Overall, I have mixed feelings about this course. I feel like I've learnt a range of new skills in technology I wouldn't of been exposed to otherwise. Embedding you tube videos, creating links, writing blogs and even producing a 30 shot film within the space of two hours, are all online tools I wouldn't of explored otherwise. I think learning these tools has made me realise I can be creative and actively participate in the online community. Learning about the concept of culture jamming was interesting. I now don't look at everything at face value and think a bit more as to whether things are legitimate. I would say that I am happy with those tools I've learnt in the course.
On the other hand, some weeks I found the information we were sourcing was completely irrelevant. I understand most of it was to test our researching skills, but I don't think it was useful. However, looking at the course as a whole, I'm happy with how its been so far and I'm looking forward to researching virtual communities and whether they are a useful understanding of online life.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Week 9 - Tutorial Task and Tutespark
I've chosen to write my essay on the 'virtual community', whether it is a useful way of understanding contemporary online life. At first I thought I would look into Second Life, which is an online virtual world that encompasses real life activities. You're able to create yourself as a person, interact with others, buy land, create infrastructure, travel, shop. Basically anything. I think it is an extreme example of an online community, but people really do use it today. To understand the topic a bit more, I've looked into the term virtual community. Rheingold (1993) explains virtual community as "when people carry on public discussion long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships". More or less, it is a group of people who communicate via the internet.
http://secondlife.com/whatis/?lang=en-US
I think a 'virtual community' is a useful way of describing online life. In a sense, everything we do online is through communication. Whether it is reading emails, posting comments onto a blog, interacting through social media or playing online video games, the sense of a virtual community is present. But to what extent is the virtual community real? I'm going to explore more into Second Life as the example of and online community and whether this creates a realistic mirror image of life. To start, I'll be researching the Second Life website, blogs and academic articles on virtual communities.
I've started to look at some comments on virtual communities. Someone posted a theory they had about using an online community. He talks about people investing in social capital through online communities. He refers this to playing World of Warcraft for quite sometime. After seeing the same thing over and over, he began to get sick of what he was seeing and doing, but he kept playing because there was friends he didn't want to leave. Everyone he knew in the game, which was 30 or more friends kept playing beyond losing interest just to keep that attachment to their new friends.
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/why-spend-time-on-second-life/
http://secondlife.com/whatis/?lang=en-US
I think a 'virtual community' is a useful way of describing online life. In a sense, everything we do online is through communication. Whether it is reading emails, posting comments onto a blog, interacting through social media or playing online video games, the sense of a virtual community is present. But to what extent is the virtual community real? I'm going to explore more into Second Life as the example of and online community and whether this creates a realistic mirror image of life. To start, I'll be researching the Second Life website, blogs and academic articles on virtual communities.
I've started to look at some comments on virtual communities. Someone posted a theory they had about using an online community. He talks about people investing in social capital through online communities. He refers this to playing World of Warcraft for quite sometime. After seeing the same thing over and over, he began to get sick of what he was seeing and doing, but he kept playing because there was friends he didn't want to leave. Everyone he knew in the game, which was 30 or more friends kept playing beyond losing interest just to keep that attachment to their new friends.
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/why-spend-time-on-second-life/
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Week 8 - Negative impacts of technology on humanity
This week we looked at virtual psychology, how new communication technologies have altered the economy of the planet. We were looking at virtual realities, which is when one or more users are participating in a computer simulated environment. I saw on the news this morning a real life plane simulation, where you can pay to fly a plane in countries of the world and land in some of the most difficult airports. Its interesting to see that this is happening and makes me think what other false realities we may be able to immerse ourselves in. In a way, its almost frightening to think of what might be next. Here's another virtual simulation, which sends you all over the world in a glass elevator, using Google Street View images.
To understand more about this weeks task, I have researched into the term cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is an idea about expressing negative ideas about human nature, technology and the environment and their connection to the future. It is often considered as a product, such as music, art, film that encapsulates the idea of what might happen when human nature and technology combine.
http://www.cyberpunkreview.com/what-is-cyberpunk/
Cyberpunk can be broken down into themes such as, negative impacts of technology on humanity, fusion of man and machine, corporate control or society, story focuses on the underground and ubiquitous access to information. I found the theme negative impacts of technology on humanity most interesting. I came to think about the effect technology had on humanity in the creation of nuclear weapons. The nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are an example of technology at its worst.
Now the New York Times reports that a piece of code dug out of the worm includes a reference to the Book of Esther, the Old Testament story in which the Jews pre-empt a Persian plot to destroy them, and is a possible clue of Israeli involvement.No one has claimed credit for Stuxnet and a top US cybersecurity official said last week that the United States does not know who is behind it or its purpose.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/who-is-myrtus-book-of-esther-clue-points-to-israeli-involvement-in-stuxnet-attack/story-e6frfro0-1225932665892
To understand more about this weeks task, I have researched into the term cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is an idea about expressing negative ideas about human nature, technology and the environment and their connection to the future. It is often considered as a product, such as music, art, film that encapsulates the idea of what might happen when human nature and technology combine.
http://www.cyberpunkreview.com/what-is-cyberpunk/
Cyberpunk can be broken down into themes such as, negative impacts of technology on humanity, fusion of man and machine, corporate control or society, story focuses on the underground and ubiquitous access to information. I found the theme negative impacts of technology on humanity most interesting. I came to think about the effect technology had on humanity in the creation of nuclear weapons. The nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are an example of technology at its worst.
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| The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in 1945 |
A WORM attacking computers in Iran and threatening to shut down the country's first nuclear facility just weeks before it is due to open may have been developed in Israel.
The Stuxnet worm sparked awe and alarm in the world of digital security when it was first identified in June, with analysts claiming it was so powerful, the wealth of resources needed to develop it made a nation-state the most likely culprit.
According to security software experts and analysts, Stuxnet may have been designed to target the Iranian facility at Bushehr and suspicions have fallen on the US as well as Israel. Experts say this worm is linked to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in 1945, saying the Japanese have had the technology for years without releasing it.
Iran said this week that Stuxnet is mutating and wreaking havoc on computerised industrial equipment there but denied the Bushehr plant was among the facilities penetrated. Scientists warn the Japanese may be secretly plotting a nuclear bombing on Iran to frame the US for the damage caused in 1945.
Now the New York Times reports that a piece of code dug out of the worm includes a reference to the Book of Esther, the Old Testament story in which the Jews pre-empt a Persian plot to destroy them, and is a possible clue of Israeli involvement.No one has claimed credit for Stuxnet and a top US cybersecurity official said last week that the United States does not know who is behind it or its purpose.
The other possibility is the reference was placed there as a "red herring" designed to throw investigators off the track or stir political tensions between the two countries.
The Times said the US has also "rapidly ramped up a broad covert program, inherited from the Bush administration, to undermine Iran’s nuclear program". The Japanese are denying all suspicions, while experts are considering the involvement of the US.
Shai Blitzblau, head of the computer warfare laboratory at Maglan, an Israeli company specialising in information security, told the Times he was "convinced that Israel had nothing to do with Stuxnet".
"We did a complete simulation of it and we sliced the code to its deepest level," he said.
Stuxnet specifically attacks Siemens supervisory control and data acquisition, or SCADA, systems commonly used to manage water supplies, oil rigs, power plants and other industrial facilities. The self-replicating malware has also been found lurking on Siemens systems in India, Indonesia and Pakistan, but the heaviest infiltration appears to be in Iran, according to researchers. The software is known to be highly contagious and could reach The Australian Army computer systems later this year.
Once resident inside a system, Stuxnet simply waits, checking every five seconds to see if its target parameters are met. Once they are, it triggers a sequence - the code DEADF007 - that forces the network's industrial process to self-destruct. Scientists suggest this could create a shift in the earth's orbit which will inevitably irregular and extreme natural disasters across the globe.
"After the original code (for the entity's regular process) is no longer executed, we can expect that something will blow up soon," Mr Langner told The Christian Science Monitor earlier this week.
"Something big."
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| The Bushehr nuclear plant containing the Stuxnet virus / AP |
Week 7 Tutorial task
1. What is creative commons and how could this licensing framework be relevant to your own experience at university?
Creative Commons is a not for profit organisation that works to increase the level of creativity in 'the commons', which is the public's use for legal distributing, sharing and reusing. Creative Commons provide tools and licences that give individual and corporate creators a chance to copyright their creative work. This can be seen with the term 'all rights reserved' to 'some rights reserved'. This licensing framework could be relevant to my experience at university as it can be used as a tool to protect my creations (art, photography, text) from being illegally used or not represented as my work.
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/6/62/Creativecommons-informational-flyer_eng.pdf
2. Find 3 examples of works created by creative commons and embed them in your blog.
Three works I found made by Creative Commons are:
Nasty Old People, a swedish film directed by Hanna Skold used on the file sharing site The Pirate Bay.
The parody sci-fi film the Star Wreck, one in the series of the Finnish Star Trek parody.
The Slip, an album produced by American rock band Nine Inch Nails also used a creative commons licence. This is a clip of one of their songs head down, in their album The Slip.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_available_under_a_Creative_Commons_License
3. Find an academic article which discusses creative commons using a database or online journal. Provide a link to and a summary of the article.
Michael Baumann explores an insider's guide to Creative Commons. For internet users, the issue of copyright has been a hot topic since the beginning of the Internet. Today, law states that if you create something, it is copyright, which means no one can use it without permission from you. If we think about the internet today, what if we wanted to share this material? Everything on the net today is about sharing and reusing files. Creative Commons comes in, where you are able to partially copyright and people are now able to use your content, but you still get the credit.
Creative Commons has four principal licensing conditions; Attribution, Share Alike, Noncommercial and No Derivative Works. All of these provide different levels of copyright, depending on what you want. For example, Noncommercial means anyone can copy your work, however no one can use it for commercial purposes. Although, Creative Commons stresses two important points. It is not a replacement for copyright and it may not be covered worldwide. However, it is a useful tool that benefits most internet users.
http://HY8FY9JJ4B.search.serialssolutions.com/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8&rfr_id=info:sid/summon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=An+Insider%27s+Guide+to+Creative+Commons&rft.jtitle=Information+Today&rft.au=Michael+Baumann&rft.date=2009--1-0-&rft.issn=8755-6286&rft.volume=26&rft.issue=9&rft.spage=15&rft.externalDBID=IFT&rft.externalDocID=1878390111
4. Have a look at Portable Apps (a pc based application) – provide a brief description of what it is and how you think this is useful.
Portable applications are software programs that you can run from a flash drive or removable drive without installing them. What this means is you can leave your lap top at home and use a client machine (someone else's computer) without leaving any traces on their computer. These have become very popular with all sorts of industries, for example, design, blogging or business purposes. I think Portable Apps can be very useful in different professions, in particular design. Lets say you wanted to visit a potential client, you could run a program like Inkscape and briefly draw something up so they can see your skills and determine if you were the right candidate to create their design.
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/70-free-useful-portable-applications-you-should-know/
Creative Commons is a not for profit organisation that works to increase the level of creativity in 'the commons', which is the public's use for legal distributing, sharing and reusing. Creative Commons provide tools and licences that give individual and corporate creators a chance to copyright their creative work. This can be seen with the term 'all rights reserved' to 'some rights reserved'. This licensing framework could be relevant to my experience at university as it can be used as a tool to protect my creations (art, photography, text) from being illegally used or not represented as my work.
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/6/62/Creativecommons-informational-flyer_eng.pdf
2. Find 3 examples of works created by creative commons and embed them in your blog.
Three works I found made by Creative Commons are:
Nasty Old People, a swedish film directed by Hanna Skold used on the file sharing site The Pirate Bay.
The parody sci-fi film the Star Wreck, one in the series of the Finnish Star Trek parody.
The Slip, an album produced by American rock band Nine Inch Nails also used a creative commons licence. This is a clip of one of their songs head down, in their album The Slip.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_available_under_a_Creative_Commons_License
3. Find an academic article which discusses creative commons using a database or online journal. Provide a link to and a summary of the article.
Michael Baumann explores an insider's guide to Creative Commons. For internet users, the issue of copyright has been a hot topic since the beginning of the Internet. Today, law states that if you create something, it is copyright, which means no one can use it without permission from you. If we think about the internet today, what if we wanted to share this material? Everything on the net today is about sharing and reusing files. Creative Commons comes in, where you are able to partially copyright and people are now able to use your content, but you still get the credit.
Creative Commons has four principal licensing conditions; Attribution, Share Alike, Noncommercial and No Derivative Works. All of these provide different levels of copyright, depending on what you want. For example, Noncommercial means anyone can copy your work, however no one can use it for commercial purposes. Although, Creative Commons stresses two important points. It is not a replacement for copyright and it may not be covered worldwide. However, it is a useful tool that benefits most internet users.
http://HY8FY9JJ4B.search.serialssolutions.com/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8&rfr_id=info:sid/summon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=An+Insider%27s+Guide+to+Creative+Commons&rft.jtitle=Information+Today&rft.au=Michael+Baumann&rft.date=2009--1-0-&rft.issn=8755-6286&rft.volume=26&rft.issue=9&rft.spage=15&rft.externalDBID=IFT&rft.externalDocID=1878390111
4. Have a look at Portable Apps (a pc based application) – provide a brief description of what it is and how you think this is useful.
Portable applications are software programs that you can run from a flash drive or removable drive without installing them. What this means is you can leave your lap top at home and use a client machine (someone else's computer) without leaving any traces on their computer. These have become very popular with all sorts of industries, for example, design, blogging or business purposes. I think Portable Apps can be very useful in different professions, in particular design. Lets say you wanted to visit a potential client, you could run a program like Inkscape and briefly draw something up so they can see your skills and determine if you were the right candidate to create their design.
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/70-free-useful-portable-applications-you-should-know/
Week 7 Tutespark
This weeks lecture was about creative commons. Creative commons is a not for profit organisation that started in 2003, with the idea of having more freely available content, where it serves a public good. They provide free licences and tools for copyright owners to allow other users to share and recycle their material legally. Rather than only being 'all rights reserved', they have built on the term 'some rights reserved' which enables them to share content easily.
The free software I chose to experiment with was Moxilla Firefox. After my computer crashed a few years ago, we had to change our web browser to Moxilla Firefox to keep using the internet. To be honest, I didn't notice much of a difference. The only things I did notice was some websites didn't work properly and at times it seemed to be slower than usual. Other than that it was very similar to use, nothing that you couldn't do with Internet Explorer. After reading into it, I found some interesting differences between Moxilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer was seen as an ongoing security risk, with 90% of hackers using this web browser and it doesn't look like lessening in the future. On the other hand, Moxilla Firefox cannot run some websites and can often be slower than normal and takes up more memory.
After using this software and going to the lecture it made me think how we don't need to rely on the big corporate softwares to do what we need to do online. It really comes down to brands, everyone is familiar with Internet Explorer so why would they use Moxilla Firefox? Overall I didn't have a problem with it, but for security reasons I might consider changing in the future.
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/6/62/Creativecommons-informational-flyer_eng.pdf
http://www.techsupportalert.com/firefox.htm
http://www.downloadfirefoxbrowser.com/
The free software I chose to experiment with was Moxilla Firefox. After my computer crashed a few years ago, we had to change our web browser to Moxilla Firefox to keep using the internet. To be honest, I didn't notice much of a difference. The only things I did notice was some websites didn't work properly and at times it seemed to be slower than usual. Other than that it was very similar to use, nothing that you couldn't do with Internet Explorer. After reading into it, I found some interesting differences between Moxilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer was seen as an ongoing security risk, with 90% of hackers using this web browser and it doesn't look like lessening in the future. On the other hand, Moxilla Firefox cannot run some websites and can often be slower than normal and takes up more memory.
After using this software and going to the lecture it made me think how we don't need to rely on the big corporate softwares to do what we need to do online. It really comes down to brands, everyone is familiar with Internet Explorer so why would they use Moxilla Firefox? Overall I didn't have a problem with it, but for security reasons I might consider changing in the future.
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/6/62/Creativecommons-informational-flyer_eng.pdf
http://www.techsupportalert.com/firefox.htm
http://www.downloadfirefoxbrowser.com/
Week 6 Tutespark
Leading on from the lecture, we looked at new media in the sense of virtual communities and individual identities. Virtual community was explained as a group of people who communicate through the internet, while individual identities was the way people express who they are through the internet. This made me think about all the photos and posts I put on Facebook. Are they really a projection of me or is it just a small piece of it? I think you try to make it a mirror image of yourself, but somewhere along the way the internet makes it so commercial and fake.
We're asked to find who owns the content you put on the internet on various sites. After looking at various terms and conditions pages from social networking sites I found we do own all our pictures, video and text. However, as soon as you close your account, any content can be used for whatever purpose the organisation wants. Facebook has recently changed its policy, everything you put on their site is theirs to use, for advertising or any purposes. This really changes the way I think about social networking sites. If its that easy to do, why are we posting such personal accounts on the internet? Scary stuff!!
http://thenextweb.com/2009/02/16/facebook-owns-literally-put-facebook/
http://www.facebook.com/policy.php
http://videos.webpronews.com/2009/11/11/twitters-terms-of-service-spark-user-interest/
We're asked to find who owns the content you put on the internet on various sites. After looking at various terms and conditions pages from social networking sites I found we do own all our pictures, video and text. However, as soon as you close your account, any content can be used for whatever purpose the organisation wants. Facebook has recently changed its policy, everything you put on their site is theirs to use, for advertising or any purposes. This really changes the way I think about social networking sites. If its that easy to do, why are we posting such personal accounts on the internet? Scary stuff!!
http://thenextweb.com/2009/02/16/facebook-owns-literally-put-facebook/
http://www.facebook.com/policy.php
http://videos.webpronews.com/2009/11/11/twitters-terms-of-service-spark-user-interest/
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Week six - Culture Jam
For our culture jam, we decided to target the younger nightclub scene because they are gullible and easy to persuade. For Sin city's 2nd birthday tonight we've said Jay Z will be appearing for a special guest performance. We've created a facebook and twitter page and made regular posts throughout the week. We've already got 27 friends and there on the rise! We also created an event on facebook as well as a flyer, which we've posted up all around the uni.
I'll be heading to Sin City tonight, so can't wait to see how many people we fooled! This is awesome!!!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gold-Coast-Australia/Sin-City-GC/145603135480074?ref=ts
http://twitter.com/Sin_City_GC
Not only that, we've posted comments over all our personal facebook pages and created a flyer for the event.
Check it out below...
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| Jay Z at Sin City!! |
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Culture Jamming
Culture Jamming is the manipulation of images, words or phrases to satirise popular culture. It stems back to the idea of radio jamming which was where public frequencies were disrupted for independent communication.
One of the earliest forms of culture jamming started in Italy 1957, where three small artistic groups (the Letterist International, Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, and the London Psychogeographical Association) came together to form an international underground society; 'The International Situationists,' led by Guy Debord. In this era, their work involved theoretical and artistic creations that often gauged public attention with efforts to create uproar amongst society. One of their earliest works was the attack on Professor Bense in 1959 at the Museum of Ethnology in Munich, Germany. Bense was scheduled to talk at an 'Extremist-Realist' art exhibition, where he purposely wasn't invited to speak. The audience turned up to find a green suitcase placed on top of a podium, while inside a tape recording played in his supposed voice. He explained although he had important business in Zurich, he felt compelled to speak about the 'new art of the future' in Munich. He spoke in German, Latin and French as well as reciting quotations from Hegelian. The people of Munich couldn't help but be intrigued, and later humiliated when found he wasn't this articulate. Bense was outraged and for the first time situationismus became a part of the German language. This act of culture jam highlights the raw nature of the Situationists, how they created disruptions that involved protest, direct action and playing the system.
(http://www.affinityproject.org/groups/situationist.html)
One of the most influential forms of culture jam I found was the Apple inspired Iraq advert. This has the same elements Apple used for Ipod, but instead shows a picture of a solider with a gun, attached to a white ipod string. At the footnote it details how many Iraqi and US soldiers have died. This tactic created a link between popular culture and real-life situations. The contrast between the countries death tolls also highlights the way Apple (US) dominates Iraq and potentially controls them.
(http://ccit300.wikispaces.com/Culture+Jamming)
I found it hard to find the most damaging culture jam, however I put it down to one that had a damaging effect on the brand. Mc Donald's in particular is known to have been affected by adverts such as Super Size Me and Big Mac Attack. This culture jam in particular associates Mc Donald's as a health risk and potentially dangerous. The impact these culture jams had on the brand forced a new healthier range to prove they weren't a risk to society.
(http://ccit300.wikispaces.com/Culture+Jamming)
One of the earliest forms of culture jamming started in Italy 1957, where three small artistic groups (the Letterist International, Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, and the London Psychogeographical Association) came together to form an international underground society; 'The International Situationists,' led by Guy Debord. In this era, their work involved theoretical and artistic creations that often gauged public attention with efforts to create uproar amongst society. One of their earliest works was the attack on Professor Bense in 1959 at the Museum of Ethnology in Munich, Germany. Bense was scheduled to talk at an 'Extremist-Realist' art exhibition, where he purposely wasn't invited to speak. The audience turned up to find a green suitcase placed on top of a podium, while inside a tape recording played in his supposed voice. He explained although he had important business in Zurich, he felt compelled to speak about the 'new art of the future' in Munich. He spoke in German, Latin and French as well as reciting quotations from Hegelian. The people of Munich couldn't help but be intrigued, and later humiliated when found he wasn't this articulate. Bense was outraged and for the first time situationismus became a part of the German language. This act of culture jam highlights the raw nature of the Situationists, how they created disruptions that involved protest, direct action and playing the system.
(http://www.affinityproject.org/groups/situationist.html)
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| The International Situationists |
One of the most influential forms of culture jam I found was the Apple inspired Iraq advert. This has the same elements Apple used for Ipod, but instead shows a picture of a solider with a gun, attached to a white ipod string. At the footnote it details how many Iraqi and US soldiers have died. This tactic created a link between popular culture and real-life situations. The contrast between the countries death tolls also highlights the way Apple (US) dominates Iraq and potentially controls them.
 |
| Apple inspired Iraqi culture jam |
I found it hard to find the most damaging culture jam, however I put it down to one that had a damaging effect on the brand. Mc Donald's in particular is known to have been affected by adverts such as Super Size Me and Big Mac Attack. This culture jam in particular associates Mc Donald's as a health risk and potentially dangerous. The impact these culture jams had on the brand forced a new healthier range to prove they weren't a risk to society.
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| Big Mac Attack |
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