Category: Readings

Week 7 Reading.

by rachelfisher-white

In Murphie, Andrew, and John Potts work “Culture and Technology.” I found the segment on Knowing the world differently: Poststructualist thought to be the most interesting.

What comes first the chicken or the egg? I think it’s fair to say that technology and change are much like the chicken and the egg, as the writers say “we know the world differently through different technologies, and different technologies themselves are in turn a response to knowing the world differently.” but as they point out may technology dwell closer to the very heart of whatever we call human. Technology changes as we change, with its requirement to match our needs, which in a sense also become their needs?
They bring up Posthuman, and according to wikipedia a posthuman being a hypothetical future being whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously human by our current standards, a completely synthetic artificial intelligence like a cyborg.

Most interestingly though, ..

They bring up technology and techniques and that ‘machines imply techniques’, and they question whether we need technique to use things and if techniques come unattached to technologies, with an attempt to answer that i bring in Raymond Williams who claims that a technical invention only becomes an available technology when one possess the knowledge and technique to do so. Therefore if techniques do not come attached to specific technologies then how would we learn the techniques, could you learn to use a pen without using a pen? learn to ride a bike without actually riding a bike? i don’t think so but saying that the ‘Folders’ on a computer stem from our already existent ability to search through folders, therefore giving us the technique without the technology.

Can I have some Privacy Please?

by rachelfisher-white

Have internet users lost a sense of privacy?

See, that question could be answered two ways depending on whether you’re looking at it positively or negatively.

Positively, people are sharing more of themselves, users are finding new ways to express themselves and allowing others to see parts of themselves that they might not have shown in public, some quirky talent that has got 543,105 views on youtube is

but negatively, people could be showing parts of themselves that perhaps they shouldn’t be showing to everyone, and EVERYONE does have access to what you post online.. like for example in the George P. Landow’s Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization he explains how he was searching for how many people had created a blog and was sent to a personal page of a woman who was explaining how many people she had slept with, “i assume there blogger intends the site for her friends, but Google mistakenly brought me there, as it may well bring her parents and employers. It is very difficult to maintain this kind of public privacy.”. Landow continues to say that “In their immediacy and accessibility, in their seemingly unmediated state, Web diaries blur the distinction between online and offline lives, virtual reality and real life, public and private.”

Perhaps because users are sitting behind a screen, they forget that whilst there not exposing their secrets directly to someones ears, they’re telling the world because everyone has access to that information. Landow even covers a rebuttal with the comment that “many bloggers screen comments, and protect their posts with passwords but once an entry goes online internet search engines can bring it to the attention of web surfers.”
Once you upload or share something on the internet, on a blog or social media page, it’s accessible to whoever knows how to find it.

Weinberger Small Pieces

by rachelfisher-white

Renee’s Blog Post about Week 4’s reading demonstrated a clear understanding of what David Weinberger was saying.

“Everyone is an author on the internet, everyone is a participator and they make contributions to this great community.We don’t get our authority from degree here, but from what we are writing. The Web is a voice with affect and passion. We listen, write, discuss and evaluate and create the Web!”

I think this is exactly what Weinberger was aiming to communicate that “The lively plurality of voices sometimes can and should outweigh the stentorian voice of experts.” He talks about how the human voice is richer and in some ways more reliable, perhaps because it is more relatable? Academics and experts know what they’re talking about and therefore can not be, or highly unlikely, be wrong and “were not looking up answers” on people’s sites, we are instead asking questions, reading other peoples responses and sometimes even answering questions ourselves. We are researching to see if people have the same worries as us, or share the same opinions.

“The Web is a written world, and the 300 million people on the Web are it’s authors.” The Web is a tool that gives ordinary people a platform to express and expand their knowledge, and it’s the ordinary people that are being listened to.

Reading 04.1 Nelson.

by rachelfisher-white

“The computer and now the personal computer, have opened whole new realms of disorder, difficulty and complication for humanity. With so called “computer basics” and so called “computer literacy”, beginners are taught a world of prevailing but unnecessary complication.”

Hypertext- a text which is not constrained to be linear.

Nelson’s excitement about the abilities of the hypertext spilled out the pdf, so fascinated the that hypertext would allow writers and readers to explore a new depth to writing that heretofore was considered impossible. That this new way is unrestricted by sequence, and therefore allow us to better match our structure with what we are writing about.

But, I quite like linear. I like it’s rules.
Whilst I do appreciate the things achievable due to the hypertext… and i do constantly reap in the benefits with its ability to link, and access to limitless sources and, well, just everything.
I like the rules i’ve been conditioned to when writing. I like beginnings, middles, and ends. I live for temporal satisfaction when i finish a hard copy of a book or television series.

When Adrian commented on one of his posts saying that we’re naive because we assume were network natives because we can work Facebook and mum can’t…I was sort of stumped, I mean like obviously I do know more than all members of my family members and that I am some what network literacy savvy but perhaps not as savvy as i’d like to think and perhaps this is what is creating my bias for the old fashioned linear way. Whilst having no limitations excited others and give them room to explore depths they’ve only dreamed about, it makes me want to run to the hills and get out my paper and pen.