Week Nine and Course Evaluation

Course Evaluation

Throughout semester two 2010 I have to say that I have thoroughly enjoyed taking New Communication Technologies subject. I’ll admit I originally I didn’t want to take the course because I had no interest in what it had to offer. However, it was compulsory core subject that I had to enroll in with my Bachelor of Communications degree.

I really have liked the idea of creating a blog and updating it weekly. I’ve never had my own blog though have always thought about starting one. This was certainly a kick in the backside for me to start one. I think I’ll start my own politically based blog and continue it after this course. As I said in my first weekly post I take a major interest in politics and many political figures and commentators use blogs to communicate to the public, so a blog would certainly pave the way for my ambitions.

I learnt alot about technology in this subject, and ideas and theories that are derived from commincation technology. Cyber Punking and Cyber Jamming were main themes that were covered in the course. I had alot of fun creating our cyber jam with my group partners Sherie and Jay, that would definately be one of the highlights. I honestly didn't enjoyed these last few weeks of the course where we have discussed virtual philosphy and William Gibson's theories. I haven't developed an interest or passion for these topics hence that's why I don't like them. I enjoyed learning about Creative Commons and privacy and ownership on social networking sites.

Overall I have enjoyed taking New Communication Technologies. I think the lectures were fairly average, though I thought the tutorials were very engaging and we were able to discuss lecture content in further detail which was helpful to me. I would certainly recommend this subject to other first year students who take an interest in technology and like the thought of publishing their work via a blog.

Online Essay

The question I have decided to do for my online essay is:

Why is privacy such a contentious issue for internet users? Discuss with reference to at least ONE social network service (or other web2.0 service).

I think that this would be a great topic to write an essay about. It covers an issue that has been mentioned in the media in recently. An issue like this definitely puts an emphasis on the issue of privacy on social networking websites like Facebook.

I have already found several academic journals for this topic.

http://find.galegroup.com.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/gtx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId=EAIM&docId=A53885088&source=gale&srcprod=EAIM&userGroupName=griffith&version=1.0

Week Seven

Lecture Review

In this week's lecture we talked about the use of freeware (free software) that can be used on operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac. Many programs that we have on our computers are expensive, like Office or Adobe Photoshop. Sometimes these programs can come with the operating system, though most of the time they have to be purchased separately. However, the internet has several websites that offer free alternative software programs thatare similar to those that you would pay hundreds ofdollars for.

There were many freeware programs that were talked about in the lecture, Mozilla Firefox was one of them. It's a very one popular freeware program that is used. It is an alternative to Internet Explorer a default web browser on Windows or Apple Mac OSX default browser Safari. Another freeware program mentioned was Gimp. Gimp is a free photo editor similar to that of iphoto what would be used on Apple. There were many other freeware programs that were discussed.

Linux an alternative operating system was mentioned as well in the lecture and we were given a challenge to trial it for 10 days.I know several people who use this system and say it is alright but I certainly won't be taking the dive and trying it out. Several videos were also shown in the lecture one about Stephen Fry endorsing the Linux Operating System and theother was about the organisation Creative Commons.

Tute Exercise- Creative Commons

Creative Commons founded by Lawrence Lessig in 2001 is a U.S based organisation that is aimed at distributing creative works by organisations or individuals. Creative commons allows other people to build on and share the work of others without infringing on copyright laws. This certainly would be beneficial for a student at university, say in the area of scientific research, where a person may have made progress ona certain subject and they can further add to it with out infringing on the other person previous work.

Here are some pieces of work that are under Creative Commons licensing: The of Honour of Knights a novel by Stephen J Sweeney, Sita Sings the Blues a 2D animated film by American Artist Nina Paley Sita Sings the Blues Nine Inch Nails album Ghosts: I-IV.

This journal article Insiders Guide to Creative Commons by Michael Baumann mainly discusses the legal aspects of Creative Commons. Baumann in the article also talks about the history of it and the general concept of Creative Commons. He makes a comparison of Creative Commons against Copyright Laws.

http://libraryproxy .griffith .edu .au/login ?url=http://proquest .umi .com .libraryproxy .griffith .edu .au/pqdweb ?did=859561461 &Fmt=7 &clientId=13713 &RQT=309 &VName=PQD

Portable Apps (Applications) is computer software that runs by portable devices such as a thumb drive (usb stick), CD-ROM and Floopy Disc. The software is run via the portable device without actually installing the software to the computer. This could be very useful for a person who wants to use their program(s) or applications on public computers like internet cafe's where they can't install the software to the computer.

Here is a video that talks about and gives a further insight into creative commons:

Tute Spark- Free Software

For a few days I decided to use Mozilla Firefox, the freeware web browser designed for Windows and Mac. I found this piece of free software to be fantastic. I own a Mac and have been using the default web browser Safari for several months. I found Mozilla to be much more faster than Safari. It also has more features than Apple's default internet browser. I use to use this program when I owned a Windows operating system, because it was the first web browser that had used and introduced the concept of tab browsing. I will continue to use this freeware, and I strongly recommend it to other people who want a change from the boring old default browsers.

Sources:

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/6/62/Creativecommons-informational-flyer_eng.pdf

http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/19321

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Books

Week Six

Lecture Review

In this week's lecture, the topics of New Media and Social Media were discussed by Adam Muir. This lecture gave an insightful overview of what new media is, how it has developed, and also how the internet has created and contributed to the phenomenon of social networking. Muir stated that technology and the media have very close link to each other especially in today's society. Muir focused on two important themes from early internet studies in the first half of the lecture, the virtual community and individual identity. He described the virtual community 'as groups and people communicating via the internet'. He explained that individual identity was how people expressed who they are via the internet'.

The second part of the lecture Muir talked about the transformation of the internet from web 1.0 to Web 2.0 after the dot com crash post 2000. With Web 2.0 there was much talk of how the social community via the web could change and develop. He discussed economic aspects of the development of Web 2.0 but he also brought up ownership and privacy. In the lecture he asked us who owns the photos and the personal content we upload to social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace.

Culture Jam- Parking Increase at Griffith University?

After a lot of thought and discussion between Jay, Sherie and myself we finally came up with a brilliant culture jam that did create quite a bit of attention and controversy. We came up with the idea that the parking fees at Griffith were going to increase dramatically in 2011. Our idea was that Queensland Government had acquired a majority of the parking at the university, including the undercover carpark. This was because they needed car spaces for the construction workers at the Gold Coast University Hospital. We started off a group on Facebook titled " that caught the attention of several people and it nearly grew to 200 people within a couple days. To stir the pot further, we even got in touch with a journalist at the Courier Mail, who wanted to publish a story about the group we had created. In the end we were strongly advised by our tutor to pull the plug on our jam by shutting down our Facebook group, incase we got in trouble off the university. I can fully understand why we had too, because an issue like this would cause alot of havoc for the university through the media. However, I'm really glad that our culture jam did catch some attention.

Below are some screenshots of our Facebook group:

Tute Spark- Social Networking

Facebook, Myspace, Bebo even Flickr are great social networking sites where you can share your life with friends, family, co-workers and the wider community. However doing this can involve risks. Privacy is one big risk. People have been able to commit fraud by stealing people's identities through social networking websites such as these. Though fraud isn't the only big issue here, ownership is. The photos, videos even publications that you post on social networking sites such as Facebook belong to the website. So those personal images that you took and posted up on your page can become automatic property of sites like Facebook and Myspace. They virtually can do what they want with anything on your page that you or your friends have posted. Recently this sort of issue has raised question and caused much confusion and controversy. There have even been stories of people trying to file lawsuits against companies and individuals for stealing their photos and infringing on their privacy.

Sources:

http://www.facebook.com/terms.php

http://consumerist.com/2009/02/facebooks-new-terms-of-service-we-can-do-anything-we-want-with-your-content-forever.html