Week 11

This week focussed on Electronic Civil Liberties / Creative Commons / Free and Open Source Software

We spoke about some of the cases that the Electronic Frontier Foundation are currently defending. This includes the NSA/AT&T alleged spying case, where the government allegedly wiretapped the internet communications going through San Francisco.

We also discussed the Concept "Creative Commons" this is an alternative way to license content to put out onto the internet to share with other people. The creative commons scheme challenges regular copyright, by allowing the creator to specific the conditions of use of their work. This frees up content for remixing and reuse...

Again there was no tutorial tasks as this time was used to complete and update blogs.

Week 10

This week I found the reading When Pigs Fly: The Death of Oink, the Birth of Dissent, and a Brief History of Record Industry Suicide really quite interesting as it told the history/ evolution of file sharing, downloading of music and the impact this had on the industry.

Main points included were:

• Downloading this is a form of stealing
• Artists no longer have control of release dates, secrets (eg. artwork on cd covers being released before set dates)
• Fans becoming enemies of the artists
• Panic in the industry
• The idea that everyone is entitled to use music download sites and aquire the music free of charge simply because the technology exists

We watched Cocaine Jesus, an example of post-copyright film-making: it is so cheap and easy to do that you can give it away free.

We also watched the short documentary film: Steal This Film 2

There were no tutorial tasks for this week

Week 9

This week we made use of the lecture time to watch the movie Bladerunner.

Bladerunner was made from the paranoid and reality-challenging literary work of Phillip K. Dick, author of the novel "Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep"

Common themes in Dick;s work include:

• Artificial intellegence
• Cities out of control
• Post-industrial Dystopia

Other of Dick's novels include Ubik, A Scanner Darkly, and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said.Movies made from Dick's stories include: Total Recall, Minority Report, Next and Paycheck.

Outlines of our written assessment (Item 2) were due this week so no tutorial tasks were carried out

Week 8

"Cyberpunk is a science fiction genre based in the possibilities inherent in computers, genetics, body modifications and corporate developments in the near future. The word comes from the amalgamation of Cybernetics (the study of communication, command and control in living organisms, machines and organisations) and Punk (a style of fast, loud, short rock music with an anarchist political philosophy and a DIY, anti-expert, 'seize the day' approach to life)."

The lecture explored the concept of Cyberpunk and movies that feature this theme

On such Movie is William Gibson's "Burning Chrome" which shares the common themes as followed:

• the future is revolutionized by the networked computer
• 'cyberspace' is the matrix of electronic data in those networks
• global corporations eclipse government as the source of power
• power depends on information rather than money or arms
• the 'sprawl' is the jerry-built mega-city that covers most of the world and where those not employed by corporations struggle to survive
• sim-stim (simulated stimulation) is a new entertainment format that plays directly into the body so you experience the world though the stars? senses and emotions
• the merging of organic and mechanical elements in the human body
  the malleability of human identity

Cyberpunk Themes centre around

1. Technology and Mythology

2. Utopia and Dystopia

3. Cities and Machines

4. Technological Change

5. Modernism to Postmodernism

Interesting to note where the specific methologies that could apply to the study of these new technologies and the cultures. These include:

• critical cyberculture studies explores the social, cultural and economic interactions that take place online;
• critical cyberculture studies explores unfolds and examines the stories we tell about such interactions;
• critical cyberculture studies analyses a range of social, political and economic considerations that encourage, make possible and/or thwart individual and group access to such interactions;
• critical cyberculture assesses the deliberate, accidental and alternative technological decision- and design-processes which, when implemented, form the interface between the network and its users.

There were no tutorial task this week. We instead learnt how to research using University Databases which i found to be a big help.

Week 7

This week's lecture discussed whether or not video games are a waste of time.

• Video Games Studies includes the following types of games:
  Arcade GamesConsolesComputer GamesMUDsMMOGs

• Video games have evolved alongside technology/computers

• Militaries include the use of video games for training purposes

• Narratology is the study of video games which are structured like that of a story or literary work. It is often assumed that these games can be studied like texts. An example of work adhering to this theme include: 'Hamlet on Holodeck' by Janet Murray
• The opposite of this is Ludology which focusses solely on game play elements. Followers argue that the story element in many games are there for decoration only

In the tutorial, we discussed the lecture and evolution of the video game. We also did an exercise that explored the basic elements of Microsoft Word and Excel. This included making a cover letter for a potential job, carried out in stages; each one adding it's own feature such as bold, italics, mailing lists etc. It was interesting to learn features that will definately come in handy many a time in the future.

Week 6

This week provided a detailed history on computers and computing. Important dates and accomplishments to note are as follows

• The first attempt at a computer was created by Charles Babbage named the 'Difference Engine." This was designed to calculate and print mathematical tables. Unfortunately this was not completed in his lifetime. He later created the "Analytical Engine" which was a massive, brass, steam-powered, general purpose, mechanical computer.
• Babbage was aided by Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace. She annotated her own translation of an Italian article about Babbage, named Sketch of the Analytical Engine.
• Work on the computer was later carried out by Alan Turing who invented the first working computer, The Bombe.
• Computers were first commercially produced by IBM in the 1950s
• Xerox PARC developed the mouse and GUI in the early 70s
• The first personal computer was released in 1975
• Bill Gates wrote a language called BASIC for the Altair
• Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created Apple
• IBM and Microsoft joined to take over the computing industry
• Linus Torvalds created GNU/Linux (Open Source software development)
• The internet, is a network of networks (what is often called an internetwork).
• The idea of the internet came from the RAND corporation in the 1960s
• The World Wide Web or Web for short, is one particular use of the Internet that emerged in the 1990s. The Web merges the techniques of (i) internetworking and (ii) hypertext to make an easy-to-use, but powerful, global system that shares all information accessible as part of a seamless hypertext space.
• Cyberspace is a much more difficult term to define, sitting as it does at the interconnction of reality and imagination, the hardware and the software, logic assembly of silicon and electricity on the desk and the wetware between your ears.
• In 1972 Karl Popper wrote about the nature of reality as being divided into three worlds:
  World 1 - the objective material world of natural things and their physical properties
  World 2 - subjective consciousness: intentions, calculations, feelings, thoughts, dreams, memories, etc in individual minds
  World 3 - the public structures produced by living minds interacting with each other and the real world.
• Early Internet Applications include: Email, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Internet Relay Chat (IRC), MUDs - Multy User Domain games.

There was no Tute due to Anzac day.

Week 5

This week’s lecture gave a good insight into Wikipedia and its credibility. It was learned that Wikipedia is not a credible, scholarly source. This is evident as shown in the articles written about Steve Stockwell and Lee Cox which held no truthfulness whatsoever. Whereas there are people employed to screen everything that is written to ensure truthfulness and credibility, articles are being posted at such a fast rate that these editors cannot keep up.

A short story – Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Luis Borges was read as well. Although quite hard to understand, the story explored ideas of a made up country, Uqbar, and how by creating false knowledge, truth is altered and people can start to believe it without physical proof.

Important notes included:
Correspondence Theory: Just the facts - observable, measurableCoherence Theory: Does it fit together and make sense?Performative Theory: I do declare
Social Theory: What can we agree on?

Tutorial Task
Walter Benjamin’s ideas in “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” do apply to contemporary digital media as it discusses new forms of communication in comparison to old forms eg. Audiences seeing everything in a play in comparison to the highly edited forms of entertainment watched nowadays, in the forms of television and movies.
Now that anyone with a computer can create things digitally (music, images, videos, etc), art is starting to lose its authenticity. Artworks made in the past suffer in physical condition and change ownership many times. Digital art can always be produced as many times as needed as well as updated – therefore losing its authenticity.
For this reason, photo shopped images are not authentic.
Also, it was found that digital things do not have an aura, as said by Benjamin, “that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.” He further explains that “the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition.” Really, once a work of art is reproduced, the original loses its value as everyone has access to their own copy at much cheaper prices.