Thursday, 31 August 2017

It slowly creeps in


We dictate what the places around us mean by turning them into our own places and creating specialised networks. We trade power around to achieve our ends and attach meaning to the world around us by creating meaning to the things and words we use.
This blog has been transformed from a blank space into a tool for the dissemination of my thoughts. I used the knowledge I’ve learned about a social network to exercise power through that very dissemination of learned knowledge. I’ve also selected my words in order to shape and convey all of that to suit the message I wanted to portray.
so how does all of this intersect?  I would say that it’s in the way it all intermingles into a new world, this new world we call, online.
If in the idea of post-humanism it suggests that the technology we use can become an extension of ourselves then can the digital world that we create and use become not only an extension of us but also become a sort of pseudo-world; a cyborg world (McNeill, 2012). It’s a world that takes in our analogue thoughts and churns out a cyber translation within its own borders, its own virtual space (Kuttainen, 2017). Most of us are never more than a pockets reach away from this somewhat transitory world that is the new cyber platform. Even with this ease of access we exhibit, this new frontier still inhabits a transitory place in our lives as even if we access it habitually it’s still a temporary part of our daily experience, at least for the moment.  

I suppose building off that and relating back to concepts of post-humanism, where does our analogue world end and our digital one begin, at what point do we become so ensconced with the digital that it all blurs and fade into one. So when does what we now conceive as our normal world, what I’ve called the analogue, get engulfed to the point where they both merge together to become the new standard where if you don’t partake in digital practices you become a new form of societal fringe dweller.
it doesn’t just stop with the fact the our lives are tied in with social media and the web but everything we do is coming to be dictated by some form of technology and not  just our phones, computers etc. if we were to try and completely extricate ourselves from everything we use it would be near impossible, we’ve become cyborgs attached to some form of technology with everything our watches in order to tell the time and the vehicles we all use at some point.



Refernces
Kuttainen, V. (2017). BA1002: Our space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, lecture week 6: Networked Narratives, retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au

Lynch, M (2016), Leave my iPhone alone: why our smartphones are extensions of ourselvesretrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/19/iphone-apple-privacy-smartphones-extension-of-ourselves

McNeill, L. (2012). There Is No “I” in NetworkSocial Networking Sites and Posthuman Auto/Biography. Project Muse, 35(1), 65-82. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au

videohive, Word Map, retrieved from https://videohive.net/item/digital-cyber-world-04/19338271

Communication of the 21st Century

        Social networks control our lives in many ways. The way we communicate on these sites can dictate our everyday life and responses. Take for instance, when going for a job, the employer can simply look you up on Facebook or Twitter and find out what kind of person you are, or who you have portrayed to be before even calling you up for an interview. If you have said anything negative about the company or the industry, you are trying to get a job with or are currently employed by, bye-bye employment. We no longer need to write letters and wait a week to receive the mail, it is a click of a button and instantly you can talk to a loved one from a different city. Communication has changed forever with the rise of social media, are we authentically ourselves or do we become someone the virtual society wants us to be?

Social media changing the way we communicate. Willis, A. (2017)

      McNiell (2012) argues that social networks challenge the older notion of the humanist which is self as being singular making people more of a posthuman. Post humanism as stated by Kuttainen (2017) challenges the boundaries between human and nonhuman.  Although unlike Facebook, Flixster has a more Humanistic approach to the social network, communication is limited between individuals. We therefore, as the user are autonomous and self -determining and are only able to leave a review on a movie title. There is no comment section on someone’s review and there is no other way of communication between people. We can almost say that the narratives in this network are individual, the Flixster community does not fully determine who we are and our feelings towards different movies. We are able to exercise our own agency.
On the contrary, how much are we exercising our own agencies? By reading the reviews of other critics, do we in a sense take on their opinion of a movie and start to judge it the way the critics see it? This can potentially make this social network somewhat achieve the posthuman approach by encompassing the identity of the different critics. Moreover, when entering the site, depending on the posts made and the scores given for movies, the higher the movies rank on a category list. This can determine what movies are watched and what movies are completely missed. A movie that I may really enjoy could be at the bottom of the categories, because the Flixster society has communicated with the network pointing out that it was not good enough to reach a higher score.
In a nutshell, communication between people has changed dramatically, instead of heading to the movie store and hiring a movie without knowing much about it, we can go onto sites like Flixster, read reviews and determine whether we think it’s a movie worth watching. Gone are the days of the constant “I lost 2 hours of my life that I can never get back”, because of a poor movie choice.

By Cassandra Schwerin

Reference List

Kuttainen, V. (2017). BA1002: Our space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, lecture week 6: Networked Narratives. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au
McNeill, L. (2012). There Is No “I” in Network: Social Networking Sites and Posthuman Auto/Biography. Project Muse, 35(1), 65-82. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au
Zurich Insurance Group. (2012, December 6). See how social media is changing the way we communicate [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wncZPE7NMVI

Willis, A. (2017). 6 Ways Social Media Change the Way We Communicate. Retrieved from http://circaedu.com/hemj/how-social-media-changed-the-way-we-communicate/

The space and place of DeviantArt





The space of DeviantArt is that of a calm and intellectual area for communications and sharing, this makes the place within our ideals. Space meaning a continuous area or expanse which is free, available, or unoccupied. Place meaning a particular position, point, or area in space; a location. words alone, used in an appropriate situation, can have the power to render objects, formerly invisible because unattended, visible, and impart to them a certain character.”



The words we use to describe virtual space and activities on the Internet. cyber space, the information superhighway, the world wide web, the net, cyber-crime, clickjacking, cyber-security, troll, online, offline, upload, phishing, spam, cyber-bullying, info Sumer, sexting, tagging, avatar, firewall, portal, platform, browser. These words both reflect and shape our ways of imagining virtual space on the Internet by the image our minds create when hearing them. Drawing on Tuan, language and naming make place in deviantart. In addition, in light of DeviantArt, what language it uses and how this defines a sense of space or place, self or community identity. The language used on the site are nice full formed sentence with thought out idea, this defines the sense of space as an intelligent calming area where one can communicate with each other about the art concepts they find interested in.



The Pictures and iconography are also forms of narrative, and are increasingly becoming important in our visually-oriented print- and popular culture. Refer to Tuan, in your discussion of what sorts of pictures, signs, or iconography shapes a sense of place and space in you chosen network. The images that are portray on DeviantArt are form all different genre from anime to real life, this is all without judgment and makes the space in DeviantArt an area where one won’t have to worry about



A song line, also called dreaming track, is one of the paths across the land (or sometimes the sky) which mark the route followed by localised "creator-beings" during the Dreaming. There are similarities between these and the network narrative of DeviantArt being that there are ways to move about the site like with any and it doesn’t matter who you talk to on the site it will be the same conversation structure, they are un-written guidelines. While there are these similarities there are also many differences while the song lines and the network narrative are un-written guides, the network narrative is a more simple and unspoken guide, where the song lines are complexes spoken/ sung guide. While any member or the network will know the narrative only members of the communities will know the true parts to the song lines.

How places are made is at the core of human geography. Overwhelmingly the discipline has emphasized the economic and material forces at work. Neglected is the explicit recognition of the crucial role of language, even though without speech humans cannot even begin to formulate ideas, discuss them, and translate them into action that culminates in a built place. Moreover, words alone, used in an appropriate situation, can have the power to render objects, formerly invisible because unattended, visible, and impart to them a certain character: thus a mere rise on a flat surface becomes something far more-a place that promises to open up to other places-when it is named "Mount Prospect." The different ways by which language contributes toward the making of place may be shown by exploring a wide range of situations and cultural contexts. Included in this paper are the contexts of hunter-gatherers, explorers and pioneers, intimate friendship, literary London, Europe in relation to Asia, and Chinese gardening and landscape art. There is a moral dimension to speech as there is to physical action. Thus warm conversation between friends can make the place itself seem warm; by contrast, malicious speech has the power to destroy a place's reputation and thereby its visibility. In the narrative-descriptive approach, the question of how and why language is effective is implied or informally woven into the presentation, but not explicitly formulated or developed. Ways of making place in different situations-from the naming of objects by pioneers, to informal conversation in any home, to the impact of written texts-are highlighted and constitute the paper's principal purpose, rather than causal explanations, which must vary with each type of linguistic behavior and each situation.” words alone, used in an appropriate situation, can have the power to render objects, formerly invisible because unattended, visible, and impart to them a certain character” we as members have made this site our space, our place, an area that much like song lines has its own guides we all follow for the good of all the members.






by Stephanie hall


Reference list   Abstract

Tuan, Y-F. (1977). ‘Introduction’. In Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. (p.p.3-7). London: Edward Arnold.

Sunday, 27 August 2017

Facebook Communication.


How social media is changing language (2017)
Most people understand that there are differences between oral and written language. Communication involves the transfer of information from one person to another. This transfer could be presented in many ways, two being; oral or written. The transfer of writing is more static compared to speaking which is a more energetic transfer of information. It is known that although speech alone cannot materially transform nature, it can direct attention, organize insignificant entities into significant composite wholes, and in so doing, make things formerly over looked-and hence invisible and non-existent, visible and real, Tuan (1991).

When people describe a place to you, they tend to describe it the way they experience it. This experience could be completely different to, say a person standing centimetres away, the factors that influence people’s experiences usually depend on their background, attitudes, beliefs, perspectives and many other things. So, the way a person uses their language to describe a place is based on how they experience it. Speech is a component of the total force that transforms nature into a human place. But speech can be an effective force acting alone or almost alone, Tuan (1991). The right to name is a form of empowerment, when people hear about the place by its name or description it already creates an idea of the place being described. Even though they do not see it they already have an idea of the place and this could be negative of positive depending on what they have heard about it.

Facebook users use their language to describe their experiences of places and situations. They combine different forms of language to support their experiences which ultimately makes other users read about their experiences differently from how it would have actually occurred. Words can also be replaced with Emojis, an emoji is a visual representation of an emotion, object or symbol and are mostly used in modern communication apps. Basically, Facebook allows users to use their language to see the world in words, to call something a “Mount” or a “Valley” or a “Plain” represents a way of seeing the world that is English according to Dr Victoria Kuttainen (2017). T

Since being introduced to Facebook I have become aware of how Facebook, as well as other social media sites, has influenced and also continues to influence the language in which I write. When you think about it the words that surround us every day influence the words we use. Since so much of the written language we see is now on the screens of our computers, tablets, and smartphones, language now evolves partly through our interaction with technology. Because the language we use to communicate with each other tends to be more malleable than formal writing, combining informal and personal communication plus a huge audience provided by social media equals a fast change for language.

In the era of social networking sites, digital media present us with a very different and in some ways opposite set of concerns. They way that we send a receive information is more important than the message itself, Marshall McLuhan (1967). There is a popular belief that the Internet is in fact allowing a dramatic expansion to take place in the range and variety of language. Soon standard of language will be lost and creativity weakened as the world imposes sameness. Facebook users are continually searching for vocabulary to describe their experiences, to capture the character of the electronic world, and to overcome the communicative limitations of its technology.

References

·         Kuttainen, V. (2017). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, Narratives, and the Making of Place, Week 5: Stories of place: Story lines. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au/

·         McLuhan, M (1967) The Medium is the Message by Marshall McLuhan | Animated Book Review| You tube video. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCr2binb4Fs

·         Tuan, Y-F. (1991). Language and the making of place: A narrative-descriptive approach. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 81(4), 684-696.

·        How social media is changing language (2017). Retrieved Image from: scyther5 / Shutterstock.com 

Saturday, 26 August 2017

SONGLINES AND NETWORKING.


SONGLINES AND WHATAPP NETWORKING.
(Peter Mulcahy & Josephine Mick)


The "Songline" is a dreamtime idea that was used to shape the truth of our ancestors. Here in Australia, the Ancestors created themselves from clay, one for each totemic species. Likewise, social network like WhatsApp is the new adjustment or modernised way of the songline, in which our networked narratives are shaped through different social media including WhatsApp. The songline used by our ancestors made it feasible for them to coordinate their route over the whole nation, provided they knew the song. This was clear with their firm belief that a song was both a map and a direction-finder, providing you know the song, you could always find your way across the country (Chatwain, 1987).

This belief was based on the premise that perception was a crucial part of a songline, and that as long as you stuck to the track, you would always find people who shared your dreaming, who were infact your family Chatwin,( 1987), pg.13) [….] The concept of social networking being a present day adaptation of the songline through our networked narratives has more similarities with the traditional concept of the songline, yet additionally varies. There are many similarities and differences between the songlines and the networked narrative of WhatsApp. However, according to Chatwin songlines had predominantly focused on perception and existence. He suggests that an ancestor would only exist to the songline of their totemic ancestor provided they know the song, or are able to identify it.
Another similarity of WhatsApp to a songline is that given that we exist in social and family groups that we see as advantageous in shaping our networked narrative. This implied we can discover our way over the social network given that we know the people we associate with. However, songline differ from the present day networked narrative as WhatsApp has the ability to explore outside your family as long as they have android mobile phones and happy to share their contact details, whereas songline to the Aboriginal people is mainly for a community of the same totemic ancestral descent.

Songlines unlike WhatsApp does not have the ability to choose its community. WhatsApp gives the user the ability to privatize their profile, giving option to choose who can see their status or profile from their family, friends and groups, or like global virtual world, WhatsApp users can also chose to open up their timeline to everyone on the contact details. Songline similarly to WhatsApp, gives the user the ability to create a community with the ability to invite others in. Songline likewise, is a totem which gives no choice to the individual neither the ability to choose another group or friends.

Despite of the similarities and differences between songline and social media like WhatsApp, my observation on present day’s beliefs on social networking sites has degraded our human qualities through being the creation of a computerized medium. Old social communications, like the Dreaming and Songlines, have a natural song about them that modern social media and networking sites are missing. (By Mollel)


Reference list

Chatwin, B. (1985).   The Songlines. Australian aborigines – Social life and customs.
            Jonathan Cape Limited, London.

Kuttainen, V. (2017). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, Narratives, and the Making of Place, Week 5: Stories of place: Story lines. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au/

Wade, D (2008 September 30) The Dreamtime .Retrieved from http://blog.ted.com/wade_davis_repo/

Image. 







Friday, 25 August 2017

Audience Manipulation and controlling the normal

 

(choose your audience, 2017).

One of the most impactful and unnoticed aspects of the power imbalance in Facebook is that of the design of the space itself. Wood, Kaiser, & Abramms, (2006) put forward that “Every map serves a purpose, every map advances an interest”. Whose interest, then, is advanced by the architecture and mapping of the Facebook site? Once again, it is the purpose of the multinational corporation of Facebook to increase the amount of advertising and as a result the money it can generate from this advertising revenue.

The power imbalance in this situation is again in the subtle ways Facebook manipulates and controls its users under the mask of a completely user-focused “social network”. When one looks at it critically, the idea that a platform, run by a corporation, that reaches millions of people daily wouldn’t be used to generate profit through the use and manipulation of information doesn’t seem to make good business sense.
Many people in the postmodern world are increasingly more aware of the types and amount of personal information we allow into the cyber world, despite reaching a point in our collective online activities where we habitually give away this information and more daily, on Facebook.

One of the reasons Facebook has been so incredibly successful in its use of targeted advertising is in the way the space has been constructed to gather information; such a way that users have been made to feel as though the space is all about them and so, they are much more willing to ‘like’ a page that aligns with their views or fill out profile information because they are under the illusion it is only seen by them, and the chosen few they nominate as ‘friends’. Whereas in actuality, the bulk of that data is used to improve the relevance of the advertising content to the individual users’ preferences. This YouTube video by dottotech explains how advertising can be targeted based on information gleaned from user’s innocuous interactions with the site.

This purposeful, designed space bears a resemblance to Walter Benjamin’s Arcades project as described by Dr Victoria Kuttainen (2017). However, this space differs from the classical arcades as it has vastly different meanings based on who is interacting with the space. In a sense, Facebook can constantly ‘renovate’ its ‘main street arcade’ based on the changing interests of the specific patron, as they walk, or scroll, along it.
More so, the actual movement of the user through this virtual space has been specifically constructed as well. Success in the Facebook context means keeping the user online for as much time as possible using whatever means possible. The way they achieve this is through the personalised ‘timeline’. This is designed in a way that content can be viewed instance at a time as the user scrolls down a (more or less) chronological, time line of content assumed to be relevant to them. Facebook, the entity, uses its power in this aspect by subtly injecting its own advertising in strategic intervals throughout the timeline. This is designed in such a way so as to seem normal enough to go unnoticed as advertising but relevant enough to demand attention from the user. This constructed normality is another example of how Facebook is used as a means of control through massive, yet widely unnoticed, power disparity.

By Adam Brown

Reference list

Choose your audience [image]. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/business/products/ads/ad-targeting
Dottotech. (producer). (2015, January 12) Facebook Ads - How they work! [video file] Retreived from https://youtu.be/r6ZVwtP3xz8
Kuttainen, V. (2017). BA1002: Maps. Week 4 Notes [power point slides]. retrieved from https://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au/
Wood, D., Kaiser, W. L., & Abramms, B. (2006). Seeing through maps: many ways to see the world. Oxford, UK: New Internationalist Publications.


Internet Pirates and Volatile Flaneurs: Soft on Software

Throughout history, many governmental policies have been designed to oppress and control the general population. However, there has been a tendency for some form of discontent to be displayed by the public. Fight the system!

Piracy. (2016).
One of this week’s concepts, the flaneur, left me with the impression of a rebellious bystander. This alternative to a simple definition is a concept discussed by Benjamin, (as cited in Lauster, 2007, pp. 1-2) where a flaneur is depicted as an entity surpassing its boundaries, as defined in previous eras. Benjamin’s flaneur is different, in that they “want to see, as much as to be seen”, a notion discussed by Kuttainen (2017) during our lecture this week. Apart from moving to observe, this new flaneur seeks out commotion within their community to cause chaos. However, what is their key purpose?

In a capitalistic society, the traffic of consumers was revolutionised by the introduction of arcades. By guiding the crowd, the businesses and entrepreneurs gained the ability to enhance traffic flow and benefit local consumerism. These flaneurs were seeking to break the conformation and direction within these capitalistically-controlled environments.

The internet today is veering towards becoming a platform with heavy capitalistic traits. Except a small independent portion, many websites are requiring some form of sponsorship or market advertising to survive. By using cookies, our every move on the internet is tracked, providing insight into our interests and viewing patterns for the sake of “Remarketing”. My social network, Steam, follows the etiquette and layout of a capitalistic business. It employs the use of marketing strategies such as remarketing and sales to coerce consumers. Through this week’s observations, I’ve begun to understand and relate this week’s readings and lecture to parts of Steam.

Steam acts as a host for virtual interaction, but also works as a marketplace for various online games. Owned by Valve™ Corporation, this company has worked as both the marketer and the creator of various online games. The varying experiences this company has accumulated has enabled it to create a convincing layout for controlling the consumers. Though, technology has created a virtual cyber-flaneur, an antagonist to the virtual, capitalistic world: Piracy.

Piracy is a ceaseless issue within technology. As discussed by Liao, Lin, and Liu (2009, pp. 1-3) problems existent from technology’s origins, such as the ability to forge, imitate and disperse ingenuine software have been possible, and its risks on virtual capitalism have been recognized. As with Benjamin’s flaneur, the defiant figure, piracy, obstructs the control of the overarching puppeteer. Regardless of any attempts to control the rebellion, new methods of evasion are constructed.

Like rats in a sewer, there is only so far you can physically control those who subsede you. Without the foundation of the ‘lowly’ puppets, the structure of capitalism may collapse. This leaves me wondering if the overarching controller will ever be able to suppress the internal rebellions, and to what end will it do it any good?

Until next week,

 ~R. Laverty


References:

Cliktree. (2013, April 12). What is google remarketing? [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45uymOc2fTA

Kuttainen, V. (2017). BA1002: Networks, narratives and the making of place, week 4 notes [PowerPoint slides]. College of Arts, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia.

Lauster, M. (2007). Walter Benjamin’s myth of the “flaneur”.  The Modern Language 102(1), 139-156. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.elibrary.jcu.edu.au/stable/pdf/20467157.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A781e6c1b56a05a77671c2a087198efef

Liao, C., Lin, H., & Liu, Y. (2010). Predicting the use of pirated software: A contingency model integrating perceived risk with the theory of planned behaviour. Journal of Business Ethics, 91(2), pp. 237-252. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.elibrary.jcu.edu.au/stable/27749793

Piracy [image]. (2016). Retrieved from https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/piracy.jpg?w=670&h=377&crop=1