6th Week; A BREIF HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER AND INTERNET

We began the lecture by watching a scene out of the movie Johnny Mnemonic. It showed some of the early ideas of a computer.

Babbage.
He was the man who created the first computer machine.
The engine was designed to calculate & print mathematical tables.

Xerox PRAC in the early 70s, a think tank (group of people) developed ideas to make the computer better, e.g. Mouse, the graphical user interface (GUI) & pull-down menus.

Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak were the inventors of Apple.

‘Killer application’ (accounting program) was brought about in 1979.

IBM – International Business Machine.

In the lecture we also watched an animated short film about the internet, and how it works. It showed how one computer can read another computer through cables.
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READING; What’s new about ‘New Media’?
It is hard to determine what is ‘new’ in technology, because the rate of change in media is so rapid, a list of new technologies quickly becomes dated.

Three interrelated social and technological process;
digitisation and convergence
interactivity
networks and networking.

We can define new media as those forms that combine the three Cs:
computing and information technology (IT), communications networks, and
digitised media and information content (Miles 1997; Rice 1999; Barr
2000)

Lievrouw and Livingstone (2002: 7) in their observation that any approach to thinking about new media needs to take account of three elements: he artefacts or devices that enable and extend our ability to communicate the communication activities and practices we engage in to develop and use these devices the social arrangements and organisations that form around these devices and practices.

The Internet represents the newest, most widely discussed, and perliaps most significant manifestation of new media.

The Internet constitutes the electronic network of networks that link people and information through computers, and increasingly through other digital media technologies, and allow for both interpersonal communication and information retrieval (DiMaggio et al. 2001).

INTERNET HISTORY, three elements;
1st - Established in 1957, Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA), electronic mail being perhaps the major communications innovation
2nd - development of a common set of networking protocols, which enabled researchers in the various local area networks (LANs)
(Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf develop in 1974 a common switching protocol that could meet the needs of an open-architecture network environment, which came to be known as TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/internet Protocol).)
3rd - 1990s, development of the World Wide Web (www).

FOUR FEATURES OF THE WORLD WIDE WEB;
1st - Colour, pictures, music, audio, as well as data & text
2nd - Hypertext (allows point-to-click access)
3rd - Hypertext then became more apparent with the development of web browsers
4th - Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http), websites.

The telecommunications industry experienced rapid change in the 1980s and 199Os, moving from being public monopolies or highly regulated companies providing ‘plain old telephone services’ (POTS), to becoming a sector involved in the delivery of a complex range of value-added network services (VANS).

Interactive media forms are those that give users a degree of choice in the information
system, both in terms of choice of access to information sources and control over the outcomes of using that system and making those choice. Interactivity is a central concept in understanding new media, but different media forms possess different degrees of interactivity, and some forms of digitised and converged media are not in fact interactive at all.
Interactive - ‘the extent to which Communication reflects back on itself feeds on and responds to the past’

Interactive - two components; interconnectivity and interoperability
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In the tute we discussed writing our essay, and how to do so in a structured way.
Intro (what essay is about, what way essay is heading)
Body (Justify argument, 3 topics, with 3 paragraphs each topic)
Conclusion (sum up argument)

We also discussed the lecture, a few points taken;
The main servers are in America
Internet is a network of networks

5th Week; WHY I HATE WIKIPEDIA

At the beginning of the lecture we viewed some Wikipedia sites. It is obvious that is not a reliable source as anyone can log in and change or add information. You can view the history of a page, and this shows how many changes have occurred since the site was created. Wikipedia isn’t necessarily useless, as it does contain a lot of information, however it shouldn’t be used as a primary resource when researching.

Matrix Problem; how can we be sure that what we’re reading is the truth?
‘There are facts that we absolutely know are true e.g. it’s raining, and then there are other facts that we can’t always be sure’.

In the lecture we also discussed searching reliable information. Library Catalogue Journals are a good source of information, found on the Griffith site.
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Reading for the week Jorge Luis Borges.
1940, short story, Tale.
Presented in English & Spanish.
Searching for the truth about Uqbar.

Notes taken…

• Volume XLVI of the Angelo-American Cyclopaedia, instead of 917, it concealed 921 pages. These fourteen additional pages made up the article of Uqbar. (not in alphabetical marking).
• The passage recalled by Bioy was perhaps the only surprising one,
  For one of those gnostics, the visible universe was an illusion or (more precisely) a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply and disseminate that universe.
  The rest of it seemed very plausible, quite in keeping with the general tone of the work and (as is natural) a bit boring.
• Reading over it again they realized that amongst the fourteen names which figured in the geographical part, they only recognized three - Khorasan, Armenia, Erzerum.
• A friend Herbet Ashe died, leaving behind a certified package from Brazil. It contained ‘not the story of my emotions but of Uqbar and Tlön and Orbis Tertius’

On Tuesday, X crosses a deserted road and loses nine copper coins. On Thursday, Y finds in the road four coins, somewhat rusted by Wednesday's rain. On Friday, Z discovers three coins in the road. On Friday morning, X finds two coins in the corridor of his house. The heresiarch would deduce from this story the reality - i.e., the continuity - of the nine coins which were recovered. It is absurd (he affirmed) to imagine that four of the coins have not existed between Tuesday and Thursday, three between Tuesday and Friday afternoon, two between Tuesday and Friday morning. It is logical to think that they have existed - at least in some secret way, hidden from the comprehension of men - at every moment of those three periods.

• Equality is one thing and identity another. They then argued: if equality implies identity, one would also have to admit that the nine coins are one
  
• Books were not signed. Plagiarism did not exist, it was established that all works were from one author. Often critics invented authors.
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Tutorial:
I couldn’t make it to the first half of the lecture so I missed all discussion at the beginning, however the time I did spend in class I started work on the tutorial task about Walter Benjamin. The class also had to choose what our assignment for the end of the semester was going to focus on.

Tutorial Task - Q's considering the reading by Walter Benjamin

How do the ideas from Walter Benjamin's "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" apply to contemporary digital media?
The ability to reproduce contemporary digital media such as newspapers to a large audience and at a fast rate.

There was a time when "Art" was made by artists who were skilled professionals. Now that anyone with a computer can create things digitally (music, images, videos, etc), what does that mean for "art"?
I guess it can be good and bad in some ways, because we loose tradition, however I think as our world advances not everything can stay the same, and creating art digitally gives artists more room for imagination and creation.

Is a photoshopped image "authentic"?
I probably wouldn’t say authentic. I think photoshopped images can be beautiful, so why shouldn’t that be considered as art? However, when a photographer can capture an image without photoshopping it is more spectacular.

Do digital "things" have an "aura" (in Benjamin's terms)?

4th Week; OLD COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES

The discussion in weeks 4 lecture surrounded the history of communication.

Some of the earlier forms of communication include;

• Rock Art
• Print
• Telegraph & Telephone (Point to point communication)
• Newspaper
• Radio
• Cinema
• Television
• Video

Semiotics: Understanding signs.
20th century saw a massive increase in communication technology.

We spoke about some theorists.
Walter Benjamin. Louis Althusser. Raymond Williams. Stanley Cohen.

The Lecturer then spoke about Walter Benjamin and his history:
During the 1st World War he was a peace activist.
Had a PHD that explored German Drama.
He was always trying to understand society.
Worked at a children radio explaining culture, influenced the minds of the young.
Went to Paris and wrote a book about Arcades.
Studied Jewish Documents.
He wasn’t a straight forward thinker.
He committed suicide when captured, so the others could get away.
TIMELINE - Understand where communication comes from and the new forms of communication.
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Reading for the week was Walter Benjamin; The Work and Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

• The Greeks only knew two technical methods of reproducing, founding and stamping. Now we can re-print the same thing over again, and art such as wood sculptures can be mechanically reproduced. No longer unique,
• Photography soon took over sculpting, as the eye is quicker then the hand .
• Manual reproduction example;
• Photography can capture better then what the eye can see, enlarge etc as well.
• Technical reproduction can reach further then what an original could.
• Works of art are received and valued on different plans. Cult value & exhibition value.
• Film industry is trying hard to spur the interest of the masses through illusion-promoting spectacles and dubious speculations.
• Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art.
• Evidently a different nature opens itself to the camera than opens to the naked eye
  

Additional notes on the reading…

• Says, the old forms of communication used to be the domain of the rich and power (ones who could afford to read)
• What is the original work of art in a photo?… The negative? The produced photo?
• Work of art is how society functions
• The article was hidden by a librarian at the library when Benjamin was wanted
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In the tute we then spoke about the lecture to help us gain further understand. We discussed some theorists. However, majority of the tute surrounded research towards our tutorial task scavenger hunt.

Tutorial Task; Search Engines

How do search engines rank the stuff they find on the internet?

• Keywords
• Graphics
• Links
• Information contnent
• Amount of Information/Pages

Who, or what, makes one page (that you might get in your search results) more useful than another one, so that it is put at the top of your search results?
Reliable source and Keywords

What are some of your favourite search engines? why do you like one more than others?
Google, because it is the most popluar and one of the biggest. I find I almost always am supplied with links to the information I was searching for. With some search engines, the links don't always give black and white answers.

Tutorial Task; Scavenger Hunt

1. Who was the creator of the infamous "lovebug" computer virus?
Onel De Guzman, a 23-year old man living in a middle-class Manila suburb.
Website - http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewBusiness.asp?Page=\Culture\archive\1998-2000\CUL20000505b.html

2. Who invented the paper clip?
Norwegian Johan Vaaler
Website - http://ask.yahoo.com/20031120.html

3. How did the Ebola virus get its name?
From a river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where it was first recognized.
Website - http://ebola.emedtv.com/ebola-virus/from-what-place-did-the-ebola-virus-get-its-name.html

4. What country had the largest recorded earthquake?
Chile 1960 May 22 19:11:14 UTC Magnitude 9.5
Website - http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/world/events/1960_05_22.php

5. In computer memory/storage terms, how many kilobytes in a terabyte?
?

6. Who is the creator of email?
Ray Tomlinson
Website - http://inventors.about.com/od/estartinventions/a/email.html

7. What is the storm worm, and how many computers are infected by it?
It begins through email, and once the email is opened the virus then spreads quietly through the computer. Because it is so quick this virus effected millions of computers.
Website - http://www.hothardware.com/News/What_Is_The_Storm_Worm_For/

8. If you wanted to contact the prime minister of australia directly, what is the most efficient way?
Through this site…
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=200637520

9. Which Brisbane-based punk band is Stephen Stockwell (Head of the School of Arts) a member of?
The Black Assassins.
Website - http://www.griffith.edu.au/school/art/staff/stockwell.htm

10. What does the term "Web 2.0" mean in your own words?
Web 2.0 is the second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate and share information online. Example; Wikipedia.

3rd Week; ALPHAVILLE

In week 3 we watched the film Alphaville. The film was created in 1965, the language was French, it was viewed in black and white and had no special effects. The film was set in the future, on another planet. The super computer Alpha 60 is what controls this world, and when tough guy Lemmy Caution is sent on a mission to Alphaville he is approached with many obscure things. The computer didn’t like emotion, this demonstrated that in the future technology will have a great hold on us. In 1965 this filmed would have amazed people, seeing a step into the possible future. Today technology has come along way and our films are much more advanced, we can see the differences instantly. However, society still views films that are similar in the fact that we enjoy watching futuristic films because it creates an imagination of what our world could be like in the future.

Readings for the week involved a few articles, one of which was about the French new wave. French new wave was an artistic movement that had influence on film especially between 1958 and 1964. They were normally low budget films, with natural lighting, shooting on location, direct sound recording and more. In the 1950’s this was all very groundbreaking.

During the tute we had a discussion about the film Alphaville. The class shared their thoughts about the film, people said; it was funny, it jumped straight into the story without creating complete understanding of what is happening, leaving the viewer to make their own sense of it. Throughout the rest of the tute the class added and viewed peoples blogs. We were then taught how to make our blogs private if we wanted that as an option.