What to think, like and be interested in

So I wonder if the next three months of my life are going to be another, filled with forced interests (http://afflicksblog.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/unofficial-blog.html). Being told what I have to have and interest in, and what I should think about those interests. The rise of social networking and citizen journalism sees research, study and fact turned to opinion. I wonder how long it will be before research assignments have a requirement of at least 10 sources from "commented blog posts", rather than scholarly peer reviewed articles. Who knows, maybe one day commenting on a blog post will class it as peer reviewed.

Comment from Prof. Davies: "omg I totally agree with that, and I like how you pointed out both sides of ur argument :)"

Why Do I Hate Facebook?

I don't know why I hate Facebook, I just do. People want to put intimate details of their lives on display, under the guise of "quotes they found online". It's a deeply personal yet distant portrait of someone's life. Maybe what bugs me is that we're all expected to be on. We have to collaborate on Facebook because it's "easier". Company's use Facebook for advertising and promotion because it's "easier" than utilising an actual PR and Media department.


I think the question that annoys me most is, "are you on Facebook?". My phone is next to me, all the time. Use that. People contact you on Facebook, and if you don't check to see if someone contacted you, it's your fault. "I posted on your wall, you should have checked". Unless of course you put your notifications on, then you get an email. You get an email every time someone mentions you. Every mundane, lacklustre, obscure topic that someone thinks you're interested in, is emailed to you, leaving you to filter through the crap in your inbox.


The privacy issues are of no concern to me. If you post intimate details of your life on the Internet, you deserve what happens to you. It's the Internet. Facebook isn't this separate entity, bound by it's own laws of privacy or security. It's. The. Internet. I've heard people use that phrase before "don't post anything on Facebook you wouldn't want on a billboard". To some people, that warning has no significance. I would happily post any of my opinions on billboard, next to my face, middle finger raised.

Week 13 - The Time Space Bubble

I can’t remember if it was in this blog or another, but I’ve said in the past that the phone in your pocket is only as good as everything else it lets you do. We don’t just want to make calls, we want a phone the takes pictures, plays music, acts as a GPS, can scan QR codes, process word documents, check emails, read the newspaper, tweet, update Facebook *deep breath* and text. Ultimately, this means everyone is living in their own little time-space bubble. A physical object is made digital by connecting us online. So for brief periods, whether it’s 30 seconds as we text, 10 minutes as we Facebook, or an hour as we play a game online, we’re living in a bubble defined by online time.

With physical objects now being connected, they cross onto to the realm of being able to communicate. Are we using a device to communicate, or is the device itself communicating?

But before looking specifically at inanimate objects going online, the relationship between people and “things” needs to be addressed. This has been analysed through the “Actor Network Theory”; a social theory, which analyses the relationship between both material and semiotic entities. Not only does Actor Network Theory analyse the objects that interact, it analyses the actual communication (i.e. the intangible) and it’s relationship with the tangible. This is a complex theory, much to in-depth to detail here, but is definitely worth looking at.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5pTKqKaElA

I wanted to embed that video, but Blogger and YouTube won't let me at the moment :(

Week 12 - UFC 92 App Anarchy

In the red corner, from Cupertino, California, weighing in at $65.23 million, the iOS Incinerator, Apple!

And in the blue corner, originally from Menlow Park, now residing in Mountain View, California, weighing in at $29.32 billion, the Open Source Obliterator, Google!

So let me start off by saying I don’t have a smartphone. I did, but not anymore. I had an iPhone for nearly 2 years, then it died and I was forced to use some ancient Nokia for about 3 months till my contract ran out. I decided to renew my contract, but go for high-end Android phone. A Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc. I hated it. I used it for 3 months and wanted to break the thing because of how sluggish an unreliable it was. Effectively I was without a functioning smartphone for nearly 6 months, which changed the way I use my phone. So now all I want is a phone that can message and make calls. Remember that’s what a phone is? As a result, I bought a Nokia X3-02 last week.

However, in the debate of Apple v. Google, iOS v. Android, I am on the side of……Apple. Why? Because of the level of control Ted was discussing in the lecture. Apple control the hardware, the system and the software on the system. The result is, in my opinion, a fully functioning system, with hardware and software synchronised to work perfectly with each other.

I believe the problem with Google’s idea of everything being open is that it leaves the door open to sub-standard development. In an ideal world, the open freedom of a system like Android attracts independent developers who are yet to be employed by a company. Kind of like a musician yet to be signed to a label. Unfortunately though, the app market (both Android and Apple) attract wanna-be developers. Apple’s setup filters out the garbage, whereas the Android system doesn’t.

An article on ZDnet.com identifies 3 key flaws in both the Apple and Android setups. Apple’s are software inflexibility, productivity limitations and fewer hardware choices. To me these were a stretch, Software inflexibility is it’s strength, the productivity limitations it discusses are inaccurate and it’s screen is the highest resolution one on the market. The android limitations it mentions however are much more accurate.

Ecosystem chaos – an open source OS, allowing hardware and software manufacturers to do anything they want with it, with minimal-to-no regulation.

Wildly inconsistent experiences – Identical versions of an Android OS running on two different manufacturers phones will do completely different things, resulting in the reliability of a particular version of Android having completely different public opinions.

Leadership vacuum – A lack of top down control from Google means there is no centralised framework or standard to build upon. Ultimately it gives hardware and software vendors free reign to manipulate Android however they please.

I could quite literally go on for 8 pages about the Apple v. Android debate. But I won’t. It’s a topic I know a fair bit about and have strong opinions on. 

Week 11 - #vivalarevalutione

“A network of peripheries – what was a permanent periphery can now become a new centre”. I loved that quote in the lecture. The idea that any node in a network can become a hub. A network of hubs. Or a network with no hub, and only decentralised control. This is essentially how SNS’s thrive. Of course any successful SNS has a centralised hub, but it is only necessary to support the network, not spread information.

This week we’re looking at the protests in Egypt and Tunisia. Back in January, Wael Ghonim reached out to Egyptian youths through Facebook, to encourage them to participate. For his efforts, he was thrown in jail to 12 days.

The ability to mass organize an event such as a protest in a Middle Eastern country, shows the true power of social networks ability to reach people. A few years back we had parents calling talkback radio shows and writing in to morning shows about how they’re worried their kids are going to post details of their party on Facebook, and an entire suburb will show up. Social networks have become so powerful now, it’s reached a point where Governments are worried about social revolution spreading on Facebook.

All through this semester we’ve been talking about social revolution in the digital world. And that is what this all is at the core of it, social revolution, which is nothing new. There’s just a new way of going about it.

Week 9 - PEBKAC

Civic hacktivism, Wikileaks, online protests; they’re all founded in the same principle of freedom of speech, which has been around for decades. It’s just teaching an old dog new tricks. Or rather, new dogs, learning the old dogs tricks and reinventing them.

“ʻThe Internetʼ is the new trick. This amazing device – full of youth, verve, and energy” – Anonymous, 2003.

Asking whether sites like Wikileaks is wrong, is not a new debate. It’s an old debate, reinvigorated. Speaking out against Governments or revealing the truth behind what the mass media tells us has been going on for years, the digital age and the Internet have just given news means of doing so, and effectively made it easier to reach the “uninformed masses”. Therefore I believe the debate lies in the effectiveness of it.

There is a big difference between one lone user calling himself a civic hacktivist by having a rant on his blog, and a site like Wikileaks.

About 7 years ago a group emerged known as “Anonymous”. They were a group of people, essentially functioning as single entity, focused on hacktivism. The group is primarily composed of members from forums and image boards, however they have no single location or base. There is no leader, anyone can join and work towards the same collective goal as the rest of the group.  They became famous however, through “Project Chanology”; their protest against Scientology.

Week 8 – And now we go to 12 year old Timmy Smith, reporting from his bedroom. Timmy are you there?

Most of what we see these days from online blogs, is the modern day equivalent of the tabloid rag magazines. People just making stuff up based on random facts and/or images they’ve seen. Couple the uninformative, rumour-based blogs of your aver Joe, with the overload of “information” being Tweeted, who knows where true journalism has gone.

Richard Wilkins fell for “citizen journalism” a couple of years back. Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett died on the same day. That morning, someone blogged, a single sentence, saying that Jeff Goldblum had died in New Zealand falling off a cliff. This was a baseless, unverified blog by someone, which the “real” news decided to jump on.

Even today I watch the news and see how opinionated and biased the news has become. I’ve always seen morning shows and current affairs programs as opinionated, financially-fueled nonsense. But the actual news programs on mainstream channels is riddled with sarcasm and political influence.

So if citizen journalism is rubbish, and media journalism is biased, where do we hear the truth from? I think through our own discourse, we discover the truth for ourselves. With the abundance of news media outlets out there, most people can discover the truth for themselves, filtering out the political bias, unverified information and nonsense for themselves.