Basically the clip summed up what this week's reading was basically talking about. We've long past the early days of the digital age. With the influx of social networking and digital democracy, people are able to go on the internet and find information, mostly clean and useful information for free. Linking this with archive fever last week, I've come to realize that our memories are a form of archiving. We archive information everyday and use it when we need it in the future. Like this video clip, I didn't expect to remember this scene in Up but after doing the lectures I've come to realize how fitting it is. A form of Archive Fever is the obsession we get towards trivial stuff when we have access to the internet, searching google for no particular reasons, checking facebook for updates, that kinda stuff.
What that clip basically suggests, is that because there's so much 'noise' on the internet, different sources, advertisements and information, it's actually stretching out our attention spans. People who use the internet on a regular basis such as myself feels that its difficult to sit down and read a single article for the readings knowing there's at least another 17 others I need to read.
As for the stuff about commons, I interpreted it to have something to do with marxist ideology, but then I thought of the internet as an example. I feel that places like the commons have a massive impact on the idea of multiple circles of assemblage. But an ideal commons on the internet is difficult to set up as there is always information and restrictions that stops people from accessing certain and often private information.
Squirrell!!!!!! Best part from the movie Up, pixar 2009, online video, Youtube, accessed 14 May 2012,
I'm gonna keep this short. Archives exist because people want to make sense of their surroundings. They exist through a set of systematic rules. And then I found this guy. He saved me a lot of time to be honest. I do agree that the internet is an mega archive of all kinds of data and information. There's a chance that the data could be shut down such as that one time when megaupload got taken down by the FBI, however the data that was downloaded by the users would intergrate such data into their own personal archives.
But again...I do feel that archived information are important in some form or another. I think of archives as a collection of records, but the thing is an archive doesn't have to be completely made out of data. It could be a collection of things, toys, books, etc. I collect toys personally and the ones I think are most valuable are the ones you cherish the most in the past. I recently excavated my Bionicle collection and I find it a piece of wonderful past that I now display next to my more recent collection.
The obsessiveness stems from the idea that people have a natural urge to organise data. Our brains have its own elaborate metadata for processing and ranking the usefulness of certain information. As such in society we do it as well just help organise our own collection of data. We use it to draw into our past, it could be useless since the information is fixed but by keeping a record of the past we could use it to shape our present and future. Much like how we keep a record of history, we could use it to understand why certain things happen and we celebrate it like Anzac Day.
So this week's topic is on assemblage. I just wanted to recall what I learnt on the readings a bit. So this thing called assemblage is about systems, and how there are a number of nodes that make up the system. Each node is equally important and should be processed individually since these nodes could be extracted and placed in other systems. The actor-network theory claims that these nodes could be both conceptual in nature or physical much like the example of a school's education system is both run by physical nodes such as white boards, textbooks and teachings on science and maths. I don't really understand the idea of non-human actors because there will always be a need for human actors to make sense of systems.
Closer distinctions between identified by Lauren, a student doing the course suggests that a key difference between the actor network theory and a new philosophy of society is that the latter focuses more on key actors. It makes sense considering how there are always more dominant nodes in any theory compared to other nodes. (Lauren2090 2012).
I feel that this is an extension to something I learnt in year one about centralized and de centralized systems. For example the reason why Sydney's train transportation infrastructure is so awful is because of how all stations are centralised at the Central CBD district. On the other hand, places like Japan have a de-centralized train system which allows people to have options to get to their destinations.
More ridiculous version of stone paper scissors, air, devil, water . This is the ideal version of an actor network theory. Equal nodes.
Considering how large the city rail map covers it's interesting to apply the theory of de-territoralisation and territoralisation. It shows the reach of the city rail in New South Wales but areas also invisible on the map. Wouldn't it be amazing if the University had its own station?
Lauren20902012, Assemblages Are Right Under Our Noises, Wordpress, accessed 14 May 2012,
This lecture basically summed up how publishing, as in the process of making something public is ubiquitous.
Its like a sudden glowing halo popped on top of my head when I realize that expressions, facial expressions are a form of publishing. I agree! Publishing is a process of bringing something from the private sphere such as something private, an idea or an opinion, screening it through a medium and transforming said 'something' into the public sphere. In other words, making the invisible visible.
The face IS a medium, its an apparatus we use to let others interpret how we feel about certain issues. However I feel that such a medium is not always something that people would openly use around people. I know some people like to hide what they are thinking and to do so they primarily conceal their facial expressions. Take the Joker for example, a man with a permanent smile, we never really know what he's thinking behind that sinister smile.
Refering back to my first blog about the idea of evolution in the media, I do feel that the readings reflects such a concept. Paywalls in newspapers is an example of something that has changed in the course of evolving technology since the New York Times seems to go through phases in which they slowly change their online subscription systems to match their business goals. They began with a paywall with little free content but slowly changed their strategies to allow more free content.
Take for example the Sydney Morning Herald. The way they handle paywalls is that they give news subscriptions as an option. They don't make it compulsory and they generate income through advertising revenue from the site due to the high levels of traffic (Sydney Morning Herald 2012).
I do feel that all this stuff we heard in the lecture about time based and space based media and natural and unnatural concepts of technology and media seems over complicated. In this day and age, technology has become a hybrid between all these different polar opposites. Take the new iPad that has been reported today, it has voice recognition systems which refers to Orality which is natural to individuals and computer interface keyboards which is literacy. I feel that in the future, technology will converge continuously, hybrids between time based and space based media is already in the now with the creation of computers and electronic data.
In response to the idea of publishing, it traditionally associates itself with the print media. Strongly relates to physical hardcopies of texts such as newspapers, books and magazines. Decades later, the first world society has evolved from printed mass produced texts to electronic substitutes. Modern inventions such as the Amazon Kindle and the iPad has revolutionized the way in which people read texts and where and who can access it. For example, John Naughton's article in the Guardian suggests how the convenience of e-books have allowed users to access books using a single platform (Naughton 2010).
The experience of reading on a computer screen and a hard copy are very different. Neither can be said to be superior over the other since they both have their own strengths and weaknesses. But in this week's podcast, e-book readers are self evolving as people have grown to experience reading with devices such as Kindle. The podcast suggests how the experience of reading texts through Kindle is very sterile as the text is printed using electronic bits and is split in overly simplified columns. The iPad saw those weaknesses in the Kindle and made a vast amount of improvements (E-Book Boom Changes Book Selling And Publishing, 2010).
Naughton has explained how traditionally, if a user was to lend a hardcopy book to a friend, it could be done without any legal consequences but nowadays it seems that what comes with a platform such as Amazon Kindle are a list of rules and regulations in which users are meant to abide to (Naughton 2009).
Personally, I do believe that these new means of publishing media has allowed users to be both producers and consumers of media (Prosumer). It has created a common ground for anyone who has access to the internet to comment and give personal thoughts on all kinds of affairs. This is the digital democracy for casual bloggers like myself to upload personal thoughts to the publicsphere for others to read.
I would like to mention a web comic called Homestuck. Instead of being published in a comic book publisher, Homestuck is run completely independently on a website called MS Paint Adventures. The author, Andrew Hussie is a prosumer who draws from all forms of pop culture and writes his own comic based on his own insights. Its interesting because he uses the internet as a medium to publish his work. This allows him to be creative especially in terms of storytelling because the way he writes the story is different from what people define a 'comic' since Hussie uses images, text. music and flash animation to tell his story. Which kinda draws the idea of visualisation as well.
It is interesting that in a recent episode of Media Watch, they report how Rob Finkelstein, a University academic has suggested reforms to regulate the freedom of press by creating a News Media Council. Not only does this council regulate information and sources of newspaper publishers but Finklelstein also believes that information on the internet should also be regulated (Regulating all with one 2012). I believe that when the internet is intertwines with the communistic idea of 'Commons' because these public domains are shared among internet users.
E-Book Boom Changes Book Selling And Publishing, 2010, podcast, National Public Radio, Washington, United States.
Naughton, J 2010, Publishers take note: the iPad is altering the very concept of a 'book', The Guardian,
accessed 14 May 2012, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/dec/19/ipad-publishing-kindle-books-apple>
Naughton, J 2009, The Original Big Brother is watching you on Amazon Kindle, The Guardian,
accessed 14 May 2012, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/26/amazon-kindle-book-deletions>
iPad vs Kindle vs Rock 2008, diagram, Amnesia Blog, accessed 14 May 2012,
<http://amnesia.com.au/blogimages/iPadvsKindlevsRock_A30A/image.png>
