The day I sat down, tired and confused after travelling for 30 hours to Australia, for the enrolment, I had no clue what to expect. Since I live in Norway and did not have the chance to enrol from there I was pretty late. So all the courses I enrolled in was almost the only ones left. One of the courses I never regretted taking was New Communication Technologies. The course was actually how I expected it to be. Doing all the different tasks on a computer, including different software as Word, Adobe and Excel. I am familiar with Word and Excel so that was not to hard and complicated, but the Adobe part took me a couple of hours to get. When I figured out how it worked it also got mere interesting and addictive. What surprised me was the blog part. I did not see that one coming. I did not expect to put all the work we did on a blog, and to keep the blog updated. I did not like the blog I used though, Blogger.com. Everything was kind of confusing and it was a bit unstructured. I also found it tangled and hard to find your way around. Anyways making your own blog is fun. I use Facebook and Myspace on normally and I find these more “friendly” and not that hard to use. I would never carry on using Blogger.com anyways because none of my friends use it. All that talk about getting friends on internet really never applied to me.
A smart thing to make everyone meet up in lectures was to make them put their lecture notes on the blog. It kind of forces them to meet up if they do not want to get left behind. The lectures were easy to follow and well structured. We also got to see some movies and different things on the web, which I do not mind. The tutorial tasks were interesting and understandable. This is the course where I got most information about what to do and when to do it. Accompanied by bright and friendly tutors I feel that everyone enjoyed this course. It is one of those courses you go to learn because it is fun and “up to date”. We are living in the age of technologies so it could not fit more perfect. Another thing I did not expect was that in New Communication Technologies we had history lessons, going back in time to see what technologies they had back then. I guess it is more important on the exam though. Summed up this was a course I liked very much, and the course liked me. I learned quite a lot new stuff and I also maintained and upgraded the stuff I already had tried out. I think this course is important for everyone that wants to use a computer on a daily business. Keep up the good work guys!
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Lecture Notes Week 12
Free software, open source, creative commons and electronic frontiers foundation
Buying software-> Property software
Owned by the company that sells it.
The collections of instructions that programmers write are referred to as source code (or just code)
Source code usually locked
->illegal to go in there and fix it.
Free and open source software refers to a kind of software that is different to property software in a number of significant ways.
Founder: Richard M. Stallman
• Users allowed to run the software for any purpose
• Study and examine close, freely modify and improve
• Give copies
• Improve the software an distribute it
Copyleft-> Core concept putting things on the internet for free.
Open source software open for all operation systems.
A lot of free and better softwares out there.
The Creative Commons
Applies to the likes of music, writing and videos or movies.
Creative commons license if you want your stuff to be free.
Can be used everywhere and gives the freedom to use information responsibly, morally and legally without fearing being sued.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
The first line of defence when freedom in network is attacked.
Deals with the law and digital media across the whole spectrum.
->keeping the internet open to people.
Both EFF and Creative Commons are non-profit organisations.
Buying software-> Property software
Owned by the company that sells it.
The collections of instructions that programmers write are referred to as source code (or just code)
Source code usually locked
->illegal to go in there and fix it.
Free and open source software refers to a kind of software that is different to property software in a number of significant ways.
Founder: Richard M. Stallman
• Users allowed to run the software for any purpose
• Study and examine close, freely modify and improve
• Give copies
• Improve the software an distribute it
Copyleft-> Core concept putting things on the internet for free.
Open source software open for all operation systems.
A lot of free and better softwares out there.
The Creative Commons
Applies to the likes of music, writing and videos or movies.
Creative commons license if you want your stuff to be free.
Can be used everywhere and gives the freedom to use information responsibly, morally and legally without fearing being sued.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
The first line of defence when freedom in network is attacked.
Deals with the law and digital media across the whole spectrum.
->keeping the internet open to people.
Both EFF and Creative Commons are non-profit organisations.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Lecture Notes Week 11
Cyberpolitics
Digital divide
-> the major issue in all cyberpolitics issues. How can everybody’s interest be represented in on-line debate? Solution: cheaper computers and internet time and more public access.
Online democracy
Distinguish between idealist and the democratic way of use the internet. Cyberdemocracy not very evident in organised hierarchical lines and commercial purposes.
Defining democracy
Francis Fukuyama concludes that from the dissolution of communist totalitarianism that the current practise of liberal democracy is "the end of mankinds ideological evolution (and) the final form of human government"
Simple definitions of democracy: the rule of the many, the rule of the majority and "government of the people, by the people, for the people".
The last 200 years democracy have both broadend and narrowed. Representative democracy as we know it today can be said to be the product of the nations of the industrial age.
Around 80% of adults in Australia and the USA says they have an interest in politics. Half of the adult American follows public affairs and vote where its voluntary. Australia 40% and only 5 % in elections. Summing this up it is a major lack of faith in the process of democracy.
The definition of democracy may never be concluded and itshard to complete, but its no reason to abandon it.
Gaps in the mass media
The growing concentration, centralisation and commercialisation of the mass media seems to have foreclosed avenues for democratic participation in the existing representative democracy. It is suggested that there can be ways in which the area of deliberation may be extended by the application of new communacation technologies.
Marshall McLuhan-> electricity does not centralise, but decentralises.
Hans Magnus Enzensberger-> propose to place the technical means of media production in the hands of ordinary people.
john Fiske-> viewers appropiate media output for their own purposes. Citizens allowed to produce their own "semiotic democracy".
John Hartley-> systematises the political import of audience reception-> Popular reality
Free speach and censorship
Key attributes of democracy-> Deliberation and discussion
Democratic activity-> Talk most improtant
Conflict Free speach<->Copyright
Citizen-Hacker: Doing Global Democracy
Hackers do not think its wrong to break into to look around and understand because they see computer system as a part of the common wealth.
1986-> The hackers manifesto-> command and control and the rule of corporations.
"Hacking" have many meanings; cutting through thick foliage and managing or coping with a difficult situation, often with an appropriate application of ingenuity or a creative practical joke. Can you hack it?
Developed beyond its anti-social and avant garde origins to incorporate any approach to any media that seeks to use hidden potentialities and anomalies in that media to open interpretation and debate.
Hackers are playing a part in extending the opportuneties for democratic deliberation by
1) providing access to debates for a multitude of voices that could never be heard through existing mainstream, broadcast media,
2) creating a greater quantity of available information that increases the level of transparency over political debate generally and above all
3) allowing people the opportunity to fiddle, improvise and 'kludge' their own communication solutions.
Primer and the Pre-history of Time Travel
Time-> somtimes described as fourth dimension.
Some Methods of Time Travel from fictionThe Time Machine
Wormholes
Faster than light time warp
The body as device
Third party phenomena
Tachyon messages
Black holes
Theoretically possible to slow time down, but never reverse it.
Black holes-> gravity dilates time.
Another possibility
Memories do not fade in a virtual mind. Therefore time never passes-> Link memory by means of a device which triggered all senses you can relive past experiences as constantly new, constantly present.
Digital divide
-> the major issue in all cyberpolitics issues. How can everybody’s interest be represented in on-line debate? Solution: cheaper computers and internet time and more public access.
Online democracy
Distinguish between idealist and the democratic way of use the internet. Cyberdemocracy not very evident in organised hierarchical lines and commercial purposes.
Defining democracy
Francis Fukuyama concludes that from the dissolution of communist totalitarianism that the current practise of liberal democracy is "the end of mankinds ideological evolution (and) the final form of human government"
Simple definitions of democracy: the rule of the many, the rule of the majority and "government of the people, by the people, for the people".
The last 200 years democracy have both broadend and narrowed. Representative democracy as we know it today can be said to be the product of the nations of the industrial age.
Around 80% of adults in Australia and the USA says they have an interest in politics. Half of the adult American follows public affairs and vote where its voluntary. Australia 40% and only 5 % in elections. Summing this up it is a major lack of faith in the process of democracy.
The definition of democracy may never be concluded and itshard to complete, but its no reason to abandon it.
Gaps in the mass media
The growing concentration, centralisation and commercialisation of the mass media seems to have foreclosed avenues for democratic participation in the existing representative democracy. It is suggested that there can be ways in which the area of deliberation may be extended by the application of new communacation technologies.
Marshall McLuhan-> electricity does not centralise, but decentralises.
Hans Magnus Enzensberger-> propose to place the technical means of media production in the hands of ordinary people.
john Fiske-> viewers appropiate media output for their own purposes. Citizens allowed to produce their own "semiotic democracy".
John Hartley-> systematises the political import of audience reception-> Popular reality
Free speach and censorship
Key attributes of democracy-> Deliberation and discussion
Democratic activity-> Talk most improtant
Conflict Free speach<->Copyright
Citizen-Hacker: Doing Global Democracy
Hackers do not think its wrong to break into to look around and understand because they see computer system as a part of the common wealth.
1986-> The hackers manifesto-> command and control and the rule of corporations.
"Hacking" have many meanings; cutting through thick foliage and managing or coping with a difficult situation, often with an appropriate application of ingenuity or a creative practical joke. Can you hack it?
Developed beyond its anti-social and avant garde origins to incorporate any approach to any media that seeks to use hidden potentialities and anomalies in that media to open interpretation and debate.
Hackers are playing a part in extending the opportuneties for democratic deliberation by
1) providing access to debates for a multitude of voices that could never be heard through existing mainstream, broadcast media,
2) creating a greater quantity of available information that increases the level of transparency over political debate generally and above all
3) allowing people the opportunity to fiddle, improvise and 'kludge' their own communication solutions.
Primer and the Pre-history of Time Travel
Time-> somtimes described as fourth dimension.
Some Methods of Time Travel from fictionThe Time Machine
Wormholes
Faster than light time warp
The body as device
Third party phenomena
Tachyon messages
Black holes
Theoretically possible to slow time down, but never reverse it.
Black holes-> gravity dilates time.
Another possibility
Memories do not fade in a virtual mind. Therefore time never passes-> Link memory by means of a device which triggered all senses you can relive past experiences as constantly new, constantly present.
Tute Week 11
This week we had an introduction to Microsoft Excel. I remember doing Excel on high school many years ago so this was not new to me, but a bit confusing since it’s been a long time. I had full control until the last bit. I tried for 45 mins and was not able to figure it out. This was the macro things. My way to work out the solutions on this week tute was simply to follow the directions we got and try to work my way around. I don’t think this software will be very useful for me the coming year because im not doing any subjects that require math skills. Yet… that I know of.
Tute Week 10
This week we had an introduction to Microsoft Word. I have used Word many times so I didn’t encounter any problems. Most of the things we were told to have I done before. When it comes to the things that I hadn’t done before, just followed the directions we got. It was pretty easy. Word is very useful for me because I am a student and on all my assignments I have to use this kind of program. Most often I use Word. The tute was helpful because I learned new stuff such as track changes.
Lecture Notes Week 10
Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a science fiction genre based in the possibilities inherent in computers, genetics, body modifications and corporate developments in the near future.
->Comes from the word amalgamation of Cybernetics (the study of communication, command and control in living organisms, machines and organisations) and Punk (music).
-> Cybernetics comes from the Greek kybernetes (steersman or pilot)
-> Cyberpunk developed as a reaction against the over-blown and predominantly safe stories pf 'space opera' such as Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy and George Lucas's Star Wars.
William Gibson
->A US/Canadian writer whose fictional work has spawned a number of key concepts like 'cyberspace' and 'virtual reality'. His work sits uncomfortably in the sci-fi genre because its gritty realism about the near future makes it too close to the truth. The social criticism inherent in his pessimistic, dystopian vision provides a balance to the corporate boosterism and optimistic views of Bill Gates.
CYBERPUNK THEMES
1. Technology and Mythology
Greek mythology-> Prometheus created humans, and stole fire from the gods and gave it to the humans. He was punished having his liver pecked by an eagle eternally.
Judeo-Christian-> Adam ate fruit and he was expelled from the Garden of Eden, only to find that there is no way out of the deal.
Cyberpunk sought to demythologise technology but effectively predicied/created the World Wide Web and so was used to remythologise technology.
2. Utopia and Dystopia
Some of the most powerful myths for and against technology have been intertwined with utopian writing. Utopias (from the Greek, meaning nowhere) are literary works that tell of imaginary places where everything is perfect, usually because people and technology are in harmony.
-> Last two hundred years have seen many Utopian experiments. People have tryed to live out the literary myth, sometimes by embracing new technology and sometimes by eschewing new technology.
Technology itself has often been visualised as Utopia
Development of new communication has led to another set of mythologies.
3. Cities as Machines
The Shape of the City dictates the kind of lives that most people lead. The City in Bladerunner is avowedly post-modern, built up layer on layer but starting to lose its relevance – people are moving to the Off-World.
-the city is a machine for living ... it creates human lifejust as humans create it
-the city is a natural thing, created by natural beings (humans)just as bee-hives and ant nests are created by natural beings
-the city is a living being ... a cyborg which combines humantissue with synthetic infrastructure.
4. Technological change
The First Media Age (centralised dissemination) versus the Second Media Age (decentralised interaction)
Early forms of electronic communication technology bore many similarities. Most importantly they were (with the interesting exception of the telephone) unitary systems of dissemination.
Mark Poster calls this period the first electronic media age.
You could write a letter, make a film or television program, broadcast a radio program, record an album and thousand could receive that message.
The latest development to mimic the equalising structure of the telephone is the Internet.
30 million users by the middle of the 1990s.
2000 about 262 million
5. Modernism to Postmodernism
Shadowing this split between the technologies of dissemination and the technologies of interaction is the shift discussed by a variety of theorists from modernism to postmodernism, from the certainties of the 'grand narratives' of big institutions to the complexities of personal survival for individuals.
But who controls the switches?
The second media age is built upon the first media age.
-> depending on the the world view inherent in existing technologies
The new media brings a need for new understandings to protect the public interests.
-the means to protect rights of access
-equity of access
-the means to strengthen and enhance existing community structures
-development of the democratic process/structure (why?)
-development of a global community
-development of strategies for developing, implementing and enforcing global laws
-intellectual property laws
-freedom of speech
At the moment, many entrenched social mores tend to dominate the ways in which we use the Internet and virtual reality.
Cyberpunk is a science fiction genre based in the possibilities inherent in computers, genetics, body modifications and corporate developments in the near future.
->Comes from the word amalgamation of Cybernetics (the study of communication, command and control in living organisms, machines and organisations) and Punk (music).
-> Cybernetics comes from the Greek kybernetes (steersman or pilot)
-> Cyberpunk developed as a reaction against the over-blown and predominantly safe stories pf 'space opera' such as Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy and George Lucas's Star Wars.
William Gibson
->A US/Canadian writer whose fictional work has spawned a number of key concepts like 'cyberspace' and 'virtual reality'. His work sits uncomfortably in the sci-fi genre because its gritty realism about the near future makes it too close to the truth. The social criticism inherent in his pessimistic, dystopian vision provides a balance to the corporate boosterism and optimistic views of Bill Gates.
CYBERPUNK THEMES
1. Technology and Mythology
Greek mythology-> Prometheus created humans, and stole fire from the gods and gave it to the humans. He was punished having his liver pecked by an eagle eternally.
Judeo-Christian-> Adam ate fruit and he was expelled from the Garden of Eden, only to find that there is no way out of the deal.
Cyberpunk sought to demythologise technology but effectively predicied/created the World Wide Web and so was used to remythologise technology.
2. Utopia and Dystopia
Some of the most powerful myths for and against technology have been intertwined with utopian writing. Utopias (from the Greek, meaning nowhere) are literary works that tell of imaginary places where everything is perfect, usually because people and technology are in harmony.
-> Last two hundred years have seen many Utopian experiments. People have tryed to live out the literary myth, sometimes by embracing new technology and sometimes by eschewing new technology.
Technology itself has often been visualised as Utopia
Development of new communication has led to another set of mythologies.
3. Cities as Machines
The Shape of the City dictates the kind of lives that most people lead. The City in Bladerunner is avowedly post-modern, built up layer on layer but starting to lose its relevance – people are moving to the Off-World.
-the city is a machine for living ... it creates human lifejust as humans create it
-the city is a natural thing, created by natural beings (humans)just as bee-hives and ant nests are created by natural beings
-the city is a living being ... a cyborg which combines humantissue with synthetic infrastructure.
4. Technological change
The First Media Age (centralised dissemination) versus the Second Media Age (decentralised interaction)
Early forms of electronic communication technology bore many similarities. Most importantly they were (with the interesting exception of the telephone) unitary systems of dissemination.
Mark Poster calls this period the first electronic media age.
You could write a letter, make a film or television program, broadcast a radio program, record an album and thousand could receive that message.
The latest development to mimic the equalising structure of the telephone is the Internet.
30 million users by the middle of the 1990s.
2000 about 262 million
5. Modernism to Postmodernism
Shadowing this split between the technologies of dissemination and the technologies of interaction is the shift discussed by a variety of theorists from modernism to postmodernism, from the certainties of the 'grand narratives' of big institutions to the complexities of personal survival for individuals.
But who controls the switches?
The second media age is built upon the first media age.
-> depending on the the world view inherent in existing technologies
The new media brings a need for new understandings to protect the public interests.
-the means to protect rights of access
-equity of access
-the means to strengthen and enhance existing community structures
-development of the democratic process/structure (why?)
-development of a global community
-development of strategies for developing, implementing and enforcing global laws
-intellectual property laws
-freedom of speech
At the moment, many entrenched social mores tend to dominate the ways in which we use the Internet and virtual reality.
Tute Week 9
This tute we were supposed to work with our essay. Searched the web and different databases for materials for my essay.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
