Chit chat sessions

The last couple of classes we have been participating in chat sessions. Trying to nut out the issues of the course.

It was fairly helpful- my biggest issue was being able to follow the chat sessions fast enough to participate. I would attempt to comment and before i know it the line i wanted to address was off the screen. It would have been easier had i been able to make screen bigger i would have found it easier i suppose.

But its week 13 and the end of classes
so good luck to all the other students on the take home exam!

Hirokikami

I have been looking around at a few blogs and in the community chat sessions. There keeps cropping up a story about a girl who died of malnutrition due to playing online games for a huge amount of time.

I am a bit sckeptical about the whole story, for me its verging on urban legend type of thing, but the other day i was reading through an old Q Weekend and came across a story about a group in Japan that have been labeled Hirokikami [if i have spelt that right].

The word translates into english as withdrawn. Basically some hirokikami withdraw from their community and society in general and spend all their time in their bedrooms. For anyone who has ever been to japan you will realise that most bedrooms in japan arent all that large. But it also makes you wonder how does someone live with out going outside?

It seems off point until you ask the question- does virtual cultures and virtual communities in
these circumstances replace or become a surrogate for these people?
A large portion of discussion in this unit goes to the idea that on a personal level most people in our class dont use the internet or other technologies to socialise beyond their existing friendships.

But what if we looked at it in reverse? Could we utilise the virtual sphere to help these people reenter the real world, help them to balance the pressures that have forced them to withdraw to their rooms to come out and be active members of the community.

just something to think about.

Governance and the governator

At times it seems bizarre the concept of governance in relation to the internet. The idea that its possible to have an iota of control over such an expansive group of internet users is an idea i have trouble grasping.

In truth i think its because i am conceptualising governance in the same manner and form as the physical world and government. Where there are rules made and enforcement of those rules

But in the virtual world this all falls back to nettiquette and protocols. The hardest part of it was understanding how it all can be enforced.

Devious Deviant Art

If I was to say "art community" would you ask me what the web address was? For some time now new technologies and software have been developing new ways for people- whether artists or of the regular kind, to manipulate, create, develop and correct pictures and design.
The phenomenon has created a new realm of artist-the digital artist. The next logical step for the art community was that using said technologies to communicate with other artists and like minded individuals. One such art-based virtual community is Deviant Art.

The community revolves around the both traditional art types and new forms of art - such as digital art.

Its success as a community stems from the sites ability to provide exposure for emerging artists and a place for all to display their works. But the site is not limited to being just a gallery space, there are forums for artists to seek advice technical, relational or otherwise; and users are able to critique and have their work critiqued by other members.

In terms of measuring its success the site has a constantly updating counter of the number of contributions made.

Its major challenge was navigation, as a new user I spent ages trying to figure out how to move through the site and the community. So far I have managed to submit two photographs and have explored the forums. Until now I had not known what a tablet pc was, but now I can tell you what you can do if your tablet pc is not recognising pen pressure!

Just for fun

I am slooooooowly working out how to use the DeviantArt website.

I also tracked down my own space on that website, its a little bit different in terms of how most websites set up their navigation, most of my experience has been trial and error.

Here is one of the photos i will be submitting to the site for my personal gallery space, more because i love the photo, which i took by accident, and the fact that i just dont have the artistic talent to put up say an illustration or something like that.

Very grey?

Copyright, like freedom of information laws, irk me and intrigue me.

Copyright, in my view is an imperfect protection. Its design takes a very archaic stance- what is mine is mine alone. But on the other hand it prevents the rightful owner from all the heartache of some other artist pooping on their parade.

At times copyright laws seem ridiculous because i cant understand how the writers of copyright laws viewed creativity. Take for example Australian copyright only allows free republication of a great piece of literature [dont quote me if i have the amount of years wrong] some fifty years after the death of the writer. Any republication prior to this date is subject to paying royalties. But to republish a great work for a profit it makes sense for some royalties to be retained- starving artists and such would roll over in their graves if they knew the publisher was getting a free ride.

Applying this to another scenario take eh- Nikki Webster [sorry she was the youngest australian musician i could think of], any part of the music she has created had another artist wished to use it without having to pay royalties and jump through the negotiation hoops her record company will inevitably pull out would have to wait until well a long time.

What i suppose i am getting at is that creativity shouldnt have to wait, be paitent or negotiated. It should just be allowed to be.

But there is the counter argument that artists who sample music etc are not being creative or original and are i suppose cheating. But its not necessarily like that, you have created something from a unique viewpoint or unique experience, sampling music could be likened to sharing a relative experience and changing the perspective.

Dj Danger mouse was onto a great thing with the grey album, i wouldnt have thought of the beatles and Jay-z in the same sentence.

Fandom- the new black?

I am a closet fan. Whenever we have shout outs in class about what television shows etc we are watching or really into i rarely say what i am deeply devoted to.

[Well as devoted as i think you could get to a television show really]

But there are many more people out there now who are going beyond the average "i watch/play/follow/read/listen and buy all the merchandise etc".

In an earlier post i mentioned MMOGs, perfect example of fans and their participation.

Marshall says it much better than i do- the fan is part of the experience. But it makes perfect sense, when i go to concerts its not enjoyable if the room is filled with people who have a negative viewpoint. It sounds ridiculous that someone would spend a handful of cash to go somewhere they would rather not be.

A constant in this equasion is that people would not be able to have such scope to participate in their favored subject without the expansion of media technologies. I love how this seems to revolve back to the technology.

Catch up

Every year i say i am going to get a flu shot but never do. I hate needles, but i hate the flu even more. No point to that last sentence just putting in my two cents.

We [as in my group for this tutorial presentation] did our presentation on friday last week.

We took on the idea of creating an online space for QUT students to socialise in.
Similar to say Hi5 or friendster. Applying this to sort of online space to QUT didnt seem to go over too well with the audience.

Their feedback-

• Such a space wouldnt really work if it was connected to QUT
• They couldnt see how you could create such a space and not have it facilitate academic dishonesty
• They didnt want to share a space with tutors and other staff as either the space would need to be heavily moderated or it would cause personal upsets as people seem to have a tendancy to bag other people out.
• They wouldnt and couldnt see themselves using the space.

Issues [that i am having to work in their feedback]

• The core concept is that the online community would be for QUT people [staff and students] to the exclusion of other people. Other communities such as MySpace do not have such a restriction on them. So how do you clearly define a space but not have it aligned or linked to an institution? Possibly changing the identity of the site would help?
• Academic dishonesty- we addressed this area possibly on too small a scale. The intention for the site is not for it to be too academic but be a social meeting place, in saying that there is scope for academic material to be exchange either dishonestly or inadvertently. There are two ways to deal with it moderating or employing tools that stop "cut and paste" or uploads of word documents. Not a perfect solution but an idea
• Disputes and other ettiquette issues- the audience raised this issue that the site would have issues balancing moderation and people's treatment of others. Two things firstly a user agreement to help people be mindful of what sort of actions are appropriate. But the moderation issue, I personally dont mind having a referee in place but many people are not like minded and see moderation as infringing on their freedom of speech. Really well and truly stuck on this one until i opened my inbox. This is going to sound odd. But i use gmail and i have noticed that in my inbox- particularly when i open up an email there is a little banner down the side that has advertising- that is matched to keywords in the email that i am reading. According to a Time article about Google they have introduced technology that remotely matches advertising to keywords in the body of your email. Where i am going with this is- if Google can use this technology to advertise then why not modify or create a program that does a similar thing except scan and moderate forums remotely? But that is a huge idea way out from left field.
• Usage.... let me think about it

But otherwise i liked our idea, i thought we worked in the concept of community and virtual fairly well.

I still believe that such a community would be useful for QUT students, not everyone is able to participate and socialise whilst on campus and some students totally miss out on the whole university lifestyle by because of their course - like external students and or by their own personal situtation.

Plain language

I had to add this article to my blog.

Not really subject related, but the other part of my study is law and i can tell you- codes or just hard to read judgements are not something new. Long, tedious judgements are a very big part of our inherited legal culture.

A highcourt judge with a sense of humor?

Read the couriermail article here