’m not sure of what I’m supposed to do with this information. It’s like being told that Vader is Luke’s father each week. I’m looking forward to how the concept of images on the network is built upon throughout the rest of this semester.

Blog Post – Week 2

The main reading for this week is to do with how the design of everyday things has implications on how they’re used and how the society that uses them is shaped around them. It’s always a weird feeling to have something that you’ve always noticed but never thought hard about pointed out and explained to you, so this week’s text’s focus on affordances – as cheesy as this sounds – really changed my perspective on the world, now that I understand what they are and that they have a name.

Poor design has always baffled me on an emotional level. Like, how ignorant to your own product do you have to be to make it in such a way that nobody can use it? There has to be an unfathomably high level of hubris and corporate “Everything Is O.K.”-ness involved in so many day to day things that just don’t work in the way anyone would expect them to.

I’m reminded of the website layout of the brilliant school that I attend currently. The RMIT website environment is such a mess that I’m surprised anyone is able to do or find anything on it. All information is split between 3 sites; the main public site, Enrolment Online, and Canvas.

The main site is what search engines direct you to, and 9 times out of 10 when you get there it just gives you a messy Web 2.0 screen with a little button linking you to the actual information in a new tab.

In stark contrast to the wacky, bright, almost Splatoon-like design of the RMIT website, Enrolment Online looks like it was designed in 2004 to match design motif with Encyclopedia Britannica on CD-ROM. This is also the part where you find all the information about, you know, you, and all the legal stuff you’d think would be easier to find. I now keep getting emails asking me to finish my application to join RMIT just because I got lost on Enrolment Online once.

Then there’s Canvas, the most functional of the 3, that contains information about your classes and basically nothing else. Having come from high school where Compass contains all of your student information, scheduling, payments, applications, assignments, submissions, class resources, and embarrassing school photos of your friends, the utter disarray of university is a bit of a shock.

Also, the RMIT specific email sign-in page lists the example email as example@rmit.edu.au. Student emails include a “student” after the at sign. Took me a comically long time to figure that one out.

Blog Post – Week 1

First class at RMIT today. Networked Media is a pretty good class to have as an introduction to uni, even in this short amount of time I’ve already learned a bunch. The prescribed reading for this week had some really interesting insight into software as a cultural product rather than just a machine that does a task.

It’s a bit strange being asked to write a blog for a class, for a number of reasons. Firstly, who blogs anymore? I guess it makes sense to take a look at the online media of the past to get an understanding of how the current systems work, or as explained by our lecturer (Teacher? Professor?) seeing where all the functionality of modern social media comes from. But the blog is a dying – or in many cases dead – medium, and I’m part of a demographic young enough that I never engaged with or created blogs ever.

Blogs have also always confused me in how they exist as a product. Like, an online journal with a bunch of information and thoughts that make perfect sense to and are meant for you doesn’t really sound like the greatest form of entertainment, and as for how people even found blogs in the past is beyond me. I guess it’s like looking back at the 1970s and thinking “Jeez, how bored must people have been to find PONG interesting?”

Regardless, this medium seems appropriate for recording thoughts and ideas, as well as being a good way to show off assessment work, so I guess it makes sense for us to be doing one of these as a part of our networked media course. The reading for this week was to do with the concept of software literacy and the introduction of the concept of affordances, as in relation to the question that we’ve been prescribed. Looking at this as an introduction to this course is really beneficial, as it straight up explains one of the key terms we need to know going forward and – for lack of a better explanation – opens your third eye in terms of looking at social media in a more critical way. I’m looking forward to seeing what will be built on this foundation, and maybe eventually it’ll make sense why the blog is a mostly abandoned format.