Tutorial 6: 3D worlds

Today's tutorial was an introduction to Second Life. We had to dive in and create an avatar. It was interesting but I personally would not make a 3D world become apart of my world. The graphics aren't even that good, the functions look annoying and there is too much to do when signing up as well as when trying to get your avatar to do something. Not a fan and wont be a fan anytime soon. But it was very interesting never the less that there is a world within a world that consumes so many people.

Lecture 5: MyFace

A guest speaker came in to visit us for today’s lecture just to discuss what type of Social networks we used. We also watched a movie called “MyFace” from the abc website from that featured on the Triple J’s The Hack Half Hour. People sit and have a discussion on the relevant topics at hand and MySpace was the hot topic. Everyone in the discussion was involved in some sort of online social networking or activities and all came with their views and experiences. The key issue was privacy and what we as users of these online communities post and are willing to expose about ourselves. Hackers are always online and in the sites that are most common for people to open a portal into their lives for the hackers to devour them. A very interesting topic because it is very relevant to everyone. Most of us are very consumed by these online networks and do not pay much attention to what could be happening behind the scenes in the 'cyber' world where all our personal information is floating and could be captured by anyone. My eyes are open and I am nowe going to pay more attention.

Lecture 4 - New media, Internet studies and Cyberculture studies

Today’s lecture started with us matching a movie called EPIC 2014. What happened to the news and what is EPIC? EPIC is the Evolving Personalising Information Consult. The movie focused on what would happen if Google developed more and took over the media and ways for people to get the news other than from the current news mediums. It was interesting in that it gave us an insight to just what the Internet is capable of accomplishing. Would Google look to customize news stories for each individual user by taking snippets of news from various sources and compiling them in a ‘news article’ personalised for that user. The question of Copyright law infringements were raised and would be a very big issue if Google were to venture with Amazon and explore such personalised options. This is a short movie to make you think. It made me think.

The main topics in the lecture were new media, Internet studies and cyberculture studies. Popular cyberculture studies started when people started to see the Internet as a magical thing, something that was new and exciting and a privilege, therefore began to call it ‘THE Internet’. General cyberculture studies started when people had been hanging on the net and now began to study it, academics became interested in what the Internet was able to do. Critical cyberculture studies are the current focus and people are now able to engage with other people. It explores and examines stories we engage in using the Internet with Interactive activities and new technologies; for example, the use of our mobile phones. Therefore narratives about our experiences have encouraged other people to explore what we are talking about and therefore enlarging our experiences. It also analyses political, social as well as economic considerations that make access to these activities possible. The way we interact with the Internet has a great impact on what we can do on it and how we can use it to its full potential.

Tutorial 4 - Task 2: Searching the Internet

Search engines sort through the most relevant web pages upon request using a set of rules called algorithms. They also use the location/frequency methods which find the closest keywords and phrases relevant to the search. The most relevant is placed at the top of the list of web pages and the developers of the websites can pay to put their sites at the top of the list so it seems to the viewer to be more relevant and entice more people to their sites. My favourite search engines are Google and Yahoo. I like the extra links they have at the side of the search pages. Sometimes I find what I’m looking for in them rather than the searched websites.

Tutorial 4 - Task 1: Using a search engine other than Google or Wkikipedia

The creator of the Love bug was Onel de Guzman. http://archives.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/06/29/philippines.lovebug.02/index.html

The world record of the largest watermelon is 262.6 pounds. http://www.hopechamberofcommerce.com/melon_heritage.htm

The Ebola virus was names after the river in the African country, Zaire called Ebola. http://ebola.emedtv.com/ebola-virus/from-what-place-did-the-ebola-virus-get-its-name.html

The largest recorded earthquake in the world was measured in Chile with a magnitude of 9.5 (Mw) in May 22, 1960. http://www.earthquake.usgs.gov/learning/facts.php

There are 1,073,741,824 KiloBytes in a TeraByte.
http://www.wizbit.net/cd-dvd_production_faqs_what_is_a_terabyte.htm

The ‘Storm Worm’ arrived in Spam email or in the form of e-cards with very interesting subject headings. It was a malicious payload that attacked any windows-based platforms.
http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/storm.asp
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/soa/Resurgent-Storm-worm-attacks-over-Web/0,130061744,339281298,00.htm

This is the only way to contact the Prime Minister:
The Hon Kevin Rudd MPPrime MinisterParliament HouseCANBERRA ACT 2600
http://www.pm.gov.au/contact/index.cfm

Stephen Stockwell is a member of the Brisbane group Black Assassin.
http://live-wirez.gu.edu.au/Staff/Stephen/default.html

Web 2.0 is a platform for a network providing software continuously getting better with the more people interact with it. It enables people to remix and create data shared from other users. It creates an exciting user experience. Examples of this are Facebook and Twitter.
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/10/web-20-compact-definition.html

Lecture 3 - History of the Internet

Today's lecture was covering the Internet and it's history. Before the concept of the Internet was even thought of, Charles Babbage started looking to develop the calculator. With the help of his close friend, Ada Byron who was the first computer programmer, they came up with ideas of how to get the abacus calculator to work. This was the first example of a machine that could count. We also discussed Gordon Moore, who developed Moore's Law which states that microchips capacities will double every two years. This concept has obviously changed somewhat with the rapid development of technology and computers becoming more advanced. Computers were first commercially produced in the 1950's by IBM.

Xerox PARC developed the mouse concept as well as the pull down menus and the GUI (Graphical User Interface). In 1975 the first PC, called O, was released to the public. BASIC for Altair was developed by Bill Gates which were languages for basic accounting, some games and word processor. He then started the company Microsoft in his garage. We then discussed the development of Apple and it's role in the progressiveness of computers. Apple was developed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and the first primitive Apple computer was sold for just $666.60. Apple continued to battle with IBM and Microsoft for control over the industry, initially with great success but they soon hit a down fall with Steve Jobs leaving the company. His return years later prompted Apples rise to success once again and there they still remain.

The Internet is a network of interconnecting computers, a network of networks. which was started by the RAND corporation who came up with the idea initially to transfer academic material from one source (computer) to another. This was the reason why Internet was needed.

We then watched a movie on YouTube called "Warriors of the net" which was very entertaining. It just animated what happens when packets of information are transferred from one computer to the next. The steps of the Internet process were explained in a simplistic way which made the broad picture easier to understand.

Early Internet applications were also touched on, mentioning the E-mail, FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and the IRC (Internet Relay Chat).

Tutorial 3 - Wikipedia articles

The task today was to get to know Wikipedia and search two topics using Wikipedia and determine whether the information was accurate, can you understand the topic and does it follow the Wikipedia guidelines.

The first topic I looked up was on South Africa. I found this topic very detailed and easy to follow and understand. The information is factual and relevant to the topic. I did not find any errors in the information nor did I find the information to be biased towards any one side of the country's history. Considering the shaky history of South Africa this is a very good thing. The people who have contributed to the article have fused together all the fundamentals of what South Africa is all about and how it got to where it is. However, in looking in the History tab of the Wikipedia page to see what changes had been made to the article, I did come across what I thought was a funny substitute in place for another word. Having said that it was offensive to who ever the statement was applied to. This change was obviously made as a joke and is a good example of what someone is able to do when using Wikipedia. Any changes could be made to any topic and if you were none the wiser you could just take it for fact, so don't. The people who edited this article did not follow the Wikipedia guidelines.

The second topic I searched was an article on Afrikaans, one of the official languages of South Africa. This article was accurate and gave me what I was looking for but there were so many spelling mistakes. It was obvious to me that an Afrikaans speaking person had added the article and was not proficient in their English spelling. Other than that it does follow the Wikipedia guidelines.

Lecture 2- Social networking and identity : Part 1 and 2

Part: 1

A researcher on the Gothic subculture, Paul Hodgkinson, came in today to give a lecture on the role of social networking in the social identity. He talked about social networks where people are able to connect themselves with friends from different walks of lives and different places in the world. The use of Facebook has become a huge tool in people being able to take their private lives onto the web and share the everyday lives with other people.

I found this topic very interesting in that Paul touched on some topics and view points that I hadn’t thought about. The idea that online social networks are likened to the bedroom and the way in which we perceive our privacy and private lives. He focused on the generations of girls using their bedroom as a place where they find out who they are, develop their identities by experimenting with clothes, shoes, make-up and all the things that girls do. Before the use of Facebook and Myspace, the private space of a girl was in her bedroom where she could decide on who comes in or not, girls were not permitted to go out as much, if any, as boys were and so their room became their social playground. Now with technology, social networks have become the bedroom in which people are choosing who they want into their friend networks (bedroom) and choosing how they define their identity through posting their pictures on their profiles as they would put photographs on their walls in their bedrooms. I found this likeness very interesting because it’s true. With technology growing, it’s hard to define what you see as private. Is your profile really private, the conversations you have with your friends in your profile, as you would have the conversation behind closed doors. There is a moral question here of where do we each individually decide what we think or perceive as private and make the relevant decision to allow such a great amount of people and the social network itself into your bedroom and be apart of your life in much more a way than you would if the social site didn’t exist.

This lecture was really interesting and gave me another view point to consider in respect to social networks and their current roles in our lives.

Part 2:

As technology grows and changes, so does societies need to keep up. The result of this is us changing the way we do things like communicate with friends, colleagues and keep ourselves informed with what is going on in the world.

I personally have fallen victim to the use of Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. Even though I have set up accounts with all three, I find that I really don’t utilise them as much as others do. Although I do communicate with people I know in these networks I have not interacted with people I have never met before. That, I suppose, is a personal choice as I have never been interested to do so. It is too easy to be apart of an impersonal world making technology and your computer be your voice, where you can say anything to anyone and really not be accountable for it because for one, the person has never met you and who are you really at the end of that interaction. It is a different story when you know the person that you are communicating with because they know weather what you are saying about yourself and your thoughts is true or not, to a certain extent because of the ‘I know you’ factor. Making friends with a stranger, on the other hand, is a different story in that the difference in the way you would communicate with them would be different to the way you would communicate with your friends. You have a license to be who you want to be and say what you want to say with a stranger. Especially with the private inbox mail, it has no limitations.

After having said that, Communication’s ever increasing technologies have aided me a hugely in being able to communicate with my family and friends back home. Things like being able to get a picture delivered to my mobile from a moment that I am missing out on at home, and being able to appreciate that moment as if I were there. The Mobile phone technologies have made it simple to be in contact as the most intimate moments even though thousands of kilometres separate the two individuals. That is a communication technology that I would not be able to live without. I appreciate that growth in new communication technologies much more than I do for the other forms like Facebook and MySpace. It just makes life more tactile and real. Who knows what’s real on the net these days.

Realistic communications also come into play with the security of communication technologies, where you could be laying out your utter most private details (hopefully not credit card details) to that close friend whom you know would never tell your secrets, but who else is really listening. You just don’t know where your information is being replayed to on what server in which country. That si probably a fear that we all have to live with these days because it is in everything we do. Every form of communication we make is in jeopardy of not being private. It makes it all to complicated to even be apart of because of the full time awareness you have to be paying to what is going on. A mobile is not even safe with a simple mistake as leaving your Bluetooth on. I think people’s awareness of their privacy issues will soon become a conditioned motion to secure what ever communication technology it is you are using at that time. At the moment I find myself having to remind myself to check that what I think is private is really private and not open to a whole network of cyber hungry people. A technology grows, so will our conditioning grow and change as does our conditioning in society grow and change as the world changes.

Lecture 1 - Introduction to what is Communication and Technology

An introduction to how new technology allows us to communicate and how we use them was discussed in the first kecture. This introduction really got me thinking about how I am influenced by and rely on technology everyday.

Networks such as Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Tagged and Youtube allow people to communicate with each other instantaneously and become many household newtworks. I enjoy the use of Facebook for keeping in contact with my family and friends overseas. It is free, fun and cuts down on my phone bills. But in saying that, I rely on this network to keep my communication open with my feinds and family and now that I have it, I am comforatble using it and therefore the verbal aspect of communication is compromised. Other technologies such as Mobile phones, email, weblogs, IM's are easily accessible and I find it interesting how people have adopted these means of communication and find life without them unliveable. This is a sad reality, not for me but for many people.

The world is changing and technology's advances are overtaking our ability to keep up with all the changes. What do we do when life is all about technology and the ways in which me communicate with it.

Web logs have also become strong forms of media and news streaming. Online weblog 'journalists' are causing controversy in whether what they are doing is actually delivering fact and not just heresay. Because anyone can deliver what they think is news online, the question of what exactly are we ready online. Is the information we are taking in fact? What are the references of the information source and how can we confirm. These are questions I consider asking when dealing with information on the net.

This course seems like it is going to be interesting and I am sure that what I will learn will be relevant to my life and where I play a role in New communication technologies.