sophie

Reflection of course

soph72 — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 04:31:35 +0000

Reflection of the Course

Throughout the duration of the new communication and Technology course I have been taken on a virtual journey into the depths of cyberspace and beyond. I admit I use the internet a lot but not to the extend I did throughout the course. I actually had fun in tutorials which is quite rare at university. The computer labs are a great way to discover the net and the computer itself by discovering it. I found I learnt a lot of things through self discovery and actually taking part in the activities rather than reading and not experiencing it first hand.

I also enjoyed the lectures, as I cringe at sitting their and listening to someone talk for 2 hours, the visual imagery and videos shown throughout the lectures helped me to gain a better understanding .

I was a little lost in the text book though as at times I was unsure what was of great importance and what was not. Though I found resolution in the glossary of terms which helped. Photoshop was great fun, the Microsoft and macros were a little boring, though rewarding as a lot of the tools in excel and Microsoft have never been explored by myself before. I found the course gave me a great start into my journey into this second media age and one that I know will be rewarding for years to come.

soph72 — Mon, 21 May 2007 01:47:57 +0000

I found todays post quite interesting as i rarely use microsoft excel. To begin with the exercises were quite simple and i was comfortable completing them though as the exercises went on i found they became quite complex. I have never used the macro system before and i found it wuite difficult at times to complete the activities. I overcame any difficulties by experimenting, searching and playing around with the different buttons until i had felt i accomplished the task, though if i was really stuck i checked with my tutor. I have found the two exercises on microsoft programmes quite interesting, the reason being in high school we were taught the basic programmes and how to use them but we barely touched on many of the techniques we have been exploring in the tutorials. Overall although there have been some activities i have found quite complex and i have been unfamiliar with others i have found to be quite simple. Though it is a great learning curve and one i feel will help me with my latter life.

soph72 — Mon, 14 May 2007 04:52:36 +0000

I found the majority of activities in the tutorial task quite straightforward to begin with, as I use Microsoft word frequently. However, I had not used the letters, mailing lists, track changes, mail merge and even the abc button before. The activities today have without a doubt helped me to understand the requirements for job applications, emails, and letters to businesses and applying for jobs. Although to begin with it seemed quite trivial it will help me in my later life and even be the difference from receiving a job or not.

soph72 — Fri, 11 May 2007 04:49:30 +0000

New Communication and Technology Academic essaySophie DowlingS2625621

The term “cybercompulsions” has been expressed as an umbrella term, referring to online media behaviours that we feel somehow compelled to engage in, without being able to converse exactly why we do it. What is it that compels us to engage in this type of virtual interactivity?

Have you ever noticed your internet usage falling into a recurring pattern? Do you go

online at about the same point in your daily routine each day? Is there a particular web site that you always peruse before starting your daily activities? Looking back can you see consistency in your online behaviour across days and weeks? Have you forgotten the exact day you started following that pattern or your exact reasons for it? Do you feel vaguely out of sorts if your online schedule is disrupted or if you go too many days without logging in?

(La rose, In the style of young, 1999, pp.106-107)

No this is not a self-diagnostic test of “internet addiction”(La rose, In the style of young, 1999, pp.106-107) you have simply acquired some new media habits.

Although, new media theory is not quite as new as it may seem, new habits are being transformed from old habits. The history of the human – computer interface is that of borrowing and reformulating, or to use new media jargon, reformatting other media, both past and present –the printed page, film and television. But along with borrowing the conventions of most other media and electrically combining them together, “HCI designers heavily borrow conventions of the human man-made physical environment” (Sproull & Kiesler, 1986, New Media theory website), so we don’t feel completely out of the norms of reality but are at ease in this virtual realm.

Little do we know that this virtual utopia is replacing reality and becoming one of the central means of communication.

The electronic media as we know it is becoming the pacemaker for social and economic development of societies. It is “the new shaping of the consciousness”.

(Brecht: 1970, New Left Review website)

It infiltrates into all other sectors of production, takes over more and more directional and control functions, determines the standard of the prevailing technology and the happenings of everyday life. Is the internet the new black box which we all centre our daily lives around. In years to come, will the computer replace the TV in the center of our living room, or has it already been done?

The answer is certainly yes. Mobile communication permeates the mundane activities of banking, Led tunes and slowly panning cameras which are the visual and audible indication of the “intangible and tangled network of cables and signals that connect and mediate buildings and people, institutions and homes, towns and continents, bodies and machines”.

(Silverstone, Roger and Hirsch, A critical introduction to new media 1991 pp.218-219)

Anything and almost everything we do in everyday life can now be done online .We can chat to friends, buy basically anything on eBay, gamble, skim the illicit sites, find a house, You tube, watch the latest movie, listen to newly released songs, promote whatever we want and even pick up a new love interest on the way.

We want to be drawn out of the ordinary and into a new and exciting virtual world rather than being stranded in the norm of everyday life where we constantly follow routine. The image of these “users” is even reflected in numerous advertisements for cable television and internet services depicting awestruck consumers being sucked into their TV or computer screens, revealing how dreams of stepping into the “interface –of a literally unmediated experience of information and communication”(Heim, pp.221,1996) is readily available and accessible.

Miller and Slater explore that the ready accessibility of the internet 24/7 encourages this internet habit, forming “the condition of virtuality”.( Miller and Slater, 2000, pp.221)

At first glance the terms; ‘everyday life’ and ‘cyberspace’ seem distinct, even reconcile concepts. So where are our decisions to choose between the two? Are they lost amid this virtual world?

In Peter Lunefield’s opinion, “The choices to develop, deploy and value digital media not

only shape the technologies themselves but also are part of a feedback loop affecting the

culture that creates them”. (Lunenfeld, Digital Dialectic website, 1995)

It is shaping our view of the society and instead of finding out these things and experiencing them for ourselves; we are cooped up inside switched onto the net. Many can admit to being a ‘user’ in the sense that everyone can confess being glued to their computer screen for hours on end. Clifford Stoll reenacts the fears of ‘capitulation’ claiming that computers ‘teach us to withdraw, to retreat into their warm comfort of their false reality’ (Stoll, pp.47-49 1995) and the false reality of others.

We are now finding relationships of all kinds on the internet because this ‘hyper personal interaction’(Walther, 1996, pp.45) appeals more than relationships formed face to face.

To some it is more sociably desirable than face to face communication because we have the freedom to idealize the ability to choose which aspects of the self to disclose and when to disclose them. This pervasive sense of interactivity allows “users” to be multiple people as concurrently with no one of these being necessarily genuine. By separating ourselves from our bodies, from time and space, the computer opens a realm in which the ‘multiplicity of identity that is taken to characterize contemporary life reaches more valid than the other.’

(Lievrou and Fin, 1990 pp.6 The Handbook of New Media, Sage Publications)

In a study conducted in 1997 Scherer found that 13 percent of internet users reported some signs of dependency on the internet, specifically that it interfered with academic work, professional performance or social life (scherer, 1997, pp.48).Ten years later and it still hasn’t changed, worsening as the interactive empire grows larger. Will our increased use of the internet have deterious consequences for the rest of our lives? McKenna and Bargh state “there is no simple main effect of the internet on the average person”. (McKenna and Bargh, 2000, pp.49) Will this virtual vortex capture more of these “users” and leave longer lasting effects?

Computers as we know them will disappear into things that are first and foremost something else: smart nails, self cleaning shirts, driverless cars, therapeutic Barbie dolls, intelligent doorknobs, computer will be sweeping yet invisible parts of our everyday lives: we’ll live in them, wear them, and even eat them.

(Negroponte, 1998, pp.223,)

The reason being why we are so compelled to engage in this virtual utopia. Cyberspace offers us new dimensions to live in, free from the “time and space of everyday life” (Rose,1999, pp.106-107). “We reside in cyberspace when we feel ourselves moving through the interface into a relatively independent world with its own dimensions and rules”. (Rose,1999, pp.106-107)

Reference List

(Silverstone, Roger and Hirsch, Eric ‘Listening to a long conversation: an ethnographic approach to the study of information and communication technologies in the home’, Cultural studies 5.2 (1991): 218-219, a critical introduction to new media,

Fetter Lane London

)

(Lievrou and Fin, 1990 pp.6 The Handbook of New Media, Sage Publications, Leah A. Lievrouw and Sonia Livingstone) Cameron Stoll, 1995 Silicon snake oil: Second thoughts on the information highway. New York Double day

(Negroponte, 1998, pp.223, New media a critical introduction, new media in everyday life. The domestic shaping of new media. Martin Lister, Jon Dovey, Seth Giddings, Iain Grant, Kieran Kelly, 2003 Fetter lane, London)

(La rose, In the style of young, 1999, pp.106-107 Impact and Issues in New Media Paul S. N. Lee, Louis Leung, and Clement Y.K. So Editors, 2004, Hampton press Inc)

(Lev Manovich PP.89 the Language of New Media, Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (
Cambridge Mass: Press, 1999)

Raymond Williams, pp.195, Media studies texts, institutions and audiences-New technologies and media audiences, technology and society, Lisa Taylor and Andrew Willis, 1999, 1974Blackwell Publishers

Websites(The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media By Peter Lunenfeld 1995,

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=P0IJPXdt3KYC&oi=fnd&pg=RA1-PP1&sig=O58RGKtaYPaeEpkz8u6Ey0nU10w&dq=academic+articles+on+new+media+theory#PPT115,M1, MIT Press. accessed, 19^th March)

(Brecht: 1970, New Left Review website Theory of Radio New Left Review, http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=430

First accessed 19^th, March)

http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb03/unraveling.html

volume 34, February, 2003,Rebecca A. Clay Print version: page 40 Unraveling new media’s affects on children Sandra L. Calvert
Children’s
Digital
Media
Center,

Georgetown
University (accessed 10^th May)

http://astro.temple.edu/~zpapacha/Lecture4/frame.htm

(Sproull & Kiesler, 1986, New Media theory website).(accessed 22^nd March)

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3669/is_200407/ai_n9451851

2004, Kevin B.Wright (accessed 8^th May)

Bibliography

Books

‘A Critical introduction to New Media’ (Silverstone, Roger and Hirsch, Eric ‘Listening to a long conversation: an ethnographic approach to the study of information and communication technologies in the home’, Cultural studies 5.2 (1991): 218-219, Fetter Lane London)

‘Impact and Issues in New Media’ (La rose, In the style of young, 1999, pp.106-107 Paul S. N. Lee, Louis Leung, and Clement Y.K. So Editors, 2004, Hampton press Inc)

‘New media a critical introduction’(Negroponte, 1998, pp.223, new media in everyday life. The domestic shaping of new media. Martin Lister, Jon Dovey, Seth Giddings, Iain Grant, Kieran Kelly, 2003 Fetter lane, London)

‘The Handbook of New Media’ (Lievrou and Fin, 1990 pp.6, Sage Publications, Leah A. Lievrouw and Sonia Livingstone)

‘The Language of New Media’ (Lev Manovich PP.89, Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (
Cambridge Mass: Press, 1999)

‘Television and a Place Called Home’ (Silverstone, Roger 1994, in Television and Everyday Life, Routledge, London )

‘The Invention of Everyday Life’ (Felski, Rita 2002, in New Formations, Issue 39 pp. 15-31)

Websites(The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media By Peter Lunenfeld 1995, http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=P0IJPXdt3KYC&oi=fnd&pg=RA1-PP1&sig=O58RGKtaYPaeEpkz8u6Ey0nU10w&dq=academic+articles+on+new+media+theory#PPT115,M1, MIT Press. accessed, 19^th March)

(Brecht: 1970, New Left Review website Theory of Radio New Left Review, http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=430

First accessed 19^th, March)

http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb03/unraveling.htmlvolume 34, febuary, 2003,Rebecca A.Clay Print version: page 40 Unraveling new media’s effects on children Sandra L. Calvert
Children’s
Digital
Media
Center,

Georgetown
University (accessed

(Theories of Media Change: Understanding New Media
Garnet Hertz (Draft, last modified 13 November 2006)

F:\New commun academic essay\Theories of Media Change Understanding New Media – Garnet Hertz.htm

The new media reader / edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort. - New media technologies / edited by Ross Harley. - New media : theories and practices of digitextuality / edited by Anna Everett and John T. Caldwell. -New Media, Old Media : Interrogating the Digital Revolution [electronic resource] Author: Keenan, Thomas W. http://astro.temple.edu/~zpapacha/Lecture4/frame.htm http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/index.php?tag=new-media-theories

New Communication and technology in developing countries edited by Jarice Hanson and Uma NarulaPublished by
Lawrence Erlabaum associates http://books.google.com.au/books?vid=ISBN0805808469&id=BcrmRD4QEo4C&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&ots=Yqh4IR4F3E&dq=new+communication+and+technology&sig=07eRvPqxOrSVtCZD5eNqw3FD05o accessed 19^th March

soph72 — Fri, 11 May 2007 04:46:41 +0000

New Communication and Technology Academic essay

Sophie Dowling

S2625621

The term “cybercompulsions” has been expressed as an “umbrella”term, (Rose, 1999, pp.106-107) referring to online

media behaviours that we feel somehow compelled to engage in, without being able to converse exactly why we do it.

What is it that compels us to engage in this type of virtual interactivity?

Have you ever noticed your internet usage falling into a recurring pattern? Do you go online at about the same point in

your daily routine each day? Is there a particular web site that you always peruse before starting your daily activities?

Looking back can you see consistency in your online behaviour across days and weeks? Have you forgotten the exact day

you started following that pattern or your exact reasons for it? Do you feel vaguely out of sorts if your online schedule is

disrupted or if you go too many days without logging in? (La rose, In the style of young, 1999, pp.106-107)

No this is not a self-diagnostic test of “internet addiction”(La rose, In the style of young, 1999, pp.106-107) you have

simply acquired some new media habits.

Although, new media theory is not quite as new as it may seem, new habits are being transformed from old habits. The

history of the human – computer interface is that of borrowing and reformulating, or to use new media jargon,

reformatting other media, both past and present –the printed page, film and television. But

along with borrowing the conventions of most other media and electrically combining them together, “HCI designers

heavily borrow conventions of the human man-made physical environment” (Sproull & Kiesler, 1986, New Media theory

website), so we don’t feel completely out of the norms of reality but are at ease in this virtual realm.

Little do we know that this virtual utopia is replacing reality and becoming one of the central means of communication.

The electronic media as we know it is becoming the pacemaker for social and economic development of societies. It is “the

new shaping of the consciousness”. (Brecht: 1970, New Left Review website) It infiltrates into all other sectors of

production, takes over more and more directional and control functions, determines the standard of the prevailing

technology and the happenings of everyday life. Is the internet the new black box which we all centre our daily lives

around. In years to come, will the computer replace the TV in the center of our living room, or has it already been done?

The answer is certainly yes. Mobile communication permeates the mundane activities of banking, Led tunes and slowly

panning cameras which are the visual and audible indication of the “intangible and tangled network of cables and signals

that connect and mediate buildings and people, institutions and homes, towns and continents, bodies and machines”.

(Silverstone, Roger and Hirsch, A critical introduction to new media 1991 pp.218-219) Anything and almost everything we

do in everyday life can now be done online .We can chat to friends, buy basically anything on eBay, gamble, skim the illicit

sites, find a house, You tube, watch the latest movie, listen to newly released songs, promote whatever we want and even

pick up a new love interest on the way.

We want to be drawn out of the ordinary and into a new and exciting virtual world rather than being stranded in the norm

of everyday life where we constantly follow routine. The image of these “users” is even reflected in numerous

advertisements for cable television and internet services depicting awestruck consumers being sucked into their TV or

computer screens, revealing how dreams of stepping into the “interface –of a literally unmediated experience of

information and communication”(Heim, pp.221,1996) is readily available and accessible.

Miller and Slater explore that the ready accessibility of the internet 24/7 encourages this internet habit, forming “the

condition of virtuality”.( Miller and Slater, 2000, pp.221) At first glance the terms; ‘everyday life’ and ‘cyberspace’ seem

distinct, even reconcile concepts. So where are our decisions to choose between the two? Are they lost amid this virtual

world? In Peter Lunefield’s opinion, “The choices to develop, deploy and value digital media not only shape the

technologies themselves but also are part of a feedback loop affecting the culture that creates them”. (Lunenfeld, Digital

Dialectic website, 1995) It is shaping our view of the society and instead of finding out these things and experiencing them

for ourselves; we are cooped up inside switched onto the net. Many can admit to being a ‘user’ in the sense that everyone

can confess being glued to their computer screen for hours on end. Clifford Stoll reenacts the fears of ‘capitulation’ claiming

that computers ‘teach us to withdraw, to retreat into their warm comfort of their false reality’ (Stoll, pp.47-49 1995) and

the false reality of others.

We are now finding relationships of all kinds on the internet because this ‘hyper personal interaction’(Walther, 1996,

pp.45) appeals more than relationships formed face to face. To some it is more sociably desirable than face to face

communication because we have the freedom to idealize the ability to choose which aspects of the self to disclose and when

to disclose them. This pervasive sense of interactivity allows “users” to be multiple people as concurrently with no one of

these being necessarily genuine. By separating ourselves from our bodies, from time and space, the computer opens a

realm in which the ‘multiplicity of identity that is taken to characterize contemporary life reaches more valid than the

other.’ (Lievrou and Fin, 1990 pp.6 The Handbook of New Media, Sage Publications)

In a study conducted in 1997 Scherer found that 13 percent of internet users reported some signs of dependency on the

internet, specifically that it interfered with academic work, professional performance or social life (scherer, 1997,

pp.48).Ten years later and it still hasn’t changed, worsening as the interactive empire grows larger. Will our increased use

of the internet have deterious consequences for the rest of our lives? McKenna and Bargh state “there is no simple main

effect of the internet on the average person”. (McKenna and Bargh, 2000, pp.49) Will this virtual vortex capture more of

these “users” and leave longer lasting effects?

Computers as we know them will disappear into things that are first and foremost something else: smart nails, self cleaning

shirts, driverless cars, therapeutic Barbie dolls, intelligent doorknobs, computer will be sweeping yet invisible parts of our

everyday lives: we’ll live in them, wear them, and even eat them. (Negroponte, 1998, pp.223,) The reason being why we

are so compelled to engage in this virtual utopia. Cyberspace offers us new dimensions to live in, free from the “time and

space of everyday life” (Rose,1999, pp.106-107). “We reside in cyberspace when we feel ourselves moving through the

interface into a relatively independent world with its own dimensions and rules”. (Rose,1999, pp.106-107)

Reference List

Books

(Negroponte, 1998, pp.223, New media a critical introduction, new media in everyday life. The domestic shaping of new media. Martin Lister, Jon Dovey, Seth Giddings, Iain Grant, Kieran Kelly, 2003 Fetter lane, London)

(La rose, In the style of young, 1999, pp.106-107 Impact and Issues in New Media Paul S. N. Lee, Louis Leung, and Clement Y.K. So Editors, 2004, Hampton press Inc)

(Lev Manovich PP.89 the Language of New Media, Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge Mass: Press, 1999)

Raymond Williams, pp.195, Media studies texts, institutions and audiences-New technologies and media audiences, technology and society, Lisa Taylor and Andrew Willis, 1999, 1974Blackwell Publishers Websites

Websites

(The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media By Peter Lunenfeld 1995, http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=P0IJPXdt3KYC&oi=fnd&pg=RA1-PP1&sig=O58RGKtaYPaeEpkz8u6Ey0nU10w&dq=academic+articles+on+new+media+theory#PPT115,M1, MIT Press. accessed, 19th March)

(Brecht: 1970, New Left Review website Theory of Radio New Left Review, http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=430 First accessed 19th, March)

http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb03/unraveling.html volume 34, February, 2003,Rebecca A. Clay Print version: page 40 Unraveling new media’s affects on children Sandra L. Calvert Children’s Digital Media Center, Georgetown University (accessed 10th May)

astro.temple.edu/~zpapacha/Lecture4/frame.htm (Sproull & Kiesler, 1986, New Media theory website)(accessed 22nd March)

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3669/is_200407/ai_n9451851 2004, Kevin B.Wright (accessed 8th May)

Bibliography

Books

‘Impact and Issues in New Media’ (La rose, In the style of young, 1999, pp.106-107 Paul S. N. Lee, Louis Leung, and Clement Y.K. So Editors, 2004, Hampton press Inc)

‘The Handbook of New Media’ (Lievrou and Fin, 1990 pp.6, Sage Publications, Leah A. Lievrouw and Sonia Livingstone)

‘The Language of New Media’ (Lev Manovich PP.89, Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (
Cambridge Mass: Press, 1999)

‘Television and a Place Called Home’ (Silverstone, Roger 1994, in Television and Everyday Life, Routledge, London )

‘The Invention of Everyday Life’ (Felski, Rita 2002, in New Formations, Issue 39 pp. 15-31)

(Brecht: 1970, New Left Review website Theory of Radio New Left Review, http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=430

First accessed 19^th, March)

Georgetown
University (accessed

(Theories of Media Change: Understanding New Media
Garnet Hertz (Draft, last modified 13 November 2006)

F:\New commun academic essay\Theories of Media Change Understanding New Media – Garnet Hertz.htm

soph72 — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:10:34 +0000

Today in week 9 tutorial task we were required to further investigate and work on our essay which is due in the upcoming weeks.

A few questions i found helpful were:

Is there something about that topic that you want to say?
What information from your research can you use to back-up your claim?
Is there specific information that has helped you come to a conclusion?

These questions allowed me to further question what i really do want to say, I was approaching a wider range of views and issues rather than just the one strong argument set in concrete. So rather than just going over the new media and the effects it has on this new coming of age i needed to come up with a specific issue relevant to ‘new media theory’. My problem now was finding that.

I feel by researching more into the topic and burriying myself into other references and ideas my idea will emerge.

Another thing i feel uncomfortable about is referencing, especially on the net because alot of the sites i have drawn my references they do not have much to reference.

My question was answered, url and date i acessed the web.

soph72 — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 01:47:23 +0000

Before

AFTER

Here i have combined popular, media and celebrity together to reveal how the media distorts the celebrities image and stories through the blurred and distorted images. These techniques the media uses proves popular, the reason being why i combined all three.

soph72 — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 01:47:20 +0000

Before

AFTER

soph72 — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 01:38:43 +0000

Today in our tutorials we explored on the internet interesting websites.

Here are a few i found

http://www.maddogproductions.com/plotomatic.htm

This great site enables you to create characters, transport, genres and senarios and finally transforming it all into your very own movie plot. I recommend it to anyone after a laugh and interested in the movie genre.

I also found some interesting games websites.

Is a website where you can dress up and make over your favourite celebrities

http://www.stardoll.com/en/

Another website quite the oposites where you can actually catch and kill celbrities..quite gruesome

http://www.newgrounds.com/assassin/

Another web site i found interesting is BORED.COM you can creat fake stories,warp celebs, watch websites get destroyed

http://www.bored.com/

www.youtube.com

www.myspace.com

soph72 — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 02:41:41 +0000

Before-celebrities

After-celebrities

I chose to blur and use mosaic on the photo of the celebrities because most celebrities hide behind a distorted and manipulated image of who they really are.

communication-Before

Communication- after

I chose to use the newspaper as the larger image to give the effect of almost taking over the world to reveal the overpowering effect the media has on the world.

Friends-Before

After

I chose this because i think although friends fade and come and go the ones that are true stand out.

Games-Before

Games-After

i chose to blur and distill the image to give the appearence and affect that the grey swirls are symbolic of the growing technology and the addiction to games across a city.

Before-Australia