A New World and the Digital Native: Contemporary viewpoints of the internet user

(In response to question 1)

The Internet plays a vital role in many aspects of our daily lives; from how we communicate and socialize with one another, to how we create and learn from the virtually unlimited information pool that is the Internet. In this modern-day age of constant interaction with new technologies, such interaction has allowed for different views of what is considered the “contemporary internet user”. Our own personal experiences with using the internet no doubt have changed the way we go about our daily lives, not just in relation to technology but in relation to each other. One viewpoint is that such regular and personal experiences with the Internet has been for the better, with young people today being presented a myriad of options when it comes to their everyday activities, both in their social life and education/career. Another viewpoint- albeit a more critical perspective- considers the Internet (also known as the Web) to have altered our culture and the way that people interact with one another, not necessarily for the better. In other words, the Internet is changing human relationships, communication, and society.

Two articles by respected commentators of modern technology today- Marc Prensky's "Emerging online life of the digital native" and Dave Weinberger's "A New World"- present different viewpoints of how to perceive the Internet and its impact on the contemporary user; the former being a more positive outlook whilst the second article takes a more critical stance.

In the first article, Marc Prensky (2004, pp.1-2) believes that young people who have become highly adept at online activities can be classified as “digital natives”; digital technologies have developed and progressed as much as they have, so growing up with such technology is considered second-nature to them. As Prensky (20004, pg.13) states, “In a very short time technology has changed an entire generation’s behaviour radically…and the Digital Natives are programmed to- and want to- keep up with it.” Prensky uses the term “digital immigrants” (the opposite of a digital native) in his article constantly, referring to adults of ages similar to the parents of many 18-24 year olds.

Bennett, Maton & Kervin (2008, pg.778) argue that Prensky fails to consider that not all youths are digital natives, and that it is not so much age that defines a digital native but primarily their cultural understanding and attitudes towards online technology. This is a valid argument, as not all teenagers have access to a computer at home, and therefore their development and familiarity with online technology would be far different to someone who from a young age has had a home computer. Many young people have adapted to changes in online technology quite fast, due to constant access to computers at home and at school, yet such adaptation and familiarity is not just restricted for young people. A good example is Facebook. The social-networking site defies demographics; it’s popular with young children and old men. It has an active userbase the size of the United States and according to Compete, it has nearly tripled in size and is now almost as popular as Google or Yahoo. Even though Prensky’s article fails to understand the reality that there are more complex dynamics when it comes to the digital native then just age or generational pre-disposition, it is by no means an inaccurate portrayal of the contemporary internet user, just a viewpoint that fails to take any critical stance.

There is one application of online technology that has been utilized and accepted almost universally by not only young people, but also adults: social networking. Sites like Facebook and Myspace (both different social beasts) being perhaps the best examples of the social networking sites. This rise in Internet-based social-networks, or virtual communities as they have come to be called, has lead to not only communication between people who know each other primarily in real life, but between parties that have never met each other face to face (Weinberger 2007, pg.87).

In Dave Weinberger's article “A New World", that is precisely one of the issues of online technology. The World Wide Web has completely remodeled many of our behaviours and norms when it comes to socializing. As Weinberger (2002, pg.5) himself states, “We’re meeting new people we would of never dreamed of encountering. More important, we’re meeting new aspects of ourselves.” What he alludes to is the sense that the Web isn’t making us more or less social, but changing the way we view ourselves as social beings. Because Internet-based social-networking has become so prevalent, the norms of socializing and communicating with one another have changed dramatically. A study conducted by the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society showed that the internet could be the ultimate isolating technology that further reduced participation in communities even more than did automobiles and television before it. In a physical sense, that much is true; we may no longer spend as much face to face time with one another due to the fact that mostly everything we need to get across in such scenarios (verbally and to some extent, non-verbally) can be achieved with greater ease. It is important to remember that whilst the internet isolates us from each other, it also simultaneously brings us closer together.

Mark Zuckerberg (the co-founder of Facebook) stated in a keynote address that once every century, a new communicative medium is created. Whilst Zuckerberg wasn’t directly stating his part in creating such a medium, it is very possible that Facebook in particular, could fulfill such a prophecy. Facebook offers something that no other online social applications have yet to do: it ties communication to identity by allowing for quick chat and long conversation. It has also allowed for the traditional ways we share things with our social network to evolve, for Facebook handles photo and video data and ties them together with a series of different ways to talk, both subtle and blatant (email & IM).

Because of these advancements in online technologies, teenagers and adults alike have had to face social structures unfamiliar to them and social networking sites have no doubt complicated how we view ourselves and one another in the ‘public life' (Boyd 2008, pg.20). Simply, the internet and its social applications has transformed the way we socialize and communicate today, and even if there are dangers lurking in that transformation (online predators being one), Marc Prensky (2004, pg.3) was correct when he believed that digital natives would begin to ‘create and evolve online reputation systems’ to help them keep safe in this new social dimension.

Bibliography

Print Resources -- Books

Weinberger, D 2007, Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, Times Books, New York

Weinberger, D 2002, ‘A New World’ in Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web, Basic Books, Melbourne.


Electronic Journal Articles:

Bennett, S. Maton, K & Kervin, L 2008, ‘The “Digital Natives” debate: A critical review of the evidence’ in British Journal of Educational Technology,
Volume 39 Issue 5, Pages 775 – 786, JSTOR. Web. 21 Oct. 2009.

Boyd, D. ‘Why Youth ♥ Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life’ in Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, JSTOR. Web. 21 Oct. 2009.

Prensky, M 2004 ‘The Emerging Online Life of the Digital Native’, www.marcprensky.com/.../Prensky-The_Emerging_Online_Life_of_the_Digital_Native-03.pdf

Websites:

Compete, "Site comparison of Facebook.com", viewed 22 Oct.
<http://siteanalytics.compete.com/facebook.com+google.com+yahoo.com/>

O’Toole, K 2000, "Study offers early look at how Internet is changing daily life", Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society, viewed 22 Oct.
<http://www.stanford.edu/group/siqss/Press_Release/press_release.html>

Satariano, A 2009, "MySpace Views Facebook as ‘Fundamentally Different’ ", Bloomberg.com, viewed Oct 22.
<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aX6CarmEjeK4>

Zuckerberg, M, "Keynote Speech at f8 2008", Facebook, viewed 21 Oct.
<http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=28083185043

Artwork Pieces

Here is a film made by my friends and I, made a while ago for a school project:




The premise for this trailer (coming to a cinema near you on February 31st) was about bins attacking planet earth and a group of noble and brave teenagers defending our planet.

-------------------------

I have a feeling that the above video may not count as a "piece of artwork", so here are some photos I took last year when I went through that obligatory "hey I'm really into photography' stage that every teenager goes through. As you can see, they are all like "sweet shots of nature/the sky/mother earth" that any fool can take. hence why I don't do photography now and it was only a stage. All these photos were taken with a canon 350d Rebel, which was constantly borrowed from a friend.







I should of just never returned that camera...

Week 8 Task: Political Participation

Part 1: Sign an e-petition

One of the few socio-political injustices I feel really strongly about, even though no amount of e-petitioning can correct it since the West Memphis Three have been incarcerated for over 15 years, it was the first thing that came to mind when I thought of something to e-petition. Here is the link to my direct petition, through the 'SAVE DAMIEN ECHOLS & THE WM3' project.

Part 2: Respond to a professional blogger at a major news site

I went onto Crikey.com, which is considered to be Australia's leading independent online news-site, and found a vast array of professional blogs. The blog I chose to respond to was Pure Posion, comprised of a team of 4 key bloggers (or writers, if you will) who for lack of a better word, scrutinise any Australian mainstream media journalist they deem to be intellectually dishonest. This current blog was regarding the "Hey, Hey, It's Saturday" skit that was deemed as racist and insensitive, my response:

'Front page of ‘The Age’ online

verbatim:“Hey Hey blackface skit frontman says sorry. He’s a top plastic surgeon – and of Indian heritage.”

Does ‘The Age’ mean that Australians of Indian heritage can’t be racist? I’m not sure'

Part 3: What is Barak Obama up to today (7/9/10)?

Today, President Obama was at the White house, to present recipients of this year's National Medal of Science and National Medal of Technology with their awards. Just looking through the first few pages of this blog (the offical White House blog- updates as often as 3 to 4 times a day), I realised just how busy Obama is on constant day to day basis. The number of hands he shakes and photos he poses for must be insane.

Part 4: Find out who your local, state and federal representatives are

I live in Molendinar, so my Local representative is Councillor Dawn Crichlow, OAM
I live in Queensland, so my State representative is Peter Lawlor
And since I live in a the division of Moncrieff, my Federal representative is Mr. Steven Ciobo MP

Part 5: Look up the Queensland or Australian hansard to find the last time your local member spoke in parliament

Woah. I found it difficult to figure out how to navigate the Queensland hansard and find out when the last time Peter Lawlor spoke in parliament. So instead, I figured that I'd have a good chance of getting this information via Peter Lawlor's own website. And I did: located in a section of his website entitled "Parliamentry Speeches", there was a listing of his speeches, the most recent being on the 22nd of September. Asked a question without notice regarding a goverment-funded trip (excess of $50,000) to the Cannes Film festival for the director of Tourism Queensland, Mr.Lawlor replied: 'The simple fact of the matter is that that
campaign that cost $2.9 million is estimated to have benefited the Queensland tourism industry by in excess of $330 million.'

It's a good comeback but it's probably very good political spin.

What do you think of the Australian Government's plans to censor the internet (the so-called "Clean Feed")???

Simply, I think that such plans would never be able to work. Even if such a censorship was put in place, people would find ways to buck the system and access uncensored information anyway.
Plus, by restricting or banning certain sites, the government would only raise more public-interest into why these sites were banned in the first place. It's like only wanting to see something just because you're not allowed, more than the actual interest in what's to be shown.
If Australia wants to consider itself a democracy, than any censoring of internet, of free press and media, is totally undemocratic. But like I said before, I highly doubt that these plans for a Clean Feed will be passed through Parliament anytime soon.

Freeware: Free Image Converter

As requested, I downloaded a piece of freeware called Free Image Converter. It's less than half a megabyte so trialing this software won't be risky.

This program allows you to re-size photos in batches, as opposed to the time-consuming effort of having to re-size each photo one by one in programs such as Photoshop or Windows Picture Editor. You simply save all of the photos you wish to re-size, open the program, select the folder which contains the images, choose the desired image size and file name, select the target folder and click convert.

This program is actually really helpful if you have taken alot of high-quality images (normal shots on a Digital SLR for example, average around 2-4Mbs) and you need to re-size them to around 40-60KB's to send online or burn onto a CD.

I think the thing with these freeware applications, specifically the ones to do with photo imaging and editing, is that they only offer one real main function as opposed to the all-encompassing Adobe Photoshop. But hey, it's free so you can't complain.

News Report

Here is our news report we did. There were no survivors. Also I went bananas with the sound editing. IMovie is fun.
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-332399

Sketchcast

This program is easy to use but it's pretty pointless. It's just like Microsoft Paint but less functions.

Made for the Net:3 Short Films

#1



This is the best example of how effective and wide-reaching an independently-produced and internet-delivered video can be. Footage featuring the "Free Hugs" campaign, started by an Australian man named Juan Mann, became world famous back in 2006 when it became the music video for the song "All the Same" by Australian band Sick Pupies. First uploaded onto the internet via YouTube, it has become the most watched video of all time (emassing nearly 50 millions plays since) on the world's biggest video-sharing site. Not only did it spark the "Free Hugs" campaign as a social movement worldwide, it also boosted the career of Sick Puppies to worldwide recognition but like all things good, it had to come an end. Maybe proving that the band wasn't very good at all. Maybe that last sentence was biased. Moral of story: upload a cool video with your band's music and pray to a higher power (or the internet) that it becomes viral.

#2

The Longest Way 1.0 - one year walk/beard grow time lapse from Christoph Rehage on Vimeo.

The style of "time-lapse" video (images captured at a rate much slower than it will be played back, thus appearing faster) has been overdone countless times in the internet age, but this particular short clip has a fresh take. It's basically a film of a guy who has taken one photo everyday for a 365 days whilst on his voyage through China (with the majority of travel taking place on foot) and like alot of human time-lapse video, you see him change from a day to day basis and in the process grow an awesome beard. What makes this cool is that every single shot has the location of where it's taken, from "middle of NOWHERE" to "36000 feet above sea level" along with the number of km's he has travelled. In reality, as cool as this short film is, the only place for it to be exhibited is on the Internet via video-sharing sites such as Vimeo and YouTube.

#3



These types of "fan-edits/fan films" are also becoming increasingly common nowadays. The premise is that the original content (i.e a music video or film clip) is re-edited and/or re-interpreted to give it a new meaning, most of the time becoming satirical. Usually these type of films cater to a "niche market" and only appeal to those within the same market but such fan edits/films like this one appeal to a widestream media-conscious audience. Entitled "Hitler's Reaction to Taylor Swift Winning Best Female Video at VMA's-Worse than Kanye", the video is a excerpt of the 2004 German film "Downfall" (about Hitler's last days) which has had its subtitles edited in order to make it seem that Hitler is furious about Taylor Swift winning the award over Beyonce. Perhaps the clip's strongest point is it's timeliness due to its reaction with current events, something that has been a benefit of the internet: to constantly produce timely content.

Google Map Is The New Black.

View The Park Benches Me and Girls have Sat On. in a larger map




A personalized map of Park Benches that have played an important part of my teenage years.

Personas: Nick Cave & Me

This thing is kinda cool. It's looks smooth. I like smooth. I've haven't done much in my life since it never found anything directly related to me. My name only came up in 10 fields...with a big bar on "illegal".



When Persona goes to work, it searches the internet for things related to your name, or in this case, Nick Cave. I don't have a full understanding of what Persona's aim is but I like this little intro (to a interview I suspect) it found: "From dark age to middle age, Nick Cave is such a far cry from the blood-spilling junkie of rock legend that these days you're likely to encounter..."
.


Here's also one of a guy you might know:



The program can be accessed from here:
http://personas.media.mit.edu/personasWeb.html

Who, What, When, Where & Why: Shots from "Mad Men".

In any program created for televison or film made for the big screen, every shot should mean something, serve a purpose. Because most moving pictures aim to tell a story, it's important that each shot no matter how overt or subtle, should build on telling that story or contribute to contextualizing the 'world' inside the screen. Here are some examples compiled below from the hit Emmy-award winning US series "Mad Men":

When

Set in the fictional advertising agency Sterling Cooper, Mad Men is set in the 1960s and every episodes will have scenes wherein the background and/or extras very much adhere to the aesthetic vales and historical authenticity of that time period, for example in this shot we can see that they are using typewriters, the office decor is historically accurate and the women are dressed in tight-fitting pin-up pencil skirts and hair up in a bun.

Why

This show is historically accurate but not just visually; its depictions of gender and racial bias, sexual dynamics in the workplace, and the high prevalence of smoking and drinking add to the reason why it's an Emmy-award winning show. The latter two 'vices' seem to constantly be on screen, and both in times of celebration and crisis, there ain't nothing wrong with pouring a drink or three.

What

The weird thing is that besides 'meetings' and the odd presentation, the folks at Sterling Cooper tend to always be taking 4-hour lunches and sitting around discussing non-work related topics (i.e their secretaries, other men's secretaries, you get the idea) and even when the boss (guy near the door) enters, well, he doesn't mind joining in on the fun either. Hence, this is what a 'meeting' is in Mad Men.


Where

The advertising agency Sterling Cooper, where half the show takes place, is set on New York City's Madison Avenue. Whilst you never see the actual building from the outside, shots like these allude to what the 'view' would be like looking down at Madison Avenue.


Who

Don Draper. The Ultimate Ladies Man. Creative director and eventual junior partner of Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency; Draper is the series' main character. His past is shadowy, but he has achieved success at the agency. A close-up like of him is commonplace in the series and often used to show what Draper is thinking. Put it simply, what makes Draper the main character in Mad Men is two things: his infidelity and the fact that this dude has serious childhood issues. Luckily he looks fantastic in a suit, struts around with supreme confidence, blows people away everytime he says anything, is uncannily successful at his job and most importantly, spends 90 percent of time with women remaining absolutely silent, only talking to say the best lines ever.



All stills were sourced from here.

Week IV: Scavenger Hunt

I don't know how I'll get any answers to anything without Google or Wikipedia, but I'll try...

1. What is the weight of the world's biggest pumpkin? How long did it take to grow?

1689 pounds. The guy was Joe Jutras of Scituate, Rhode Island, breaking the world record of the biggest pumpkin on September 29, 2007. Joe said that the "pumpkin grew in 87 days. It was an average of 20 pounds a day. I went on vacation for three days and came back and it was huge." Keep on keeping on Joe.

Sourced from Pumpkin Nook (http://pumpkinnook.com/giants/giantpumpkins.htm) found using the Yahoo! search engine.

2. What is the best way (quickest, most reliable) to contact Lilly Allen?

The question asks for a Lilly Allen with two three L’s.The most famous one is Lily Allen, with only two L's, and if you go online and Ask Jeeves (a search engine) for "Lilly Allen phone number", you can get access to a forum where others are also looking for her digits. This was the most realistic response: "try calling 0800 GET-A-LIFE!” Harsh but true.

There are also other Lilly Allen's with three L's. Myspace is probably the best tool to use to stalk underage teen girls, so that's what I used. Result: 24 pages of "Lilly Allens". Here is the link to the first 10 (of 236): CREEP! You can message them and if you're over 18, end up on NBC's "To Catch A Predator".

3. What is the length of a giraffe's tongue?

According to the San Diego Zoo, the average length of a giraffe's tongue is 18-20 inches long (so around 46-centimeters). Cool...

Sourced from the San Diego Zoo Website (www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-giraffe.htm)found using the Ask! Search Engine

4. What does the term ‘seagull manager’ refer to?

According to BNET Business Dictionary, a seagull manager refers to a manager who is brought in only when there is a problem or crisis , makes a lot of fuss (i.e. "shits on everything"), achieves nothing, and then leaves. Now I finally have a term to apply to my area manager.

5. What was David Cronenberg's first feature film? Which of his films Had 'Blondie' in it?

Using IMBD (the world's biggest internet movie-database), I was able to find out that David Cronenberg's first feature film was a 65-minute Sci-Fi movie called "Stereo". Sourced from IMBD (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065036/)

Again using IMBD, I looked in David's Cronberg's filmography and found a 1983 film called "Videodrome" starring Debbie Harry (aka the lead singer of Blondie) but with dark brown hair. I'm not sure if this film went down in the annals of cinematic history:
Sourced from IMBD (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086541/)

6. When was the original 'Hacker's Manifesto' written?

Again 'Asking Jeeves', I discovered that the original 'Hacker Manifesto' was written on the 8th of January in 1986 by a hacker who went under the name of The Mentor. A brief article, the Hacker's Manifesto can be accessed here. According to my tutor Kaya, it's also in the movie "Hackers" which I haven't seen and have no plans to see anytime soon.

Information sourced from Economic Expert (http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Hacker:Manifesto.html)

7. Why do phone numbers in Hollywood films start with '555'?

The Official Home of Correct Movie Opinions says that the reason why phone numbers in Hollywood films start with the prefix 555, is to prevent people calling an actual working landline, leading to some farmer from Ohio getting requests to talk to God. Image and info sourced from The Movie Blog; http://www.themovieblog.com/2008/06/movie-blog-history-lesson-555

8. What is the cheapest form of travel from the Gold Coast to Sydney?

Once I watched a program on the Discovery Channel about “out-of-body experiences” or “astral projection” as it is also known as; simply, a phenomenon that occurs when a person travels outside his physical body, or travels in the spirit realm using a different state of consciousness. This video below tells you all you need to know about astral projection and illustrates it so it’s like your metaphysical self is connected to your via a invisible umbilical cord:

Since the question doesn’t state what kind of ‘travel’ it has to be, the cheapest way (virtually free) is to go through an out-of-body experience and project yourself through an astral plane; next thing you know, you’re in Sydney.

9. What song was top of the Australian Pop Charts this week in 1965?
I searched and searched, but the only source of info I could get about who was top of the tops back in 65 was on the Wikipedia. I know it's a sin to use it but I have no other choice. Assuming the week encompassing the 17th of August, the song was “Help! /I’m Down” which was number one on the Australian Pop Charts for 8 consecutive weeks, from 14/8 till 2/10.

Info sourced from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_number-one_singles_in_Australia_during_the_1960s

10. Which Brisbane band includes Stephen Stockwell on keyboards and vocals?

Brisbane-based Punk band, The Black Assassins.

Link to their website- http://blackassassins.net/

Week III: Language of the Screen Pt.2

For the week three blog task, we've been asked to find further defintions of the following film shot terms:

VLS/WS*

LS
MLS

MS*

MCU
CU

BCU

ECU*

*have been explained in a previous blog-post

Here is an explanation of these terms and an example of each shot, taken from the films of Leonardo Di Caprio. Oh yeah!

LS: Long Shot. In this type of shot, figures are visible but the background/foreground dominates.

Image sourced from here

MLS: Medium Long Shot. Typically, this type of shot focuses on the body from the knee up.

Image sourced from here

MCU: Medium Close-up. This shot focuses on the subject's face with a portion of their upper chest visible. Often used when two characters are talking to one another.

Image sourced from here

CU: Close-up. This shot singles out a portion of the subject, most commonly the face, in turn emphasizing non-verbal communication, such as a facial expression or gesture. Most films with Leo Di Caprio consist of about 3.7 of these shots every 10 seconds, since that's the only reason why most people go to see his films. He's a good-looking dude.

Image sourced from here.

BCU: Big Close-up. This shot is used most often to highlight the features of the subject's face, and is used for the same purpose as the Close-up. I got over looking up Leo, so here's another example which is probably better. My friend took this photo.

Bibliography

Film Directing and Film Making Tips for the Independent Filmmaker, Understanding camera techniques - shot size, viewed 18 August 2009

Week III: The Violation of Brendan Davies, Pt.1

Capturing some "footage"

Week III: Language of the Screen

We have been asked to find definitions for the following film terms and record how we researched the information online. The person next to me found the answers on another student's blog (a Skye) and I looked at their screen, so in hindsight, I really didn't have to search through the information metropolis that is the internet. In our tute, pretty much everyone gradually came across the same method of finding another student's blog. But for "progress" sake, I'll show how that blog (and definitions) came to be found.

Step 1: Typed "WS Language of the Screen" onto the Google search engine and the 2nd last link was Skye's blog.

Step 2: Great Success!

To get a more definite and concise definition of these terms, I typed in "film and screen analysis ECU WS MS", since I studied film and screen analysis last semester, and clicked on the first link: Film Directing and Film Making Tips for The Independant Filmaker.

And the defintions are...

ECU: Extreme Close-up (focus on the eye)
WS: Wide Shot (subject is shown in relationship to their surroundings)
MS: Medium Shot (the body from the waist up)

Here are examples of each type of shot from the films of Darren Aronofsky:

ECU- Extreme Close-up


WS- Wide Shot


MS- Medium Shot

Week III: Computer History X

A brief history of Computing & the Internet:

• Charles Babbage got into computers way before they were cool; his 19th Century Difference Engine, designed to calculate and print mathematical tables, is considered to be the original computer.
  
• For the computer to seriously develop, a serious man was required to do some serious work: Alan Turing. During WWII, Turing and his posse devised the first working computer, aptly titled The Bombe. After using this computer to crack German "Enigma" codes, he got arrested for being a homosexual and later commited suicide by drinking cyanide. Heavy stuff.
  
• IBM start producing the first commercially produced computers in the 1950s. These first machines were massive and expensive, so as a result, only the military and large companies could use them. It's worth noting that back then, they didn't have social networking sites or any websites back then, so even if you had a computer, you couldn't do anything fun or productive with it.
  
• Bill Gates decides to drop out of high school and start writing computer language for the first personal computers (PC's) released in 1975. That same year, Bill Gates started a company you may have heard of called Microsoft.
  
• Modern-day tech giants Apple were also founded around this time, by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak whose girlfriends left them for Bill Gates, since word on the street was that Bill had his own company. After selling their first Apple computer for $666.60 and their soul to the devil for untold wealth, the PC revolution began.
  
• Bill Gates joined forces with IBM and to cut a long story short, became the richest man on Earth for a long period of time. The End.

More in-depth material about the history of computing is presented here

Week II: Photoshop Master

Behold my prowess in the field of photo alteration:

Before:

After:

Week II: A Convergent Technology and Proof that 9/11 was a set-up.

"These implications of 9/11 being a controlled demolition are dark for our country (USA), because it means that somebody besides Al Qaeda was involved."

Week II: Convergence + Technology = Technological Convergance

According to the Ivy League folks over at Princeton, the term 'convergance' is the occurance of two or more things coming together. When this term is applied to the realm of technology, it refers to the intertwining of two or more pre-existing technologies, which should produce a technology more convenient and better-suited in performining similar tasks.


Examples of Convergent Technology:

1) Skype: Skype is a free-to-use software program that allows people who use it to communicate- both through voice calls and video conferencing- to other users over the Internet, and in some cases, to landlines and mobile phones. This program can also be used to share files and send instant messages/SMS to other poeple aswell. More information can be found here. Nice to know that this software wasn't developed by 20-something American computer-nerds/college-dropouts in their parent's garage.

A diagram of essentially how Skype functions.

2) The Iphone (or any "Smart Phone"): The Iphone is one of the best examples of convergent technology in the modern age. It retains the purposes of a phone- calling, sending & receiving text messages- whilst at the same time intertwining pre-existing technologies: it serves the role of an MP4 player (plays music and videos), a computer (can send/receive emails, browse the internet), a GPS-system (can access maps) and a portable-gaming console. God favours the undertakings of Steve Jobs.

The Iphone with four of it's central features: GPS, Internet access, MP4 and of course, being a mobile phone.

3)Refrigerator-TV: Okay, I guess it's cool that the powers that be have combined the everyday necessity of an fridge with the endless entertainment value of a television. But unless you sold your shares in Apple and have bought this for your holiday home in Cape Cod, I highly doubt that this piece of convergent technology is entirely practical and needed in the everyday home. Sure, your friends will be impressed but your wife will be asking why you didn't buy a TV for the living room; last time she checked, that's where people actually watch their television.

Just in case you lack any imagination, this is what a refrigerator-tv looks like.

4) "Spy" Pen Camera: Besides James Bond, there is a niche market out there for camera devices in everyday items that don't resemble a camera. Like this pen. I have a feeling that it's used for more sinister reasons than "home security", but I'll pass judgement this time. According to OZ Spy, "This video pen camera has colour video and audio with real time date and time stamping. The built-in 4GB memory gives 16-hour audio/video recording in AVI format and the super sensitive microphone can record sound with-in a 15 square metre range." Whatever you do, don't bring this on first dates. Or any dates.

Cool when you're 13. Liable for charges when you're 30.

I Prefer Phil Collin's Solo Work over his Genesis stuff.

In this blog, I will be documenting my experience in studying New Communication Technologies, including weekly tutorial tasks and summaries of that weeks lecture. I'll aim to reflect on my own ideas regarding the course and include entries about interesting books or websites I have discovered in my free time and/or during class time.

When I mean "interesting books or websites", I pretty much mean anything relating to conspiracy theories i.e "9/11 was an inside job", "The Illuminati/New World Order", etc.
This interest in conspiracy theories (theories can, and have, been proven true by the way) stems from my grandpa. If you've ever seen the film "Conspiracy Theory " starring Mel Gibson, it pretty much nails my grandpa down to a tee, except he isn't a mentally unstable taxi driver and isn't being hunted by the FBI yet.