Month: January 2015
Week 4, Wednesday reading
Only one reading this week to be completed by Monday, 2nd February. It’s a bit dense so be sure to take your time with it.
Galloway, Alexander R. Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization. The MIT Press, 2006. Print. (Extract from Introduction, PDF)
Different Perspectives
Have a look at these two different news articles about the same story. While neither goes particularly far towards either side of bias, have a think about the ways in which information is prioritised and what the respective focus of each article implies.
From The Guardian:
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani meets Julie Bishop, urges Western troops to stay
From The Australian:
Julie Bishop meets new Afghan president
Wednesday, Week 3 Readings
Andrew Murphie and John Potts, Culture and Technology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Print. ‘Theoretical Frameworks’ extract (PDF)
Andrew Murphie and John Potts, Culture and Technology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Print. ‘Introduction’ extract (PDF)
Wednesday Week 2 Readings
These cover all of next week, so try and get them done by Monday. There won’t be any readings on Monday of next week so the load of readings will be lightened considerably from here on out.
1. Barabási, Albert-László. Linked: The New Science of Networks. Cambridge (MA): Perseus, 2002. Print. (Extract, PDF)
2. “The 80/20 Rule”. Barabási, Albert-László. Linked: The New Science of Networks. Cambridge (MA): Perseus, 2002. Print. (extract, PDF)
3. Watts, Duncan J. Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. London: Vintage, 2003. Print. (Extract – PDF) (Note: this one is a bit long and wanders so just skim through it a bit.)
4. Anderson, Chris. “The Long Tail.” Wired. N.p., Oct. 2004. Web. 23 Aug. 2013. (PDF, and Web)
Landow
Although in some distant, or not-so-distant, future all individual texts will electronically link to one another, thus creating metatexts and metametatexts of a kind only partly imaginable at present, less far-reaching forms of hypertextuality have already appeared. (69)
One of the great strengths of hypertext, after all, lies in its ability to provide access to materials regardless of how they are classified and (hence) how and where they are stored. From the Nelsonian point of view, hypertext does not so much violate classifications as supplement them, making up for inevitable shortcomings. (108-9)
The concepts of beginning and ending imply linearity. What happens to them in a form of textuality not governed by linearity? (110)
One may argue that, in fact, all the hypertext linking of such texts does is embody the way one actually experiences texts in the act of reading; but if so, the act of reading has in some way gotten much closer to the electronic embodiment of text and in doing so begun to change its nature.” (116)
From:
Extracts from: Landow, George P. Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006. Print. (low rez PDF)
Week 2, Monday Readings
These to be completed by Wednesday, 14/1/2015.
1. (&2) Douglas, J. The End of Books — Or Books Without End?: Reading Interactive Narratives. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.
(First reading, and the second reading)
3. Graham, Paul. “The Age of the Essay.” Paul Graham. http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html N.p., Sept. 2004. Web. 11 Aug. 2013.(pdf)
4. Shields, David. Reality Hunger: A Manifesto. New York: Vintage, 2011. Print. “Collage” extract, (pdf)
Week 1, Wednesday Readings
These should be completed by next Monday. These are listed in order of importance and I would encourage you to think about the significance of the date of publication attached to each piece as it will inform your understanding of the text.
1. Bush, Vannevar. “As We May Think.” The Atlantic July 1945. The Atlantic. Web. 19 July 2013.
2. Extracts from: Landow, George P. Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006. Print. (low rez PDF)
3. Extract from: Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale (N.J.): Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991. Print. (low rez PDF)
4. Nelson, Theodor Holm. Literary Machines 91.1: The Report On, and Of, Project Xanadu Concerning Word Processing, Electronic Publishing, Hypertext, Thinkertoys, Tomorrow’s Intellectual Revolution, And Certain Other Topics Including Knowledge, Education and Freedom. Sausalito: Mindful Press, 1992. Print. (PDF)
Mixed Media Creative Critical Essay
Value: (40%)
Due: Friday, 19th February at 5pm
This task can be completed in pairs or individually. If a complete draft of the writing (minimum 1200 words) is submitted to your teacher by Monday, 9th February you will receive a bonus 5 marks. Work that is done in pairs is expected to be more sophisticated (writing, ideas, use of media, references) than work that is done individually.
Submission
Email the URL of your essay with a screen capture of all pages included in a .pdf attachment by 5pm on the due date.
TOPIC PROBLEM
Network literacy is not merely knowing about this, it is doing it. It is in this doing that we can understand that literacy is an applied knowing, or if you prefer a knowing through doing.… It is being comfortable with change and flow as the day to day conditions of knowledge production and dissemination, and recognising that all of this may change, and appear differently in six months. What underlies such change, however, are the principles of distributed content production and sharing, folksonomies, trust networks and having access to skills that let you collate and build with these varieties of content and knowledge….. Network literacy means recognising that there are no longer canonical sources and having the skills to find what it is you think you want, of being able to judge it, and then of being able to incorporate this, in turn, into your knowledge flows. Finally, networked literacies are marked by your participation as a peer in these flows and networks — you contribute to them and in turn can share what others provide.
Miles, Adrian. “Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge.” Screen Education Autumn.45 (2007): 24–30.
Your task is to compose and pursue a research question that will enhance your understanding of a topic area that is of key interest to you and will have direct relevance to your future career. This should be explored in the context of Networked Media and must include a variety of different media. The essay can exist across multiple webpages.
Take any of the ideas/concepts/arguments in the above quote to investigate and think about the possible implications of this for you as a future professional media maker. For example, what might you need to know about? How might this affect how you make media? Consume it? How it get used? Distributed? Could the media in itself (what sort of thing we currently mean when we say ‘media’) change? In other words take something from this to think about what it might mean for you as someone who will influence our future media.
DESCRIPTION
This essay is to be published as a page or pages on your blog or as a standalone web page/s published via themediastudents.net website.
It is to include:
- text
- image (photos or drawings)
- video and/or audio
The essay is to be around 1,500 words in length. It does not have to conform to traditional academic requirements and so can be
- personal
- use “I”
- finish with questions rather than answers
- be exploratory in its thinking and argument/s
However, it is still an essay which means the work must:
- make an argument
- explore or think about an idea or ideas
- use evidence
- appropriately cite that evidence
An essay is not an opinion piece, it is informed by research and thinking. This makes an essay critical, which doesn’t mean it criticises something negatively but that it interrogates ideas and assumptions to see what they are, what they are made of, and where they might take you. An essay is then a place in which you think through something, rather than reporting on what you already know or understand. This task is inviting you to treat your writing and making as more like a laboratory, where you state something, then think about what it means, its consequences or implications. In other words follow the idea where it leads you.
The essay can consist of more than a single page. The image/s and video/s and/or audio that you use are expected to contribute to the ideas being explored. They might reflect an idea, reinforce or endorse it, or provide a prompt or point of departure for your own thinking.