Week 9

Assessment 2 (pt 2 of the blog) has been extended - and is now due by Friday of Week 10!

For Week 9's entry you should write about your chosen essay topic, (found under 'assessments' on learning@griffith), your initial thoughts about this topic, and where you think you may begin researching it.

Also you need to ensure that by the end of week 10 you have posted a final entry on your weblog that evaluates the course overall'. (This is included in the assessment description on the course profile)

For the final essay topic, I chose to discuss about 'Internet Privacy' below:


Why is privacy such a contentious issue for internet users? Discuss with reference to at least ONE social network service (or other web2.0 service).

I will discuss this topic with Facebook social network, because internet user privacy is challenging with a big contentious issue since Facebook invented. Facebook is a large platform which allows people sharing information and contents with anyone who owns a Facebook account. Privacy right becomes a big issue since World Wide Web internet was invented in 20^th century, people can easily share or copy the information and contents from somebody around the world. Therefore, copyright is set to be a legal law to protect everyone’s moral property and have a restriction of plagiarism on the internet.

Week 8 - Tute Task

 

What is Cyberpunk?

Cyberpunk is about expressing (often dark) ideas about human nature, technology and their respective combination in the near future.

While some see cyberpunk to be a long-since dead relic of the 80s, I consider it to be alive and well. There are many aspects of “cyberpunk-ness” but these are what I consider the most important cyberpunk themes:

Negative Impact of technology on humanity: In a cyberpunked near-future, technology runs rampant, and usually manipulates most societal interactions. Dystopian near futures are very common, but so are futures where the impacts of specific technologies are played out in a world only slightly different from the present. Sacred societal boundaries are often crossed with regularity. Often the earth is severely damaged. Crime and drug use are often key supporting themes.

Fusion of man and machine: In addition to cyborgs, sentient programs and robots, cyberpunk often blurs of what it means to be human. Traits we take for granted as representing humanity disappear via introspective looks brought on by the fusion of man and machine. In some cases, such as in the extreme Japanese cyberpunk films, the fusion is explicitly invasive. In other cases, sentient programs take over roles traditionally occupied by humanity, thus, marginalizing humans on the fringes of society. This fusion also affects the control of perception - numerous storylines explore with influences to perception, usually involving some method of virtual reality environment to either mask or take the place of the “real world.”

Corporate control over society: Cyberpunk almost always has an ever powerful controlling entity that directs society. Most often this is represented as a corporation. Some times its simply an ever present singular government. A common theme for corporate control involves a futuristic dystopia, where the last traces of high civilization exist only in an enclosed and protected city, where civil liberties are removed under the guise of protecting humanity.

Story focuses on the underground: Cyberpunk almost always focuses on the underground of society. While the story may lead to revolution and toppling the power structure, the perspective is always that of the oppressed or the punk, anti-hero of the oppressed.

Ubiquitous Access to information: Cyberpunk often deals with the continual spread and access to information. Hacker themes and ever-connecting internets are common. Additionally, the connection of humans to this omnipresent information stream leads to the blurring of the virtual with the real.

Cyberpunk visuals and style: Cyberpunk visuals, ideally, are dirty, hyper-realistic “lived in” looks at the near future. Often cyberpunk films will have a single dominating color that permeates the film. We also see patterns of dark motifs contrasted with shocking neon color schemes. And just as important, a sense of slick style often pervades a cyberpunk movie.

Clearly, Cyberpunk is not an exact concept. Its meanings vary. However, in separating that which appears to be cyberpunk from that which is just cool, I felt the need for something more concrete if I’m going to use these attributes for rating movies. The two ratings on the movie reviews (degree of cyberpunk visuals and correlation to cyberpunk themes) reflect my interpretation of how closely they meet the above descriptions. In some cases, this approach leads me to differ on films other people feel are cyberpunk in nature.

If you differ with this approach feel free to add a comment. If your reasoning needs something more elaborative, post a link to your discussion or become a contributor here, and you can have your position here on your own page.

SFAM (2007, February 19). What is Cyberpunk. Retrived from http://www.cyberpunkreview.com/what-is-cyberpunk/

Cyberpunk

Movie - I-Robot tralier (2004)



Movie - Sorrogates




Funny robot dance move and fight

Week 8

Many writers have utilised cyberpunk as prefigurative social and political theory in the realms of urban studies, cultural theory and the sociology of the body. Below are some of the main, recurring themes.


Negative Impact of technology on humanity: In a cyberpunked near-future, technology runs rampant, and usually manipulates most societal interactions. Dystopian near futures are very common, but so are futures where the impacts of specific technologies are played out in a world only slightly different from the present. Sacred societal boundaries are often crossed with regularity. Often the earth is severely damaged. Crime and drug use are often key supporting themes.

Fusion of man and machine: In addition to cyborgs, sentient programs and robots, cyberpunk often blurs of what it means to be human. Traits we take for granted as representing humanity disappear via introspective looks brought on by the fusion of man and machine. This fusion also affects the control of perception - numerous storylines explore with influences to perception, usually involving some method of virtual reality environment to either mask or take the place of the “real world.”

Corporate control over society: Cyberpunk almost always has an ever powerful controlling entity that directs society. Most often this is represented as a corporation. Some times its simply an ever present singular government. A common theme for corporate control involves a futuristic dystopia, where the last traces of high civilization exist only in an enclosed and protected city, where civil liberties are removed under the guise of protecting humanity.

Uprising of the underground: Cyberpunk almost always focuses on the underground of society. While the story may lead to revolution and toppling the power structure, the perspective is always that of the oppressed or the punk, anti-hero of the oppressed.

Ubiquitous Access to information: Cyberpunk often deals with the continual spread and access to information. Hacker themes and ever-connecting internets are common. Additionally, the connection of humans to this omnipresent information stream leads to the blurring of the virtual with the real.


In this tutorial students should select one of these themes & complete some basic research on it (ideally finding a short fiction online that deals with the topic (there’s heaps of online cyberpunk fiction, so this shouldn’t be a problem). Once students have a basic understanding they should try and identify a current news story that reflects their chosen topic.

Once they have found a story they should attempt to re-write the news story as a persuasive piece about how their piece of cyberpunk fiction has forecast the particular story/event & how it will inevitably lead to the world becoming a post-industrial dystopia (like every cyberpunk story does/is).

Week 7

Research and provide short answers to the following questions. Provide references where applicable.

1. What is creative commons and how could this licensing framework be relevant to your own experience at university?

Creative Commons is a non- profit organisation that increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational and scientific content) in “the commons” and the body of the work that is available to the public for free and legal sharing, use, repurposing and remixing. Creative Commons organisation provides free, easy-to-use legal tools which give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple standardize way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work.

The Creative Commons licenses enable people to easily change their copyright term from the default of ‘all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved”. Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright and the public domain. Therefore, the license is not an alternative to copyright, by working alongside copyright, you can select the best suit you and modify your copyright terms. They have collaborated with intellectual peroperty experts all around the world to ensure what their licenses work globally.

For further information and terms of the licences, please visit Creative Commons website.

Creative Commons: What is CC?.(2010). Retrieved from

http://creativecommons.org/about/what-is-cc

2. Find 3 examples of works created by creative commons and embed them in your blog.

Jamendo is a music website and a community of music authors.

All music on Jamendo is free to download and licensed through one of several Creative Commons licenses or the Free Art License, making it legal to copy and share, as well as to modify and make commercial use of for some, depending on the license. Jamendo allows streaming of all of its thousands of albums in either Ogg Vorbis or MP3 format, and downloads through the BitTorrent and eDonkey networks

There are more than 32,000 albums available for download now on Jamendo. Widely varied music genres and styles include: Dance/Electro, Hip-Hop, Metal, Jazz, Lounge, Pop/Songwriting, and Rock

Jamendo.(2010). Retrieved from http://www.jamendo.com/en

MoveOn is an American non-profit, progressiveor liberal, public policy advocacy group and political action committee which has raised millions of dollars for candidates it identifies as "moderates" or "progressives" in the United States. It was formed in 1998 in response to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

MoveOn.ORG: What is MoveOn™?.(2010). Retrieved from http://www.moveon.org/about.html

Ghosts I–IV is the seventh studio release by American industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails, released on March 2, 2008. The team behind the project included Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor, studio-collaborators Atticus Ross and Alan Moulder, and instrumental contributions from Alessandro Cortini, Adrian Belew, and Brian Viglione. Reznor described the music of Ghosts as "a soundtrack for daydreams", a sentiment echoed by many critics who compared it with the work of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp. The songs are unnamed, and are identified only by their track listing and group number.

The album was released under a Creative Commons license (BY-NC-SA), and in a variety of differing packages at various price points, including a US$300 "Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition".

Nine Inch Nails: Ghosts I-IV.(2010). Retrieved from

http://ghosts.nin.com/main/home


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.

To summuraise the article I found via ProQuest is about the copyright laws which have been around in the US. In the 20th century, the impact of using, reusing and distribution of media and content on the internet is significant. A new copyright protection named Creative Commons, is led to law restriction on the worldwide internet and a new media culture. A set of licensing tools are standing between the "All Rights Reserved" of traditional copyright and "No Rights Reserved" that is the public domain. Creative Commons is a way to have access to the content, in the spirit of the 21th century and without running afoul of the "all rights reserved" mentality.

Gordon-Murnane, L.. (2010, January). CREATIVE COMMONS: Copyright Tools for the 21st Century. Online, 34(1), 18-21. ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 1957509621).


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.

A portable application (portable app) is a computer software program that is able to run independently without the need to install files to the system it is run upon. They are commonly used on a removable storage device such as a CD, USB flash drive, flash card, or floppy disk.

Portable software is typically designed to be able to store its configuration information and data on the storage media containing its program files.

You can download and entitle the benefits of using portable app from Portableapps.com for free, and it is not confused with software portability where software allows to be compiled for different computing platforms. It is convenience that portable application can be run on any computer systems such as Microsoft Windows XP or Vista, certain version of a Linux distro, etc.

Week 7 - Respond to Lecture

Try some free software - good examples which are free and easy to download are: Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Gimp, Audacity, amsn, pidgin, etc.

Try to use it exclusively for a few days - then decide whether you like it or not! Say why/why not.

 

In my opinion of using Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird.

Mozilla Firefox is a good free browser to Internet Explorer. Mozilla Firefox is faster, secure and better than Internet Explorer. By comparing to Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox has less faulty problems occurring when you surfing on the internet.

Moziila Thunderbird, it is simply similar to Microsoft Outlook Express or Windows Mail, you can set up the theme and layout which you wish with the new updated 3.1 version. The impact tools can help to transferring the mails, contacts, favorite setting from old version to the new version.

Inconclusion, I can tell Moziill appilcaions are more faster, convenience to operate and easy to be familiar with the using. Also, the design is much more beautiful than Windows application. The most important thing is, they are free!!

Week 6

Tutespark

Leading on from the lecture on online privacy & social networking....

Who has the right to use your creations?

Who owns the content you put on the internet on various sites?

This includes pictures, video, text, etc?

Think about all the content you upload onto social networking sites - Do you own it?

 For an example of Facebook website, we own the contents and information we post online. But once when we publicsh contents or information with a setting showing everyone, it means that we are allowing everyone, including people off of Facebook, to access and use our contents and information, and to associate them with us. Such as pictures and videos we uploaded, texts we wrote on Facebook,etc.

The terms and conditions of Fcaebook was changed in Februrary 2009, which is "anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later.” When we post contents on the Facebook, it means that we authorise and direct them to make copies as they deem necessaru in order to facilate the posting and storage of our user data on the website.

By posting user contents and information to any part of the site, it automatically grant the permission and represent and warrant that we have the right to grant, to Facebook company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising.

Users of Facebook could remove the items they upload in any time, if we choose to remove our user content,the license granted above would automaticallu expire. However, we are accknowleded that Facebook may retain copies of user data even after our accounts were terminated.

Facebook retain full ownership of all of our contents, Information and any intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights associated with the content we post on the website.

Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, said that the philosophy “that people own their information and control who they share it with has remained constant.” Despite the complaints, he did not indicate the language would be revised.

Reference list

Statement of Rights and Responsibilities: Sharing your content and information. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/terms.php

Stelter, B. (2009, Febrarury 16). Facebook's Users Ask Who Own Information [Press relaese]. The New York Times, New York. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/technology/internet/17facebook.html

Remedies Under Copyright Laws against Internet Content Thieves. [Image] (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.free-legal-document.com/images/copyright-laws-internet.jpg

Twitter vs. Facebook. [Image] (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://pub.tv2.no/multimedia/na/archive/00626/Facebook_62644016x9.jpg

Week 6 Lecture

Media- New Media Social Media

New Media:

Virtual community/ Individual Identity

Internet Studies:

Web 2.0 / Social Media

l   Technology

“…is the scientific study of mechanical arts and their application to the world”.

Often includes physical objects and the knowledge of the techniques used to enable their fiction.

l   Media

When technology is used for social communication.

Media is plural for medium.

A little different to the use of the term “The Media”.

(see the work of: Marshall McLuhan; Ray and Williams)

Common Themes from Early Internet Studies

Virtual Community

(a way to explain a group of people who communicate via the internet)

Individual Identity

(a way to explain how people express who they are via the internet)

l  Virtual Community

“…when people carry on public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships…” (H.Rheingold, 1993, The Virtual Community)

l   Individual Identity

“The Internet has become a significant social laboratory for experimenting with the constructions and reconstructions of self that characterize postmodern ;ofe. Inits virtual reality, we self-fashion and self-create”

(Turkle, 1995, Life On the Screen)

Identity Play

Shared Interests

l   On the early internet people who were isolated in different geographic areas often turned to the internet to “meet” other people with similar interests…

l   See Rheingold 1993, Turkle 1995, Dibbell, 1998 – many other early internet books explore that…

Ego-Centric Social Network

l   Focus has moved away from groups of people with common interests to networks where you (the individual) is the common thread

Web 2.0

l   Following the dot.com crash of 2000 – Tim O’Reilly and his friends wanted to motivate the tech community into feeling good about itself again…

…so they proposed thinking about the internet in new ways…

l   They came up with the notion that there was a new era in the web’s history

l   What was wrong with Web 1.0??

l   Is mostly a technical definition describing key technologies to do with the creation of web services with emphasis on the user experience…

But the concept of “groups of people who use the internet” has been “co-opted by the “social media” crowd..

Web 2.0 – features

l   Folksonomy – organizing knowledge – in other words using “tags” on posts or items. This describes users defining the caregories rather than some authority imposing the structure.

l   The idea of user- generated content – people create {{photos, images, videos, text} and put it on the internet. Media scholar Henry Jenkins refers to this as “Participatory Cultutre” (2006).

l   Open API – means sharing data openly between services on the internet.

(O’Reilly, 2003, what is Web 2.0?)

… Community and collaboration is the common element here.

Read-Write Web

l   The Features described create a version of the internet where average people can contribute

l   As opposed to the previous “read only” web which many “old media” (recording industry, news media, book publishers) would like the internet to be…

Social Media

l   Weblogs/blogs – and all their variations like vlogs, moblogs, microblogs (twitter, identi.ca, jaiku, etc)

l   Social network services (SNSs) – friendster, orkut, myspace, facebook, linkedin, livejournal (also a blog site), forums might be here but they are a bit web 1.0, etc

l   Content sharing communities- flickr, deviant.art, youtube, blip.tv, jamendo, last.fm, del.icio.us, dig, etc etc

Social Media Experts?

Have become ubiquitous on the web in the last 3 years or so,,

Mostly they are marketing people who want to teach you how to use web2.0 tools to promote your business/brand..

l   The “Attention Economy” – who wants your eyeball?

What do they want you to see or do once they have your attenetion?

l   The “Economy of Accumulation” – who has collected information about you?

What can they do with that information?

Do you think they sell it to the highest bidder? O Rly?

Who owns it?

l   If there’s Social Media..how about Anti-Social Media?

Isolatr beta- “People always used to approach me to try and talk about this or that. I wanted to punch them in the throat. Now they leave me the hell alone. Thanks isolatr!’ –Doc Searls

Cultral Jam Campaign

Free Parking @ Griffith Uni

Free car parking coming to Griffith University's Gold Coast campus in 2011! Join this group to show your support and help spread the word. Stay tuned for more details.

Kirby, Cornor, Sophia, Christian and me have invited our friends and Griffith Uni students to join.
Our Free Parking at Griffith Uni campaign has 91 members so far, and I invited 22 friends.

Free Parking @ Griffith Uni- Grif Freeman page

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=104568022938083&ref=mf

Free Parking @ Griffith Uni - Group page

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=104568022938083&ref=mf