Guess where I be.

Symbiosis

– The integration of the natural and the unnatural.

Emergence

– The creation of patterns and intricate networks.

Immersion

– The removal of remediation, the ability to believe that there is no technology between the user and what is being experienced.

World Peace

– There is no such thing. More like… world equality and understanding.

Transparency

– To show what makes technology clearer to the user, and leave the parts open for interpretation by the public.

Flows

– Dynamism, the idea that technology will be entirely dynamic, malleable and ever-changing, adapting seamlessly to all users and environments.

Open Work

– Effortless collaboration between users and freedom to modify technology.

The Other

– Technology should provide an insight into that which we do not understand.

New Art

– New technologies bring new arts. Pretty self-explanatory.

Hacking the Dream

– I don’t know why this is a dream.

I hate that word, but this is about the Symposiums that I don’t go to, so it makes sense to edit the word slightly and turn it into a point that is never reached. You know, me being a know-it-all, cause I know it all.

Anyway… so for the last unlecture Adrian has blessed the slackers among us with lecture slides, which is nice. Of course, from the looks of things week 12 was a conclusion more than a body paragraph, as old ideas were rehashed and the point was really driven home: the network is ‘flat’, completely interactive and lacking in the rules and mores that govern what we knew and understood before. Or something. I honestly think we are still overcomplicating it, but I get the point.

I get why we are learning about learning, rather than really learning about how to make blogs and how to use software. My interpretation of this course and its ideology is that the content IS irrelevant, and that’s entirely the point. We can be expected to learn something that will be invalid in a few years, there’s no point, and since this is one semester of work we can’t really come back to it. Instead of learning what we won’t need to know, we learn how to interpret information while it is still relevant, and how to evolve once that information has become obsolete. The internet and the network are ever changing landscapes, without form and largely without function, we can’t truly understand something that dynamic until we understand that it simply IS dynamic. It’s like… dynamia. Is that a thing? No, but I like it. It is everything that changes, encompassing all the concepts and ideas, accepting and rejecting, reinvigorating and viciously tearing apart. It’s creating, destroying, changing, improving and ruining everything simultaneously and constantly.

I don’t like the concept of the network, I think it’s a horrible thing to contemplate because it’s not a thing. It’s cruel, but it’s nothing. I can’t actually generalise it, really, just… assume.

NOPE, I’M DONE. MY BRAIN HAS DIED.

So, this is the Bachelor of Communications (Media). This is first year.

I’m sure I have teachers who look at me and see another student who doesn’t have their head in the game, who’s gonna tumble and fall once their out of the course. I’m looking like another barista in the cafe, frothing lost motivation and forgotten dreams.

But I’m not.

If anything, I have learnt that this is my industry, and everyday I see fellow students who clearly don’t feel the same, as well as some who do. Sadly, media seems to be an industry only the lucky and very determined succeed in. And I, at least, feel determined. Spines is hopefully on the way, if it isn’t something else will be. I’m writing, producing, AD-ing, I’m production managing. The latter I’m actually doing on an established variety show, which impressed me, at least.

I feel like I’m getting places, even if it doesn’t look like it to my assessors. It’s just that university is less important than my TV show and Live on Bowen. It’s them that employers will look at on a resume, not ‘B. Comm (Media)’. That’ll just get me a higher pay bracket when I get going.

Let me think of something smart to say about Networked Media…

Give me a second.

Ok, this is kinda dumb, but I might just say something about the Niki assessment.

I understand that most people are trying to complete this final entry to a standard that they could submit it under, as the first three all fell apart or kinda sucked or whatever. I’m not, the entry before this was satisfactory for me. It was long, intriguing, and – how dare I to blow my own horn – well written. Now, that places me in an awkward position for my group of three this fortnight.

This pair who are studying Google’s strange-but-potentially-revolutionary project ‘Google Glass’ with me both want to submit this entry. One says they need it, the other says they’d like to make this one better than the alternative. That’s fine, but I just don’t have their motivation. Forgetting the essay, my Niki assessment is effectively complete.

I feel like I’m gonna let people down.

I feel like that should bother me more than it does.

I was browsing Tumblr just now, since deep down somewhere I’m a prepubescent girl. Anyway, I was looking through my funny feeds when I had a think-nugget.

What if this is the end of society? I don’t mean our death and destruction is imminent, but with websites like Tumblr ensuring that cultural artefacts remain relevant way past their lifespan, how can society evolve?

What if this is it?

What if this is what our culture will be in a thousand years? We’ll still talk about Supernatural, Pokemon and the black woman whose apartment caught fire but she didn’t have enough time to prepare properly and got bronchitis. Isn’t that disturbing?

Our technology will be different, but culturally, what will change?

Ignore me.

Facebook

People have problems with this monolith of social media. I have problems with it too. It’s cruel, cold and profit-driven, while maintaining an air of familiarity, warmth and community. There are good reasons why so many people want to see it disappear from the invisible network of the web.

Maybe we’re being a bit dramatic though. We don’t like it, it’s cruel. It’s smart, but I don’t think we can call it

So, Actor-Network Theory. I thought it’d be something like a map to celebrities’ homes, but instead it is this confusing concept that just… doesn’t really make sense. The reading we were presented with this week aimed not to explain what it is, but rather to dispel our misconceptions about what it isn’t.

It’s not a ‘network’ in the structural sense. We can’t look at it two-dimensionally, or even three-dimensionally. Every connection to every node is a new dimension, or something. Somehow. I’m choosing to disregard this, because I think if people ask me to look at things in the infinite-dimension my brain will die. Instead, I’m just gonna look at it three-dimensionally. Well, two-dimensionally, but all colour-graded and fancy-like so that if I look at it through those old-fashioned 3D glasses it looks like that third-dimension is lurking around somewhere.

Actor-networks lack the qualities of a technical network, as in order, strategy and, well, sense. That doesn’t tell me what they actually contain, other than disorder and randomness. They could contain copious amounts of squirrels and ebola-infected mud bricks. Common sense would suggest otherwise, but if Networked Media’s taught me anything it’s that common sense is useless, always.

One thing that is clear between these networks and normal social theory is the importance of non-human ‘actors’. Concepts can act as nodes or even hubs, and the theoretical and untraceable connections that bind them can link an infinite number of these non-descript entities. That just makes it more confusing: this isn’t social theory, I’m told, but it totally is. Just… like, it’s society. That’s what society is, connections, between things that are human and sentient as well with things that aren’t.

What. Is. This. Shit.

It’s a story about connections. It’s about the actors that maintain the connections. It’s about the network that comes from the actors and the connections that they maintain. It’s about the concepts that navigate the network that comes from the actors and the connections that they maintain.

Goddammit.