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.

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