So this is the last week of New Communication Technologies! As a result, it will also be the last little msg that i post on this blog! I've learnt quite a bit in this course to do with the wonders of Photoshop, MS Word and Excel, Virtual Worlds, how to make a blog, the emergence of blogs as a means of new communication, every word with the prefix cyber (eg. cyberpolitics, cybertherapy, cyberpunk etc. etc.) and in last weeks lecture i had the stunning revelation that Adam is a younger version of Richard Stallman (the pioneer Free Source Software movement). He definitely wants to be him when he grows up!
It has been a little frustrating that the lectures and tutes seem starkly unrelated in content but also a relief because generally, the tutes have been quite fun (thanks Jules!) and the lectures the complete opposite (so it's a relief that the ENTIRE course doesn't evoke the same reaction that the thought of a lecture does - namely a rather large GROAN!).
Anyway, thanks for the memories new comm tech and my little blog buddy, might see you in cyberspace somewhere (oh! theres another word that starts with cyber to add to the list!)!
So long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Adieu!
Emma :-)
Monday, May 28, 2007
Monday, May 21, 2007
Excel(lent) not!
Ok so another truly riveting experience, this time with Microsoft Excel! oh yay. I know that i should be excited or whatever about learning new skills and how to put formulas in columns (which did give a moment of interest when it worked it out for itself i might add!) but i'm afraid to say that my interest factor is probably somewhere in negative figures. Also, because certain instructions are not the same as on my computer, the frustration factor is increasing well into the positives. Oh what a lovely way to waste time!
hmmm yep getting more and more frustrating by the instant! And the instructions are sometimes not written in complete sentences (eg.Highlight Row 4 by clicking on the number at the start which will select the whole row.... So when you select the row (which has a Loss) and then right-click on the Mouse on that number at the start..... yeah i thought what the? as well!
and when they say go back and "repeat this process" there is no indication how far back this particular process actually began or what needs to be done again because all the steps sort of blend into one ever increasingly frustrating sequence of GROAN!
yeah well i think we're getting the drift that this has been one of my favourite activities of all time now aren't we? HA
I managed to get one of the little button thingys working at the end Eureka! but that doesn't inspire me enough to get the other 2 working... i guess if i ever own my own business (which really isn't a current aim of mine) i'll have to employ a receptionist/administrator who finds excel to be a more interesting program than i do and will work it for me :-)
hmmm yep getting more and more frustrating by the instant! And the instructions are sometimes not written in complete sentences (eg.Highlight Row 4 by clicking on the number at the start which will select the whole row.... So when you select the row (which has a Loss) and then right-click on the Mouse on that number at the start..... yeah i thought what the? as well!
and when they say go back and "repeat this process" there is no indication how far back this particular process actually began or what needs to be done again because all the steps sort of blend into one ever increasingly frustrating sequence of GROAN!
yeah well i think we're getting the drift that this has been one of my favourite activities of all time now aren't we? HA
I managed to get one of the little button thingys working at the end Eureka! but that doesn't inspire me enough to get the other 2 working... i guess if i ever own my own business (which really isn't a current aim of mine) i'll have to employ a receptionist/administrator who finds excel to be a more interesting program than i do and will work it for me :-)
Monday, May 14, 2007
Microsoft Word
So this week we experienced the wonders of Microsoft Word... I am truly amazed *cough cough* and the fact that words can bold and be underlined and go into italics is a really new and interesting concept for me! I guess the one thing that i hadn't done before was the Track Changes thingy which highlights things that you have changed and deleted and shows you the editing process. I would never use it in the future though because you'd need to reformat the document.... that's part of the reason i much prefer handwriting things first and seeing what i've crossed out or changed to maybe use parts of it again or whatever and then once there's a solid draft there i'll type it up as is. Much easier! Anyway i'm enlightened as to the myriad of possibilities to do with Word and mail merging etc etc so another week has been completed! Until next time.....
Friday, May 11, 2007
Academic Essay
Web logs (blogs) are a relatively new communication technology. How has the development of blogs impacted on communication and information sharing?
Original blogs were link driven pages with a combination of commentary, personal thoughts, essays and links (Blood, 2000). These pages were created only by people who already knew how to make a website. Today, they are much more widely accessed and their content varies from being expressly personal to expressly journalistic, textual to photographic, paid to unpaid, link based, thematic, travel oriented, collaborative etc. (Cohen, 2006). There has been a general trend towards a change in the nature of blogs from filter style to journal style, however they are also emerging as an increasingly important means of public expression and opinion. As a relatively new means of communication technology, they have encountered both criticisms and popularity, and are expected to play an important role in future communication practice.
Listed on a ‘page of only weblogs’ by James Jesse Garnett, editor of Infosift, were the only 23 weblogs known to be in existence at the beginning of 1999. In July of that year, Pitas launched the first ‘build your own weblog’ tool, followed by Blogger and Groksoup in August (Blood, 2000). The launch of these free services enabled individuals to publish their own blogs more quickly and easily. The popularity and prevalence of blogs increased rapidly in the next few years, with research by Technorati (a leading blog search engine) finding the number of blogs doubling every 5 months since 2003, over 22 million blogs currently on line, and 70,000 new blogs being added every day (Allen, 2005).
Supporters of the emergence of blogs believe that they are a form of self expression, a way of making their voices heard with a unique opportunity to exercise one’s right to freedom of speech (Johnstone, 2005). Programs like Blogger and Pitas have given people with little or no knowledge of HTML or Internet technologies the ability to write about anything they want and potentially have a global audience (Allen, 2005). Blogs also encourage collaboration. The participatory nature of writing, response and counterargument on blogs allows for ongoing debate, critical refinement and ‘thinking in progress’. This form of public expression and opinion, developed largely as a result of blogs, is potentially powerful in improving public debate, however it could also be detrimental. Empirical research has shown that online discussions do not work towards consensus, are often short lived with little impact and can easily turn into ‘dialogues of the deaf’ and lead anywhere (Nguyen, 2006). Despite the notion that anyone can share their opinions and ‘be heard’, online participation forums are still dominated by the elite and those on the more advantaged side of the digital divide with a generally higher socio-economic status and social influence (Perkel, 2007).
In modern day society, there is a growing impatience with traditional methods of communication and the consumption of information. People want to find what is relevant to them as quickly as possible (Quinn & Quinn-Allen, 2005). As if in response to this desire for immediacy, blogs are endlessly updated with new thoughts and observations and are primarily concerned with the present (Eesley, 2005). “Online diaries are immediate, visceral and unpolished; qualities that speak to us directly and strike us as true” (Johnstone, 2005). Readers have faith in the authenticity of the blog despite notable absence of any reliable form of authentication. Although blogs are a good environment to read other people’s ideas, those ideas are not always fact based, insightful or politically or culturally correct. It is difficult to tell the difference between truth and fiction and the motivation of the individual blogger is hard to ascertain. Research by Johnstone (2005) suggests that it is because of the personal and seemingly intimate nature of blogs that readers invest their trust in the content presented without the scepticism that is increasingly applied to information from more traditional media sources.
However, as a new means of communication technology, the relationship between the emergent blog and its audience is at times considered to be oppositional (Nguyen, 2006). Traditionally, the right to be ‘published’ has been earned and reliant on literary quality (Gregg, 2006), however these factors are noticeably absent from millions of blogs published on line. Blogs have been criticised as boring, too personal or detailed and too apparently concerned with topics that are thought of as unworthy of public conversation (Cohen, 2006). Blogs never quite address a person (dialogue), never quite address a crowd (speech or public address), and are never quite speaking to oneself (monologue or soliloquy). According to Cohen (2006), bloggers could be considered to be narcissists, as they insist on endlessly remarking in a public fashion on very unremarkable things and publicising their boring lives. “The trouble is not that ordinary people write them, but that these ordinary people have become too visible, precisely in their ‘ordinariness’; their self interested individualism” (Cohen, 2006).
Blogs are reshaping our notion of how content is created and information is distributed throughout the world today. Although blogs encourage people to express their opinions and discuss them with a worldwide audience, the nature and distribution of technology means that this effect has a limited capacity. The shift in blogs from filter style to journal style has seen a rapid increase in publication of biased and subjective information, and the unmediated nature of blogs means that anyone from anywhere can create a blog containing information of little consequence. As a relatively new means of communication technology, they have received both opposition and support with respect to their validity as a credible information source. More recently, the potential longevity of blogs has been realised by industry, advertising, politics and media who are capitalising on commercial and organisational opportunities. It is through these investments and developments, as well as their ever-increasing popularity that blogs will continue to form an integral part of communication in the future.
References
Journal Articles:
Cohen, K. (2006) ‘A Welcome for Blogs’ Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 20(2): 161-173
Johnstone, R. (2005) ‘Spasms of Assertion – The Politics and Aesthetics of Blogging’ Australian Book Review p32-36
Quinn, S. & Quinn-Allan, D. (2005) ‘User generated content and the changing news cycle’ Australian Journalism Review 28(1): 57-70
Nguyen, A. (2006) ‘Journalism in the wake of participatory publishing’ Australian Journalism Review 28(1): 143-155
Gregg, M. (2006) ‘Feeling Ordinary: Blogging as Conversational Scholarship Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 20(2): 147-160
Websites:
Perkel, D. (2007) ‘Creativity and gaps in participation: Stories from the field’ http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/node/71 (accessed 8th May 2007)
Sramana, M., Allen, R., & Eesley, C. (2005) ‘What matters: Blogs and their impact on society’ http://alum.mit.edu/ne/whatmatters/200512/index.html (accessed 9th May 2007)
‘Humanizing your blog for intimacy’ http://www.rsspieces.com/2006/10/15/humanizing-a-blog-how-blogging-is-like-b (accessed 9th May 2007)
‘Recruiting the self centred’ http://blogs.targetx.com/targetx/emailminute/?p=124 (accessed 10th May 2007)
Blood, R. (2000) ‘Weblogs: a history and perspective’ http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html (accessed 9th May 2007)
Original blogs were link driven pages with a combination of commentary, personal thoughts, essays and links (Blood, 2000). These pages were created only by people who already knew how to make a website. Today, they are much more widely accessed and their content varies from being expressly personal to expressly journalistic, textual to photographic, paid to unpaid, link based, thematic, travel oriented, collaborative etc. (Cohen, 2006). There has been a general trend towards a change in the nature of blogs from filter style to journal style, however they are also emerging as an increasingly important means of public expression and opinion. As a relatively new means of communication technology, they have encountered both criticisms and popularity, and are expected to play an important role in future communication practice.
Listed on a ‘page of only weblogs’ by James Jesse Garnett, editor of Infosift, were the only 23 weblogs known to be in existence at the beginning of 1999. In July of that year, Pitas launched the first ‘build your own weblog’ tool, followed by Blogger and Groksoup in August (Blood, 2000). The launch of these free services enabled individuals to publish their own blogs more quickly and easily. The popularity and prevalence of blogs increased rapidly in the next few years, with research by Technorati (a leading blog search engine) finding the number of blogs doubling every 5 months since 2003, over 22 million blogs currently on line, and 70,000 new blogs being added every day (Allen, 2005).
Supporters of the emergence of blogs believe that they are a form of self expression, a way of making their voices heard with a unique opportunity to exercise one’s right to freedom of speech (Johnstone, 2005). Programs like Blogger and Pitas have given people with little or no knowledge of HTML or Internet technologies the ability to write about anything they want and potentially have a global audience (Allen, 2005). Blogs also encourage collaboration. The participatory nature of writing, response and counterargument on blogs allows for ongoing debate, critical refinement and ‘thinking in progress’. This form of public expression and opinion, developed largely as a result of blogs, is potentially powerful in improving public debate, however it could also be detrimental. Empirical research has shown that online discussions do not work towards consensus, are often short lived with little impact and can easily turn into ‘dialogues of the deaf’ and lead anywhere (Nguyen, 2006). Despite the notion that anyone can share their opinions and ‘be heard’, online participation forums are still dominated by the elite and those on the more advantaged side of the digital divide with a generally higher socio-economic status and social influence (Perkel, 2007).
In modern day society, there is a growing impatience with traditional methods of communication and the consumption of information. People want to find what is relevant to them as quickly as possible (Quinn & Quinn-Allen, 2005). As if in response to this desire for immediacy, blogs are endlessly updated with new thoughts and observations and are primarily concerned with the present (Eesley, 2005). “Online diaries are immediate, visceral and unpolished; qualities that speak to us directly and strike us as true” (Johnstone, 2005). Readers have faith in the authenticity of the blog despite notable absence of any reliable form of authentication. Although blogs are a good environment to read other people’s ideas, those ideas are not always fact based, insightful or politically or culturally correct. It is difficult to tell the difference between truth and fiction and the motivation of the individual blogger is hard to ascertain. Research by Johnstone (2005) suggests that it is because of the personal and seemingly intimate nature of blogs that readers invest their trust in the content presented without the scepticism that is increasingly applied to information from more traditional media sources.
However, as a new means of communication technology, the relationship between the emergent blog and its audience is at times considered to be oppositional (Nguyen, 2006). Traditionally, the right to be ‘published’ has been earned and reliant on literary quality (Gregg, 2006), however these factors are noticeably absent from millions of blogs published on line. Blogs have been criticised as boring, too personal or detailed and too apparently concerned with topics that are thought of as unworthy of public conversation (Cohen, 2006). Blogs never quite address a person (dialogue), never quite address a crowd (speech or public address), and are never quite speaking to oneself (monologue or soliloquy). According to Cohen (2006), bloggers could be considered to be narcissists, as they insist on endlessly remarking in a public fashion on very unremarkable things and publicising their boring lives. “The trouble is not that ordinary people write them, but that these ordinary people have become too visible, precisely in their ‘ordinariness’; their self interested individualism” (Cohen, 2006).
Blogs are reshaping our notion of how content is created and information is distributed throughout the world today. Although blogs encourage people to express their opinions and discuss them with a worldwide audience, the nature and distribution of technology means that this effect has a limited capacity. The shift in blogs from filter style to journal style has seen a rapid increase in publication of biased and subjective information, and the unmediated nature of blogs means that anyone from anywhere can create a blog containing information of little consequence. As a relatively new means of communication technology, they have received both opposition and support with respect to their validity as a credible information source. More recently, the potential longevity of blogs has been realised by industry, advertising, politics and media who are capitalising on commercial and organisational opportunities. It is through these investments and developments, as well as their ever-increasing popularity that blogs will continue to form an integral part of communication in the future.
References
Journal Articles:
Cohen, K. (2006) ‘A Welcome for Blogs’ Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 20(2): 161-173
Johnstone, R. (2005) ‘Spasms of Assertion – The Politics and Aesthetics of Blogging’ Australian Book Review p32-36
Quinn, S. & Quinn-Allan, D. (2005) ‘User generated content and the changing news cycle’ Australian Journalism Review 28(1): 57-70
Nguyen, A. (2006) ‘Journalism in the wake of participatory publishing’ Australian Journalism Review 28(1): 143-155
Gregg, M. (2006) ‘Feeling Ordinary: Blogging as Conversational Scholarship Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 20(2): 147-160
Websites:
Perkel, D. (2007) ‘Creativity and gaps in participation: Stories from the field’ http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/node/71 (accessed 8th May 2007)
Sramana, M., Allen, R., & Eesley, C. (2005) ‘What matters: Blogs and their impact on society’ http://alum.mit.edu/ne/whatmatters/200512/index.html (accessed 9th May 2007)
‘Humanizing your blog for intimacy’ http://www.rsspieces.com/2006/10/15/humanizing-a-blog-how-blogging-is-like-b (accessed 9th May 2007)
‘Recruiting the self centred’ http://blogs.targetx.com/targetx/emailminute/?p=124 (accessed 10th May 2007)
Blood, R. (2000) ‘Weblogs: a history and perspective’ http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html (accessed 9th May 2007)
Monday, April 30, 2007
Researching...
Essay Essay Essay! Today's tute is being spent researching for our essay, that I did actually have an idea for, to do with internet blogs (as i mentioned in Week 4 i think it was...). But don't you just hate it when the topic idea that you had is given as an example for the EVERY person enrolled in the course? Me too! haha
So all of a sudden its a couple of hundred people's idea too.. hmm now to think of how i'm actually going to do it and what to include. Today, however, I did discover that its due next Friday when for some reason i thought it was due this Friday so i'm relieved to have that extra week that wasn't there before! Well i guess it was always there but you get what i mean! Anyway, moving right along.....
So all of a sudden its a couple of hundred people's idea too.. hmm now to think of how i'm actually going to do it and what to include. Today, however, I did discover that its due next Friday when for some reason i thought it was due this Friday so i'm relieved to have that extra week that wasn't there before! Well i guess it was always there but you get what i mean! Anyway, moving right along.....
Monday, April 23, 2007
Active Worlds... ooooo
So the wonders of Active World have been revealed to the Tutes this week... hmm well it has no doubt taken its creators an incredbly long time to come up with and i guess the idea is kind of clever to tour around a 3D world with other users.
The socialising between regular internet msging is similar in the way that it is in text form and between users, but in this 3D environment, every user can read other users' conversations. So the privacy aspect that programs like MSN have (where your conversations are with one particular person unless a third user is specifically added to the conversation intentionally) is lessened in the 3D environment. Essentially though, it is still a relatively shallow way of communicating, with the limits of 2D text to communicate emotions and tone of voice that can still be misinterpreted. Its 3D nature does not extend to the socialising aspect, with all the "tourists" very similar in appearance and able to perform all the same 'physical' functions. Face to face communication just can't be beaten i'm afraid!
I guess the initial idea that there are these other users all round the world that you are interacting with and can write comments to is interesting... But it's only really interesting for about 10 minutes. Walking around and kicking people, waving, jumping, spinning, blowing kisses etc. is an especially good way of wasting time (and doing the macarena is totally random and very funny!) and aside from that, this whole Active World thing really has no point.
The socialising between regular internet msging is similar in the way that it is in text form and between users, but in this 3D environment, every user can read other users' conversations. So the privacy aspect that programs like MSN have (where your conversations are with one particular person unless a third user is specifically added to the conversation intentionally) is lessened in the 3D environment. Essentially though, it is still a relatively shallow way of communicating, with the limits of 2D text to communicate emotions and tone of voice that can still be misinterpreted. Its 3D nature does not extend to the socialising aspect, with all the "tourists" very similar in appearance and able to perform all the same 'physical' functions. Face to face communication just can't be beaten i'm afraid!
I guess the initial idea that there are these other users all round the world that you are interacting with and can write comments to is interesting... But it's only really interesting for about 10 minutes. Walking around and kicking people, waving, jumping, spinning, blowing kisses etc. is an especially good way of wasting time (and doing the macarena is totally random and very funny!) and aside from that, this whole Active World thing really has no point.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Frustration plus!
So here we go again with the ever so time consuming program that is PhotoShop!
This beautiful photo of my lovely friends Alyce, Brodie and Patrice at another friend's fancy dress 21st! In the task it comes under the categories of Friends and Unconventional. It has to at least come under those 2 categories because it took me such a long time to do! My computer decided to shut down and restart itself only going back to the beginning of my little PhotoShop experience so i had to start from a smidge above scratch again! GROAN! Ah well at least it's there now - They're my heroes! haha
This beautiful photo of my lovely friends Alyce, Brodie and Patrice at another friend's fancy dress 21st! In the task it comes under the categories of Friends and Unconventional. It has to at least come under those 2 categories because it took me such a long time to do! My computer decided to shut down and restart itself only going back to the beginning of my little PhotoShop experience so i had to start from a smidge above scratch again! GROAN! Ah well at least it's there now - They're my heroes! haha
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