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.

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